MYANMAR and the United States appeared to have agreed to disagree on what to called the Rohingya Muslims. Many Buddhists inside Myanmar prefer to call them “Bengalis”, arguing that the one million or so members of the minority community are mostly illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and not a native ethnic group. Reports said the new Myanmar government led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had asked US Ambassador Scot Marciel not to use the term Rohingyas while dealing with their cause. It will not help them anyway. He however did not agree. He said it is the US government practice to call communities by the name they themselves prefer. The normal US practice and the normal international practice is that communities anywhere have the right or have the ability to decide what they are going to be called. And normally when that happens, we would call them what they asked to be called. It’s not a political decision; it’s just a normal practice. We must say that the US envoy did what he was rightly expected to do by the global community and he deserves appreciation. He did not succumb to pressure from Myanmar’s so-called democracy leader who is now out to disown her own people. The international community had so long waited that Suu Kyi would prove different although she was maintaining total silence to speak for Rohingya Muslims under the junta government. Now her government policy shows to be equally hostile to the country’s small ethnic group who seems to be no challenge to its security except being Muslims by names. Myanmar Foreign Ministry official Aye Aye Soe acknowledged Tuesday that her office had asked Marciel not to use the term “Rohingya”. She said Marciel has the right to call the minority whatever he likes, but calling them Rohingya could enflame communal tensions. It appears to be an indirect threat violating standard diplomatic norms. The Myanmar junta and its Buddhists ultra nationalist forces were persecuting the Rohingya Muslims over the past decades, killing them, burning their homes and forcing them to flee to other South Asian countries for safety including Bangladesh. Large number of Rohingyas are already living in Bangladesh as being homeless and Myanmar is pushing more such refugees across the border at frequent intervals. In the latest move the Rohingyas were disfranchised and bared from voting as Myanmar’s nationals in last year’s election which led the nation to democratic rule after decades of military rule in the country on the Southeastern border of Bangladesh.Many had hoped that Myanmar transition to democracy under National League for Democracy (NLD) would bring peace to its persecuted minorities. But the latest attempt to put an end to their ethnic identity as asking people not to call them Rohingyas shows that they are doomed to be permanently stateless as expelled from their home country.
