Dr Jacques Leider said Rohingya is not an ethnic concept.
Dr Jacques Leider (France)
Q: Are the Rohingya an ethnic group of Burma?
A: My answer is that Rohingya is not an ethnic concept. Okay, they can stand up and say we are an ethnic group inside Myanmar. But I think that is not the best way. When you argue we are Muslims and we have been living in Rakhine for several generations, nobody can deny it. For me, Rohingya is the term, which is an old word that has been claimed as above all as a political label after the independence of Myanmar. For the moment, I do not see that all the people there readily submit to one and a single label. When I was in Bangladesh, people pointed out Muslims to me who originally lived in Rakhine. They have now moved to Bangladesh and when you ask them, “are you Rohingya coming from Rakhine?” they say, “no, we are Muslims who live in Rakhine, we do not take for us the label Rohingya.”
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Ok, Dr. Leider,
Let me ask you.
Perhaps, you may visit Bangladesh sometime and just you set up your mind to pick up your " own concept" through merely an interview with someone or a group of refugee in Bangladesh? Does your client represent the whole Rohingya community ? How can you justify your " personal concept" ignoring the academic finding, concepts and historical records by many historians at home and abroad alike ? You should explore all those things as a whole in order to invent a new concept rather than hurried to a bold and irrelevant final decision that you've just made.
Hla Aung
Paris