Repatriation of Muslim Refugees from Bangladesh 1978-79

Repatriation of Muslim Refugees from Bangladesh 1978-79
1. Associated Press (AP) report from Teknaf Road - 5 June 1978
2. United Press International (UPI) report from Dacca - 29 June 1978
3. Text of 'Secret' Burma-Bangladesh Repatriation Agreement 9 July 1978
4. United Press International (UPI) report from Cox's Bazaar - 10 October 1978
5. Richard Wigg: The Times 27 October 1978 - Repatriation camps stay empty
6. Richard Wigg: The Times 31 October 1978 - Barren Ricefields after Muslim Flight
7. British Embassy Report on visit by Bangladeshi Foreign Minister - 6 February 1979
8. The 1978-79 Bangladesh Refugee Relief Operation - Alan Lindquist UNHCR 1979
9. British Embassy report on the reception arrangements - 23 February 1979
10. British High Commissioner Stephen Miles: Dacca Report - 10 April 1979
11. British Ambassador's despatch on the completion of the repatriation - 3 July 1979
12. Extract from Chapter IV of 'Arakan' by Klaus Fleischmann, Hamburg 1981
13. The Muslim population in Arakan - Peter Nicolaus, Senior Repatriation Officer,1995
14. The Repatriation of Refugees after the exoduses of 1978 and 1991: CR Abrar 1995
15. The Legal Statisus of Indians in Contemporary Burma - Robert Taylor ISEAS 2006
16. Unpacking the presumed statelessness of Rohingyas - Nyi Nyi Kyaw 2017

The Other Side of the Rohingya AsiaWeek – 14 July 1978

The Other Side of the Rohingya
AsiaWeek – 14 July 1978

 

Rangoon correspondent U Maung Maung reports on his recent (July 1978) secret visit to thetowns of Aykab (Sittwe), Buthidaung and Maungdaw:

Extracts: From the minarets of mosques in the townships I toured, I could hear the familiachant calling the devout to prayer. The sound seemed to support the government’scontention that there was no religious persecution in the area. I certainly saw no sign ofantipathy  among the non-Muslims towards Muslims.

ကုလအတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ် နှုတ်ထွက်ပေးဖို့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ အဖွဲ့တွေ တောင်းဆို

RFA 
လွတ်လပ်တဲ့ အာရှအသံ
2019-06-20

ကော့ဇ်ဘဇားဒေသ ကုတုပလောင် ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းက ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို ၂၀၁၈ ဇွန်လ ၁၆ ရက်နေ့ကတွေ့ရစဉ် AFP Photo

                                         
မြန်မာ့အရေးနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး ကုလသမဂ္ဂရဲ့ကိုင်တွယ်ဆောင်ရွက်ချက်တွေ မအောင်မမြင်ဖြစ်ခဲ့ရတယ်ဆိုတဲ့အခြေ အနေနဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး ကုလသမဂ္ဂအတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ် Antonio Guterres အပါအဝင် ထိပ်တန်း အရာ ရှိကြီးတွေ ရာထူးကနေ နှုတ်ထွက်ဖို့နဲ့ အာဆီယံအရေးပေါ်တုံ့ပြန်ဆောင်ရွက်ရေးနဲ့ သုံးသပ်ရေးအဖွဲ့ ERAT ရဲ့ အစီရင်ခံစာက မြန်မာအစိုးရရဲ့ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုကို အားပေးရာ ရောက်တဲ့အတွက် ပယ်ဖျက်ပေးဖို့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာအဖွဲ့အ စည်း တွေက တောင်းဆိုလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Testimony of a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh in 1978.

ina.fr

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ရွိ နီလာ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းသို့ ေရာက္ရွိေနေသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတိုင္းရင္းသား သန္႔စင္စစ္ဆင္ေရး "နဂါးမင္း" ၏ အစိတ္အပိုင္းတစ္ရပ္အျဖစ္ ၿမန္မာအာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလကတည္းက ၿမန္မာနိုင္ငံထဲက ေနေမာင္းထုတ္မြတ္စလင္လူနည္းစုမ်ား။ ၂၂ ႏွစ္ အရြယ္ရွိ ၿမန္မာေက်ာင္းသား တဦး ၿဖစ္သည့္ ေမာင္ေက်ာ္နုက ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကို ဆန္႔က်င္ က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ရက္စက္ယုတ္မာမွဳ မုဒိမ္းမႈ၊ ႏွိပ္စက္ညႇင္းပန္းမွဳမ်ားၿဖစ္သည့္ လူမိ်ဳးတုန္း သတ္ၿဖတ္ ေနမွဳမ်ားကို ေဆြးေနြးေနပံု။
.........................................................................................................................................

In Bangladesh, refugee camps of the Rohingya Muslim minority have been expelled from Burma since last February by the Burmese authorities as part of the "Dragon" ethnic cleansing operation. In Nila camp, a 22-year-old Burmese student, Maung KYAWNA, discusses the abuses against the Rohingya people in Burma: rape, torture, which he calls... 

Link:https://www.ina.fr/video/I17248665/temoignage-d-un-refugie-rohingya-au-bangladesh-video.html

1978 Rohingya Refugees in World Press

( 30.12.2017 ) Secret 1978 Document Indicates Burma Recognized Rohingya Legal Residence

Secret 1978 Document Indicates Burma Recognized Rohingya Legal Residence

Anders Corr , Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

As I detail in a prior article, Myanmar’s Buddhist government is systematically and repeatedly terrorizing the minority-Muslim Rohingya population into flight. Such attempts at what a senior U.N. official calls “ethnic cleansing” are clearly illegal, as is Myanmar’s related denial of residency rights to the Rohingya. But a 1978 “Repatriation Agreement” with Bangladesh marked “Secret” and published by Princeton University in 2014 constitutes evidence that in 1978, Myanmar acknowledged that the Rohingya had legal residence in the country. 

 Rohingya Muslim refugees along with Indian supporters shout slogans against human rights violations in Myanmar, during a march to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New Delhi on December 19, 2016. Myanmar faces growing pressure from its neighbors over claims its army has carried out a bloody campaign of abuse against its Rohingya minority as ministers held emergency talks on the crisis. More than 27,000 from the Muslim ethnic group have fled northwestern Myanmar for Bangladesh since the start of November to escape a heavy-handed military counterinsurgency campaign. PRAKASH SINGH/AFP

Myanmar justifies its persecution of the Rohingya by publicly claiming that the Rohingya have no legal residence in the country, and should therefore move to Bangladesh, from which they ostensibly originate. The Myanmar government has even asked the international community to stop using the term “Rohingya” in an attempt to erase the Rohingya’s historical ties to Rakhine state that date to the 8th Century A.D. But the secret repatriation agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh in 1978 constitutes evidence that Myanmar recognized the Rohingyas’ legal residence in the country. An Asian diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous confirmed to me that this secret document is authentic. 

After 1962, Myanmar (which was then called Burma) renewed repression of Rohingya political and social associations. In 1977, Burma began registering citizens and screened out ‘foreigners,’ primarily to target the Rohingya. The Rohingya alleged that the Burmese military used forced evictions and widespread rapes and murders against the Rohingya. By May 1978, approximately 200,000 Rohingya refugees had entered Bangladesh and settled into 13 U.N. refugee camps near the border. The Burmese authorities publicly claimed that the fleeing refugees showed the Rohingya’s illegal residence in Burma. But Bangladesh urged Burma to accept the refugees back, and the U.N. used economic carrots and sticks to encourage Burma to agree.

The secret 1978 “Repatriation Agreement” that resulted states, “THE LEADERS OF DELEGATIONS, duly authorised by and on behalf of the Government of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma and the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, following their talks held in Dacca on 7th - 9th July 1978 HAVE AGREED as follows,” and continues, “The Government of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma agrees to the repatriation at the earliest of the lawful residents of Burma [italics mine] who are now sheltered in the camps in Bangladesh on the presentation of Burmese National Registration Cards along with the members of their families …” This constitutes evidence that in 1978, Burma agreed that the Rohingya refugees, most of whose families at one time had national registration cards or other documents, were by and large “lawful residents of Burma.”

Between 1991 and 1992, additional rapes, forced labor, and religious persecution caused another 250,000 Rohingya refugees to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh. A 1992 agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh similarly acknowledged the lawful residence of the Rohingya in Burma. Titled “Joint statement by the foreign ministers of Bangladesh & Myanmar issued at the conclusion of the official visit of the Myanmar Foreign Minister to Bangladesh 23 - 28 April 1992,” the agreement called the fleeing Rohingya “Myanmar residents” and “members of Myanmar society.”

 In this photograph taken on December 13, 2016, Muslim fishermen gather their net while they fish on the shore of Maungdaw facing the Bay of Bengal located in Myanmar's strife-torn Rakhine State near the Bangladesh border. Almost 27,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh since the beginning of November, the UN said on December 13, fleeing a bloody military campaign in Myanmar's western Rakhine State. KHINE HTOO MRAT/AFP/Getty Images

As long as Myanmar violates its past agreements and the human rights of the Rohingya, other states and corporations should increase economic and diplomatic pressure on the country. This should include the threat of economic sanctions, and increased diplomatic pressure on the civilian government, including de facto leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. On the Rohingya issue, her silence is wrong, as is her general support for the Myanmar military, and according to one knowledgeable source, “even protection of the military committing excesses.” At a minimum, she should publicly acknowledge the crimes being committed in Rakhine State, and support the voluntary return of the Rohingya and the Rohingya diaspora. 

Aung San Suu Kyi’s past efforts on solving land disputes have yielded little progress, and the national advisory commission she initiated on Rakhine State has no Rohingya members and is yet to produce recommendations. Her relatively quiet position of support for the Myanmar military hurts more than helps the cause of democracy and human rights. Because of her intransigence on the Rohingya crisis, over 200,000 people have signed a petition calling for the removal of her Nobel Peace Prize.

It is time for all parties, including governments, media, civil society, and corporations, to get much tougher on the Myanmar government and its military over the Rohingya issue. Reference should be made to the 1978 and 1992 agreements signed by Myanmar and recognizing Rohingya legal residence in the country. Myanmar must be held accountable, and must honor its Rohingya agreements, which include a recognition of the Rohingya’s lawful residence in Myanmar. The alternative for Myanmar is to face an international community ready to impose bruising political, diplomatic and economic consequences.

Please follow me on Twitter @anderscorr, or contact me at corr@canalyt.com.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anderscorr/2016/12/29/secret-1978-document-indicates-burma-recognized-rohingya-legal-residence/2/#40049de35ba0

745 - 1978 Repatriation Agreement

1978 Repatriation Agreement by U Ba Sein on Scribd

( 30.12.2016 ) Secret 1978 Document Indicates Burma Recognized Rohingya Legal Residence ( forbes.com )

Contributor
Anders Corr

I cover international politics, security and political risk.

As I detail in a prior article, Myanmar’s Buddhist government is systematically and repeatedly terrorizing the minority-Muslim Rohingya population into flight. Such attempts at what a senior U.N. official calls “ethnic cleansing” are clearly illegal, as is Myanmar’s related denial of residency rights to the Rohingya. But a 1978 “Repatriation Agreement” with Bangladesh marked “Secret” and published by Princeton University in 2014 constitutes evidence that in 1978, Myanmar acknowledged that the Rohingya had legal residence in the country.

( 05.12.2016 ) Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Life of ‘Unwanted’ Rohingyas ( intpolicydigest ) Video

Husnain Iqbal
05 Dec 2016



At a time when the world is debating measures to deal with the refugee influx from the Middle East, the plight of the Rohingyas in another part of the world is being met with indifference. Maybe, this is due to the few numbers involved or that the geo-political placement of this ‘refugee’ crisis is far away from the lands of Western hegemonic interest and the suffering of this community is falling on deaf ears – even those of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

BURMA: RAPE, FORCED LABOR AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN NORTHERN ARAKAN

Asia Watch
A DIVISION OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
May 7, 1992 Vol. 4, Issue 13

BURMA: RAPE, FORCED LABOR AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN NORTHERN ARAKAN

INTRODUCTION 1

ARAKAN AND THE ROHINGYA MUSLIMS.................................. 2
The 1978 Exodus.................................................. ............................ 4
The 1990 Election and Its Aftermath ........................................... ....5

( 31.05.1978 ) နဂါးမင်း စီမံချက် ဒီဗီဒီယို မှတ် တမ်း ၁၉၇၈ ခုနှစ် မေလ (၃၁) ရက်နေ့မှာ ရိုက် ကူး ထားခဲ့တာပါ။

Ro Nay San Lwin

ရိုဟင်ဂျာဂျီနိုဆိုက်အစ .. ဒီဗွီဒီယိုမှတ်တမ်းက ၁၉၇၈ ခုနှစ် မေလ (၃၁) ရက်နေ့မှာ ရိုက်ကူးထား ခဲ့ တာပါ။ နဂါးမင်းစီမံချက်နဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို အတင်းအဓမ္မ ဒုက္ခ သည် ဘဝတွန်းပို့ခဲ့ တုန်း ကပါ။ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေ...