Reports of Rohingya refugees making it out of Bangladesh on Bangladeshi passports and finding employment in the Middle East are pretty disconcerting. Matters get worse when it is noted that the frequent troubles these 'Bangladeshis' get into in places like Saudi Arabia are causing a fairly good number of problems for our bona fide workers there.
We thus have a pretty peculiar situation here. While the Bangladesh government, which sent a three-member team to Riyadh last month to discuss the issue with the Saudi authorities, has said (and with good reason) that these men are Myanmar nationals, the Saudis have cited the Bangladeshi passports that let them into the kingdom. Obviously, one cannot wave off the Saudi position since it is grounded on a reality.
Which brings us to the question of how these Rohingyas acquired Bangladeshi passports. As citizens, albeit persecuted ones, of another country, they are supposed to enjoy the status of refugees under the appropriate international conventions. Obviously, though, in the past many years, even as efforts have been underway in Bangladesh to persuade the Myanmar authorities to take them back, some unscrupulous groups of people have been engaged in organizing Bangladeshi passports for them. Reportedly as many as 700 Rohingyas are now under arrest in Saudi Arabia as Bangladeshi citizens and that on the basis of the passports they possess. It should have been for the Bangladesh authorities to investigate the mystery when reports first began to appear some years ago of Rohingyas being given Bangladeshi passports. The upshot of that failure not to inquire into the situation now seems to be giving us a bad name abroad. The Saudis plan to deport the detained Rohingyas to Bangladesh rather than to their home country.
There is little question that the Rohingya issue is a humanitarian one. Every effort should be expended in persuading the Myanmar authorities to create the conditions that will allow them to go home. Despite the long period of time which has elapsed since they first were pushed into Bangladesh, there is an urgent need for Dhaka and Yangon to find a solution to the issue. At the same time, for the Bangladesh authorities, it is of critical importance that a strict supervision of Rohingyas, in line with accepted international laws, be undertaken and maintained. With reports of Rohingyas having become voters in Bangladesh, acquiring passports and setting off for the Middle East as migrant workers, such supervision is today a necessity. We cannot afford, at least not in countries where a huge number of our citizens are employed, to be embarrassed by people who have travelled abroad as Bangladeshis through fraudulent means.
One expects that the Bangladesh government is seized of the problem. Its responsibility at this point should be to devise a Rohingya policy that takes into account both the short term and mid term aspects of it. Being a resource-strapped country, Bangladesh cannot afford to house the Rohingyas endlessly. Neither can it have them become its citizens by questionable means.
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