By Oliver Dickie
(Photo: Reuters)
The coronavirus pandemic which has spread across the globe in 2020 has caused national governments to look inwards, and to push domestic challenges to the forefront of their agenda. This attitude is entirely understandable, but if it persists as a legacy of Covid-19, then groups which are nationless will suffer dire consequences. The particular group considered here is the Rohingya Muslims, located in eastern Myanmar.
There have been longstanding tensions in Myanmar, formerly Burma, between the majority Buddhist population and the Rohingya Muslims. Tensions flared in the latter half of the twentieth century, with increasing numbers of the Rohingya Muslims emigrating from Myanmar since the 1970s. The most recent crisis began in August 2017, when an exodus was triggered in the wake of an attack by Rohingya Arsa militants on police posts. Burmese troops and local Buddhist mobs retaliated by burning villages and killing civilians. In this shockingly violent and tragic retaliation, 6,700 of the Rohingya population, including 730 children, were killed, and many women were raped in the attacks. Therefore, the Rohingya Muslims have been forced to migrate into the sanctuary provided by Bangladesh, in Cox’s Bazar. The seriousness of this situation is underlined by the harrowing UN statement, declaring the situation a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
Naturally, this refugee crisis has provoked tensions across South East Asia, principally in Bangladesh, which bears the brunt of the forced migration. The Bangladeshi government’s vision is for the Rohingya population to be repatriated, but this strategy looks increasingly redundant. Myanmar is unwilling to create the conditions in which the Rohingya Muslims would be content to return, namely full citizenship and physical protection, in order to protect themselves from future human rights abuses and to prevent Buddhist vendetta campaigns. Concessions of this nature are unlikely to be given because Burmese opinion has become more hostile to the Rohingya Muslims since the start of the crisis. Moreover, China, the regional superpower with the ability to mediate between Bangladesh and Myanmar, is reluctant to do so. Both China and India’s persecution of Islamic minorities upon their boarders makes them unwilling to help Bangladesh, and India’s clampdown on Muslims in the eastern state of Assam – who were effectively stripped of their citizenship in August 2019 – promises to exacerbate Bangladesh’s refugee problem.
The failure of repatriation efforts so far has caused the Bangladeshi government to take a more hardline approach to the refugees in Cox’s Bazar. It has toughened travel restrictions, making it difficult for refugees to leave the parameters of the camp. It has also cut off internet access to the camps and threatened to arrest any refugee found with a phone. Aside from obstructing the relief efforts of NGOs, it has isolated the refugee camps from world opinion, decreasing the accountability of the Bangladeshi government for their treatment of the refugees. What amounts to the ghettoization of these refugee camps is an ominous sign. Policies towards the Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh will only become more hardline in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the recession which will inevitably follow, heightening the vulnerability of this group. Moreover, the Rohingya Muslims already stand to suffer disproportionately from the pandemic because of the cramped conditions within the refugee camps and their lack of adequate healthcare.
Therefore, although the national challenges posed by Covid-19 are significant, this is no excuse to neglect the even greater international ones. There is no easy solution to these deeply entrenched and societally complex issues, but that is no excuse for not trying to create innovative approaches to them. The British policy of throwing money at the problem is clearly not sufficient, as the refugee settlements in Bangladesh are increasingly looking like a long term issue, a fact Bangladesh is unwilling to realise. Aid is certainly a start, but diplomatic efforts must be made to ensure that the Rohingya Muslims are protected from the hardline impulses of Bangladesh and the suffocating aggression of Myanmar. ‘Learning the lessons of history’ is a cliched phrase which is invoked too often, but the effects of economic hardship, nationalism and Western isolationism are a toxic commixture which could tip this precariously balanced crisis over the edge, as they did in Cambodia in 1975.