M Serajul Islam
Article
Published: Jun 29,2019
A file photo shows Rohingya refugees queue for aid in Cox’s Bazar in September 2017. — New Age/Reuters
A RECENT appeal of the foreign minister to honorary consuls at home and abroad ‘to engage their respective governments and civil societies to facilitate the repatriation of Rohingya refugees’ surprised many. The minister exposed his lack of knowledge about honorary consuls in making the appeal. The honorary consuls are not diplomats. They pursue their normal professions and provide services for the embassies of the countries that appoint them as facilitators on a voluntary basis. Their role is limited mainly to providing protocol assistance to the embassies and promote the interest of their countries in matters of trade, commerce, consular affairs, tourism, et cetera.
The minister’s appeal was made, first, to the honorary consuls in Dhaka who are appointed by foreign embassies that are accredited concurrently with Bangladesh mostly from New Delhi and, second, the honorary consuls that Bangladesh embassies appoint in important cities abroad where they have no representation. The appeal to the honorary consuls in Bangladesh did not make sense because they would have to respond to the Bangladesh government itself; in fact, to the foreign minister. Bangladesh’s honorary consuls abroad have neither any power nor any locus standi to approach the host governments. That role is for the embassies that appoint them — in other words, for the Bangladesh ambassadors and diplomats under whom they work.
The minister’s appeal to Bangladesh’s honorary consuls abroad as well as the honorary consuls of foreign embassies in Bangladesh was, therefore, as the saying goes, barking up the wrong tree. All the above, therefore, begs a question. Why did the minister not discuss the matter with relevant officials in his ministry before he made the public appeal to the honorary consuls? Any diplomat at the ministry with one posting to a Bangladesh embassy would have been able to guide him about honorary consuls. Perhaps, it underlines a problem of coordination between the minister and the mandarins in the foreign ministry.
The minister, nevertheless, was on the right track on the seriousness of the Rohingya crisis to Bangladesh. The reasons are self-explanatory. First, the Rohingyas, now over a million, are not likely to go back under the present circumstances. In fact, the Rohingyas are still entering Bangladesh. Second, international pressure on the Myanmar military to create the conditions for the Rohingyas to return has vanished. Finally, Bangladesh is now finding it extremely difficult to meet the huge financial costs for caring to such a huge number of Rohingyas on its soil with international assistance dwindling that led the minister in the first instance to make his surprising and wasted call to the honorary consuls to engage with ‘governments and civil societies.’
The consequences for Bangladesh for keeping the Rohingyas on its soil indefinitely are too dangerous to contemplate. The Rohingya situation could eventually develop in the footsteps of the Palestinian problem that has become the principal source of conflict in the Middle East and one of the main causes of instability in the contemporary world because the Palestinians were wrongly and through an international conspiracy hatched by the British forced out of their ancestral homeland and turned into permanent refugees. The Rohingyas are being forced to face the same predicament as the Palestinians. They could turn the eastern part of South Asia with Bangladesh as the epicentre into a new region of conflict, tension and terrorism to put into jeopardy Bangladesh’s development efforts.
The minister must, therefore, set aside his faux pas with the honorary consuls and focus on the Rohingya issue that has thus far not been handled by the foreign ministry correctly. He should examine his ministry’s past mistakes — and there are many of them. The ministry, for instance, silently watched Bangladesh’s closest allies India and China, which could have stopped the Rohingya crisis and the influx of refugees, back the brutal Myanmar military, instead. India’s support for the Myanmar military was brought into focus by Narendra Modi’s unbelievable visit to Myanmar at the height of the Rohingya massacre that glorified the perpetrators of an active genocide and condemned the victims. The Indian prime minister visited Myanmar in denial of the impact and dangers of the Rohingya influx on Bangladesh.
China displayed support for the Myanmar military and apathy towards Bangladesh. It showed no sympathy at all for the Rohingyas. And when the heat was mounting on the Myanmar military mainly because of the role of the international media that displayed graphic coverage of the active genocide, China encouraged Bangladesh to sign the agreement for the repatriation of the Rohingyas in January 2018 that gave the Myanmar military the opportunity to escape the international sanction that was coming. It will remain a mystery what motivated then-Bangladesh foreign minister to sign the agreement when it was plainly obvious that it was allowing the Myanmar military off the hook and that under it, not a single Rohingya would return.
The current foreign minister while revisiting the past mistakes must realise that both India and China have more important strategic interest in supporting Myanmar on the Rohingya issue than standing behind Bangladesh. That situation has not changed for either. Therefore, he must seek the solution to the Rohingya crisis more at the multilateral level than bilateral and most certainly not with China or India. And while looking at the past, he must revisit why his predecessor failed to insist that the Rohingyas must be referred to by name in the January 2018 agreement for their repatriation. That failure deprived the Rohingyas of an array of human rights that all ethnic groups are entitled under the international law.
It will not be easy for the minister to get a handle on the dangerous and extremely difficult Rohingya crisis. Thus far, international support for dealing with the Rohingyas has come mainly because of the efforts of prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Unfortunately, her own foreign ministry and the country’s closest friends, namely India and China, let her down. It was incredible that when the Rohingya issue drew international attention where even president Trump was ready to impose game-changing sanctions on Myanmar, the Bangladesh foreign ministry hailed the China-sponsored agreement under which Myanmar agreed to take only 1,500 refugees a week and that too after a verification process that was entirely in their hands as one of the best agreements that the foreign ministry had ever signed. It is no wonder that no refugees have gone home under that agreement and none are expected to return either.
Postscript: The prime minister said in the parliament recently that ‘if we cannot send them back soon (the Rohingyas), there is an apprehension that our security and stability will be hampered.’ That underlined the dangers that an unresolved and lingering Rohingya crisis poses for Bangladesh. Unfortunately, there are no resolutions of the Rohingya crisis in sight because the opportunities that came Bangladesh’s way have been wasted, a lot of it by the Bangladesh foreign ministry and little else is in sight.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
The minister’s appeal was made, first, to the honorary consuls in Dhaka who are appointed by foreign embassies that are accredited concurrently with Bangladesh mostly from New Delhi and, second, the honorary consuls that Bangladesh embassies appoint in important cities abroad where they have no representation. The appeal to the honorary consuls in Bangladesh did not make sense because they would have to respond to the Bangladesh government itself; in fact, to the foreign minister. Bangladesh’s honorary consuls abroad have neither any power nor any locus standi to approach the host governments. That role is for the embassies that appoint them — in other words, for the Bangladesh ambassadors and diplomats under whom they work.
The minister’s appeal to Bangladesh’s honorary consuls abroad as well as the honorary consuls of foreign embassies in Bangladesh was, therefore, as the saying goes, barking up the wrong tree. All the above, therefore, begs a question. Why did the minister not discuss the matter with relevant officials in his ministry before he made the public appeal to the honorary consuls? Any diplomat at the ministry with one posting to a Bangladesh embassy would have been able to guide him about honorary consuls. Perhaps, it underlines a problem of coordination between the minister and the mandarins in the foreign ministry.
The minister, nevertheless, was on the right track on the seriousness of the Rohingya crisis to Bangladesh. The reasons are self-explanatory. First, the Rohingyas, now over a million, are not likely to go back under the present circumstances. In fact, the Rohingyas are still entering Bangladesh. Second, international pressure on the Myanmar military to create the conditions for the Rohingyas to return has vanished. Finally, Bangladesh is now finding it extremely difficult to meet the huge financial costs for caring to such a huge number of Rohingyas on its soil with international assistance dwindling that led the minister in the first instance to make his surprising and wasted call to the honorary consuls to engage with ‘governments and civil societies.’
The consequences for Bangladesh for keeping the Rohingyas on its soil indefinitely are too dangerous to contemplate. The Rohingya situation could eventually develop in the footsteps of the Palestinian problem that has become the principal source of conflict in the Middle East and one of the main causes of instability in the contemporary world because the Palestinians were wrongly and through an international conspiracy hatched by the British forced out of their ancestral homeland and turned into permanent refugees. The Rohingyas are being forced to face the same predicament as the Palestinians. They could turn the eastern part of South Asia with Bangladesh as the epicentre into a new region of conflict, tension and terrorism to put into jeopardy Bangladesh’s development efforts.
The minister must, therefore, set aside his faux pas with the honorary consuls and focus on the Rohingya issue that has thus far not been handled by the foreign ministry correctly. He should examine his ministry’s past mistakes — and there are many of them. The ministry, for instance, silently watched Bangladesh’s closest allies India and China, which could have stopped the Rohingya crisis and the influx of refugees, back the brutal Myanmar military, instead. India’s support for the Myanmar military was brought into focus by Narendra Modi’s unbelievable visit to Myanmar at the height of the Rohingya massacre that glorified the perpetrators of an active genocide and condemned the victims. The Indian prime minister visited Myanmar in denial of the impact and dangers of the Rohingya influx on Bangladesh.
China displayed support for the Myanmar military and apathy towards Bangladesh. It showed no sympathy at all for the Rohingyas. And when the heat was mounting on the Myanmar military mainly because of the role of the international media that displayed graphic coverage of the active genocide, China encouraged Bangladesh to sign the agreement for the repatriation of the Rohingyas in January 2018 that gave the Myanmar military the opportunity to escape the international sanction that was coming. It will remain a mystery what motivated then-Bangladesh foreign minister to sign the agreement when it was plainly obvious that it was allowing the Myanmar military off the hook and that under it, not a single Rohingya would return.
The current foreign minister while revisiting the past mistakes must realise that both India and China have more important strategic interest in supporting Myanmar on the Rohingya issue than standing behind Bangladesh. That situation has not changed for either. Therefore, he must seek the solution to the Rohingya crisis more at the multilateral level than bilateral and most certainly not with China or India. And while looking at the past, he must revisit why his predecessor failed to insist that the Rohingyas must be referred to by name in the January 2018 agreement for their repatriation. That failure deprived the Rohingyas of an array of human rights that all ethnic groups are entitled under the international law.
It will not be easy for the minister to get a handle on the dangerous and extremely difficult Rohingya crisis. Thus far, international support for dealing with the Rohingyas has come mainly because of the efforts of prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Unfortunately, her own foreign ministry and the country’s closest friends, namely India and China, let her down. It was incredible that when the Rohingya issue drew international attention where even president Trump was ready to impose game-changing sanctions on Myanmar, the Bangladesh foreign ministry hailed the China-sponsored agreement under which Myanmar agreed to take only 1,500 refugees a week and that too after a verification process that was entirely in their hands as one of the best agreements that the foreign ministry had ever signed. It is no wonder that no refugees have gone home under that agreement and none are expected to return either.
Postscript: The prime minister said in the parliament recently that ‘if we cannot send them back soon (the Rohingyas), there is an apprehension that our security and stability will be hampered.’ That underlined the dangers that an unresolved and lingering Rohingya crisis poses for Bangladesh. Unfortunately, there are no resolutions of the Rohingya crisis in sight because the opportunities that came Bangladesh’s way have been wasted, a lot of it by the Bangladesh foreign ministry and little else is in sight.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
No comments:
Post a Comment