The Conflict of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar

While Burma is a very diverse country, including in its borders at least 134 ethnic groups, not all of them are equally treated. Rohingya Muslims, who amount to around a million people in Myanmar alone, are one of the most persecuted ethnic minorities in the world according to the United Nations. They practice Islam and speak Rohingya, their origin is debated, as it is unknown whether they are indigenous to the Rakhine region in western Myanmar or they are actually a group of immigrants originating from Bangladesh that moved across the border during the British rule of said country. It’s in this debate where lies the precariousness of the situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar. While Muslim minorities have been present in the country since the eight century, historically they have settled in a different area than the region where the majority of Rohingya people are located now. Differences from the other Muslim minorities present in Myanmar don’t stop at the region where they mainly inhabit, their languages differ in origin, and while both people have lived in the same territory for generations, the Rohingya have their own historical narrative that they share in some aspects alone. However, while those other muslim minorities, the Thet and the Kamein people have been recognised by the Burmese government and have obtained citizenship, the Rohingya, on the other hand, have not. The reason why this is happening, and why it cannot be fixed easily, is that most Burmese people don’t consider them natural to their country because of their similarities with the Bengali. The tragedy is, as Aung San Suu Kyi pointed out, is that Rohangya do not consider any other country or land as their home. Burma is their home, and they cannot be persecuted because of their ethnic differences. Any government willing to call itself democratic by today’s standards cannot permit nor encourage the salvage racist discrimination that the Rohingya have been subjects of since before the mid-20th century. 

The issue of the Rohigya people, while very present inside Burma’s border for almost a century has in the last two years or so has taken a more central and important spot in international forums because of the country’s attempts to move forward from the military dictatorship that had ruled for almost half a century. With the current president, U Thein Sein, came promises of opening the country to the outside and formalising a democracy that had been tainted by a junta that has held the power for fifty years and a military elite that still is the most powerful force in the country. The efforts to modernise the country have been rewarded by the international community in the form of foreign investment within the country, the invitation to participate in international forums. The clearest of these examples is the trust the international community relied on the Burmese government when they offered them the chairmanship of ASEAN (Assembly of the Southeast Asian Nations) for 2014. Various humanitarian groups have since then condemned the actions of occidental democracies to welcome Myanmar so freely even though their efforts to help the Rohingya minority are still very few. Because the country’s citizenship law passed in 1982 did not recognise the Rohingya as a minority natural to the country they are still unable to acquire citizenship even though they have lived in the country for many generations. This leaves them stateless and defenceless and with many restrictions in movement, being relegated to force labor, defenceless to confiscation of property, forced eviction and demolition of their houses, unarmed in front of discriminatory taxation and with unsolvable limitations in health care, marriage, employment and education. Also worthy of mention is the restriction in the number of children that a Rohigya woman can bear, which must not surpass two. This is due to a rise in nationalism within the country that has also been present in other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Sri Lanka amongst others. “The face of Buddhist terror” as Time magazine named him, is a Burmese monk named Ashin Wirathu. Natural to the city of Kyaukse, the “Burmese bin Laden” as he is called was imprisoned from 2003 to 2010 because of his hate speech that he now recites in the city of Mandalay, Burma’s second most larger city. In his speeches, he talks about the importance of nationalism to protect Burma from the supposed Islamic invasion that Muslims are planning. To quote Wirathu directly “Taking care of our own religion and race is more important than democracy,” which farther proves that the country will not be able to advance into a true democracy without solving this problem. Along with his buddhist extremist group, the 969 movement, he promotes the boycott Muslim products as well as Buddhist-Muslim intermarriage. These measures and the way the Rohingya are treated have resulted in the flee of around 86 thousand muslims in the last two years, counting only the ones that fled by boat, trying to seek refuge in neighbour countries. On top of the flee by boat that we have observed during the last two years, some estimated 200,000 Rohingya fled to bordering countries such as Bangladesh and Thailand from 1978 until 1991 and another group of 250,000 during that year. There are also an estimated 20 thousand living in the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees

(UNHCR) border camps at Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. Here enters another problem for the Rohingya minority because their ethnic group has not been recognised as an Muslim minority by Islam either, leaving them completely “friendless”, the flee is due to the abhorring human rights violations that Rohingya suffer, left alone and with no other option. The two-child rule, a clear example of the mistreatment they have to suffer, is still imposed on Rohingya women and families leaves women who get pregnant but already have two children to either have an abortion, flee the country or give birth to a child that will have to live hidden for the rest of his life. The main issue with this is that Burmese law prohibits abortion except in case of the mother’s life being endangered, so many women are forced to undergo clandestine abortion procedures in horrible conditions, leading to the loss of life of many of them. 

These constant abuses continuously committed against a chosen minority cannot be tolerated by the international community. We cannot look the other way and ignore how racism reigns on this country that is at a turning point and can still develop promisingly. The international community has a responsibility towards the Rohingya people, to pressure the government to give them citizenship so that they can finally the human rights that they rightfully deserve. However driven by economic interests foreign countries might be, Myanmar can never evolve into a successful democratic country if these attacks continue which is why fixing the issues regarding the Rohingya people should be one of the government’s first concerns. 

References:

1. Akins, H. (2013) No place for Islam? Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar, Al Jazeera
2. Parnini, S. N. (2013). The Crisis of the Rohingya as a Muslim Minority in Myanmar and Bilateral Relations with Bangladesh. Journal Of Muslim Minority Affairs, 33(2), 281-297. doi:10.1080/13602004.2013.826453
3. Abdelkader, E. (2014). MYANMAR'S DEMOCRACY STRUGGLE: THE IMPACT OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE UPON ROHINGYA WOMEN AND YOUTH. Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 23(3), 511-542.
4. Aldama, Z. (2014) Myanmar's Buddhist-Rohingya ethnic divide, Al Jazeera
5. Gearan, A. (2013) Burma’s Thein Sein says military ‘will always have a special place’ in government, The Washington Post

Picture:

• Myanmar Refugees Recover In Aceh: IDI RAYEUK, EAST ACEH, INDONESIA - FEBRUARY 13: Rohingya boat people wash clothes at a refugee camp in a district of the town of Idi Rayeuk on February 13, 2009 in Aceh province on Sumatra island, Indonesia. Approximately 200 Rohingya Muslim refugees continue to receive treatment after being rescued from boats drifting at sea for up to three weeks. Reports indicate that approximately 1,200 people from the Myanmar region may have tried to gain entry to Thailand. The Indonesian Navy continues to search for any possible survivors, though it is not clear how many people are missing. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images). (2009).