It has been two years since Abdul Kalam fled his village home in Myanmar’s Rakhine state with his wife and four children to escape a deadly military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
For four months, Kalam worked to survive the military atrocities that started against the minority group in August 2017. His exodus to nearby Bangladesh became urgent as the genocidal crackdown continued, allegedly in response to attacks from Rohingya extremists.
Kalam was shocked see Myanmar’s embattled civilian leader, Aung San Kyi, on television defending military atrocities against Rohingya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague (Sunday Examiner, 22 December 2019).
Sitting inside the Kutupalong camp, the largest of 30 Rohingya refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar, he and his friends watched Suu Kyi andher team presenting their arguments before the court on December 11 and 12.
The proceedings followed a lawsuit filed with the ICJ by The Gambia in November 2019 charging Myanmar with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace prize laureate and once considered a rights champion for her long struggle against the Myanmese military, termed the allegations of genocide against Rohingya “incomplete and misleading.”
Kalam said, “We are frustrated. She has done it for domestic political gain. No one believed her statements because there is countless evidence of genocide against Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes in the dark of the night, and settled in a foreign land.”
“The Myanmar team and Suu Kyi dragged their country down even further and made themselves a laughing stock before the international community because the world knows that Rohingya have faced genocidal atrocities,” Bishop Rozario said.
Myanmar’s justification of military atrocities and denial of Rohingya genocide has no grounds, said Bishop Gervas Rozario of the Diocese of Rajshahi, chairmperson of the Catholic bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission.
“The Myanmar team and Suu Kyi dragged their country down even further and made themselves a laughing stock before the international community because the world knows that Rohingya have faced genocidal atrocities,” Bishop Rozario said.
“A geopolitical game is underway, with Myanmar drawing support from China and Russia on the Rohingya issue. The path of justice is difficult, but increasing pressure and an embargo on Myanmar by the international community might help deliver justice for Rohingya even if it comes too late.”
Although it may take years to have a judgment, refugees like Kalam hope it will finally come.
Fencing off refugee camps
Apart from Myanmar’s denial of genocide, sadness gripped refugees as the Bangladeshi authorities started erecting barbed wire fences around camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Wire service AFP reported on December 10 that soldiers were erecting fences around Balukhali camp, a large refugee settlement, a move seen as the latest attempt to quell growing frustrations among locals due to the presence of a large number of refugees in Bangladesh.
Observers say the move is partly due to security concerns but mostly the result of the government’s failure to repatriate refugees to Myanmar. A plan to relocate refugees to an island was also suspended following opposition from Rohingya.
Rights activists have decried the camp fences. It will turn the camps into “open-air prisons,” said the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Rohingya are unhappy about the fences but can do nothing about them, says Abdur Rahim of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH)
“Bangladesh has generously sheltered Rohingya. They have accepted the fencing on security grounds but on humanitarian grounds, it is unacceptable. After all, Rohingya are human beings, not animals, to be caged,” Rahim said.
Kalam, had a mixed reaction. “It is true that some Rohingya illegally sneak out of the camps, so it is a good move in terms of security, but it also put restrictions on freedom of movement, which does not go down well with refugees,” he said.
Bishop Rozario called the barbed-wire fencing “unacceptable” and a “violation of human rights.”
He noted, “Bangladesh may have been forced to fence off the camps. It may yield some positive results but overall, the fencing off won’t be effective.”
An official from the state-run Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission defended the fences.
“They will save both Rohingya and local communities from the clutches of criminal gangs around the camps,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is purely a security measure and does not violate the refugees’ human rights.”
Despite living in Rakhine State for centuries, Rohingya Muslims are persecuted and denied citizenship by the Buddhist-majority nation, which sees them as recent illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh currently shelters more than a million Rohingya, most of whom fled two brutal military crackdowns in 2016 and 2017, which the United Nations called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” UCAN
