Tribune Desk
September 15th, 2017
During a session of the Jatiya Sangsad, Chandpur-3 Representative Dr Dipu Moni told the attending session about the Rohingya who were elected into the Myanmar parliament.
Dr Dipu Moni was raising a motion at the parliament about the Rohingya refugee crisis when she detailed the political imbroglio the Rohingya have been a part of since the mid-20th century. She said there have been 17 Rohingya members of the Myanmar parliament till now, and two of them were women and one had been a minister.
“The 1947 elections saw Sultan Ahmed and MA Gaffar win seats from Maungdaw and Buthidaung respectively, just prior to the independence of Burma. Sultan also served as a parliamentary secretary. The 1951 elections saw five Rohingya, including Zura Begum from Maungdaw, one of the first two women to be elected as a member of the parliament.
In 1956, there were six Rohingya MPs in the parliament. Decades later, four MPs from the National Democratic Party for Human Rights were elected in the 1990 election – Shamsul Anwarul Huq, Nur Ahmed, Chit Lwin Ebrahim and Fazah Ahmad.” MA Gaffar had presented a Memorandum of Appeal to the fledgling government of the Union of Burma in 1948, asking for the Rohingya to be recognised as one of the official ethnicities in the country. His proposal was never accepted, but it did lead to more Rohingya participating in politics and joining the government. Sultan Mahmud, a Rohingya politician, had served as the minister of health from 1960-1962.
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Dr Dipu Moni continued that Rohingya political party was banned in 1992, preventing them from participating in politics. But prior to this, the Rohingya have always found a niche in the government, even in its upper echelons.
She stressed on the 1982 Myanmar Nationality Law which did not recognise the Rohingya among the 135 legally recognised ethnic groups of Myanmar, denying the Rohingya people citizenship and basic human rights.
“The Burmese military rulers have been robbing the Rohingya of their rights since the first coup in 1962,” the Chandpur-3 representative added.
She criticised Nobel laureate Aung Saan Suu Kyi, saying: “In her Nobel acceptance speech, she [Suu Kyi] said ‘Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace’ but her once-laudable words now ring hollow.”
The former minister of foreign affairs denounced Myanmar referring to the Rohingya as Bengali trespassers or Bengali in general, referring to several documents which establish the Rohingya as a long-settled ethnic group in Myanmar, since from the eighth century.
Following her speech, the parliament passed a motion to call upon international bodies to exert diplomatic pressure on Myanmar to repatriate the Rohingya and establish their security.
It should be noted that when the Rohingya were able to be participate in politics and join public administration, the country was officially named Burma by the military in power. Both names come from the same etymological source, referring to the Bamar ethnicity which is predominant in the region. Burma was used when speaking, but Myanmar was the written form. Politically, the names have existed as opponents since the 90s to show favour or disliking for the military rule. Since the Myanmar armed forces began attacking the Rohingya in Rakhine, nearly 400,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh. This article was first published on Bangla Tribune
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