Persecution of Rohingyas draws world attention

Historically, the Rakhine state was originally known as Arakan province before the British occupied Burma, now known as Myanmar, in 1824 and continued to rule it until 1948. As a part of divide-and-rule policy, British colonialists turned various ethnic groups against each other. Independent Myanmar inherited that legacy, but majority Buddhists today have become nationalist and xenophobic. Rohingya Muslims have been residing there for generations as ethnic citizens.
For centuries, the people living in the Rakhine state represented a mix of Moghuls, Turks and Persians, racially mixed with Bengalis, Hindus and Buddhists. Persian was the court language of Rakhine state until 18th century. For generations, Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists lived together.
Rohingya Muslims have been targeted for persecution  by the military junta of General Ne Win since 1982 when it introduced new citizenship law declaring Rohingya Muslims as non-citizens or Bengalis while they have been residing there for centuries. Having denied citizenship, they are forced into manual labour by the government, prohibited from attending schools and denied voting rights as well. In their own country, they were segregated from the mainstream of life. Many of them are languishing in jails in Myanmar.
Recent reports say thousands have fled persecution and genocide in Myanmar and are now on floating boats in the coast off Thailand and Malaysia. As a former diplomat, this writer has been watching the development of the Rohingya exodus since 1979 when a large number of Myanmar Muslims were expelled by the military junta. As many as 200,000 Rohingyas were given shelter by the government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party under  Ziaur Rahman on humanitarian grounds and placed in  temporary camps put up near Cox's Bazar of Chittagong district. A diplomatic campaign was launched by the Bangladesh government to convince friendly countries to put pressure on the Myanmar government to take Rohingyas back. It even pursued the Malaysian government to put pressure on Myanmar to take Rohingya Muslims back in view of very good relations that Kuala Lumpur had maintained with Yangon. This resulted in a bilateral agreement signed between the Bangladesh government and the Myanmar military administration. Within a span of six months, Rohingya Muslims were repatriated back to Myanmar.
The state of Rohingya Muslims was changed  when the Myanmar government had made an amendment to the citizenship law that took away their citizenship rights. This was done shortly after the repatriation, thus making them stateless. Rohingya people again became victim of the Myanmar military persecution in 1990 when they conducted an operation under Nagamin
(Dragon King) in an effort to eliminate illegal migrants from the country. The junta concentrated on the Rakhine state to drive out Rohingyas. Local Buddhists, along with the military, attacked Rohingyas which caused 270,000 of them to flee by March of 1990 from Myanmar to Bangladesh. It was the third time that Rohingyas fell victim to riots between Muslims and Buddhists in the Rakhine state when a Buddhist woman was allegedly raped. Besides taking the rapist to task, the government should have exercised power to stop riots between the two communities. Riots took lives of many Rohingya Muslims under the nose of security police. Since the clashes between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in 2012, around 7,000 to 300,000 Rohingya migrants are living in UNHCR- operated camps or illegally in Bangladesh while more than several hundreds were killed.
Rohingyas on floating boats were allured by smugglers for safe haven and jobs. Now they are starving to death on the sea. What a great tragedy has befallen these innocent Rohingya Muslims for no fault of theirs. It is learnt that Turkey has dispatched a naval ship to the coast of Thailand to provide relief to the starving Rohingyas. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is reported to have said that his country is taking efforts to reach out to the people abroad with a Navy vessel and in coordination with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Another startling and horrifying news is that Malaysian and Thai authorities discovered mass graves of the Rohingyas. They also found smugglers' camps with watch towers, crude cages of sticks and barbed wire. As of now more than 1,000 people were brought ashore in Indonesia and Thailand, according to a report of May 16-17 in the Wall Street Journal. Under pressure, Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those 7,000 migrants still floating on the sea.
The Oslo conference on Rohingya Muslims, held on May 26-27, urged Myanmar to end persecution of the Rohingya Muslims. As many as six Nobel Peace laureates attended the conference which was held at the Norwegian Nobel institute. Archbishop Desmond Tutu described the persecution of the Rohingyas as slow genocide. In a joint statement, the Nobel laureates said, what Rohingyas are facing is a textbook genocide in which an entire indigenous community is being systematically wiped out by the Myanmar government.
As of now, only a few Rohingyas are represented in the Myanmar parliament, elected in 2011, but voting rights of their constituents were stripped of. Ethnic people like Shan, Kachin and Karen have seats in the parliament. The present army-backed civilian government of Myanmar is pledge-bound to bring reforms in the political, economic and social arenas. Therefore, they should ensure basic human rights to Rohingyas and other ethnicities in Myanmar. Myanmar's denial of the existence of the Rohingyas as a people violates their rights to self-determination. The international community has the responsibility to end Myanmar's systematic persecution and destruction of the ethnic group of Rohingyas and resettle them back with due honour. Enough is enough.
This time a large number of Bangladeshis are on boats to seek job opportunities in Indonesia and Malaysia and became victim of human trafficking. The Bangladesh government should take precaution to stop trafficking of  human beings for the sake of image of the country.
The writer is a retired diplomat from Bangladesh. amjad.21@gmail.com