A committee for Rehabilitation of Rakhine National Territory is offering jobs and homes to new arrivals to create a Muslim free buffer zone running nearly 100 km from state capital Sittwe to Maungdaw in the northeast closer to Bangladesh as the world witnesses it. All these areas were previously Muslim dominated, now almost the entire Rohingya population had fled vacating the region for resettlement by Buddhist population.
Earlier media reports had said Myanmar is also militarizing the Rakhine State bulldozing abandoned villages and building new roads, helipads, soldiers camps and other military infrastructure to permanently seal the region from Rohingya Muslims in the event they want to return home. What is surprising is that the Myanmar government is engaging Bangladesh in deceitful talks to take back refugees — now over one million in the country — to reduce international diplomatic pressure to end the crisis, But evident suggests, they are taking quick action at the same time to create a new situation in which meaningful repatriation will lose any perspective following the change of demography in the region. Rohingyas will feel more insecure and they will have no land to resettle.
It is almost clear Myanmar is openly playing foul not only with Bangladesh and the international community with support from China, Russia, India and such other regional Buddhist nations, they are also out to set up a purely Buddhist nation state destroying its Muslim population. It is shame that the international community and the UNO in particular; which is only giving lip services to the cause of Rohingyas is doing nothing to help the Rohingyas when Myanmar is destroying the last vestige of their presence in their ancestral land.
We witness a helpless Bangladesh with its poor leadership is no match to Myanmar’s outmaneuvering using political support of some big powers and its Buddhist neighbours. We call upon the international community once again to stand by the helpless Rohingyas to get them back to their land.
