A heart-wrenching history

For many people in Europe, the Rohingya people may have a very unfamiliar name. However, their fate is tragically too common. Earlier this month, a US medical charity, Physicians for Human Rights, declared that the Rohingya were facing starvation.

It is just over a month ago that I was in Bangladesh on an official visit as an MEP. With the Foreign Minister of that country, Dipu Moni, I discussed the situation of the Rohingya.

They are a Muslim people of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), one of about 135 tribal groups. However, the authorities in Myanmar do not recognise them and if, today, there are hundreds of thousands of Rohingyan refugees in Bangladesh, it is because they are claiming extreme persecution in their home country.

These people from northwest Myanmar are among the poorest and most persecuted people in the world. They have been fleeing repression for the last 50 years, making their way to neighbouring countries.

Over the last year, however, another medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres, has been reporting that intimidation and violence against the Rohingya has been stepped up. Ironically, the national elections planned to take place in Myanmar later this year may be a cause. It is more important than usual to make sure that the Rohingya are displaced, dispersed and keep a low profile. Their ability to vote must be minimised. Already they are denied citizenship and the right to own land.

Meanwhile, it is being claimed that the government in Bangladesh is frustrating efforts to provide the Rohingya there with humanitarian aid and adequate care.

On its part, the government is denying all charges of arbitrary arrest, illegal expulsion and forced internment.

When I met the Foreign Minister, Dr Moni, she informed me that she had been twice to Myanmar in the last year and that the relations between the two countries were good except for the allocation and recognition of Rohingya people.

The Bangladesh government has officially recognised about 28,000 as refugees. They live in UN camps and Myanmar has now accepted to take some 8,000 of them back.

However there are about 300,000 who live outside the camps and have no status. Bangladesh is refusing to give them any form of recognition.

In words that may sound familiar in Malta, Bangladesh is claiming to be the victim of the situation, since it is a poor country that has to accommodate many more people than it can look after.

The government is now cracking down harder on the Rohingya it refuses to recognise, so that it discourages a further flow into the country given the increased persecution in Myanmar itself.

As for other neighbouring countries, Thailand, which is another destination, was last year widely reported (though it denied it) to be using the navy to stop refugees in mid-territorial waters and take them back into the open sea without food and water.

Compared with such treatment, Bangladesh is behaving better. However, its crackdown on unregistered refugees, as of the beginning of January, is unprecedented. Some refugees were pushed back across the border while others were jailed.

There is also rising anti-Rohingya sentiment, with popular movements and propaganda being mobilised to press the government to take more action.

Between January and February, it was reported, thousands of Rohingya fled their homes into a makeshift camp whose population swelled into the tens of thousands.

They are without food assistance, without access to means of livelihood (since they would face arrest if they left the camp to find work) and the hunger and insecurity is rapidly creating a humanitarian crisis.

Some of the personal tales recounted by charity workers are harrowing. People have been dragged out of their shelters. Medecins Sans Frontieres has reported knife injuries on a four-year-old girl and a baby thrown onto the ground. One woman spoke of being arrested if she tried to collect wood and beaten if she went to fetch water.

The minimum that needs to be done is easy to see. But it is difficult to see it being done.

The arrests must cease immediately as must the forced displacement of the unregistered Rohingya (especially in those districts known as Cox's Bazar and Bandarban).

It is obvious that the Rohingya are facing persecution in Myanmar and, therefore, need international protection and recognition as stateless asylum seekers. It is also obvious that they need to be provided with adequate basic services and access to a means of livelihood.

From a Maltese perspective, however, it is not clear that the entire burden of these duties ought to fall on Bangladesh. If we are going to invoke human dignity in appealing to Bangladesh, then, perhaps, the international order should also work on a better legal framework of human solidarity that would share the burden.

The Rohingya's familiar humanitarian crisis requires unfamiliar solutions.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.