Canada must not forget the Rohingya

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/09/2022 (1103 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Aug. 25 marked the five-year anniversary of the last Rohingya massacre that eliminated nearly 400 Rohingya villages from the world map. Five years later, the survivors of the massacre languish in the world’s largest refugee camps, with minimal fundamental human rights and very few basic services, forgotten by most of the world.

Canada, the first western country to declare the situation a genocide, has done little lately as its priorities have shifted almost entirely to other situations around the world.

On Aug. 25, 2017, the Burmese military launched its “clearance operation,” in which nearly half of all Rohingya villages were burned to the ground. Tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered, and an unknown number of mass graves were set up.

Nearly one million survivors were forced to move into refugee camps in nearby Bangladesh, having suffered severe trauma from witnessing people hacked to death, children burned alive and gang rapes of women and girls. Many international civil-society organizations and governments declared the situation a genocide, with the current U.S. administration of President Joe Biden declaring it as genocide in March of this year.

The survivors who managed to escape to the refugee camps in Bangladesh saw some hope in the initial years, when almost every international humanitarian NGO flocked to the camps to provide aid. As years passed, the aid began to dry up and the number of NGOs in the region declined.

Economic activity in the refugee camps has always been prohibited, so there is no opportunity to create self-sustenance. No formal education of Rohingya children is permissible in the camps, as they are considered transient guests; even worse, informal education centres have often been shut down by camp authorities.

Many survivors managed to escape to India and Malaysia, but unfortunately continued to face extreme hardships and dangers. Many who went to Malaysia became victims of human traffickers who would extort money, sell them as slave labour in the fishing industry, or abandon them in the Andaman Sea.

Those who fled to India became targets of severe Islamophobic attacks with the rise of Hindutva movements, were labelled “illegal” and constantly threatened with deportation.

For those who remained in Myanmar, the situation gradually deteriorated. Following the coup d’état on Feb. 1, 2021, the military once again took control of the country. Freedom of movement, education and livelihood became even more restricted and the Rohingya, being the poorest, would continue to disproportionately experience the effects of Myanmar’s severe economic recession, resulting from internal turmoil.

Canada initially showed leadership in the Rohingya crisis, by declaring the situation a genocide, rescinding the honourary Canadian citizenship of Myanmar leader Aung San Su Kyi and committing $300 million in humanitarian aid for Rohingya refugees.

But since then, Canada has been absent from the international forums where the plight of the Rohingya is being addressed.

Canada can become a party to the current cases concerning Rohingya genocide that are open in the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, a promise that Canada has made a few times but hasn’t yet delivered. Canada can also ensure, as an impartial entity, that the Rohingya have a place in the democratic groups it supports in Myanmar.

Canada can also leverage its relations with countries such as India that host large populations of Rohingya refugees to demand they are treated with dignity and provided with their basic human rights. Canada can rally its allies to provide monetary support to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which has appealed for the remaining half of the $880 million required to sustain the refugee camps for 2022.

At the very least, Canada can advocate for access to education for young Rohingya refugees living in the camps. Nearly half a million children are deprived of education, according to a recent statement by Human Rights Watch. When the current minister of international development took office, he explicitly expressed interest in the education of marginalized children around the world in his mandate letter, an issue that the Rohingya community has known well.

Support for the education of young Rohingya refugees would, at the very least, give hope to these children that their future can look different than their present and their past.

Raïss Tinmaung is a Rohingya from Toronto. He has led campaigns, petitions, peaceful rallies, and new chapter formations of RHRN across Canada. He is a renowned speaker at Rohingya forums and interviews, and his writings have been published in both national and international journals and newspapers.