It's interesting that nearby Islamic countries Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are not offering to take Rohingya Muslims.
The Rohingya are from Bangladesh originally, and they should return there if their presence in Myanmar causes armed conflict.
The UN should negotiate with Bangladesh to take them back and should offer some resettlement money.
Australia is active in the Rohingya issue because Rohingya are seafaring people and will soon be heading their boats for Australia if nothing else emerges that attracts their interest.
Why is it not surprising that the stinky fingers of the British are traced to the origin of this problem where the British fostered Muslim immigration from Bangladesh into Myanmar. Perhaps the British should be compelled to take 100,000 or so Rohingya to lead by example.
Ozpolitics pommie denizens should be promoting the cause of the Rohingya to remedy the wrongs of British Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people Quote:... British colonial rule
A British 1939 report warned "seed of future communal troubles" regarding unchecked Chittagonian immigration into Arakan.
British policy encouraged Bengali inhabitants from adjacent regions to migrate into the then lightly populated and fertile valleys of Arakan as farm laborers. The East India Company extended the Bengal Presidency to Arakan. There was no international boundary between Bengal and Arakan and no restrictions on migration between the regions. In the early 19th century, thousands of Bengalis from the Chittagong region settled in Arakan seeking work.[59]
The British census of 1872 reported 58,255 Muslims in Akyab District. By 1911, the Muslim population had increased to 178,647.[60] The waves of migration were primarily due to the requirement of cheap labour from British India to work in the paddy fields. Immigrants from Bengal, mainly from the Chittagong region, "moved en masse into western townships of Arakan". To be sure, Indian immigration to Burma was a nationwide phenomenon, not just restricted to Arakan.[61]
Historian Thant Myint-U writes: "At the beginning of the 20th century, Indians were arriving in Burma at the rate of no less than a quarter million per year. The numbers rose steadily until the peak year of 1927, immigration reached 480,000 people, with Rangoon exceeding New York City as the greatest immigration port in the world. This was out of a total population of only 13 million; it was equivalent to the United Kingdom today taking 2 million people a year." By then, in most of the largest cities in Burma, Yangon, Sittwe, Pathein and Mawlamyine, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. The Burmese under the British rule felt helpless, and reacted with a "racism that combined feelings of superiority and fear."[61]
The impact of immigration was particularly acute in Arakan, one of less populated regions. The Rakine saw themselves as made a minority in their own land by Indian immigration with complaints being made all of the jobs and land were going to the Rohingyas.[62] In 1939, the British authorities, alert to the long-term animosity between the Rakhine Buddhists and the Muslims, formed a special Investigation Commission led by James Ester and Tin Tut to study the issue of Muslim immigration into the Arakan. The commission recommended securing the border; however, with the onset of World War II, the British retreated from Arakan.[63]...