They now number more than a million, but the Rohingya refugees who are now in camps in Bangladesh may not be returning to their homes across the border anytime soon. Still, recent pronouncements from Myanmar’s civilian National Unity Government (NUG) indicate that the Rohingya are finally being heard by leaders in what they consider their homeland.
The NUG was formed just last April by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), which is made up of several lawmakers from Myanmar’s dismissed parliament. On 3 June, the NUG released a policy statement that not only pledged to “actively seek justice and accountability for all crimes committed by the military against the Rohingya and all other people of Myanmar throughout our history” — even giving the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over these — but also to see to the “voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation” of Rohingya who had been driven out of Myanmar.
More importantly, the NUG said that it would repeal Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law and replace it with one that would base citizenship on “birth in Myanmar or birth anywhere as a child of Myanmar citizens.” Addressing the Rohingya directly, it said that the Rohingya are “entitled to citizenship by laws that will accord with fundamental human rights and democratic federal principles.”
The Rohingya are one of Myanmar’s ethnic groups, but are not recognized as citizens of the country. Predominantly Muslim, most of them are from Rakhine State, on Myanmar’s western coast. They are assumed to be descendants of Arab traders from centuries past, but many in Myanmar have long referred to them as “Bengalis”; in fact, “Rohingya” is not recognized as a name of a particular Myanmar ethnic group by many Burmese.
Discriminated against for generations, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes in Rakhine beginning 2017, following violent raid after raid by Myanmar military troops and local mobs. Most of the fleeing Rohingya have ended up in Bangladesh, where they have lived in refugee camps as the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh, along with a variety of UN bodies and representatives of other countries, discuss their fate every so often.
Talks and more talks
To be sure, Bangladesh has been eager to see them go home. Comments former Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain: “The Bangladesh government has given shelter to the Rohingya. They have been living here safely for four years. But the government is not obliged to accept all the demands of the Rohingya. The government has taken several initiatives keeping in mind their safety…and in no way compelled them to return to their country. Now it is important to have a meeting between Bangladesh and Myanmar to take back the Rohingya as soon as possible. Of course, their safety must be taken into account.”
He concedes, however, that “the Myanmar army has been making various excuses on the issue of taking them back. In fact, there is no desire to take them back.”
As early as 23 November 2017, Bangladesh and Myanmar had signed an agreement on Rohingya repatriation. This was followed by an agreement signed by the two countries on 16 January 2018, supposedly stipulating that repatriation would take no more than two years. Even then, however, the situation in Rakhine remained dangerous for the Rohingya, and most of the refugees refused to return to Myanmar. So far, Bangladesh has yet to repatriate a single Rohingya. Last 19 January, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China held a virtual tripartite meeting on the Rohingya, but it yielded little result.
The Rohingya themselves have said they are open to returning to Rakhine — but only if their safety is guaranteed, at the very least. Says Humayra, a Rohingya at the Kutupalong camp at Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh: “This is the second time I have fled here in Bangladesh. Most of my family was killed by the Myanmar military. I don’t want to go back because I don’t want to my children to face the same risk that I did.”
Zilani, a 14-year-old Rohingya, adds, “I’m very scared when I hear that I will be sent back to Myanmar. I think they will torture me a lot when I go back there…Here I can go to school. I can play independently with others. I don’t want to go back to Myanmar.”
Five major demands
Some Rohingya at the camps, however, have put together a few more demands that they want met before they consider repatriation. In August 2019, the Rohingya even held a rally to make their demands known to the representatives of foreign organizations who were visiting the camps at the time. According to the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), these demands are:
- The passage of a law in Myanmar’s parliament recognizing Rohingya as local, since they are permanent residents of Arakan (Rakhine);
- Rohingya in Arakan should be given citizenship and issued identity cards;
- Rohingya should be taken back to their villages and the land confiscated from them returned;
- UN peacekeepers must be deployed in Arakan and with Rohingya police, to protect the Rohingya there; and
- Those who committed atrocities against the Rohingya should be tried by the International Criminal Court and not by a local court in Myanmar.
The ARSPH has since repeatedly aired these demands at press briefings and elsewhere. In September 2019, it even put them in writing and sent them off to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office of the Commissioner for Refugee Relief and Repatriation (RRRC). It has yet to get any response or commitment on the demands from either body.
Now, though, the NUG seems ready to grant the most crucial among them, based on its recent policy statement. At least one Rohingya organization has already reacted positively, albeit with caution. In a statement issued last 20 June, the U.K.-based Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) called the NUG’s announcement as “a step in the right direction toward a credible solution for the Rohingya community of Myanmar.”
But it also noted, “This process would need to be inclusive from the onset. In this regard, we encourage further direct engagement between the NUG and Rohingya representatives, and as such ARNO and our partners stand ready to play our part in what needs to be an inclusive process of engagement with Rohingya representatives.”
As it is, the NUG statement has already had some groups in Rakhine State up in arms. Just a few days after the statement was made public, a leader of a Rakhine group told the Irrawaddy online magazine: “Everyone knows the Bengali issue is sensitive in the country. The NUG was only formed recently and our party says a nascent government should not be making these decisions without consulting Rakhine revolutionary groups, stakeholders, and civil society organizations.”
Some observers are also looking at the NUG policy statement with suspicion, noting that it is actually the elected government led by the National League of Democracy (NLD) of detained State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw Suu Kyi had been heavily criticized by the international community when she appeared at the International Court of Justice at The Hague in December 2019 and defended the Myanmar military for its actions against the Rohingya. Ironically, just more than a year later, her legally re-elected government failed to be sworn in after the military staged a coup and detained her and other NLD officials.
There have been calls for the NUG to prove its sincerity by appointing a Rohingya as one of its members. Then there, of course, is the problem of how it can wrest control of Myanmar from the military so it can actually do what it is promising.
In the meantime, no one among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh looks ready to budge just yet. Says Sadeq Alam, one of the Rohingya camp elders: “The Myanmar government cannot be trusted. They have broken faith many times before. We return only if we are given citizenship directly.” ●
Farhana Haque Nila is a Dhaka-based senior reporter with Mohona TV and News Now Bangla.