The Plight of the Rohingya
Long considered one of the world’s most persecuted peoples, the
Muslim Rohingya have no legal status in Burma and face severe
discrimination, abuse and escalating violence. In 2012, violent
attacks, fanned by a campaign of virulent anti-Muslim hate speech that
continues today, destroyed numerous Rohingya communities and displaced
well more than 100,000. Today, the Rohingya in Burma are forcibly
isolated, cut off from nearly all goods and services and unable to
provide for themselves. According to the United Nations, crimes against
humanity have been, and continue to be, perpetrated against the
Rohingya. Their treatment, combined with statements by government,
political and religious leaders indicate that the Rohingya are being
subjected to ethnic cleansing.
While the Burmese government has signaled its intention to alleviate
the plight of the Rohingya, little has as yet been done to address the
fundamental causes of their suffering. Burma’s democracy movement has
been largely silent about the treatment of the Rohingya.
A PERSECUTED MINORITY
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Rakhine (also called Arakan)
State, which borders Bangladesh and has a Buddhist majority that is
ethnically Rakhine. Although Rohingya have resided in Arakan for at
least several centuries, Burma’s 1982 citizenship law does not include
them among the country’s officially recognized ethnic groups,
effectively denying them any right to citizenship. The Burmese
government classifies the approximately 800,000 Rohingya as “Bengalis”
and insists that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Since
Burma’s independence in 1948, the Rohingya have been subjected to
periodic campaigns of violence and continue to face various forms of
official and unofficial persecution, including:
- Limits on the right to marry and bear children Rohingya must obtain official permission to marry and in some areas have been prohibited from having more than two children. As a result, some 60,000 Rohingya children born in violation of these restrictions cannot be registered and are thus ineligible for all government services, including education.
- Limits on movement Rohingya must obtain official permission to travel even to a neighboring village. Applications for travel permits require long waits, payment of fees and bribes, and intrusive scrutiny. The travel restrictions effectively deny the Rohingya access to post-primary education, markets, employment opportunities and health care.
- Forced labor Rohingya in Northern Rakhine State have regularly been required to work without pay for government and military authorities. Children frequently perform this labor, which is required exclusively of the Rohingya in Rakhine State.
- Denial of due process Rohingya are routinely subjected to confiscation of property, arbitrary arrest and detention, physical and sexual violence, and even torture at the hands of authorities.
- Segregation Rohingya are barred from the teaching, medical and engineering professions. Many health care facilities will not treat them and few businesses will hire them other than for manual labor.
Rakhine State is one of Burma’s poorest states, and the Rakhine
ethnic group has also long suffered from economic discrimination and
cultural repression by the Burmese majority and central government. As
Buddhists and an officially recognized minority, however, the Rakhine
enjoy rights and opportunities denied to the Rohingya, who are
universally reviled in Burma. Poverty exacerbates Rakhine animosities
toward the Rohingya, whom the Rakhine view as alien competitors for
scarce resources. These animosities erupted into communal violence
between Rohingya and Rakhine between June and October 2012 that left
hundreds dead and more than 140,000 displaced, the vast majority
Rohingya. The deadliest violence consisted of Rakhine attacks against
Rohingya communities. According to both Rakhine and Rohingya witnesses,
Buddhist monks and local Rakhine politicians incited and led many of the
attacks, with state security forces failing or refusing to stop the
violence and sometimes participating in it. The violence forced the
Rohingya to abandon many of their communities, where anything left
standing after the attacks was subsequently razed by the government.
The displaced Rohingya now live in official and unofficial IDP camps
under conditions that the UN’s emergency relief coordinator has called
among the worst she has ever seen. Humanitarian aid workers have
frequently been prevented from accessing these camps.
Citing the need to maintain security, Burmese officials have
essentially imprisoned much of the Rohingya population, using barbed
wire and barricades to cordon off not only those in the camps but also
another 36,000 in still extant Rohingya communities. Denied permission
to exit, the inhabitants cannot access markets, schools or health care
facilities and cannot pursue their livelihoods. A recent UN report
cited "alarming rates of severe acute malnutrition" in the camps. In
June, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in
Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, cited “credible allegations that widespread
and systematic human rights violations by state officials targeted
against the Rohingya and wider Muslim populations have occurred and are
continuing in Rakhine State.”
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
There have been some positive, if mixed, developments. Since early
2013, the central and local governments have taken significant steps to
improve humanitarian access and provide safer shelter to the displaced
ahead of the monsoon season. These efforts, however, included a
registration drive that required Rohingya to identify themselves as
“Bengali,” which many viewed as forcing them to accede to illegal
status. In May 2013, the government commission established to
investigate the 2012 violence -- which had no Rohingya members – called
for general measures to improve communal relations in Rakhine State and
to hold those responsible for the violence accountable, but it also
recommended birth control measures for the “Bengalis.” In response,
local officials in Rakhine State announced stepped-up enforcement of the
two-child limit for Rohingya. Although Burma’s Minister of Immigration
and Population originally praised this measure, both he and the Chief
Minister of Rakhine State recently assured Special Adviser Ojea Quintana
that no such policy is in force. Meanwhile, however, politicians and
monks in Rakhine State have openly called for ethnic cleansing of the
Rohingya.
While Burma’s President, Thein Sein, has pledged to seek
regularization of the Rohingya’s legal status, he also insists that
there is no need to change the 1982 citizenship law, under which it is
practically impossible for most Rohingya to obtain citizenship. In July
2013, the central government abolished the notoriously abusive NaSaKa
border security force in Rakhine State, but the police forces that
replaced them are reportedly continuing many abusive practices targeting
the Rohingya. In August 2013, Rakhine authorities prosecuted six
Rakhines for murdering Rohingya bus passengers at the start of the
violence in June 2012, but thus far, the majority of the persons
prosecuted for last year’s violence have been Rohingya, despite the fact
that Rohingya make up the vast majority of the victims.
Spreading Anti-Muslim HAte Speech and violence
This lack of accountability has likely contributed to the outpouring
of anti-Muslim hate speech that since March has been accompanied by
sporadic violence targeting Muslim Burmese citizens residing in other
parts of the country. While Buddhist monks have been among the most
visible instigators, there is ample evidence of security forces’
complicity in the violence, which has claimed scores of lives and
destroyed thousands of properties. The Buddhist “969” movement uses
anti-Muslim hate speech and intimidation to force boycotts of Muslim
businesses and is now seeking to criminalize marriage between Muslim men
and Buddhist women. The escalating segregation and discrimination
against Burma’s Muslims, who comprise about 5% of the population, leave
them in well-founded fear for their safety and livelihoods.
Photograph by Greg Constantine.
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