The Myanmar military has been identified worldwide in the same manner as was the Pakistani military in 1971. This is largely due to the diplomatic initiatives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during her visit to the United States while the Rohingyas were fleeing in thousands to Bangladesh from the active ethnic cleansing/ genocide of the Myanmar military. In fact, she was even considered as a possible recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to highlight the plight of the Rohingyas while offering to them sanctuary and shelter like the Indians had given to the Bangladeshis who had fled in millions to India from the marauding Pakistani army.
The Pakistanis were fortunately made to pay. They lost half their country as Bangladesh won independence although they have so far not paid for killing the millions during the nine-month-long Liberation War. In case of the Myanmar, it is today considered guilty in the eyes of the international community in the same way as the Pakistani military in 1971. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called its crimes against the Rohingyas as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing" that has been backed emphatically by the United States.
The Bangladesh Prime Minister has called the action of the Myanmar military, genocide and many world leaders, including the French President, agreed. Yet, this fact is not reflected in the actions of some of Bangladesh's closest friends. In fact, it would appear that the Myanmar military had nothing to hide or answer for what it has done to the Rohingyas going by the way some of Bangladesh's closest friends have reacted. These friends of Bangladesh are treating Myanmar as their friend in this Rohingya ethnic cleansing/genocide and keeping Bangladesh at an arm's length.
Later this week, China would be welcoming Myanmar's much-criticised Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for her condemnable role in the Rohingya crisis. South China Morning Post wrote: "Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi will visit Beijing later this week, as China offers her a political and economic haven from a storm of global criticism over her country's handling of the Rohingya refugee crisis." The Nobel Laureate would be visiting Beijing in the footsteps of the visit of the Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing who was received by President Xi Jinping. In between, the Chinese Foreign Minister was in Myanmar on an official visit.
The Chinese Foreign Minister was in Dhaka before he went to Myanmar. His visit to the two capitals resulted in an "arrangement" between the two governments for resolving the crisis. Normally in bilateral negotiations, there could be a treaty, an agreement or an MOU (memorandum of understanding). A bilateral treaty implies responsibility that either party could violate at the risk of a case in an international court for instance. A bilateral agreement may not take violations to an international court automatically but nevertheless could be violated by either party at some considerable risk. An MOU is the weakest of results of bilateral negotiations. Either party could forget about an MOU like it was never signed.
On the Rohingya issue, Bangladesh signed what is an "arrangement" that Myanmar did not release to its own media and that Bangladesh has released only after criticisms about it in the media. That hinted at the weakness of the outcome of the negotiations. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has stated that the "arrangement" would not encourage Rohingyas to return home and the Rohingyas themselves have said they would not return to their deaths because the "arrangement" does not give them any guarantee of their lives or freedom from the conditions that had made them flee. Further, under the arrangement, it would be the Myanmar authorities that would unilaterally decide who would be able to return.
Bangladesh signed the arrangement by also agreeing to the Myanmar demand that it would not refer to the Rohingyas as Rohingyas. And in doing so, it has compromised on the most fundamental legal status of the Rohingyas with which they could take their case to the International Court of Justice or on their behalf Bangladesh could do the same arguing, as India had done to the UN and the world with the case of the Bangladeshis who had fled to India, that by forcing a million Rohingyas to Bangladesh, Myanmar has invaded the country.
The reason why it is important for Rohingyas to be referred as Rohingyas is of course as fundamental as it is for all other ethnic groups worldwide to be called by their ethnic names. It is strange that no one has pointed to the Myanmar Government that what they are doing is something that has not happened to any ethnic group anywhere. It is not that Rohingyas picked the name somewhere down the road of history for some ulterior motives. They have been known as Rohingyas as long as they have lived in the Rakhine state that started many hundreds of years before it was annexed by the majority Barmans of Myanmar in 1784.
Of course, Myanmar has an ulterior motive in refusing to call the Rohingyas as Rohingyas to undermine what was embedded in the Myanmar nationality law in its 1947 Constitution. That law was designed to give citizenship to the country's 130 plus ethnic groups of which the Rohingyas were one. They fulfilled all the conditions under which these ethnic groups could become Burmese citizens like first, they had to be from an "indigenous race", second, have a grandparent from an "indigenous race"; third, are Burmese citizens and lastly, lived in British Burma prior to 1942. In 1982, Myanmar with ill-intent and without explanation dropped the Rohingyas from the list of indigenous race and thus made them stateless. That Myanmar chose just one of its 130 plus ethnic groups to deny citizenship can be explained only by the fact that the Rohingyas are Muslims.
The Myanmarese tried to rationalise leaving the Rohingyas out from the list of "indigenous race" in its 1982 Myanmar Citizenship law by falsely claiming they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh that, unfortunately, Bangladesh thus far has failed to refute. The historical fact is that many Rohingyas had fled Arakan to Chittagong when Muslim rule ended there and Arakan was annexed by the Buddhist Barmans from the south in 1784 who with the majority Buddhist in the region committed cruelties and atrocities on the Rohingyas because they hated Muslims. In fact, the first exodus of Rohingyas occurred a year after the annexation when 35 thousand Rohingyas had fled to Chittagong.
Thus calling Rohingyas as Rohingyas is at the heart of resolving the Rohingya problem because that is the key to their claim as citizens of Myanmar. It is not Bangladesh that has failed the Rohingyas by succumbing to the Myanmar demand not to use the term Rohingya, the Holy Pope also succumbed to the same demand on his visit to Myanmar before coming to Bangladesh. If the Pope had not succumbed to the brutal Myanmar military-led government he would have done the cause of the Rohingyas a world of good for, in current international politics, the Pope is universally acclaimed as the voice of conscience. The Pope explained afterwards that his decision in avoiding the "R" word was to keep the door for negotiations open and if he had uttered the "R" word, Myanmar would have shut the door. He called his strategy with Myanmar for which he avoided the "R" word as "half a step backwards for one step forward"
And before the Pope and China, the cause of the Rohingyas and Bangladesh were dashed when the Indian Prime Minister went personally to Myanmar to tell the Myanmar Government where India stood on the issue of genocide/ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. India blamed it all upon the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for killing four Myanmar soldiers in an act of terrorism! In a UN resolution condemning the Myanmar government for its treatment of the Rohingyas, ten countries, including China and Russia, opposed it and 26 countries, including India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, abstained.
The Pope nevertheless said in his interview something that perhaps explained why some of Bangladesh's closest friends went into such denial over the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. The media described the Pope's explanation as the Pontiff's "geopolitical analysis" of the Rohingya problem. He stated that someone had told him that the area where the Rohingyas live is "rich in precious stones" that "outside interests wanted to be emptied for mining." This is a simplistic explanation but in it could be found the reason why Myanmar, despite committing what is undoubtedly ethnic cleansing and genocide, is being given the reprieve and in fact welcomed in some capitals so warmly and its diplomacy succeeding.
The writer is a former Ambassador.
