(Sept. 24 at 5:15 p.m.) GOOD NEWS — the BURMA Act was just approved in the House of Representatives (394 Yeas, 21 Nays). Thank you to all who reached out in support of the Rohingya. Your efforts make a difference. On to the Senate!
The House of Representatives is set to vote on the BURMA Act of 2019 (H.R. 3190) as early as Tuesday, Sept. 24. The legislation to offer aid and protection to the Rohingya of Myanmar (Burma) has garnered 53 cosponsors in the House, but will need even more support to move forward. The situation for the Rohingya is more dire than ever, with those who remain in Myanmar subjected to ongoing atrocities, while those seeking safe haven as refugees in Bangladesh are being squeezed by the Bangladeshi government via a series of rights-effacing restrictions. It’s time for Washington to step up its response to this clear-cut genocide. The United States must take a much harder line with Myanmar and send a strong message that the regime cannot get away with such atrocities and sham repatriation attempts. It must also share more of the burden with Bangladesh so as to assuage the country’s mounting frustration with the continued presence and needs of the Rohingya. The BURMA Act provides a solid strategy for meeting both of these objectives by acknowledging the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military, activating counter-impunity mechanisms like robust sanctions against the top architects of the genocide, and increasing humanitarian assistance to help Bangladesh better manage the response.
Time to urge the Senate to pass the legislation — Take action now!
[maxbutton id=”32″]
As a recap, in August, 2017, a brutal campaign waged by the Myanmar military apparatus, known as the Tatmadaw, triggered a mass exodus of more than 750,000 Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh–an operation that rights groups, the UN, U.S. elected officials, and even some governments have branded a genocide. It has been two years since the “final solution” against the Rohingya began, but their circumstances have continued to deteriorate. The Rohingya in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, have been living in a purgatory for the past two years — caught between a homeland that yearns for their extermination and a host country that wants them out. The Rohingya are being squeezed by both sides, systematically stripped of their dignity and deprived of their rights with ever-increasing severity.
Myanmar and Bangladesh have staged several elaborate repatriation attempts to get the Rohingya to return to Myanmar — despite Myanmar’s denial of the atrocities, its continued perpetration of abuses against remaining Rohingya and other minority populations within its borders, and its razing and bulldozing of Rohingya villages, so that they have no place to return to other than what are, in essence, concentration camps. Since the most recent voluntary repatriation push several weeks ago, during which not a single Rohingya refugee boarded the buses waiting to transport willing volunteers back home, even more evidence of Myanmar’s complicity has emerged, and Bangladesh has begun to lash out against the Rohingya for their failure to cooperate and play into the ludicrous fiction that returning to Myanmar is a viable option.
Until recently, Bangladesh has been very generous in accommodating a refugee population of over 1 million Rohingya in sprawling camps in Cox’s Bazar. But Myanmar’s lack of cooperation in taking meaningful steps towards accepting responsibility and correcting wrongs, combined with escalating resentment from local Bengalis about the benefits being bestowed upon the Rohingya, has transformed Bangladesh’s initial humanitarian openness to impatience and frustration. Bangladesh is having trouble coming to grips with the likelihood that the Rohingya could remain within its borders for a very long time, and its responding by lashing out against the persecuted minority group it welcomed with open arms two years ago.
Life has never been easy in the camps. The Rohingya have faced myriad invisible barriers since fleeing to Bangladesh to live in these sprawling settlements comprised of makeshift, impermanent shelters. For two years, they have been restricted from working, dependent completely on foreign aid and the few loopholes that enable them to feed their families. Children are excluded from the educational system, with the small percentage actually capable of accessing informal education through programming in the camps being restricted to learning in English and Burmese only — two languages neither they nor most of their teachers speak or understand. All of these restrictions were designed to disincentivize the Rohingya from staying in Bangladesh for the long term — an understandable move given Bangladesh’s struggles providing for its own poor population of 160 million let alone absorbing over a million more impoverished survivors of genocide. But since August 22, 2019, when not a single Rohingya refugee agreed to return to near-certain annihilation in Myanmar, Bangladesh has begun to squeeze the Rohingya through a series of greater restrictions, in what seems like punishment for their refusal to cooperate with the repatriation plan.
On September 1, 2019, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) ordered telecommunication operators to shut down mobile phone services in the camps within seven days. The next day, the BTRC ordered mobile network operators to shut down 3G and 4G services in the camps each day between 5 pm and 6 am. This blackout, implemented under the guise of increasing security, has effectively cut the Rohingya off from the rest of the world, including family and friends who remain in Myanmar. The 13-hour daily shutdown also puts the refugees at serious risk by cutting off communications with security, health, and other necessary services. Compounding the telecommunications shutdown, on September 4, Bangladesh’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defense recommended building a security fence around the camps to preclude the Rohingya from freely moving outside the camps. Dhaka has also issued an ultimatum that 100,000 Rohingya must either relocate to the silt island of Bhasan Char — accessible only by boat and vulnerable to constant storms — or face deportation back to Myanmar.
A view of the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by Rares Michael Ghilezan.
It is far from a coincidence that the rollout of Bangladesh’s multi-tiered clampdown began just days after the recent Rohingya repatriation exercise failed. On Aug. 22, the date of the failed repatriation, several Rohingya refugees were killed in an alleged standoff with Bangladeshi law enforcement after their supposed invovlement in the murder of a local ruling-party official. After a massive demonstration in Kutupalong camp was attended by more than 100,000 refugees on August 25, marking the two-year anniversary of Myanmar’s crackdown that catalyzed the mass exodus to Bangladesh, government officials banned several nongovernmental aid organizations from working in the camps.
Dhaka has justified these efforts to further clampdown on the Rohingya as necessary to root out nefarious elements in the population, increasingly drawn to drug trafficking and other crimes. Bangladesh has begun to paint the Rohingya as an untrustworthy population fomenting insecurity, engaging in illegal activity, and vulnerable to radicalization. In this way, the once safe haven for the Rohingya has alarmingly begun to mirror some of the same tactics employed by their homeland of Myanmar to persecute and dehumanize them.
Bangladesh must stop painting the Rohingya as a security threat that requires telecommunication shutdowns and barbed wire fences to contain. Instead, the Bangladesh authorities should direct their ire at the Tatmadaw and the Myanmar government, which caused the genocide in the first place. Taking out frustrations on the refugees will only further harm a survivor population merely trying to rebuild their lives after being subjected to the crime of crimes. For its part, the United States must step in before this situation further deteriorates. Passing the BURMA Act in the House and then the Senate will infuse hope and leadership in a way that has been acutely missing from the global response to this man-made catastrophe.
Please help Jewish World Watch in a last effort push to get our elected officials to co-sponsor the BURMA Act of 2019 and vote YES when the bill comes up for a vote this week. The time is NOW to change the narrative and protect the Rohingya from being further dehumanized. They have suffered enough! The United States has a legal obligation to respond to genocide. And, while our borders may be closed to the Rohingya, a demonstration of solidarity and a significant influx of resources is needed now more than ever. Facing a near-impossible situation where Myanmar is denying genocide and doing virtually nothing to facilitate their safe, voluntary, and dignified return, the Rohingya have no choice but to remain in Bangladesh for the foreseeable future. The international community must either step up with other viable options for resettlement or accept this likely scenario and join forces to prop up Bangladesh in its efforts to sustainably support a refugee population of this size. The United States must take the lead and the BURMA Act is the prime vehicle through which to do just that.
[maxbutton id=”32″]