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The Rohingya Refugee Crisis of 2012: Asserting the Need for Constructive Regional & International Engagement
Mirza Sadaqat Huda is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland, Australia.
On the 10th of June 2012, more than 500 members of the Rohingya community, a historically persecuted ethnic group originating from the Rakhine State in Western Myanmar crossed the Naf River into Southeast Bangladesh to seek refugee from large scale sectarian strife that was originally identified as an ethnic conflict between the minority Rohingyas and the Buddhist majority. Ethnic tensions that evolved over time to be a perpetual trait of relations between the Rohingyas and the Rakhine exploded into communal violence in late May 2012, following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman, allegedly by three Rohingya men. With at least 50 casualties 30,000 displaced and continued indifference by the Myanmar authorities, the Rohingyas were forced to seek refuge in Bangladesh, with the first large groups arriving by boat in June and intermittent influxes in the next few months.
Bangladesh has for the first time refused to accommodate Rohingyas fleeing persecution. The country is currently home to around 28,000 registered Rohingya refugees, housed in two UN High Commission for Refugees’ (UNHCR) administered camps in Cox’s Bazar[2], as well as another estimated 200,000 to 500,000 illegal migrants spread throughout the country[3]. The exodus of Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh in June 2012 instigated a diverse range of conflicting as well as parallel reactions by Regional and Western Governments, International and National Media, Multilateral Organizations and International Non-Government Organizations (INGOs). The decision by the Government of Bangladesh to provide initial relief to Rohingyas fleeing violence but not provide them with medium to long-term accommodation was unprecedented in the country’s history and resulted in a large number of national, regional and global implications.
Although Bangladesh’s decision to turn back more than 500 Rohingya refugees was portrayed as emanating from a nationalistic and statist approach, in reality, although some criticisms of adopting a neo-realistic approach to a humanitarian crisis are well directed, the government’s decision has been greatly influenced by socio-economic issues that have emerged due to the presence of Rohingya refugees in South-eastern Bangladesh. Thus, the national administration’s policy was partly a reaction to significant local perceptions, but this underlying factor was not widely publicized.
On the other hand, the Government of Bangladesh insisted on the authenticity of widely speculative reports of the presence of militants among the fleeing Rohingyas, to secure international acceptance for its policy. Emphasis was also made on Bangladesh’s non-obligation to accommodate refugees, due to the supposedly ‘internal’ nature of the issue. Unlike previous incidents that led to the influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh, initial reports suggested that the June 2012 crisis was solely an ethnic conflict, although reports of state complicity and participation emerged later. This anomaly in the official explanation of the country’s policy, together with the subjective and often unrealistic portrayal of Bangladesh as an insensitive and uncompromising neighbor by International Media, INGOs, Western Countries and National and Regional Analysts, has given rise to dichotomous and biased interpretations of the role played by Myanmar and Bangladesh on this issue. This article aims to highlight four intrinsic geopolitical trends that have been made apparent by the Rohingya crisis of 2012.
Due to geographic proximity, international pressure, as well as genuine solidarity with the plight of the Rohingyas owing to some similarities in religion and culture, Bangladesh has been host to hundreds of thousands of registered and unregistered Rohingyas who have fled persecution from the Myanmar Army, with the first large group of refugees arriving in 1978. The refugee influx of 1978 was prompted by increasingly repressive measures by the Myanmar government against ethnic and linguistic minorities. Following widespread violence against the Muslim Rohingyas by the military as well as the Buddhist majority, over 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. Initially both governments had agreed to the repatriation of 200,000 refugees but this process proved to be lengthy, hampered by the prospects of reprisal violence faced by returning refugees. In 1979 around 50,000 refugees remained in Bangladesh while the rest returned to Myanmar.
The government of Myanmar renewed its oppressive stance against the Rohingyas and in 1991-1992 the second large-scale influx of more than 270,000 Rohingya refugees entered Bangladesh. The UNHCR and the Government of Bangladesh facilitated the repatriation of more than 220,000 but approximately 22,00015 refugees continued to languish in camps in Bangladesh with little hope, or in some cases intention, of returning to Myanmar. Their numbers were supplemented by the intermittent influx of refugees from Rakhine over the last two decades.
Although ASEAN has come under severe criticism for its handling of the Rohingya issue, given its limitations and severity of other issues, it has made its views clear on acceptable standards of human rights practices that are required of member states. As Myanmar is set to chair ASEAN in 2014, the other nine member states must evaluate the very real possibility of the Rohingya issue becoming a regional problem, which may, in theory, transcend the ‘non-interference on internal affairs’ principal.
