12 nationalpost.

com national post, tuesday, March 10, 2009

Heidi Kingstone
in Bangladesh
E
very so often the tragic human
situation of the rohingyas
pushes itself to the forefront of
international consciousness.
lately it has been as a result
of the thai authorities forcing hun-
dreds of desperate men out to sea in
open boats and leaving them to die.
When 220 of these former Burmese
refugees, known as rohingyas, were
discovered, and angelina Jolie talked
about their plight, the spotlight was
on them again, if only briefly.
then, the story disappeared, but
not the reality of the rohingyas im-
possible circumstances. these per-
secuted Muslim refugees come from
largely Buddhist Burma, where they
have lived for many generations, yet
they are stateless; the government
refuses to recognize them as citizens.
instead the government makes their
lives intolerable in the hopes that the
estimated million or so remaining ro-
hingyas will follow the other 250,000
who have already slipped over the
border into the eastern part of Bangla-
desh. the rohingyas and the Bangla-
deshis of the chittigong region speak
a similar language and practise the
same religion. so the country has been
a natural place to look for sanctuary.
But Bangladesh has enough of its
own problems. Beyond being des-
perately poor, with over 150 million
people crammed together on low-
lying land in a space smaller than
england, it is one of the most densely
populated countries on earth. it
doesn t have enough resources to
feed and house its own people, let
alone to absorb the rohingyas.
the refugees break down into four
categories. the first are the 23,620
official and registered refugees who
are housed, fed and looked after
by unhcr (the un refugee organ-
ization). the second are the roughly
5,000 self-settled refugees, those mis-
erable people who have built shelters
on the outskirts of Kutupalong, the
un camp. they have nothing and are
entitled to nothing. the third type,
of which there could be 200,000, are
those refugees who have melted into
the host community. Many, though,
are lured back to the unhcr camp
by the guarantee of regular supplies.
this is a source of concern for the
government in a country where food
insecurity is standard and malnutri-
tion levels are prevalent in 50% to
60% of the general population.
the fourth kind of refugees is also
unregistered, but now have shelter,
sanitation, health care and water pro-
vided by a British-based charity called
islamic relief. these 500 families
lived in inhuman conditions, in the
open air, in a mangrove bed, in make-
shift shacks that were flooded twice a
day by the tidal naaf river; they were
prohibited from moving any further
inland by the government.
to help, islamic relief asked for 20
acres on which to build a site called
leda, in order to rehouse the 10,000
refugees. the government finally
agreed. in order to ensure that the
government didnt change its mind,
the forest had to be quickly cleared,
the drains dug, 360 latrines put in
and 1940 palm leaf structures erect-
ed along, all within three months be-
fore the rainy season .
While most rohingyas consider
themselves Burmese, they have no
desire to return to a place where
they face brutal discrimination.
Men are often taken by the army
and used for forced labour. once the
men go, the women are stranded.
land is routinely confiscated. they
are subjected to numerous impos-
sible restrictions, such as not being
allowed to leave the village without
permission, which also means not
being able to sell goods at market.
they cannot get married without
state authority, and that costs a for-
tune. they are only permitted to
have one child. Women are subject-
ed to sexual violence. there are no
schools, so they remain at the bot-
tom of the pile without any means
of escape. the Burmese government
tells the rohingyas they are Bangla-
deshi; the Bangladeshis tell them
they are Burmese.
the rohingyas have come to
Bangladesh in two major waves:
in 1978 and in 1991, when 250,000
of them flooded across the border
and 230,000 were voluntarily re-
patriated. they returned to find
their situation unimproved and re-
crossed the border.
another option for the rohingyas
is resettlement in third countries.
so far 244 of them have been sent to
canada, new Zealand, australia and
the ireland, but that strategy has its
obvious limitations. the third possi-
bility is local integration giving the
rohingyas Bangladesh citizenship.
its a political issue, says islamic
relief s country director, ahmed
nasr. some sort of pressure should
be used, and Bangladesh also needs
some incentives, maybe more aid.
Meanwhile the un is making the
case for the rohingyas to stay in Ban-
gladesh until the conditions in Burma
are conducive to their return. the
World Food program has been provid-
ing support since the refugees first ar-
rived and plans to spend us$9.6-mil-
lion over the next two years, providing
food and support to the refugees in
the official camps.
something needs to be done, as
many of these people have lived in
camps for 16 years. they are psycho-
logically tired. there are no easy an-
swers but so far neither government
is taking responsibility.
in leda camp people talked to me
about the food shortage. the govern-
ment allows islamic relief to provide
sanitation, housing and health care,
but not food or education. the char-
ity wants the rohingyas to be self-re-
liant, urging them to work in the salt
fields nearby, or as rickshaw wallahs.
Kabizatul Kubra, a Bangladeshi
woman from the local commun-
ity, says she has sympathy for the
rohingyas. Were sad they lost
so much; they are also created by
allah, like us, but we are a poor
country and they should go back.
her concerns are that if food is not
provided, they will turn to thiev-
ing. she accused the women of
being prostitutes and the men of
polluting the water source, but con-
ceded that the community has bene-
fited from the health care centre,
which it is also able to use.
there are serious issues facing
leda, despite the efforts made by is-
lamic relief. there is not enough wat-
er, and there are growing concerns
about hygiene and sanitation as the
available land is already congested
and water resources are declining
rapidly. islamic relief is damming
the canals and, when it rains, using
it as a natural reservoir. But this will
work only in a few months, during
the rainy season. there will be four to
five difficult months before that.
leda may be a well-managed
camp clean and orderly, with a
small market, five doctors, a mental
health clinic and a therapeutic feed-
ing centre but in the end it is a
refugee camp. a woman i met there,
a midwife, said as we walked around
the camp followed by dozens of chil-
dren, we are just floating here, un-
able to start a new life and unable to
forget the old one.
National Post
hkingstone@googlemail.com
issues &
Irwin Cotler:
Human rights jurists
are hoping for a new era
of accountability
islaMic relieF WorldWide
Some Rohingya refugees used to live in these makeshift shacks, which were flooded twice a day by the Naaf River.
irwin Cotler
t
he international criminal courts
order last week for the arrest of
sudanese president omar hassan al-
Bashir on charges of war crimes and
crimes against humanity was noth-
ing less than historic.
never before has the international
community so clearly expressed the
principle that nobody stands above
the law. never before has the court
intervened to bring to account the
acting leader of a country besieged
by destruction and impunity, with
the aim not only of ending the injus-
tice, but also human suffering.
and yet, while last weeks events
are historic, it is not yet clear what
judgment history will pass on them.
international human rights jurists
hope that al-Bashirs arrest warrant
will serve as the harbinger of a new
era of accountability, and perhaps
even deterrence. however, this laud-
able outcome is far from guaranteed.
indeed, the international criminal
courts recent history suggests other-
wise. in May, 2007, the court ordered
the arrest of ahmad harun, sudans
former minister of state for the in-
terior, based on clear evidence that
he was responsible for horrific war
crimes and crimes against humanity
in darfur.
then as now the court ap-
peared to have the support of the
international community while the
sudanese government stood ada-
mantly opposed to the international
justice process. in the end, not only
was harun not taken to the dock of
the accused in the hague, he was
appointed Minister of state for hu-
manitarian affairs. harun became
responsible for hearing the com-
plaints of the victims of the very
atrocities he was accused of planning
and perpetrating.
in the immediate aftermath of the
al-Bashir arrest warrant, we are con-
fronted with a similar crossroads.
president al-Bashir responded to the
courts decision with vitriol, exhort-
ing his followers to reject this new
colonization and claiming that the
real criminals are the leaders of the
Western countries.
relief organizations, which are
working tirelessly in darfur to help
alleviate the humanitarian crisis,
were expelled with ruthless vindic-
tiveness. an estimated 4.7 million
people receive aid in darfur, but
with some 6,500 staff affected by the
governments expulsion, humani-
tarian capabilities are expected to
be cut in half, if not worse. at least
13 groups in total were ordered to
leave or curb their work, including
oxfam, doctors Without Borders
and save the children.
the message president al-Bashir
is sending is clear and deliberate: he
intends to continue to oppress the
people of darfur with the same ruth-
less abandon that led to the courts
order. Faced with prosecution, he is
using his standing ability to bring
horror to darfur as his only lever-
age. in a perverse logic, he is thus
telling the world that accepting his
war crimes and crimes against hu-
manity is the only way to stop them
from continuing.
We cannot let this happen. the
international community must en-
sure that the courts arrest warrant is
enforced through joint support and
action by the united nations se-
curity council and the co-oper-
ation of the african union and
member states of the inter-
national community.
Moreover, members with-
in sudans ruling na-
tional congress party
must finally dis-
tance themselves
from president al-
Bashir, surrender
him to the court
and pursue a
peace process
both with re-
spect to darfur
and the north-
south compre-
hensive peace
agreement.
canada, one of the founders of the
international criminal court treaty
and the architect of the responsibil-
ity to protect doctrine which in-
cludes the responsibility to prosecute
has an important role to play in
promoting respect for the courts de-
cision and ensuring that president al-
Bashir is brought to justice.
the international criminal court
took a courageous step in calling for
president al-Bashirs arrest. the re-
sponsibility now falls on the inter-
national community to ensure
justice is served.
National Post
z Mp irwin cotler is the
special counsel on human
rights and international
justice for the lib-
eral party. he is the
founder and chair
of the save dar-
fur parliament-
ary coalition.
Nobody stands above the law
These persecuted
Muslims come from
largely Buddhist
Burma, where the
government refuses
to recognize them
The International
Criminal Courts
arrest warrant for the
President of Sudan
must be enforced
ThE worsT rEfugEE
crisis in ThE world
Sudanese
President
Omar Hassan
al-Bashir