So the Rohingya are your brothers now?
Arakan, like the name implies, is the land of the Arakanese. If the Rohingyas wish to settle permanently in Arakan, they must forget about their pipe dream of an autonomous state and look to integrate with the Arakanese. I don't mean stopping the practice of islam, but they should learn the Burmese language and accept that they are part of Myanmar.
As I said before, no one, not the Arakanese, not the Burmese army, not the Burmese democratic parties, not the international community, will support an independent Rohingya islamic republic in Myanmar. If they want to start an armed insurrection then they will be crushed, pure and simple, and be sent to Bangladesh at gun-point. Not only that but even the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi will give their tacit support of this. Now I don't think anyone wants this to happen so I would be very mindful of wanting "Arakan for our Rohingya brothers".
Welcome to the PDF forum alaungphaya. If you do not mind my asking, are you currently staying in Rakhine state or other part of Myanmar, or overseas? Let me say that I have one very close friend, a Burman from Myanmar. I also have another Burman friend and another Chinese-origin Myanmar friend. They are my colleagues.
It is good to see a member from Myanmar. As a Bangladeshi, I can say that people in Bangladesh would never support "an independent Rohingya islamic republic in Myanmar". There are irresponsible people in this forum who support "an armed insurrection", but not our govt. or majority of our people as far as I know. Myanmar is too important a neighbor for us to upset Myanmar-Bangladesh relationship.
But you have persecuted a minority, 1.2 million of which have fled and living in other countries because of this persecution. Many have died on the sea trying to flee and have been mistreated in other countries. The fact that some of them may have moved from Chittagong area in early 1800's during British rule is no excuse for denying citizenship and persecution. They have their rights to citizenship and for continuing their culture, language and religion and you cannot force them to assimilate to Burmese society, if they do not want to, unless they do it voluntarily.
We helped these hapless persecuted people and gave them refuge out of humanitarian concern. Yes they have some ethnic, religious and linguistic ties to neighboring people of Chittagong but we helped Buddhist Rakhine community also and I am sure we would help any other group running for their lives just as much even if they had no ethno-religious-linguistic ties with us.
Myanmar has been an irresponsible nation in the way it has treated with Rohingya's. I have heard majority Burman tribe is at war with many other tribes, but Rohingya's have been treated the worst and denied citizenship.
If some of them have armed themselves, they may have done it for self-defense as I heard they get no protection from Police or Army.
These problems you have are not insurmountable, they are not difficult to solve. But if you cannot solve them and your problems spill over to our land, we will approach, ASEAN-10 org., UN, USA, China, Japan and South Korea to correct your actions. But if the problems are not solved even then and we continue to have refugee problems, then as a last resort our armed forces may intervene and then we may end up in war, although none of us want that eventuality. And we are confident as a nation that we can easily take care of a nation like yours in a war, please do not underestimate our resolve.
Now, lets look at the other side, you are a member of ASEAN and we are trying to become another member of ASEAN, by first becoming an observer. Please look at the regional picture here:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/180755-geopolitics-asean-region.html
Please come to this thread and discuss regional and even our mutual issues here. Our future membership in ASEAN and a formation of ASEAN+ depends on our good relationship with Myanmar, so it is a vital strategic issue for Bangladesh and we will not jeopardize this vital relationship unless we are forced to.
Also, please note that India strategically want to box us in and does not like our look east policy to have increased relationship with ASEAN via Myanmar. So it is not impossible that they are instigating or even staging incidents like the recent flare up. But provocateurs can only provoke when a situation already exist for such provocation. It is good for Indian strategy, but bad for both Myanmar and Bangladesh.
I think both of our countries have a lot to learn about each other and if we work together, I believe we have a bright future, where both of us can help each other tremendously. So I welcome you in this forum and also I would encourage you to ask other Myanmarese to come to this forum, so we get the opportunity to learn about each other and work on regional issues.
