Damsana Ranadhiran :
The International Community most possibly are not fully realising the potential security threats the region and the world would face in near future unless the longstanding Rohingya refugee issue is resolved immediately thus compelling Myanmar in taking back over one million of their people from Bangladesh. Living off the land is natural for Rohingya, who lived a predominantly agricultural life in Myanmar. But now, according to the United Nations, less than four hundred thousand Rohingyas remain in Myanmar, compared to over one million in various refugee camps in Bangladesh.
According to media reports, due to delay in returning of the Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, lots of these refugees have started small businesses serving the needs of the refugee communities, ranging from simple tea shops to tailoring services. Full-blown fresh-food markets have also emerged, the trading jointly run by local Bangladeshi farmers as well as Rohingyas.
From an aerial view, it may look like an example of harmony. There is no doubt about the sympathy of Bangladeshi people towards the Rohingya refugees, who are sacrificing a lot for this unfortunate community from Myanmar. But from a closer look, such mixing of Rohingyas with the locals and participating in commercial activities would definitely generate enough grounds of grave concern. Because gradually these refugees may ultimately melt into the mainstream. Of course even such melting might not generate any concern unless the Rohingyas were having high-grievance towards those repressors in Myanmar.
The Rohingya crisis
Discriminatory policies of Myanmar’s government since the late 1970s have compelled hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya to flee their homes in the predominantly Buddhist country. Most have crossed by land into Bangladesh, while others have taken to the sea to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Beginning in 2017, renewed violence, including reported rape, murder, and arson, triggered an exodus of Rohingya amid charges of ethnic cleansing against Myanmar’s security forces.
The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority who practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam. There are an estimated 3.5 million Rohingyas dispersed worldwide. Before August 2017, the majority of the estimated one million Rohingyas in Myanmar resided in Rakhine State, where they accounted for nearly a third of the population. They differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously.
The Rohingyas trace their origins in the region to the Fifteenth Century, when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, when Rakhine was governed by colonial rule as part of British India. Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya’s historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country’s 135 official ethnic groups.
Neither the central government nor Rakhine’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, recognize the label “Rohingya,” a self-identifying term that surfaced in the 1950s, which experts say provides the group with a collective political identity. Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the most widely accepted theory is that Rohang derives from the word “Arakan” in the Rohingya dialect and ga or gya means “from”. By identifying as Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group asserts its ties to the land that was once under the control of the Arakan Kingdom, according to Chris Lewa, Director of the Arakan Project, a Thailand-based advocacy group.
The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingyas citizenship, and as a result most of the group’s members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless. Myanmar’s 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, and the military junta, which seized power in 1962, introduced another law twenty years later that stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. Until recently, the Rohingya had been able to register as temporary residents with identification cards, known as white cards, which the junta began issuing to many Muslims, both Rohingyas and non-Rohingyas, in the 1990s. The white cards conferred limited rights but were not recognized as proof of citizenship. Still, Lewa says that they did provide some recognition of temporary stay for the Rohingya in Myanmar.
In 2014 the government held a UN-backed national census, it’s first in thirty years. The Muslim minority group was initially permitted to identify as Rohingya, but after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census, the government decided Rohingya could only register if they identified as Bengali instead.
Similarly, under pressure from Buddhist nationalists protesting the Rohingya’s right to vote in a 2015 constitutional the referendum, then President Thein Sein canceled the temporary identity cards in February 2015, effectively revoking their newly gained right to vote. (White card holders were allowed to vote in Myanmar’s 2008 constitutional referendum and 2010 general elections.) In the 2015 elections, which were widely touted by international monitors as free and fair, no parliamentary candidate was of the Muslim faith. “Countrywide anti-Muslim sentiment makes it politically difficult for the government to take steps seen as supportive of Muslim rights,” writes the International Crisis Group.
The Myanmar government has effectively institutionalised discrimination against the ethnic group through restrictions on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement. For example, Rohingya couples in the northern towns of Maungdaw and Buthidaung are only allowed to have two children. Rohingya must also seek permission to marry, which may require them to bribe authorities and provide photographs of the bride without a headscarf and the groom with a clean-shaven face, practices that conflict with Muslim customs. To move to a new home or travel outside their townships, Rohingya must gain government approval.
Moreover, Rakhine State is Myanmar’s least developed state, with a poverty rate of 78 percent, compared to the 37.5 percent national average, according to World Bank estimates. Widespread poverty, poor infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities in Rakhine have exacerbated the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas. This tension is deepened by religious differences that have at times erupted into conflict.
International response to Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing
In December 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama lifted sanctions against Myanmar, saying it had made strides in improving human rights. The move came amid a crackdown on Rohingyas and was criticized by some as premature. A year later, new US sanctions were imposed against a Myanmar general for his alleged role in the military’s attacks in Rakhine and the U.S. government has continued to widen its sanctions regime on Myanmar military commanders in 2018, as evidence of the military’s atrocities mounts.
Advocacy groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Arakan Project, and Fortify Rights continue to appeal for international pressure on Myanmar’s government. In November 2018, Amnesty International stripped Suu Kyi of the Ambassador of Conscience Award it had conferred on her during her fifteen-year house arrest. During early 2018, the ICC’s chief prosecutor launched an investigation into alleged war crimes that forced the exodus of Rohingyas.
It’s a ticking time-bomb
Although there is visibly no real initiatives from the International Community, especially the United States and United Kingdom and putting pressure on Myanmar for the immediate return of those over one million Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh; unfortunately on the other hand, India and China are either maintaining silence or extending support towards Myanmar. There are even reports about India forcefully pushing hundreds of Rohingyas into Bangladesh territory.
Gradually, the level of frustration and anger is on rising amongst the Rohingya refugees. While ARSA may always try to take full advantage of this situation, there is a sharp possibility of international terrorist groups forming nexus with ARSA.
(Damsana Ranadhiran is a retired intelligence official)
