The end of the Rohingya village

Editorial

By now it is becoming quite evident that Rohingya villages will not stand the test of time. Seven years back, as a world cheered on a new supposedly democratic Myanmar, many Rohingyas dared to hope for a better future. Yet by mid 2018, almost a year after one of the most brutal military campaigns in modern history, it is evident that the authorities are laying the blueprint for the complete destruction of Rohingya habitats. The Rohingyas who remain will be relocated from their old villages into cramped IDP camps guarded by the very security forces who led the ethnic cleansing of 2017.

Events in both Buthidaung and Maungdaw confirm this. In Taung Bazaar and Guam Pyi of Buthidaung, state government and immigration officers have informed local villagers that they will have to leave their homes and settle in a designated spot where the government has built ‘housing’ for them. In Maungdaw, the visiting Bangladeshi Foreign Minister and his entourage were given a tour of one the centres which will hold the Rohingya population who would supposedly be accepted by Myanmar. These centres set up by Myanmar to house returning Rohingyas from Bangladesh have stunned many because of their eerie likeness to Nazi concentration camps. There is no going back to their former lands for the Rohingya.

The riots of 2012 destroyed the fabric of Rohingya society in the central townships e.g. Akyab, Kyauktaw, Mrauk U and so on. Rohingyas there were either banished to IDP camps where living conditions have been described by aid agencies as being the ‘worst in the world’, or their villages have been under intense blockade leading to starvation like circumstances. It seems that the few Rohingyas left in Maungdaw and Buthidaung are eyeing a fate similar if not worse. The same stands true for any Rohingya who might be repatriated to Myanmar under any of the bilateral or international agreements.

Instead of repatriation and resettlement, Myanmar seems more determined than ever to wipe out the remaining traces of Rohingya humanity in Arakan.