Muhammad Abdul Bari - The Rohingya Crisis: A People Facing Extinction

The Rohingya Crisis. A People Facing Extinction

First published in England by

Kube Publishing Ltd
Markfield Conference Centre
Ratby Lane Markfield Leicestershire
LE67 9SY United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 1530 249230 Fax: +44 (0) 1530 249656

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Muhammad Abdul Bari, 2018 All rights reserved

The right of Muhammad Abdul Bari to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84774-124-0 Paperback
ISBN 978-1-84774-125-7 ebook
All Author proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the education of Rohingya children, wherever they are.

Map and Image credits

Map 1 Shutterstock; Map 2 Wikimedia CIA World Factbook, Public Domain; Map 3 Wikimedia Rohingya people in Rakhine (Arakan) State in Myanmar; Map 4 ERCC Portal European Commission; Map 5 Shwe Gas Movement Shwe.org; Image 1 Shutterstock; Image 2 Shutterstock

Cover image: Joel Carillet, iStock
Cover Design: S4Carlisle Publishing Services
Typesetting: S4Carlisle Publishing Services

Printed by: IMAK ofset, Turkey

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all people who have suffered from ethnic cleansing and genocide around the world.

Endorsements

Muhammad Abdul Baris book The Rohingya Crisis provides a superb historical analysis of why Rohingya Muslims have been subject to decades of discrimination and exclusion. His extremely informative history on the persecution that the Rohingya have faced will undoubtedly help build awareness and understanding of the plight of the Rohingya population.

Well-sourced and accessible, this excellent book should be read by anyone wanting to understand the unbearable suffering currently afflicting the Rohingya.

Rushanara Ali , MP for Bethnal Green and Bow

Co-Chair, All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma

We should all feel shame and anger of this terrible betrayal of the Rohingya people. This carefully written and eloquent short book by Muhammad Abdul Bari is carefully documented and records facts in a sober way. He makes clear that there is no question that what has occurred is a genocide.

Peter Oborne , Columnist for the Daily Mail and Middle East Eye

For anyone who wants a concise and readable explanation of the situation of the Rohingya, this is the book. The August 2017 Burmese military offensive which drove around 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh did not come out of the blue. It came after the systematic increase of repression and human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslim minority by the Burmese government and military. This book details the history and provides the context to help understand how and why this crisis happened, including the failure of the international community to protect one of the worlds most persecuted minorities.

Mark Farmaner , Director, Burma Campaign UK

Dr Muhammad Abdul Baris book about the plight of the Rohingya is both timely and significant. I congratulate him for bringing to the fore the scale and barbarity of the sheer pain and suffering inflicted on a people for so long. As someone who has witnessed genocide and massacres in my beloved Bosnia not long ago at the hands of the Serbs, we really do feel and understand the suffering of the Rohingya Muslims. Like in Bosnia, what is striking in Myanmar is that the Rohingya have been, and continue to, suffer in silence without any credible international response. The feelings of isolation, helplessness and the lack of action from neighbours and those who boast freedom, human rights and justice, is the most difficult to accept.

The Serbian crime against Muslims in Bosnia was the worst in Europe since World War II, leaving a dark stain on Europes human rights record, but the unending persecution of the Rohingya is a new world low which will affect generations to come. This book, I hope, will serve as an alarm bell to remind us all that: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. (Martin Luther King)

Dr Mustafa Ceri , Former Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Muhammad Abdul Bari has written a book that had to be written. While the world looks away, genocide is being committed by the Myanmar authorities against the Rohingya Muslims. The plans to erase the Rohingya and any memory of them cannot succeed. This urgent book bears witness to the oppression of the Rohingya so that there are no excuses: that we did not know. This book is a reminder that no justice for the Rohingya diminishes us all.

S. Sayyid , Professor of Rhetoric and Decolonial Thought, University of Leeds

In camps from Calais to Coxs Bazar, there are hundreds upon thousands of people who have been forced by violence, disaster and persecution, to flee their homes. On this often perilous journey, they lose a part of themselves, who they are, along the way. We often say Never Again, but every day there continues to be systematic persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, while in the refugee camps, children are facing trafficking and malnutrition. The Government of Bangladesh and British humanitarian agencies are responding to challenges on the ground, but much more needs to be done to ensure that those responsible for genocide are brought to justice.

With this short book by Dr Bari, there is now an easily accessible record of the historical background and the unfolding humanitarian tragedy. It includes an eloquent personal perspective of the responsibility that now rests on the shoulders of the UN, the Bangladesh Government and other key players. He urges that any repatriation of refugees to Myanmar must ensure their full citizenship status, freedom of movement and removal of the discriminatory laws of the past. This book is an effort to keep the Rohingya issue alive.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan , MP for Tooting, UK

Contents

Maps and Images

In the aftermath of the Myanmar militarys latest vicious operation against the Rohingya, volumes of information from various media sources and individuals close to the conflict continued to pour onto my desk whilst writing this monograph. I am grateful to all those, in Bangladesh and elsewhere, who have been conscientiously monitoring events on the savage eviction of a people from their homeland in Rakhine State to Bangladesh and regularly sending me reports, books, articles, news links and pictures.

I am indebted to Rumman Ahmed, Peter Oborne and Dr Jamil Sherif for their meticulous observations and thoughtful ideas as well as their inspiring comments on the first draft. My thanks go to Mark Farmaner, Dr Thomas MacManus, Kyaw Win, Nick Ryan and Salman Farsi for their contribution and ideas in the final draft of the manuscript.

Time is of the essence in such a volatile situation and I am grateful to Kube Publishing for being able to get the book edited, designed and printed in such a short time.

I am grateful to our youngest son, Adib, who in spite of heavy pressure in his job and studying towards a professional qualification, was able to do the editing of the subsequent drafts. My gratitude to Sayeda, my wife, and other members of the family for their encouragement knows no bound. Acknowledging all the others by name is going to be an impossible task.

This short book has been written with the main aim of helping the long-persecuted Rohingya people in their struggle for survival and justice. It is imperative for morally upright people anywhere in the world to stand with the Rohingya until they all are repatriated to their homeland in Myanmar with safety and full citizenship rights. All proceeds from this book will go to charity, especially toward the education of Rohingya children.