Tiptoeing in Rakhine state

May 12, 2013
The Daily Star

Nirmal Ghosh

Photo: AFP

THE word used in its report to describe the Rohingya Muslims, “Bengali,” shows how cautious Myanmar’s independent Rakhine Commission has been.
The Commission, tasked to investigate the violence in Rakhine state last year that left over 200 dead and over 100,000 displaced, released its report on Monday last week. A week later, President Thein Sein revealed in a televised speech that he had adopted its recommendations. Ten committees have been set up to work on them.
A member of the Commission told The Straits Times: “We had to walk a very fine line.
“You can’t be idealistic on the Rakhine state issue. The threat of violence is very real. The outside world wanted us to use the term ‘Rohingya’ but if we had, there would have been bloodshed the very next day.”
So it called the Rohingya “Bengali”– the politically correct term in the Rakhine and Burman context. The Rohingya, who bore the brunt of the violence that one international rights group has described as “ethnic cleansing,” are not one of Myanmar’s official ethnic groups. The majority Buddhist Rakhines see them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh swamping and Islamising the state.
In its recommendations, the Commission focused on the politically feasible: doubling security forces in the state and for Myanmar to “immediately” resolve Rohingyas’ citizenship status and recognise their basic human rights.
The proposal for resolving the Rohingyas’ citizenship status may have far-reaching consequences if executed honestly and speedily.
But it will be a fraught task, given the challenges. The fear that the Rohingyas are bent on Islamising Rakhine is shared by many among the Burman Buddhist majority elsewhere in the country. In recent weeks, the violence has spread to central Myanmar and morphed into a general anti-Muslim movement driven by radical right-wing Buddhist monks.
Also, Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Act denies citizenship to anyone who cannot prove their ancestors had lived in the country since 1823 — setting a high bar for the Rohingyas seeking citizenship.
The citizenship issue is a minefield. The president said: “The government will deal with the citizenship-related issues by adopting short, medium and long-term strategies.”
He was being honest, analysts say, when he cautioned: “This is a situation that requires time and careful handling. We have to ensure that we do not inadvertently create additional difficulties when we address it. We ask everyone to recognise that this is a complex and sensitive issue that requires wise, careful as well as decisive action.”
Underscoring the sensitivity of the issue, last month, seven Rohingyas were arrested at a displacement camp in Rakhine after an altercation with officials who tried to make them register as “Bengalis” on a regional census form. They refused for fear that saying in writing that they were Bengali would jeopardise their chances at citizenship.
The Rakhine Commission has come under fire from some human rights advocates. Britain-based academic and activist Maung Zarni last week wrote that the president and his allies were “increasingly using various crisis inquiry commissions… as public relations instruments to deflect public attention from its spectacular failures in handling popular discontent, state-sponsored violence against civilian populations, and mass ethno-religious violence.”
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the report had failed to fix accountability and missed an opportunity to review the 1982 Citizenship Act.
But many analysts disagreed. “The critics can afford to be absolutist,” said a Yangon-based analyst who asked not to be named. “But if they want the 1982 citizenship law to be amended, they are not going to get it. If they want the term Rohingya used, they are not going to get it. They will get what is politically possible in this climate.”
Another Myanmar analyst, Mael Raynaud, wrote in an e-mail message: “The Commission seems to have done a very good job in a situation where it cannot be seen as attacking anyone directly. This is the context in Myanmar, and given that context, what we have here is an excellent report on which basis a lot can be done.”
The Commission member who spoke to The Straits Times said the government was serious about implementing the proposals. But he admitted: “The threat of violence is a deterrent for everyone, including the government. The government is being cautious, and when you have to be so cautious, it is difficult to get things done.”
© The Straits Times (Singapore). All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Asia News Network.

Big flow of boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh feared

The Straits Times

 Nirmal Ghosh

Regional governments are bracing for a further influx of boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh, headed to Malaysia mainly, that could number in the hundreds, maybe thousands.

Some incidents in the past two weeks indicate there could be more this year than the estimate for last year.

Last Friday, Vivian Tan, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, said that last year, about 13,000 boat people - mainly Rohingya Muslims, including many from Myanmar's Rakhine state - fled Myanmar and Bangladesh. At least 485 people are known to have drowned or been lost at sea.

"These numbers are very worrying," Tan said. "The fact that even women and children are increasingly risking this journey shows the growing sense of desperation among the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh."

Last week, the Thai authorities deported a group of 73 Rohingya who had sailed from Myanmar.

Colonel Manat Kongpan, who heads Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command for the Phuket region, told the local journal Phuket Wan that the military was intercepting "two to three" vessels a week. About 3,000 boat people had been found since October, when the sailing season started; it usually reaches its peak in December and January. The voyage from Teknaf in Bangladesh can take from two to six weeks.

Thailand was heavily criticised for turning Rohingya back onto the high seas without any provisions in a previous instance. It now has a policy of "helping on" the boat people, by providing fuel and provisions. Most want to go to Malaysia, which has agreed to receive them.

Apart from Malaysia, no country in the region wants this "hot potato" on its shores, said a diplomat in Yangon, who asked not to be identified.

Most of the Rohingya leave from Bangladesh, where more than 200,000 live largely in both official and informal camps - little more than makeshift shacks sprawled over the countryside outside Teknaf, a town named after the river that marks the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Adding to the flow now are some Rohingya from Myanmar's Rakhine state, aid agencies say. Violence erupted between Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese there last year, and the situation remains tense. The diplomat said: "Feelings are very fervent; the two communities hate each other."

The violence first flared up last June, after which Rohingya who had their settlements razed were accommodated in camps.

A second round of attacks in October drove more into the camps, and further entrenched a physical segregation of the Rohingya and Arakanese.

The Arakanese form the majority in the area and consider the Rohingya - whose population in Rakhine state is estimated at around 800,000 - illegal immigrants.

The area has a long history of informal cross-border migration and conflict, with Muslims and Buddhists having been armed by different sides during World War II as Burma sought independence from Britain. But many Rohingya are now second- or third-generation settlers there.

The Arakanese, the majority Burmans and the Myanmar government do not recognise the term "Rohingya", which appeared in the mid-1940s.

They describe the Rohingya as "Bengalis" from Bangladesh's Chittagong division. Rohingya are not on the Myanmar government's list of ethnic minorities, which renders them stateless.

Bangladeshis do not consider them Bengalis either. The Rohingya in Bangladesh, who reside mostly in the Teknaf area, are seen as a potential security threat because they compete with locals for scarce resources and jobs. They are also potentially a sensitive nerve in relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar. There are fears of Rohingya militancy - which has sputtered on and off for decades - re-emerging in response to persecution in Rakhine.

Dr Tasneem Siddiqui, who heads the University of Dhaka's Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, told The Straits Times that boats carrying goods from Myanmar go to Teknaf's Shahpuri island, where they are unloaded. Human smugglers then load them with both Rohingya and Bangladeshis, and they set off for Malaysia.

The Bangladeshi authorities know who the smugglers are and should be more proactive in stopping the trade, Dr Siddiqui said.

"And there has to be scope for formal migration, otherwise people - whether Rohingya or Bangladeshi - will take desperate steps."

Malaysia's willingness to take in the Rohingya is seen as a bright spot in a gloomy situation. "The big question is how long it will last," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, some governments and aid agencies are scrambling to keep at bay a humanitarian disaster in Rakhine's squalid camps, which now accommodate upwards of 100,000 Rohingya.

Saudi Arabia has provided millions of dollars in financial aid, and Iran last week sent 30 tonnes of essential supplies. Last September, Jakarta sent seven tonnes of aid.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa is due to visit Rakhine state this week.