Rohingya people wait after arriving to Shahparir Dip in Teknaf, Bangladesh. Credit: IPS

By Azeem Ibrahim
Apr 12 2018 (IPS)

In recent months, international media coverage of Myanmar has focused on the plight of the Rohingya people in the west of the country. And for good reason: Since August 2017, brutal army attacks on this Muslim ethnic minority have sent more than 750,000 people — 90 percent of the Rohingya population living in Rakhine state — fleeing over the border to Bangladesh, in what can only be described as a coordinated campaign of genocide.

The numbers are staggering, but the hate isn’t new: The Rohingya, one of the world’s largest stateless groups, have long been a favorite target for persecution by the country’s Buddhist central authorities. The Rohingya have a different religion, a different skin color, and speak a different language than most of their neighbors.

The campaign against the Rohingya has radically expanded the military’s capacity for ethnic cleansing and, perhaps more importantly, seems to have emboldened it, as the bulkof the population appears to support the army’s aggression toward the group.

Yet their well-publicized tragedy has obscured a darker truth about Myanmar: The country is in the midst of one of the longest multifront civil wars in the world. Each facet of this conflict cleaves along ethnic or religious lines — often both. The assault on the Rohingya is thus far from Myanmar’s only active military campaign against a minority group. And as soon as the Rohingya are completely removed from the country, the military will be free to redeploy its resources elsewhere.

When that time comes, Myanmar’s remaining minorities are likely to experience similar treatment. Many of these groups have been in the military’s crosshairs for more than half a century. Yet the persecution to come will far exceed anything they’ve suffered before. The campaign against the Rohingya has radically expanded the military’s capacity for ethnic cleansing and, perhaps more importantly, seems to have emboldened it, as the bulk of the population appears to support the army’s aggression toward the group.

To understand why all these conflicts have endured for as long as they have and why they are accelerating now, consider Myanmar’s demographic and political dynamics. Sixty-eight percent of the country’s population is Bamar (ethnic Burmese). The Bamar are primarily concentrated around the Irrawaddy Valley, the country’s heartland. Myanmar is also 88 percent Buddhist, and the majority of that group adheres to the conservative Theravada doctrine.

Surrounding the Irrawaddy Valley are a range of border areas home to a plethora of ethnic and religious minorities — almost all of which have sought independence from the central government at one time or another since 1948, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, gained independence from the British.

These secessionist movements stem from the fact that, soon after independence, Bamar Theravada Buddhists won overwhelming control of the government and the military and soon stamped theirs as the official identity of the state. In the years that followed, as a succession of military dictatorships attempted to build a unified nation, they systematically marginalized and repressed religious and ethnic minorities using a variety of extremely heavy-handed measures.

Numerous groups were denied citizenship, saw their villages demolished, and had their marriage rights curtailed. Authorities in Rakhine state have limited the number of children Rohingya Muslims are allowed to have — typically a maximum of two, just below the population replacement rate.

In the past few years, skirmishes between the army and the secessionist movements have intensified once again as the federal army has found new resolve. In 2011, battles between Myanmar’s military and the separatist Kachin Independence Army in the country’s north displaced nearly 100,000 Kachin people. Seven years later, the displaced are still living ininternal refugee camps, with few prospects for rebuilding their lives. And in the last two years, the army has increasingly taken to shelling targets in or near the civilian camps and villages.

In nearby northern Shan state, the military and the Taang National Liberation Army recently reopened hostilities — a continuation of a conflict that dates back to 1963. Over the last nine years, fighting between the army and the nearby ethnic Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has sent tens of thousands of refugees over the border to China. To the south, the army has targeted Christians among the Karen people, driving more than 100,000 refugeeinto Thailand over the last couple of decades.

It’s not just such displacements that darkly echo the Rohingya situation. Kachin and Karen women have reported that the military has used rape against them as a form of repression, much like the mass rapes reported by Rohingya refugees.

This story was originally published by Foreign Policy

Excerpt:

A Rohingya couple, Mohammad Faisal and his wife Hajera, pose for a photo with their child at their camp at Teknaf Nature's Park, Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

By Azeem Ibrahim
Dec 18 2017 (IPS)

On Nov. 23, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement to return the Rohingya refugees — more than 600,000 people who escaped from Rakhine state in western Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh — after ethnic cleansing carried out by Myanmar’s armed forces since August.

Bangladesh is expected to compile lists of refugees wanting to return on a voluntary basis. Myanmar intends to verify each application to establish whether a refugee is eligible for repatriation. The returnees must provide copies of identity cards and documents certifying the address of their residence in Myanmar.

It might create the illusion of a policy decision by two governments moving toward addressing a shared refugee crisis. But the agreement is a hollow political gesture.

One of the first factors to consider is Myanmar’s verification process for a refugee to return. Myanmar’s military governments have had a consistent policy of either withholding official documentation from the Rohingyas or seizing and destroying the little documentation they had. A British government report documented how the Myanmar government changed its citizenship rules in 1989 and rendered the residency cards that most Rohingyas were carrying invalid. The government collected those invalid residency cards, but in most cases failed to provide the Rohingyas with the new residency cards. As a result, a majority of the Rohingyas in Myanmar did not have any official documentation at the beginning of this year.

Myanmar’s minister for resettlement, Win Myat Aye, has said that his country would be taking back no more than 300 refugees per day. At that rate, it would take over five and a half years for all the 600,000 Rohingyas to be allowed back in.
Most of the Rohingyas who fled for Bangladesh left under dire circumstances — their villages set on fire, their lives in peril. They made desperate runs with their children and elderly. How many would have had the luxury of time and safety to look for their documents before the exodus?

The agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar specifies that the refugees should be returned to their homes and property. It is highly improbable, because numerous Rohingya villages have been burned and their cattle and lands seized by their Buddhist neighbors.

And last week, Myanmar announced that it would be building camps for some of the returnees. It is unclear whether it is a serious policy proposal or yet another talking point. No details about the capacity of the proposed camps are available. What is known is this: Myanmar’s minister for resettlement, Win Myat Aye, has said that his country would be taking back no more than 300 refugees per day. At that rate, it would take over five and a half years for all the 600,000 Rohingyas to be allowed back in.

The other issue is that the resettlement has to be voluntary. Why would a Rohingya prefer moving from a refugee camp in a relatively safe country to a refugee camp in an intensely hostile country and depend upon safety from the very people who killed their families and burned their villages?

Several Rohingya refugees I met in the camps in Bangladesh did tell me that if they were granted citizenship and equal rights, they would return to Myanmar. But that seems improbable because of Myanmar’s long history of systematically depriving the Rohingyas of their legal and basic human rights.

The government of Myanmar has given no assurances about the legal status of the returnees nor spoken about guaranteeing their safety. They might simply end up being described as “immigrants from Bangladesh,” a phrase their persecutors all along used to describe them.

A recent statement from Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military chief, about the proposed repatriation process has renewed fears about the safety of potential returnees. “The situation must be acceptable for both local Rakhine ethnic people and Bengalis, and emphasis must be placed on (the) wish of local Rakhine ethnic people who are real Myanmar citizens,” he said.

All of this raises severe doubts about the agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Several Bangladeshi leaders I met in Dhaka after the agreement was signed seemed keen to send the Rohingyas without having given much thought to how they would achieve it. They regard the Rohingyas as a financial burden on their impoverished country and a potential security threat.

Bangladesh has tried to keep the Rohingya refugees in camps isolated from the rest of society to signal that they are not meant to live there for good. Bangladeshi politicians signed the agreement because from their point of view, any deal that might move some Rohingyas back across the border is a good deal.

For the civilian government of Myanmar and its de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the refugee agreement is a public relations exercise to ward off international condemnation. Sources in Myanmar told me there is no communication between the military and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s government on the issue. Without support from the military leadership, even if she would be so inclined, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi cannot stop the army from assaulting the Rohingyas.

The Rohingyas know it. And that is why there is not much in the way of a line to fill in resettlement forms around Cox’s Bazar. Staying in Cox’s Bazar is the best option for the Rohingyas at the moment. Bangladesh must let them stay and not try to push them back over the border into the hands of their persecutors.

Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy, is the author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide.”

Encouraged by the author who is relentless in his efforts to draw international attention to highlight the hopeless state of the Rohingya, IPS is republishing his oped from The New York Times of Dec 6, 2017.