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Solidarity with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

Statement of the Fourth International

Tuesday 6 March 2018

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The Myanmar military junta has been operating ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people living in its Arakan province for a long time. However, since August 2017 it has waged genocide against the Rohingya which has provoked massive migration to Bangladesh and to other countries as well.

The military junta has brutally tortured women, children and elderly people. They have beheaded, mutilated, burned people and raped women indiscriminately. The victimized Rohingyas crossed the border into Bangladesh in order to save their lives and became refugees. They started to build their huts on a plain which is flood prone and on the hillsides which are liable to landslides. They are around 1 million in number living in sub-human conditions in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh government gave them shelter in temporary camps on humanitarian grounds. But it is not equipped to deal with this huge number of refugees. UNICEF and UNHCR are trying to address the humanitarian needs but their response is insignificant. They have yet to organize the substantial funding to respond the crisis.

What the military junta has done around the Rohingyas is a gross violation of human rights and the perpetrators should be brought to justice. Aung San Suu Kyi, the state Prime Minister of the country and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is silent about the atrocities and the genocide perpetrated by Myanmar military junta.

In order to solve this Rohingya crisis, international solidarity is really necessary. The reaction of the so-called international community has been severely lacking faced with this serious humanitarian crisis. The Rohingya are victims of geopolitical competition. Today Myanmar is opening up to foreign investments. Chinese companies in particular have been investing in Myanmar. Sources claim that certain areas of Arakan has been cleared to build heavy industrial plants on behalf of Chinese companies. [2]

The Fourth International (FI) strongly condemns the genocide perpetrated by Myanmar military junta and demands the immediate creation of conditions for the safe return of the Rohingyas to their own country, the issuing of proper identity documents and the granting of citizen rights to them.

The FI demands justice for the Rohingyas victims, which means the military junta which committed genocide and violated the human right of Rohingyas must be accountable for their actions.

The FI also demands a proper humanitarian response to Rohingya refugees by both the Bangladeshi government as well as by the international community.

The FI calls on all progressive forces to express their solidarity with the refugees.

Belgium

2nd March 2018

Footnotes

[1Arakan is generally known as Rakhine state