Myanmar conflict threatens regional
stability By Subir Bhaumik
AGARTALA and IMPHAL - As a rising number
of Rohingya Muslims flee sectarian conflict in
Myanmar and take sanctuary in India's northeastern
states, the flow of refugees is putting a new
strain on bilateral relations. New Delhi has
called on Naypyidaw to stem the rising human tide,
a diplomatic request that Indian officials say has
so far gone unheeded.
Ongoing sporadic
violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhist
Rakhines in western Myanmar has left more than 80
dead and displaced tens of thousands. The Myanmar
government's inability or unwillingness to stop
the persecution of Rohingyas has provoked strong
international reaction, raising calls for
retribution in radical corners of the Islamic
world, including a threat from the Pakistani
Taliban to attack Myanmar's diplomatic missions
abroad.
Fears are now rising that
Myanmar-borne instability is spreading
to India's northeastern
frontier regions, threatening to spiral into a
wider regional security dilemma. At the same time
that Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines
clashed in Myanmar, fighting erupted between
Muslims and Hindus in India's northeastern Assam
State. As in Myanmar, where the Rohingyas are
considered illegal Bangladeshi settlers, the
Muslims targeted in Assam are accused of being
ethnic Bengalis who have migrated illegally from
Bangladesh.
"Unless checked firmly, the
Rohingya influx could become a big headache in
northeast India. The Rohingyas have nowhere to go
after Bangladesh foiled their attempts to cross
over from Myanmar by land and sea," says
Sabyasachi Basu Roy Choudhury, an expert in
migration patterns on the India-Myanmar-Bangladesh
frontier. "They are unwelcome in other countries
of Southeast Asia like Thailand, so they will
naturally turn towards India."
Before the
explosion of violence in Myanmar, over the past
two years more than 1,400 Rohingyas had been
intercepted in three northeastern Indian states -
Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur - while trying to
enter illegally, according to reports sent by the
state police forces to the Indian home ministry.
While almost half of them were caught
while trying to enter Indian territory from
Myanmar's Rakhine State, the rest were nabbed
while trying to enter India from temporary
shelters in Bangladesh's Chittagong region. The
shelters, supported by the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
were first established in the late 1970s when
Rohingyas started to flee persecution in Myanmar.
Bangladesh's former military ruler General
Zia ur Rahman was at one point of accused by
Myanmar, then known as Burma, of supporting
Rohingya insurgents. The number of these shelters
had diminished in recent years as many Rohingyas
either returned to Myanmar with UNHCR support or
melted permanently into Bangladesh or further
afield into South Asia, Southeast Asia or the
Middle East.
"Those trying to enter
through [the northeast Indian state of] Tripura
came from Bangladesh [which border Tripura], where
the Rohingyas are under considerable pressure to
go back to their native [Rakhine] province in
Myanmar. But those trying to enter directly to
India [from Myanmar] ended up in Mizoram and
Manipur, which have direct borders with Myanmar,"
said a senior Indian federal intelligence official
who requested anonymity.
He said that most
of the Rohingyas arrested in Tripura had tried to
flee Bangladesh after the country's Awami League
government started pressuring them to return to
Myanmar two years ago. But many of them have been
captured in the past two months in Manipur and
Mizoram, trying to escape persecution in Rakhine.
Basu Roy Choudhury said many Rohingyas are
moving from their temporary shelters in
Bangladesh's Chittagong region to settle down in
the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), where the
Buddhist Chakma and Marma tribes resent Muslim
settlements.
Militant
history Militants from these tribes fought
a two-decade guerrilla war against the Bangladesh
government (1976-1997), during which Bengali
Muslim settlers were regularly attacked and killed
in large numbers, provoking inevitable
retaliation. In 1997, the Shanti Bahini (Peace
Force) which ran the armed campaign for the
Buddhist tribes in southeast Banglahdesh against
government troops signed an accord with Dhaka.
Their fighters laid down arms and returned
to normal life when Bangladesh promised to create
an autonomous council to fulfill the tribal
aspirations for self rule and also to stop Muslims
from settling in the plains districts of the
Chittagong Hill Tracts. But because those autonomy
promises were never fully fulfilled, the Buddhist
tribespeople there remain restive and any
large-scale settlement of Muslims, Rohingyas or
Bengalis, some fear could reignite the conflict.
"So the Rohingyas will obviously be
unwelcome in Chittagong Hill Tracts and that could
create fresh tensions," says Basu Roy Choudhury.
Islamist groups in Bangladesh are keen to
undermine the demography of the Chittagong Hill
Tracts by pushing more Muslims into the area, as
this is the only region in Bangladesh with a
non-Muslim majority. The Jamait-e-Islami, which
joined the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led
coalition that ruled the country between 2001 and
2006, continues to view such migration as
favorable to bolstering its grass roots support
base and "Islamizing" of the area.
Then,
Jamait ministers encouraged Islamic
non-governmental organizations supported by Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan to help Muslim settlers with
settlement funds to move into the Chittagong Hill
Tracts. Other smaller Islamic groups continue to
support Muslim settlements in the area. The local
Buddhist tribespeople, meanwhile, either support
their own groups or the present ruling Awami
League and its more secular agenda.
"A
recent conference of [Chittagong Hill Tracts]
groups in Thailand's northern Chiang Mai city
expressed apprehension about this trend," says
Mrinal Chakma, a researcher with Calcutta's
Maulana Azad Center for International Studies.
"Islamist groups are backing the Rohingya
settlements in the CHT, though the present
government may not be encouraging it."
The
Rohingyas are also largely unwelcome in India's
northeastern region, where nativist groups angered
by the illegal migration of settlers from
Bangladesh periodically attack Muslim settlers.
Most of the Rohingyas caught entering northeast
India have told security officials during
questioning that their destination was Assam, 35%
of whose 25 million people are Muslims, mostly of
Bengali origin.
"With a large Muslim
population, Assam may be a natural attraction for
the Rohingyas, because from there they can melt
into other states of India," says Samir Das, who
has researched the nativist movements in Assam.
Muslims of Bengali origin have been the
target of recent violence by indigenous Bodo
tribespeople in western Assam. More than 80 people
have died in the riots that erupted in late July
and more than 250,000 people, both Bodos and
Muslims, have been displaced. The Assam government
was forced to call out the army to control the
situation and was given shoot-at-sight orders to
quell the violence.
"So for those
Rohingyas headed for Assam, it would be a frying
pan-to-fire situation. It could further complicate
the fragile ethnic balance of Assam and the rest
of India's northeast, where there's considerable
angst over alleged illegal migration from
Bangladesh," said Samir Das.
India has
asked its northeastern states and border guards to
maintain a tight vigil on the country's borders
with Bangladesh and Myanmar to prevent a further
influx of Rohingyas. Officials say they are
worried over the growing arc of violence after
Muslims in its financial capital Mumbai and in the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh attacked natives
of northeastern states, easily identifiable by
their Mongoloid features, at the weekend in
retaliation against the violence against Muslims
in Assam.
Police opened fire in Mumbai on
Saturday to control the rioting, in which two died
and more than 50 others were injured, including
several police. During their protests against the
violence against their co-religionists in Assam,
the Indian Muslim groups in Mumbai and elsewhere
have also protested against Rohingya persecution
in Myanmar, even calling for suspension of
diplomatic ties with Myanmar.
Subir
Bhaumik, a known specialist on Northeast India
and Bangladesh, is a former BBC correspondent.
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