Rohingya Crisis in Bangladesh

Rohingya ; A dichotomy of Humanitarian Help - Looming Impediment

Imran A. Chowdhury

Bangladesh is perhaps one of the most generous countries in the present world in terms of her quest for the humanitarian aspects. The country was born from the backdrop of a massive human catastrophe; genocide and a Bengali holocaust perpetuated by the military juntas of Pakistan in 1971. When the world’s richest and advanced countries are shying away from sheltering millions of displaced people littered all around the world whereas Bangladesh had the magnanimity to give refuge to the Rohingya population at the behest of our passionate Honourable Prime Minister who compromised our own population issues and other social safety net arrangements to help those who were in great danger of their lives from the onslaught of the Myanmar’s annihilation.

There are in excess of 700,000 refugees presently living in Bangladesh and there seems to be an unknown and unheard unwillingness of their repatriation. When the word organisations are proactively trying their best to minimise this enormous economic, social, environmental & politico-religion burden from the shoulders of Bangladesh.

Rohingya issues have attracted some unasked for and unwanted sympathisers from all around the world. Who were shedding of crocodiles tears for these people where they are not even flinching an eyelid for scores of people who are facing the same kinds sectarian and racial and religious persecution in their own doorstep, yet they had no dearth of compassion for the Rohingya people. Which makes an analytical brain wonder!

Friends of Bangladesh and other international humanitarian agencies were the most compassionate and proactive to help those people in distress and funded Bangladesh amply generously to cope with this. There could be another issue which need to be addressed here about the role of the international NGOs too. The latest report in the newspapers indicates that some of the NGOs are even involved in making sharp tools too. Many have indicated that there is a massive disparity in terms of NGO vs Refugee expenditure percentage ratio. These are some of the staggering data to augment to a rather sinister ploy. It was also reported that, they are the one who have played an important role to not to allow the refugees to be moved to the island where the government had made arrangements to re house the Rohingya.

Watching the plights of refugees from the plush hotels and bars of Cox’s Bazaar is more important than that of living secluded in a remote island. I guess that was not their aspirations. The proof of these assertions are in the pudding as the latest report indicates that there were numbers of NGOs who are barred from operating in the camps by the Government for their unethical activities.

I myself was a refugee in India in 1971 as an 11 years old I know the plight of a refugee full well. There is no pride in being a refugee. But when I was in India no one tried to cash in my situation and incite discontent in us. Poverty and impoverishment were at its peak at the time too. Whereas it seemed that there was a lot of un-called for attention for the Rohingya from certain part of the world. Mammoth unregulated and unaccounted for clandestine fund raising was going on in by pseudo NGOs and hastily manufactured charitable organisations in the West all in the name of the Rohingya

people. It seemed that, it was one of the most dangerous activities to accomplish with and the concocted stories in the social media was spreading like bush fire long before the actual avalanche of the exodus of the Rohingya people started in reality. These were and are still very dubious and suspicious in nature. The Rohingya population perhaps became a pingpong ball for those who want to create some kind social imbalance and or start a new kind of socio political agenda. Charity tourism from the West was rife and the sudden mushroom growth of Neo philanthropists was visibly noticeable. Though Bangladesh authorities were very vigilant and proactive yet there were hundreds and thousands of these charity tourism for selfies and portraying social, economic & poverty of those displaced people was their agenda to incite some kind of reprisal elsewhere. There were photo sessions to show case relief distribution to impress the donors to their fund raising.

Which was at times very disturbing and alarming. An army of vested quarter was born from the ashes of this Rohingya crisis in far away places. Places where anti Bangladesh liberation forces and anti status qua fraternity are thriving to obliterate what Bangladesh has achieved over the years to make it emulate those derelict countries who are riddled with poverty, tyranny, killing and full blown fundamentalistic regime.

Have the Rohingya population been roped in by those vested quarter ? Have they brainwashed these people to not to go back to their place of birth? The conditions in the refugee camps with no birth control and education awareness and the prerequisites of brainwashing, radicalising and inculcating violent extremism suits like a text book experiment! Also there is this mythical wish of establishing a pan sub continental hinterland of a radical patch might have played some kind of role to recruit these poor, impoverished, derelict and uneducated camp dwellers. Is another matter to probe and subsequently detox them from these perils.

Far fetched thought of vote bank politics may be also secretly playing a pivotal role there too. The mammoth population growth in those camps are a sign of looming danger to imbalance the demography of the whole region and by the

next one or two generations these refugee population will amalgamate with the mainstream society without a trace of their origin; but what it might pose is a huge chunk of vote bank for those ideological political outfits.

It reminded me when I was a student in college in 1977 79 the first bout of the refugees across the border from the then Burma started to pour in to Bangladesh and there was spontaneous setting up of a religious ideology based NGO. Which started to function there under the auspicious assistance and sponsorship of the government at the time. They were proactively recruiting volunteers from the colleges to work for them in the camps and many have since turned into one of them in no time. The present scenario for some unknown reason resonates the old foot print and reminds the historiography.

Fishing in murky water is always the trend of those groups who are out there to capitalise on people’ misery, poverty, displacement, I wonder has this happened with the Rohingya population too? Nevertheless, the generous help from Bangladesh for the people in distress may pose as a looming as an over arching social, political and demographic impediment to say the least.

Its heart wrenching to find that, there are people who thrive to exist in this world to capitalise to establish their agenda by using a very distressed and vulnerable group of refugee. Also there are philanthropic outfits of international repute who pets ulterior motives to have a life in a gravy train at the cost of the misery of these poor homeless, down trodden displaced population. I wonder when will they learn the lesson of Humanity.

[Writer is a

UK based Founder & CEO of a ThinkTank & an NGO.www.cppp.org]