Daily Times

Myanmar previously known as ‘Burma’ gained independence in 1948 from British Raj. It is a predominantly a Buddhist country. In the year 1989, the military government officially changed the country’s name from ‘Burma’ to ‘Myanmar’ but still many political parties in the country use its original name ‘Burma’ claiming the military government did have the legitimacy to change the country’s official profile. In a total population of 51 million, around one million Rohingya Muslims make their presence. According to Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, Rohingya Muslims are not counted among the 135 ethnic minority groups of the country, rendering them a ‘stateless’ community. In a landmark victory in 2015 general elections in Myanmar, the Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi was ambitious to offer citizenship rights to Rohingya Muslims as promised during her election campaign and interviews to the world media, however, after 2015 she has been reluctant to address the issue of Rohingya Muslims.

The Rohingya Muslims are adjudged to be the most persecuted ethnic minority of the world. Most of the Rohingya population lives in Rakhine, one of the poorest province of the country, they are bound to live in ghettos, not allowed to go out of their boundaries without governmental permissions. To get citizenship, ethnic minorities have to prove they have lived in the country for sixty years. The government officials always deny producing such documents that would show the existence of these ethnic minorities in the country longer than the prescribed period required for citizenship. Therefore, the Myanmar authorities believe them to be ‘illegal Bangladeshi immigrants’. Government jobs and high-profile professions like medicine, engineering and law are forbidden fruits for Rohingya community. Over the years, this situation for this hapless community has led them to flee to Thailand, Bangladesh, Philippine, and Malaysia. In 2012, after serious violence erupted against Rohingyas, the President of Myanmar asked the United Nations to relocate Rohingya in other countries saying, “We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but Rohingya who came to Burma illegally are not our ethnic nationalities, and we cannot accept them here.” A research document ‘Equal Rights Trust in Partnership with the institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies’ by Mahidol University claims, “This violence, together with the economic and social ostracisation of Muslim and Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, led to the displacement of over 140,000 people into Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps in Rakhine State. Additionally, there has been a spike in forced migration of Rohingya out of Myanmar, mostly on boats heading for Southeast Asia and beyond.

The exact numbers of Rohingya who have undertaken this journey since 2012 are not known, however, it is estimated that from June 2011 to May 2012 approximately 9,000 people have travelled in this way; from June 2012 to May 2013, this number is believed to have risen to over 31,000 and it is estimated that during this sailing season, since June 2013, at least 54,000 have undertaken the journey. Between June 2012 and May 2014, as many as 2,000 Rohingya are believed to have gone missing at sea. Since 2012, grave concerns have been raised regarding the desperate humanitarian situation for Rohingya and Muslim communities in Myanmar, both within the IDP camps and in their home communities” Myanmar is bordered by Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Laos and China. Thailand remains the most attractive destination for persecuted ethnic minorities as well as economic migrants. When these ill-fated Rohingyas try to enter to Thailand via sea waters, they are pushed back by the Royal Thai Naval Forces.

In 2009, the Thai forces were bitterly criticised over their actions against struggling Rohingyas. Bangladesh being the second best choice and Rohingyas ancestral place is even more resistant to them. The Bangladeshi forces have sealed their border with Myanmar fortifying it with the deployment of the Border Guards and Coastguards forces. The international community raises questions about the role of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) towards their intervention but these countries generally do not criticise each other as it is their ‘key principle’. However, in a recent rally against human atrocities in Myanmar, the Malaysian Premier, Haji Najib Razzak deemed Rohingya’s treatment a ‘genocide’. Kufi Anan, the former UN Secretary General recently visited and said that his “committee was deeply concerned by reports of alleged human rights abuses in Rakhine and urged Burmese security forces to act with the law.” Nurul Islam, a UK based Rohingya community leader said that many Rohingya men who had spoken to Kufi Annan were later arrested by Myanmar security forces.

The Rohingyas fleeing persecution tell heartbreaking stories. Syeda Khatun, one of the refugees at the Bangladeshi coast recounting her stories tells that when Burmese soldiers raided her house in October “she was more than five months pregnant and they carried her at gunpoint to a large courtyard in the village where other 30 Rohingya women had already been brought by those soldiers. They separated 15 younger good looking women and took them to some unknown place. She was one of those girls who was raped by them. Not only this but after that violence her husband wanted to abort the child as he was not sure he was the only biological father of that child.” In her words, she said, “My husband said the baby is impure and should be aborted,” she said. “I resisted the idea of the abortion from the beginning. In Bangladesh, some people counselled my husband that only he is the real father of my baby. But he is firm on his belief that the baby has been fathered by many, including him … and he has distanced himself from me.” Only during the months of October and November, at least 100 women were raped and many were killed, around 40 Rohingya Muslims have been burnt alive and some 800 houses have been torched. Another female victim of Buddhist soldiers, Noor Ayesha narrates her story, “A group of about 20 soldiers appeared in front of my house. They ordered all of us to come out in the courtyard. They separated five of our children and forced them into one of our rooms and put on the latch from outside. Then they fired a ‘gun-bomb’ on that room and set it on fire. Five of my children were burnt to death by the soldiers. They killed my two daughters after raping them. They also killed my husband and raped me.”

Since 2012, Rohingya have been facing state-sponsored persecution and have been denied healthcare, livelihood, food, and freedom of movement. There is a new Rohingya genocidal wave, which unfortunately is believed to take control over the country if Rohingya’s are accepted as legitimate citizens of the state. This is a self-imposed fear or the reality of the time as Buddhism is being delimited to certain geographical regions as compared to Islam and Christianity. After her victory, Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the ruling National League for Democracy and daughter of Aung San, the father of the modern day Myanmar nation promised equal rights. In her recent visits to Singapore, she avoided questions about Rohingya community saying, “I am not saying there are no difficulties, but it helps if people recognise the difficulty and are more focused on resolving these difficulties rather than exaggerating them so that everything seems worse that it really is.”

Though predominantly Myanmar may or may not give equal rights to Rohingya but it is the responsibility of all neighbouring countries and countries of human rights champions to take a stand for the state persecuted Muslim community of Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi was being considered the second liberator of the country after her father’s struggle for independence but it seems that all her thoughts and promises were of a volatile nature. Depressed and destitute community is finding no hope in the modern era of Aung San Suu Kyi. It is the need of the hour that at least Muslim countries should take a stand for Rohingya Muslims, who are being persecuted every minute in their motherland. In recent weeks, around 10,000, Rohingyas, flown to Bangladesh in the quest to find safety and refuge. Pakistan being the second biggest Islamic nation on the earth has potential to stir up the international mind to sort out Rohingya’s issue amicably.

The can be reached at kaleem.dean@mail.com