By Aman Ullah
Replying to a query from Awami League MP
Rumana Ali in parliament on 2019-09-12, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said
Myanmar is dragging its feet on resolving the Rohingya crisis although it
signed bilateral agreements with Bangladesh following pressure from the
international community, including the United Nations.
Referring to the two failed attempts to start
the Rohingya repatriation, Hasina said, “We’ve seen that Myanmar could not win
Rohingyas’ trust in creating a conducive situation [in Rakhine state] for their
dignified return.”
She said Myanmar should have ensured a
sustainable Rohingya repatriation by guaranteeing their security, freedom of
movement and work opportunities in Rakhine.
Fleeing military atrocities, including
killings, rapes, tortures and burning of houses in the Rakhine State, more than
743,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Bangladesh since August 25, 2017. They joined
the 300,000 others who had arrived earlier. In today’s world, Rohingya refugee
is the highest size of refugees. A developing nation like Bangladesh has to
bear the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars each year towards food,
housing, medical and other basic needs of these unfortunate people.
Ever since the emergence of this crisis,
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government have left no stone
unturned to mobilize global communities in putting pressure on Myanmar to
resolve the crisis immediately. Unfortunately, until now, none of the world
body or the mighty nations in the world, including the United States, China,
Russia, and India, in particular, are showing real interest in this issue,
except for some mere lip-service, while China and India in particular, as well
as Russia, are silently siding towards Myanmar. Even, the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) has failed to take action, hindered by Russia’s and
China’s use of their veto powers.
Since the UN has failed to resolve the
crisis, Bangladesh need to work with the powerful regional forces such as
India, China and Japan to drum up support for a durable and early solution.
Japan has expressed its full support to the Rohingya repatriation issue. India
has not been much supportive of Bangladesh’s efforts and has rather expelled
many Rohingya refugees who took shelter in the country. Further, India never
extended its support to Bangladesh in any international forum to solve the
crisis. Indeed, Dhaka has failed to secure any support from notable Myanmar-backers
such as China, Russia and India, who have economic and military ties worth
billions. As a result, Bangladesh seems to have failed to prove itself as
strategically more important than Myanmar.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina went to China on
1st July, 2019 for four-day official visit where she implored China's leaders to help jog Myanmar
into action and start the repatriation process that had been agreed in November
2017 -- brokered in the background by Beijing -- but has so failed to
materialize.
From the very beginning, China not only
expresses sympathy with those who have fled into Bangladesh but also advocates
Myanmar and Bangladesh resolving the problem via dialogue and consultation.
Earlier this year, the Chinese Foreign
Ministry held high-level internal discussions on how to achieve this. At the
time "solving the Rakhine problems" became central to their Myanmar
policy and strategy, according to Chinese government sources.
During Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina’s recent visit to Beijing, she was told by Chinese President Xi Jinping
and her counterpart, Li Keqiang, that a sustainable repatriation to Rakhine was
the best solution to the Rohingya crisis.
Over the past few months, Beijing has become
impatient and absorbed with sorting out the problems of Rakhine. A series of
high-level meetings took place in these months: with Chinese diplomats and the
special envoy Sun Gaoxiang meeting Bangladesh and Myanmar officials in an
attempt to break the deadlock. They even met Rohingya leaders in the camps in
Cox's Bazaar, at least twice to encourage the Rohingya to return to Myanmar.
This culminated in the key meeting between
top Bangladesh and Myanmar officials, brokered by the Chinese at the end of
July. This seems to have eased the bilateral tensions and cleared the way for
cooperation between the two countries on repatriation. China in its eagerness
to kick-start the repatriation procedures pressured Dhaka to start by mid-August.
But due to the Eid holiday, it was deferred a week to start on Aug 22.
Although, under the China's persistent
insistence a rushed attempt to start the repatriation process, not a single
refugee ready to return. Both Bangladesh and Myanmar blamed each other for the
failure and the US inappropriately weighing in on Dhaka's side, also blaming
Myanmar for the failure. The root problem is that the Refugees did not trust
the authorities of Myanmar.
According to Larry Jagan, a Myanmar
specialist and former News Editor of BBC World Service, “the root cause of the
current failure was China's strong-arm tactics in trying to prematurely force a
start to the repatriation programme. Since the crisis erupted anew in August
2017, Beijing has played a constructive role behind the scenes -- one that is
too often not given enough credit -- though this time China's impatience in
trying to "solve the Rakhine problems" was counter-productive in the
extreme: it not only doomed the repatriation process to another false start,
and caused untold angst among-st the refugees themselves; it may also have
actually widened the gulf between Myanmar and Bangladesh and caused further
problems for any future attempt to start repatriation in earnest.”
China still does not lose their hope. Mr.
Zheng Tianzhuo, the Chinese Embassy’s Political Division Director said: “We believe that it’s an ongoing process…
repatriation could start any day as long as they are willing and ready.”
However, the core question is arising that,
is there still possibility for finding a durable solution for this Rohingya
refugee crisis?
A durable solution for refugees is one that
ends the cycle of displacement by resolving their plight so that they can lead
normal lives. Traditionally, three durable solutions have been practiced to end
refugee crisis: voluntary repatriation, local integration and resettlement.
Here, for the present Rohingya refugees’ crisis voluntary repatriation is only
applicable.
Repatriation means the way in which the
refugees can return to their country of origin in safety and dignity. But the
return must be voluntary. The voluntary repatriation ultimately leads to the
cessation of refugee status, whether on an individual or group basis. The core
components of voluntary repatriation are return in safety and with dignity.
This means the return in and to the conditions of physical, legal, and material
safety, with full restoration of national protection as the end result.
The aspects of physical safety include the
overall security situation and assurances from the authorities about the safety
of returnees and specific safety issues, such as the presence of mines and
un-exploded ordnance.
The aspects of legal safety include the
adoption and implementation of amnesty laws to protect returnees from
discrimination or punishment on the sole ground of having fled the country;
legislation to ensure a returnee’s citizenship status, plus access to
documentation related to personal status and measures in place to ensure
recovery of property or, if this is not possible, entitlement to adequate
compensation.
The aspects of material safety include access
to means of survival and basic services, such as drinking water, health
services, and education and income-generating opportunities.
Moreover, without safety and restoration of
national protection, return may not be sustainable and refugees concerned may
move back to the country of refuge. Creating conditions conducive to voluntary
repatriation is a major challenge, which required the expense, effort, and time
to establish peace, ensure respect for human rights, rebuild infrastructure,
restore normal political, economic and social life, rehabilitate the judicial
system as soon as the voluntary
repatriation to take place.
Already two attempts repatriation have failed
as the refugees refused to return, arguing that the situation in Rakhine was
not safe and they did not receive confirmation that they would be granted
citizenship and freedom of movement.
Myanmar government does not accept Rohingyas
as citizen and branded them as illegal immigrant from Bangladesh. In Myanmar
they are not citizens, in Bangladesh they are not refugee, in the agreement
they are forcefully displaced persons. Moreover, Myanmar has consolidated its
stand by offering, a NVC card upon by which they will illegible to apply for
their citizenship. The authority concerned would be sorted out as per 1982
Burmese Citizenship Law where it has left little room for the Muslims of
Rakhine to accommodate them. Nobody knows what would be the fate of those whose
applications would be turned down where thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been
languishing in different jails in Myanmar on charges of illegal Bangladeshi
immigrants. This stands of the government of Myanmar will ultimately breeding
the problem in the inner core and make more complex.
Moreover, the government of Myanmar playing
with dilly-dally game. For more than one million refugees, there are only two
transit centers for receiving 150 persons each. That’s mean it will take at least
10 years to receive these one million plus persons. On the other hand Myanmar
handed over a list a list of 3,450 names of refugees that they had cleared to
return from an original list of 22,000 names handed to the Myanmar authorities
over a year ago. The Bangladesh side also submitted another list of 25,000 only
God knows when and how many persons would get clearance to return from Myanmar.
In May 2018, the United Nations struck a deal
with the Myanmar government under which refugees would be allowed to return to
Rakhine, although not necessarily to their original villages, many of which
have reportedly been razed or occupied by Buddhists. The deal was widely
criticized for not meeting the Rohingya Muslims’ main demands: a restoration of
citizenship rights that they have been denied for decades, freedom of movement
and guarantees of safety.
Thus, there is no quick fix to Rohingya
crisis. As former deputy secretary general of the United Nations Lord George
Malloch Brown said, “This is a classic dilemma of refugees… the reality is,
these [refugee] problems don’t lend themselves quick fixes. It’s a steady
problem”. Brown also said that it requires “a great depth of patience and
humanity” on Bangladesh’s side to manage this issue because a refugee
population of that size in the part of the country is a huge burden.
This crisis indeed is going to be a stain on
the leadership of China and other countries for a long time to come. It is in
China's best interest as well as that of the region to bring about a
sustainable conflict resolution without losing any time. Chinese policymakers
need to act responsibly for about one million refugees who are living in dire
and desperate conditions in Bangladesh.
The Rohingya crisis, if not resolved soon,
may haunt the entire Southeast Asian region. And the difficult terrain of
mountains and forests is most suitable to sustain long-term guerrilla warfare
both against Myanmar and China, and that would be extremely costly to endure.
China is the biggest stakeholder in this
turmoil. A radicalized region is going to be a major roadblock for China's Belt
and Road Initiative (BRI) as well as to maintain the gas-oil pipelines carrying
80 percent of China's imports that come from the Middle East and Africa.
There is no room for military solution to
neutralizing radicalized groups. The deep-rooted issues that give rise to them
must be addressed. For a peaceful, stable region nothing short of a
comprehensive approach is going to work. That means Myanmar should take
Rohingyas back, giving them full citizenship status, respecting their rights
and dignity under the supervision of the international community. Rohingyas
need to be rehabilitated, their homes rebuilt and their lives restored.
Looking back, when Rakhine residents
including Rohingyas revealed the damages they faced due to the Chinese gas-oil
pipeline project (from Rakhine to Yunnan province of China), had China given the
local residents fair compensation for the expropriated lands for China's
pipeline project, things might have turned out differently. The compensations
for Rakhine residents would have been only a tiny fraction of the enormous
benefit China would receive every year by bringing in gas and oil through
Rakhine instead of through the distant Strait of Malacca and the risky South
China Sea.
A stable and developed Rakhine would have
been conducive to China's expressed greater vision of the regional developments
in which China would remain an indispensable and dominant player. The
possibility of a win-win state of affairs was nipped in the bud. Now, a costly
quagmire in the form of a mega humanitarian crisis has emerged.
It will only succeed if China, using their
“good office” takes a realistic approach to help find a solution -- one that is
agreeable and acceptable to all parties involved, including the refugees. Of
course, it can only move the process forward if the legitimate concerns and
interests of the refugees are at the heart of any future repatriation plans.
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