The lingering problem of Rohingyas’ statelessness

Luv Puri

Ex-member, UN Secretary-General’s Good Offices on Myanmar

Of the total 1,140 Rohingyas to be reportedly repatriated to Myanmar from Bangladesh through the pilot project, 711 have had their cases cleared. According to the reports, the cases of the remaining 429 were still being processed and their identities and places of origin verified. The development accompanies several rounds of shuttle diplomacy between Dhaka and Naypyidaw that have taken place in the last five years to support the repatriation of Rohingyas.

These efforts started during the National League for Democracy (NLD) government regime in the first quarter of 2018 and it seems that they have continued even under Myanmar’s military-ruled administration. The military staged a coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021, and a civil war-like situation prevails as protesters are demanding the restoration of democracy. The success of the repatriation project has consequences for the larger Rohingya population and the countries, including India, in which they are residing as refugees. The number of Rohingyas living outside Myanmar is four times that of those who are in that country.

As per the Arakan Project, in 2019-20, the approximate number of Rohingyas living in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, the UAE and Malaysia was 9.47 lakh, 5 lakh, 3.5 lakh, 40,000, 50,000 and 1.5 lakh, respectively. Bangladesh hosts the maximum of number of refugees and they have come to the country in several phases. The most recent was in August 2017 as 7.2 lakh Rohingyas were expelled from Rakhine in Myanmar on account of the army’s allegedly disproportionate use of force after attacks by the Arakan Rakhine Salvation Army on military’s posts. The magnitude of the displacement in 2017 can be gauged from the fact that Maungdaw district, comprising the townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, with a population of over 7.5 lakh Rohingyas, witnessed a near-total exodus.

Within Myanmar, Rohingyas had been stripped of citizenship rights by a domestic law in 1982. Under this law, citizenship is based on the membership of the ‘national races’, which, the state says, settled in Myanmar prior to 1824, the date of the first occupation of the region by the British. Myanmar has 135 national races enshrined in its 2008 constitution and the Rohingyas are not a part of this category. It is unlikely that the Myanmar military would give up the rigid idea of citizenship to accommodate the Rohingyas.

The story of the Rohingyas and their connection with Rakhine is mired in contestations of history, identity, colonialism and conceptualisation of modern-day nationhood. The official version of Myanmar is that the Rohingyas came from present day Bangladesh to Rakhine and their language is nothing but Chittagonian, which has similarities with Bengali. Officially, Myanmar calls Rohingyas ‘Bengalis’, which goes against the universally agreed right of the community to self-identify. It is said that initially, the British, when they gained control of Rakhine, facilitated the flight of Rohingyas as sharecroppers. Rohingyas contest this version assiduously and the exact history may be even more complex. They affirm that they are native to Rakhine and have their own distinct language. In this battle of versions, little attention is paid to the fact that till the British Empire imploded in 1947-48 in Myanmar and India and new nation-states were created, including Myanmar and East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, geography was porous between the coastal Rakhine and the neighbouring Bangladesh’s Chittagong district.

With a gush of nationalism sweeping across the post-colonial world, national boundaries came to be tightly defined and official historical narratives were developed in support of the new boundaries. In Myanmar, the new official narrative promoted a binary history, which was internalised, including the idea of natives and foreigners, by the Burman Buddhist majority. In a country of multiplicities in terms of ethnicity and religion, internal strife became a way of life, including among adherents of Buddhist majority of different ethnicities such as Rakhine Buddhists as a result of the enforcement of the singular national vision of the majority. The Rohingyas, who are cent per cent Muslim and with their own ethnicity, stood little chance of being included in such a polity. The Myanmar military has often invoked the threat of Rohingyas to gain political legitimacy and the ruling political elite is always insecure about adopting a liberal, accommodating approach towards the Rohingyas as this would potentially invite the wrath of the majority.

Even within a semi-democratic system, from 2010 to 2021, Myanmar’s military — the Tatmadaw — continued to wield a major influence, both constitutionally and politically. Section 339 of the Myanmar constitution states: “The Defence Services shall lead in safeguarding the Union against all internal and external dangers.” The fact is that the anti-Rohingya narrative of several decades created a situation where even a seemingly democratic and liberal party like the ruling NLD exacerbated the situation of Rohingyas. The NLD oversaw two phases of violent expulsions of Rohingyas in 2016 and 2017.

That is why the pilot project of repatriation may become an exercise in optics. The main impediment stalling repatriation is the demand by Rohingyas for the full recognition of their political, social and economic rights that no one in Myanmar is willing to concede. As per the international humanitarian norms, the return should be a fully informed and voluntary decision with enabling conditions. Within camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the situation is becoming more and more challenging for the authorities. There are visible signs of radicalisation in the midst of poverty and a situation of hopelessness, particularly among the youth, as incidents of violence and fatalities increase as a result of intra-camp feuds. And the practical reality is that the Myanmar coup on February 1, 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 surge, more or less internationally effaced the plight of Rohingyas, whose images, many of them in bloodstained clothes, crossing the Naf river to enter Bangladesh, shook the conscience of the international community in August 2017.

Considering their large presence in South Asia, South East Asia and West Asia as refugees, the situation of Rohingyas is a humanitarian problem requiring a concerted engagement among the relevant host countries to evolve a common strategy in their engagement with Myanmar about their long-term status. There is also the old question of the pursuit of accountability for human rights violations in Myanmar vis-à-vis Rohingyas. In the past, countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have talked about granting of permanent resident rights to Rohingyas settled in their country. There is also the proposal of settlement of a few refugees in western countries willing to accept them as part of their overall asylum policy. However, this is not a panacea to the basic lingering conceptual problem of their statelessness and the rights of the vast majority of Rohingyas living both within Myanmar and outside.

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