Re: Your news concerning illegal activities of Rohingyas in Bangladesh:Habib Siddiqui, USA

Thursday October 27 2005 14:52:15 PM BDT
Habib Siddiqui, USA
Re: Your news concerning illegal activities of Rohingyas in Bangladesh: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1527268,000500020001.htm

Dear Editor,

The reported link between the Rohingya Muslims, now living as refugees in Bangladesh with extremists of JMB is untrue. Rohingyas, like most Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims, follow a very liberal branch of Islam and are Hanafi Muslims. The JMB, on the other hand, follows an extreme ideology, with some commonality with Osama Ben Laden's group. From the eyewitness reports that I have been able to gather from the refugee Rohingya community, the fact is they were handing over books and gifts in an Iftar party, when pro-Myanmar anti-Rohingya Arakanese/Burmese Maghs called police saying that the Rohingyas were distributing arms in the Iftar party. So, without any verification, the police raided the refugee camp and arrested some refugees.

They are victims of the very refugee problem and not of any crime, let alone the arms distribution in an Iftar party. The reason that many Rohingyas again have returned to Bangladesh, in spite of the Dhaka-Yangon pact addressing the repatriation of the Rohingy refugees, is that to this very day their basic human rights are routinely denied in Myanmar. There is no security for them there.

They are denied their citizenship to Myanmar, and are being accused of being illegal settlers from Bangladesh, while their ancestry to the land dates back to the 7th century CE. They are denied basic opportunities of livelihood there. Even for a simple marriage, they have to wait almost a year to get the necessary permission and that too after lots of bribes are paid to government officers.

Many of their leaders (and their family members) are now serving long prison times on citizenship and other ludicrous charges. In this regard, the matter of U Kyaw Min is an exemplary one. He is now serving 47 years prison time in the notorious Insein prison. The Amnesty International has a long list of such detainees

(see: http://www.aappb.org/prisoners2.html Kyaw Min's name is # 311 on that list). What is needed from the International community is to put pressure on the military junta to secure and guarantee basic human rights of these Rohingyas, failing which a plebiscite in the model of East Timor needs to be conducted under the UN auspices to determine whether Rohingyas should opt for an independent state or live within Myanmar as equal citizens.

Regards, Dr. Habib Siddiqui

(an anti-war and human rights activist) Philadelphia, USA

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