Everyone knows when seen from outer space the world is round and there are human beings on it. We call the human beings, who are us, the people of the world. Yes, it belongs to every one of us because we are the people of the world, right? Wrong! There is a huge group of human beings who cannot call themselves ‘people’ of the world because they do not have a place in it. Do you know whom I am talking about? Yes, I am talking about the Rohingya populace. If you got it right the first time then my congratulations to you!
The Rohingya masses do not have a permanent land anywhere in this world, a place where they can settle down and call home. Once upon a time, they thought the Rakhine state in Myanmar, where they had been living for decades, was their home. But not anymore. In the year 1982, the Myanmar government outlawed them, saying that they were not citizens of Myanmar and that they had been staying illegally, all the while. They had said and are still saying that Bangladesh has the full rights on them as they had emigrated from that region originally, and that they were Muslims, the official religion of Bangladesh. They asserted that the mostly Muslim Rohingya populace have got no rights to be the citizens of the predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.
The Myanmar military has been forcing them to leave for Bangladesh for several years now. It is still going on. However, Bangladesh does not recognize and accept them as its own. Even the several thousands of Rohingya community that Bangladesh took in under refugee-status have been forced to be transported to some remote islands, the latest being Bhasan Char, in Bay of Bengal. To Bangladesh, the Rohingya do not belong to the mainland as they are the people of Myanmar.
So this is the complicating issue; Bangladesh says the Rohingya are not its citizens. Myanmar also says likewise. Other countries are also not welcoming them with open arms. And they can’t wait to see their backs of. Even the British, once the colonial rulers of Myanmar, then called Burma, seem to have washed their hands off them. Who are the Rohingya then, without any part of the world to call their own? Aliens in human forms? That the world looks upon suspiciously?
