A renewal of the hopes and aspirations which accompanied the bloody birth of this country. A catalyst for how we look upon and treat one another. The world needs a hero to look up to, let that be usThe ads need to appeal to the public opinion of each of these countries, whether they support these actions. South Korea, as a victim of colonial genocide, the public will not stand for it. Nor Japan, with the wholesale death of its citizens from the nuclear bombs and firebombing of its civilian population. Likewise, any other nation whose firms are thought to be profiting from the Rohinya exodus. If all this fails, then Bangladesh must be prepared to welcome with open arms these outcasts as full-fledged citizens. Not because they are Muslim, not because they are ethnically Bengali, but because they are. Otherwise, to let them fester in an identity purgatory is to invite future evils in the form of radicalism. Can we be the bigger nation? A couple of decades of consistent growth and entry into lower-income status says “yes we can.” We weren’t welcoming to the 1947 refugees, but can we prove that we have evolved to accept new dispossessed into our fold? In Niaz Alam’s piece (September 10), he reasoned Bangladesh should take charge of the narrative by giving the refugees citizenship. I agree. It would be a paradigm shift in how we perceive ourselves and the image we send out to the rest of the world. A renewal of the hopes and aspirations which accompanied the bloody birth of this country. A catalyst for how we look upon and treat one another. The world needs a hero to look up to, let that be us. The political calculus is infinitely complicated by our neighbour’s insistence that it harbours 20 million illegal “Bangladeshis.” Giving the persecuted citizenship would cause every Right-wing nutcase to start agitating and scheming to send home the supposed “border jumpers.” These are India’s equivalent of Trump’s Mexicans. The current Indian regime’s warm embrace of the Myanmar leadership in the name of fighting terrorism reaffirms its acceptance of targeted genocide. No friends of Bangladesh, nor of humanity. I wish our PM all the strength and decisiveness in grappling with these matters. One thing, if anything, history has shown, Bangladesh prevails.Shammi Huda is a businessman.
I used to joke during my recent stand-up gigs that Barack Obama was America’s first black president and that Donald “Forrest Gump” was America’s first Bangladeshi president.
However, I take that all back.
By her words and actions, our prime minister has proven to be a step above in her compassion, her statesmanship, and her basic humanity towards the Rohinya refugees.
Indeed, a worthy heir to the founding father. May her enlightenment extend to our hill tracts compatriots who have had little to rejoice in their citizenship in recent and past times.
So the Bangladeshi diplomatic corps has been caught with it’s collective pants down. Seemingly unaware of the onset of this pogrom, which, by it’s aftermath, can only be seen as meticulously pre-planned.
On the international stage we’ve been outflanked and out-manoeuvred.
As SS Rahim said: “We stand today globally isolated diplomatically as a nation against a state that has been supposedly isolated for decades.”
A foreign office that, time and time again, has failed Bangladeshi citizens and Bangladeshi interests, and made demoralised by political appointees, needs a rethink, a revamp, and a refocus.
It is too easy to frame the crisis in terms of xenophobic nationalism that led to ethnic Chinese being deprived of citizenship and rights in the 50s, or ethnic Indians being literally marched out in the 60s.
This is a land and asset grab.
Commercial interests from South Korea and Japan and others coveting the natural resources of the Rakhine state find a convenient solution to their eviction requirements.
Failing to garner diplomatic consensus, the Bangladesh government needs to take out full page ads in all major dailies of the countries whose firms are driving this.
