Such escalation of fight on Bangladesh border inside Myanmar border is not a good sign when Dhaka is trying its best to encourage a political solution of Myanmar domestic problem. Needless to say it will create more influx of Rohingya refugees in the county increasingly impacting the safety of our people and security at the southeast.
The fights erupted at a time when former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan led International Commission on Rohingya crisis has just published its recommendation in Myanmar capital with the call on Myanmar government to end the crisis by ending deprivation of Myanmar’s minority Muslim community.
However the office of the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said military and border police have intensified fight in Rakhine State by launching “clearance operations.” Police fought Rohingya attackers and captured weapons.
Suu Kyi called the attacks “a calculated attempt to undermine the efforts of those seeking to build peace and harmony in Rakhine State.” In Washington, the State Department spokesperson called for calm and respects the rule of law and protection to human rights and people’s fundamental freedoms.
A militant group, called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA, took responsibility for the Thursday night attacks on more than 25 locations, saying they were in defense of Rohingya communities that had been brutalized by government forces. The army’s abuses fuelled further resentment toward the government among the Muslim Rohingyas, Myanmar’s Buddhist majority considers most of them as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, denied citizenship and rights to their homeland. ARSA took advantage of the resentment by stepping up recruitment of members.
What can one expect if an entire population is subject to discrimination, humiliation, and brutalized on almost daily basis? The Rohingyas are doing what almost any other minority community in the world is doing. It is to protect their existence and preserve their ancestral land from being torched and cleared. Rohingya youths appear to be acting impulsively banding together to fight back oppression. The problem with such discrimination and brutality on a population is that it leads people to thinking that they have nothing to lose.
If a person can’t do normal things like work, marry, run business or perform any of the social and religious duties or send children to schools, which are part of being a human being without fear, or freedom then they feel marginalized. Over time this results in a situation where violence inevitably occurs–it happened in Palestine, Kashmir, and in Myanmar.
The solution is simple–the Myanmar government must threat the Rohingya as fellow human beings and their citizen.
It must stop reprisals and sit for talks in the light of the recommendations of the Kofi Annan Commission in which Suu Kyi herself is a cochairman. Myanmar can’t destroy its ethnic minority and hold on the belief that the world will witness it for long. But in our view it is an internal problem of Myanmar and it must solve it through discussion. Bloody violence and reprisal will not be good for both sides and like the USA, every peace-loving people is becoming growingly concerned about the fate of the Rohingya people.
