On protecting refugees from Myanmar

As a retiree from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, her words were music to my ears. My 23 years of service with UNHCR gave me the opportunity to deal with the plight of refugees in every continent of the world. It is no exaggeration to say that whenever we received positive support from governments on refugee protection, we danced with joy. 

UNHCR served as the focal point for all UN assistance to Bangalee refugees in India during our Liberation War. Some of my colleagues in the organisation told me how proud they felt to have helped the birth of our nation. I often told them that having been born through the world's largest refugee crisis, I had perhaps a better understanding of refugee situations than most of them.

I have always felt that, among all the nations of the world, we would perhaps be most protective of refugees because of our history. In fact, going beyond our recent experience of being refugees ourselves, we have had a long tradition of giving shelter to refugees from all over India and beyond. The prevalence of Sufi Islam in Bangladesh is a testimony to the generous asylum given by our rulers to refugees from Iran in those days. The composite nature of our population speaks of our long tradition of hospitality.

In more recent years, we have also given shelter to many hapless refugees from our neighbouring country, Myanmar. They have come and gone back in large numbers in the last four decades. In more recent years, as the socio-political situation in their places of origin in Myanmar deteriorated, more refugees have tried to enter our country. 

But alas, our hospitality appears to be drying up. In the last two years, our border guards have pushed back so many of these refugees that many of them, trying to go to more distant shores, have perished at sea. We are doing so even today. Reports in our news media in the last few days tell us how much our border officials are once again engaged in turning back many harried asylum seekers from Myanmar.

I know how refugees feel when they are not allowed to enter or disembark in the country of their arrival. My experience between 1978 to early 1990s, with the movement of over two million Vietnamese boat-people in the waters of South East Asia, reminds me of the inhuman suffering they had to endure before many of them perished at sea or were finally able to land in a neighbouring country. Their suffering outweighed those of our own refugees in India. And the generosity shown to the latter by the government and people of India also far exceeded our own treatment of refugees from Myanmar.

I acknowledge that the host population in refugee-receiving countries suffer a great deal due to the presence of a large alien population amidst them. We should remember, however, that we too had imposed a similar burden on our hosts in India. That was resolved even though many in India had feared that the refugees would never return to Bangladesh. Similarly, over five hundred thousand Myanmarese refugees have returned to their country over the last three decades. In fact, I had accompanied a large group of these refugees back to Myanmar in 1979. When circumstances permit, refugees do return home. It is only when the circumstances are dire that they remain in their country of asylum for a long time. The history of world refugees is replete with examples of how they have endured most formidable difficulties and found durable solutions in the end. In the process, they have also contributed in so many ways to the host societies.

As human beings, we owe it to all other human beings to be given an opportunity to find humane solutions to their problems, however impossible they may appear at a given time. Let me end by quoting our Prime Minister: “We must seize this historic opportunity and deliberate on a robust, ambitious and bold commitment to protect refugees both to address current issues and to prepare the world for future challenges.” This is bold statesmanship indeed. 

Let us hope that our Prime Minister will pursue her efforts with the Myanmarese leadership to find durable solutions to the refugees who come to our country. In the meantime, let all those engaged in policy making and in physically pushing back refugees from our territory take heed of the commitment of our Prime Minister to protect refugees.

The writer is a former Director of UNHCR and Chairman Research Initiative, Bangladesh (RIB).