SOURCE   ”THE HUFFINGTON POST”

For Riya, life in the refugee camps in Bangladesh isn’t much better than Burma. Her shelter rests on the side of a hill pieced together with scraps of tarp and chunks of mud, and she only has access to water for one hour a day. Since being born, her son has been inflicted with numerous illnesses. He suffers from continuous bouts of diarrhea, his belly is distended from malnourishment, his scrotum enlarged, and his thighs and lower belly covered in red pustules. Riya scrounges for food from relatives, collects and sells firewood from the local forest, and begs for money outside the camp just to avoid hunger. Under these conditions, she cannot seek medical care for her son because of the constant need to find food to avoid starvation. Riya shares the common sentiment in the refugee camp that the choice between living in Burma or fleeing to refugee camps in Bangladesh, is “like a choice between a crocodile and a snake.”

For many Rohingya refugees, like Riya, they sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after being subject to state-sponsored persecution in Burma. Many have experienced property seizures, forced labor, military conscription, and have been prohibited from practicing their faith, or freely traveling, marrying or having children without permission from Burmese authorities. The Rohingya are an ethnic, Muslim minority from Burma who have no legal recourse and no protection from human rights violations. This is because of a 1982 law denying the Rohingya citizenship in their country of origin. This lack of nationality is the root of their persecution in Burma and the reason why the Rohingya cannot return home.

With no prospects for change in Burma, and a deplorable reception in Bangladesh, the Rohingya refugees are essentially being “warehoused.” As defined by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, this means they are kept in a “protracted situation of restricted mobility, enforced idleness, and dependency.” They are denied basic human rights such as the right to wage-earning employment, freedom of movement, access to courts, and public education. Although many Rohingya have been languishing in Bangladesh refugee camps for 19 years, this group is little known outside of Southern Asia. Yet, the Rohingya are a population deserving of international attention and advocacy on their behalf.

As a stateless group, the Rohingya are stuck in between a country that denies them citizenship and a country that denies them refugee status. To ensure their humane treatment, the conditions and outlook facing the Rohingya must be changed. First and foremost, their forcible repatriation to Burma must stop. Protection from forced return to a county of persecution is a widely practiced custom known as non-refoulement. Yet despite being accepted by some as customary international law, the principal of non-refoulement goes unrecognized in Bangladesh. Rohingya refugees have recently come under threat from an unprecedented campaign by Bangladesh authorities to forcibly return them to Burma. Because persecution of Rohingya persists in Burma, their repatriation must stop.

Second, international humanitarian organizations must be permitted to enter the camps and offer basic needs services to the Rohingya to ensure their survival. This is especially important in light of the inadequate levels of aid. In the past, the government of Bangladesh has tacitly allowed a few non-governmental organizations to provide services to the Rohingya, but recently rescinded their approval for some. Now, organizations like Islamic Relief are forced to end their operations in Bangladesh due to lack of government approval. Islamic Relief had provided primary support for 13,000 Rohingya refugees in a makeshift camp. Their exit increases the already overwhelming need for basic survival services.

Riya’s experience is just one example that illustrates the need for durable solutions for refugees in the midst of protracted conflict. Unfortunately, Riya’s story is not uncommon. There are 39,000 other Rohingya refugees living in refugee camps and an estimated 200,000 undocumented Rohingya living in Bangladesh.

As we approach March 17th, there is special occasion to raise awareness about the Rohingya and advocate on their behalf. This date marks the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Refugee Act by President Carter. The Refugee Act demonstrates U.S. recognition of the ongoing refugee phenomenon, and the need to provide a haven and overseas assistance for the persecuted.

On this anniversary, the law that demonstrates our desire to provide refuge should be commemorated, but this anniversary should also draw policymakers’ attention to the continuing need to provide assistance to those fleeing persecution. There needs to be recognition of the continued displacement of the Rohingya and progress on policies that ensure their humane treatment. As Americans, we need to recognize our ability to act on behalf of those we have not met, our responsibility to choose empathy over apathy, and our power to affect change by placing pressure on our government. This is a population that cannot wait 19 more years for a solution to their displacement.

By Dr. Habib Siddiqi   SOURCE ”THE ASIAN TRIBUNE”

The subject of minorities is a very touchy one in any country, especially in nation-states where a national heritage or culture or identity (often dictated by the majority population) defines the characteristic of the state.

Such modern concepts of states get complicated if there are other minorities that live in the state, each claiming to be a separate “nation” by virtue of its religion, language, culture, etc.

Bangladesh has about 12% religious minorities, including approximately 10% Hindus, the remainders being Buddhists, Christians, agnostics, atheists and animists. Roughly one percent of the population lives in the high hills, e.g., Jayintia, Garo Hills and Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) districts.

Historically the Bengal delta was husbanded by people who resorted to wet cultivation while the people in the hills, who were outside tax collection from ruling authorities, resorted to dry cultivation for their staple food. In the olden days of the Mughal rulers the authority of the state sometimes ended where the hills began.

As we all know it was the marauding attacks from the Maghs (Arakanese Buddhists) and Portuguese pirates, which were sponsored by the Buddhist Kings of Arakan, that led to Shaista Khan’s campaign to re-conquest Chittagong and its hilly districts, ensuring these territories’ sovereignty within the Mughal rule. His campaign stopped shy of the present-day Arakan that demarcated itself from Bangladesh by the Naaf River. During the subsequent Nawabi rule of Bengal and British Raj the territorial boundary remained the same, i.e., both those districts remained integral to Bengal and outside Buddhist rules of Arakan, Burma and Tripura.

Unlike the Mughal and Muslim Sultanates of Bengal, the British Raj (esp. during the Company era) was more interested about collection of revenue and had little concern about the goodwill of the local people and their legitimate grievances whether or not such taxes were burdensome. It was their heavy handedness that led to the horrible famine of 1769-1773 (corresponding to Bangla Year 1176-1180, and more commonly therefore known as “Chiatturer monontor”) killing some 15 million people of Bengal (that included Bihar and Orissa). One in every three person perished in that great famine.

During the British Raj a more drastic and concerted effort was taken to reclaim hilly areas under taxation. In order to increase revenue collection, the Raj created local tribal chiefs in the Hilly districts, Rajas, who would ensure payment of such revenues. For the planes, it had by the 19th century already instituted a similar scheme of collecting revenues from the zamindars (not to be forgotten in this context the Sunset Law), who essentially became the enforcer of collecting such revenues in the form of money or kind (e.g., paddy) from the raiyats – peasants, and petty merchants. That is, the role of the zamindars was similar to a revenue collector in modern times.

The CHT districts with their deep forests, much like many other hilly parts of pre-modern era India, often became refuges to rebels and revenue- and tax-evaders who would settle (without its true connotation) there to escape from being hunted down by the ruling authority. In 1784 in the nearby Arakan there was a massive genocidal campaign that was steward-headed by the racist Buddhist king of Burma — Bodaw Paya — who had invaded the independent state. Arakan – the land of poets Alaol and Dawlat Kazi – had a significant population of Muslims (commonly known as the Rohingya people) who had lived in the other side of the Naaf River for centuries. [As shown elsewhere by this author, the origin of the Rohingya people of Arakan pre-dates the settlement of the Tibeto-Burman people there.] The genocidal campaign by the Buddhist king led to a mass scale forced eviction and exodus of hundreds of thousands of people of Arakan to the nearby territories of British India, esp. to Chittagong and CHT districts of today’s Bangladesh. Nearly a hundred thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed by the Burmese extermination campaign. The Mahamuni statue of Buddha itself was stolen away from the Arakan. Many Muslims were taken as slaves and forced to live elsewhere, e.g., in places like the Karen State of Burma.

Those Rohingya Muslims who were able to save themselves from Burmese annexation of Arakan, like many Magh Arakanese, settled mostly in the Chittagong and CHT districts. The Muslim refugees and their descendants that had lived and settled in those places came to be known by the local name Ruhis, depicting their Rohingya/Arakan origin. During the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26, Arakan and subsequently the vast territories of Burma came under the British Rule. The exiled Rohingya/Ruhi Muslims and Maghs of Arakan, and their descendants, were allowed and encouraged to resettle in those territories south of the Naaf River. While many did return, others remained behind in Chittagong and CHT districts. The British policy and the subsequent process of return of the Arakanese exiles, esp. the hard-working wet cultivating Rohingya people, facilitated the cultivation of vast territories within Burma, which had hitherto remained barren and uncultivable. This enriched the coffer of the British Government through collection of revenues and taxes. Many descendants of the exiled Rohingyas (or Ruhis of Chittagong) would also become seasonal laborers in Arakan.

Today, the bulk of the ethnic minorities that live in the Chittagong Hill Tract districts are the descendants of those fleeing refugees from Arakan who fled the territory during Bodaw Paya’s extermination campaign. They are our Chakma and Marma people. (There are two other ethnic minority groups living in the CHT – the Kukis and the Tripuras. The former are also known as the Chins in Burma and Mizo in India; while the latter lives mostly in the Tripura state of India.)

Their history to the territory cannot be traced with any authenticity before that historical event of 1784. This does not mean that there was no migration of people over the hills; in fact, there was migration in those days of porous borders where geography was not often attached with politics, state and administration. Like any nomadic people, the hilly people had no permanent settlement to the territory – they moved to and fro between porous borders of today’s Bangladesh, Tripura (India) and Burma. Their migration from outside, much like the Ruhis of Chittagong and CHT, cannot be traced before 1784.

Since the British rule of the territories dating back to 1826, many Bengali Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have moved to the CHT for a plethora of reasons, including administrative jobs, logging, trade and commerce, a trend that was to continue well unto the Bangladesh period with development of industrial infrastructure there.

After the emergence of Pakistan in 1947, the CHT was made part of East Pakistan. During the War of Liberation, its Raja (Tridib Roy) openly aligned itself with the Pakistan regime, thus leaving a strong sense of betrayal and mistrust between the local Bengali or Chittagonian people and the Hilly people. During the war of liberation and in the post-liberation era, many Bengalis were kidnapped and killed by the extremist elements of the Hilly people. [A relative of mine was one such casualty who was kidnapped and later presumably killed, never to be found later.] Crimes of this nature continued unabated making the territory unsafe and insecure. Outside the towns, there was virtually no functioning of the government. The territory became impassable and unlivable for most Chittagonian and Bengali speaking people. They would be kidnapped, and often times killed, even when ransom money had been paid to the kidnappers.

The so-called Shanti Bahini comprising of armed hilly bandits and extremists demanded autonomy and they were aided and armed by anti-Bangladeshi forces from outside. With the assassination of Bangabandhu Sk. Mujib, as the political scene changed drastically inside Bangladesh, the Shanti Bahini had a new sponsor – India – to destabilize the country. This led to tense situation between the government of Bangladesh and the Hilly people, leading to the deployment of the BDR and Army. The era of instability persisted during the military-supported governments of Zia and Ershad when hundreds of soldiers and officers died fighting against the criminal hilly terrorists.

After the overthrow of the military dictatorship, the situation improved somewhat, especially with the signing of peace treaty in 1997 under the first Hasina administration which stipulated total and firm loyalty towards the country’s sovereignty and integrity for upholding the political, social, cultural, educational and economic rights of all the people living in the hilly region. Unfortunately because of its demography and geography, the region continued to see infiltration of arms from outside, which inevitably have gone to forces that are destabilizing the region. Thus, even to this day, criminal hilly gangs who are opposed to the peace treaty and armed by anti-Bangladeshi governments and NGOs continue to harass the local police, BDR and military outposts, and kidnap and kill Bengali-speaking population, including members of the local and foreign NGOs that work on various projects aiming to improve the economic and social condition there.

In the last two decades, the CHT has also seen the incursion of narcotics and harmful drugs from Burma and India. Outside drug-traffickers, the territory has also become a natural hideout for many refugees and secessionist groups from Burma that are opposed to the SPDC oligarchy.

As noted elsewhere, some of the Arakan National Congress (ANC) member parties are terrorist organizations (e.g., ALP) and are heavily involved in drug trafficking. It is worth noting that ANC is a racist, chauvinist, ultranationalist Rakhaine organization that opposes to Rohingya human rights. In the past they have carried armed excursions from the CHT against the hated SPDC regime ruling in Burma.

In recent years some NGOs have emerged with ulterior motives that are at odds with aspirations of the people and territorial integrity of Bangladesh. No place offers them a better venue than the Hilly Districts where a sizable number of ethnic minorities live. They want withdrawal of Bangladesh Army that has preserved the territorial integrity. They want enactment of fascist ghettoization laws that would confine a particular ethnic or religious group into living in enclaves or reserves. They want forced removal of Bengali Muslims and Hindus from the hilly districts. It goes without saying that such demands are unrealistic and are sure recipes for dismemberment of Bangladesh. Their anti-Bangladesh activities are also bolstered by some human rights activists with foreign affiliations whose agenda includes weakening the sovereignty of Bangladesh. Not to be forgotten in this context are also some local players that are opposed to the current government. The latest unrest in the CHT may well fall into their scheme to destabilize the government.

As Bangladesh government renews its pledge for harmony, territorial integrity and stability, it cannot afford to appear weak against forces that threaten its very existence. Any measure that offers exclusion over inclusion, ghettoization over pluralism, discrimination over equal opportunity is undesirable and must be avoided.

As hinted earlier, economics has been a key driver shaping the demography within our planet. And Bangladesh (whose GDP owes much to the foreign remittance of her economic labors working overseas) with scarcity of land is no exception to that grand rule. In the post-liberation period, with the sharp growth of job opportunities within the hilly districts, some Bangladeshis have settled into the CHT. Many hilly people likewise have found jobs in the planes of Bangladesh, away from their traditional homes in the hills. This is quite natural for a country whose constitution allows for pursuit of freedom of movement, employment, economic prosperity and happiness for all. With a high fertility rate among Bengalis and Ruhis, it is no accident that they are a majority in some Hilly districts today.

The Hilly people are aware of these trends and have immensely benefited from the overall economic prosperity of the region. Most of them are against the extremists within their community. They also understand that they are the best protectors and preservers of their language and heritage, something that is becoming rather difficult for small minorities in a global economy of our time. In that balancing act between preserving cultural heritages and ripping the benefits of economic prosperity they would be better advised to follow the American/Canadian Amish/Mennonite example as opposed to that of the Native Americans living in the Indian reservations.

In closing, to qualify as an aborigine a member of an indigenous people must exist in a land before invasion or colonization by another race. More stringent definitions require that the aborigines have resided in a place from time immemorial; i.e., they are the true sons and daughters of the soil. From this definition, the Koori, Murri, Noongar, Ngunnawal, Anangu, Yamatji, Nunga and other aboriginals in Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China, the Chechens in Chechnya of Russia; the Siberian Tatars, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets and Selkup people of Siberia in Russia; the Native Indians of the USA and Canada, Eskimos of Canada and few other races in Central and South America are the true aborigines (or more correctly, aboriginals) of our world.

It is not difficult to understand why the British anthropologist T.H. Lewin (1839-1916) did not consider the tribal people living in CHT as aborigines. The brief analysis above also confirms that view. Thus, the Mongoloid-featured hilly people are as much settlers to the CHT as are the Chittagonians/Ruhis and other Bangladeshis living there. Calling these latter people “settlers” while calling the Mongoloid featured Hilly people as the “adibashis” or aborigines would be false and insincere! Simply put: all the people living in the CHT are the adhibashis (residents) there.

Dr. Siddiqui has authored two books and co-edited another one on the Rohingyas of Burma. His book – “The Forgotten Rohingya: Their Struggle for Human Rights in Burma” – is available from Amazon.com

A key Asian conference in Bali, Indonesia, on people smuggling and human trafficking has failed to discuss in detail or resolve the issue of the Rohingya ethnic minority, tens of thousands of whom are holed up in various Asian countries, having fled Burma.

The Rohingyas, a mainly Muslim minority with a distinct culture and language, have been fleeing persecution at the hands of Burma’s military-led government for the past three decades – mostly to Bangladesh, where there are an estimated 200,000, but also to many other Asian countries. A few are classed as refugees, but the majority are stateless migrants without rights.  (more…)

Deriving from recent debates about ethnicity and other axes of identity in contemporary cultural geography, anthropology and history, my aim here is to respond to ’scholars’, ‘academics’ and ‘intellectuals’ whose discontent with ‘Rohingyas’ seems to be more politically motivated than objective examination of the politics of ethnicity (My apology if this observation dose not reflect the complex Rakhaing-Rohingya struggle).

Before I start off, I should admit that my research area is not western Burma or Arakan/Rohingya/Rakhaing. Therefore, my discussion is less about the specificity of Rohingyas/Rakhaing/Arakan affairs than the very nature of identity at a conceptual level. My purpose here is not to take side with Rohingyas or to blame Rakhaings for being anti-Rohingyas (as I will discuss at the end). Instead, my aim is to point out that it is inappropriate and misleading the public to promote conceptually wrong arguments as if they are academically sound research and scholarly opinion. Most importantly, I’d like to discuss how these arguments theoretically and empirically contradict the understandings of ethnicity that have been articulated in broader academia. (more…)

By Prof. Marranci

I have discussed and provided some information about the quite unknown tragedy of Rohingya Muslims elsewhere in this blog. Normally, Rohingya Muslims make news only when there is a dearth of other stories. Today, more people know who the Rohingya are because of shocking reports in which some tourists in Thailand have  witnessed and documented the severe mistreatment of refugees by the Thai army on Thai beaches. The UN has asked access to the refugees, some of whom have been expelled, and an investigation into the alleged mistreatment.  Rohingya Muslims are virtually stateless, and to define them as ‘economic migrants’, as the new Thai government has attempted to, is unrealistic no less than the full probe they have promised, which however is to be conducted by the same Thai army involved in the international scandal.

It would be easy to present Rohingya Muslims as the victims of ‘evil’ Buddhists, but the reality is very different:  Rohingya Muslims are  victims of their lack of strategic value, both for their native Southeast Asia and the wider international community. Similarly to the tragic reality of Black Muslims in Darfur, their lives have no economic, or political, value for the rest of our cynical world. In a certain sense, since Rohingya Muslims are also unable and unwilling to start a conflict in the region, this also diminishes the chance that their tragic odyssey from place to place will be terminated soon. (more…)

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

An often-practiced devious way to grab someones land is to deny his right to that property. Nothing could be more horrific when a government itself gets into such a criminal practice. The most glaring example of such a crime can be seen in the practices of the regimes that have ruled Burma (now Myanmar) since its independence from Britain in 1948 (esp. since 1962 when Gen. Ne Win came to power). In our times, one can hardly find a regime that has been so atrocious, so inhuman and so barbarous in its denial of basic human rights to a people that trace their origin to the land for nearly a millennium. [1[ The victims are the Rohingya Muslims living in the Arakan (now Rakhine) state. They have become the forgotten people of our time. The Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 has reduced them to the status of ?Stateless.

The ruling junta in Myanmar do not want to know and let others know that the Rohingyas have a long history, a language, a heritage, a culture and a tradition of their own that they had built up in the Arakan through their long history of existence there. Through their criminal propaganda - to garner support among the Buddhist majority - they have been feeding so much misinformation against the Rohingya that even Joseph Goebbles must be amazed in his grave! The level of disinformation has reached such an alarming level that if you were to talk with a Burmese Buddhist, he/she would say that the Rohingyas are foreigners in Arakan; they don?t belong to Burma; they belong to Bangladesh.[2] Such allegations are unfounded. Distinguished scholar Abdul Karim writes, “In fact the forefathers of Rohingyas had entered into Arakan from time immemorial. [3] (more…)

FACTS ABOUT THE ROHINGYA MUSLIMS OF ARAKAN IN MYANMAR (BURMA)

Arakan, formerly called Rohang, lies on the north–western part of Burma with 360 miles coastal belt from the Bay of Bengal. It borders 167 miles with Bangladesh both by land and sea. Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial. They are a people with distinct culture and civilization of their own. They trace their ancestry to Arabs, Moors, Pathans, Moghuls, Bengalis and some Indo-Mongoloid people. Early Muslim settlements in Arakan date back to 7th century AD.

Due to large scale persecution through ethnic cleansing and genocidal action against them, about 1.5 million Rohingyas are forced to leave their hearth and home since Burmese independence in 1948. This unfortunate uprooted people are mostly found in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; also in UAE, Thailand and Malaysia. (more…)

Almost 14 years have passed since the UN General Assembly recognized the suffering the Rohingya experienced at the hands of Burma’s military regime. Yet, Rohingya and Muslims from Burma continue to be subjected to a widespread and systematic campaign of persecution and discrimination at home and the denial of basic protection and fundamental rights in neighboring countries.

Often overlooked in global media coverage, the plight of more than 1 million Rohingya and Muslims from Burma should be more closely watched by the international community, to prevent what increasingly appears to be another genocide in the making.

ROHINGYA AND MUSLIMS IN ARAKAN STATE:  SLOW-BURNING GENOCIDE

The experiences of more than 1 million Rohingya and Muslims from Burma are often overlooked in global media coverage, whether in Burma or in exile in Bangladesh, Malaysia and elsewhere. (more…)

Introduction

Ever since the occupation of Arakan by Burman invaders in 1784 CE the Rohingya Arakanese have been made targets of extermination and genocide with the ulterior motive of turning Arakan into a Buddhist dominated province of Burma. Following separation of Burma from British India and attainment of Home Rule in 1937, the Burmese again availed the opportunity to continue its policy of Rohingya extermination – genocide. However the 1962 military take-over drastically changed the Burmese political scenario. Extermination and genocide increased, and within nearly 4 decades about half (1.5 million) of total Rohingya population had been forced to flee their homeland and those remaining in the country are counting their days in utter misery, fear and frustration. (more…)