The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein had called the actions of the brutal and savage Myanmar military against the Rohingyas as a "textbook case of ethnic cleansing" at the height of international attention on the Rohingya tragedy in the end of August last year. The Bangladesh Prime Minister had taken the tragedy to the UN in September and had successfully brought world focus upon the predicament of the Rohingyas as hundreds of thousands of them fled to Bangladesh to avoid death and rape of its women. She had described the tragedy as genocide and western leaders and the international media agreed.
When it appeared that the Myanmar military would be held responsible for their brutality and savagery, particularly when powerful western nations, including the US, showed the resolve to put Myanmar on the mat, powerful non-western nations and powers in the region came to Myanmar's rescue. These powerful non-western nations - China, India, Russia - helped Myanmar and its military come out, as it appears at present, in the clear. Thus, instead of being made to pay for brutality and cruelty, it is now showing magnanimity with their "readiness" to take back the refugees.
That platform to express their "readiness" and earn further credit with the powers that gave it the exit to come out of the tight corner when to the world it was exposed as the perpetrator of crimes against humanity has been provided ironically by Bangladesh. It invited the Myanmar Home Minister to Dhaka for bilateral talks where the Rohingya repatriation has been discussed but not as the main item on the agenda. The main items were, first, drug trafficking and second, to stop the influx of displaced Myanmar nationals to Bangladesh. And following the talks, Myanmar agreed to take 8296 refugees back after its unilateral verification!
Significantly, at the time when Bangladesh and Myanmar were holding the bilateral talks, South Korean Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar gave a significant interview in the news media on the Rohingyas. She said that she has evidence that what the Myanmar military has done to the Rohingyas "bears a hallmark of genocide." She refrained from calling it a genocide only because it would need going through a legal process that would be impossible with the Myanmar military in no mood to allow anyone to collect direct evidence lest what is obvious would be established.
Yanghee Lee's conclusion Myanmar military's brutal and savage actions "absolutely" bore the "hallmark of genocide" based upon another important factor other than the evidence of the killings and rape. This was its determined attempts to destroy the identity of the Rohingyas. Sadly, the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his attempts to help the Rohingyas with their human rights notwithstanding, supported the Myanmar military by agreeing not to refer to the Rohingyas by their ethnic name in his Report. The Myanmar government is now using the Kofi Annan Report to deal with the accusations of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity against it.
And Bangladesh also followed Kofi Annan by agreeing to call the Rohingyas as "Displaced Persons of the Rakhine State" in China-brokered "arrangement." Unaware of the dangerous implications, perhaps Bangladesh wanted to make China happy, oblivious again, that China's intentions in brokering the deal were totally different from its own and a matter of its geopolitics. A cursory look at the map of the region would reveal that geopolitical interest of China. Three Myanmar states of Kachin Chin and Rakhine and the Sagaing region lie between China and the Bay of Bengal. Except for the Rakhine, the others are politically fragile with China's influence strong there to pressure both Myanmar and the Indian Governments.
And in the Rakhine state, the last Myanmar state in China's geopolitical strategy for a land access to the Bay of Bengal, it has invested massively through the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC) in a US$ 9.0-billion project that includes a deep seaport and an economic zone in Kyaukpyu. India, aware of Chinese intentions that are extremely vital for its strategic interests, had already targeted the state for massive investments. India has already invested in the Sittwe deep seaport "as part of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, as it seeks an alternate transit route to Northeast India through Myanmar." India has also eyed the State's rich hydrocarbon potential for huge investments and went against all its democratic beliefs to support the Myanmar military's genocide in Myanmar.
And it is into this complex and dangerous conflicting geopolitical interests of China and India that Bangladesh has been drawn. And it is Bangladesh's failure of understanding geopolitics the reason why it so easily fell for the China-sponsored "arrangement" where it also inadvertently agreed to follow the Myanmar military's demand that the Rohingyas should not be named as such, a demand to which even Kofi Annan had succumbed. In fact, the so-called arrangement that China brokered was what allowed the Myanmar military to come from a very tight corner so far almost totally unscathed leaving Bangladesh at the wrong end of the Rohingya tragedy.
Kofi Annan and Bangladesh's submission to Myanmar's demand that Rohingyas cannot be addressed by their ethnic name has made them an ethnic group, perhaps the only one in recent history, whose ethnic identity has been taken from them by force to make them stateless and "displaced persons". In the process, the willingness has done them even worse damage than just take away from then their ethnic identity. The Rohingyas as Arakanese were one of the many ethnic groups in Burma who could trace their family residency prior to 1823 and as such entitled to become Burmese citizens under The Union Citizenship Act, 1948. The Myanmar Citizenship Act of 1982 excluded the Rohingyas from that list of "indigenous groups" and turned them "stateless". It is this sinister design that Kofi Annan and Bangladesh dittoed in agreeing not to refer to the Rohingyas by their ethnic name and instead to call them "displaced persons."
The geopolitical interests of China and India in the region as a consequence do not augur well for Bangladesh and the Rohingyas. Neither has any interest to annoy Myanmar for the sake of Bangladesh or the Rohingyas. Both are aware that Myanmar's actions against the Rohingyas have been the part of their grand design to make the country free of the Rohingyas. China may encourage Myanmar to take a few Rohingyas back as a token gesture having brokered the "arrangement."
The Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee articulated this predicament of the Rohingyas and Bangladesh when she said succinctly that the Rohingyas cannot be repatriated "under existing conditions unless the discriminatory and oppressive laws against the Rohingya population are dismantled." Myanmar having committed genocide/ethnic leasing/crimes against humanity is under no pressure to do even a little bit of what the UN Special Rapporteur feels is necessary to create the condition of the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees.
Thus with the monsoon approaching, the Rohingyas and Bangladesh must now prepare themselves for fresh miseries and little else in the coming months and years perhaps while China and India play out their strategic interests at the expense of both.
M Serajul Islam is a former
career Ambassador.
