Abstract
The author, who has interviewed human rights activists in Burma, analyses the deeply entrenched and unchecked Islamophobia against the Rohingya, who have lived at least two centuries in Burma and yet are refused citizenship. They and Muslims from around the country have been subject to a recent deadly wave of anti-Muslim violence and yet politicians, including Aung San Suu Kyi, are unwilling to address the institutionalised racism, emphasising that constitutional change has to come first. The persecution of the Rohingya will continue, argues the author, while foreign governments are so willing to make political and economic deals with the racist former junta.
Abu Tahay is a small passionate man who has something important to say. He has said it to David Cameron, to William Hague, to Hugo Swire and now here in the single air-conditioned room of a small local grassroots organisation (optimistically named ‘Smile’) in Mingalar Taung Nyunt township in Yangon, he is saying it to me. It’s a desperate story and he is well versed in it. It is the story of the Burmese Rohingya: rendered stateless at the hands of the military junta, brutalised by armed Buddhist nationalists, abused, dehumanised and displaced by the current Burmese state and now fleeing the country that refuses to recognise them.
Bare life in Arakan
The Rohingya are an ethnic group with ancient traditions in Burma and a continuous physical presence there for at least the past two centuries, but they are defined by the Burmese state as Bangladeshi nationals with no right to the privileges of Burmese citizenship. Abu Tahay, Chair of the Union National Development Party, shows me the historical evidence that positions the Rohingya ethnic minority in Burma before the military’s pre-colonial citizenship cut-off date of 1823; 1 he shows me research from the Australian National University that identifies eighth-century Rohingya stone monuments in the Burmese state of Arakan (or Rakhine) and the linguistic work of British colonial scientist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton. 2 It is all compelling evidence and he leaves nothing out. On its basis the Rohingya are surely entitled to Burmese citizenship and ethnic minority recognition. Instead theirs is a ‘bare life’ in which every aspect of social and political life is restricted and diminished. Denied freedom of movement, employment, education and worship, the Rohingya must also apply for permission to marry and, when they do, they must sign a written obligation to have no more than two children. The consequences of breach are chilling: ‘Any more children than that are not registered and therefore not able to go to school, receive any sort of education, other services from the government, not able to apply for permission to move with their parents. They become unregistered children of stateless people, possibly the worst situation you could possibly imagine.’ 3
The ‘reforming’ government of Thein Sein has shown no sign of affording the Rohingya anything but continued persecution, dehumanisation, discrimination and violence. Unconscionable then, that the International Crisis Group chose to honour Thein Sein with its peace award this year.
There are an estimated 800,000 Rohingyas living in Arakan state but that number is dwindling fast. Thousands have fled and continue to flee on boats into the Bay of Bengal to escape the anti-Muslim state sponsored violence that took the lives of nearly 200 in late 2012. Tens of thousands of Rohingya people were displaced in the terror that ensued, and 130,000 were forced into detention camps near Sittwe after their homes were destroyed in June and October. According to UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, the camps in Sittwe, Myaybon and Pauk Taw evidence a ‘dire humanitarian situation’ and are characterised by overcrowding, a lack of access to clean water and sanitation, a high risk of disease, food insecurity, child malnutrition, and ‘harsh and disproportionate restrictions on the freedom of movement’. Behind the terror is a systematic pattern of dehumanisation.
There are also between 200,000 and 300,000 unregistered Rohingya refugees living outside camps in Bangladesh, in addition to 29,000 registered in camps assisted by UNHCR. In Thailand, Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project and Rohingya expert, reports that conditions for the 1,700 or so Rohingya men in immigration detention centres are appalling: ‘They are jails’, she says, ‘where people cannot even lie down’. 4
State crime and Islamophobia
During the second wave of violence, however, it was not only the Rohingya but also Kaman Muslims from coastal fishing villages in southern Arakan who were forced to flee as their communities were attacked. Although the Kaman are a recognised ethnic group with full citizenship rights, those rights did not protect them from racist state-sponsored violence that destroyed homes and livelihoods. Nor has citizenship protected those thousands of Muslims currently subjected to a terrifying wave of anti Muslim violence across Burma, in Meiktila, Yamethin, in the Pegu townships of Zigon and Nattalin and in the eastern Shan State town of Lashio. 5 These attacks, which left many dead and thousands displaced, demonstrate that citizenship is no protection against the communal violence and Islamophobia corroding Burma’s reformist agenda. The targets of these attacks were not the Arakan Rohingya as much as Muslim citizens, their mosques, schools, businesses and homes. State, and state-sponsored violence against Muslim communities has been orchestrated by Burma’s security forces – specifically the NaSaKa border force and – assisted by Arakan nationalists, paramilitaries and extremist Buddhist monks. Together they have been able to act with impunity. The cruelty and ferocity of the recent violence has been wrenchingly captured in photos and footage of charred bodies, blazing villages, displaced people, IDP detention camps, armed monks and Buddhist nationalists. Across the country this violence is reinforced by the ‘969’ 6 anti-Muslim campaign. Led by the militant racist monk Wirathu, this campaign is gaining traction with local groups across the country who hold meetings and produce CDs, pamphlets and stickers in an effort to persuade the Buddhist majority to boycott Muslim businesses.
According to Andrew Selth, these anti-Muslim riots are not simply a manifestation of the new freedoms Burma is experiencing (as some would argue). In his view, religious tension has always been a feature of the Burmese political landscape:
Full rights for Muslims were enshrined in the 1947 constitution, but in 1960 Buddhism was made Burma’s state religion and after the 1962 coup the military regime tended to equate Muslims with colonial rule and the exploitation of Burma by foreigners. Muslims were not permitted to run for public office, join the security forces or work as civil servants. The number of mosques was restricted, some Muslim cemeteries were destroyed and a number of madrassas were closed.
7
Chris Lewa concurs. ‘Buddhist nationalism’, she says, ‘means that there is strong anti-Muslim feeling here – they are frightened by the change and fearful of losing traditional superiority’. Thein Nyunt, chair of the New National Democracy Party made no concessions in his defence of the current 1982 law when he declared: ‘The citizenship law is intended to protect our race; by not allowing those with mixed blood from making political decisions [for the country], so the law is very important for the preservation of our country.’ 8
Back in the Smile offices, as our interview draws to a close, Abu Tahay shows me the statistical data he has painstakingly gathered and meticulously compiled on the current abuses suffered by his people. The arrest figures, deaths in custody, deaths in detention camps and rape statistics – all derived from Arakan court records and information drawn from victims’ families – are further evidence of his people’s anguish. He believes it is this kind of proof that will persuade the international community to challenge the Burmese government on the question of its citizenship laws. This evidence is every bit as – indeed, probably more – credible than anything produced by the Burmese authorities and clearly demonstrates that the Rohingya are victims of systematic and enduring state crimes.
But Abu Tahay’s struggle for recognition is dictated by and predicated upon the terms of the former racist Junta. If the Rohingya can prove and in turn convince the authorities of their ancient right to citizenship and win their place at the Burmese minority table they will have won something – but they will not have won a victory against Burmese racism or protection from the violence preached by hate-filled Buddhist monks like Wirathu and his 969 campaigners. Unless racism is defeated the violence we have witnessed against the Rohingya, the wider Muslim community and other minorities will be sure to continue.
Inside Burma the lack of discussion surrounding the Rohingya Muslims reveals how deeply ingrained and institutionalised Burmese Buddhist nationalism is. Why are many of the most courageous Burmese human rights activists, many of them former political prisoners, so unwilling to engage in support of the Rohingya? One such activist from 88 Generation 9 told me that the ‘Rohingya is not our ethnic group. Bengalis use the label “Burmese Rohingya” as a passport for asylum … we need to examine who should be a citizen … but it will be difficult to support citizenship. If however the Rohingya ask for their human rights we are ready to support.’ Aware of the paradox but unwilling to elaborate further he pushed our conversation on to other topics. In my time in Burma this was a common and unsettling experience.
Challenging an icon
It is Aung San Suu Kyi’s general refusal to speak out against the crimes endured by the Rohingya that has provided cover for David Cameron and the international community’s failure to intervene. At the outset of the recent waves of anti-Muslim violence, Burma’s icon of freedom and democracy was at one with the military backed government in her singular calls for the restoration of law and order by, it must be noted, the very same state security forces that so terrorised the entire Burmese population for five brutal decades. Rather than stand up against Buddhist-led racism, she has pegged her colours firmly, not to the oppressed Rohingya, nor to the increasing victims of Islamophobia, but to her former military jailors, for whom she shares a ‘great fondness’ 10 and whom she now charges with the task of implementing the rule of law. To this Abu Tahay asks: ‘But how will the rule of law be reinforced? Why does the government never take action against racist police, the NaSaKa border security forces, the Rakhine [Arakan] nationalist para military forces who are committing the violence?’ His question is perhaps the most pertinent challenge to Burma’s ruling elite.
Forced on the question during a trip to Tokyo in April 2013, Aung San Suu Kyi called for a review into the fairness of the citizenship laws 11 and more recently has described the enforcement of the ‘two-child policy’ as ‘illegal’ and ‘against human rights’. 12 But these gestures offer far too little, far too late, and are compromised by Aung San Suu Kyi’s insistence that questions of justice cannot be addressed until Burma’s constitution is amended and the rule of law adopted. Why this is so, is puzzling. Surely building a just society requires – at the very least – the immediate demand for justice when injustice abounds? The Lady’s wilful silence on racism in Burma suggests only a form of cynical politicking. Until the holy grail of constitutional reform, which would free her to run for president, is within grasp she is apparently happy to side with a regime that uses brutal force to suppress dissent (see the Letpandaung Copper Mine protests 13 ) and that engages in the ethnic cleansing of an abject group of Burmese people whose demands are simply to be recognised as such and treated with dignity.
Racist fault-lines
Racism is Burma’s political fault-line and while the epicentre might reasonably be understood as the ethnic cleansing of Burma’s Rohingya community in Arakan, the central fracture itself must be understood as institutionalised Islamophobia, deeply embedded and historically informed. There is little dispute that the Rohingya Muslims have suffered the most pervasive and brutal of recent state-sponsored crimes, but to focus only on the Rohingya is to fragment the racist violence experienced by the whole Burmese Muslim community and to be drawn into arcane legal debates around the rights and wrongs of immigration and citizenship policy that pertain most specifically to the Rohingya. History forces us to move beyond the immediacy of the Rohingya in order to challenge the more pervasive violence corrupting Burma’s transition from dictatorship.
Abu Tahay’s faith in the British political elite is touching – ‘they were very supportive’, he tells me of the meeting he and other ethnic minority leaders had with David Cameron and other UK government representatives in April 2012. I’m sure they were. In the comfortable surrounds of the British Ambassador’s Residence in Rangoon it would have been impolite to be anything less. But Cameron, Hague and Swire have done nothing at all to help the Rohingya, nor are they likely to.
For the moment the Rohingya must rely on the moral force of their cause, but while there is more economic and political mileage in doing business with their oppressors, the British government will continue to pay only lip service to Abu Tahay and the Islamophobia that underpins the relentless persecution of his community.
Abu Tahay’s stateless people continue to live in cruel isolation with few friends. And Abu Tahay is growing tired, ‘I don’t have the inner strength that’s why we need the international community’, he says quietly.
