Hapless Rohingya Muslims

On January 14, a massive fire that started by a gas cylinder used at the camp to cook food swept through the crowded Nayapara refugee camp of the Rohingya at the town of Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh. The fire demolished around 550 ramshackle shelters and forced at least 3500 refugees, including children and women, to flee their homes.  No lives were lost. The most recent blaze is also the latest catastrophe to strike the Rohingya community.

To know who the Rohingya are I googled and found out that the Rohingya are Muslims. Rakhine, a state of Myanmar, is the native place of the Rohingya Muslims, where they have been living for centuries. The overall population of the Muslim community in Rakhine state stood some 1.1 million in 2017. What havoc life has played with the Rohingya is that Myanmar has yet not recognized the Muslim community as one of its 135 official ethnic groups. The Rohingya have never been granted nationality by the country under its citizenship law 1982.

The Rohingyas have been systematically rendered a stateless people. However, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly specifies that everyone has the right to nationality. Moreover, the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the two treaties that form the foundation of the international legal framework to address statelessness, strictly instruct member states that the stateless are to be treated in same the way as nationals of any country. It means that the stateless should be provided with the fundamental rights which include right to education, housing, justice and healthcare. But Myanmar has openly defied the laws denying all the rights to the Rohingya Muslims.

For the past five decades, due to their religion and ethnicity the Rohingya people have been made victim of the deadliest outbreaks of violence and systematic discrimination in Rakhine state by the majority Buddhist Bumars of this South-East Asian nation. They were maliciously and horridly attacked by military forces in 1978, 1992, 2016 and lastly in 2017.

Although there has been a series of the government crackdowns on the minority group, a heavy-handed military crackdown on them was started in 2017. Thousands of state troops assaulted the Rohingya’s village of Chein Khar Li in Rathedaung Township in Rakhine state and burned around 700 buildings. In the damaging crackdown, during just five days, at least 400 people were brutally killed; hundreds of women and girls were raped; and an enormous number of children and women were cruelly tortured. This was a gross violation of human rights by any count. Presently, in the world, the Rohingya Muslims are the most oppressed Muslim minority community.

Following the military operations in October 2016 and in August 2017 against the Rohingya, Islamabad had sturdily condemned the ethnic cleansing of the Rohnigya, and some political and religious groups had held solidarity rallies across Pakistan. Yet all this is not sufficient to address the plight and challenges the Rohingya have been facing. To find a way out of this humanitarian cataclysm, committed and dedicated political, social and cultural efforts are to be made by the UN, the OIC and other international bodies. As Pakistan holds a significant position in the Islamic Military Alliance, Islamabad has to ensure that the matter of Myanmar’s state-sponsored terrorism will be included in its agenda and a voice will be raised from time to time for the rights of the most persecuted community on this powerful platform.

The Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh is the world’s largest refugee camp that hosts more than a million Rohingya refugees. A great majority of the 750,000 refugees had fled their homes in Myanmar to the camp after the devastating attack, which is called a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya community, was made on them in 2017. The Nayapara camp hosts around 22,500 refugees including 17,800 children and women.

The Cox’s Bazar refugee camps consist of shanties which have been made from timber and other combustible substances. The living conditions of the refugees in the shanty houses are not good. They have no access to even basic things such as nutritious food, sanitation or healthcare. The future of their children is uncertain and bleak as they have not been provided with schooling. Until and unless the problem of their return to their native place is solved, the international donor agencies have to take some concrete initiatives for their permanent housing along with the provision of their basic needs.

In the military crackdown of 2017, flagrant human rights violations— extrajudicial killings of innocent people, rapes and gang-rapes with women and children— had taken place in Rakhine state. The UN fact-finding mission had wanted to unearth atrocities committed against people of the Rohingya community.  The Myanmar regime had refused the mission access to the people. Following the refusal, the Human Rights Wing (HRW) had warned that Myanmar would be declared a pariah state if the country did not change its mind and policy.

Around three and a half years have passed, Myanmar has yet neither been declared a pariah state nor the country taken any effective measures, nor has it been penalized in any way by the international community. The country is still continuously strengthening its defence and political ties with neighbours and friends.

Following the military operations in October 2016 and in August 2017 against the Rohingya, Islamabad had sturdily condemned the ethnic cleansing of the Rohnigya, and some political and religious groups had held solidarity rallies across Pakistan. Yet all this is not sufficient to address the plight and challenges the Rohingya have been facing. To find a way out of this humanitarian cataclysm, committed and dedicated political, social and cultural efforts are to be made by the UN, the OIC and other international bodies. As Pakistan holds a significant position in the Islamic Military Alliance, Islamabad has to ensure that the matter of Myanmar’s state-sponsored terrorism will be included in its agenda and a voice will be raised from time to time for the rights of the most persecuted community on this powerful platform.