Why the Rohingya Can’t Yet Return to Myanmar?
Here below is an article by Dr Ibrahim, which made a small error in stating that the Bangladesh had signed an agreement, it is actually an arrangement, with the apartheid Myanmar.
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On Nov. 23, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement to return the Rohingya refugees — more than 600,000 people who escaped from Rakhine state in western Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh — after ethnic cleansing carried out by Myanmar’s armed forces since August.
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On Nov. 23, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement to return the Rohingya refugees — more than 600,000 people who escaped from Rakhine state in western Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh — after ethnic cleansing carried out by Myanmar’s armed forces since August.
Bangladesh
is expected to compile lists of refugees wanting to return on a
voluntary basis. Myanmar intends to verify each application to establish
whether a refugee is eligible for repatriation. The returnees must
provide copies of identity cards and documents certifying the address of
their residence in Myanmar.
It
might create the illusion of a policy decision by two governments
moving toward addressing a shared refugee crisis. But the agreement is a
hollow political gesture.
One
of the first factors to consider is Myanmar’s verification process for a
refugee to return. Myanmar’s military governments have had a consistent
policy of either withholding official documentation from the Rohingyas
or seizing and destroying the little documentation they had. A British government report documented
how the Myanmar government changed its citizenship rules in 1989 and
rendered the residency cards that most Rohingyas were carrying invalid.
The government collected those invalid residency cards, but in most
cases failed to provide the Rohingyas with the new residency cards. As a
result, a majority of the Rohingyas in Myanmar did not have any
official documentation at the beginning of this year.
Most
of the Rohingyas who fled for Bangladesh left under dire circumstances —
their villages set on fire, their lives in peril. They made desperate
runs with their children and elderly. How many would have had the luxury
of time and safety to look for their documents before the exodus?
The
agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar specifies that the refugees
should be returned to their homes and property. It is highly improbable,
because numerous Rohingya villages have been burned and their cattle
and lands seized by their Buddhist neighbors.
And last week, Myanmar announced
that it would be building camps for some of the returnees. It is
unclear whether it is a serious policy proposal or yet another talking
point. No details about the capacity of the proposed camps are
available. What is known is this: Myanmar’s minister for resettlement,
Win Myat Aye, has said
that his country would be taking back no more than 300 refugees per
day. At that rate, it would take over five and a half years for all the
600,000 Rohingyas to be allowed back in.
The
other issue is that the resettlement has to be voluntary. Why would a
Rohingya prefer moving from a refugee camp in a relatively safe country
to a refugee camp in an intensely hostile country and depend upon safety
from the very people who killed their families and burned their
villages?
Several
Rohingya refugees I met in the camps in Bangladesh did tell me that if
they were granted citizenship and equal rights, they would return to
Myanmar. But that seems improbable because of Myanmar’s long history of
systematically depriving the Rohingyas of their legal and basic human
rights.
The
government of Myanmar has given no assurances about the legal status of
the returnees nor spoken about guaranteeing their safety. They might
simply end up being described as “immigrants from Bangladesh,” a phrase
their persecutors all along used to describe them.
A
recent statement from Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military
chief, about the proposed repatriation process has renewed fears about
the safety of potential returnees. “The situation must be acceptable for
both local Rakhine ethnic people and Bengalis, and emphasis must be
placed on (the) wish of local Rakhine ethnic people who are real Myanmar
citizens,” he said.
All
of this raises severe doubts about the agreement between Bangladesh and
Myanmar. Several Bangladeshi leaders I met in Dhaka after the agreement
was signed seemed keen to send the Rohingyas without having given much
thought to how they would achieve it. They regard the Rohingyas as a
financial burden on their impoverished country and a potential security
threat.
Bangladesh
has tried to keep the Rohingya refugees in camps isolated from the rest
of society to signal that they are not meant to live there for good.
Bangladeshi politicians signed the agreement because from their point of
view, any deal that might move some Rohingyas back across the border is a good deal.
For
the civilian government of Myanmar and its de facto leader, Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, the refugee agreement is a public relations exercise to
ward off international condemnation. Sources in Myanmar told me there is
no communication between the military and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s
government on the issue. Without support from the military leadership,
even if she would be so inclined, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi cannot stop the
army from assaulting the Rohingyas.
The
Rohingyas know it. And that is why there is not much in the way of a
line to fill in resettlement forms around Cox’s Bazar. Staying in Cox’s
Bazar is the best option for the Rohingyas at the moment. Bangladesh
must let them stay and not try to push them back over the border into
the hands of their persecutors.
Azeem Ibrahim, a senior
fellow at the Center for Global Policy, is the author of “The Rohingyas:
Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide.”
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