In a recent report on Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees, Save the Children depicts a sordid story of helpless mothers and their vulnerable babies. More than 48,000 Rohingya babies will be born in 2018 in the squalid refugee camps of Cox’s Ba zar, Bangladesh and exposed to malnutrition from birth with life expectancy below five years. Rachael Cummings, Save the Children Health Advisor stated, “There are a huge number of pregnant and lactating women needing maternal health support.”
Preceding the current tragedy are countless stories of horror and brutality unthinkable in the modern era of openness driven by digitalisation and social media. As Rajuma, a petite Rohingya young woman with light brown eyes, was being beaten by a pack of Burmese soldiers, she wrapped her arms around her baby to protect from the soldiers. The soldiers burned her village and threw her son into the fire and raped her after that. According to human rights investigators, Myanmar’s military has killed more than 1,000 civilians and the exact figure may be higher as Myanmar is not letting UN or anyone else in the affected areas. Around 6.5 million people have fled to Bangladesh and 374,680 children are in need of humanitarian assistance. Many of the men from numerous families were either killed or went missing since the violence erupted.
Mohammed Rashid, a 45 year old Rohingya Muslim had surgical dressing under his eyes as the Myanmar army injured them with bullet splinters. He hid in a forest for two days and then was stopped at the border. He managed to get into Bangladesh but on his way heard the heart wrenching story that their village has been burned down. The Myanmar soldiers apparently arrested a large number of Rohingya men, took them to a village hut and then burned the hut. "My brother was killed and the army burned him with the group,” Fortify Rights quoted 41-year-old Abdul Rahman of Chut Pyin.
On the receiving end is one of the most densely populated countries and natural disaster prone countries of the world i.e. Bangladesh with 1,252 people per square kilometre and GDP per capita around US$ 1,400. Turkey, with a per capita income of US$ 11,000, which is more than seven times than that of Bangladesh’s, receives $853 as aid per refugee compared to Bangladesh which received $14 per refugee till end of last year. While more than 850,000 refugees were to receive special debit cards financed by the EU this August in Turkey, refugees in Bangladesh still struggle to get access to basic needs.
Some of the influential regional powers are either standing on the sidelines or waiting for things to play out. India, world’s largest democracy which prides itself for its secular and pluralistic values and terms its relationship with Bangladesh as “role model for neighbourly relations” to the utter surprise of many stated, “We stand by Myanmar, we strongly condemn the terrorist attack on August 24-25 and condole the death of policemen and soldiers.” Even going by commercial interests, India’s exports to Myanmar is around US$ 1billion while it is around US$ 7 billion to Bangladesh. One wonders whether India would have acted the same had the Rohingyas been Hindus instead of being Muslims. However, India has sent 7,000 tonnes of relief materials to Bangladesh.
China has been advocating resolution through bilateral efforts between Bangladesh and Myanmar and has offered to negotiate. Beijing and Moscow questioned UNSC's jurisdiction to take any measure and contended that any interference would worsen the situation. While China has been awarded series of mega infrastructure projects in Bangladesh and Russia is building the country’s first nuclear plant, both countries have opted for Myanmar at the expense of Bangladesh in pursuit of economic and strategic interests in the region. Hence, world’s largest democracy, biggest communist state, and a powerful Eurasian country, all have lined up with Myanmar turning a blind eye to the “text book case of ethnic cleansing” as aptly stated by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State had opined that sanctions against Burma were “not advisable” at this time as “We want Myanmar to succeed; we want its democracy to succeed.” The Bosnian genocide in 1995 resulted in mass killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the genocide in August 1995, the NATO forces attacked the Serbs from the air, which led to the Serbs’ surrender and the Dayton agreement was signed in Ohio which ended the Bosnian war as the US and Russia put pressure on Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia to attend the peace conference. Rohingyas are neither from Europe and are one of the poorest and persecuted minorities of the world.
So why would either the West or the East care enough to either punish the Myanmar or send the Rohingyas humanitarian assistance they need? After all, the poor deserve to be treated poorly and being a brown coloured Muslim minority persecuted in a remote corner of the world is not a qualifier for either sympathy or support.
Except few Muslim-majority countries, response from the Islamic world has been equally pathetic. A recently opened pipeline running through Myanmar, also known as Burma, carries oil from Arab countries and the Caucuses to China's land-locked Yunnan Province. The pipeline starts at the Bay of Bengal in western Myanmar's Rakhine state, the location from where most of the Rohingya have been forced out. "One could argue that Saudi Arabia is less likely to be outspoken on this (Rohingya) issue because it actually relies on the Burmese government to protect the physical security of the pipeline," said Bo Kong, a senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Turkey however has helped the Rohingyas by building refugee camps for 1 lakh refugees. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım came to Bangladesh this December and helped aid efforts by international groups along with the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), and Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate in the region.
The crisis could turn into a regional inferno, as the violence continues. Rather than seeking a peaceful solution, “Suu Kyi's office is not only doing nothing to stop it — in some ways they're throwing fuel on the fire,” said Matthew Smith, the founder of a human-rights group, Fortify Rights, working in Bangladesh, to CNN.
While some critics call for Suu Kyi’s Noble Prize to be withdrawn, an editorial in The Washington Post urged Suu Kyi to heed the words of her own 2012 Nobel acceptance speech: “Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless,” Suu Kyi said, “a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace.”
The writer is a freelancer