Abstract
This article, based on event history and a narrative analysis of reports produced by human rights groups, reveals that the genocide of Rohingyas of the Rakhine state of Myanmar is the result of the Myanmar military government’s deliberate policies and unpremeditated consequences that have led to the higher level of conflict among groups in Myanmar. It examines the processes by which the Myanmar government has constructed the collective identity of Rohingya as illegal immigrants. It focuses on the role of the sustained historical and conflictual relationships among the Myanmar government, Rohingyas, and the Rakhine Buddhists that contributed to the Rohingya genocide.
Rohingya from Rakhine State in Myanmar have been experiencing ethnic cleansing (BBC, 2016). The United Nations Special Rapporteur to Myanmar reported that the atrocities inflicted on Rohingyas could be considered crimes against humanity. This article explains how the mass killing of Rohingyas is explained by Myanmar government policies that superimpose the historical conflict among the ethnic groups of Rakhine. In this article, I use the terms Rakhine in reference to Rakhine State, Rakhines in reference to Rakhine’s ethnic Theravada Buddhists, and ETBNs in reference to Rakhine’s ethnic Theravada Buddhist nationalists. The term Rohingyas is used to refer to the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine.
Rakhine is located in the western part of Myanmar. The national poverty rate of Myanmar is approximately 38%, whereas approximately 78% of Rakhines live in poverty. There are approximately 1.33 million Rohingyas in Myanmar. Approximately 1.08 million live in the northern part of Rakhine (Fortify Rights, 2014), where they account for nearly one third of Rakhine’s population. The southern part of Rakhine is the home of the majority of Rakhines. There are approximately two million Rakhines.
Analytical Framework
According to researchers, the mass killing of civilians during war is a military strategy to defeat a well-organized guerrilla army supported by powerful mass-based civilians. Civilian support for guerrilla insurgents frustrates regimes because guerrillas are not easily found. Therefore, the regime targets the guerrillas’ mass base of support (Valentino, Huth, & Balch-Lindsay, 2004). A reflection on the mass killing of Rohingyas in Myanmar would explain that the assumptions of “a well-organized guerrilla army” and “powerful mass-based civilian support for guerrilla insurgents” are problematic. The Myanmar government accused the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group, of being responsible for violent attacks on border security officers in 2017. Compared with ARSA, the Karen National Union (KNU) is “the most significant of Burma’s ethnic and political insurgent groups,” and Karen has the longest history of conflict with the central government (South, 2011). Although the Myanmar government has repressed the KNU and many Karen civilians, unlike the intent to destroy all Rohingya civilians, all Karen civilians were not targeted. In addition, ARSA does not have mass-based Rohingya support (International Crisis Group, 2016).
In his historical analysis, Kiernan emphasizes the role of ideology in the origin of genocide. He explains how the English conquest of Ireland, North America, Australia, and the United States and European colonial power committed genocides in many parts of the world. Kiernan also analyzes genocides in Maoist China and during Japanese imperialism. He identifies racism, territorial expansionism, fetishes for agrarianism, and a desire to restore purity and an idealistic cult of antiquity. Kiernan (2007) argues that obsessions and preoccupations of one or a combination of these four ideologies, along with other ideologies, have led to genocide in the past. Kiernan overemphasizes the role of ideologies and downplays the role of specific political and regional forces in genocide. Kiernan’s “focus is on genocidal ideology, which Kiernan explains as a nostalgic reaction to the changes wrought by early modernity” (Moses, 2008).
Hagan and Rymond-Richmond demonstrate how the Sudanese government used racial ideology and mobilized local Arab Janjaweed militia that led to the genocide of non-Arab Black Africans in Darfur. They argue that the racial ideology was socially constructed and had an important role in transforming individual motivation into the “collectively organized dehumanization” of Black Africans (Hagan & Rymond-Richmond, 2009, p. 876). Black Africans were victimized not because they were Black, but because the Sudanese government and the militia successfully constructed them as racially inferior to local Arabs through the persistent use of racial epithets. Hagan and Rymond-Richmond overemphasize racial language as the main factor of genocide and ignore the political dynamics of the Darfur conflict (Shaw, 2009). In Myanmar, the ideology of Rohingya as illegal immigrants has been extensively used by the government. However, this has been just one genocidal ideology that has led to the atrocities. We must consider the political processes by which the identity of Rohingya as a non-Burman Muslim minority group in Myanmar has been constructed and the illegal immigrant ideology in which it has been represented.
Elias focused on the declining trend of interpersonal and mass violence in post-medieval and early modern western culture, sexual behavior, the civilizing process, and state formation. Elias explained the forces that were responsible for the declining scale and scope of violence. He argued that the structuring and self-restraining of violent behavior were because of the formation and taming of the state and the increased thresholds of shame that were generated and regulated by complex networks of social connection. In the European context, state monopolies of violence, along with other forces, transformed the habitus, which led to a decrease in the scale of public violence. Elias identified the multilinear form of civilizing processes and argued that the process of state formation may also be responsible for the periods of decivilization and an increase in the risk of mass violence (cited by Broadhurst, Bouhours, & Bouhours, 2017). Moses (2008) argued that such a Eurocentric theorization of genocide assumes that genocides occur in societies—“failed states,” . . . that have experienced perverted modernization. Had they followed the western, preferably the North American, road to modernity, it is implied, they would not have become totalitarian states and perpetrated genocide . . .
Genocide scholars have used Sykes and Matza’s neutralization theory to explain the strategies that perpetrators use to rationalize their genocidal acts. Sykes and Matza (1957) provide a set of justifications that offenders use prior to committing crime: they deny responsibility to accept blame for the offense; they deny the injury of victims by arguing that no harm has been done to them, and the criminal act should thus be considered to be socially acceptable; they blame the victim as being responsible for the offense; they label the people who condemn the offender as corrupt and thus validate their own criminality; and they appeal to a higher loyalty to a group to justify their criminality. These techniques facilitate criminality by neutralizing the normative expectations that would otherwise prevent juveniles from committing criminal acts. The empirical research on genocide that uses this theory has produced inconclusive findings. Alvarez’s research on the Holocaust adds the dehumanization of the victim as one more technique by which ordinary Germans neutralized the internal pressure to not participate in the Holocaust. These techniques are rationalized not only consciously, as Sykes and Matza thought, but also unconsciously (Alvarez, 1997). This theory cannot explain why the military junta of Myanmar has routinely committed mass atrocities against Rohingyas for more than five decades. It is possible that the junta has redefined its own internalized moral code that replaced the moral code shared by the larger society. Neutralization theory also fails to explain the political motives that genocidal elites may have.
Other scholars have identified that authoritarian regimes are more likely to be responsible for mass killing (Horowitz, 1976; Rummel, 1995). Authoritarian states might lack the professionalism and competency to distinguish between noncombatant civilians and insurgents, especially in guerrilla wars. The regime might suspect civilians as the support base for insurgents during armed conflicts. If the regime devalues these civilians, then destroying them is likely the only option (Valentino et al., 2004). These civilians might be framed as enemies who pose a security threat to the state and who deserve to be killed (Shaw, 2007). Critiques have questioned the reliability of Rummel’s data on mass causality because “he chooses numbers of death that almost always are skewed in the direction of the highest guesses” (Harff, 1996, p. 118). In addition, the sample of genocides that Rummel used in his research that identified authoritarian regimes as the perpetrator is based on post–World War II genocides and, therefore, is not a representative sample of genocides.
Southwick addresses the critical elements of the democratic development in Myanmar as the country is transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy. The denial of basic human rights and the mass displacement of Rohingya, combined with a weak response from the international community to the Rohingya crisis, are major impediments to this transition. Southwick refers to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and urges that the international community has the responsibility to act to prevent atrocities against the Rohingya and guarantee their citizenship of Myanmar (Southwick, 2015). In 2005, the members of the United Nations endorsed the R2P norm. According to this norm, each state is responsible for protecting its people from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. According to R2P, the international community has the responsibility to encourage and help at-risk states to take the necessary steps to prevent these crimes. R2P stipulates that in cases where the national authorities fail to protect their people from these crimes, the international community, through the Security Council of the United Nations and with the cooperation of relevant regional organizations, should take action to protect the population at risk (United Nations General Assembly, 2005). Myanmar is a high-risk country of genocide and needs urgent action from the international community to prevent possible genocide (Southwick, 2015).
Researchers have argued that mass ethnic violence is a strategy of a repressive government to challenge armed conflict in a multiethnic country in the process of a transition from authoritarian government to democratic government. Genocide is a likely part of the process of political development, such as state building, state competition, and the consolidation of the state in modern times (Levene, 2000). The last episode of Rohingya genocide occurred recently, during a time when Myanmar was transitioning from military rule to democratic rule, starting in 2011. Genocide also occurred during decades of the junta rule, when there was no attempt at democratization. Thus, state building and democratization may not be sufficient conditions to explain the episodes of genocide in Myanmar.
Deep-seated social conflict, dehumanizing attitudes, hatred, and discrimination among ethnic groups have been identified as the causes of mass killing (Fein, 1993; Kuper, 1981). Intergroup fissures can increase the likelihood of genocide by promoting further cleavages among groups, by increasing exclusive in-group identity, by desensitizing the in-group’s moral responsibilities to the “out-group,” and by facilitating the collective punishment of the “out-group.” Sustained and pervasive conflict among groups in plural societies results in greater vulnerability to genocide if inequality is superimposed on differences based on religion, ethnicity, race, or socioeconomic status (Kuper, 1981). The central mechanism is creating a division between the in-group and the out-group, according to Kuper, or constructing differences between the inclusion and the exclusion of groups, according to Fein (1993). Critiques argue that Fein uses liberal ideology to explain genocide, that is, the Holocaust, and perceives genocide as an “ideologically motivated and state-executed program” (Moses, 2008).
Kuper outlines the processes of the social construction of the out-group and how these processes can help the perpetrators to rationalize mass atrocities. He identifies polarization between the in-group and the out-group, which may be because of “deliberate policies or unpremeditated consequences of strategies pursued . . .” He argues that the higher level of polarization between groups may lead to the genocidal elites perceiving mass atrocities as normal, necessary, and good for the well-being of the in-group (Kuper, 1977).
The construction of the out-group benefits the state elite if this construction increases the legitimacy of the state and the dominant group’s control over the state. The risk of genocide increases if political or cultural crises of national identity are threatened because of the conflict between groups. The risk of genocide further increases if the state elite can successfully desensitize the in-group’s moral responsibilities to the out-group and develop strategies to strengthen its control over the state and if the potential cost of the collective punishment of the out-group is low (Fein, 1979).
The national threats that are often heightened during war, the role of restraint, and the interaction between national and local actors are important predictors of the large-scale, sustained destruction of selected groups (Straus, 2012). Straus demonstrated that genocide is likely if political elites can heighten the internal divisions of the multiethnic identity of a country and mobilize the ideology of inclusion versus exclusion, such as who should be a part of the political community and who should not be. Genocide is not a predetermined event but an outcome of an escalatory process. Straus is critical of researchers who emphasize that genocide is a premeditated act. He points out the dynamic nature of genocide: “Genocide is rarely the first choice of leaders, but rather the choice emerges over time in response to failures, events, contingencies, and the actions of one’s opponents” (Straus, 2012, p. 550). There may be many “events, incentives, and constraints” that are responsible for pushing genocidal elites toward escalation (Straus, 2012, p. 550). Perpetrators evaluate their past failures, events, incentives, conditions, and the actions of their targets before they become involved in mass atrocities (Levene, 2000; Shaw, 2012). The 2012 riot in Rakhine was portrayed by the Myanmar government as spontaneous ethnic violence, but observers argued that the violence was well planned by the security forces, border patrol, and government (Stoakes, 2015). The Myanmar government periodically drove Rohingyas off their land, but many displaced Rohingyas returned to Rakhine. Although many forces have contributed to the periodic mass killing and displacement of Rohingyas, the role of the Myanmar government in the killing and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas requires attention.
Based on the analytical framework provided by Straus, Kuper, and Fein, I examine the dynamic processes by which the Myanmar government has constructed and superimposed the collective identity of Rohingya as illegal immigrants, an out-group, in Myanmar that facilitated the Rohingya genocide. Following Kuper’s idea, I focus on the role of the sustained historical and conflictual relationships among the Myanmar government, Rohingyas, and the dominant ETBNs that contributed to mass atrocities against the Rohingya at different phases in the history of Myanmar. Following Kuper’s theory, I examine the deliberate policies and unpremeditated consequences of the strategies pursued by the Myanmar government that have led to a higher level of conflict among groups in the history of Myanmar and that have caused the genocide of Rohingya. I apply Fein’s idea about how intergroup fissures can increase the likelihood of genocide by promoting further cleavages between the Rakhines and the Rohingya and by increasing exclusive out-group identity. I apply Straus’s idea and demonstrate how the Myanmar government heightened the internal divisions of the Rohnigya and Rakhine Buddhists by introducing policies and mobilized the ideology of who should be considered Myanmar’s citizens and who should be considered illegal immigrants.
Method
This article is based on an event history and qualitative narrative analysis of secondary sources of data, including the reports of Human Rights Watch and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). I believe that the reports produced by the human rights groups and NGOs and the review of the scholarly literature used in this research can produce knowledge for further scholarly inquiry.
I collected online reports produced by human rights organizations and NGOs. I visited the online archives of International Crisis Group Asia (2014-2017), Human Rights Watch, Burma (1996-2017), and the Transnational Institute (2014-2017). These organizations have produced special reports on the human rights abuses of the Rohingya in Myanmar. I collected all available reports in the archives of these organizations.
Coding of Documents and Reports
As I started reconstructing the narrative of genocide, I followed qualitative coding of the secondary data. At first, I engaged in paragraph-by-paragraph coding of the data to achieve an in-depth knowledge of the data. I focused on (a) the specific years of conflict among the Myanmar government, ETBN, and Rohingya; (b) the activities of the government, ETBN, and Rohingya that were closely connected to the unfolding of the Rohingya genocide; (c) the specific years that the government introduced policies that constructed Rohingyas as illegal immigrants and that were responsible for conflict and escalating conflict between the ETBN and the Rohingya; and (d) the collective punishment of the Rohingya.
Prior to the coding, conceptual coding categories were identified based on the previous research on the prediction of genocide. One major predictor is group conflict. Coding the conflict among the government, ETBN, and Rohingya entailed two stages. The first stage involved identifying the conflict among the groups. A conflict is operationalized as any occurrence in which the members of the three groups vocalized or indicated differences of opinion regarding the rights of the Rohingya.
In the second stage, the context of the conflict was noted including the date; the person or group involved; the manner, that is, the theme of the speech or policy in which a person or group attempted to affect the rights of the Rohingya; the audience toward whom the speeches/policies in question were directed; the overall political condition within which the conflict occurred; and the outcome of the conflict.
Based on the UN Genocide Convention and using Fein’s and Kuper’s idea, genocidal intent is operationalized as how the perpetrators have attributed the collective identity of the Rohingya as an out-group who deserves collective punishment. Based on Harff’s idea, the perpetrators are operationalized as the government or its agents and the ETBN who act with implicit government sanction (Harff, 1996). Genocide is operationalized as the sustained, intentional, and premeditated killings of Rohingya members (Harff, 1996). I extend Harff’s definition of genocide by including nonmurderous techniques of genocide, such as forced migration and human rights abuses of the Rohingya. Forced migration is operationalized as the migration of Rohingya across the national border because of the deliberate or unpremeditated consequences of the perpetrators. Following Kuper’s idea, I also coded the deliberate policies or unpremeditated consequences of the strategies pursued by the Myanmar government that have led to the higher level of conflict between the Rohingya and the ETBN over time. Sustained conflict is operationalized as the continuous and intermittent conflict from 1947 to 2017.
By using Mitchell and McCormick’s (1988) idea, I operationalize human rights abuses as violating the integrity of persons. Examples of human rights abuses are forced migration; torture; rape; imprisonment of Rohingyas without trial; the failure to supply food, water, and life-saving drugs; and restrictions on Rohingya travel, marriage, and birth.
A single paragraph of a report of a human rights organization and NGOs was usually categorized under several analytical codes. For example, the excerpts from a report of the International Crisis Group, Asia, indicate that the Rohingya of Myanmar is currently experiencing widespread human rights abuses caused by government forces that have heightened the interethnic conflict between the Rohingya and the Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine and is responsible for the mass killing and forced migration of the Rohingya. This item was first coded as “government forces heightened interethnic conflict.” Then, this item was dated, and the context was noted and filed under one of the seven categories of “the government forces,” “target of the government forces,” “Rohingya collective identity,” “conflict between ETBN and Rohingya,” “abuse of human rights,” “genocide,” and “forced migration.” I also wrote analytical memos for myself to focus on the differences across the government policies and different responses of the ETBN and Rohingya across different phases of the genocide while they dealt with the problem of addressing “the government forces heightened interethnic conflict.” I speculated that there were going to be some differences in the levels of conflict across different phases of the Rohingya genocide because of the different types of policies of the Myanmar government and the different sociopolitical environment over time. Thus, these analytic memos performed the role of working hypotheses.
I divided the history of conflict among the government, Rakhines, and Rohingyas according to years and phases. I examined each of the data sources as a narrative and analyzed the data in relation to the key themes that were derived from a critical review of the theories of genocide. I examined the sequencing, order, and contingency of the temporality of the different events that are present in the data (Griffin, 1992). I analyzed the initial key choices made by the ETBNs, Rohingyas, and Myanmar government by examining the events that were specific to the initial historical context of each of the phases of the conflict that shaped the direction of the later phases of the mass killing.
Findings
1947: The First Phase of Conflict During Decolonization
Myanmar was colonized by the British in 1886 when the country was characterized by ethnic minorities and a Burman Buddhist majority. British policies disrupted village economies. The royal Buddhist patronage that Buddhists had received for thousands of years ended (Turner, 2014). The British colonial power filled many government positions with Indians who had migrated to Myanmar. The great influx of Indian migrants to Myanmar led to the dominance of major sectors of the economy by Indian migrants. Indian immigrants bought large tracts of land from Buddhists during the Great Depression (D. Smith, 1965), which caused tension between the Burmese Buddhists and the Indian immigrants in 1930 and 1938 (International Crisis Group, 2017). The British implemented an indirect rule of ethnic minorities in the border areas of Myanmar with China and India. The majority of Buddhists observed these policies as an attempt to undermine the Buddhist religion and culture.
During the decolonization process of Myanmar in 1947, General Aung San agreed that ethnic minority states would be granted greater autonomy from the central government. Since the independence of Myanmar in 1948, all of the civil and military governments have failed to implement the decentralization of power and ethnic minorities’ control over the political and economic resources of their states. After the military takeover in 1962, the military government implemented a unitary state and imposed Burman Buddhism as a strategy to unify Myanmar’s multiethnic nation until 2011. The junta attempted to impose Burman Buddhist majority rule on all ethnic minority groups, including Rakhines (Rieffel, 2017). The central government was almost exclusively represented by the dominant Burman Buddhists.
Rakhines are among the most marginalized ethnic groups in Myanmar and are repressed by the central government (Aron, 2018). Most of the powerful positions in Myanmar’s parliament, the Rakhine administration, and businesses are occupied by the Burman Buddhist elite (Wolf, 2015). With high poverty, Rakhines want more control over Rakhine’s economic and political resources. With very few jobs available, the ETBNs see Rohingyas as an additional burden on Rakhines and a threat to Buddhism. The ETBNs are fearful that if they are unable to assert greater control over the resources of Rakhine, Rakhine will disintegrate from a Theravada Buddhist state into a non-Buddhist state (Aron, 2018).
Mistrust between the ETBNs and the Rohingyas is compounded by the decades of demands by Rohingyas to have an autonomous state for themselves in northern Rakhine. Fear about Rohingyas among the Rakhines is rooted in the British colonial and post-colonial periods. During World War II, Rakhine was the frontline of the war, where the imperial Japanese forces confronted the British forces. Rohingyas supported the British, while Rakhines supported the Japanese. Conflicts between armed units of the two groups killed thousands of people on both sides between 1942 and 1943 (International Crisis Group, 2016). The Japanese were defeated. Rakhine was reoccupied by the British later, but interethnic conflict continued (Chan, 2005). Later, Rohingyas moved to the northern part of Rakhine, and Rakhines moved to the southern part, which caused a virtually segregated state.
After the independence of Myanmar in 1948, Rohingyas wanted to be a part of Pakistan, which was denied by the Pakistani leaders. Later, Rohingyas demanded an Islamic republic for Rohingyas in northern Rakhine and were involved in armed struggle (Yegar, 1972). Armed factions of ethnic Rakhines also demanded autonomy from the central government (Southwick, 2015). The military junta defeated the rebels in 1962, although the rebellion continued until the 1990s (Calamur, 2017).
1948-1978: The Second Phase of Conflict: The Construction of Rohingya as Illegal Immigrants
Alam (2018) demonstrates the political processes by which the identity of Rohingya as an out-group, that is, a non-Burman Muslim minority group in Myanmar, is constructed and that leads to their human rights violation and mass killing. The 1948 citizenship law of Myanmar did not allow Rohingyas, who fled Myanmar during the Second World War, to return to Myanmar. The Rohingya who returned were considered to be illegal immigrants (Yegar, 1972). Many Rohingya armed rebel groups were formed. In 1948, the first Muslim armed conflict against the government occurred in Rakhine that demanded Rohingyas’ right to live in an autonomous northern part of Rakhine as full citizens of Myanmar. The rebel groups attacked Buddhist villages in northern Rakhine. The rebellion in Rakhine and communist insurgencies led to severe violence in Rakhine (M. Smith, 1999), which caused a further rift between Rakhines and Rohingyas.
The Myanmar military took control of the violence in 1954 by launching military attacks on Rakhine. The insurgency temporarily ended in 1961 through ceasefires (International Crisis Group, 2016). Prime Minister U Nu granted Rohingyas citizenship in Myanmar in 1954 (Human Rights Watch, 1996).
In 1964, the National Security Act was introduced by the junta, and all Rohingya organizations were banned. From 1966 to the 1980s, the military regime denied Rohingyas citizenship in Myanmar. More than 270,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh during this period.
The Rohingya were denied the right to elect government representatives in the 1974 national elections (Mahmood, Wroe, Fuller, & Leaning, 2017). In 1974, several armed Rohingya rebel groups were formed, which were involved in conflicts with the government. Rakhine’s civilians were affected by the conflict, which increased the tension between Rakhines and Rohingyas. From 1971 to 1978, Rakhines and Buddhist monks demanded that the government force Rohingyas out of Myanmar (Yegar, 1972). Between 1977 and 1978, Rohingya civilians suffered violence, human rights abuses and forced labor that were largely inflicted by government security forces (Southwick, 2015).
1979-1992: The Third Phase of Conflict: The Citizenship Law and the Reconstruction of Rohingya as Illegal Immigrants
From 1978 to 1992, the junta drove many Rohingyas out of Myanmar (International Crisis Group, 2014). In 1982, the junta introduced a citizenship law that allowed Rohingyas to apply for citizenship if they could speak one of Myanmar’s official languages and could provide evidence that their family lived in Myanmar before the independence of Myanmar in 1948 (Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, 1982). The Rohingya language was not considered to be an official language. Most of the Rohingyas failed to provide this evidence. The British brought many Rohingyas to Myanmar as laborers between 1824 and 1948, when Myanmar was a part of British India (International Crisis Group, 2014). Rohingya migration was considered to be internal migration (Chan, 2005).
Because the 1982 law required proof of citizenship, most of the Rohingyas who were unable to provide proof lost their citizenship (Zawacki, 2013). All of the successive governments have denied that Rohingyas are one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups and have denied their citizenship. Their property was subject to arbitrary confiscation (Human Rights Watch, 2000). The conflict between the ETBNs and the Rohingyas escalated. The mass killing of Rohingyas by the junta and ETBNs occurred in 1982. Intermittent conflict between the Rohingya and the ETBN continued until 1991.
In 1991, a significant number of military troops were deployed to northern Rakhine. They confiscated Rohingya land to build military camps and for agricultural production. The troops used Rohingyas as forced laborers (International Crisis Group, 2014). The atrocities against the Rohingya between 1991 and 1992 were largely inflicted by government security forces (Southwick, 2015). In 1992, 250,000 Rohingyas were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh (International Crisis Group, 2014).
1993-2009: The Fourth Phase of Conflict: The Issuance of White Cards and the Genocide of Rohingyas
In 1951, the government introduced the White Card, which allowed cardholders to stay in Myanmar temporarily if the cardholder was 18 years old, although they had to participate in a citizenship-examination process to become citizens. Before the election of 1990, the State Law and Order Restoration Council issued numbers of White Cards. Most of the White Card holders were Rohingyas (Gibson, James, & Falvey, 2016). White Card holders were allowed to vote. The issuance of the White Card was an electoral strategy of the military-backed political party to obtain Rohingya votes in the elections of Rakhine state (Myint, 2014). The ETBNs protested the government’s issuance of White Cards to Rohingyas. The election results elevated the tension between the ETBNs and the Rohingyas. Violent clashes between the Rohingyas and the Rakhines occurred in 1993. Many people on both sides were killed. These clashes led the military to crack down. Massive human rights violations by the Myanmar security forces were followed by mass migrations of Rohingyas to Bangladesh (Shukla & Thompson, 2005).
The Arakan Rohingya National Organization and other Rohingya rebel organizations were formed in 1998 (see below). The Arakan Rohingya National Organization was an umbrella organization that was formed by a few rebel groups (International Crisis Group, 2016). Rebel organizations continued to be involved in conflict with the Myanmar government. Rebel groups planted bombs in a border town in April 1994, which caused civilian injuries (International Crisis Group, 2016). Security forces defeated the rebels. Approximately 70,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh due to torture by Myanmar authorities and ETBNs (Yegar, 2002). These Rohingya were not allowed to return to Myanmar. The Rohingya who returned were identified as illegal immigrants (International Crisis Group, 2016). The government restricted their movement from northern Rakhine to the capital of Rakhine. Intermittent violence between the ETBNs and the Rohingyas continued.
The 2001 riot in the capital city of Rakhine left several Rakhines and Rohingyas killed (International Crisis Group, 2016). Rioting also spread to other parts of Myanmar (Human Rights Watch, 2002). Small-scale conflicts continued until the end of 2009.
2010-2013: The Fifth Phase of Conflict: The Reconstruction of Rohingyas as Illegal Immigrants and a Riot in Rakhine
The next episode of severe violence occurred in 2010. In the 2010 multiparty election, White Card issuance caused antagonism between Rakhines and Rohingyas (Myint, 2014). There were nearly 2.7 million eligible voters in Rakhine in the 2010 election. Of these 2.7 million, 750,000 were Rohingya White Card holders. The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), which was founded in 2010 by Rakhine nationalists, campaigned for the support of Rakhines, while the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a military-backed party, campaigned for the support of White Card holders. The RNDP won 18 of 45 seats in the Rakhine state parliament. The USDP also secured many seats in the election. ETBNs interpreted the USDP’s campaign as a strategy to defeat the RNDP by issuing White Cards and securing the Rohingya vote (International Crisis Group, 2014). This belief created further violence against Rohingyas. Discrimination and the illegal confiscation of Rohingya’s property by the state agency and ETBNs continued in 2011.
In July 2012, President Thein Sein stated that illegal Rohingyas threatened the stability of Rakhine State, and they could be settled in United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee camps or could be sent to a “third country” if a country was willing to take them (Vandenbrink, 2012). The president’s statement reinforced Myanmar’s majority groups’ belief that the Rohingyas do not belong in Myanmar (Human Rights Watch, 2013). The president’s comment justified violence against Rohingyas by the ETBNs. A mass killing of Rohingyas occurred in 2012 following rumors that a Rakhine Buddhist woman was raped and murdered by Rohingya men. ETBNs planned the attack for months before the rumor. The military and Rakhine local government sided with the ETBNs (Human Rights Watch, 2013). A military crackdown followed. The government and military ignited the conflict between the groups by asking the Rakhines to evict Rohingyas from their homes. More than 200 people were killed between 2012 and 2013 (Southwick, 2015). Moreover, 140,000 people were relocated in internally displaced camps, and 86,000 Rohingya migrated to neighboring countries in 2012 (Kingston, 2015). Internally displaced camps are under military surveillance, and Rohingya need permission to leave them (Mahmood et al., 2017).
Serious violence against Rohingyas continued in 2013. ETBNs lobbied for laws to protect their race and religion that targeted Rohingyas (International Crisis Group, 2016). The police, interagency border control forces, and the military were involved in armed conflict (Human Rights Watch, 2013). Mass graves were found in which Rohingya civilians were buried. Although President Sein later stated that the perpetrators would be brought to trial, no steps were taken to stop the violence (Human Rights Watch, 2013). The Myanmar government restricted Rohingya’s access to food and medicine. In 2012, approximately 2,000 children were found to be acutely malnourished and on the verge of death (Southwick, 2015).
In October 2012, President Sein attempted to negotiate a peace agreement between various rebel groups and the government. Nevertheless, the violence continued. Government vehicles dumped bodies of Rohingya in mass graves (Kingston, 2015). In 2013, approximately 35,000 Rohingya were forced to leave the country. Many took dangerous boat rides to cross the national border. More than 2,000 died in the sea because of overcrowded boats (Kingston, 2015) or from starvation and ill-treatment by crew members (Mahmood et al., 2017). Human traffickers took advantage of the vulnerable condition of Rohingya and forced them to work as bonded labor in Thai and Malaysian agricultural fields and deep-sea trawlers (Southwick, 2015). Many Rohingya were caught by the Thai government, deported, and then re-smuggled by traffickers (Kingston, 2015).
2014-2017: The Sixth Phase of Conflict: The Reconstruction of Rohingya as “Bengalis”
The next wave of mass killing occurred after the first census in 2014. Until 2014, Rohingyas were called either Bengalis or Rohingyas. The use of the word Rohingyas was not controversial until 2014. Initially, before the census, the government allowed Rohingyas to identify themselves as Rohingyas in the census. Later, following protests by the Buddhist nationalists across the country, the government decided that Rohingyas could only register as Bengalis and not as Rohingyas (International Crisis Group, 2016). The Rohingya who failed to register as Bengali and without adequate documents were subject to relocation in the internally displaced camps (Southwick, 2015). The policy was a strategy to institutionalize the government’s attempt to discriminate against the Rohingya because the people who identified themselves as Bengali “are basically admitting to being undocumented . . . and could later be denied naturalized citizenship and face deportation” (Kingston, 2015). Suu Kyi and the military chief also failed to use the term “Rohingyas” in referring to Rohingyas in their public speeches (Tarabav, 2017). Several mosques were closed as demanded by the extremist Ma Ba Tha movement, which used anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In 2014, a major document written by Rakhine district-level officers was revealed by Fortify Rights. The document stripped Rohingyas of their human rights. It restricted Rohingyas’ movement and their right to marry, have children, and much more. This document alienated Rohingyas. Doctors Without Border, an NGO, used to be the main health care providers for the Rohingya. In February 2014, the government forced the organization out of the country. The ETBN also accused the Red Cross and human rights organizations of favoring Rohingya and forced approximately 700 foreign aid workers to leave Myanmar (Southwick, 2015).
In 2015, nationalist Buddhists monks successfully made the Myanmar government introduce a birth control law that would allow 14 states in Myanmar to request presidential order. It allowed the local authorities to organize campaigns so that women must have a gap of 36 months between childbirth events. Human rights groups argued that the law targeted Muslim and non-Buddhist ethnic minorities, whom the Buddhist monks feared were growing too rapidly (Perria, 2015). According to a government report, the high population growth rates of Rohingyas and the in-flow of illegal Rohingya immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh contributed to the fear and insecurity among the Buddhist majority (Perria, 2015). According to Alam (2018, p. 192), these policies indicate how “the state is deliberately altering the demographic make-up of Myanmar and the production of ethnic, religious and national identities that become exclusionary.”
Rohingyas again faced a massive military crackdown in 2015. Before the election of 2015, a majority of the members of Myanmar’s parliament voted for a bill to amend the law barring White Card holders from voting in elections and forming political parties. The majority of Myanmar’s people did not want White Card holders to vote in the election (Myint, 2014). After the election of 2015, Suu Kyi came to power. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democratic (NLD) party was able to win the election because they opposed decades of military rule. The religious extremist Ma Ba Tha movement, which used anti-Muslim rhetoric, often successfully mobilized mass support by merging national and local issues in campaigning against the NLD during the 2015 election (Lintner, 2017). Rohingyas rallied behind the NLD. Suu Kyi launched a government committee and international commission to address the Rohingya issue. However, from mid-2,016, the NLD government failed to continue to oppose the Ma Ba Tha movement’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In 2016, ARSA was formed. ARSA’s military capacities are limited, and it is ill-equipped to combat Myanmar’s military. ARSA attempts to mobilize the support of unarmed villagers. ARSA is assumed to have no more than 500 active combatants (Lintner, 2017). ARSA perceives the state-sponsored segregation of Rohingyas, the stripping away of Rohingyas’ citizenship, and the heavy militarization of northern Rakhine as fundamental human rights abuses (Aron, 2018). ARSA denies that it has any ties to international extremist Islamic groups, such as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS; International Crisis Group, 2016). The demands of ARSA are resented by the ETBNs, and violence has escalated between the two communities.
Since 2016, ARSA has coordinated small-scale attacks on security forces near the Myanmar–Bangladesh border. In 2017, violence escalated among ARSA, the Myanmar police, and border security forces in Northern Rakhine when 12 members of the border security forces were killed. According to the military, from August 25 to September 15, 2017, there were at least 93 clashes with “extremist Bengalis,” who demanded to be recognized as Rohingyas (Tarabav, 2017). Organized attempts to challenge discrimination and to be recognized as Rohingyas by various Rohingya organizations have provided a further incentive for the repression of Rohingyas. The government forcefully started to send Rohingyas to concentration camps in the border areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh, where Rohingyas are deprived of human rights (Human Rights Watch, 2013). The military chief framed the Rohingya question as a “national cause” and asked the country to unite against Rohingyas’ demands that they be one of Myanmar’s ethnic groups (Tarabav, 2017). Suu Kyi also denied that Rohingya are subject to ethnic cleansing (Rowlatt, 2017). By September 2017, 400,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh. The Myanmar government placed landmines in the border area between Myanmar and Bangladesh to prevent displaced Rohingyas from returning to Myanmar (Youtube, 2017). The government recognizes ARSA as a terrorist organization with an Islamic jihadist agenda, although terrorism experts do not see any clear link between ARSA and Islamic jihadists (Lintner, 2017).
Based on satellite pictures of Rakhine, human rights groups argue that mass killings were planned long before the ARSA rebel attack on border posts on October 9, 2017 (Rowlatt, 2017). The military launched a brutal campaign against Rohingya civilians. Sexual violence against Rohingya women was perpetrated as a weapon of war by the military and an instrument to terrorize the target (Meger, 2016). Hutchinson (2018) suspects that pregnant Rohingya women and new mothers who were living in refugee camps in Bangladesh were victims of sexual violence. Hutchinson (2018) indicates that the chances are high that many Rohingya women who were raped were also killed because Myanmar army perceives Rohingya women as too dirty to rape. Presently, the mass killing and displacement of Rohingyas continue.
Conclusion
Genocide scholars have argued that historical interethnic conflict facilitates genocide by promoting further cleavages among ethnic groups, increasing exclusive in-group identity, desensitizing the in-group’s moral responsibilities to the out-group, and facilitating the idea of the collective punishment of the out-group. Based on the analytical framework provided by Straus, Kuper, and Fein, this article explains how different phases of mass killing of Rohingyas are rooted in the sustained, historical, and conflictual relationship among the Myanmar government, Rohingyas, and the dominant ETBNs. I also examined the policies of the government by which it constructed and superimposed the collective identity of Rohingya as illegal immigrants and facilitated the collective punishment of Rohingyas. I applied Fein’s and Kuper’s idea about how intergroup fissures can increase the likelihood of genocide by promoting further cleavages between Rakhines and Rohingya and by increasing the exclusive out-group identity. In addition, I applied Straus’s idea to examine how the recent acceleration of the Rohingya genocide is caused by the military government that has successfully heightened the internal divisions of the Rakhine and Rohingya communities by introducing laws. To understand the Rohingya genocide, we need to go beyond the exclusive focus on religious conflicts between Rakhines and Rohingyas that have overshadowed the role of the government in superimposing historical conflicts between these groups. We also need to include the nonlethal techniques of genocide instead of defining genocide in the more restrictive terms of the loss of lives.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.