'Kalar' is a racist term used to refer to people of South
Asian origin, often directed towards the Rohingya
Dr Md Ziaur Rahman, chairman of the Department of
Criminology at Dhaka University, said the Rohingyas have been oppressed since
the 1700s, adding that the reason why they have not been able to gain rights
from Myanmar is because of a failure to rise up against state oppression due to
a lack of formal organizations and networks and resource mobilization to
capitalize on political opportunities.
Dr Zia was speaking at a session titled “Failed
Resistance and Current Uncertainty of the Rohingya” at the end of a two-day
international conference on “Refugees in the Public Imagination: Discourse of
(dis)location and (dis)placement”.
The event organized by the Department of English and
Humanities at the University of Liberal Arts (ULAB) held sessions covering
topics such as the refugee narratives, Rohingya oral literature, the history of
the Rohingyas and coverage of the Rohingya crisis.
A plenary session titled “One and Only Figure of the
Refugee” was conducted by Dr Salimullah Khan, director of Center for Advanced
Theory at ULAB, where he went into great detail on the history behind the
Rohingya crisis, stressing on how refugees are often denied their human rights.
“It is important to first define what it means to be a
human in order to protect their rights,” he said.
Mashrur Shahid Hossain, associate professor at the
Department of English of Jahangirnagar University, presented a research paper
on the Rohingya’s oral literary traditions called “Ou Anar Foriso: Reading
Rohingya Literature and Art vis-a-vis Rohingya Translocation.”
During his presentation, Mashrur mentioned how the
Rohingyas were discriminated against by the Myanmar nationalists, who used
derogatory and racist terms such as “Bangladeshi Kalar” – “Kalar” is a racist
term used to refer to people of South Asian origin, often directed towards the
Rohingya.
He said, despite the Myanmar national anthem guaranteeing
equal rights to all, the government of Myanmar refused to grant the Rohingyas
their rights.
During another session on how the Rohingya crisis has been
dealt with by the media, called “Covering the Rohingyas,” speakers said the
Rohingya were forcefully displaced and their land illegally occupied by locals.
Tanvir Chowdhury, Aljazeera correspondent for Bangladesh,
said that most of the Rohingyas said they were too traumatized to want to
return to Myanmar.
Probash Amin, head of news at ATN News, said he thinks
that it will take up to 50 years to repatriate the Rohingya back to Myanmar
from Bangladesh, even though there is a bilateral agreement between the two
countries.
“I am pretty sure that 30,000 to 50,000 Rohingyas
returning would be a success and the remaining 950,000 of them will end up
living in Bangladesh,” he said, adding that the Rohingyas might end up being a
security risk in the near future.
Zahirul Islam Mamun, chief executive editor at ATN
Bangla, and Sam Jahan, correspondent for Agence France-Presse, were also
present at the panel discussion.