- ISHITA GUPTA (ishgupta.97@gmail.com)
After Rohingya insurgent’s Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF), sudden attack on Myanmar’s military posts, Southeast Asia has become a battle ground for countries fighting to get rid of Rohingya refugees. Native to Myanmar, Rohingya muslims have been facing identity crisis across Southeast Asia. According to Myanmar government Rohingya does not hold any right to citizenship of their country, furthermore the Muslim minority is considered illegal immigrants coming from Bangladesh.
25th August 2017, was when ARIF attacked dozens of police posts and an army base, resulting in nationwide oppression of Rohingya minority by Myanmar’s military troops. Posterior to havoc, it is expected that over Five Lakh Rohingyas have left the country and fled either to Bangladesh or Indonesia to safeguard their families from military troops in Myanmar.
Human rights groups have accused the military in Myanmar for renewed violence, including reported rape, murder and arson, citing reports of systematic and massive abuses of human rights and compelling Muslim Rohingya to flee their homes in the predominantly Buddhist country.
A much anticipated decision of Myanmar government to form a new overarching committee ‘Union Enterprise For Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development’ to aid refugees, oversee their return and help them resettle, came on 13th October,2017, after Kofi Annan Advisory Commission submitted recommendations on Rakhine State (native place for Rohingya), regarding reviewing of the 1982 Citizenship Law, to Myanmar government on 24th August 2017, however it took over a month for Suu kyi to realise human rights of Rohingya’s in their country, but this delay has already tarnished Myanmar’s image internationally.
The Rohingya, an ethnic muslim minority, who live mainly in Rakhine state, near the Bangladesh border, have had a long troubled history. Myanmar government does not recognize the members of long persecuted religious minority, who arrived in Rakhine generations ago, as citizens and consider them to have migrated illegally from Bangladesh. The group was denied recognition as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups under country’s discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law, stripping the Rohingya of access to full citizenship, hence rendering them stateless.
Rights groups and UN Leaders have condemned the escalating violence and atrocities as ethnic cleansing. “Myanmar authorities have created out brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority”, said Nikki Haley , US Ambassador to United Nation at an emergency UN Security Council meeting.
Sudden influx of more than 4,00,000 Rohingya refugees, posed the burden of crisis upon Bangladesh. The UN has issued an urgent fund raising appeal of $430 Million, for a Humanitarian Response Plan, in order to eliminate dire conditions in country’s refugee camps, according to sources.
Though India extended its full support for Bangladesh, contributing in the humanitarian relief under the operation ‘Insaniyat’, Bangladeshi analysts were sceptical about New Delhi’s promised support for Bangladesh. ‘Given India’s economic and strategic interest in Myanmar, I think it will be difficult for India to support Bangladesh and put pressure on Myanmar to address Rohingya problem, said Ameena Mohsin, an international relations professor at Dhaka University, speaking to Benar News.
“ The penultimate stage will be resettlement. The repatriation of the refugees from Bangladesh will follow the terms agreed with the UN and Bangladesh in 1990, when Muslim refugees who fled the military crackdown at the time, were allowed to return. Of course it also involves a process of verification, which has already begun. The longer term objective is to bring development to the region and establishing a durable peace,” said Suu kyi speaking to Bangkok Post after being accused of not speaking out for the Rohingyas and increasingly facing pressure upon withdrawing the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to her for the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.
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