As reported in these columns earlier, the primarily involved countries, Myanmar and Bangladesh remain rigid in their refusal to treat Rohingiyas as a human community in urgent need of help. If the matter remains unresolved, it is India, the uninvolved third party, that could well end up being the sanctuary for this new category of “boat people”. Some India-based Islamic organisations are already demanding this.

In any case, an unannounced exodus may well be under way. Only days ago, a team of 12 suspected Rohingiyas were arrested from Barasat railway station in West Bengal, intercepted on their way to North India for work and a new life. This, against a backdrop of Singapore authorities refusing permission to land to a team of some 40 Rohingiyas without food and water in a boat, helped by Viet Namese fishermen along the way. And Bangladesh has followed suit more recently, by turning back 85 Rohingiyas, including women and children, carried by boats after they had escaped from Myanmar, sailing along the river Teknaf, over a 48 hour period. However, they gave food and water to the refugees, bringing to nearly 1600 the number of people turned back so far by the Coast guards. At the height of ethnic violence erupting in the Rakhine province last year, over 900 people tried to escape to neighbouring countries, including Thailand. It is not known how many made it successfully.

While the international Muslim community has rallied behind the 750,000 Rohingiyas currently stranded in Myanmar, the apparently ruthless stand taken by Bangladesh continues to surprise most observers, despite strong evidence that the affected people did migrate from its territory to Burma during British rule. The fact that the Rohingiyas are treated as Bengali-speaking Muslims originally from Bangladesh by Myanmar authorities has won them no concessions from Dhaka so far.

Still, Bangladesh has accommodated nearly 250,000 refugees in refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar area, while Malaysia has given shelter to some 90,000. But over the years, there has occurred a remarkable similarity in the legal position adopted by Myanmar and Bangladesh on the status of the Rohingiyas.

The details, as narrated by Rohingiya spokesmen in social network websites, highlight the spectacular failure of the international civil rights movement and HR organisations when it comes to ensuring minimum human right for such a large group of people.

A partial census in Myanmar in 1954 revealed that 56 percent of the people in the Arakan (later Rakhine) province were Buddhists, while around 41 percent were Muslims. Anti-Indian riots in 1930, and later in 1938 in Burma, saw hundreds of non-Burman people killed, while over 50,000 fled to neighbouring areas, mainly to the port-city of Chittagong and Rangpur. Bangladesh authorities now argue that these people were all Burmese citizens earlier. Aggressive Burmese mobs raised the slogan “Burma for the Burmese” at the period.

Under General Ne Win, who later ruled the country, Burma drew up the Burmese Citizneship Law in 1982. According to Rohingiya commentators explaining their plight on social media websites, the Burmese followed the “Jus Sanguinis” principle in determining citizenship, which laid the emphasis on not the area of one’s birth, but on one’s bloodline. It laid down that to claim citizenship, an applicant must prove his or her descent from at least one Burmese parent.

Under this law, “full” citizenship was to be enjoyed by all Burmese and 135 listed “naturalised races” who had been living in Burma prior to 1823, when the British took over control of lower Burma.

Others, who became citizens under the post Independence 1948 Union Citizenship law, were to be treated as Associate Citizens. This meant people who could furnish evidence of their entry and their settlement over a period of time, before Independence in 1948. They were also required also to speak at least one local language well and have children born in the country.

When Associate citizens applied for full citizenship under the 1982 act, at first 144 groups were identified for inclusion. Later, the administration deleted nine groups from the approved list of recognised races and tribes, citing Constitutional provisions of 1974.

Three among those crossed out were Muslims groups: the Rohingiyas, the Chinese Muslims (Panthay) and Malaysian Muslims (Bashu).

Of late, panels of international lawyers and HR groups have pointed out how the 1982 legislation ignores customary international law standards. It offends the universal declaration of Human Rights and leaves Rohingiyas and other groups totally without any legal protection! Recently, 31 NGOs have appealed for the 1982 law to be repealed immediately.

For the Rohingiyas though, the unkindest cut came from Bangladesh, bad enough as their position in Myanmar was. Presumably to counter Myanmar’s evaluation of the Rohingiya problem and its stand, Bangladesh authorities, in 1982, amended their own citizenship rules, by making it difficult for refugees to secure citizenship. This has enabled present day authorities in Dhaka to treat the Rohingiyas as non-citizens, which renders them practically stateless. Further, Bangladesh authorities pressured three foreign agencies into stopping their supply of relief goods for the Rohingiyas putting up in refugee camps on its territory, in an obvious bid to discourage them from approaching Bangladesh.

The country has also ignored requests and suggestions from Pakistan, some West Asian countries and the international community urging upon its not to turn back boatloads of persecuted Rohingiyas fleeing Myanmar, where they do not have minimal security for their lives and property. Bangladesh pleads its own population density, which is the highest in the world and hence its inability to take the load of more refugees. In any case, it is saddled with around 250,000 Rohingiyas and has been pressing upon Myanmar to take them back, without much luck.

It is clear that many provisions of the Universal declaration of Human rights and the International Conventions on the status of refugees and stateless people have been flagrantly violated by both Bangladesh, Myanmar and countries like Thailand and Singapore, which have refused any help to the escaping Rohingiyas. The most pertinent query seems to have come from Jack Healy on the Huffington Post website, quoted extensively in the social media web: “How can Burma’s national sovereignty and culture be threatened by 1.3 percent of its population living in abject poverty and misery?” Answers, anyone? (IPA Service)