One person accompanying them was the Bengali-speaking Abdul Rahman Gazi. He said the group escaped from Bujidong, Myanmar a month ago, in the wake of anti Rohingiya riots and somehow found shelter in Chittagong area.

Gazi, apparently a Bangladeshi agent, promised to take them into India, where they were going to New Delhi in search of work. For some days, they had hidden in the Swarupnagar area of Barasat and were about to be shifted to a go-down near Mathura, in Uttar Pradesh. This seems to indicate that there is an established escape route and supportive network in place for illegal trespassers on both sides of the international border. Even as the arrests were being made, two others of the group escaped.

Despite some recent moves by Myanmar authorities to address the presence of the Rohingiya population in the Rakhine (Arakan) province, it appears the verdict of history and past developments is working against the interests of the community. Their efforts to escape to Bangladesh and India continue unabated, with no general improvement in the situation. They are known to have made their way to Rajasthan and other states through West Bengal, where there is insufficient awareness among the state police and intelligence about the Rohingiya problem.

Recent media reports suggest that the Myanmar Government has initiated a process of enumerating the Rohingiyas settled in their country of late. However, there has been sharp criticism of the methods followed by the officials, as reported in these columns earlier. The authorities do not include the Muslim Rohingiyas among the 170 odd listed tribes and groups belonging to the national mainstream. They are seen as “Bengalis” who came over illegally from Bangladesh a few days ago, having nothing in common in terms of their religion, values or culture with the local Muslim majority population. Over time their numbers have grown to over 800,000, although recurrence of ethnic violence directed against them has seen some 250,000 of them escaping to Bangladesh.

Relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar have not improved by the fact that the former does not recognise Rohingiyas as its citizens either. This renders the group stateless and makes the very initiation of any meaningful dialogue between the two countries extremely problematic.

As far as the “Census” operation went, independent observers reported that with their poor literacy record, the Rohingiyas either did not understand many questions posed by the officials, or know how the forms were supposed to be filled up. Unclear answers about their religion or language for instance, automatically made the authorities register them as “Bengalis” or stateless. Such listing would make most of them automatically eligible for eventual deportation. Very few could furnish documentary evidence of their stay in Myanmar over a period of time. The reason: not being recognised as citizens, they were largely denied access to official documentation!

Most observers see the efforts at enumerating the Rohingiyas as Myanmar’s knee-jerk response to the unfavourable international publicity it has copped over its hardline stand on the community, seen as the most persecuted in the world in recent times. However, some observers point out that there is another side to the story.

While the Rohingiya organisations claim that they settled in the energy-rich Arakan region during British rule in South Asia, Myanmar authorities dispute this, maintaining that at best they came over from Bangladesh a couple of decades ago and settled illegally.

Once in Myanmar, the Rohingiyas became willingly or otherwise, the pawns of international politics and intrigue. Pakistan was looking for revenge against India for the creation of Bangladesh. Analyst Anand Kumar writes of the efforts made by the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka, to bring different Islamic groups and Indian insurgents together on the basis of a common programme. On May 9 and 10, 2002, 63 representatives of nine major Islamist groups met to establish the Bangladesh Islamic Mancha. It also included the ULFA, the Islamic Oikya Jote of Bangladesh and the Rohingiyas. The new Mancha (platform) was placed under the leadership of the HUJI. Their eventual objective was to carve out a Muslim majority territory out of Assam, North Bengal and the Arakan region of Myanmar. In Myanmar, the agitation for an autonomous Muslim majority area was proposed as a logical first step towards this.

Naturally, Myanmar authorities were aware of these developments. The Pakistani intelligence agency ISI played an active role in bringing Islamic groups and banned Indian insurgent groups together in a joint enterprise. It helped these groups secure arms etc. from Thailand and providing recruits from different countries with false passports, so they could be sent for arms and other training in Pakistan, Afghanistan or the POK.

Some details of these activities were available after the arrest of Bangladeshi ISI agent SM Alam, in January 2008 by the Assam police. Alam, a member of the Jamat-e-Islam affiliated Islamic Chhatra Shibir, had recruited and sent for training 40 youths from the region before his capture, according to Kumar.

It is arguable whether such developments justify the hardline uncompromising position taken by Myanmar on the Rohingiya issue, but certainly they make it easier to appreciate that Myanmar, too, has a point of view and its own perspective on the matter. Later developments in the Arakan region, where Saudi Arabian relief and cultural organisations set up branches and carried out local activities, causing religious and ethnic tensions, did not endear the Rohingiyas to the Buddhist-majority administration. Even the new pro-democracy government has refused permission to the organisation of Islamic countries to set up an office in the Rakhine area to carry out relief and other help for the Rohingiyas.

No matter what happens in the region, India must take care to make sure that there is no further illegal influx of refugees into its territory. (IPA Service)