By Saudi Gazette
Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel on the Rohingya crisis
Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel on the Rohingya crisis
The veteran US diplomat quit as the 10-member advisory
board was making its first visit to Myanmar’s Rakhine state from where nearly
one million Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months.
The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation
of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Myanmar last year. The
board is to advise the Myanmar government on enacting the findings of an
earlier commission that investigated the condition of the Rohingya.
The commission was headed by former UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan. Announcing his resignation last week, Richardson said he could not
in “good conscience” sit on a panel that was only “whitewashing” the causes of
the Rohingya crisis. He accused the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi of
lacking in “moral leadership”. According to Richardson, Surakiart Sathirathai,
the board chairman and a former Thai deputy prime minister, was not “genuinely
committed” to implementing recommendations regarding the issues of Rohingya’s
safety, citizenship, peace, stability and development.
By now everybody knows that all of Rohingya’s problems
arise from the fact that they have no citizenship rights. The Buddhist-majority
Myanmar considers them interlopers from India’s Bengal province during the
British colonial rule. The Rohingya have no access to education or health care
and their freedom of movement is severely restricted.
Although the latest wave of anti-Rohingya violence and
refugee exodus began with Aug. 25 militant attacks on 30 police posts and an
army base that killed 12 security officers, major attacks on Rohingya forcing
them to flee to Bangladesh and other neighboring countries have occurred at
least three times in the past 50 years: In 1977-78, in 1991-92 and in 2012 when
hundreds of thousands fled across the borders following attacks by Buddhists.
Bangladesh’s plan to start repatriating those who entered
since September 2017 has been postponed due to concerns about their safety.
Repatriation was to begin last Tuesday. But doubts hang over their return to
Myanmar amid warnings that conditions remain unstable in the Rakhine state.
According to Bangladesh, the list of people to be sent back is yet to be
prepared. But that is not the only problem.
Human rights groups think any repatriation now would be
premature and dangerous. They express doubts whether repatriation will be safe,
truly voluntary, and dignified. It is not even clear if the Rohingya will get
to return to their original dwellings which were razed during the violence last
year. Even though the UN and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have welcomed the
Bangladesh-Myanmar agreement on the return of refugees, they are not a party to
the deal. So there is no guarantee that the operations will abide by
international standards.
Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay’s statement that
the returnees could apply for citizenship “after they pass the verification
process” has also created doubts and confusion in the minds of the refugees and
their supporters.
In this context, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s
(ARSA) Jan. 21 declaration that it has no choice but to fight the Myanmar
government will only complicate the situation and make things harder still for
the Rohingya. The entire Rohingya population had to pay a heavy price for
ARSA’s Aug. 25 attacks on security posts. In the ensuing violence, scores of
Rohingya were shot, killed and gang- raped. This also helped the Myanmar
authorities to reframe their anti-Rohingya atrocities as part of a worldwide
fight against terrorism. One can only hope that enough number of Rohingya will
see through ARSA’s game and take a firm stand against the group. The Rohingya
should realize that far from helping their cause, ARSA is only helping the
Myanmar authorities to depict a community who are fighting for their rights as
a lethal combination of criminals, illegal immigrants, terrorists, and the most
dangerous kind of threat to the country’s security.