By Dr. Maung Zarni | Published by Anadolu Agency on June 16, 2018

Myanmar’s leader is doing her best to cover up her country’s international crimes against Rohingya people

Cambridge, THE UK -- In the first meeting on June 13 between Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and Christine Schraner Burgener, the Burmese urged the freshly-minted Special Envoy on Myanmar for the UN Secretary General to understand “the real situation” about the Rakhine State, from which 700,000 Rohingyas fled, in what the Secretary General himself characterized as “ethnic cleansing”.

The phrase “the real situation” rings alarm bells in my head. It was all déjà vu.

For 13 years ago, ‘the real situation’ (of Myanmar) were the very words Lt. Gen. Myint Swe, the then Chief of Myanmar’s military intelligence services, used when he urged me to convey their approach to the world -- in my writings, media appearances, and meetings with politicians and diplomats.

The chief spook and I were meeting one-on-one for the first time at the Dagon Hall of the old War Office in Yangon, with only his deputy, Col. Mya Tun Oo -- now the Joint Chief of the Armed Forces -- present in the meeting, as the notetaker.

Then, I had just returned to my country of birth after nearly 17 years of active U.S.-based opposition to the Burmese military rule. I rationalized my return -- and support -- for the generals as a citizen’s effort to help the embattled military leadership under Western sanctions so that our country could be re-integrated into the wider world community, particularly from the West, which had attempted to isolate the post-Cold War Burma on the grounds of the Burmese military’s egregious violations of human rights. The general was my official host who arranged my safe and voluntary return and resumption of Myanmar citizenship.

In due course, I came to realize what the spy chief meant by “the real situation”. He simply wanted me to be the mouthpiece for the military and help amplify the military’s version of Burmese affairs and events; for, in his own words, “the world doesn’t believe us”, having implied that I, as a western educated Burmese, would be more credible.

Whether the military’s “real situation” corresponded to the lived experiences of the people or not was of no concern to the spy chief (and the entire military leadership).

I have since ended my support for the “reformist” military leadership, whom I had initially given the benefit of the doubt.

The reality is, the same military leaders went on to slaughter Buddhist monks in the non-violent “Saffron Revolt” of 2007, calling for more compassionate policies to address the country’s economic woes and blocked emergency aid to several million Cyclone Nargis victims in 2008. My host general was centrally involved in these sordid turn of events that were marked by the military-government’s brutality and inhumanity.

Ex-Lt.Gen. Myint Swe is still around and is now the powerful military-backed Vice-President in the military-NLD partnership that jointly runs the country today.

A year ago, after the first wave of “security clearance” operations against the newly emerging “Muslim insurgents” led to the less-reported exodus of nearly 100,000 Rohingyas in 2016, Vice President Myint Swe chaired the national Inquiry Commission on the violence in the Maung Daw Township, Rakhine, for Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD government, and proceeded to unequivocally exonerate Myanmar’s security forces whose brutalities were well-documented. The Myanmar troops, the National Commission concluded, acted in accordance with the rules of engagement and the law of the land.

It is in fact painful to watch national leaders, politicians and generals (and ex-generals) treat facts and truths as if they were a rubber band that can be manipulated into any elastic shape or length.

Because of her active dismissal and denial of the ugly truths about the military, which her father had founded three years prior to her birth, Suu Kyi has been denounced worldwide, from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to S. Africa’s retired Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu and fellow women Nobel laureates to editorial boards of the world’s leading newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Times, the Guardian and the New York Times. Worse still, leading lights of international law and human rights including Milosevic’s prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice of Britain and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Professor Yanghee Lee have raised the very real possibility that the former icon of nonviolence may find herself in the dock together with the senior military leaders, her partners in power.

In the last six years, that is, since the two bouts of large-scale violence against Rohingyas -- in June and October of 2012 -- during which Myanmar’s decades-old systematic state persecution of this Muslim minority community came to the world’s attention, Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership performance has gone from bad to worse, from studied silence to willful ignorance to proactive denial and dismissal of

well-documented international crimes, which seniormost UN human rights officials and envoys view as having ‘hallmarks of a genocide’ or ‘strongly suspected’ as ‘acts of genocide’.

On her 67th birthday -- 18 June 2012 -- I had the great pleasure of sharing a televised Rule of Law Roundtable with the iconic Burmese leader whom the Burmese public revere and address as “Mother” (of the People). (Other panelists included Sir Geoffrey Nice, Oxford University Law Professor Nicola Lacey and LSE Professors Mary Kaldor and Christine Chinkin.) Because just a few days prior to the LSE roundtable, Suu Kyi flunked the media test about her knowledge of the emerging crisis in Western Myanmar -- she could not answer a basic question by a U.S. National Public Radio journalist Anthony Kuhn: “Do you know if Rohingyas are your people, Myanmar people?” -- she sent instructions via the British Foreign Office to the LSE organizers that she was in effect unprepared to address Rohingya questions. I was pre-assigned to respond to any Rohingya question, which has since come to define the country.

From adopting the strategy of studied silence six years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi now engages in varying acts of adamant denial, outright dismissal, intentional distortions, and disingenuous obfuscation about the Rohingya, all with the express intention of telling the world “the real situation” on the ground.

Her recent exclusive interview with NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster as well as a Myanmar-friendly TV station, for the first time in five years is a case in point. She falsely frames what Professor Amartya Sen -- Suu Kyi’s old teacher at Delhi University and a close friend of her late husband Michael Aris -- called “the slow genocide”, which began several decades ago. Disingenuously, Suu Kyi mischaracterizes Myanmar military’s institutionalized persecution of Rohingyas, a well-documented fact since the late 1970’s, as “a communal conflict” dating back “several centuries” while saying “very few people in the world know the (intricate) historical issues”.

Studies after studies of past genocides have established the fact that genocides, from the Holocaust to Rwanda and Bosnia, are not military or violent conflicts of communities that could be placed on a moral parity: they are, with no exceptions, state-directed large-scale crimes -- now illegalized by the 1948 Genocide Convention -- targeted to erase the presence of ethnic, religious, racial or national minorities, which are typically misframed by the perpetrating groups, both state and societies, as “a threat to nationhood or national security”.

She is now in the process of forming yet another inquiry commission in order to establish facts about the “real situation” in Rakhine, which the ICC Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague is convinced is one involving crimes against humanity targeting the Rohingya ethnic minority.

While the rest of the world see Myanmar as systematically committing egregious international crimes -- whatever their legal names -- and the UN attempts to seek access to the crime sites, her NLD government has openly defied the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to send the International Fact Finding Mission since its establishment in 2016. Instead, Suu Kyi established the Rakhine Commission with Kofi Annan as its chair and proceeded to use it as a public relations shield against strident global criticisms rightly directed at both her leadership and the country.

Furthermore, the former human rights icon did not shy away from resorting to acts of bullying and threats against anyone who dares raise the issue of Myanmar’s crimes against Rohingyas.

According to UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, Aung San Suu Kyi personally threatened that “you know, if you continue with the UN’s (pre-human rights) line you won’t be able to come back here (Myanmar)” -- a threat she followed through: Professor Lee has been barred from entering the country for the rest of her tenure. Aung San Suu Kyi is also the Foreign Minister who ultimately decides who is to be issued visas and who is to be denied them.

Suu Kyi now argues that her government has carried out constructive activities to move the Rakhine situation forward in accord with the Kofi Annan-led Rakhine Commission’s recommendations. But from its inception, the Annan commission was, by its own official admission, mandated not to examine any allegations of human rights abuses in the Rakhine state, or alleged violations of international treaties and bodies of law by Myanmar such as the Genocide Convention, which Myanmar ratified in 1956, or the Child Rights Convention. She officially barred the Annan Commission from calling Rohingyas by their group name.

Despite the easily accessible official documentations that offer irrefutable evidence in support of Rohingyas’ claim that they belong in Myanmar as an integral ethnic minority who enjoyed full and equal citizenship even in the early years of the military rule in the 1960’s and the early 1970’s, the Ministry of Information under Suu Kyi’s control just banned the Washington-based U.S. Government’s Radio Free Asia TV from broadcasting on Myanmar channels for the latter’s continued use of the word Rohingya. The RFA board of directors issued an official statement describing her government as “Orwellian,” and highlighted the fact that the Myanmar government is trying to “deny the existence of a people” starting with the attempts to “erase its group identity”.

In the aforementioned NHK interview, Suu Kyi, a former prisoner of conscience and victim of state persecution for 15 years, also defended the state’s detention of two local Buddhist journalists on the grounds that they are violators of “state official secrets” just because they uncovered the first mass grave of Rohingyas with photographic evidence and eyewitness stories.

For 15 years as a Burmese activist foot soldier, I held her in highest esteem, and followed her policies of isolating and sanctioning our country to the letter. None of Suu Kyi’s acts of deception, distortions and denial of facts on the ground surprises me. It was these negative qualities of Suu Kyi which I discerned as early as 2004 which compelled me to break ranks with her NLD party, turn my back on her as the opposition leader and seek alternative paths to pushing for political liberalization in my country of birth -- specifically working with the generals considered “potential reformers”.

While the tragic turn of events has vindicated my withdrawal of support for and cooperation with both the generals and NLD leadership, it is excruciating to watch the two bitter enemies now colluding, not on the path towards democratization or a peaceful end to the world’s longest civil war (between Myanmar armed forces and non-Rohingya ethnic resistance groups such as Kachin, Karen, etc.) but in covering up our country’s crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya Muslims.

It is not difficult to discern Suu Kyi’s underlying utilitarian logic which runs something like “we have the whole country’s future to be concerned about, not just a small population of Muslims in one region”. The former icon of human rights now holds, in unconcealed contempt, the world that previously rallied for her human rights and is now standing up for Rohingyas’ right to life and belonging, and for that matter, human rights for all Myanmar people including journalists.

For the record, my own public opposition 30 years ago to the military rule and its hallmark rights abuses was inspired by her heroic example of privileging principles of truth and liberalism.

Today, I want Aung San Suu Kyi to be held accountable for her willful collusion with Myanmar military leaders in the latter’s crimes against an entire ethnic community. Suu Kyi’s crimes are no longer her studied silence or failure to extend her government’s primary responsibility to extend the benefit of “peace and security” to the Rohingya people.

The last thing the UN officials and envoys on Myanmar should do is to allow themselves to be used as “conveyers” of Suu Kyi’s version of “the real situation”. As infectious as it is, the international actors are best advised to not embrace Suu Kyi’s utilitarian discourse of economic development, poverty alleviation, centuries-old civilizational conflicts, and incremental approach to addressing the crisis in Rakhine.

In the face of Myanmar’s ongoing international crimes against Rohingyas as a people, inside Myanmar and in the refugee camps in Bangladesh -- all under Suu Kyi’s watch, and with her complicity -- the UN needs to stop promoting Myanmar’s lies -- such as bypassing the calls for ICC-led accountability in order to support its “fragile democratic transition”.

The UN must not allow Suu Kyi to form yet another whitewash “inquiry commission” within Myanmar’s fundamentally dysfunctional criminal justice system equipped with neither conceptual tools for atrocity crimes nor judicial independence.

No political regime, civilian or military, that commissions international crimes against its own national minorities should be given the benefit of the doubt when its smooth-talking Oxford-educated politician says it is on the path towards incremental liberalization and constructive resolution of the crisis confronting a people whose existence she herself denies.

[The writer is an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism in Cambridge, UK and a coordinator for the Free Rohingya Coalition]

Published by Anadolu Agency on June 16, 2018

Maung Zarni says 'UN needs to stop promoting Myanmar’s lies – such as bypassing the calls for ICC-led accountability'

ANKARA -- The United Nations should “stop promoting Myanmar lies,” an international expert wrote in an analytical piece for Anadolu Agency. 

Maung Zarni, coordinator for strategic affairs at the Free Rohingya Coalition, wrote: “In the face of Myanmar’s ongoing international crimes against Rohingyas as a people, inside Myanmar and in the refugee camps in Bangladesh -- all under Suu Kyi’s watch, and with her complicity -- UN needs to stop promoting Myanmar’s lies -- such as bypassing the calls for ICC-led accountability in order to support its ‘fragile democratic transition’.” 

"The UN must not allow Suu Kyi to form yet another whitewash ‘inquiry commission’ within Myanmar’s fundamentally dysfunctional criminal justice system equipped with neither conceptual tools for atrocity crimes nor judicial independence. 

“No political regime, civilian or military, that commissions international crimes against its own national minorities should be given the benefit of the doubt when its smooth-talking Oxford-educated politician says it is on the path towards incremental liberalization and constructive resolution of the crisis confronting a people whose existence she herself denies,” he added. 

‘Aung San Suu Kyi held accountable’

“Today, I want Aung San Suu Kyi held accountable for her wilful collusion with Myanmar military leaders in the latter’s crimes against the entire ethnic community,” Zarni added. 

“Suu Kyi’s crimes are no longer her studied silence or failure to extend her government’s primary responsibility to extend the benefit of ‘peace and security’ to the Rohingya people,” he wrote. 

Earlier this month, Zarni wrote in another analytical piece that Rohingya survivors of the Myanmar genocide are demanding a UN security force to guarantee their safe return to their homelands, terming the new agreement signed between Myanmar and the UN as inadequate. 

On June 6, the Myanmar government signed an agreement with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), allowing them to get involved in the much-delayed repatriation process.

Since Aug. 25, 2017, more than 750,000 refugees, mostly children, and women, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community, according to Amnesty International.

At least 9,400 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine from Aug. 25 to Sept. 24 last year, according to Doctors Without Borders.

In a report published recently, the humanitarian group said the deaths of 71.7 percent or 6,700 Rohingya were caused by violence. They include 730 children below the age of 5.

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.

By Tun Khin | Published by The Diplomat on June 15, 2018

Conditions are nowhere near ready for Rohingya to return in safety and dignity.

Last week, the United Nations and the Myanmar government inked a deal that will supposedly begin the long process of repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees back to their homes. The UN hailed it as “the first step to address the root causes of the conflict in Rakhine.” Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s state counselor and de facto political leader, said it will “hasten” refugee returns.

The rest of the world, however, was kept guessing. The full text of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) — signed between the Myanmar government, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN Development Program (UNDP) — has not been released to the public. Media outlets, NGOs, donor governments, and even other UN agencies have all been kept in the dark.

This lack of transparency is far from the only red flag raised by the deal.

Admittedly, from official UN statements, it is possible to glean some positive aspects, mainly around increased access for UN agencies across Rakhine state. These are areas that have been largely sealed off to the outside world since August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched its murderous “clearance operation,” killing thousands of Rohingya and forcing hundreds of thousands more to flee across the border into Bangladesh. Aid and reconstruction are badly needed for those who remain, something an increased UN presence would benefit.

But the deal raises far more questions than answers. For one, it was negotiated behind closed doors entirely without involving Rohingya representatives. How can it possibly ensure a safe and dignified repatriation process without involving the very community it concerns? By excluding us Rohingya and dealing only with Naypyidaw, the international community is again sending the message that we are not worthy to be masters of our own destiny.

The timing of the deal also makes it difficult not to suspect Myanmar’s motives. The MOU was announced on the same day as Myanmar said it will establish a new commission to “investigate the violation of human rights and related issues” in Rakhine state since 2017. The fact that Myanmar did not even mention its own military’s abuses speaks volumes of how credible this investigation will be. Myanmar has a track record of establishing similar commissions at politically opportune times, which have never led to any genuine accountability. The MOU and the commission are likely both attempts to buy some time and goodwill from the international community.

The bigger picture, of course, is that conditions are nowhere near ready for Rohingya to return in safety and dignity as long as the root causes of the crisis remain in place. The risk of violence against Rohingya remains a constant threat, particularly as no one has been held to account for the well-documented atrocities carried out by the security forces and their proxies. Not only have Myanmar’s leaders refused to genuinely investigate these human rights violations, but they have even flat-out denied that they have taken place.

At the same time, the Myanmar authorities are keeping in place a dehumanizing system of repression and segregation against Rohingya across large parts of Rakhine State. Not only are Rohingya essentially denied citizenship under Burmese law, we are also kept separate from other communities. We need special permission to travel, to attend hospitals, and to gain an education – if we are even allowed into schools in the first place.

In Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, much of what remains of the Rohingya community is kept in ghetto-like neighborhoods, sealed off from the rest of the town with barbed wire. This discrimination was what drove me to flee Rakhine State in the early 1990s to gain an education, since the authorities would not allow me to attend university simply because I was Rohingya. It has only gotten worse since.

It is also important to remember that the latest crisis is just the latest chapter in a long cycle of abuse. In the late 1970s, my parents were forced to flee into Bangladesh along with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya after the Myanmar army launched the brutal “Operation Dragon King,” ostensibly to root out “illegal immigrants.” In the early 1990s, I witnessed similar abuses myself in Rakhine state when yet another military campaign forced another exodus of refugees.

Myanmar has clung to the same genocidal policies for decades. The only thing that has changed in recent years is that the efforts to eradicate us Rohingya as a people have become more intense than ever before.

Unless the Myanmar authorities are pressured into a fundamental policy shift, any MOUs – no matter how well-intended by the international community – will accomplish nothing in the long run. If the repatriation process starts without addressing the fundamental issues plaguing the Rohingya community, the only winner will be the Myanmar authorities who, once again, will have gotten away with their genocidal policies.

The international community should insist that Myanmar ends all forms of discrimination against the Rohingya. Those responsible for human rights violations must be held to account as a first step to ensure that there is no return to violence. Finally, Rohingya in Rakhine State – both those living there now and future returnees – need a protection guarantee from the international community so that they are not left at the mercy of the Myanmar security forces. What form this take will need to be negotiated with Rohingya representatives present at the table.

These demands are non-negotiable – the very future of the Rohingya as a people is at stake.

Tun Khin is President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK and a member of the Free Rohingya Coalition.

People of Bengal for Rohingya

Ro Mayyu Ali

RB Poem

June 16, 2018

What a humanity!

What the warm hands you people provide 

For those who escaped for lives 

Crossing the Naf in haste 

With the pierced-bullet in little bodies 

You people receive and link us accessing 

Through the gate of your hearts

Ah! What a thrill!

What a tenderness!

What the sweet smiles you bloom 

For those who're panic and traumatised

Behind the scenario of mass killing and gang rape 

You embrace us with required necessities 

Waiting nearby border in broad daylight 

Ah! What a compassion! 

What a morality! 

How generous you are! 

For those whose homes were burnt to ash 

And escaping the death 

You welcome us 

In your open arms and hearts 

And give refuge for a million

Ah! What a kindness! 

Your Bengal is its own needs 

But your hearts are enough huge 

Your nation is not enough rich 

But your contribution to humanity is unique

Though you people look different

In tongues and culture 

You make us feel comfortable. 

You make us feel physical safety. 

You're the example of humanity. 

In sense of everlasting resolution 

Your comrade and respect are 

To be the key solving this humanitarian crisis 

Your sincere integration is

To be the knot of our safe and dignified return 

We've been fled and back many times 

This time should be the last ever 

That's what we mean 

Coming into your kind bosoms 

In great humane neighbourly tie of 

Rohingya and people of Bengal

* On behalf of Rohingya community, a heartfelt thank from the poet, himself a Rohingya refugee to the people and government of Bangladesh who has been providing the refuge for a million of Rohingya refugees in their land.*

By Aakar Patel | Published by The Hindu on June 14, 2018

The profound lack of support for Rohingya refugees in India is shameful

On May 22, Amnesty International (AI) released a briefing that revealed that a Rohingya armed group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), had committed serious human rights abuses against Hindus in northern Rakhine State in Myanmar. As a movement that campaigns to end human rights abuses against all people, AI aims to uncover all cases of human rights violations without bias, regardless of who the perpetrators are and where the violations are committed.

The May 22 briefing follows AI’s earlier reports documenting military attacks on the Rohingya that led to more than 693,000 people fleeing from their homes to other countries. This briefing and other AI reports on the situation in Myanmar point to the overwhelming evidence that the Myanmar authorities have been unable, or dare I say, unwilling to protect its civilians.

It’s about people

The issue here is not about which “side” committed more atrocities. The issue is about people. About civilians. About mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, who have been killed, maimed and brutalised. It is about their rights as human beings.

We should be calling for better protection for survivors fleeing persecution in accordance with international human rights law. We should be calling for justice, truth and reparation for victims and their families. We should be calling for unfettered access to the northern Rakhine State for independent investigators. However, the reaction to the briefing report has been deeply disturbing.

Some politicians and media outlets are using AI’s briefing to advocate the mass expulsion of the Rohingya. The debate has further deteriorated to unfairly and unreasonably attributing the condemnable actions of the armed ARSA to all Rohingya people. What this means is that we are willing to demonise and malign an entire community for abuses they may not have committed.

Despite irrefutable evidence that Rohingya people fleeing to India are at serious risk of human rights violations in Myanmar, the Indian government has refused to recognise them as asylum seekers and refugees. Instead the Rohingya have been labelled as “illegal immigrants” — even those recognised as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India. In fact, in August last year, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs proposed to forcibly return to Myanmar all the 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India. The Ministry claimed that the Rohingya are a threat to national security.

Why is it that the only solution envisioned by Indian authorities to address security concerns, in this case, is to forcibly return people to the real risk of apartheid and death?

There have been no attempts to consider alternative measures to distinguish people who actually pose a threat from people in dire need of protection. The mass expulsion of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar would be an abject dereliction of India’s obligations under international law. In the past, AI India has advocated that the most effective way for the Indian government to address security concerns is to conduct “fair and efficient refugee determination proceedings”.

A straightforward solution

The UN Refugee Convention provides a straightforward solution to deal with the potential security concerns involving asylum seekers. Article 1F of the Convention excludes protection for those involved in serious crimes. Therefore, if India acceded to the Refugee Convention, it would be able to effectively assess Rohingya asylum applications and deny protection to those who might fall under Article 1F exceptions, such as members of ARSA who participated in the August 2017 violence.

Indian authorities have outsourced refugee status determination to the UNHCR, which follows a rigorous process. However, this is largely meaningless as India refuses to officially recognise Rohingya people identified as refugees by the UNHCR. These people are left in a state of limbo with neither the UNHCR nor the Indian government providing them effective protection.

The profound lack of support for Rohingya refugees in India is shameful. Even though India is not a party to the Refugee Convention, it has always had a longstanding tradition of providing shelter to those seeking protection. However, in this instance, it seems to be faltering, and it is time we question why.

Aakar Patel is the Executive Director, Amnesty International India

Published by The Global New Light of Myanmar on June 10, 2018

Myanmar’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi sat down for her first one-on-one interview with NHK in 5 years. In the interview, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told NHK World correspondent Orie Sugimoto that deep-rooted communal sentiment in Rakhine State cannot be resolved overnight.

Q: The Myanmar government has agreed to have UN Agencies assist with the repatriation process of the so-called Rohingya people in Rakhine State, and to set up an independent committee to investigate human rights violations. These actions have been long required by the refugees themselves and international communities as well. Why did Myanmar take these actions at this time at this point?

A: I don’t think it’s quite this time at this point. It’s a process. Perhaps, people are unaware of the fact that we have been negotiating with UN Agencies, as sure kind of MoU we can agree to and this goes back to quite some time ago to the recommendations of Dr. Kofi Annan’s commission. And, of course, with the regard to the national latest investigation team, this is something that was advised by our advisory board. And we take very seriously that advice because after all, we appointed them because we believe they will be able to give us a valuable perception of the situation.

Q: As we cannot see that, may I ask you why it took such a long time for Myanmar to come out with these actions? What’s the difficulty in taking these actions?

A: Well, I don’t think you can say that it took us a long time because if you remember the advisory board made their recommendations just a few months back. So, I don’t think you can say we have taken a long time over the national investigation team. With regard to the UNDP and the UNHCR MoU, we’ve been negotiating and to negotiate and come to an agreement on MoU, we need to look into all the implications, both sides. There are some things that we agreed to immediately and there are some things over which we had to trash out a few obstacles. So, if we want to have a MoU that is meaningful and also at the same time, truly implementable, I think it’s worthwhile to take a bit of time.

Q: What was the difficult point for Myanmar to comply with?

A: I don’t think there was one difficult point as such either for us or UN Agencies. I think it was a question of many points. But none of them really is inseparable, which is why we’ve come to an agreement now.

Q: Myanmar has been criticized for alleged violence against so-called Rohingya Muslims. I also heard the Myanmar government saying that this issue is very complicated, complex, sometimes it’s not right for the international community to intervene in this issue. Could you explain why this issue is so complicated and difficult for Myanmar, and why sometimes it’s not right for the international community to intervene in this issue?

A: First of all, of course, it’s a long standing issue. People forget that it goes back a couple of centuries. It’s not something that happened yesterday. You cannot resolve a problem that has been existing for such a long time in a few months. And our government took over the responsibility of that administration just 2 years ago. And you cannot resolve a problem like that overnight. And very few people outside of Myanmar and even very few people in Myanmar are aware of all the historical issues that are involved. So, it’s not just for the world outside. It’s also for our people inside the country to understand what’s going on and why we take the steps that we take. It’s most important that our people should understand. Because we are the one who must in the long run preserve the stability and security of our country.

Q: Is it too risky for Myanmar not to wait for or not to take enough time to explain to the people of Myanmar and to explain the international community how complex this issue is?

A: I think it’s risky for anybody to go head long into a problem without considering all the various aspects involved.

Q: Can you please explain what the risk for Myanmar is in doing things more quickly?

A: You cannot hurry over everything. The things that require time have to be given time. You cannot force issues. You cannot say to people, for example, “Now forget about the problem and start a new page.” You can’t just order them. You have to create a situation which will enable them to understand why they have to find different ways of resolving all the problems.

Q: Can you talk more about the independent committee to investigate the human rights violation in Rakhine State such as the members of the committee? Are you sure that it will be reliable and independent and will explain to the international community that the Myanmar government is trying to follow the rule of law?

A: We cannot at the moment tell you exactly who is going to be in the commission. But we will only appoint people in whose integrity and whose ability we have full confidence.

Q: Do you believe that having an investigation committee which is independent will improve the situation and gain the understanding of the international community as well?

A: The advisory board believes that this is something that should be done. And as for the full confidence, and in the goodwill as well as the wisdom of the advisory board, we think that this will be a positive move that will help the situation.

Q: Why did you choose this national initiative, rather than an international initiative such as the UN fact-finding mission?

A: We’ve explained repeatedly why we cannot accept the UN fact-finding mission with regard to this initiative as I’ve been explaining earlier. This is something that is recommended by the advisory board and they have been in the situation to study what’s happening in Rakhine. And since they recommended it very seriously, we take it very seriously as well.

Q: In Cox Bazaar, many refugees are hesitating to return to Myanmar because they are afraid of facing violence if they come back to Myanmar. This fact is making it even more difficult to start voluntary repatriation. So, how will Myanmar restore trust with the refugees and also with the international community?

A: Trust is a 2-way business. I don’t think it’s just up to just Myanmar to establish trust. I think the other side also has to take necessary steps in order to establish trust.

For example, we understand that the forms that are required to fill in in accordance with the MoU agreed between Myanmar and Bangladesh have not been distributed widely to the refugees.

Unless these forms been distributed and unless the refugees know that there’s a legal and safe way for them to return to Rakhine. Then we will not be able to make quick progress. So I think, it’s a 2-way process. MoU is agreed to by 2 or more parties, and it’s competent on all parties involved to implement their responsibilities.

Q: I understand that all parties have a lot of work to do to restore and establish mutual trust. For the Myanmar side, what can you do?

A: We have carried out all our responsibilities in line with the MoU. If you study the MoU, if you look at what we’ve been doing, I think you’ll find that we have carried out all our responsibilities. But trust is not something that you can create just by signing a piece of paper and it’s the people who have to take a risk on whether or not the situation is trustworthy. If you’re not prepared to try out a situation, you can never tell for sure whether it’s acceptable or not.

Q: I understand that Myanmar has taken all possible actions to restore the trust. But from now on, what kind of actions do you plan to take?

A: Trust is not something that you establish within a limited amount of time. You cannot say, well, trust has been established to Degree A, and now. And the next 4 months we go to Degree B. It doesn’t work like that. It’s an ongoing process. And as I said, everybody concerned must be positive and committed to the process of reestablishing trust.

Q: Recent actions by the Myanmar government like the agreement with the UN, establishment of the independent committee to restore mutual trust and with other parties… can we understand it in that way?

A: Are you saying that did we undertake to sign the MoU with the UNDP and UNHCR and to form the investigation team in order to create trust?

Q: I don’t mean to say it’s the only purpose. But is it in line with Myanmar…?

A: I think I’ve explained several times now that it’s in line with the recommendations that were made by Dr. Kofi Annan’s commission and by our advisory board. The commission and the board both were formed at our initiative and obviously, we put people whose wisdom and goodwill we believe, so their recommendations have to be taken very seriously indeed.

Q: I know it’s very difficult for you to clarify but can I ask when do you expect the actual return of the refugees will start?

A: That depends much on us as but also on Bangladesh. It’s a 2-way business. Until the refugees have been given the forms, until they’ve been informed fully of all the steps they need to take to come back to Rakhine, we will not be able to carry forward the process very quickly. As you know, some have come back but not through the official channels. And the ones who came back, said that they were not aware of the need to fill in forms and to follow a certain procedure.

Q: Inside Myanmar, among many Myanmar citizens, there is deep rooted discrimination or hatred against so-called Rohingya people or Rohingya Muslims or sometimes Bengali. As a leader of this country, and as a leader of democracy do you have messages for those people of this country?

A: We have been working on it ever since our government took over the administration. One of the first things we did after we came into the administration on the 1st of April was to form a committee for the rule of law and development in Rakhine. Because we realized that the animosity, the distrust and if you like, the fear and hate in Rakhine were rooted in the fact that it’s a region where there’s very little prosperity and very little security. Which is why we formed the committee for the rule of law and development. Since then, we were looking to the long term solution of the Rakhine problem, if you like. We’d like to see it as a challenge, rather than a problem. So as I said, it’s ongoing. You cannot wipe out what has happened in history for more than a century within a few months, not even within a few years. It is something that you have to work on consistently. If you look at other countries, you’ll find that, often, even long standing democracies have problems. Making sure that all the different communities are at peace, and I have learned to trust and like each other.

Q: Just recently, Japan Ambassador Mr. Maruyama was invited to Maungdaw and Sittwe to observe the situation. How do you evaluate the role of Japan in this issue?

A: Japan has been very positive and practical in its contribution of aid and assistance to the resolution of the situation in Rakhine. We appreciate it very much. It’s also our policy to make sure that those countries that are providing aid and assistance in that part of our country can go there frequently to see how we are carrying out the projects of which we agreed.

Q: Do you feel that the Japanese stance is a bit different from other countries?

A: Each country’s stance is different. Of course, some countries tend to stick together and some countries act individually. But I think, basically, there are no 2 countries which have taken exactly the same stand. There are always nuances.

Q: What do you believe is the specialty of the Myanmar-Japan relationship?

A: I would not like to put it as a specialty on Japan-Myanmar relations. Because then, it will imply that we don’t have good relations with other countries. But, I think we can say that we have always valued the deep friendship between Japan and Myanmar, which is based on the friendship and understanding between our peoples. I always say that it all comes down to that. There’s nothing that can replace friendship and understanding between people. Government comes and government goes. People go on forever. I think part of our special relationship as you call it with Japan is very much rooted in the fact that there’s a deep friendship between our people.

Q: Moving on to the democracy and development of Myanmar. Two years after the establishment of the new government, can you please describe achievements in percentages and numbers?

A: Absolutely impossible to explain in percentage and number. Actually, I’ve never thought of it that way. I have to go back to the work “process.” The development of a country is a process. It never comes to an end. And even the very-well developed democracies have challenges that they have to overcome time and again. And new challenges arrive as the world changes. So, we cannot fix the kind of ideal, you said, for democracy. It has to change all the time. But, basically for us, we think that the most important thing is for our people to be aware of their part of the responsibility for establishing democracy in the country. It’s not just the responsibility of the government. I think in fact, that’s the contradiction. If you want democracy, to say that the success of democracy is totally in the hands of government is totally oxymoronic because democracy is people-based. People have to be very much part of the process. And I can hardly calculate how many of the people considered themselves as part of the process and to what extent. But if we go back to the election of 2015, you will remember that a good proportion of our electorates went to the poll. Myanmar, as a country, has suffered from poor education and still suffers from poor education and poor communication including just ordinary roads. I think it’s a great achievement that a high percentage went to the poll to carry out their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic society. We are certainly not a wholly democratic country. If we look at the legislature you can see very clearly that we are only 75% democratic. Because only 75% of our representatives are elected by the people. But I don’t think that’s the percentage by which we can judge the degree to which we have democracy. I think our people are a lot less frightened than they used to be before the election. I think you’ll notice that there is much more open criticisms of their government and those connected to the government than they ever used to be in the past. That’s an indication of the fact that democratic freedom has progressed. But we all have to be aware of the fact that the freedom brings with it the responsibility. And we have yet to know for sure how much the responsible part of this process has increased.

Q: As you mentioned, democracy is people-based. Do you feel the mindset of the people has changed compared to 2 years ago?

A: I said earlier that they are less frightened. That means their mindset is changing and we make it a point of repeating again and again, reiterating the fact that they have responsibility as well. Our government uses the word “responsibility” a lot. And I think it’s important.

Q: As you mentioned, Myanmar is not fully democratic because you still have that influence of the military in politics as well. Is this fact making it more difficult to combat the challenging issues such as the Rakhine issue or reconciliation of ethnic minorities?

A: Let’s say that it is an added dimension to the challenges that we have to face. And that’s quite normal. Because as you said, and as I have explained, we are not a wholly democratic society yet because our constitution is not wholly democratic.

Q: We haven’t seen physical progress in the amendment of the constitution. Do you have any roadmap to achieve that goal of amendment of the constitution?

A: We do have a roadmap, which is not going to be made public. But, at the same time, I think you will understand that in 2014, when we had a debate in the legislature with regard to the amendment of the constitution, we made it quite clear we want to bring about the amendment through peaceful negotiation and within the framework of the law, because we want to establish sound and healthy principles for the democratic machinery in our country.

Q: Do you sometimes find difficulty in balancing the actual situation of Rakhine State or regarding national reconciliation and the power of the military? Are you finding such a dilemma?

A: I don’t quite know what you mean. Because I don’t think that is the strength of the military that has any direct effect on what’s happening in Rakhine. I know that, and I’m sure you know that according to the constitution, elected government cannot direct military operations. So of course, we do not have the kind of overall control that will be exercised by a wholly democratic government.

Q: Recently, 2 Reuters journalists were arrested when covering the Rakhine issue. Myanmar is criticized for limiting the freedom of speech and being undemocratic. The journalists were arrested when they are covering human rights issue in Rakhine state. How do you respond to these criticisms? Is democracy in Myanmar different from that in which the international community believes?

A: They weren’t arrested for covering the Rakhine issue. They were arrested because they broke the Official Secret Act. And I think you are aware of the fact that everybody has free access to the court proceedings. Now, all of this is in accordance with due process. I’m sure the NHK correspondent attends the court proceedings regularly. What is important is that we should be working in accordance with due process and rule of law. They were arrested because they broke the Official Secret Act. We cannot say now whether they were guilty or not. That will be up to judiciary. It is for the judiciary to decide. They were not arrested for covering the Rakhine issue.

Q: They were not arrested for covering the issue. But, while they were covering the issue…

A: And other issues. I think if you’ve been following the court proceedings, you will understand that there were other issues involved in breaking of the Official Secret Act.

Q: Many parties from the international community are demanding that Myanmar free those 2 journalists immediately. How do you see those voices from international community?

A: As I said, we follow the due process and everybody is free to follow the court proceedings to find out whether or not they are fair, whether or not they are in accordance with the rule of law.

Q: Regarding Myanmar-Japan relations, what kind of role do you expect Japan to play for democratization and the development of Myanmar as a whole, and for economic relations?

A: We expect Japan to play the role of understanding and a longstanding friend.

Q: Many Japanese companies are really willing to come to Myanmar, and to join the Myanmar economy. But they are concerned about the infrastructure, especially the electricity. Can we expect a better environment for those companies?

A: They should study what we have done in the way of infrastructure over the last couple of years. I think they will see that we’ve made considerable progress. Mind you, over the last 2 years, we have concentrated more on political needs than our economic needs. Meaning to say, that we have given priority to the construction of roads and provision of electricity for regions for politically necessity rather than for reasons where it is economically profitable. But, we can now concentrate more on economically profitable areas because we can handle the first priority quite adequately so far.

Q: Do you believe the economic relations of Myanmar and Japan will contribute to the future of Myanmar?

A: I hope it will contribute to the future of Japan as well.

Q: But what about Myanmar?

A: Of course, it will contribute to the future of both countries, if it’s carried out in the right way. As I said, we should be fair. We have to look to each other’s needs and each other’s benefits. Not just our side.

Rohingya refugees fleeing into Bangladesh in the middle of night. Photo: Kevin Frayer, Getty Images

By Haikal Mansor
June 13, 2018

They had a world where they woke up in the sunshine.

They had a path on which they walked with pride and freedom in combine.

They had a family that loved, laughed and played together.

They had a home where they slept in peace and all-loving-weather.

They had a future which laid their children’s foundation like a hope-breather.

The presence of Rohingya is blighted by a deep, dark world,

one where the sun never shines;

the path paved with thorns and bones;

the family torn apart, few left in one;

the home with no peace;

the future found nowhere in piece.

Within the wall of darkness holds

the open Apartheid State controlled

by the men in uniforms uncontrolled,

the concentration camps in wield,

the mass killing fields,

the burned houses,

the bulldozed villages and mosques,

the charred babies,

the raped, burned women’s bodies,

the mutilated men’s bodies.

On the other side of the wall of darkness rests

the largest refugee camp where

a million Rohingya trapped in the horror,

haunted by the terror,

in the darkest world of error,

chased by disasters in many forms,

and rushed in sending back to the men in uniforms

where the ghosts of terror grow stronger;

the souls of victims weep louder;

the safety and justice is nowhere near

which they most fear.

No light to shine the path of darkness.

No sunshine emerges to break the wall of darkness. 

Nobody wills to Protect the Rohingya.

No one sets up the light of justice for the Rohingya.

Yet they crave for the hope of light

among those who hold the grain of kindness in bright

to break through the wall of darkness aright.

By Shibani Mahtani

The Washington Post

June 12, 2018

Last week, the United Nations inked a deal with the government of Burma to begin the long process of resettling some of the 700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled their homes for neighboring Bangladesh after a brutal military campaign last year.

The Burmese government promoted the agreement as proof that it is doing right by the Rohingya, a persecuted minority that is denied citizenship rights and freedom of movement in Burma. The United Nations has celebrated it as a major first step that would help secure the future of the Rohingya in Burma. 

But no outside observers are able to verify the claims: The agreement has been kept unusually secret. 

The three parties that signed the memorandum of understanding — the U.N. refugee agency, or UNHCR; the U.N. Development Program; and the Burmese government — have declined to make the text of the agreement available to those who have asked to see it, including journalists, other U.N. officials and U.N. donor countries such as the United States.

Nongovernmental organizations, including Refugees International, have urged that the text be made public and warned in a statement that “conditions for Rohingya in Myanmar remain appalling,” referring to Burma by its official name. A statement from about two dozen Rohingya organizations across the world also raised concerns about keeping the text secret.

“All previous records showed that the U.N. agencies, including UNHCR as the agent of the interest of the international community, could not provide adequate protection to the Rohingya returnees due to obstinacy of the Myanmar government,” the groups said. “We are intrinsically aware of the false promises of the Myanmar authorities who are characterized by cheating and brutality.”

A Western diplomat closely following the negotiations said the United Nations has withheld the text of the agreement at the request of the Burmese government and called the lack of transparency “problematic.” The diplomat, who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, spoke on the condition of anonymity. A spokesman for the Burmese government could not be reached to comment. 

In response to questions from The Washington Post, Knut Ostby, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Burma, said the UNHCR, the UNDP and Burma's government are in “discussion about publicly releasing the contents of the MoU.”

“Such a decision would require consent of all three parties,” he added.

Negotiations between the U.N. agencies and the Burmese government took about four months, with especially heated discussions about the issues of citizenship and identity for the Rohingya. Most Burmese, including Aung San Suu Kyi and other government officials, do not even use the term “Rohingya.” The U.N. news release on the resettlement agreement referred to the group as “refugees in Bangladesh.”

Ostby said in an interview before the signing of the agreement last week that both sides eventually agreed that the Rohingya need to have “an identity and need to exist as normal people.”

He also said that the agreement specifies that the Rohingya need to be able to live in safety and be provided basic services, including access to work and shelter. “We have requested and agreed that there should be a clear and predictable pathway to citizenship,” Ostby said.

But no details have been provided by the United Nations, which will not be handling the citizenship verification process, or the Burmese government. And a statement from Suu Kyi’s office on the repatriation agreement simply refers to the Rohingya community as “displaced persons” rather than using the word “Rohingya.”

In an interview with the Japanese broadcaster NHK, Suu Kyi pointed to the agreement as a sign that Burma's government has “carried out all [their] responsibilities” toward the refugees, and she urged the international community to study its text — the same text that has not been made public.

The Rohingya refugees themselves doubt that the government can ensure their safety. Many fled amid atrocities that allegedly included rape, torture and extrajudicial killings at the hands of the Burmese military, carried out in response to attacks by a militant group on police posts in Rakhine state.

The United Nations has not negotiated with the refugees themselves on the terms of their resettlement but says it can do so now because it will be granted access to northern Rakhine, where the attacks occurred. The area was all but sealed off after the violence in August.

“We have not been in a position to negotiate with refugees before this, but UNHCR will now be in a position to have these conversations,” Ostby added.

By Serajul Quadir 

Reuters

June 12, 2018

DHAKA -- Landslides and related incidents triggered by pre-monsoon rain in southeast Bangladesh have killed at least 12 people since Monday, including two Rohingya Muslims, and the government said it was moving fast to relocate tens of thousands of people. 

The deaths happened in the districts of Cox’s Bazar and Rangamati - both bordering Myanmar from where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled a military crackdown - due to incessant rain over the past three days, government officials said on Tuesday. 

International aid agencies said there was a big risk of an outbreak of waterborne diseases in the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, where nearly a million people live, mostly in shacks made of bamboo and plastic sheets that cling to steep, denuded hills. 

“Sodden and unstable hills have collapsed over the weekend, destroying latrines. At lower levels, water from flash floods is washing over latrines, carrying sludge through the camps,” said Sanjeev Kafley, head of the Cox’s Bazar office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. 

“We’re already seeing increases in acute water diarrhoea, and the risk of an outbreak of waterborne diseases is now a serious likelihood.” 

One of the two Rohingya casualties in Cox’s Bazar was a two-and-half-year-old boy who died when a mud wall fell on him and his mother. The injured mother is in hospital. A Rohingya man was killed when a tree, weakened by rainfall, fell on him. 

The number of Rohingya in Bangladesh has swelled since last August, when an army operation in Myanmar following Rohingya insurgents’ attacks on security forces prompted an exodus to Bangladesh. 

Mohammad Shamsuddoha, a senior official in Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commission, said that around 1,500 shacks have been damaged or destroyed since the weekend due to the rain. 

Nijhum Rokeya Ahmed, from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, said there was a possibility of medium to heavy rain over the next 24 hours that could trigger further landslides in districts like Rangamati and Cox Bazar. 

The government is working with international aid agencies to quickly relocate an initial group of 100,000 Rohingya from the camps, said Mohammad Shah Kamal, the top civil servant in the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, who was visiting Cox’s Bazar. 

As of the first week of June, more than 28,000 refugees had been relocated, according to the Inter Sector Coordination Group that oversees relief work in the camps in Cox’s Bazar. 

Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said relocation was a challenge due to the lack of alternative flat land. Around 200,000 people have been identified as being at high risk. 

“Since we don’t have any place here we have to move them to Bhasan Char island and by September this year the relocation will be possible,” said Kamal, referring to the much-criticised plan to shift the Rohingya to a remote Bay of Bengal island being developed. 

In the hilly district of Rangamati, where 10 Bangladeshis have died, officials said rescue and relief teams were struggling to reach people due to difficult terrain. 

Reporting By Serajul Quadir in DHAKA; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA; Editing by Krishna N. Das and Alex Richardson

By Associated Press

June 11, 2018

BANGKOK — A U.S. government-affiliated broadcaster that provides news to countries in Asia where freedom of information is restricted is losing its local partner in Myanmar after refusing demands that it stop using the term “Rohingya” to describe an oppressed Muslim minority.

Monday was the last day that the DVB Media Group’s network would carry its television broadcasts, said Radio Free Asia spokesman Rohit Mahajan. He said RFA told Myanmar authorities that it was unwilling to bow to their pressure to use a term other than Rohingya.

About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since the government launched a violent counterinsurgency campaign last August in western Myanmar, where most live. Many people in Myanmar call the Rohingya “Bengali” to reflect their contention that they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh rather than natives.

The government refuses to recognize the Rohingya as an official ethnic minority and denies most the right to citizenship and its privileges.

Myanmar is the second Southeast Asian nation in 10 months where RFA has lost access to local broadcasters. Cambodia last August prohibited local FM stations from carrying RFA programming, one of several actions restricting the media in what was seen as a move to silence critical voices ahead of a general election this July.

Mahajan said RFA had been broadcasting on DVB’s channel since early October last year. A May 7 memo about DVB’s case from the government broadcasting agency Myanma Radio and Television to private broadcasters said the direct use of the “controversial word ‘Rohingya’” was a violation of contractual codes to which broadcasters are bound.

A statement by RFA President Libby Liu provided Monday to The Associated Press declared that the U.S. broadcaster “will not compromise its code of journalistic ethics, which prohibits the use of slurs against ethnic minority groups. RFA will continue to refer to the Rohingya as the ‘Rohingya’ in our reports. Use of other terms, even those that fall short of being derogatory, would be inaccurate and disingenuous to both our product and our audience.”

“By forbidding the use of the word ‘Rohingya,’ Myanmar’s government is taking an Orwellian step in seeking to erase the identity of a people whose existence it would like to deny,” she said. “RFA will continue to provide audiences in Myanmar with access to trustworthy, reliable journalism, particularly when reporting on issues that local and state-controlled media ignores and suppresses.”

Spokesman Mahajan said RFA’s programming for Myanmar would remain available on its website, on Facebook and YouTube and on shortwave radio, and its reporters will continue to work in the country.

In Cambodia, the cessation of RFA broadcasts on local media last year was followed by the closing under pressure of its office and in November by the arrest of two of its former reporters on “espionage” charges that are generally considered to be trumped up as a way to intimidate the media.

RFA, which is loosely modeled on longtime broadcaster Radio Free Europe, carries broadcasts to China, Cambodia, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam as well as Myanmar. It is funded by the U.S. government but run by an independent board.

DVB — the Democratic Voice of Burma — was originally established in 1992 as a shortwave radio station in Norway to beam uncensored news to Myanmar when it was still under military rule. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its relationship with RFA.

By Maung Zarni & Natalie Brinham

Anadolu Agency

June 11, 2018

Newly-organized UN in Myanmar has shelved organization’s own governing principles of transparency and inclusivity, as evidenced by freshly-inked MOU with Myanmar

- Maung Zarni is Coordinator for Strategic Affairs with the Free Rohingya Coalition (www.freerohingyacoalition.org). 

- Natalie Brinham is an Economic and Social Research Council PhD scholar at the Queen Mary University of London and co-author of “The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya” (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, Spring 2014). 

CAMBRIDGE, UK -- One million Rohingya survivors of the Myanmar genocide, who took refuge across the borders in the neighboring Bangladesh, remain largely unpersuaded by the news of the latest repatriation deal the United Nations agencies have signed with their perpetrators in Naypyidaw, and openly call for “UN Security Forces” to guarantee safe return to their homelands in the Western Myanmar state of Rakhine.

On 6 June, the two UN agencies with mandates for refugee protection and “development” inked the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Myanmar, a hybrid military-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi regime. Knut Osby, UN’s man in Yangon, took to the Twittersphere, putting the spin that “Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomes the agreement”, whose content is treated as if it were Myanmar’s top national security secret. Additionally, Mr. Osby, who holds the assistant secretary general position, tried to assure the Rohingya refugees via the mass media that UN would be pressing for “group identity” recognition by Myanmar and a “voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable” return.

Leading INGOs, including the Nobel Peace Prize winning Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Washington-based Refugees International, headed by Eric Schwartz, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees and Migration, issued statements, stressing the total absence of necessary conditions and injecting a dose of reality as if to pre-empt the typically phony reactions of ‘welcome’ that pervade diplomatic quarters. Both organizations express varying degrees of valid skepticism about the MOU. The conditions on the ground indicate no semblance of physical safety for any returning Rohingyas. There is no indication that the official acceptance of Rohingya by Myanmar as an integral ethnic minority of the Union is forthcoming, especially when one remembers the national standing Rohingyas had enjoyed as a group until the early years of the military rule in the 1960’s. And there is little prospect for their re-integration into the predominantly Buddhist society where the most powerful Senior General Min Aung Hlaing publicly declared his genocidal intent, that the presence of the Rohingya in N. Rakhine was an “unfinished business” from the pogroms of the Second World War.

In addition to the frightening prospects of being marched back to Myanmar’s “killing fields”, what has truly unnerved the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh -- thousands have been in refugee camps in Bangladesh since the early 1990’s as they fled the earlier waves of violent persecution -- about this latest UN-Myanmar refugee deal is this: UN agencies -- the UNDP, the UNHCR, the World Food Program (WFP) -- have a dismal record when it comes to standing up for the Rohingya in the last 40 years since the UNHCR first became involved in the repatriation process in the summer of 1978.

The UNHCR operates in both countries at the pleasure of the governments in Dhaka and Naypyidaw, neither of which is a signatory to the Refugee Conventions. The UN’s rotating international staff in Myanmar may lack the institutional memory about their uncomfortable role in the broken sacred principle of non-refoulment, but those Rohingya who were forcibly repatriated have not. The UN agency whose principal mandate is protection of the refugees was in fact in no position to stand up for the most vulnerable Rohingyas sandwiched between the perpetrating Myanmar and Bangladesh.

In the decades that followed the 1990’s repatriations, the UN’s refugee watchdog had consistently put keeping good relations with host governments in order to secure access -- or “pragmatic humanitarianism” -- above its own organizational mandate of protection. That is why the UNHCR, and all other UN agencies operating in Myanmar, have had an open, if unwritten, directive for all staff to comply with regarding Myanmar’s refusal to use the term ‘Rohingya’. So the staffs of all UN agencies operating in Myanmar avoid using the word ‘Rohingya’ in all their communications seen or heard by Myanmar officials. On the eve of Myanmar’s “ethnic cleansing” of the N. Rakhine state, the WFP reportedly recalled its July 2017 report about the semi-famine like conditions in which 80,000 Rohingya children under the age of 5 were living at the “request” of the Myanmar government.

Specifically, UN agencies in Myanmar lead an organizational double-life, speaking in two different scripts: one, tailored to placate the host regime by not calling Rohingyas by the group’s ethnic name in meetings and interactions with Myanmar authorities, who have attempted to systematically erase the group’s identity from Myanmar’s collective consciousness, history and official records; the other one to please the ears of global human rights organizations and Rohingya campaigners internationally by calling the group by their proper name, Rohingyas.

At the level of individual management of the UN’s in-country team, the last UN Resident Coordinator, Renata Lok-Dessallien, opted to maintain cordial relations with Myanmar leaders and prioritizing (business-friendly) development approach over human rights, an act which undermined the then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s policy of Human-Rights-First, which was adopted as a result of the widespread failures of UN agencies during the last phase of the civil war in Sri Lanka, where Colombo was accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide against a Hindu Tamil minority group. Specifically, Lok-Dessallien commissioned an internal report entitled “The Role of the United Nations in Rakhine state” but subsequently “suppressed” the report. The report’s recommendations included the call for frontloading human rights with respect to the oppressed Rohingya group, pointing out the UN’s ill-preparedness in the face of (likely) mass atrocities against the group and enjoining taking a firmer stance on the state’s egregious rights abuses in the Rohingya area.

The UN had since replaced the disgraced Resident Coordinator with Knut Osby, significantly increased its Myanmar budget and elevated its office in Myanmar one-notch up the UN bureaucracy to the level of Assistant Secretary General-ship.

The UN’s reputation -- and most specifically the reputation of the UNHCR and the UNDP -- is on the line in Myanmar, and beyond. Any part they play in facilitating returns from Bangladesh to Myanmar is risky, when returns could potentially result in another round of mass killings, further decades of containment in concentration camps or deliberate slow starvation. The UN agencies simply must place protection and human rights first this time around. The signs of a new secretive deal do not bode well for the Rohingya survivors. The newly-organized UN in Myanmar has even shelved the organization’s own governing principles of transparency and inclusivity, as evidenced by the freshly-inked MOU with Myanmar. Myanmar is now a suspect in the eyes of the International Criminal Court and international law circles. In apparent compliance with the demands for secrecy typically made by Myanmar’s military-controlled National League for Democracy (NLD) government, the UN has not made public the MOU for scrutiny. Neither has the UN included Rohingyas in any stage of the negotiations over the MOU, nor spelled out their future role. There is then little wonder that the Free Rohingya Coalition, the emerging global network of the widely recognized Rohingya representatives, with deep roots in their communities, both inside Myanmar and in diaspora, including Bangladesh, cry foul against the MOU, which remains shady. 

The UNHCR have added a fourth adjective -- “sustainable” -- to the mainstreamed mantra of “voluntary, safe and dignified”. To make the fourth adjective viable, the UN must listen to Rohingya voices that call for a “protected return to a protected homeland in Myanmar”.