Rohingya Crisis: Should Rakhine Be Under Bangladesh’s Sovereignty?

the quint
Shafiur Rahman

Opinion

Five years ago, an op-ed in a Bangladeshi daily, Dhaka Tribune, ruffled the feathers of the powers that be in Myanmar’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw. Such was the offence taken that the Bangladeshi Ambassador was summoned for a dressing down by the Burmese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the opinion piece, now long removed from the web, journalist Zeeshan Khan had argued that the Rohingya “should have the option of forming an independent country between Bangladesh and Myanmar”.

Now, a broadly similar proposition has resurfaced in an intervention by US Congressman Brad James Sherman, in the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. 

 

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Bring Rakhine under BD -The Asian Age

The Asian Age 

29th June 2019

Kazi Nazrul Islam Ave, Dhaka

A Congressman of the United States has proposed bringing Rakhine state of Myanmar under the Bangladesh territory, arguing that Naypyidaw has failed to protect its nationals in that area.Bradley James Sherman made the proposal in the Congress during a hearing on the budget for South Asia on June 13, urging the US State Department to consider the matter.

Referring to the US supporting the split of South Sudan from Sudan, he asked why the government will not take similar step about Myanmar for the protection of the civil rights of Rohingya people in Rakhine.Sherman, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific of the Congress, described as genocide the atrocities Myanmar forces had unleashed against the Rohingyas, the Muslim minority in the predominately Buddhist country.