Human Rights And Repatriation Essay

Bangladesh and Myanmar recently signed a bilateral deal to return in phases the over 650,000 Rohingya refugees languishing in Bangladeshi border camps for over a year. While this move may release some of the swelling international pressure on both states to uphold basic human rights, it does little to improve the future prospects of the Rohingya. And with the U.N kept out of this deal, there will be no neutral oversight to ensure the process goes smoothly and without bloodshed. Some media sources, including the B.B.C, have oxymoronically termed the brokered return a “repatriation,” which is facetious. Repatriation implies the Rohingya will return to their country of citizenship. They won’t. The reality is they are South Asia’s equivalent

Shockingly, even the much-feted civilian government of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi continues to deny the Rohingya citizenship and refuses to recognize their language and nativity. Myanmar treats the Rohingya as unwanted foreigners to be expelled or exterminated, while Suu Kyi—in the past celebrated as the Asian Nelson Mandela—maintains an eerie silence that has sparked calls to strip her of the peace prize. Myanmar claims the Rohingya are in fact ethnic Bengalis who were ferried to the country as cheap labor during the British Empire, and hence must go back. Bangladesh categorically rejects this claim. At its root, the crisis may be about simple economics, of scarcity and choice. Myanmar is an underdeveloped country that has witnessed repressive military dictatorships for most of its post-independence existence. Consequently, the Rohingya are not only a drain on resources, but also squat on land that is rumouredly mineral rich. Moreover, we must remember that any form of dictatorship necessitates crystallizing and maintaining an antagonistic “other,” which in Myanmar’s case regrettably happens to be the