The plight of Rohingya Muslims – a historical perspective

And what now?

With the ten Asean countries obligated not to criticise each other about their

internal affairs, little could be expected from the country’s neighbours

The misery of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State of Myanmar has nowadays become the converging point of attention of media houses all across the globe. Drawing criticism from various quarters, the ongoing military crackdown on “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities” has been declared as “crimes against humanity” and “a systematic campaign of violence” by the United Nations. While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to bring up the issue at the next UN general assembly after labelling the repression as a “genocide perpetuated under the cover of democracy”, Pope Francis has reportedly announced to visit Myanmar in November in the wake of “the persecution of the religious minority of our Rohingya brothers”. However, the misery of this stateless community is not new. Despite being foregrounded in 2012, 2015 and yet again in 2017, the riots are not new. Though many among us might have heard the word ‘Rohingya’ for the first time only lately, the ethnicity and the crises associated with it are not new. Rohingya Muslims, the persecution they are subjected to and the ultimate solutions of these clashes, have existed since long, but all three have been widely ignored by the world for decades.

Rakhine State, formerly called Arakan, has been home to Muslims and Hindus along with Buddhists since long owing to the migration from the Indian subcontinent to the given land as part of the spread of three religions. The geographical link between Rakhine State and Bangladesh on today’s world map implies a much stronger cultural link and an even more compelling historical tie between the regions of Arakan and Bengal. A pre-colonial article dating back to 1799, written on the languages spoken in the Burma Empire, identifies this ethnicity as a resident of the given region by acknowledging a dialect spoken by them and “who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan”. The words formerly used for Arakan, including Rohang – an early Muslim name for the state – gave the Rohingya community its etymological identity. Thus the community often termed as Bengali-speaking settlers is often left with no choice but to migrate, whether illegally or under the ambit of humanitarian support, to Bangladesh and other adjoining areas amid crisis, a matter that has long been a bone of contention between the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The ethnic diversity that has been surfacing as the root cause of the dispute was inevitably established owing to Arakan’s coastline on the Bay of Bengal and it, therefore, being a centre of trade and cultural exchange between Burma and the rest of the world. Thus just like the co-existence of Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims and Buddhists in Burma share quite a history of living together harmoniously. In fact, with more and more immigrants from British India, Arakan became a state with the largest percentage of these settlers in Burma in 1937. The question that erupts on this revelation given the current plight of Rohingya Muslims is: What factor contributed to polarisation of the region along ethnic lines?

In 1942 Japanese forces invaded Burma during World War II and the British forces retreated, leaving behind a power vacuum that resulted in inter-communal violence between pro-Japanese Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim villagers. With an estimated collective loss of around 90,000 lives, the Arakan massacre of 1942 was one of the deadliest the region has witnessed to date.

Despite the aforementioned account, many Rohingya leaders, MA Gaffar to name one, were elected on high positions in the government and parliament after Burmese independence in 1948. The 1962 Burmese coup d’état was a major driving force behind the demand of Rohingya minority for self-determination in Rakhine State followed by increase in discrimination against minorities in several states. The Burmese Citizenship Law of 1982, however, proved to be the final nail in the coffin whereby the Rohingya Muslim community was given no recognition whatsoever as one of the eight national races and was subsequently denied citizenship rights despite a clear-cut clause that awards full citizenship to “descendants of residents who lived in Burma prior to 1823 or were born to parents who were citizens at the time of birth”. And this is the exact point from where the dispute begins.

Though the Rohingya maintain their stance of being time-hallowed residents of Arakan with pre-colonial as well as colonial forbears, the official stance of the Myanmar government denies all such claims and holds them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The ethnic cleansing or genocide that Myanmar is being accused of is also in the same context as the government does not recognise ‘Rohingya” as an existing ethnicity. Of the approximate population of 1.3 million Rohingyas that lived in Myanmar prior to the latest military crackdown, many fled to nearby countries such as Bangladesh (a country which is already home to half a million of them), Thailand (100,000 refugees), Malaysia and India (40,000 each), with a significant number of them in Myanmar living in camps for internally displaced persons. The crimes committed against them, as probed by the United Nations, include “summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and forced labour”. Beheading and setting alight children is yet another heart-wrenching reality.

People hailing from different realms are eyeing Myanmar with disceptation over the given conflict. Nobel laureates, international organisations, politicians as well as religious figures are criticising Aung San SuuKyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar’s de facto leader, for “covering up this crime perpetrated by the military”. “If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets,” reads an open letter written by more than a dozen fellow Nobel laureates to Kyi.

The most pertinent and significant question to ask at the moment is: What’s next for Rohingya Muslims?

With the ten Asean countries obligated not to criticise each other about their internal affairs, little could be expected from the country’s neighbours. However, the horrific tales and dreadful events have pushed several leaders, including Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, to question Kyi’s Nobel Prize and her inaction during the current state of affairs.

A ray of hope could be seen in the formation of an Advisory Committee on Rakhine State under the supervision of the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Its effectiveness, however, is yet to be witnessed. In any case, there are only two possibilities: either it would prove to be a fate-changer for the Rohingyas, or it would just add another pile of documents to the several that already exist.