London-based renowned Rohingya rights activist Nay San Lwin, also a regular contributor to Rohingya community blog Rohingyablogger.com, speaks with the Dhaka Tribune’s Tarek Mahmud to discuss the issues of racial discrimination against Rohingyas in detail

How have Rohingyas faced discrimination in the Rakhine state of Myanmar?

Rohingyas have been subject to racial discrimination since the military coup in 1962.

In 1965, a radio program broadcasted in Rohingya language was shut down.

Then in 1974, the Burmese junta launched ‘Operation Jasmine’, locally known as “Operation Sabae”, through which they confiscated many identity cards from the Rohingyas while they were traveling from one state to another.

1978 saw another large scale operation, ‘Dragon King’, to wipe out Rohingyas, which resulted in more than 250,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh. But soon after, although they had been expelled as illegal Bangladeshis, they were repatriated as Rohingyas.

Since then, Rohingyas have lost many basic rights. In 1982, Rohingyas became stateless within their own country after the enactment of the new citizenship law. 10 years later in 1992, the military junta imposed severe restrictions against us, forcing us to live in open-air prisons.

Do the Myanmar authorities impose such restrictions only against the Rohingyas? Why has the Myanmar government acted this way?

Myanmar authorities are targeting the Rohingya population specifically because the Rohingyas are confined within one particular area. But they are not only targeting Rohingyas, they are antagonistic against other Muslim minorities across the country as well.

However, there is a difference between the policies concerning Rohingyas and other Muslim minorities. Myanmar’s policy towards the Rohingya is to simply wipe them off Myanmar’s map through genocide. They do not want the Rohingya population in the country.

They are very well aware of Rohingyas’ lineage and history, but they still continue to propagate the claim that Rohingyas are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. With the help of this propaganda campaign, the Myanmar government has garnered the support of the Buddhist majority, which made it easier for them to kill thousands of Rohingyas and drive them out to Bangladesh since August 25, 2017.

How do you think the Rohingyas can be repatriated properly?

Firstly, the repatriation agreement should be held up, and the homeland of Rohingyas in the Northern Rakhine state must be protected. Secondly, the United Nations and the international community should oversee the safe repatriation of the Rohingyas back to Rakhine.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh will only go back if a safe repatriation process is ensured.

How can the Rohingya diaspora play a role in the repatriation process and in rooting out this racial discrimination?

Rohingya diasporas are trying to help as much as they can, but it is very important that the UN and the international community intervene in the repatriation process.

Most of the countries have agreed with it, with the exception of China and Russia. Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing need to be produced before the International Criminal Court. Only then will the genocide against Rohingyas stop.

China and Russia are obstacles in the process, but we will not give up. There must be justice for all the atrocities the Myanmar government has been committing for almost four decades.

How is the Rohingya crisis affecting the Asian countries in different arenas such as security, health, migration, and others?

The refugee camps in Bangladesh act as a black market for traffickers. I think, after the monsoon season, many traffickers will try to smuggle genocide survivors residing in Bangladesh. But if the Bangladeshi government is vigilant, this might not occur.

Do you think the Bangladeshi government is tackling the Rohingya crisis in a diplomatic manner? If not, then what do you think Bangladesh should do?

We appreciate the fact that Bangladesh is hosting more than a million Rohingya refugees. I think they are doing their best, but it is also true that we will not like all of their activities since they have to be diplomatic at the same time.

As a result, I think countries like the US, the UK, and organizations like the EU and OIC need to stand beside Bangladesh and pressurize the Myanmar government to accept the demands of the Rohingya survivors.

Bangladesh has to be firm with Myanmar about the repatriation process. It must urge the Myanmar military to stop calling Rohingyas ‘extremist Bangladeshi terrorists’ and start recognizing them as their own citizens.

As Bangladesh is a state party of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it has the capacity to refer Burmese criminals to the court.

Bangladesh has been suffering the Rohingya crisis for 40 years. The exodus continues to repeat, again and again. The time has come to take strong action against Myanmar so it stops the ongoing genocide.

How has the international community addressed the Rohingya crisis? What more do you think it should do?

The UN has termed Rohingyas as the most persecuted minority since 1992. But no solutions have been provided yet.

Many rights organizations and countries are calling the persecution against the Rohingyas ‘ethnic cleansing’. But this is not the right term. Scholars and experts have called it a genocide. I believe if the international community starts using the correct term, it will help in stopping the genocide, and actions against the Burmese criminals will be taken faster.

The Rohingyas have been displaced by their government several times already. What is the future of the Rohingyas?

In short, if the repatriation of Rohingyas is not protected, if the homeland of Rohingyas in the Northern Rakhine state is not protected, the exodus and genocide will continue. That is why we are demanding the safe return of the Rohingyas back to Myanmar.

Myanmar State Chancellor Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized for her role in the crisis. How far do you think she is responsible? What she can do, now?

As a Nobel peace laureate, she at least has a moral authority and obligation to speak out against any injustice. But unfortunately, she has put her support behind the genocidal campaign against Rohingyas. She has sided with military criminals.

As the de facto leader of Myanmar, she is fully responsible for stopping all atrocities against Rohingyas. The military has claimed that they inform the government about everything, and have to get permission before acting. Since she is not willing to do anything for the Rohingyas, except lying to the international community about the Myanmar military’s actions, she should be brought to the International Criminal Court.

Bringing criminals like her to the International Criminal Court is a huge challenge for us, but we will not stop trying. Aung San Suu Kyi needs to be punished.

Maung Zarni is a Myanmarese academic exiled in the UK who is an activist, commentator and expert on Myanmar. He is currently a scholar with the Documentation Centre of Cambodia at the Sleuk Rith Institute. In an exclusive interview with the Dhaka Tribune, he talks about the Rohingya repatriation to Myanmar which, he says, from the Myanmar army’s perspective is a tactical retreat in the face of heavy artillery of international condemnations, criticisms and reimposition of sanctions, and it might take around 10-20 years to complete

Over 688,000 Rohingya entered Bangladesh between August 25, 2017 and February 11, 2018, after Myanmar security forces launched a brutal crackdown against the mainly Muslim minority – following militant attacks on border outposts and an army base by insurgents.

As agreed between Bangladesh and Myanmar on November 23, the Rohingya repatriation process was supposed to start on January 23. However, it was delayed, and on Friday (February 16), Bangladesh handed over its first list of 1,673 Rohingya families (8,032 individuals) to Myanmar to start the first phase of repatriation to their homeland.

Do you think the Rohingya repatriation ever will take place?

Yes, the repatriation will take place because both Dhaka and Naypyidaw wants it. Dhaka wants it to take place because the pressure of 688,000 (in addition to the pre-existing Rohingya refugees from the previous waves since 1991) needs to be relieved and wants to set the new process of reducing the number of Rohingyas from its soil. Myanmar wants repatriation because it wants to show the world that its intention is not genocide or ethnic cleansing, and it has this mistaken belief that taking back the Rohingyas who survived the Myanmar troops’ mass-slaughter will make it difficult for the world to press charges of ethnic cleansing or genocide. As the former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, the veteran US envoy and diplomat, said it openly: “Repatriation is a big whitewash,” of Myanmar’s international state crimes against Rohingya. From the Myanmar military’s perspective repatriation is a tactical retreat in the face of heavy artillery of international condemnations, criticisms and reimposition of sanctions.

How long do you think it might take?

Well, there are estimated one million Rohingyas who fit the textbook example of refugees – although Dhaka chose to invent its own term “displaced people of Myanmar,” even under the most conducive circumstances it will take 10-20 years, especially at the rate Myanmar side wants to receive.

Do you think the Rohingya people’s return will be “safe, voluntary and dignified”?

Absolutely not. I actually avoid that international mantra coming from INGOs, UN agencies and governments following Kofi Annan’s phraseology. How can the return ever be “safe, voluntary and dignified” for a million people whose physical, cultural, economic, social and intellectual existence, as a minority community has been completely and intentionally destroyed from its very foundations? Myanmar military burned nearly 350 villages systematically in a region stretching 100 kilometres within several months. Myanmar’s Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing viewed – and officially told the nation of anti-Rohingya racists – that the army is engaged in completing the “unfinished business” from the WWII. I will say the “finished business” is charred villages where any physical traces of Rohingyas are being bulldozed. Those thousands of Rohingya who still remain inside Myanmar today just told the Canadian Special Envoy to Myanmar, Bob Rae, last week that they feel like they are “in a big cage” where they have absolutely no freedom of movements for accessing food, medicine, jobs, etc. I want to ask those politicians and officials who spit out this mind-numbing delusional phrase, why they are knowingly pussyfooting around Myanmar’s blatant violations of the Genocide Convention – an inter-state treaty, and focusing on sending the Rohingya survivors back to what really is a vast complex of past and future concentration camps inside Myanmar.

What role can the UNHCR play?

UNHCR is primarily mandated to protect Rohingyas. Its leadership has been doing a good job, telling the Security Council – and the world at large – the unpalatable truth being that the conditions inside Myanmar are absolutely non-conducive to any form of return of Rohingyas. It should continue to discharge its main mission of protecting and promoting the well-being of the one million Rohingyas on Bangladeshi soil. It should persuade Dhaka to accept Rohingyas as legally defined refugees and genocide survivors – not simply “forcibly displaced persons from Myanmar.”

How much power does the military still have over the state and how much power does the government have to address this crisis?

The military has all the power to end the persecution of Rohingya. But the military will not cease the genocide because it has since late 1960’s institutionalized the eradication of Rohingyas from the group’s very foundations on the false, racist and paranoid ground that they are Bangladesh’s “proxy” Muslim population inside the strategic Western region. Suu Kyi’s civilian leadership shares these paranoid and anti-Muslim racist policies as well. The difference between the Myanmar generals and Suu Kyi government, particularly Suu Kyi herself, is not in kind, but in degree. This is the racist woman who cannot bring herself to respect the right of Rohingya to self-identify as Rohingya or cannot embrace the truth that Rohingyas are a part of Myanmarese society at large, despite her Oxford education and decades of life in liberal western societies. It’s no longer about whether if Suu Kyi had more power would she have been able to end it. The fact is whatever limited power the civilian government has it uses it to deny, dismiss and cover up the military’s crimes against humanity and genocide against Rohingyas. Remember, Suu Kyi has consistently praised the ethnic cleansing and Myanmar army for “doing a good job.”

How effective do you think are the recommendations made by the Advisory Commission?

Absolutely zero effect, despite the loud chorus of support from UN and government quarters for its recommendations. To start with, the military did not welcome Kofi Annan’s involvement from day one at all. It attempted to derail, block or otherwise mitigate the commission’s influence on policy and public opinion. As a matter of fact, it was Myanmar military that was determined to kill the final report upon delivery in August 2017: Annan’s recommendations stand in the way of the military’s attempt to complete its “unfinished business.” One has to be absolutely delusional and stupid not to see how this report plays right into the hands of the Myanmar generals. The military strategists simply honey-trapped the young, primitively armed angry Rohingya militants to attack a few military and police outposts as they wanted the pretext to launch the large scale genocidal campaign of terror within a few days of Kofi Annan’s report.

My reading of the turn of events since August 26, 2017 stands in sharp contrast with the mainstreamed but patently false view that ARSA triggered these military operations by Myanmar that led to the displacement of 688,000 Rohingyas, burning of nearly 350 villages. ARSA is no Hamas in terms of its capacity or strength. Not even Israel has inflicted this level of genocidal destruction of its target. Myanmar is worse than Israel.

Lt General Kyaw Swe, the home affairs minister, who was in Dhaka on an official visit mentioned that Myanmar was keen to implement a few Annan Commission recommendations. It is a complete act of deception. When the military failed to derail Kofi Annan commission’s work, it attempted to use Annan as its outermost shield internationally. The ex-major and Myanmar spokesperson Zaw Htay said this openly.

What should be done to ensure the security and basic rights of the Rohingya people?

In the short run, the world needs to monitor the Rohingya’s plight very closely. Four types of large Rohingya populations exist today: 307,500 pre-existing Rohingya refugees and 688,000 new arrivals in Bangladesh; nearly half a million inside Myanmar among whom 120,000 are in IDP camps where they are languishing in inhuman conditions; then there are Rohingyas in vast open prisons in areas that are not yet attacked or destroyed by Myanmar military and its Rakhine local militia and vigilantes. Dhaka needs massive infusion of humanitarian assistance both in cash and in kind so that no public health epidemics break out in these large refugee areas of Cox’s Bazaar and Chittagong. 100,000 Rohingyas who are apprised as the most vulnerable as soon as the monsoon season begins, need urgent assistance with relocation, and material support.

In the long run, the only viable safeguard for Rohingyas against Myanmar’s evidently genocidal national policies is to help establish North Arakan sub-region – which has been predominantly Rohingya since Myanmar’s independence – and historically, as UN-protected self-administered Rohingya home. Of course, Myanmar will resist any attempt to help put Rohingyas back on their own ancestral soil. But no genocides ever end without the intervention of some sort from outside power. The Security Council will never authorize intervention although it is tasked with the principal duty of promoting peace and protecting world’s population. Just remember how Bangladesh was liberated from the nasty genocidal attacks by West Pakistan in 1971. Bangladesh had 12 million Bengali or East Pakistani refugees back then. Now you are a nation with a vibrant economy.

Rohingya people deserve and need a piece of earth they can call home, where they can be Rohingya, where they go to school, access medical services, have proper villages, tend to their farms and look after their families – without having to fear being locked in this cycle of large scale terror and violence, forced repatriation, living in “big cages” inside Myanmar – until the next waves of killing and destruction comes.