Who will save the Rohingya Muslims?

DR. ALI AL-GHAMDY

Arakan (Rakhine) province was an independent kingdom for much of its history. A vast region stretching from western Burma to the Bengal region, Arakan was weakened when war broke out with the Mughal rulers in India, especially when it lost the Chittagong region to the Mughals. The region’s weaker position and instability led to its annexation to the Burmese state.

The British were represented in Burma by the East India Company, which initially began with commercial activities and ended up by establishing a government. With the expansion of British domination beginning from the eastern part of India, or Bengal, a series of wars broke out between the British and the Burmese. This subsequently resulted in the British invading Burma and making it part of the British Empire.

Arakan was the site of many battles during the Second World War. With the end of the war and following Britain’s decision to give independence to some of its colonies, Burma became independent in 1948. Thus, Arakan became part of the newly independent Union of Burma. However, it did not stop the people of Arakan from demanding their own independence and eventually they rebelled.

In 1974, the socialist government under General Ne Win granted self rule to Arakan province. However, this failed to satisfy Arakan Muslims, who calling themselves mujahideen, carried out an armed rebellion and vowed to create an Islamic state. The people of Arakan region belonged to various sections of the pluralist Burmese society, and Muslims were from the minority Rohingyas. Muslims found that their nationality was abrogated and the majority Buddhist population began to take repressive measures against them with the tacit approval and support of the government.

Since the beginning of the crisis in the 1960s, heinous crimes have been committed against Rohingyas such as perpetrating massacres, depriving them of their rights, and driving a large number of them out of their country. As a result, the Rohingyas were forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh authorities set up tents for the refugees and extended them help with the hope that their problems would be quickly resolved. However, since the 1990s, the persecution and massacre of Muslims has increased and a large number of them have been pushed out of the country to Bangladesh where new tents have been erected for them. Many of these refugees later fled to Saudi Arabia and other countries.

The mounting international pressure on the Myanmar government and the growing resistance of the opposition under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had kindled new hope that the usurped rights of the Rohingya Muslims would be restored and that those who had been driven out of their homes would be able to return. But all of these hopes were shattered again and the Rohingyas became victims of massacres at the hands of Buddhists with the clandestine support of police and security forces who made no effort to save these people. This triggered another exodus of boatloads of refugees fleeing to Bangladesh in order to save their lives.

However, the Bangladesh government has issued orders to close its borders to these refugees despite repeated calls from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and several other global rights groups as well as organizations, such as the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Asian Human Rights Commission. These groups have asked Dhaka to offer refugee status to Myanmar’s minority Muslim Rohingyas against the backdrop of the deadly violence in the country’s Buddhist dominated Arakan state.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni announced that her country is not in a position to shelter any more refugees as the densely inhabited state is already over-burdened with nearly half a million refugees. She urged the global human rights groups, as well as the UNHCR to pressure the Myanmar government to create a conducive atmosphere for the return of the refugees as well as to restore their rights instead of asking Bangladesh to open its borders to more of them.

Still there is public pressure from civil rights organizations as well as some prominent Muslim leaders and the media to ensure the protection of these refugees after allowing them to return to their country and to extend humanitarian assistance to them in addition to restoring all of their legitimate rights. At the same time, some Bangladeshi observers have come forward to support Dhaka’s decision not to allow any more refugees into the country. They have pointed out that the disturbances that took place and are taking place in Arakan are the outcome of Myanmar domestic policies. They also indicate that allowing more refugees to enter the country may create a misunderstanding in Myanmar at a time when its head of state is scheduled to visit Bangladesh next month.

In a bid to save the Rohingya Muslims from massacres, Salimullah, chairman of the Rohingya Rights Organization, has talked by phone with officials of several Muslim governments as well as with leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation and several international human rights organizations. He has praised the position of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi with regard to their problem. However, he was not able to brief her on the latest turbulent situation because she was in Europe to receive the Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to her two decades ago. She addressed the International Labor Organization in Geneva before delivering her Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo, 21 years after winning the award while under house arrest. Even though she referred in the speech to the ongoing bloodshed in her country, she did not as expected specifically refer to the massacres being perpetrated against Muslims besides demanding that the world and the Myanmar government protect their lives which would have made the Nobel Peace Prize more meaningful.


— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdy is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at algham@hotmail.com