The Fate of Rohingyas

Another happening in the world around us that really bothered me and intrigued me was the problem of the fleeing Rohingyas refugees. They are not just fleeing, but it is a mass exodus, them fleeing in thousands and tens of thousands.

In 2015 there was a major episode and the Rohingyas fled from Myanmar, a mass migration, when they fled to the South East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand by boats, giving them the nick name ‘the boat people.’ Around 25,000 of them fled and some 300 of them lost their lives in the waters, while crossing the Straits of Malacca and Andaman Sea.

Now again in October-December 2017, another mass exodus took place, almost 500,000 people left their homes to take shelter in the border town of Bangladesh, Cox Bazar on rickety boats and on foot.

Why is this happening? Why are they fleeing thus? Who is persecuting them and why? Such questions troubled me and I wanted to study the background of the whole matter. What I found was amazing. 

Rohingyas are a Muslim minority group living in the Buddhist majority state of Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, in the North West Province of Myanmar, the former Burma. Since beginning Myanmar refused to acknowledge this ethnic group as their own. They were considered ‘stateless entities,’ people who had come as refugees from Bangladesh.

The Rohingyas had lived in Arakan area for almost 200 years, ever since British rule was established in Burma (now Myanmar). The British colonized Burma for almost hundred years, from 1824 to 1948. During that time, laborers from India were encouraged to migrate to Burma by the British to cultivate rice. Such migration happened just as any migration would occur depending on the availability of labor and livelihood. The British ruled Burma as a province of India. Such a migration was considered normal, rather encouraged.

British had promised a separate land to the Rohingyas, a Muslim National Area in exchange of their support for the World War II. While Rohingyas supported the British, the nationalists Burmese supported the Japanese, considered intruders by the British. After the war the Rohingyas were rewarded by the British with prestigious government posts, but were denied a free state. As elsewhere colonial politics played here too and even after hundreds of years a population is suffering due to that.  

However once Burma gained its independence from the British rule in 1948, close on heels of Indian independence, the Rohingyas demanded an autonomous province that was promised to them. But Myanmar, now independent, refused to acknowledge these people as their own and declared their migration to their land during British era as illegal. They were denied citizenship. By 1950s the army crushed all opposition from Rohingyas.

The Act of citizenship of Myanmar of 1948, and thereafter 1982, did not include Rohingyas as one of the 135 ethnic groups of the country that was listed. Ever since they had suffered discrimination, oppression, persecution and forceful eviction. After the military coup in 1962, troubles started. 1970s saw the first military crackdown on them, forcing them to flee.

The basic requirement of citizenship in Myanmar was that the concerned person should have the required proof that a family of theirs had been living in Myanmar prior to 1948. No such record was forthcoming for Rohingyas, because they were considered as migratory laborers and were never issued with any such citizenship.

When registration for citizenship was taken up in 1977, the army which was in power by that time, refused to enlist Rohingyas and they were declared as illegal immigrants. They were given identity cards as foreigners. Thus they were deprived of basic rights. They cannot vote, they had no free access to study, work or travel, marry, practice their religion, or to health services.  They cannot own property; restrictions were placed on them entering certain professions like medicine or law or run for office.

In 2012 fresh violence against Rohingyas started. The trigger was the alleged gang rape and killing of a Burmese woman by some Rohingyas and killing of 10 Burmese women by some Rakhines. Since then riots, burning of the villages of Rohingyas and blood shed have been the norm. The majority Rakhines also persecuted them. It was nothing but a virtual ethnic cleansing. Since 2012 Bangladesh had received some 200,000 Rohingyas as refugees who are living in Cox Bazar.

The recent violence against Rohingyas started in October 2017, when a few of Rohingya militants under the name Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked some of the army stations, a very stupid idea. They are a Muslim militant group and the army suspects that they are trained by ISI of Pakistan and aided with money from Saudi Arabia.

In the military backlash that followed the poor and innocent Rohingyas paid the price. Their houses were torched, youth killed and they were forced to flee the country.  5,00,000 refugees landed in Cox Bazar due to this  2017. They are living in squalor and unhygienic conditions despite the United Nation’s humane services to these poor and displaced people.

Aug San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, it’s elected leader of National League for Democracy, and the winner of Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, and the present State Counsellor, which is a post akin to that of a Prime Minister of the nation, has maintained a stoic silence in the matter of military oppression of Rohingyas, despite international criticism.

The fear of the Myanmar government seems to be that this Muslim minority, a foreign body with a separatist agenda, might swell in the future and overcome the Buddhist majority population, and the country could become a Muslim spot on the world map, brewing up terrorist activities.

May be the way today’s Britain or the West might fear that the Muslim population will overtake them in biological numbers. Or as Qaddafi, while he was alive, said to have assured his fellow religious men, not to resort to terrorism to win the West, but they can do so by sheer numbers very soon.

Or even as some in authority in India worried that Tamil Nadu might want to separate from Indian Union, if joined together with the Tamils in the north east Sri Lanka. I am sure they heaved a sigh of relief when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka lost and their leader Prabhakaran was killed in action.

Be that as it may, these are no justifications for a government to uproot and destroy an ethnic minority, especially the poor and the vulnerable who are caught in between. Any person born in a country has a claim to be counted as the citizen of that country, especially if parents were also born and lived in the country. To say that one has no citizenship even after generations of the family having lived in a country, is utter injustice. And this is what is happening to the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

International agencies and institutions will have to bring pressure on the government of Myanmar to be more humane and resolve this crisis in which the poor and the marginalized are bearing the brunt against an organized crime against humanity. A people cannot be treated as cattle, and neither could citizenship be denied to those who have lived in a country for generations.