জন্মভূমি ও শরণার্থী

Rohingya refugee in a camp in Bangladesh. (Photo: UNOPS)

বাড়ি সবসময় আমাদের হৃদয়ের কাছাকাছি একটি জায়গা, শুধুমাত্র এই কারণেই নয় যে আমরা সেখানে জন্মগ্রহণ করেছি, বড় হয়েছি এবং সেখানেই বাস করি। প্রকৃতপক্ষে বাড়ি বলতে ইট, পাথর, টিন, কাঠ বা বাঁশের কোন কাঠামো বোঝায় না। বাড়ি হলো সেই জায়গা যা ভালবাসা, মায়া এবং যত্নে লালিত।

আমাদের মাতৃভূমি বাড়িরই একটি বর্ধিত সংস্করণ, যা আমাদের দেশপ্রেমকে জাগ্রত করে। 

কোভিড-১৯ মহামারী এবং দীর্ঘ লকডাউনের কারণে আমরা ভালোবাসা এবং যত্নের বাইরেও মূলত জীবন বাঁচানোর জন্য বাড়িতেই দীর্ঘ বন্দিত্ব বরণ করতে বাধ্য হয়েছিলাম। এ সময় হাজার হাজার অভ্যন্তরীণ এবং বিদেশী অভিবাসী শ্রমিক চাকুরি ও আয় রোজগারের পথ হারিয়ে নিঃস্ব এবং হতাশ হয়ে বাড়ি ফিরেছিল।

এহেন অবস্থা সত্ত্বেও শান্তি ও ভরসার বিষয় ছিলো যে বিশ্বের কোটি কোটি ঘর-বাড়িহীন ও দেশহীন মানুষের চেয়ে আমরা ভাগ্যবান। কারণ আর যাই হোক আমাদের ঘর-বাড়ি ও জন্মভূমি আছে, যা তাদের নেই। 

জাতিসংঘের শরণার্থী সংস্থা ইউএনএইচসিআর-র তথ্য অনুসারে বিশ্বে প্রায় জোরপূর্বক বাস্তুচ্যুত মানুষের সংখ্যা প্রায় ৭ কোটি ৮০ লাখের মতো।

মানুষ প্রাকৃতিক দুর্যোগ এবং সংঘাতের কারণে বাস্তুচ্যুত হয়, এবং তাদের অনেক নামে ডাকা হয় - উদ্বাস্তু, রাষ্ট্রহীন, অভ্যন্তরীণভাবে বাস্তুচ্যুত ব্যক্তি, আশ্রয়প্রার্থী, শরণার্থী ইত্যাদি। তারা সবাই তাদের প্রিয় স্থান - বাড়ি এবং স্বদেশ থেকে বঞ্চিত।

Home, homeland and aliens

Rohingya refugees arrive in Bangladesh from Rakhine state of Myanmar in 2017 (Photo: AFP)

Home is a place always close to our hearts, not only because we were born, grew up and belong there but also because home is where there is love and care.

Our homeland is an extended version of home, which in addition invokes our patriotism.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and long lockdowns, we have been staying home not only because we love and care but mostly to save lives. But this long confinement at home has not been loving and caring for everyone as people are under pressure from loss of work and income, mental anguish and fear of death.

The troubles are even more dire for tens of thousands of internal and overseas migrant workers who returned home penniless and hopeless.

Despite this turmoil, people should remain calm and consider themselves luckier than the millions of poor souls around the world who are deprived of home and homeland.

There are nearly 70.8 million forcibly displaced people in the world, according to United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

People are displaced by natural disasters and conflicts, and they are referred to by many names — refugees, stateless, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, etc.

Maybe we should call them aliens, because they are alienated from what we all love — home and homeland.

The Forgotten People: Bihari Refugees of Bangladesh

The Bihari refugees - 160,000 people who have lived like animals in congested makeshift camps, all over Bangladesh, for more than 40 years.

No relief for Bangladesh's most vulnerable communities

An elderly female tea-plucker works in one of Bangladesh's many tea gardens in this file image. (Photo by Mufty Munir/AFP)

There are many venerable communities in Bangladesh, among them suffering the worst are those working on tea plantations in conditions akin to slavery, the Biharis who are scorned for siding with West Pakistan during Bangladesh's Liberation War of 1971 and the stateless Rohingya who have fled neighboring Myanmar.

These communities find themselves facing dire challenges with historical roots that are hard to untangle.  

Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

Rohingya Children at a refugee camp in Bangladesh (photo: Dr. Habib Siddiqui)

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, rarely makes international headlines for good reasons, so if you see something hit the wires of the international press, prepare yourself for the worst.

Whether it is an expose of the country’s dire poverty or the toxicity of the drinking water; whether the lack of infrastructure or political unrest; bad news is a safe bet from a country where half the 160 million population can’t read and earns only about 50 cents per day.

But some issues are more pressing, if not more widely reported, in the country.

One example is the issue of refugees – a longstanding issue that has again come to the fore with the outbreak of violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Allegedly sparked by the rape and murder of a young Buddhist girl and the subsequent retaliatory killing of 10 Muslims, the violence drove hundreds of Rohingya towards the Bangladesh border.

Authorities on the Bangladeshi side have continued to refuse entry to Rohingya refugees, despite incurring criticism from Human Rights Watch, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the US State Department.

Since last week, border guards have turned back boats carrying hundreds of refugees seeking a safe haven – though authorities did provide food and water before sending them on their way.

Apart from its international commitments as a member of the United Nations and the dictates of common decency, has the country forgotten the assistance it received at a time of great need?

An estimated 10 million people fled to India during the 1971 war of liberation.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni defended the refusal of entry to the Rohingya by saying, “Bangladesh never signed any kind of international act, convention or law for allowing and giving shelter to refugees. That’s why we are not bound to provide shelter to Rohingyas.”

The statement fails to address the most critical issues, ones that have deep historical roots.

In 1978 and again in 1991, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled Rakhine state to Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence that some have equated to ethnic cleansing by the then military junta ruling Myanmar.

Many later returned, but a large number refused out of fear for their safety. Bangladesh authorities say that about half a million Rohingya refugees still remain in Bangladesh, residing in largely makeshift camps in the southeastern border districts.

The UNHCR puts the figure at between 200,000 and 300,000, with only 28,000 granted official refugee status.

Authorities are obviously trying to prevent another influx of refugees that may not want to return once order is restored.

Despite maintaining a presence in Myanmar since at least the 7th century, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship by their government, which refuses to include them in a list of 135 recognized ethnic minorities.

Today the Rohingya are numbered among the world’s most persecuted minorities, unrecognized as citizens at home and unwanted abroad.

Descendents of ethnic Rakhine, Bengali and Arab seafarers, they continue to be unwelcome in Bangladesh as well.

Relegated to ill-equipped and unhealthy camps, and subject to exploitation and abuse by border security guards as well as local residents, the Rohingya receive little in the way of official support from the government, which sees them as an additional burden on a country already groaning under the substantial weight of other social and political problems.

The Rohingya problem is not without precedent.

Bangladesh’s three million ethnic tribals continue to fight for their rights despite being recognized as citizens of the country.

And what of the 160,000 Bihari Muslim refugees who fled to the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from India after the partition? They have always considered themselves citizens of Pakistan, though they were not born there and most have never even visited that country.

They have been locked in the country since Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971, proving that dividing countries on religious grounds was a historic blunder.

For more than 40 years, the Rohingya have endured international neglect and dire living conditions. Bangladesh remains adamant about its refugee policy, and efforts by the international community have to date been largely ineffective.

The international community must decide on a better course of action. The limbo in which the Rohingya have lived for so long is not sustainable. And tensions in western Myanmar, and Bangladesh’s resistance to change its position on refugees, will likely spell even more bad news for the country.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym for a Dhaka-based journalist and analyst

Read the original post here- Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

In search of a homeland

I’ve just watched a classic Bengali film called Ontorjatra – Inner Journey.

It’s about the emigrants’ search for a homeland and a sense of place, so it resonates strongly in Bangladesh.

Many Bangladeshis leave the country every year, mostly heading for the US and Europe. Once settled there, they start calling themselves citizens of that particular country and enjoy all the benefits of being a Westerner. While the first generation of immigrants are alive, they will naturally call Bangladesh their homeland, but will the successive generations?

This applies to Bangladesh’s immigrants as well as its emigrants, as there are at least three communities here which are virtually stateless.

Around 500,000 tea workers in the northwest are tribespeople brought from various Indian states during British rule, lured by the British tea planters for a better life which never materialized.

Most of them are poor and landless, living a life that is segregated from the majority of native Bengali people, in allocated shanties called ‘worker lines’. Cut off from their roots after the partitioning of India, they are slowly forgetting their language and culture.

Then there are about 160,000 Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar who left their home for West Pakistan after partition. For over 40 years they have been forced to live as refugees in ill-equipped camps across the country. I’ve seen how they have to live; it’s an animal existence.

They call Pakistan their homeland, even though they were not born there and have never seen it. There have been a few repatriation initiatives but nothing concrete.

Finally, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in the southeast have always called Rakhine state in Myanmar their home. But they have been consistently denied citizenship, generally persecuted and are officially stateless.

Rohingyas can trace their roots in Myanmar since the 8^th century but the majority of people in Rakhine, who are Buddhists, consider them to be foreigners and deny them citizenship.

So what does patriotism mean? Is homeland just a fiction that exists only in someone’s imagination? I think it may well be.