After months of mounting pressure on the Bangladesh government to deal with the Rohingya refugees, a policy document outlining the new strategy has been rushed through. Devoid of public consultation, the relevant agencies will implement it immediately.
The strategy has again proved the Hasina government as an intellectually bankrupt one in the global arena. The meaning of compassion and humanity has eluded its policy makers by way of their inability to comprehensively address the plight of the Rohingya Muslims.
By unequivocally identifying the Rohingya Muslims as Myanmar nationals although they are denied all citizenship in Burma, it has placed nationalism as sovereign and pivotal in its decision-making. Likewise the strategy acknowledges the 300,000-500,000 refugees already in Bangladesh but insists on regional responsibility and repatriation of the refugees without a care for what they will have to return to. By reducing their desperation and persecution to empty slogans rather than recognising these people to be as the UN stated “the most persecuted people in the world”… the massacres, rape, and denial of basic human rights are meaningless to Sheikh Hasina, who arrogantly dodges Bangladesh’s Islamic responsibility of providing security, refuge, health care and provision to the these helpless people. Rather than open its borders and give sanctuary it has maintained its view that the refugees are economic migrants who deserve to be refused entry.
The strategy gives lip service to the ‘systematic persecution and deprivation’, of the Muslims but then discredits itself by proposing to enhance border security with observation towers, outposts and barbed wire fences, and promises to strengthen intelligence and surveillance of ‘undocumented Myanmar nationals with subversive and criminal activity’. Hence formalising the very stance it had adopted since 2012.
The Hasina government strategy even has the nerve to exclude reputable humanitarian agencies such as Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF whose decades of expertise with dispersed populations, humanitarian relief and salvage operations is far superior to that of their own Bangladeshi Red Cross. Even the UNHCR has been ousted from the proposals, no doubt to sidestep some international standards, monitoring and most importantly transparency.
Our glorious Islamic history set the highest standards for humanity. Under the rule of Islam repeatedly we saw sincere leaders mobilise armies of taqwa to rid the lands of persecution in exchange for justice. From the earliest generation we witnessed the sublime ruling of Islam, which resonated with all and radically changed the region for good. This continued throughout the Abbasid era, with men like Mutassim Billah who saw the value in one woman where as the Hasina government cannot see it in tens of thousands, and right until the end of the Ottoman times, Sultan Abdul Hamid set the example of humanitarian aid by sending more charity to the Irish during the Potato Famine than their own English Queen Victoria.
May Allah سبحانه وتعالى forgive our complacency towards the plight of His beloved Ummah and return to us the righteous Khilafah on the way of the Prophethood, the comprehensive implementation of the Shariah which will guarantee the security of life, property, lineage and faith of every citizen, regardless of nationality, race, status and gender.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Maleeha Hasan