I’m starting to see a pattern. News articles appear that tell us that this group or that group is living in some squalid camp somewhere in the world and a ‘durable solution’ is needed. Watch out for that phrase ‘durable solution,’ that’s UN humanitarian refugee industry code for the West needs to take refugees pronto.
So last night when I saw this article in the News from Bangladesh my alarm bells went off.
The Rohingya refugee problem in Bangladesh is a decades-long pending issue. According to the official record, there are some 26,000 Rohingya refugees in two official camps in Cox’s Bazar, a southern district of Bangladesh bordering Burma. The government of Bangladesh manages these camps with assistance from UN refugee agency, UNHCR. These refugees are the remainder of some 258,000 Rohingyas who left Burma to escape the genocidal operation led by the Burmese military rulers against the Rohingyas in 1991- 92.
_________So, as a part of their protection, the Bangladesh government should take urgent step to recognize them as refugees and to raise the issue in the international forum with a view to find out a durable solution to their problem.
The above is written by:
Ahmedur Rahman Farooq, Chairman, The Council for Restoration of Democracy in Burma (CRDB) and a member of The Union of Rohingya Communities in Europe (URCE). Norway.
Guess you folks in Norway already have Rohingyas and maybe we have too! We were told in Hagerstown that the Burmese planned for our city were all Christian Karen people. Were they? I’ve also heard rumblings that the largest Burmese refugee community in the US, in Ft. Wayne, IN, has some tension growing between Karen and some Burmese Muslims. Could it be Rohingya?
Who are the Rohingya? Just google Rohingya and Al Qaeda and you will learn all you need to know. Here is a quote from a Hudson Institute report.
In addition to minority flight, there have been other factors augmenting the relative power of the Islamists. Since 1991, perhaps as many as 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have entered Bangladesh across its southeastern border with Myanmar (Burma), a Jamaat-e-Islami stronghold. Many reside between the port city of Cox’s Bazaar and the Myanmar border. Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Chatra League, have worked to radicalize these refugees, who are probably more susceptible to religious indoctrination after their persecution in Myanmar. Indeed, according to reports by human rights groups on local minorities, many of Harakat ul-Jihad Islami’s newest members are recruited from the Rohingya settlements.
And, if you don’t believe the Hudson Institute, how about Time magazine:
Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.
So, by now you are thinking we can’t be that stupid. We really wouldn’t even give a moments thought to bringing Rohingya into the United States. Afterall, didn’t President Bush say we were fighting Al Qaeda over there so we didn’t have to fight them here?
You can imagine my shock to find this sandwiched in the testimony of Kenneth Bacon of Refugees International, the refugee industry’s lobbying arm, before a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing testimony on the funds needed for refugee resettlement for 2008:
I urge the Subcommittee to continue this support, while at the same time not forgetting often overlooked refugee and displaced populations, like the 29,000 stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
So, State Department, tell me it isn’t so. We aren’t actually bringing Rohingya into the United States? These aren’t the refugees former Asst. Secretary Sauerbrey had in mind when she said we need to bring refugees here because they become terrorists in the camps?
By the way, these poor and destitute Rohingyas have their own English language website here.