Rohingya are now victims of Asean members’ self-interest

Though suspended this week, a plan to forcibly repatriate some 700,000 Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar’s Rakhine state is still in the pipeline. The ethnic Muslim minority fled last year from atrocities that the United Nations equates to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Terrified Rohingya refugees who crossed the border told of rapes and mass murders at the hands of Myanmar security forces. Many of these attacks were assisted by local Buddhist residents who, like the government, maintain that the Rohingya do not belong in Myanmar.
The bloody campaign to uproot the Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine was conducted in conjunction with a mass movement led by Buddhist monks. They called on fellow citizens to boycott Burmese-Muslim businesses out of a bogus fear that Islam would “take over” the predominantly Buddhist country.
Instead of questioning the motives and logic of this movement, many Buddhist nationalists in Thailand were inspired by it, wrapping themselves with the Thai national flag and indulging in bigotry in the name of nationhood.
The Thai government appears to have been caught off-guard by the rise in Islamophobic sentiment, but security officials are keeping a close watch on the phenomenon.
As expected, Rohingya refugee families on the repatriation list have gone into hiding, petrified at the possibility of being forced back into the teeth of potentially deadly violence.
A UN fact-finding mission told the Security council this month that “returning them in this context is tantamount to condemning them to life as sub-humans and further mass killing”.
Myanmar denies the allegations of atrocities and insists its security forces were merely responding to a series of coordinated attacks against its military outposts by the rebel Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in August last year.
The little-known and poorly armed ARSA were quickly labelled “terrorists” by the government and military. Meanwhile, longstanding drug-trade militias like the United Wa State Army and its affiliates receive red-carpet treatment from the Myanmar government. The incongruence here might be explained by the fact that there are no plans to force the Wa people across the border to China so the government can seize their property.
But Myanmar is now trumpeting the return of the Rohingya to Rakhine, in a bid to show a horrified international community that allegations of genocide are misguided and the Rohingya exodus was all a big misunderstanding. Sadly, Asean ministers appear to have swallowed this story without bothering to ask the Rohingya about their fears and concerns.
“Don’t make your problem my problem” has long been Asean’s unofficial slogan under its policy of non-interference.
Short-sighted self-interest was in rich supply among leaders at last week’s Asean Summit in Singapore. Malaysia’s appeared to be the only voice that questioned this unsound logic.
Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina is concerned about repercussions in next month’s general election if she comes across as indecisive on the issue. Hasina is also being pressured by China to push the repatriation and give an impression that things are returning to normal.
For Beijing, normalcy means mega-investment and enormous energy projects in this conflict-racked area.
Thailand, meanwhile, is too concerned over maintaining good relations with Myanmar, despite lingering historical mistrust fuelled by overlapping territory claims along the border, the use of proxy armies, and drug trafficking.
The entire region, it seems, is too self-interested to view the atrocities committed against the Rohingya through a humanitarian lens.
As a result we now face a repeat of events in 2012, when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees returned to Rakhine only to be housed in internment camps, without basic services and facilities.
The Rohingya must have the right to return home, but to safe and secure 
conditions.