{"id":137345,"date":"2019-07-15T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=137345"},"modified":"2019-07-10T10:28:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T09:28:15","slug":"bangladesh-can-make-myanmar-pay-for-crimes-against-rohingya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/07\/bangladesh-can-make-myanmar-pay-for-crimes-against-rohingya\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh Can Make Myanmar Pay for Crimes against Rohingya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

8 Jul 2019 – <\/em>Last week, UN International Independent Fact-Finding Mission\u2019s Chris Sidoti, Bangladesh\u2019s high commissioner to the U.K. and prominent experts from Bangladesh, gathered in London to tackle an overlooked, but pressing issue: the challenges of repatriating 1.2 million Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

This comes in the back drop of Bangladesh\u2019s Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen reportedly accusing Myanmar of \u201clying\u201d about the status of the repatriation of Rohingya refugees to their places of origin.<\/p>\n

Although the two countries signed a repatriation agreement in October 2018, according to the UN and other international observers, the favorable conditions for the returning Rohingya are non-existent.<\/p>\n

Of the 800 expected villages promised as a part of the repatriation efforts, only two villages with favorable conditions are believed to be existed.<\/p>\n

Herein lies the problem: the long-term, large-scale presence of the Rohingya people in Bangladesh is unsustainable.<\/p>\n

The government of Bangladesh has been struggling to address the existential need of the world\u2019s second largest refugee population. Abul Kalam, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner stated: \u201c22% of the fund appeal (out of a total of $920 million annual appeal for the Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis) has been met.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors. It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone without adequate financial support from the international community.<\/p>\n

Moreover, allowing the Rohingya to permanently settle in Bangladesh would validate the genocidal regime in Myanmar. Since February 1978, following military dictator Gen. Ne Win\u2019s premeditated campaign to erase western Myanmar of any Rohingya presence, Myanmar has engaged in an atrocious campaign of terror against the residential population of northern Rakhine state.<\/p>\n

In doing so, Myanmar\u2019s successive regimes, civilian and military alike, have resorted to all the violent, institutional and legal means at their disposal. Over the last four decades, Myanmar has relentlessly shifted the official justifications for its state-directed persecution of Rohingya.<\/p>\n

Long-held fears of Rohingya<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the evolving justifications are \u201cconcerns for Muslims\u2019 demographic dominance\u201d in\u2028 western Myanmar, \u201ccommunal conflict\u201d, \u201cterror threat\u201d — as Aung San Suu Kyi put it to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2017, \u201csecurity clearance operations\u201d, or \u201cunfinished business from WWII\u201d as put by Suu Kyi\u2019s military partner Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.<\/p>\n

In the national imagination of the Burmese public, their government\u2019s genocidal project is about restoring Rakhine to its original, purely \u201cBuddhist\u201d, state and ridding the region of “Bengali” interlopers.<\/p>\n

The question that the Bangladeshi leadership, and those meeting in London last week, ought to confront is the following: Why would the neighbor that systematically destroyed nearly 400 villages in a matter of weeks, thereby seizing the vast and important western Myanmar region of northern Rakhine, cooperate with Dhaka on the repatriation of almost three quarters of the entire Rohingya population?<\/p>\n

With this cultural, political and societal backdrop in mind, recognizing the long-held fears of the Rohingya people for rights and safety will be crucial to understanding why this voluntary scheme has not been successful so far.<\/p>\n

As long as Myanmar has done nothing to assuage Rohingya’s well-founded fear of renewed state-directed mass-violence and deportation, any plans for repatriation will remain implausible. No Rohingya in their right mind will voluntarily return to Myanmar. Not without international protection, restored citizenship and basic human rights.<\/p>\n

So, what are Dhaka\u2019s strategic options? The first is one of three major proposals from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina — the creation of the \u201csafe zone\u201d inside northern Rakhine state in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

I for one, think the establishment of a safe zone where Rohingya can return, live under the protection of a coalition of international actors, armed or unarmed, is a potentially viable plan to address the needs of returning Rohingya as well as Dhaka\u2019s need to repatriate the vast number of Rohingya refugees.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, Myanmar will violently oppose the idea. Some Burmese officials have already publicly dismissed the safe zone proposal on grounds of sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Interim possibility<\/strong><\/p>\n

Secondly, Dhaka should pursue one interim possibility: Force Myanmar to pay reparations to Bangladesh for hosting the victims of the genocide.<\/p>\n

This demand should be part of the set of \u201cimmediate measures\u201d that Dhaka, a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, can ask from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Dhaka can make this legal demand unilaterally via the ICJ, or jointly with other state parties such as Malaysia, which also shoulders the burden of hosting an estimated 200,000 Rohingya on its soil.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, Dhaka can join the Gambia-led initiative by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to mount a legal challenge to demand justice and accountability for the genocide.<\/p>\n

The UN already recommended in 2018 that military leaders should face genocide charges and this month, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has asked judges on the International Criminal Court to open a full investigation into these allegations.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, why not find a way for Bangladesh, which has shouldered the financial burden of supporting over 1 million Rohingya refugees, to obtain compensation from Myanmar? Dhaka should include an annual payment of $1 billion from Myanmar in the OIC’s move to challenge Myanmar at the ICJ.<\/p>\n

Introducing an economic deterrent may yet discourage other states from engaging in ethnic cleansing and forced deportation of minority ethnic groups. The other 150 states — which are party to the Genocide Convention, still unprepared to participate meaningfully to end Myanmar’s ongoing genocide — should do their part in backing a legal challenge at the ICJ.<\/p>\n

On July 1, the Dutch parliament passed with 2\/3 majority votes a motion requesting the government to explore possible legal proceedings against Myanmar before the ICJ for violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention. Bangladeshi parliamentarians should follow the suit.<\/p>\n

Myanmar, as the perpetrating state, must be made to pay for its crimes. Literally.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, <\/em>former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center \u2013 Cambodia.\u00a0Zarni is coordinator for Strategic Affairs for Free Rohingya Coalition and an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge, UK.<\/strong><\/em> His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the <\/em>New York Times, The Guardian and<\/em> the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are <\/em>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), <\/em>An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and <\/em>Myanmar\u2019s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal). He co-authored, with Natalie Brinham, <\/em>Essays on Myanmar Genocide. Zarni holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education) , National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aa.com.tr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Jul 2019 – Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors. It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone without adequate financial support from the international community. Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":137346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677],"tags":[229,240,1149,1198,526,120,1199,865,267,260,487,926,866,651,291,287,103,107,527,985,380,124,126,92,118],"class_list":["post-137345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-updates-on-myanmar-rohingya-genocide","tag-activism","tag-asia","tag-asia-and-the-pacific","tag-buddhism","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-conflict","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-genocide","tag-geopolitics","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-humanitarianism","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-justice","tag-military","tag-power","tag-racism","tag-religion","tag-rohingya","tag-social-justice","tag-solutions","tag-united-nations","tag-violence","tag-violent-conflict","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}