Spotlight on world’s most persecuted
Thousands of families are trapped and unwanted, says Peter Jones
THE
visit of Aung San Suu Kyi to Sydney for the Australia-ASEAN meeting and Peter Dutton’s decision to welcome South African farmers rather than stateless people driven off their land has highlighted the tragedy of the Muslim Rohingya people.
When the British constructed the borders of Burma, India and East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971), the Rohingya people were like so many others in this part of Asia, essentially a minority on the wrong side of boundaries drawn up by European colonial powers.
The Rohingya have lived in what became Burma since the 15th century, but since then have been the victims of border shifts and now ethnic and nationalist chauvinism. The British had conquered Burma in the 19th century but when the new country was proclaimed in 1948, the Buddhist majority lived in the central plain, while around the edge were non-Burmese Christian, Muslim and animist peoples (officially Burma has 135 ethnic groups), many of whom wanted independence. Among them, in the coastal state of Arakan, were the Rohingya, who had earlier fled to Bengal then were encouraged to move back by the British who saw the area as fertile but depopulated.
After independence, the Burmese military seized power in 1962 and have waged war against the ethnic minorities ever since. They called for Burma for the Burmese and reinvented themselves as the State Law and Order Council. They changed the country’s name to Myanmar in 1989 and encouraged violence against the Rohingya, insisting they were Bengalis and not citizens of Myanmar. Many of the Rohingya have been driven out with thousands killed or made homeless. The regime banned the use of the word Rohingya and said they had to be registered as Bengalis.
While many Rohingya fled across the land border to Bangladesh, others tried to escape by boat. Many drowned or were pushed back to sea. Some made it to Australian waters only to be detained offshore. About 80 of the Rohingya are still on Nauru and about the same on Manus Island.
Those who have escaped from the latest wave of violence this year are jammed across the border in Bangladesh where it is estimated 700,000 people are camped in what is probably the world’s largest refugee camp. Most live in flimsy shelters and are at the mercy of the approaching monsoon season.
While there are calls for repatriation to relieve the pressure, authorities in Myanmar have made it clear they don’t want the Rohingya back while in Bangladesh, the most densely populated country in Asia, with 162 million people in an area just over twice the size of Tasmania, there are obvious reservations about another million people.
The plight of the Rohingya was skated around at the summit in Sydney attended by Myanmar’s State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. As her now-deceased husband was British, she had been banned from becoming President after her National League for Democracy won the 2015 election. She disappointed many former admirers by appearing to side with the military and Buddhist nationalists led by radical monks and the Organisation for Race and Religion, refusing to acknowledge the killings, gang rapes and destruction of villages and homes as ethnic cleansing. She refuses to use the word Rohingya and pulls out of public appearances where she might be challenged.
Given the status of the Rohingya as the world’s most persecuted minority, one can only speculate why Peter Dutton feels able to offer the welcome mat to white South African farmers but locks up the Rohingya who are never to be allowed to settle here. Peter Jones is a teacher of comparative religion and modern history and has travelled extensively in Asia, including Burma and Bangladesh. He works with the local Amnesty Refugee Rights Committee.