The recent visit to Bangladesh by a Myanmar government minister has left ill-feeling in the neighboring country, particularly in refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar where over a million Rohingya languish.
Two days after the visit by Win Myat Aye, Myanmar’s Minister for Social Welfare, officials in Bangladesh and aid workers in the country’s southeast were stunned to hear that a Rohingya family of five had been repatriated to their homeland.
The return of this one family has been derided by Bangladeshi officials as a “propaganda” and cheap “publicity stunt”, rather than an actual repatriation. It was the first such move since a murderous crackdown by the Myanmar Army last August, denounced by the United Nations as “ethnic cleansing”, forced at least 700,000 Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh.
Initially, the arrival of Win Myat Aye, the minister also responsible for relief and resettlement, was “perceived as an important visit which could potentially speed up the apparently stagnated repatriation process,” according to a senior Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry official, who preferred to be unnamed.
However, the Myanmar minister’s trip proved to be “nothing more than a usual diplomatic visit,” said the official, who admitting that the government of Sheikh Hasina had “wanted and expected more.”
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal in November to send back “forcibly displaced persons” — as Myanmar calls the Rohingya — to their homes in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state.
Myanmar minister visits Rohingya camp
Media outlets and the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry had been notified about Win Myat Aye’s visit to Dhaka and the Rohingya camps. And there had seemed to be reasons for optimism, as he was the minister handling the repatriation issue and no senior Myanmar official had ever visited the camps in Bangladesh.
Win Myat Aye came and saw the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazaar. In a meeting with a group of 50 Rohingya refugees, he told them to prepare to “go back to your own residences”, and promised that new villages would be built for them with hospitals and schools.
However, as Reuters reported, when the refugees asked if they would be granted Myanmar citizenship, which they had been long denied, his reply did nothing to bolster confidence. “We are trying to have that,” he said, adding that Myanmar could currently only offer them national verification cards.
Some were not convinced by the minister’s words and later voiced their doubts about the Myanmar government’s sincerity.
“It got sort of unpleasant afterwards,” Abul Kalam, the Bangladesh government’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, who accompanied Aye, told Asia Times later.
Kalam said the refugees had expressed their anger and disappointment in their meeting with Aye at the camp. “Their main concern, which they have told us too a number of times, is that without citizenship they will never be safe in Myanmar,” he said.
After his visit to the camp, Win Myat Aye met with senior Bangladeshi officials including Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali. The meeting between the two was described as “excellent” by Ali, who told media that it was held “in a friendly and cooperative” spirit.
Win Myat Aye said: “We had a fruitful discussion. Now we can overcome many difficulties and I am very sure that we can start repatriation process as soon as possible.”
Three days later, on April 15, Myanmar took back the five Rohingya from the “no man’s land” between Bangladesh and Myanmar. This was dubbed a “repatriation of first refugee family” since the last year’s crisis.
Repatriation or propaganda?
The Myanmar government posted a statement on the Facebook page of its Information Committee, saying, “The five members of a family came back to Taungpyoletwei town repatriation camp in Rakhine State.”
Photos posted beside the statement showed a man, two women, a young girl and a boy receiving the ID cards and getting health checks. It said the family had been sent to stay “temporarily” with relatives in Maungdaw town.
Use of the term “repatriation” angered Bangladeshi and United Nations officials. Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Kalam told Asia Times “This was no repatriation; it was a publicity stunt and also propaganda set up by the Myanmar government.
“As the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, I was not informed or made aware of [the family’s return]. I think it was sort of an insult that Myanmar government had made to our government.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement that their office had no direct knowledge of the event and was not consulted or involved in this reported return.
South Asia analyst Olof Blomqvist told Asia Times there were “many serious questions about how this supposed return was carried out, not least because there was no oversight by the UN whatsoever.” For the repatriation process to become reality, he said “Myanmar must commit to genuinely engaging with both Bangladesh and the international community, and to put the human rights of Rohingya at the heart of the process.”
Blomqvist said Myanmar’s assurances that “it is ready to start repatriating Rohingya refugees, has no basis in reality. Rohingyas will not be able to return to their homes in safety and dignity until conditions improve substantially inside Rakhine state.”
He said this must include ending the “entrenched and dehumanizing discrimination Rohingya have faced in Myanmar for decades, and also bringing to justice security forces that have been responsible for horrific human rights violations.”
U r a cake
People in "glass houses should not throw stones". Since the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the founder of the country) in 1975, Bangladesh has increasingly turned to Islamization. According to a 2005 Jane’s Intelligence Review report “Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries on earth, on the brink of being a failed state, and that makes it a perfect target for al- Qaeda and its-ever expanding network of Islamist extremist organizations.” Also read "Bangladesh: Breeding ground for Muslim terror, by Bertil Lintner ". The minority population of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians in Bangladesh have been decimated (from 40% in 1950 to less than 10%) and their property confiscated with connivance from local authorities and government. The case is specially disheartening for Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where an area of 13,295 square kilometers, is now part of Bangladesh, belonged in 1947 to mostly indigenous Buddhists. CHT is now heavily militarized and outsiders are not allowed in by Bangladesh government and Buddhists are in an apartheid conditions. The Bengali Muslims have since infiltrated the area (killed, raped and burnt the villages) with the help of the Bangladesh security forces.
Are some refugees being kidnapped by ARSA, UN and Bangladesh in Cox Bazar
The administration of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi claimed that it had accepted a refugee family last week.
The Bangladeshi government and the UN quickly and bitterly rejected the claim, some Bangladeshi news agencies even saying that the returning family had been spies of Myanmar for a long time.
It is clear that the government and the so called international organization have seen refugees in Cox Bazar as their assets for pressuring Myanmar government. They couldn’t accept that only a family of five people returned to Myanmar on the ground that those refugees were not officially registered and they took refuge in what they call no man’s land.
Are they Muslim and did they live in Rakhine State? Did they leave Myanmar? Is it sure that they were spies as quickly accused by the Bangladesh media? There are many questions to ask about their rejection.
Is it so important for them to quickly reject the Myanmar government’s claim that five refugees had returned to Myanmar? Is it so important for them that five Muslims who had left Myanmar for whatever reason including spying for Myanmar government, which officially has announced that it had ready to accept refugees.
The picture has become very clear. The international community forced Myanmar government to accept the refugees. Myanmar agreed to take back the refugees without hesitation. At that time, the ARSA reportedly killed some elders in refugee camps in Cox Bazar who urged their fellows to return to Myanmar. Then, the UN said that that it was premature to send back the refugees to Myanmar. The Bangladeshi government urged to put more pressure on Myanmar government to take back refugees although Myanmar has never refused to do so. The UN and some individuals from international organizations like the UN Human Right Council and ICC put pressure on Myanmar for so called ethnic cleansing. It is the responsibility of Myanmar government, which has internationally declared that it is ready to accept the refugees, if something went wrong with the returning refugees. The ARSA has been so silent as everything they want to do is carried out by the international media, international community and the UN.
International media reports mainly cover the crisis from last year’s area clraeance operations to exodus of refugees and put blame on Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, the issue has been brewing since Myanmar was colonialized by the British more than a century ago. Their reports just focus on blaming some entities without seeking a solution. Recently, the UN put 51 entities around the world in the blacklist of sexual violence. However, leading news agencies like Reuters published headlines like Myanamr military put in the blacklist of sexual violence. Some so called human rights organizations like HRW published the same headline.Under the news report, they said "Donate" . They were luring donations.
Is the return of five Muslims, whether they are spies as accused by the media or not, so important for them? Yes, they do not want to hear that.
It is not likely that no refugee wants to return to Myanmar as those wanted to do so have been killed. It is highly likely that some are being taken hostage for pressuring MCctu Myanmar
why do they want citizenship if Myanmar is so bad to them? why is Dhaka not absorbing their own people? what’s behind their inexplicable attitude to this?