September 20, 2024
By Jihye Jo, S. Korea
When dealing with international conflicts, we often return to the fundamental question of whether people’s lives are equally valuable. While the news about the deaths of five wealthy people who went to see the wreckage of the Titanic still receives attention and is often covered as news, stories about the Rohingya, a persecuted ethnic group in Myanmar, are only reported here and there as fragments.
It may be a bit of an extreme metaphor, but when we see people’s lives being treated seriously or lightly depending on their country of origin or economic interests, we are reminded of the common question of whether all people’s lives are equally valuable. And as I find myself becoming numb to the stories of so many Rohingya victims, Rohingya people who have lost their families, and Rohingya women who have been victims of sexual violence by the Myanmar government and the Arakan rebels, I wonder how I can practice the value that all lives are precious without becoming numb to the terrible tragedy.
<Last month – 7th anniversary of the Rohingya genocide, 20,000 new refugees flowing into Bangladesh
due to the second genocide, Bangladesh government urging resettlement of Rohingya refugees to third
countries>
There have been many changes in the Rohingya community over the past month (August-September 2024).
First, August 23rd was the 7th anniversary of the Rohingya genocide. 21 domestic civil society organizations in solidarity with the Rohingya, including the St. Francis Peace Center and the Jesuit Center for Human Rights and Solidarity, held a press conference to condemn the Myanmar military on the 7th anniversary of the Rohingya genocide near the Myanmar Embassy in Korea, urging the international community and the Korean government to actively intervene. Meanwhile, in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, people also participated in the rally, holding papers with messages such as “Rohingya Genocide Remembrance,” “Hope is home,” and “We Rohingya are the citizens of Myanmar.”
In contrast to these peaceful protests at home and abroad, there is news of a second genocide, even worse than the 2017 Rohingya massacre. “My relatives, colleagues and friends in Rakhine state say this is worse than 2017, and this is the beginning of a second genocide, and probably in a more horrific way,” said Wai Wai Nu, director of the Myanmar Women’s Peace Network, adding that the number of Rohingya in Myanmar has been steadily decreasing.
As villages have been evacuated by the Arakan Army, 20,000 new Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh and have been secretly settled in camps in Chittagong (the Bangladeshi government estimates the number of new Rohingya refugees are around 16,000). The new Bangladeshi government is aware of the Rohingya refugees entering the country, but is not taking any special measures to detain them. This is because the Bangladeshi government is a new and interim government. Of course, the number may be 20,000, which is absolutely less than the 740,000 in 2017, but the problem is that many of these new Rohingya refugees have been seriously injured or raped by the Arakan Army. As Rohingya refugees continue to flow into the Bangladeshi camps, the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, has become the world’s largest refugee camp. With Rohingya refugees who are literally “nowhere to go” because neither the Bangladeshi nor the Myanmar governments have accepted them, the Bangladeshi interim government is appealing to the InterInternational Organization for Migration (IOM) to help them quickly resettle in a third country. Resettlement in a third country seems essential, if only to improve the poor human rights conditions of the refugees in the camps. The International Organization for Migration has resumed the resettlement of Rohingya refugees to third countries such as the United States and Canada in 2022, after about 12 years, but in reality, progress is at a standstill and progress is slow. Even if the pace of change is slow, it seems that life gives us a lesson that we must not give up and move forward.