Civil Society and Citizenship in India and Bangladesh by Sahoo Sarbeswar;Chaney Paul;

Author:Sahoo, Sarbeswar;Chaney, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd.

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Political Failure and the Suffering of Stateless ‘Non-Citizens’:

Civil Society Perspectives on the Rohingya Crisis

Paul Chaney

This chapter explores the crisis facing an estimated 900,000 Rohingya people (United Nations, 2018), a Muslim minority group (a variation of the Sunni religion) that has fled persecution in the western state of Rakhine, Myanmar. The Rohingyas have sought sanctuary in the south-eastern district of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. They are a stateless people regarded as ‘non-citizens’ by both Myanmar and Bangladesh, and are subject to inhuman treatment, oppression and rights denial. In this chapter, attention centres on the ‘situated knowledge’ expressed in civil society accounts of the emergency; specifically, the perspectives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with the Rohingya refugees. The analysis is based on a range of primary and secondary sources—including the views of Rohingya representatives and NGOs (alternatively, civil society organisations or CSOs) gathered during research workshops—as well as NGOs’ data submitted to the 2018 third cycle United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the official monitoring mechanism associated with UN human rights treaties.

Whilst the Government of Bangladesh espouses a participatory approach to its rights obligations (for example, ‘Bangladesh will … continue to fully involve CSOs in promoting human rights at all levels’, Government of Bangladesh 2013, 18), the following discussion provides insight into the balance of rhetoric versus reality. It reveals how the official Government of Bangladesh’s response to the crisis is failing to address a broad range of rights violations including: access to health care, violence, intimidation and sex trafficking. Some groups within the refugee population fare particularly badly, notably women, girls and disabled people. This chapter argues that government must end its mistrust and growing repression of civil society and engage with NGOs and, in particular, Rohingya people, in order to shape an effective crisis response that ends their inhumane treatment.

Context

Over the past century, there has been a regular influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh. They fled Myanmar in the face of violent military repression, Buddhist extremism and ethnic discrimination. Hitherto, for around a thousand years, they resided in Arakan (Ahmed, 2010). Following invasion by the Rakhine, this independent kingdom became a part of Burma in 1785. The indigenous people of Arakan were predominantly Hindus and Muslims. The Rakhine referred to the Rohingyas as kula or ‘dark-skinned people’ (Ware and Laoutides, 2018). In the face of discrimination, they took flight to northern Arakan in today’s Myanmar and have become known as Rohingya. In the wake of this migration, the Rakhine and Rohingya co-existed but ethnic tensions flared-up during the British-colonial era. These continued over the ensuing decades, leading to a gradual Rohingya exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh in the 1970s. A key point was reached in 1982 when the Burmese government stripped the Rohingya people of their citizenship; the administrative pretext of the ruling elite was that this was because they were not able to prove that their ancestors had settled in Burma before 1823 (Kyaw, 2017).

Military operations in Myanmar saw a further exodus of 260,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh during 1991–1992. Ongoing oppression resulted in another crisis point in 2017.

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