Bangladesh should take a stand on Crimea
BANGLADESH'S rationale for abstaining from voting in the March 27 UN General Assembly resolution against “any alteration of the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” is that Bangladesh does not like country-specific resolutions. That begs the question: if a UN resolution called for Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war, would Bangladesh abstain because the resolution is country-specific?
The Soviet Union played a pivotal role in the creation of Bangladesh. It supported Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971. In the face of intense western pressure for a ceasefire in December 1971, as the Liberation War was still progressing, the Soviet Union continued to veto every UN Security Council resolution unfavourable to Bangladesh until Bangladesh was liberated. The two nations that helped Bangladesh the most when it faced an existential threat are India and the Soviet Union. Bangladeshis will always remain grateful for that.
Friendship between Bangladesh and the Soviet Union strengthened after independence. Numerous Bangladeshi students went to the Soviet Union to study. When Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman needed medical treatment in 1974, he did not go to the West; he went to Moscow instead. As bilateral ties blossomed, Aeroflot started its Dhaka-Moscow service.
But, Bangladesh also has a history of telling its friends when they are wrong. Bangladesh voted against the friendly nation of Iran in the UN when Iranian students took American diplomats hostage in November 1979. Bangladesh was not happy when the friendly nation of Soviet Union invaded another friendly nation, Afghanistan, in December 1979.
It is through the prism of Bangladesh's diplomatic history that it must view the current Crimea crisis. First, a little history of Crimea is in order. No ethnic group has lived in Crimea in perpetuity. Affiliated with the Ottoman Empire, Crimea was a part of Crimea Khanate between the 15th and 18th centuries before the Russian Empire conquered it in 1783. In 1954, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea over to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.
A census carried out by the Russian Empire in 1897 found that Crimea's population was 35.55% Tartar Muslims, 33.11% Russian and 11.84% Ukrainian. In 1944, Joseph Stalin expelled all of the nearly 200, 000 Crimean Tartar Muslims to Central Asia. A 1959 census carried out by the Soviet Union found the following ethnicities among Crimeans: Russian (71.4%); Ukrainians (22.3%), Tartar Muslims (0%). The 2001 census carried out by the Russian Federation lists Crimea's population as 58.5% Russian, 24.4% Ukrainian and 12.1% Tartar Muslims.
Friends should be honest with friends. Bangladesh should tell its Russian friends that it is not right to take Crimea away from Ukraine unilaterally just because it can. Most of the world will never recognise that Crimea, taken in this manner, is a part of Russia. This act will remain a blot on Russia's reputation; it will diminish Russia's stature in the world. Abstention in a General Assembly vote is a diplomatically polite way of telling a friend that he did something wrong.
Russia should also advise ethnic Russians living in other countries that they must learn to become loyal citizens of the country they reside in. It sets a bad precedent, and creates bad blood among citizens belonging to different ethnicities if some ethnic Russians living in countries contiguous with Russia want to integrate with Russia.
Bangladesh should empathise with Ukraine. Like Ukraine, Bangladesh is surrounded by bigger and more powerful neighbours. Fortunately, Bangladesh's neighbours are friendly. However, in the hypothetical case of a bigger power grabbing some of Bangladesh's limited land unilaterally, Bangladesh would expect its friends to do more than simply abstain in the UN General Assembly.
Avoiding country-specific resolutions, regardless of who is right or wrong, is a lame excuse of a foreign policy. Sometimes a nation needs to show its true colours and take a moral stand. Even if that means temporarily offending a dear friend.
The writer is a Rhodes Scholar.
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