The Bengali Refugees in Arakan During 1971 Liberation War

By Aman Ullaah 

In 1971, during the Bangladeshi Liberation war, several Bengalis were forced to find refuge in neighboring Arakan. The Burmese government, at this point under the control of General Ne Win, carried out several military operations against the Rohingya and forcedly expelled over 200,000 Muslims from the region back to Bangladesh, which included native Rohingya.

A Madrid born freelance journalist Carlos Sardiña Galache, in his article -‘Illegal migration’ in Arakan: myths and numbers” dated 16 Aug, 2018, writes that: -

“One of the rationales underlying the persecution of the Rohingya by the Burmese state is that they are “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh”, having flooded Rakhine State (formerly known as Arakan State) over the last century. But how valid are such claims in the face of available evidence?”

“The border between Bangladesh and Burma is extremely porous and has been poorly guarded on both sides for long stretches of time; smuggling of all kind of goods, including narcotics, is a common feature there, and often happens with the connivance of corrupt officials. Moreover, the grip of the Burmese state in border areas is very tenuous, and Northern Arakan is no exception. Nobody, however, has provided any evidence of massive waves of “illegal Bengalis”. Nevertheless, the government and institutions linked to it have repeated such claims over and over again, and they are believed by many Burmese.”

According to Carlos Sardiña Galache, in 1965, Ne Win visited Pakistan, and the West German ambassador reported that discussions took place about “the problem of the roughly 250,000 Moslems resident in the Province of Arakan whose nationality is unqualified because the Burmese regime regards them as illegal immigrants from East Pakistan.” This figure was literally doubled in a paper published as recently as 2018 by the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (Myanmar-ISIS), a government think tank founded in 1992 by the military junta then ruling the country. The paper asserts that “in 1971, there were around half a million (500,000) war refugees who fled into Myanmar … to escape the violence of the Bangladeshi war of independence.”

Mr. Nurul Kabir the editor of Daily New Age in his article “ Liberation War of Bangladesh: Actions, reactions and inactions of foreign powers” dated 19 July 2018, mentioned that, Nurul Islam, a researcher on the history of liberation war in Cox’s Bazar, writes that a group of Awami League leader of the region, such as Ataur Rahman Kaiser, Advocate Noor Ahmed and Dr BM Fayezur Rahman, crossed over to Burma on April 20, 1971 with a view to seeking Burmese assistance for Bangladesh’s war of liberation. But the Burmese authorities refused to provide any assistance to that effect. Nurul Islam writes:

 “A Burmese government official at Balibazar clearly told the Bengali delegation that they could provide shelter to the Bengalis, but would neither arrange for their foods nor would allow any activities from within Burma against the Pakistan forces. Moreover, the Burmese official also told the League leaders that the Burmese authorities would have nothing to do with protecting the refugees in case the Pakistan forces launch any attack on them in Burmese territories.” [Muhammad Nurul Islam, Cox’s BazareMuktijuddha, Shabdarup, Dhaka, 2017, p 117]

Utterly disappointed, the League leaders concerned returned to Bangladesh and some of them later managed to cross over to India while the rest engaged themselves with locally developed groups of freedom fighters.

Of the Bangladeshi refugees in Burma, some members of the East Bengal Regiment, led by Habilder Abdus Sobhan, secretly provided armed training for a group of students, peasants and workers in the deep Arakan forest in July who had entered Bangladesh to fight the enemy forces at the end of the month. The group of freedom fighters, which finally set up its camps in the deep forest of the hilly Lama thana, fought a battle against the enemy forces on November 25, resulting in 17 casualties on the Pakistani side and martyrdom of a freedom fighter. [Muhammad Nurul Islam, Cox’s Bazare Muktijuddha, Shabdarup, Dhaka, 2017, p 133] 

Nevertheless, the Burmese provided shelters for some 50,000 Bangladeshis,[ Muhammad Nurul Islam, Cox’s Bazare Muktijuddha, p 125] escaping, however, its own moral responsibility under certain international laws and covenants that obligate the host country to provide food and medical facilities to the foreign refugees.

Mr. Nurul Islam further said that,  some 50,000 Bangladeshis took refuge in Burma got evident from a press statement of Syed Nazrul Islam, the acting president of the Bangladesh’s government-in-exile, issued in June 1971, thanking the government of Burma for providing shelters for 50,000 people from Bangladesh, a significant section of which was Buddhists mostly from Cox’s Bazar and its adjacent areas who fled their homeland in the face of Pakistan Army’s brutal atrocities in the bordering Arakan state of Burma. The Burmese authorities, however, ‘denied’ the helpless Bangladeshis ‘any official status of refugees.’ [ Muhammad Nurul Islam, Cox’s BazareMuktijuddha, p 125]

During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, an estimated 50,000 Bengali Muslim refugees—primarily from southeastern East Pakistan. Among them an estimated 3,000 Buddhist residents of Ukhiya (located in Cox’s Bazar), including villagers from Ratna Palong, Bhalukia Palong, and Rumkha Palong, fled across into then-Arakan, trembling under targeted violence from Pakistani forces and Razakars on May 12, 1971. These individuals were part of a small but significant displacement of Bangladeshi Buddhists fleeing immediate danger.

Myanmar-ISIS gives two sources for such an extraordinary assertion: a book written by Moshe Yegar, a former Israeli diplomat, and a conversation that the British and Bangladeshi ambassadors in Rangoon maintained in 1975, as recounted by the British diplomat. But Moshe Yegar merely wrote that “an undetermined number of Bengalis who were opposed to the cessation of Bangladesh from Pakistan fled to Arakan. Subsequently almost 17,000 Bengalis returned though the number that remained in Arakan continues to be unknown.”

However, in a confidential report of British Embassy Rangoon (Yangon) dated 14 January 1972 referring the then Burmese Foreign Minister Colonel Hla Han, mentioned that,

“Fortunately there was no appreciable influx of armed troops. In the last days of the war some fourteen light civil aircraft and helicopters landed in Akyab bringing some 174 passengers, mostly Pakistan officials and their families, including Major-General M. Rahim Khan who was wounded.  A small Pakistan naval vessel also made its way to Akyab. The vessel and aircraft have been impounded by the Burmese until it is clear who has the rightful claim to them. Colonel Hla Han said that they had been claimed both by the administration in Bangladesh and by the Pakistan authorities.  The Burmese were taking the line that it was up to the claimants to settle the question of ownership between themselves. The Burmese had no wish to retain them indefinitely, but if the claimants should be referred to the International Court. Colonel Hla Han also said that the number of refugees in Burma had now been reduced to about 2,000.

That means among the 50, 000 Bangladeshi only 2,000 left and the rest 49, 800 were returned to newly independent Bangladesh not 17,000 only as Moshe Yegar wrote.