PRIME Minister Sheikh Hasina has sought support from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states to launch the Rohingya case at International Court of Justice (ICJ) with voluntary funding and technical help to ensure the legal rights of Rohingyas and address the question of accountability and justice. She was speaking on behalf of the Asia Group at the 14th OIC Makkah Al Mukarramah Summit titled ‘Hand in Hand Towards the Future’ at Safa Palace in Makkah.
Signing of an ‘instrument’ hurriedly on November 23 last year between Bangladesh and Myanmar for repatriation of Rohingyas notwithstanding, not a single person out of over a million refugees returned home within the last six months. It, however, attached a condition to the deal that Bangladesh would have to prepare a family-wise list of Rohingyas and they would have to go through a verification of residency. Why Bangladesh accepted this condition remains a riddle. Since the deal, Myanmar has verified the residency of about 1,000 Rohingyas out of a list containing 8,032 names for repatriation.
We needed to include our regional powerhouse China to ensure that Myanmar would at least try to maintain their commitments but we didn’t. Neither did we seek the aid of the US and the EU to try and use sanctions as a tool to force Myanmar to comply. In the meantime the Rohingya situation is akin to sitting on top of a powder keg. Internal rivalries between the Rohingya complicate matters as they fight to gain supremacy. The camps are a haven for the recruitment of Yaba smugglers and women traffickers.
Desperate Rohingyas try their best to go abroad using fake passports. Blaming them is difficult as they seem to be caught in a perpetual No Man’s Land–in all honesty if an individual has no options to do anything with their lives he would be desperate to try anything or go to any length. In the meantime as a nation we are caught in the middle–we can’t return them as Myanmar doesn’t care about what we think because we don’t have the power to make change its mind. It knows that any UNSC measure will be blocked by its allies like China. So why should Myanmar care?
