It
was in 1982 that the Muslim Rohingyas were stripped of their Burmese
citizenship and became the stateless, persecuted minority they are today. Their
misery has intensified in recent months as mobs of Buddhists, incited to
violence by local politicians and even monks, have attacked Rohingya villages in the western state
of Rakhine. In incidents apparently sparked by the rape and murder of a young
Buddhist woman in May, at least 170 Rohingya have been killed and 100,000
driven from their homes into camps.
The
violence comes at a time of unprecedented – and mostly justified – optimism in
Myanmar. In the past 18 months, the country has undergone an astounding
transformation, from a reviled dictatorship to a fragile democracy worthy of an
official
visit by Barack Obama, the US president. The new sense of freedom
may have, ironically, allowed previously suppressed communal hatreds to bubble
horribly to the surface.
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A
Muslim group of Bengali origin, many of the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in
Rakhine state have lived there for generations, although some may be relatively
recent arrivals. There are claims by some Rohingya that Muslim kings ruled the
region for more than 100 years from as early as the 15th century.
That is not
how most of the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who live in the state see it. To them,
the people who call themselves Rohingya are simply Bengali interlopers – recent
Muslim arrivals trying to take their land. According to this version – shared
by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority population – Rohingya arrived in the past two
centuries, brought by the British from the Chittagong region of Bengal to work
in the paddy fields. Many Buddhists reject even the term Rohingya, regarding it
as a modern-day invention.
Many
Burmese who thought Mr Obama’s speech at Yangon University this week
inspirational said they disliked his reference to the Rohingya issue. In a powerful
section of his address, the US president conceded that “every nation struggles
to define citizenship”. There was no excuse, however, for violence against
innocent people, he said, and universal principles applied to everyone, no
matter what religion they practised, where they came from or what they looked
like. Contrast that with the message of U Ye Myint Aung, former Myanmar
consul-general in Hong Kong, who in 2009 contrasted the Rohingyas’ “dark brown”
complexion with the “fair and soft” skin of the Burmese. “In reality, Rohingya
are neither ‘Myanmar people’ nor Myanmar’s ethnic group,” he said, adding that
they were “as ugly as ogres”.
The
Myanmar of 2009, an isolated and despised junta, is a world away from the
country today. Myanmar is opening and liberalising at a pace rarely seen in
modern history. The government, led by President Thein Sein, now has the chance
to show to the world just how far it has come. The Rohingya problem, which has
the makings of a human catastrophe on a truly horrible scale, presents the
government with the opportunity to prove that it cannot only meet the
aspirations of its people but also lead from the front
.
In
June, the government declared a state of emergency and sent thousands of troops
to the state to protect the Rohingya. This is an extraordinary development. The
army, which for years led the assault against ethnic minorities, now finds
itself protecting one of the most vulnerable groups in the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, has not
covered herself with glory over the issue. She has called for the establishment
of law and order but has stuck to the formula that “both communities have
suffered human rights violations and both have also violated human rights”.
That
is true. But it is rather like saying that whites as well as blacks violated
human rights in apartheid South Africa. The comparison is not far-fetched.
Since the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship they have been classified
as temporary residents, required to buy registration cards and to seek
permission to travel between villages, to marry and even to have more than two
children. Those Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh have been ruthlessly
turned back to Myanmar or herded into stinking internment camps.
In
recent days, Mr Thein Sein has begun to move in the right direction. In a
letter to the UN, he said the government would consider all solutions “ranging
from resettlement to granting of citizenship”. Rakhine state would also be
fully open to humanitarian aid, he said, after complaints from relief agencies
that they cannot reach many of the affected people.
Myanmar’s
biggest challenge – greater even than the move to democracy – is to settle the
ethnic minority issue by establishing a federal union and ending permanently
some of the longest-running insurgencies in the world. War with the Kachin in
the north of the country still rages. But unlike other minorities in Myanmar,
including the Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Chin and Shan, the Rohingya are not
regarded as a legitimate ethnic group. That makes the stakes all the higher.
The government should grant the Rohingya citizenship. On that basis it could
defend their rights as citizens. It would not be popular. But it would be the
right thing to do.
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