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।

Poetry, art and songs of broken souls

 

A young Rohingya refugee reads ‘Exodus: Between Genocide and Me’ by Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar of Bangladesh. (Photo: New Ali)

The river separates Arakan and Bengal

The river that Rohingya startle to hear

The crossing is to escape or to die

Where many are swallowed alive

The East becomes a roaring inferno

The West is world’s largest makeshift camp

Some leave their limbs behind, bodies are carried

Others cross with bullets embedded

A bullet in the chest is bigger than a heart

A body falls into the water

Another dances on the riverbank

The world just watches on

Whilst criminals erase their marks

The river cradles irrefutable evidence

Whilst the human solidarity is a lie

Waves bear witness to what victims suffer. (The Naf River)

This heart-rending poem embodies the agony of one of the world’s most persecuted minorities — Rohingya Muslims. And it has been composed by a young Rohingya poet in exile.

Mayyu Ali, 28, lives with his parents at Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar of Bangladesh. He is on the front line of a cultural resurgence among the beleaguered community.

Born and brought up at Maungdaw in Rakhine (Arakan) state of Myanmar, Ali studied for a BA degreee in English at the University of Sittwe in the state capital before sectarian violence in June 2012 stopped his education in the second year, forcing him to work for an aid agency in Maungdaw.

His family fled following the Aug. 25, 2017, military crackdown. “My home and village were burned down by the Burmese security forces and my parents and I escaped to Bangladesh for our lives,” Ali told UCA News.

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.

Repatriation of the Rohingya: Real deal or mind game?

Rohingya Muslims enter Shahporir Dwip Island in Bangladesh after crossing the Naf River on Sept. 13, 2017 to escape a military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine State. The Rohingya issue remains a thorny political and diplomatic problem between the neighboring countries. (Photo by Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)    

The failed attempt to send 150 refugees out of over one million currently residing in overcrowded camps in Cox's Bazar back to Rakhine State in Myanmar was the first concrete step for their repatriation.

The problem is that none of those in the first batch of 2,260 refugees due to be sent home were willing to go. Most of them responded by fleeing their temporary shelters and going into hiding. Others held daylong protests opposing the repatriation move.

Dhaka has been working enthusiastically to return the Rohingya to Myanmar but the deal has been delayed several times after a repatriation deal was signed in January of this year.

The first deal, inked without any third party involvement, sparked an international outcry.

Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated and impoverished nations, was forced to sign the deal as it creaks under the weight of domestic pressures including a shortage of resources. Finding more resources to feed some one million refugees has invited a backlash from many Bangladeshis.

Yet the deal failed to defuse the mounting international criticism of Myanmar's handling of the crisis. It did not include third party oversight and, importantly, lacked any input from those at the center of the crisis — the Rohingya.

That being said, none of the deals signed so far have taken into account the key concerns and demands of the Rohingya, including calls for justice over the atrocities they have suffered, the return of their property, reparations for the damage done, and the right to citizenship in Myanmar.

Rohingya repatriation plan not sustainable

Plan to send refugees back to Myanmar lacks foresight as they are still unwelcome in Rakhine State (Photo: Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)

The world's most unloved people, the most persecuted, the godforsaken — call the Rohingya Muslims by whatever name you prefer.

Those born in Rakhine State in Buddhist-majority Myanmar are unwanted in their place of birth and equally unwelcome in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

They seem like left-out pages of history, as they cannot call the place they were born "home" in any true sense of the word despite their historical presence there being enshrined in the 2,000-year-old Arakan kingdom (located where Rakhine now lies) as early as the 8th century. 

নির্যাতন, অবহেলা ও নীরবতা: রোহিঙ্গা সংকটের নেপথ্যে

Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar in September, 2017 (Photo: Stephan Uttom)

মায়ানমারে রোহিঙ্গা মুসলিম সংখ্যালঘু সম্প্রদায়ের জাতিগত নি:স্বকরণ (Ethnic Cleansing) প্রক্রিয়ার সঙ্গে রুয়ান্ডার তুতসি জনগোষ্ঠীর গনহত্যার ব্যাপক ধরণের সাদৃশ্য রয়েছে। তুতসি গণহত্যা (Genocide) আধুনিক বিশ্বে সংঘটিত সবচেয়ে ভয়াবহ গণহত্যাগুলোর মধ্যে অন্যতম।

১৯৯৪ খ্রিস্টাব্দের এপ্রিল থেকে জুলাই মাসে এ গণহত্যা সংঘটিত হয়। রুয়ান্ডার সংখ্যাগরিষ্ঠ হুতু সম্প্রদায়ের জঙ্গীগোষ্ঠী ও হুতু সমর্থিত সরকারের সেনাবাহিনীর হাতে এ সময়কালে প্রায় ১০ লক্ষ সংখ্যালঘু তুতসি হত্যাকান্ডের শিকার হয়।

এ গণহত্যা ছিল মধ্য ও পশ্চিম আফ্রিকার দেশ রুয়ান্ডায় সুদীর্ঘকাল ধরে চলা জাতিগত বিদ্বেষ ও সহিংসতার চরম ও নিষ্ঠুরতম পর্যায়।

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.  

It's time to face the Rohingya issue head on

Rohingyas are one of world's most persecuted and neglected people

Unwanted in Myanmar and unwelcome in neighboring Bangladesh, Rohingya Muslims are literally ‘God’s forsaken’ people.

For decades, they have remained ‘one of world’s most persecuted people’, according to the United Nations, due to years of persecution in Arakan (Rakhine) state in Myanmar, yet their suffering looks set to increase further in the near future with recent hostile moves in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Recent media reports say Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has reaffirmed a discriminatory two-child policy to control the Rohingya population.

This has sparked outrage from various quarters including the US government, Human Rights Watch and Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The move coincides with the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry’s drafting of a strategic plan to tackle undocumented Rohingya refugees that it says are living in the country illegally.

The plan, currently being reviewed by several government bodies, contains 25 proposals including conducting a survey to determine the exact number of Rohingya refugees, forming a taskforce to stop Rohingyas entering the country illegally, and installing an embankment as a barrier along 50km of the Naf River that separates Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Most importantly, for the first time it proposes a special law that will make it a punishable offense to provide shelter and support to "illegal Rohingyas."

The plan needs to be cleared by an inter-ministerial cabinet body, which will not take long. Once in place the government intends to establish detention centers along the border and repatriate illegal Rohingyas back to Myanmar.

“The government is getting strict on Rohingyas because they have tainted the country’s image internationally with their illegal activities. Moreover, the government thinks the international community is not doing enough to press Myanmar on the Rohingya crisis,” said a Foreign Ministry official who did not want to be named.

In the past four decades, thousands of Rohingyas have fled a series of bloody crackdowns and sectarian violence in Rakhine and entered neighboring Bangladesh. Most were eventually repatriated, but 30,000 have refused to leave, for fear of further persecution.

In 1993, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) granted official refugee status to these Rohingyas, which allowed them to stay in two camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, where they depend on government and NGO aid for survival.

The UNHCR, however, estimates there are about 300,000 undocumented Rohingyas, residing outside the official camps; Bangladesh authorities put the number at around 500,000.

Bangladesh has been relatively friendly in the past. Rohingyas look very similar to native Bengali people physically and their language is related to a Bangla dialect spoken in southeastern Bangladesh.

Many have found a home in Bangladesh by utilizing their physical and linguistic similarities. They have married locally, found jobs and run businesses, albeit illegally.

In recent years the local media has reported many unlawful activities allegedly committed by undocumented Rohingyas. These include Rohingyas being arrested in Middle Eastern countries with fake Bangladeshi passports, damaging the environment by forest encroachment, and involvement with militant groups and drug smuggling.

These allegations and revelations which many say taint the country’s image have led to closer and more critical government monitoring of the Rohingya issue.

The government denied entry to thousands of Rohingyas fleeing bouts of deadly sectarian violence in Myanmar in June and October last year. The decision was criticized by the UNHCR, various Western governments and international rights groups.

In August last year, the Bangladesh government banned three international NGOs – Doctors without Borders, Action against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK – from operating among the Rohingyas.

Rosaline Costa, a rights activist and lawyer, says they deserve shelter and support in Bangladesh on humanitarian grounds, but sympathy has been lost because some vested groups have "misused" Rohingyas for their own interests.

“I worked with the UNHCR for eight years … and found that Rohingyas were being abused by several organizations. Rohingyas were also sent abroad illegally, they were recruited by extremist outfits and coerced into illegal activities like robberies, drug-smuggling and the sex trade,” said Costa, coordinator of Hotline Human Rights Bangladesh, adding the government has yet to develop a workable mechanism to deal effectively with the refugee problem.

Professor CR Abrar from Dhaka University’s International Relations department says a solution to the problem has been elusive because no one has ever tackled it properly.

“Bangladesh, Myanmar and the international community have failed to find a solution, because the issue was never part of long-term development plans for this region. What Bangladesh and Myanmar are doing now won’t be effective in the long run because they fail to tackle the root causes and lack efficient policies to redress it,” Professor Abrar said.

The plight of the Rohingya is rooted in history. For hundreds of years they had a happy and peaceful existence which was snatched from them in recent times. Without effective and efficient attention and concerted efforts from all parties involved to address underlying historic, social, economic and political issues that affect their hopes for a better future will remain elusive. Hasty and imprudent efforts won’t improve anything, but will only make things worse.

The Third Eye is a commentator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Click to view original post It's time to face the Rohingya issue head on

  

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

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