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January 2021 by the Editor of Rohingya Crisis News
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MAY BE IN ERROR.
Starting in the late 1970s, Saudi Arabia accepted tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, who were fleeing persecution in Myanmar, and granted them residency in the Middle-Eastern desert kingdom. More came in subsequent years, and those already in the Kingdom began to have children. By 2019, according to at least one source, an estimated 300,000 Rohingya were living in Saudi Arabia. [NOTE: Saudi Arabia, like most of the oil-wealthy Gulf Arab states, has been notorious for importing poor foreigners to work as little more than slave-labor to Saudi enterprises (especially oil industry), or slave-like servants to the Saudi upper-class and upper-middle class -- then discarding and deporting them when they are no longer very useful (due to age, disability or rebellion, for instance, or due to downturns in global oil demand).] Some of the Rohingya in Saudi Arabia gave birth, and raised generations of Rohingya children as Arab-speaking Saudi residents, though Saudi Arabia denied Saudi citizenship to those Rohingya. PASSPORT PROBLEMS: Some Rohingya acquired Bangladeshi passports. Some of the passports came from authorities in Bangladesh, others from Bangladeshi consulates in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere -- passports implying that the Rohingya were citizens of Bangladesh. The passports -- at least initially -- legitimized the Rohingya's travel and presence in Saudi Arabia. The fact that Bangladesh has given passports to some of the Saudi Rohingya -- and thus implied they are Bangladeshi citizens -- arguably helps bolster Myanmar's claim that ALL Rohingya should actually be Bangladeshi citizens, rather than citizens of Myanmar. This has created a problem for Bangladesh, in their repatriation negotiations with Myanmar (who insists that ALL Rohingya are actually "Bengalis" -- implicitly from Bangladesh -- and should live in Bangladesh). Bangladesh now claims that those Bangladeshi passports, held by some Saudi-Rohingya, were fake or illegitimate -- and acquired through bribery, deceit, or other corrupt and illegal methods. SAUDI PUSH-BACK: Starting in 2011, Saudi Arabia began resisting the influx of Rohingya refugees, and began interning them in detention camps. Currently, about 500 to 1,000 are interned in a detention camp in Jeddah. In April 2019, about 650 of the men there protested by going on a hunger strike. Saudi Arabia has begun efforts to return them to Myanmar, or at least to Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi passports held by some of the Rohingya have legitimized Saudi Arabia's deportation of them to Bangladesh (even though, actually, they are from Myanmar). However, various human-rights groups and Rohingya advocates, have complained that the Saudi Rohingya are arrested upon landing in Bangladesh. The organizations, along with the United Nations human-rights official on the Myanmar-Rohingya issue (Yanghee Lee), have urged Saudi officials to just let their Rohingya refugees -- stateless people with no official "home country" -- to continue to live in Saudi Arabia. Bangladesh wants that, too. EXPIRED PASSPORTS - FRESH PROBLEM: At present, some of the passports, held by some of the Rohingya in Saudi Arabia, have expired -- and cannot be used to legitimize sending the Rohingya to Bangaldesh. So Saudi Arabia, in early 2021, has urged Bangladesh to supply current passports to replace those that have expired. Bangladesh does not want to, because fresh passports will enable Saudi Arabia to start sending their Rohingya -- possibly tens of thousands of them -- to Bangladesh. But Bangladesh, a poor and desperate country, in need of foreign aid and development money, depends upon wealthy Saudi Arabia for significant amounts of that income. Consequently, grudgingly, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, in late-2020 / early-2021, has assured the Saudi's that those Rohingya who had Bangladeshi passports will be provided with fresh, current ones. BAD TIMING: Unfortunately for Bangladesh, this fuss comes just as they are sitting down with Myanmar and China -- to try to hammer out a deal to return the Rohingya in Bangladesh back to Myanmar. Myanmar, which doesn't want its Rohingya back, is expected to use the Bangladeshi passports -- and the deportation of Rohingyas from Saudi-Arabia to Bangladesh -- as "proof" that the Rohingya should actually be viewed as citizens of Bangladesh, and should stay there, rather than return to Myanmar. For more detailed and direct information on the Rohingya issues with Saudi Arabia, see the following listed links to relevant article abstracts here in the Rohingya Crisis News. After clicking on any link below, there will be a slight delay, while the system loads the entire RCN page for that year, then jumps to the listing and abstract for that specific article.
~RCN Editor //////// |