(Bangkok) – Burma’s government
should publicly revoke a discriminatory population control regulation
that restricts Rohingya Muslims to having two children. Implementation
of this policy is consistent with the wider persecution of the largely
stateless Rohingya, violating international human rights protections,
and endangering women’s physical and mental health.
The Arakan State spokesperson, Win Myaing, told the media on May 26 that
local authorities had reaffirmed a 2005 regulation for Rohingya Muslims
in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships in northwestern Arakan State along
the Bangladesh border. The discriminatory two-child rule has been
enforced alongside regulations that require Rohingya couples seeking to
marry to obtain permission from the authorities by paying hefty bribes.
Couples often have to wait for extended periods, sometimes as long as
two years, before receiving permission. Officials have also forced many
women to undergo pregnancy tests as part of the marriage application
process.
“Implementation of this callous and cruel two-child policy against the
Rohingya is another example of the systematic and wide ranging
persecution of this group, who have recently been the target of an
ethnic cleansing campaign,” said Brad Adams,
Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “President Thein Sein says he is
against discrimination. If so, he should quickly declare an end to these
coercive family restrictions and other discriminatory policies against
the Rohingya.”
Rakhine State Spokesperson Win Myaing claimed local officials sought to
implement a recommendation by the government Inquiry Commission on the
Sectarian Violence in Rakhine State, a 27-member body appointed to
examine the causes of last year’s deadly violence between ethnic
Arakanese (Rakhine) Buddhists and Rohingya and Kaman Muslims. The
commission’s summary report, released on April 29, 2013, called for
“implementation of family planning programs amongst Bengali [Rohingya]
communities” to address its “rapid population growth.” However, the
report said that “government and other civil society organizations
should refrain from implementing mandatory measures which could seem
unfair and abusive.” The commission included political leaders of
Arakanese Buddhists but did not include any Rohingya members.
The two-child regulation is a further example of state persecution of
the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch said. Government security forces, local
Arakanese political party officials, and Buddhist monks participated in
crimes against humanity during a campaign of ethnic cleansing
against Rohingya and other Muslims in June and October 2012. To date,
no one has been held accountable for these crimes. Should further
widespread or systematic attacks be carried out against the Rohingya
population, enforcement of the two-child policy could amount to crimes
against humanity.
Renewed Call for Two-Child Policy Latest Form of State Persecution
The 2005 two-child regulation was an addition to longstanding
discriminatory marriage restrictions on Rohingyas in Arakan state.
Advance permission to marry came from the Na Sa Ka (in Burmese, Nay Sut
Kut Kwey Ye), a corrupt interagency border guard force comprising
military, police, immigration, and customs. Rohingya couples seeking to
marry have had to give a written undertaking that they will have no more
than two children. Flouting the two-child restriction is punishable
with fines and imprisonment.
To avoid paying fines or being arrested, Rohingya women who became
pregnant before getting official approval to marry or after having two
children have resorted to unsafe and illegal abortions. Some underwent
multiple unsafe and self-induced abortions at home. Article 312 of the Burmese penal code
criminalizes all instances of abortion except those that are carried
out to save a woman’s life, already posing a tremendous barrier for
women seeking abortion services. These barriers to safe abortion
services are exacerbated for Rohingya women because of the marriage
restrictions and two-child policy. Rohingya also face severe
restrictions on their right to freedom of movement, requiring advance
travel permission from the Na Sa Ka even to seek emergency medical
treatment. Permission is frequently refused unless bribes are paid.
Unsafe abortions are a leading cause of maternal deaths in Burma.
“Fear of punishment under the two-child rule compel far too many
Rohingya women to risk their lives and turn to desperate and dangerous
measures to self-induce abortions,” Adams said.
The 800,000 to one million Rohingya in Burma are particularly vulnerable
to government abuse because most are denied citizenship under Burma’s
discriminatory 1982 citizenship law. Rohingya children born out of
wedlock or in a family that already has two children do not receive any
status whatsoever from the government, making them ineligible for
education and other government services, unable to receive travel
permissions, and they are later not permitted to marry or acquire
property. They are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention.
To evade these regulations, Rohingya women pay bribes to register them
with other legally married adults, or keep their children hidden and
unregistered to avoid being fined or imprisoned. In instances that the
Na Sa Ka learns of families having more than two children, these
children are sometimes placed on a government blacklist. The Inquiry
Commission estimated that the number of unregistered Rohingya children
was 60,000. Because of these restrictions, “the majority of the Bengali
[Rohingya] population marry in secret without the necessary
administrative approval and children born under these circumstances
remain unregistered.”
Local government authorities and the Na Sa Ka oversee a web of tight
regulations governing Rohingyas, Human Rights Watch said. These include
restrictions on travel, birth, death, immigration, migration, marriage,
and land ownership. Na Sa Ka officials enforce these restrictions by
frequently detaining, beating, and extorting money from Rohingya. In
2012, Na Sa Ka arbitrarily detained an estimated 2,000-2,500 Rohingya
for “offenses” both serious and trivial, including repairing homes
without official permission and owning “unregistered” livestock,
according to informed sources.
In all instances, contraception should not be used with the objective of
“population control,” least of all by selectively targeting ethnic
minorities, Human Rights Watch said. Contraceptive services together
with other reproductive and sexual health services should be provided in
a non-discriminatory and non-coercive manner to all women. Women and
men should have the option of adopting contraception of their choice and
deciding on the size of their family.
In March 2012, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child,
which monitors state compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, called upon Burma to “abolish the local order restricting
marriages for Rohingya people and cease practices which restrict the
number of children of Rohingya people.”
Parliamentary opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on May 27 said about
the two-child policy that, “it is not good to have such discrimination.
And it is not in line with human rights.”
Human Rights Watch called upon the government of Burma to:
· Immediately revoke the regulation establishing a two-child
limit for ethnic Rohingya in Buthidaung and Maugdaw townships in North
Arakan State, and other coercive or discriminatory policies, rules,
regulations or laws regarding population;
· Repeal provisions of the penal code that criminalize abortion,
especially those provisions that punish women and girls who have had an
abortion;
· Provide unfettered access for international humanitarian
agencies to provide medical and other services to all persons in need in
Arakan State, with special focus on needs of internally displaced
persons and other populations with restricted freedom of movement; and
· Investigate and appropriately prosecute all persons,
regardless of position or rank, implicated in serious human rights
abuses in Arakan State since 2012.
“Governments who care about reform in Burma need to speak out about the
persecution of Rohingya Muslims,” Adams said. “If this policy had been
announced by a Burmese government official before the reform process
began, donors would have denounced it in the strongest terms. Now, when
the international community’s influence is much greater, governments and
donors need to find their voices.”
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