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In recent weeks Myanmar has been receiving another round of bad press. This time attention is focused on desperate people from the Myanmar-Bangladesh borderlands who have taken to boats seeking sanctuary and better lives across the Andaman Sea. Their journeys have often proved heart breaking.
Evidence of mass graves and gross exploitation in Thailand and Malaysia have shaken the region, with Southeast Asian governments working towards a cooperative solution to what has been a longstanding, and usually ignored, crisis. The roots of many of these tragedies are found in northern Rakhine State where the Muslim minority who call themselves Rohingya are disempowered and shunted aside.
The Myanmar government seeks to avoid responsibility for them, claiming that this group is ineligible for the privileges granted to Myanmar’s other ethnic and religious minorities. When in 2012 Muslim neighbourhoods and villages were attacked in a wave of Buddhist fury, the international community sought to offer a rapid humanitarian response. Since then conditions in Sittwe and the forgotten townships of northern Rakhine State have remained tense, primed for further violence.
Rakhine Buddhist nationalist movements, which argue that they face an unrelenting tide of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, have sought to entrench their dominant position, unwilling to countenance compromise with those who were their Muslim neighbours.
Practical, compassionate and sustained responses to this situation have struggled to adjust to the changing political terrain elsewhere in Myanmar. Many Buddhists resent special treatment for displaced Muslims and have even sought a moratorium on the use of the “R” word. Such sensitivities are compounded by impressions that international activism–whether from the liberal West or the Islamic world–is designed to undermine Myanmar at a time of uncertainty, even vulnerability.
Myanmar is preparing for what we anticipate will be elections in late 2015, with a wide range of other promising economic, cultural and strategic developments also gaining momentum. President Thein Sein and his government in Naypyitaw are justifiably proud of the way they have managed a multi-faceted transformation from entrenched military government to semi-civilian rule.
Their 10-year-old capital exemplifies a grandiose ambition for Myanmar, where the country takes what they imagine is its rightful place as a major regional power. Long land borders with China and India have some investors salivating at the potential for Myanmar to be a new regional hub in manufacturing, energy and mining, with further economic potential once new infrastructure is put in place. It is a big story, with many good news aspects, that also requires awareness of its contradictory trends.
One of the most important is the festering human tragedy of northern Rakhine State. But what will Myanmar’s authorities do about the Rohingya? They face unenviable decisions, no doubt, but it looks like business-as-usual can no longer be sustained. Earlier I suggested that bold responses will be required. The reputation of the country is being damaged with every new story about how poorly Rohingya are treated.
Such mistreatment of the Rohingya, both in Myanmar and elsewhere, shows how far the country, and the region, needs to go before it is a happy place for all its people. Today’s headlines are an important reminder that this is a story that needs sustained attention and effort if anything is to improve.
Nicholas Farrelly is the co-founder of New Mandala. This is an extract of his paper for the 29th Asia Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur, which is being held on 1-3 June 2015.
The “Rohingya” are not a regional conundrum but an Islamic straw man, to trash Myanmar. Perhaps it is well-past time the Buddhist nations had their own “OIC” to denounce the treatment of all ethnic and cultural non-Muslim minorities in Islamic nations; that would include, by the way, all Islamic nations (and would include the persecution of minority Islamic sects that weren’t “Halal” enough for the majority).
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Myamartians love “tayokes”, especially Chinese businessmen and Korean soap operas but they can’t stand the “kalars”, Indians, especially the dark-skinned Muslims, supposedly brought into Burma by the colonial Brits, the “kalarphru” (white Indians!). I don’t know why, but Marayu was an Arakan king and some of my ancestors are from Rakhaing State, so perhaps I should know. I think it has more to do with race than with religion, but I am an atheist and I don’t believe in racial classification. Nazis and the KKK used to do that. Nowadays, 23andme can do that more “scientifically” using your DNA, but who cares!
(by the way why was my recent comment about the popularity of skin-whitening creams in Asia censored? No free speech at Australian Universities?)
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After WW II in “civilized” Europe, millions of people were driven out of their homes after the nazis were defeated, thanks chiefly to the Soviet Army. Many of these were Germans who were told in no uncertain terms there was no room for them in Czechoslovakia and Poland. When they tarried, they were killed. When Myanmar got its freedom from Britain, they earned the right to determine who was a citizen and who was a squatter. In the US, our hands aren’t clean: our surviving aboriginal inhabitants weren’t universally accorded citizenship until 1921 a few hundred years after the pilgrims drove up. Why the rush to push Myanmar to do what took us forever to do? But only after we’d slaughtered a few million of those we’d “removed” from their homes.
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My understanding is that, the British during their colonial era, brought in the Rohinyas to police and control the Burmese people. Suffice to say that there were atrocities by the hands of the Rohinyas against the Burmese. This has left a festering wound bordering on outright hatred throughout Burma that has continued to this day. That period was such a painful period for the Burmese people that even our Noble prize winning Lady is deafeningly silent on this issue.
Yes, based on humanitarian ethos, Burma should forgive, if not forget, and assilmilate the Rohinyas into their own conclave under and within the protection of Burmese law. However, the Brits and Western polyannas should also realize their complicity in this festering wound. Support should be given morally and financially to Burma to help and aid in the relocation of these homeless people. Finger-pointing is well and good, but it serves no pupose if there ae no concrete action plans to end and resolve this humanitariona issue.
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Not exclusively so. The state of Arakan, predecessor to the contemporary Rohingya identity has a long history with Burma. The Burmese were in regular conflicts with Arakanese states for several hundred years before arrival of the British, many of these ending up in Arakanese soldier doing the usual business of pillaging and burning.
I don’t think the hatred stems from that either, there used to be Mujahideen operating when Burma was formed, and today Rohinya supposedly gets special treatment from the world press. No, I think it’s the fear of the different, in this case your regular Burmese buddhist can find little in common with Rohinya culture and religion, which appears to be almost identical to neighboring Bangladesh. They are viewed as an outsider and a threat to Burmese cultural dominancy in the region. This mentality that alienate difference has always been prevalent in the world, and especially with a government like this the radical Burmese are able to subject Rohinyans to the publicized de-humanizing treatments.
One possible solution, which is never going to happen is to grant Rohinya more autonomy and force the Burmese nationalists to back off.
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That’ll be the day. Witness what’s happening with the Kokang, an ethnic Han Chinese conclave established by the Yang clan, followers of the exiled Ming Emperor, in Eastern Burma later granted a substate by the British colonial government in 1947 for services rendered against the Japanese, and also enjoying a self-administered special region under the 2008 Constitution. They were first used by Ne Win against the Communist Party of Burma, and then it was the CPB’s turn to use them against Ne Win to greater effect only to mutiny against the Burmese communist leadership and make a ceasefire deal with Khin Nyunt until it broke down in 2009 when they were driven across the border into China. Hostilities renewed earlier this year. It would suit the government if the Rohingya embarked on a second Mujahid rebellion but instead they have wised up and played the victim this time round.
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The “Rohingya” get treatment from the Press, that only Hamas and Abbas can dream of. “Poor Islamic refugees mistreated and denied human rights..” Oh wait, I forgot, that’s Sudan and Syria…..
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