A report published last Thursday by the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), an organization affiliated to Queen Mary University in London and partnered with Harvard University, is once again turning the world’s attention to the Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Myanmar.
Titled “Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar”, the research is an in-depth analysis of the policies implemented by successive Burmese governments toward the Rohingya community. It concludes that beyond any reasonable doubt these were implemented with genocidal intents.
The Rohingyas inhabit Rakhine State, on the border with Bangladesh. A law passed in 1982 deprived them of their right to citizenship and various outbursts of inter-communal violence between the Buddhist and Muslim communities forced them to relocate to Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps.
According to ISCI, the conflict is rooted in politics rather than religion, and a bit of historical research is needed to grasp the reasons behind it.
Rakhine – also known as Arakan – used to be an independent kingdom with its own capital, Mrauk U, and came under Burmese control only in 1785. In spite of this shift in sovereignty – and of British colonial rule, which soon followed – locals are still mostly Rakhines, a Buddhist people distinct from the Bamar, who populate the fertile valleys of the Irrawaddy river basin.
In their midst is another minority: the Rohingyas, possibly descendants of the Muslim soldiers who followed King Narameikhla, the founder of Mrauk U, in the 15th Century.
As Rakhine people nurture little sympathy for the Burmese administration – which has done little for them in terms of development – various governments apparently thought it wise to foster hatred between the Buddhist and Muslim communities, with a view on keeping control of both.
According to the report, “the Rohingya were issued citizenship/ID cards and granted the right to vote under Burma’s first post independence Prime Minister, U Nu [..] In the 1960s, the official Burma Broadcasting Service relayed a Rohingya-language radio programme three times a week as part of its minority language programming, and the term ‘Rohingya’ was used in journals and school text-books until the late 1970s.”
Then things started to change. Besides taking away their citizenship, the government began framing them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and eliminating their historical legacy, for instance by demolishing local mosques – unmistakable signs of their past presence. In 2012, 33 were destroyed in Sittwe alone, according to the report.
Today, a feeling of hostility toward them is widespread in the whole nation and their name has disappeared altogether: the government refuses to pronounce it and during the 2014 census they had to register as ‘Bengali’. Many, apparently, refused to do so.
The situation has worsened significantly since the 2012 clashes, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) called episodes of ethnic cleansing and said were perpetrated by local political groups with support from central authorities. According to HRW, 128 people were displaced, while recent data from the United Nations quoted by Amnesty International show that about 416,000 people are currently affected by inter-communal violence.
These are the men and women who, in an effort to reach other countries, triggered the 2015 South East Asian refugee crisis and who, according to Amnesty International, may wind up at the center of another as the monsoon ends.
According to ISCI, the attacks were organized down to the smallest detail by local activists in league with the Arakan National Party (ANP), a local Rakhine political group. The report says that when the time came to raid Rohingya villages, special buses were set up to transport Rakhine men selected for the purpose. Others apparently blocked all of the villages’ exits but for those that led to the IDP camps.
In one case, the report cites sources according to whom the police asked the attackers if they were numerous enough to take over a hamlet, and, having received an affirmative response, simply left – a sign, the researches contend, that authorities knew well what was going on and avoided taking action.
Making parallels with Rwanda and Nazi Germany, ISCI concludes that this is nothing less than genocide. The Rohingya “have been, and continue to be, stigmatized, dehumanized and discriminated against. They have been harassed, terrorized and slaughtered. They have been isolated and segregated into detention camps and securitised villages and ghettos. They have been systematically weakened through hunger, illness, denial of civil rights and loss of livelihood.”
There are only two steps left for the process to be complete, according to ISCI: the extermination of the Rohingya and the eventual erasing of their memory among locals. The first one, “if not inevitable, cannot be ruled out.”
A report published last Thursday by the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), an organization affiliated to Queen Mary University in London and partnered with Harvard University, is once again turning the world’s attention to the Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Myanmar.
