DHAKA’S congestion does take some getting used to, but my return earlier this month was even more educational than my trip in March 2023, when I launched the UCSI University Bangladesh campus.
The Malaysian connection was unanimously cited as a major factor in their choice of university!
In my speech during a forum hosted by the university, I remarked how cooperation in education is a key plank for people-to-people relationships as academics and students interact with think tanks and community organisations that embody Track II diplomacy.
During the panel discussion, a young Bangladeshi MP spoke of similarities between the national visions of both prime ministers.
A Bangladeshi foreign policy expert – who spent years at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia – spoke about cooperation in institution-building and tackling geopolitical issues.
Our former foreign minister, Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, spoke from his incredible wealth of experience, wowing the audience with his personal interactions with personalities and issues from past decades.
Still, the main purpose of the trip was focused elsewhere.
Syed Hamid is chairman of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar (MAGM), of which I am also a member.
Over the past year, I have been continually exposed to the experiences of Rohingya in Malaysia, and this trip provided an opportunity to further understand the dynamics that have resulted in the ongoing humanitarian crisis, as well as see actual conditions on the ground.
Cox’s Bazar is home to a million Rohingya refugees, mostly displaced from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since a massive wave of violence in 2017, but also including tens of thousands of children born there since.
It was the single most educational visit to any settlement in my life.
My first observation was the entrance to the Kutupalong refugee camp (the biggest amalgamation of camps) was that it was not far from the tourist beach town named after Captain Hiram Cox of the East India Company, who was apparently “employed in assisting with the resettlement of Rakhine refugees who had fled their homes following the Burmese invasion of 1784”.
Upon entering the camp, I noticed shops selling groceries, children peeking out of their bamboo and tarpaulin homes, and dogs and chickens (but curiously, no cats) along the dirt roads.
“Assalamu’alaikum!” the children would excitedly greet our group, headed by Syed Hamid and accompanied by officers of a hugely significant Bangladeshi community development organisation (and the largest NGO in the world) called BRAC.
They played a key role in organising our trips to the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre – an incredible venue of exhibited and performing arts located within the camp – and numerous learning centres and play areas supported by UN agencies and international aid organisations.
In one classroom, a student drama production was used to educate peers about the dangers of human trafficking and forced recruitment – for armed groups fighting each other in Myanmar enter the camps to find young men to fight for them: just one of the daily risks of violence within the settlement.
The next stop was to a skills training centre where young Rohingya are taught plumbing, electrical and – with support from Uniqlo – sewing and producing garments for women in the camp.
Finally, we visited the Ukhiya Specialised Hospital, an impressive facility including services for surgery, trauma care, eye and dental care alongside a 24/7 emergency unit.
At the entrance was a plaque commemorating the site’s history as the Malaysian field hospital, which it is still fondly referred to as by locals, such was its positive impact.
Before I left the country, I visited the Liberation Museum in Dhaka, and understood why it is that Bangladeshis are so welcoming to refugees (despite the country, like us, not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention).
It is because during their war of liberation, they too suffered massive displacement and needed help from their neighbouring country.
In meetings with diplomats and officials from Bangladesh, the region and the West, the overwhelming consensus was that despite the country’s generosity, repatriation to a safe and stable Myanmar must remain the ultimate policy objective.
Most importantly, every Rohingya I met wants to go home.
They don’t want to live permanently outside their homeland, whether in Bangladesh or Malaysia for that matter.
They want to live in peace, security and dignity in their own land and Malaysia, as chair of Asean next year, will have a real opportunity to help resolve this crisis.
The advisory group is ready to assist.
Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin thanks the High Commission of Malaysia in Dhaka, BRAC, UCSI and Geutanyoe Malaysia for their support.
The views expressed are the writer’s own.
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