A letter from Reader

A letter from Reader

Recently, the so-called Rohinjas issue was popping up at the front pages of media. The news media merely highlighted and emphasized the plight of those refugees fleeing from Myanmar and Bangladesh border due to economic hardship and lobbied to get permanent shelter in Myanmar (not in Bangladesh) for them but they seem neglect the feeling of the Rakhine indigenous people whose population is rather small compare to neighboring country’s booming population and in danger of becoming extinct unless prevented.

Majority of Myanmar population is Buddhists. Speaking of Myanmar, it consists of all nationalities including Rakhine. Therefore, the country is, in general, belongs to the Buddhist people who are traditionally good-natured and broad-minded. They have shown their generosity far enough to the aliens settling in the country since long time. Everyone can see, in downtown Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, the number of mosques and churches are quite larger than Buddhist pagodas even though the Christianity and Islam are not the native religion in Myanmar. On the contrary, Could anyone imagine that what is going to happen if Buddhist minority tries to build a Buddha statue or pagoda in Muslim dominated country?

In fact, we have principally recognized the direct descendants of old Bengali inhabitants in the country as the citizens but it does not mean that they are ethnic Myanmar because of cultural and traditional history. If one insists that the Rohinja is the one of the ethnic groups in Myanmar, we must label him as a poor historian.

It is not reasonable to conclude that all of the boat people were coming from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Many of them neither speak Myanmar nor Rakhine nor have no evidence to identify themselves as Myanmar citizens. Furthermore, population growth among those people is incredibly high according to observer’s figure. Under these circumstances, the squatters will easily be mixed up with local inhabitants who use the same dialect, culture and religion, thanks to the corrupted local authorities. It cannot be denied that the main cause of this issue is due to inept government official measures and corruption which is rife in various areas of public services.

People’s stand on the assimilation of those so-called Rohinjas into Myanmar society has impaled it on the horns of a dilemma, forcing a difficult choice between humanitarianism and nationalism. The locals still vividly remember the slogans chanted by the so-called Rohinjas during the 1950 and 1988 event. They never intended to become a part of Myanmar. It is unfortunate that Junta will leave this delicate and arguable matter for future democratically elected government to find out the righteous solution. In my opinion, such decision will testify to the accountability of a government. India has been facing such kind of problem as they share the border with Bangladesh. In spite of the fact that local people in West Bengal who speak same language and uphold the cultural tradition as Bengalis are recognized as Indian citizens, if not mistakenly noted, Indian government determined to erect the fences along the borderline to prevent the illegal immigrants from entering the country. The media nagging about it could never undermine their decision.


Ko Thet