By Usaid (Muneeb) Siddiqui

PolicyMic

October 10, 2013

A fresh outbreak of violence in the troubled Rakhine state of Myanmar claimed the lives of five Muslims in the town of Thandwe earlier this month. In addition to that, nearly a thousand Buddhist protestors torched nearly 50 homes of belonging to Muslim residents including a neighbourhood mosque.

A general anti-Muslim sentiment has proliferated in post-military Burma. The Rohingya Muslim sect in particular has been at end of extreme violence from the majority Buddhist population of Rakhine. Coupled with the institutionalized discrimination faced by the Rohingya on a daily basis, their place in Burmese society remains precarious at best. Condemnation from around the worldhas been profound, where even the highest Buddhist authority, the Dalai Lama, has called for an immediate end to Muslim bloodshed.

On a more worrisome note, ever since the conflict took precedence on the international stage, the ruling government has espoused a relative silence over the issue, failing to improve the lives of their native Muslim populace. This deliberate aloofness of the Burmese ruling elite is complex. However, with the recent transition to democracy after decades of military rule, the government’s apathy seems to stem from unwillingness to lose growing support amongst the Buddhist majority.

The present conflict between Buddhists and Muslims was started in mid-2012, when over a 100 people were killed in the western state of Rakhine. As a result, thousands were made to flee from their homes, seeking refuge under the auspices of IDP camps.

Since then, numerous episodes of sporadic violence have taken place with casualties almost exclusively on the Muslim side. Human rights organizations continue to criticize the governmentfor their meek response, both politically and physically.

A comprehensive report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) published last week presents a grim picture of the security apparatus in Rakhine. The majority of the police force is comprised of mainly Buddhists, who the ICG states to be “at best unsympathetic to Muslim victims” and “complicit in the violence against them” at worst. Furthermore, the ICG research reveals a lack of police resources in the failure to handle the brewing violence: limited equipment, vehicles and a general incompetence related to “anti-riot techniques” were cited for the poor security arrangement. 

National hero and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s sheepish reaction to the persecution of Muslims has caught most people by surprise. Commentators and analysts alike have accused herfor betraying her principled stances in the past, decrying her silence and opting for political opportunism.

The government’s apathy in the whole crisis seems to arise from being unwilling to compromise its support amongst the overwhelming Buddhist majority. As anti-Muslim sentiment rises in the country, any strict measures taken to control the violence may result in a backlash. This may, though not imminently, lead to some form of interference from the disgruntled military junta.

As elections are not set to take place in 2015, the opposition party nor the ruling establishment are likely to further the cause of Muslims, knowing the backlash they would face from a sizable constituency.

Further complications arise due to the systematic discrimination faced by Muslims. The Rohingya have denied citizenship in the country and are often referred to as “Bengali immigrants”. Today they face a two child policy, a move first enacted during previous military rule, which severely diminishes their reproductive rights, as many analysts has rightly argued. Suu Kyi has lamented the policy yet many in her movement have shown support for the controversial law. 

In the face of international pressure, the Burmese government now fears a growing isolation in the world community. In addition, denunciation from Buddhism’s highest authority has been a welcome development as well. Nevertheless, unless the establishment is willing to let go of crony politics, and address the deeper rooted issues of discrimination, the Muslims of Myanmar can hope for little.

By Zubair Akram

PolicyMic

October 8, 2013

Religious violence in Burma, also known as Myanmar, has become the new breeding ground for sectarian violence. Much of the violence this past week has been instigated by radical Buddhist mobs belonging to the notorious 969 Movement at Rohingya Muslims, which constitute less than 5% of Burma’s total population, and are of Bengali heritage. The 969 Movement is led by Ashin Wirathu, a relatively unknown Buddhist monk who claims to preach nonviolence but actively loathes Muslims, who he sees as part of a malevolent mission to eradicate the country’s Buddhist majority.

Rohingya Muslims face draconian social and economic restrictions, and they are not entitled to full citizenship. Moreover, they are unable to marry individuals outside their faith. Beginning this year, mosques were heavily looted and destroyed, inciting greater animosity between the two groups.

Many Rohingya Muslims have resided in Burma for many generations but some have recently entered Burma from neighboring Bangladesh, the latter of whom have become victims of social deprivation, sectarian violence, and limited economic mobility.

Thein Sein, current President of Burma, favors the departure and resettlement of Rohingya Muslims. He believes they are contributing to the breakdown of stability in Burma in recent times. This demands some type of greater approach with the Burmese government to reach a resolution.

Why the world must act?

The Buddhist-Muslim conflict is a highly critical moment for the international community to form a unified response against such discriminately based violence. Not only should the UN pledge to end all forms of abuses against humanitarian concerns but also actively make Burma accountable for its actions against a minority people. This should entail both a pro-humanitarian and pro-peace effort for regional stability.

The religiously motivated violence is not confined to Burma but also extends beyond its borders mainly in South and Southeast Asia.

Continued violence against the Muslim minority population has deleterious consequences for Buddhists. Muslims from nearby states have retaliated attacks against them in recent months. 

In India, Muslims have sought revenge against the killings of Rohingya Muslims by destroying Buddhist holy sites, in particular where the Buddha is to have attained enlightenment. This adverse reaction by Muslims in India indicates how intertwined the violence in Burma actually is. In Indonesia, Muslims have provided donations to the Rohingya Muslims to preserve their local population. In May, two Indonesian Muslims were apprehended for attempting to blow up Burma’s embassy in Jakarta.

If tit-for-tat episodes such as these continue to occur, there is a greater probability that this might possibly create a greater spillover effect for Southeast Asian countries. The intra-Burmese conflict is ensuing to become a regional conflict that encompasses Muslims and Buddhists throughout this part of the world.

To decrease the volatility of this phenomenon, the U.S., European Union, and Japan, all of which have been providing financial stimulus to Burma ever since its election in 2011 that ended military rule, should hold Burma fully responsible for the ongoing wave of violence. If not, the violence may well seep through and create a more radical environment for regional instability.

Even more so, the UN should send a team to investigate the background of the situation and set parameters for internal stability to coalesce. Tough measures against Burma will lead to greater recognition of this massive human rights concern. This could bring more educational programs that espouse tolerance and anti-defamation policies. 

Furthermore, states that possess sizeable Muslim populations including Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia should foster constructive and meaningful dialogue with the Burmese government to reach an amenable solution. If not, we can expect even larger attacks on both sides and which would both inevitably inadvertently lead to a greater catastrophe for Burma and beyond.

By Dom Hammond 

Policymic 

August 27, 2013

Over the last two years, the positive news of a Myanmar embracing democracy and engaging with the developed world has been consistently offset by reports of sectarian violence between Buddhists and the minority Rohingya Muslim population. Estimates suggest that 300 Muslims have been killed and up to 300,000 displaced as refugees since the military junta nominally ceded power in 2011. No longer is this violence restricted to the state of Rakhine where the majority of Burmese Muslims live. Major incidents are reported in states as far south as Thaketa, just a few miles from Yangon, the cultural, historic and business capitol of the country which is now awash with western businessmen drinking expensive cocktails in expensive hotels. This worrying trend of more frequent and more widely spread violence threatens to derail the country’s turnaround.

As violence in Myanmar creeps closer to the capitol, shown below, the genocide taboo creeps closer to the consciousness of the west.

The violence we are forced to consider here is of the most disturbing kind — indiscriminate, brutal, and deadly. A further disturbing element is the widespread belief that government forces are supporting the violence by turning a blind eye. There are many reports of government forces standing by and, if not actively encouraging, being less than heavy-handed with Buddhist perpetrators. There is some convincing video evidence of this around the news sites and on YouTube. Convictions relating to sectarian violence have been proportionately more prevalent for Muslims who have also seen harsher sentences handed down. Despite political reforms, power is still in the hands of the military, and currently concentrated in the hands of exclusively ethnic Burmese Buddhists.

For those who believe that "genocide" is too shocking a term to use here, I would respond: The Rakhine Buddhists refer to the Rohingya as Bengali rather than Burmese and believe they are illegal immigrants despite their having settling in the Rakhine region centuries ago. By denying their history and denying the Rohingya’s right to call Myanmar home, I believe the term "genocide" can be used without hyperbole to describe this systematic approach to removing an ethnic minority. Human Rights Watch (HRW) agrees.

This makes my recent Sunday morning browse of the papers all the more extraordinary:

1. The Travel section of the Sunday Telegraph ran a feature on why you should consider a river cruise as the most relaxing way to take in the sites of Burma.

2. A McKinsey Global Institute’s report reminded me why global corporates are desperate to deploy capital in the region (in short: natural resources, geographic position and large, young workforce that can become more productive).

3. My Twitter feed reminded me that Hugo Swire, the UK’s FCO minister, is working hard to interact with Thein Sein’s government.

HRW has compared the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya to that of the Tutsis in Rwanda. I did not spend my Sunday mornings reading the paper in 1994, but the idea that travellers would be vacationing in Kigali, investors throwing money at coffee plantations, and President Clinton welcoming Juvenile Habyarimana to the White House seems far-fetched.

It is wholly incumbent on the government of Myanmar, its law enforcers, and the robustness of its judiciary to stamp out this violence. For Muslims in Myanmar, it increasingly obvious that their lives are at stake, but wherever the government sits on the scale of indifference too complicity, they must know the future prosperity of the country is at stake too, for the following reasons:

1. The flourishing tourist industry is likely to stall if the violence continues to encroach on the most popular visitor sites. While attacks remained in Rakhine state it could be dismissed by tourists as “a skirmish among locals, hundreds of miles from our hotel”. But if the stunning, temple-laden plains of Bagan and the banks of the Irrawaddy play host to burning schools and mobs with machetes, the Ray-banned, camera-toting tourists will direct their wanderlust back to Thailand.

2. Global corporates who are serious about putting down roots in Myanmar to profit from the massive economic potential of this genuine frontier market will have to consider their responsible investment obligations far more carefully. Doing business in Myanmar will, for many years to come, rely on opaque local connections and relationships with government. The legal and reputational risk of being seen to be in cahoots with factions remotely connected to the notion of genocide would be disastrous.

3. Efforts of Western nations and ASEAN to engage with Thein Sein and his government, laudable as they are, must go hand-in-hand with pressure to react to the ethnic cleansing of its people in the manner expected of a democratic government being offered a seat at the table of global trade and diplomacy.

Just two days after my rose-tinted reading, I woke up to reports on Tuesday that a 1,000 strong Buddhist mob had torched Muslim homes and shops in Sagaing. To avoid points 1, 2 and 3 above, the Myanmar government should issue a statement condemning the attacks, confirming the legitimacy of the Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group, and committing to investigating and enforcing the full extent of the law in convicting any offenders. 

Hope springs eternal.

Myanmar has experienced significant transitions in its economic and political institutions over the past year and half, but it has yet to respond to the recent burst of attacks against the country's Muslim minority. Muslims compose only 5% of Myanmar’s 60 million population, and with the displaced Rohingya minority among the country's population, the current government’s inability to seriously address this issue sets a dangerous precedent.

Muslims in Myanmar are often associated with the Rohingya population, a landless ethnic minority group who have been severely displaced, with neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar accepting them. The Myanmar government has described the Rohingyas as illegal immigrants who come from Bangladesh, while Bangladesh too has rejected the minority group, claiming they neither have the capacity nor land to allow another minority group to settle in a 100-million-person country the size of Iowa. This has led to displacement for the 800,000 Rohingyas, who often are drawn into conflicts with Buddhists.

What is concerning to many is the recent BBC footage in Myanmar where law-enforcement agents stood idly by as Buddhist monks and many others, often affiliated with the “969” movement, attacked different Muslim minorities in Rakhine and Meiktila. Violence between the two groups will not subside in the coming months. While the EU and many others have lifted trade restrictions, it is important to note how exactly Myanmar is going to handle this. Aung Sung Kyi, Myanmar’s most eminent leader has taken a more conciliatory approach in addressing this issue, emphasizing Myanmar’s, need to build a more unified society and have the Rohingyas integrated within a Buddhist-majority nation. Kyi mentions a notable point about integration, but the rise of Wirathu, a radical Buddhist monk who has called for the removal of Muslims and referred to them as the chief cause of these riots, has made this difficult.

The basic duty of any government is to protect its citizens. By not protecting its own people, the current Myanmar government is leaving a window of opportunity for more violence, less integration, and a more polarized society to develop. When communal tensions occur, we hear the voices that are projected the loudest. What we often don’t hear are the voices of the marginalized. These are the stories of the 5% of the Muslims there, and the many other minority communities all throughout the world.

Myanmar has many challenges ahead. Bringing an end to this violence and incorporating different ethnic groups into its democracy can help consolidate a smoother transition away from the military junta, which still has formidable power in the country. Picking on the minorities won’t solve the problem. Integrating them into a broader coalition in which their interests are represented will.