“Five years ago, an op-ed in a Bangladeshi daily, Dhaka
Tribune, ruffled the feathers of the powers that be in Myanmar’s capital, Nay
Pyi Taw. Such was the offence taken that the Bangladeshi Ambassador was
summoned for a dressing down by the Burmese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In the opinion piece, now long removed from the web,
journalist Zeeshan Khan had argued that the Rohingya “should have the option of
forming an independent country between Bangladesh and Myanmar”.
Now, a broadly similar proposition has resurfaced in an
intervention by US Congressman Brad James Sherman, in the House of
Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. https://youtu.be/LNCmx_Cy7JI
Tweeted by Brad James Sherman @BradSherman “The
@HouseForeign Subcommittee on Asia & the Pacific convened an important
hearing today to discuss vital U.S. interests in South Asia. Watch what I had
to say here: http://bit.ly/2wTEX9a
Brad Sherman’s ‘Solution’ To Rakhine’s
Rohingya Crisis
At the time, Ye Htut, the President's Office
spokesperson, made the Burmese objection clear: “We will never allow such
damage to the sovereignty and territory of our country”.
Rohingya activists were at one with this. Nay San Lwin, a
prominent Rohingya advocate, found the whole notion to be “horrible”. He said
at the time, ‘We are Burmese. We are Myanmar’s Rohingya. We are part of Myanmar
and we will always be part of Myanmar”.
Five years since, social media chatter reveals
significant differences in Rohingya thinking between then and now.
Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democratic Party member of
the House of Representatives, made his explosive observation in the form of a
question to a State Department official.
He asked that given the ethnic cleansing
and genocide against the Rohingya, and the failure to issue citizenship by the
Myanmar government, should the US government not “support the transfer of the
Northern Rakhine state to Bangladeshi sovereignty?”
After Ambassador Alice Wells found the necessary
composure to answer, the Congressman persisted in giving the example of South
Sudan, and recommended that:
“If the Myanmar government doesn’t announce
that it is dedicated to the protection of these (Rohingya) people, and the issuance
of citizenship documents, then we will alter our position, and call for the
transfer of the North Rakhine State to a country that will protect these
people.”
What the Rohingya Themselves Feel about Brad
Sherman’s Comments
Sherman's incendiary comments were made in the middle of
June 2019, and have hitherto only surfaced in local Bangladeshi media and niche
outlets. Nevertheless, his comments have generated strong responses from
Rohingya themselves. I asked Nay San Lwin whether he still thinks the idea of
separation is unpalatable. He said: “5 years ago, I responded according to the
situation we were in. But this time I am not going to say the same things
because the situation has changed.”
Lwin is troubled by the lack of progress in
every aspect of the Rohingya crisis. He continued: “Thousands have been killed,
slaughtered and burned alive. Many hundreds of women have been raped.”
He continues, “The violence against us has risen
massively. None of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.”
Lwin finds the idea of separation from Myanmar and being
part of Bangladesh very difficult. At the same time, he insists he is being
realistic. “Myanmar has no intention to fulfill what we want. Myanmar hasn’t
given any assurance or guarantee that we will not be persecuted again.”
And it is only after this preamble that Nay San Lwin
breaks with his statement of the past and says: “Enough is enough. If America
is willing to intervene in the situation and assure our human dignity, we will
be persuaded. All we want is human dignity regardless of who governs us.”
Rohingya Dissent On Whether Rakhine Should Be
Placed Under Bangladesh Sovereignty
This is a far cry from his previous solid belief in
Myanmar. I questioned Lwin if this secession or separation idea does not feed
into Burmese narratives, that this has always been the Rohingya plan? Lwin is
indignant and insists that that is preposterous: “We have never wanted to
secede. It is the Burmese governments who have made us stateless in the land of
our birth. They have stolen all our rights and have no intention of restoring
them!”
I asked another prominent Rohingya
activist, Tun Khin, what he thinks Rohingya refugees in the camps of Bangladesh
might feel about the Congressman’s idea. Tun Khin reiterated that the Rohingya
never wanted to be separated.
He added: “However, currently the survivors think
governments have failed them, the whole of the UN system has failed them, and
they may see this as a way of extricating a solution.”
READ ALSO HERE: The activist has thanked to the congressman and said “this is the only way to solve the Rohingya crisis forever unless sooner may disappear the Rohingyas from the land.” https://t.co/xOhdCoRifBNot all Rohingya activists are enamoured with the idea though. Razia Sultana, recent recipient of the US State Department's International Women of Courage Award, was disgusted by the suggestion. She said: “I believe it is a trick to grow tensions in the region.” Sultana was adamant and declared in a tweet that, “We (Rohingya) don't want to remove ourselves or join another country or threaten the sovereignty of Myanmar.”
The Idea of Secession
It is worth noting that secession has only recently become an unclean concept in the Myanmar constitution. The 2008 constitution emphatically declares that: “No part of the territory constituted in the Union, such as Regions, States, Union Territories and Self-Administered Areas, shall ever secede from the Union.”
It is worth noting that secession has only recently become an unclean concept in the Myanmar constitution. The 2008 constitution emphatically declares that: “No part of the territory constituted in the Union, such as Regions, States, Union Territories and Self-Administered Areas, shall ever secede from the Union.”
However, Burma’s 1947 constitution had an
entirely different concept of what a democratic system ought to look like. That
constitution enshrined, “the right to secede from the Union.”
The buzz being generated by Congressman Sherman's
suggestion is a reflection of the violent subjugation that the Rohingya face in
Northern Rakhine State. In that context, the very notion of a federal union
binding the country together is simply – as many Rohingya are now arguing –
untenable.
(Shafiur Rahman is a documentary filmmaker,
currently working on the Rohingya crisis. He can be reached at @shafiur. This
is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The
Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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