Suu Kyi’s inaction inexcusable : The Tribune India

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Hammer & tongs

Suu Kyi’s inaction inexcusable

Not many people know what a refugee camp is. I do, for I visited one in Assam where the refugees numbered four lakh — three lakh Muslims and one lakh Bodos — in July-August 2012.

Suu Kyi’s inaction inexcusable

Rohingya crisis: Refugees jostle for aid at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Reuters



Keki Daruwalla

Not many people know what a refugee camp is. I do, for I visited one in Assam where the refugees numbered four lakh — three lakh Muslims and one lakh Bodos — in July-August 2012. I was Member, National Commission for Minorities. Entire villages, mostly of Muslims, had been burnt. About a hundred, including some Bodos,  had been killed. The administration, overwhelmed as it was, could not provide any cooks to the inmates. Wisely they left it to refugee women to gather firewood and cook rice and lentils.  

It was the height of monsoons, and we — Syeda Hameed, former Planning Commission Member, and I — went camp after camp in driving rain and wind. I remember a woman telling us, “I have not changed for 18 days.” That meant two things — shortage of toilets, also no bath for 18 days. Camp administrators said within two days or so they had put up 21 toilets. But there were 6,000 people in the camp, which was actually a school. 

 I can imagine what is happening in Bangladesh camps today — over four lakh Rohingya refugees living under makeshift thatched roofs, women and children hungry and sick, who have walked through jungles and mountains. Entire villages have been burnt and close to 3,000 killed, including children. Incidentally, above a lakh (1,12,000), according to available figures, have risked life travelling in rickety boats to find sanctuary in Malaysia.

In the subcontinent, specifically in relation to today’s India and Myanmar, Rohingya suffer from Aristotle’s tragic flaw ‘hamartia’. They are Muslim. For Myanmar, they are aliens as well and that makes it two sins. Aung San Suu Kyi called them Bengalis! Many of them in the 19th century went from Bengal to work there. The British considered Burma a province of India and the movement an internal migration, like the Bengali descent into  Sylhet and then Assam. (The way East Pakistanis and later Bangladeshis have driven the Buddhist Chakmas from the Chittagong Hill Tracts should also not be forgotten. Thank God they are in the process of getting citizenship in India.)

Many Rohingya claim they have been living in Myanmar since the middle ages. Myanmar does not consider them as one of the country’s ethnic groups. In the early nineties, the brutal military junta, known absurdly as ‘State Law and Order Restoration Council’ (SLORC), held parleys with 35, not 135 militant groups, in an attempt to hammer out a constitution.

I was sent by PM Narasimha Rao to warn the SLORC that we were about to give the Nehru Peace Prize to Suu Kyi. Now we go there to talk ‘security’, as if some Rohingya onslaught is to take place on Myanmar and India. Yes, but there is considerable raw material here to be radicalised, tinder waiting for the match.

Suu Kyi’s speech consisting of half lies was a big disappointment to many, but not me who has been following her silence and her niggardly statements on the Rohingya. She has never spoken with any compassion on these benighted people, kept stateless deliberately by Myanmar. Suu  kyi is a great lady, whom one has admired for decades, but her inaction here is inexcusable.

One has seen protests in the West with people holding placards calling her Ig-Nobel. What has happened in Myanmar, especially the Rakhine state in August, has been described as ‘the nearest thing to ethnic cleansing.’ It was wholesale slaughter. And we talk security with Myanmar! Her statement fell far too short. Those who will be taken back are the ones with ‘verifiable documents’, governed by its agreement with Bangladesh in 1993. Even they will be taken back as refugees, not citizens. Two years ago, Myanmar cancelled the Temporary Residence Cards given to the Rohingya in 1995. There is no hope here, seeing the brutal antipathy which the Myanmar military (and possibly the Buddhist clergy) has against the Rohingya.

The security angle projected by the Indian Government and its Intelligence agencies is plainly laughable. It is a moot point whether the agencies made a fool of the government, or the party and  the government forced them to take this line. States where the Rohingya are encamped do not talk of any incident where they have posed a threat. The Prime Minister himself goes to Myanmar to discuss ‘security’ and not human rights. To old observers, it all looks like a replay of Bush and Blair going to war with Iraq after squeezing out some reluctant and ambiguous reports from their agencies.

And yet there is the other side, and there is merit in what it projects. The RSS mouthpiece rightly points to the ‘borderless Umma’ which Muslims belong to. Why can’t the Muslim countries, a good 50 of them, absorb some of the Rohingya. The Al Jazeera website amazingly puts out in a map that Saudi Arabia has taken 2,00,000 Rohingya. Not easily believable. The Muslim countries did not absorb even the Syrian refugees while Europe took in more than a million. And the Palestinians remained stateless in all the Islamic lands, didn’t they, right till now?

India’s reputation as a country giving sanctuary to those exiled and refugees has suffered badly. Remember we gave sanctuary to U Nuh once. But those were Nehruvian days when ideals mattered. Now all we hear is bragging rights and glitzy event management.

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