Photo : Collected
As Myanmar rebels gain ground in the north and push the military junta in the south, there is no light at the end of the tunnel at this moment regarding Rohingya repatriation.
The Chinese-brokered repatriation of a limited number of Rohingya refugees to return to homes in Rakhine State has fallen flat due to the raging civil war in Myanmar.
Armed insurgencies by the People's Defence Force (PDF) of the National Unity Government (NUG) have erupted throughout Myanmar in response to the military government's crackdown on anti-coup protests.
Meanwhile, pictures and videos surfaced on social media and several rebel websites, indicating that the Arakan Army has taken control of six towns in Rakhine State – Pauktaw, Kyauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Taungpyoletwe, and Myebon – and one in Chin State, Paletwa.
The Arakan Army is one of the three ethnic armies in the “Brotherhood Alliance”, which launched ‘Operation 1027’ against the Myanmar military dictator who ousted an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy and plunging the Southeast Asian nation into bloody turmoil.
The Arakan Army is at the peak of its offensive against the military junta in Rakhine State, and there are only a few days left to capture all junta camps where hardly 100 soldiers are stationed, said the Three Brotherhood Alliance in a statement issued last Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the offensive, the AA fighters have captured many military bases, tactical operation command bases, battalions, and division headquarters of the junta. Initially, they all refused to surrender, as reported by Narinjara News.
Government soldiers, in retaliation, are attacking civilians in the south. The Rohingyas in northern Rakhine State are bearing the brunt and fleeing from their settlements.
Several sources in Ukhiya have said that the guards of the Rohingya settlements have long abandoned their checkposts, and the ethnic community has scattered for safety and security.
Unfortunately, the Arakan Army is equally unkind to them. The Rohingya are being forced to flee towards the coasts of the Naf River, with advice to cross into Bangladesh.
They were asked to join their relatives in neighbouring Bangladesh, where nearly 1.2 million Rohingya refugees are living in squalid refugee camps in Teknaf and Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar, and Naikhongchari in Bandarban.
Intensified patrols and strict vigilance of the Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB) and Coast Guards have discouraged them from crossing the river, which borders Bangladesh with Myanmar.
The border guards have thwarted several attempts by panic-stricken Rohingyas fleeing from Rakhine State, affected by the civil war. They have not been ensured security and safety by the rebels, local Rohingya leaders informed their relatives living in camps.
Several sources in Ukhiya and Naikhongchari have indicated that scores of Rohingya, after taking perilous journeys through the hill forests for several days, have trekked into the camps.
Officials working with international NGOs confirmed that incidents of some illegal migration have occurred and have been sheltered in the camps by relatives mostly.
NGO officials declined to be identified for security reasons and said that they are not expecting a huge or even moderate influx of Rohingya people, as the borders are sealed.
The refugee leaders are reviewing the situation across the border into Rakhine State. They are in touch with Rohingyas who are living in extreme difficulties.
Meanwhile, the jihadist outfit Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), and Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA), a new armed group that emerged in Myanmar to “protect the rights of persecuted Rohingyas”, are being pressured by the rebel Arakan Army.
The Rohingya militants fled their hideouts and presumably took shelter in the hill forests, despite claims in their social media accounts that they have captured huge weapons from Myanmar government forces.
The ARSA, RSO, and ARA, in separate posts on social media, demanded that they are fighting on several battlefronts with government Tatmadaw forces.
The brutal crackdown by Myanmar forces on the Rohingya sparked after the Islamist ARSA overran a couple of Myanmar Border Guards Forces outposts in August 2017.
The United Nations described the genocide of the Muslim Rohingya as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’, which Myanmar repeatedly denied.
The genocidal campaign sparked the worst refugee crisis in the region, forcing a million to flee from the restive Rakhine state in Myanmar.
An estimated 3.5 million Rohingya have dispersed worldwide. Nearly a million Rohingya refugees are sheltered in Bangladesh. Others are in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan.
Last year, a flurry of Chinese diplomatic parleys with the Myanmar military junta aimed to mitigate the Rohingya crisis or face the music of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case Gambia indicted Myanmar for the genocide of Rohingya ethnic minorities.
Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University, an expert on genocide and forced migration, said he does not see any room for negotiation for repatriation of Rohingya refugees as most of Rakhine State has been overrun by the rebel army.
Bangladesh has raised the refugee crisis at several international platforms and other global summits. The world leaders lauded Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina for providing food and shelter to a million ‘stateless’ Rohingyas, he remarked.
The Tatmadaw military has suffered numerous battlefield setbacks in Rakhine state and elsewhere in recent months.
Myanmar’s junta is offering an olive branch of freedom of movement to Rohingya Muslims restricted to temporary camps for the displaced in Rakhine state as part of a bid to entice them into military service amid the nationwide rollout of a conscription law, according to sources in the region.
The Rohingya crisis heightened after the draconian Citizenship Law of 1982 requires individuals to prove that their ancestors lived in Myanmar before 1823 and refuses to recognise Rohingya Muslims as one of the nation's ethnic groups or list their language as a national language.
Myanmar’s “all-weather friend” China stood beside the country at a crucial moment of a series of economic sanctions by the West, slammed after the persecution of Rohingyas and when the military junta ousted the country's former democratically-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since a military coup in February 2021.
Earlier parleys held under the good offices of China, Myanmar conspicuously remained silent over their citizenship rights but assured that the Rohingya will be given a national verification card (NVC), which the Rohingya refugees regard as too little and too less. The stubborn refugee leaders refused to accept NVC, which identifies the Rohingya as ‘aliens’. They said that the Rohingya would be confined to resettlement camps and argued that they wanted to be repatriated from refugee camps to another settlement in Rakhine.
Bangladesh authorities echoed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or UN Refugee Agency, which advocates for the safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable repatriation of 1.2 million Rohingya refugees who fled the ethno-religious strife in 2017 amid a military crackdown.
Since 2017, Bangladesh has respected the international principle of non-refoulement refugee convention, the right of refugees not to be returned to a country where their lives or freedom would be threatened.
Ambassador Humayun Kabir told The Daily Messenger over the phone that he could not see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Thus Bangladesh will have to wait for a long time to let the civil war end and then initiate a fresh round of negotiations with the government in the capital Naypyidaw for a safe, secure, and sustainable repatriation.
Messenger/Fameema
