By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

While the attention of most of the world is turned towards the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the most persecuted people on our Planet continue to suffer in silence in an overpopulated refugee camp in Bangladesh, where in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic the annual monsoon rains lash the makeshift dwellings, making life difficult for the million odd Rohingya Muslims.
On Wednesday August 25 to mark the 4th anniversary of the genocide that drove them away from their ancestral homes in the Rakhine state of Myanmar by the Buddhist military regime, as many as 4,000 refugee children staged a 15-minute peaceful protest in the Kutupalong Camp -- the world’s largest refugee settlement – in the city of Cox
Bazaar to attract attention to their unending plight.
They were seconded by groups of Rohingya women carrying placards demanding justice and calling on the UN to facilitate their return home with guarantees of end of persecution.
It was indeed a painful sight to see a once proud and prosperous people reduced to poverty and eking out a miserable life in a neighbouring country in dwellings flooded by rainwater which is some places was knee-deep.
What was the crime of the Rohingya people that made the Myanmar soldiers burn their towns and plantations, slaughter their men and children, and rape their women?
Nothing, except adherence to Islam and the resolve to protect their ethnic identity and culture against the ‘Burmaization’ policy of a repressive regime that refuses to recognize them as citizens of Burma.
It is indeed a blot on human conscience that powerful western states and wealthy Arab states have turned a blind eye towards the plight of the Rohingyas.
The regimes in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which squander hundreds of billions of dollars in killing the fellow Muslim Arabs of Yemen, are the least interested in helping the Rohingya Muslims, who are now scattered in several countries of South East Asia after making dangerous sea voyages that take a heavy toll of life.
These dangerous journeys are due to the fact that since 1982 the Myanmar regime has stripped the Rohingua Muslims of their citizenship rights.
In view of these factors, it is the duty of the UN and the international community to redouble their efforts for safe repatriation of the Rohingya people to their occupied homeland, with concrete guarantees that they should never again feel compelled to seek protection and safety elsewhere.
This is the only durable solution to a crisis which has trampled all humanitarian values and shows no signs of ending.