US Campaign for Burma » Rohingya People of Burma
For decades, the Rohingya people have been victims of systematic and widespread human rights violations at the hands of the military junta. In a recent report released by the Irish Center for Human Rights, an expert on international human rights law claimed that these mass atrocities perpetrated by the military government against the Rohingya minority in the country’s western region may constitute crimes against humanity. Overlooked for years, their plight and the root causes of their dire situation remain under-examined.
Brief history of Burma’s Rohingya Minority
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority living in northern Arakan state in western Burma. They face religious discrimination at the hands of Burma’s military regime, which doesn’t recognize the Rohingya as citizens of Burma. The regime does not consider the Rohingya people as one of 135 legally recognized ethnic minority groups in Burma, leaving the Rohingya stateless, homeless and rights-less.
The first Rohingya people arrived in Burma as early as 7th century. These early migrants were known to be Arab sailors and merchants who traveled to Burma for economic pursuits. These Muslim settlers came to Burma in a total of three waves: from 7th to 13th century, in the 15th century and from 1826 onward throughout the British colonial rule. Today this day, Burma’s military regime maintains that the Rohingya immigrated to Burma from India while under British colonial rule, flagrantly omitting their earlier arrivals and settlements in the region.
With time, these Muslim settlers married into the local culture and made permanent settlements in western region of Burma. Today, Rohingya Muslims constitute 1/3 of the total population of Arakan State, and the rest belongs to Buddhist Arakanese.
Mass Atrocities Against Rohingya: Loss of Land and Rights
The Rohingya are denied fundamental human rights and freedom, and the military regime consistently perpetrates human rights violations against this vulnerable population. The regime refuses to issue identification cards to Rohingya, which are necessary to be able to travel, as well as to obtain passports and enroll in higher education. They are denied land and property rights and ownership. The land on which they live can be taken away at any given time.
Furthermore, the Rohingya are victims of modern-day slavery – forced labor. These people are forced to work without pay on construction sites for roads, railways, and building army barracks. Because they are forced into these construction projects with no compensation, they cannot generate any income to feed themselves and their families. In addition, their non-legal status makes it extremely difficult for the Rohingya to find employment. Acute and chronic malnutrition is rife among the Rohingya minority.
Moreover, these gas/oil pipelines generate billions of dollars annually for the military, and less than 1% of this gas/oil revenues makes it back into Burma to benefit the people of Burma. Often times, these revenues are used to buy more weapons or end up in off-shore individual bank accounts of the generals and their associates.
The denial of citizenship to the Rohingya means that the Rohingya must abide by laws for “temporary residents.” For example, Rohingya are denied birth certificates, and they must seek permission to marry, a process that may take months or years and may involve considerable bribes and requirements to renounce their religion. Restrictions on movement can prevent the Rohingya from accessing healthcare and education, or from working as civil servants. In many cases, the Rohingya are denied healthcare, or required to pay arbitrary fees.
Land confiscation has become a common practice, as the regime forces the Rohingya to evict from their lands in preparation for international development projects such as gas/oil pipelines and hydropower plants. Among several other development projects in the region, the regime is building the Shwe gas pipeline through Arakan State. The construction of previous pipelines have involved abuses such as forced labor, forced portering and forced resettlement, and it is likely the Rohingya will be further subjected to these abuses upon the beginning of this construction project. Though the regime uses these pipelines to export energy sources, Arakan state is not included on Burma’s power grid and thus has no electricity.
Military attacks on Rohingya People
As early as 1942, the Rohingya have been the target of state-sponsored persecution. In 1942, an estimated number of 100,000 Rohingya were slaughtered by the Burmese nationals, local Arakanese communists and Japanese occupiers. In 1978, the Burmese Army launched a military offence, named Dragon King, to root out these so-called ‘foreigners’. Hundreds were arrested, tortured, raped and killed. In the following months of the military operation, over 300,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government refused to provide food supplies and other necessities to the Rohingya refugees, leaving many of them to die from starvation and disease.
5983-RohingyaAgain in 1991, the Burmese Army launched another military operation to drive out more Rohingya from Burma’s lands. More than 268,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government forcibly repatriated over 60% of those who fled back into Burma, with full knowledge of their heightened vulnerability to persecution, discrimination, and insecurity.
Stateless and Unwanted
As if their home government does not treat them badly enough, the Rohingya do not find welcome in other countries where they seek refuge. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Burma to Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia to escape persecution and adversity only to fall into even greater trials. Currently, over 30,000 Rohingya live in squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh where they are denied access to food supplies, medical aid, and education. Sexual violence against women remain prevalent.
Many Rohingya people also fled to Thailand and Malaysia, with the hope of finding refuge and a life beyond misery and poverty. However, they are subjected to dehumanizing treatments by both Thai and Malaysian authorities. In December 2009, it was reported that Thai officials towed a boatful of Rohingya refugees back into international waters in a motorless barge, where they were at the mercy of the shark-infested sea. According to one survivor of this ordeal, “The boat drifted for 10 days and 10 nights. During the daytime, [we] saw large fish swimming along the boat the looked like sharks.” Then he went on to say that “at night they would see a light, perhaps from a passing ship or a nearby island, and many on board attempted to swim for it lest their boat drift in the wrong direction.” He said, “We saw many drowning, one by one, as the current was carrying them away and none of them had the energy left to swim.”
In February 2009, a thousand Rohingya refugees fleeing to Thailand were sent back to Burma, whom the Thai authorities forcibly expelled.
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Myanmar conflict spurs hatred for Asia's outcasts
06-14) 05:24 PDT BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) --
They have been called ogres and animals, terrorists and much worse — when their existence is even acknowledged.
Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.
In Myanmar, shaken this week by a bloody spasm of violence involving Rohingyas that left dozens of civilians dead, they are almost universally despised. The military junta whose half-century of rule ended only last year cast the group as foreigners for decades — fueling a profound resentment now reflected in waves of vitriolic hatred that are being posted online.
"People feel it very acceptable to say that 'we will work on wiping out all the Rohingyas,'" said Debbie Stothard, an activist with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, referring to hyperbolic Internet comments she called "disturbing."
The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact many of their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.
"This is the tragedy of being stateless," said Chris Lewa, who runs a non-governmental organization called the Arakan Project that advocates for the Rohingya cause worldwide.
"In Burma they're told they're illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they're told they're Burmese who should go back home," Lewa said. "Unfortunately, they're just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it's only getting worse."
That fact was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the latest violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Rohingyas have clashed with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and each side blames the other for the violence.
The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh has defied international calls to let them in, saying the impoverished country's resources are already too strained.
A few have slipped through, however, including a month-old baby found Wednesday abandoned in a boat after its occupants fled border guards.
Three other Rohingyas have been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the Bangladeshi town of Chittagong, including one who died.
The unrest, which has seen more than 1,500 homes charred and thousands of people displaced along Myanmar's western coast, erupted after a mob dragged 10 Muslims off a bus and killed them in apparent retaliation for the rape and murder last month of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman,
allegedly by Muslims.
On Thursday, Rakhine state was reportedly calm. But Rohingyas living there "very much feel like they're trapped in a box," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "They're surrounded by enemies, and there is an extremely high level of frustration."
The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Myanmar has roots in a complex web of issues: the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.
Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians — not the government — are more tolerant. But even there, the Rohingya are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.
Myanmar's government has the largest Rohingya population in the world: 800,000, according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around other parts of the world, primarily the Middle East.
Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas are routinely discriminated against. In Myanmar, they are regularly subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Rakhine who inhabit the same area, Lewa said.
The Rohingya must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and even to marry. Apparently concerned about their numbers growing, authorities have also barred them from having more than two children.
In 1978, Myanmar's army drove more than 200,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, according to rights groups and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Some 10,000 died in squalid conditions, and the rest returned to Myanmar. The campaign was repeated in 1991-1992, and again a majority returned.
The Rohingya last garnered world headlines in 2009, when five boatloads of haggard migrants fleeing Myanmar were intercepted by Thai authorities. Rights groups allege they were detained and beaten, then forced back to sea, emaciated and bloodied, in vessels with no engines and little food or water. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.
The same year, Myanmar's consul general in Hong Kong — now a U.N. ambassador — described the Rohingya as "ugly as ogres" in an open letter to diplomats in which he compared their "dark brown" skin to that of the "fair and soft" ethnic Burmese majority.
The latest unrest has focused fresh attention on the Rohingyas' plight, but it has also galvanized a virulent new strain of resentment.
Many Burmese have taken to the Internet to denounce the Rohingya as foreign invaders, with some comparing them to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
While vitriol has come from both sides, what makes the latest unrest unique is that virtually "the entire population is openly and completely against" them, said Sai Latt, a writer and Myanmar analyst studying at Canada's Simon Fraser University.
"We have heard of scholars, journalists, writers, celebrities, even the so-called democracy fighters openly making comments against Rohingyas," Sai Latt said.
One Burmese actress posted
"I hate them 100%" on her Facebook wall on Monday as the fires burned. By Thursday,
her comment had nearly 250 "likes."
Prominent Burmese language journals have reported "only the Rakhine side," Sai Latt said. And many people have lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of getting the story wrong.
Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner released in January, has said Rohingyas should not be mistreated but added they "are not an ethnic group in Myanmar at all." He blamed the recent violence on illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
However, the leader of the country's democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, has shied away from the blame game, saying the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law.
Speaking in Geneva on a five-nation European tour, she said that "without rule of law, such communal strife will only continue.
"The present situation will need to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity," she told reporters.
The tide of nationalistic sentiment against the Rohingya puts Suu Kyi in a difficult position. Her conciliatory message risks alienating large blocs of supporters at a time when she and her National League for Democracy are trying to consolidate political gains attained after they entered Parliament for the first time in April.
The Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect similar to one spoken by residents of southern Bangladesh. And physically, they are almost indistinguishable from their Bangladeshi counterparts, said Lewa, of the Arakan Project.
But their history — specifically the amount of time they've lived in Myanmar, and who among them qualifies as a legitimate resident — is bitterly disputed.
Some say the Rohingya are descended from Arab settlers in the 7th century, and that their state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Later waves arrived from British-run colonial India in the 1800s, but like the colonists themselves, they were regarded as foreigners.
That view persisted through half a century of military rule, which finally ended last year. Myanmar's post-junta government does not recognize them as one of the country's 135 indigenous national ethnic groups. And many people stridently believe they are not even a real ethnic group — rather, they are only illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
President Thein Sein, who has instituted a state of emergency and sent in troops to contain the violence, has warned any escalation could jeopardize the nation's fragile democratic reforms.
The International Crisis Group said that ironically, the nation's newfound freedoms may have helped contribute to the unrest.
"The loosening of authoritarian constraints may well have enabled this current crisis to take on a virulent intensity," the group said. "It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast."
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