By Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

The National

October 23, 2014

In April, I wrote an article for The National on the worsening situation for Muslims in Myanmar. Their condition has not got any better. Instead, the government has adopted new legislation that is likely to have a further devastating impact on its Muslim minority.

Last month, the country’s foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, told envoys at the UN General Assembly that a long-expected strategy for the Rohingya minority would soon be put into effect. According to Mr Lwin, the “action plan” had been devised to guarantee peace and security for everybody in the area. He called on the global community to take part in the implementation of this strategy to provide a “durable solution” in the region.

Not long after Mr Lwin’s address at the UN, mainstream media such as Reuters shed light on what the scheme might practically involve: a set of coercive strategies that endanger the situations of thousands of people, while at the same time recycling legislation that was not in line with international law and was condemned when it was first enacted in 2012.

The suppression of the Rohingya community has been going on for decades. Since 1982, these people have been denied citizenship rights and have been considered illegal immigrants in their own homeland. Consequently, hatred, torture and killings have become a horrific daily reality for them. Over the past two years, Buddhist mobs have reportedly killed hundreds of Rohingya Muslims. The United Nations reported that the atrocities had also displaced almost 29,000 people, and labelled the Rohingya as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that the government has done nothing to stop the continuing atrocities and has, instead, unwittingly contributed to them. At the same time, many in the mainstream media have been silent. The world community knows very little, if anything at all, about the situation.

This new strategy shows that the government of Myanmar has no inclination to put an end to the continuing repression, and is pursuing more coercive initiatives that will probably contribute to further injustice against Rohingya minorities.

According to Emanuel Stoakes of The Diplomat, a draft of this new strategy contains only a slight difference from the old policy. Under the policy, the Muslims of Rohingya, who were retrospectively denied citizenship in legislation enacted by the military leadership 26 years ago, are given the opportunity to attain certain privileges if they are able to comply to a “citizenship verification exercise” in which these people must identify themselves as Bengalis – indicating that they came from Bangladesh.

Refusing to identify as Bengali, or being unable to provide the necessary documents to prove their existence in Myanmar for generations, would give them no option but to be incarcerated in camps. After that, the policy envisages that they be relocated abroad by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Given that many people have said they are prepared to reject the verification programme and many others would be unable to find their official family records, it is likely that a very large number of Rohingya will have no option but to be displaced to camps. In such a scenario, the likelihood of violence and destabilisation would rise significantly.

Under its rules, the UNHCR may not be able to resettle the Rohinyga because they do not meet the definition of a refugee as someone who has “fled persecution and conflict across international borders”. This would mean that those Rohingyas who are denied citizenship could be forced to stay in camps indefinitely.

The unspeakable suppression against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar must end soon. It is more than clear that these people are in dire need of genuine and serious efforts by both the Myanmar government and the international community to mitigate their worsening situation.

More voices must join those speaking out in support of their rights. Organisations such as Asean must break away from their silence and insist that there be no normalisation with Myanmar while these outrageous policies are adopted against innocent men, women and children in their own homeland.

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is a writer based in Qatar and the UK.

By Editorial of The Nation

August 13, 2013

Instead of punishing, abusing and exploiting refugees, Thailand should be prepared to offer them economic opportunities

Rohingya boat people continue to flee Myanmar, where they are barred from citizenship, to seek better lives elsewhere. Many of them end up in detention centres in neighbouring countries, particularly Malaysia and Thailand. 

When it comes to refugees, Thailand always claims the high moral ground. Over the years it has provided shelter to those fleeing war and persecution in Cambodia, Laos and other Southeast Asian countries. Those who claim to have fled from political conflict at home live temporarily in refugee camps along the border. Those who seek an escape from economic hardship at home can find jobs here if they manage to get legal documents and are properly registered. Others work illegally until the authorities catch them.

But is our humanitarian record that good? With regard to the Rohingya, Thailand has done the same as other countries - locking them up behind bars. Some have died in custody. It seems that no one really cares what goes wrong.

The Rohingya have fled from the border areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh, and from western Rakhine State, to seek jobs and better lives here and in Malaysia. Thousands of these people have been working here for years, saving money for their families. But the authorities are targeting many of the newcomers, perhaps as a result of recent communal conflict in Myanmar between Buddhists and Muslims. Others are victims of human traffickers and are still sent to jail because they're illegal migrants, having entered the Kingdom without permission. Typically they are convicted, serve time in jail and then deported, but some die behind bars before completing their sentences. After suffering perilous sea journeys, then abuse at the hands of traffickers and the authorities who often act in collusion, these people have every reason to curse their bad luck. 

Thai authorities have no reason to mistreat these migrants. Most Rohingya - and indeed most other refugees from neighbouring countries - have committed no crime apart from illegal entry. Of course most Rohingya have no legal documents, but that is hardly their fault since they're denied any such documentation by the Myanmar government. 

With or without documents, they still have the right to live, work and support their families. Illegal migration is not a serious crime, but many states, including Thailand, treat such intruders as if they were murderers, allocating huge sums of money and resources to control and punish them.

Tough punishment, some officials say, is a deterrent to foreigners considering entering the country illegally and taking jobs from Thai nationals. That is wrong thinking. The Rohingya and other migrants from Myanmar are an essential and irreplaceable component of the Thai economy. They do the dirty, backbreaking jobs Thais don't want and they are paid low wages. Many are exploited in conditions of virtual slavery. They come here with nothing and they help to build the economy. Employers are delighted to exploit this cheap source of labour. 

Thailand should be doing more to help the Rohingya boat people. With correct organisation, fair documentation and supervision, and decent wages and working conditions, they can still play a significant role in developing the national economy.

Joshua Kurlantzick

In late May, the Myanmar president Thein Sein arrived in Washington, DC for a historic meeting with Barack Obama. The US president praised him lavishly at the press briefing that followed their summit. He lauded his leadership "in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform", before discussing joint projects that US assistance will focus on in Myanmar, such as improving agriculture. Pleased, Thein Sein replied: "I take this opportunity to reiterate that Myanmar and I will continue to … move forward so that we can build a new democratic state, a new Myanmar."

Only three years earlier, nearly every Myanmar leader had been barred from entering the US because of sanctions imposed on the country's military-ruled government. Congress regularly castigated Myanmar as one of the most tyrannical societies on earth, and when former president George W Bush found himself in the mid-2000s in an anteroom with Myanmar's then-leader at an Asian summit, he steadfastly refused to acknowledge the other man's presence.Now, the situation had flipped so rapidly that many longtime Myanmar-watchers cannot keep track of the changes. While once American policymakers blasted Myanmar and its government as a tyranny, now they paint it as a model of emerging democratisation.

By the time Thein Sein arrived in May, Washington had lifted sanctions, corporate leaders were jostling to meet him and the distinguished global organisation International Crisis Group had presented the Myanmar leader with its annual "Pursuit of Peace" prize.

Other democracies around the world had lifted sanctions as well, and so much cash had already begun flowing into Myanmar that Lex Rieffel, an expert on development and Myanmar at the Brookings Institution, warns that donors are already duplicating projects, disregarding the wishes of the Myanmar government and wasting huge sums. Western and Japanese companies, which had been mostly barred for two decades by the sanctions, are arriving in droves, since Myanmar is probably the last large untapped emerging market in the world and also contains large quantities of oil, gas, minerals and other natural resources. Myanmar's latest round of auctions for offshore oil blocks attracted 59 bidders, including many of the largest resources companies in the world. Meanwhile, the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi continued her own global tour. Besides stops in Washington, Tokyo and other world capitals to pick up multiple awards, she travelled to such places as Ulan Bator in Mongolia, for the annual meeting of the Community of Democracies, a global group of democratic nations.

Yet neither the cartoonish portrayals of Myanmar in the past nor today's idyllic pictures of its future are correct. While the country has taken important steps towards democracy, its opening, which began in 2010, has also unleashed dangerous forces that have led to scores of violent attacks against Myanmar's Muslim minority, who make up about four to five per cent of the country's 60 million people.

The attacks, which last year seemed confined to the western Myanmar state called Rakhine (also known as Arakan), have now spread. Nearly every day, the Myanmar press reports burnings, beatings and evictions of Muslims from towns across the country. These attacks have led to angry responses by some groups of armed Muslims and by several of Myanmar's large Muslim-majority neighbours. And though the government denies involvement in the pogroms and its president has issued stern warnings against future violence, a recent comprehensive report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) found "the Burmese [ie Myanmar] government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya [Muslims] that continues today". The Rohingya originally settled in present-day Myanmar from areas west of the country populated by ethnic Bengalis. Some are first or second-generation arrivals, but others have lived in Myanmar for centuries.

At least 100,000 Muslims have been made homeless in the past two years by violent attacks, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed, along with a much smaller number of Buddhists. Left unchecked, rising ethnic hatred and increasing attacks could push the country into a terrible period of ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has had a long history of xenophobia and inter-ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the army's oppressive five-decade rule over the country. Outside North Korea, Myanmar was until 2010 probably the most closed nation in the world. In that year, the army began a transition to a civilian government, holding elections that helped create a civilian parliament and formally renouncing its control of the presidency.

Yet the new "civilian" president was Thein Sein, a supposedly moderate former general. In previous army commands, he had been in charge of an area in northern Myanmar notorious for rights abuses by the army, as well as drug and weapons trafficking; even today, Myanmar remains the dominant producer of methamphetamines in East Asia and one of the world's biggest producers of heroin. As regional commander, it would have been unlikely that Thein Sein did not know about these activities, notes an article in Asia Times Online, a leading regional web publication.

Still, Myanmar has witnessed enormous change in the past three years and, whatever his past, Thein Sein has been genuinely interested in promoting reform. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) swept last year's by-elections, the first truly fair elections in two decades. Parliament has become more than just a rubber stamp for the army and in the 2015 elections the NLD may well win a majority, which could theoretically put them in a position to run the country.

But this rapid shift has, as in other former autocratic and diverse states, also unleashed severe tensions. The inter-religious violence began last year in Rakhine, near the border with Bangladesh. The exact cause of the fighting remains unclear, but after rumours spread that several Muslim men had attacked Buddhist women, crowds of Buddhists began attacking areas of the state populated by Rohingya.

One of the biggest towns, Sittwe, saw its Muslim area burnt to the ground. Tens of thousands of Rohingya fled into the hills, tried to escape into Bangladesh or boarded makeshift boats to flee to Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia. Many drowned or were turned back by the Thai navy, which often picks off refugees' boats and then sends them back to sea to drown if they do not have money to pay the navy. (Thailand's military has historically harboured great animosity towards Myanmar and there are widespread allegations that some Thai navy men killed fleeing refugees or forced them into bonded labour.)

Last year, Thein Sein and Suu Kyi suggested that the violence was confined to Rakhine and centred primarily on local Buddhists' perceptions (right or wrong) that Rohingya were outsiders. In other words, that the violence was sparked by anger over immigration and job losses, not by religious and ethnic differences. This claim seemed dubious at the time, and the spread of violence has since shown it to be untrue.

In a statement earlier this year, Suu Kyi's spokesperson said she has little interest in supporting the Rohingya's claims for rights and citizenship - a surprising response by the Nobel laureate, a woman renowned around the world as a champion of freedom and rights. Yet within Suu Kyi's party, I have found that most activists express disdain for Myanmar's Muslims. Even the famed activist Ko Ko Gyi said that the violence in western Myanmar was the fault of Muslims themselves. Many in Suu Kyi's party even condone a government policy that has, over the past decade, limited Rohingya to two children, a rule no one else in the country has to follow. (Suu Kyi has not endorsed this policy.) Last week, Myanmar's Minister of Immigration and Population Khin Yi publicly backed the two-child policy for Rohingya.

Even more important, neither the government nor Suu Kyi has offered a viable plan for how to create a more federal state, which will be essential in a country with so many ethnic minority and religious groups and so little trust of the central government. In other countries in the region, such as Indonesia, which emerged from its own chaotic transition to democracy in the late 1990s, federal rule and decentralisation have been critical to reducing ethnic tensions and empowering local leaders across the country. Also, in Myanmar no prominent opposition leaders, activists or government officials have concurred with the findings that ethnic cleansing has taken place in Myanmar.

No matter the original source of the violence in Rakhine, government's ineffectiveness - or complicity in the attacks, according to HRW - seems to have encouraged anti-Muslim extremists throughout the country. In its comprehensive report on last year's attacks, HRW found that on numerous occasions of violence against Rohingya, crowds of marauding Buddhists appeared to be organised well in advance and ignored by the police, who often simply vanished once mobs started attacking and burning mosques, Muslim-owned shops and homes.

Since the violence appeared to be targeted, HRW labelled it ethnic cleansing. Its report showed that security forces participated in the attacks, burnt mosques and often prevented anyone from assisting injured and dying Muslims.

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi said little. Thein Sein more recently has deplored the violence, but has taken few concrete steps to stop it. (In one speech in May, Thein Sein said the government would "take all necessary action to ensure the basic human rights of Muslims".) Indeed, on his watch, the police and army this year have conducted several investigations of the Rakhine attacks, but wound up primarily detaining groups of young Muslim men.

Now the Myanmar government faces far broader unrest, killings that threaten to tear the country apart and completely undermine the recent economic and political reforms.

Emboldened by the lack of action taken against marauders last year, Buddhist extremists have launched a national anti-Muslim campaign, led by nationalist monks. The campaign, called the 969 Movement (the name comes from Buddhist numerology), calls on Buddhists to avoid Muslim shops and properties and tacitly encourages evictions and even attacks. The movement's followers encourage Buddhist shop-owners to put 969 stickers on their stores, identifying them as Buddhist-run, and have at times reportedly attacked Buddhist merchants for doing business with Muslims. One 969 leader, nationalist monk U Wirathu, has given numerous interviews calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the country or worse. When he gives sermons, Wirathu now draws thousands of followers, like a nationalist rock star. In a much-covered speech in February, Wirathu told followers: "Once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practise our religion … If you buy from Muslim shops, your money doesn't just stop there. It will eventually go towards destroying your race and religion." Some liberal commentators have compared the movement to neo-Nazis, and in March militant monks in the town of Meiktila carried swords and knives, watching over Muslims being force-marched out of the area.

Violence has exploded across the country. Mobs of Buddhists, some with ties to the 969 Movement, have struck in the towns of Meiktila, Nay Pyi Taw, Bago and now in Yangon, the largest city. Earlier this year in Meiktila, groups of men burnt Muslims' homes and then attacked survivors, killing at least 40 people, including schoolchildren. U Wirathu publicly praised these actions. Many of the mobs also appear to have ties to several long-standing paramilitary organisations that previously worked with the army to enforce military rule, according to several Myanmar rights activists. Police provide protection for U Wirathu as he travels, as if he were a state leader.

In Okekan, another town in central Myanmar, gangs of Buddhists attacked Muslims, even though there had been few previous signs of inter-religious tension. The leading Myanmar publication The Irrawaddy reported that the gangs "appeared to be a well-organised mob, complete with scouts and checkpoints" in scenes eerily reminiscent of the organised violence of Rwanda in 1994. At least 10 people were killed in Okekan, though the exact number of deaths remains unclear.

Even in towns where there was no history of inter-religious tensions, attacks on Muslims have erupted. In Lashio, a town in north-eastern Shan State, Buddhist gangs armed with knives and petrol bombs attacked the major mosque and burnt it down in late May. Some locals claimed that the gangs had even burnt down a Muslim orphanage, although it was difficult to confirm these reports.

Thein Sein has declared states of emergency in several parts of the country, deploying the army in an attempt to stop violence, yet the army has little knowledge of how to quell protests peacefully. And though some police officers may have acted bravely, overall the authorities have either been absent during the rioting or too poorly trained to do anything. In Lashio, the government has only arrested one man, a Muslim.

Outside of Indonesia and other South East Asian nations directly affected by Myanmar's tensions, the world seems to have paid little attention to this looming catastrophe. Yet Myanmar's tensions are creating instability in the middle of Asia. Already, militants in Indonesia angry at the attacks on Muslims in Myanmar allegedly tried to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, a plot foiled by Indonesian security forces. And in the past two weeks, at least four people have been killed in Malaysia as Buddhist and Muslims from Myanmar have begun attacking each other in Kuala Lumpur. This comes just after violence between Myanmar Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Indonesia resulted in several deaths. Malaysia has this week detained several groups of refugees for fear of greater violence.

On the day HRW released its damning report, the European Union lifted its remaining trade sanctions on Myanmar. The US, other western nations and Japan see a strategic prize in Myanmar that could potentially offset China's growing power in the region: before the western democracies lifted sanctions, China was by far the largest donor to and investor in Myanmar.

The government, Suu Kyi and foreign donors that have poured into Myanmar must act rapidly and develop a plan for devolution and federal government. Thein Sein should purge senior military leaders shown to be disobeying his commands. Suu Kyi needs to be less reticent in speaking out on the rights of all people in Myanmar and on the need to halt ethnic and religious attacks.

In addition, the Myanmar government and donors need to focus incoming aid on areas crucial to restoring peace. These include creating a civilian-controlled police force, to reduce the need for army intervention in conflict areas; training young journalists to understand the need for sourcing stories; and launching mediation efforts to increase dialogue among ethnic groups and religions.

At the same time, regional governments and western donors could plan more effectively for outflows of refugees from Myanmar's conflicts. Relief agencies and wealthier nations could provide funds for temporary camps for refugees in Thailand, as well as help some resettle elsewhere abroad.

Meanwhile, the Association of South East Asian Nations could adopt a common approach to intercepting refugee boats and agree to accept people fleeing Myanmar, assured that the economic burden would not fall on them alone. Otherwise the world could be left watching, as it was in Rwanda two decades ago, as slaughter feeds upon slaughter.

Joshua Kurlantzick is fellow for South East Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Nation

June 8, 2013

After all the years that Thailand has been involved with sheltering refugees from neighboring countries, one would think that our authorities' handling of sensitive humanitarian issues would have improved over time. But as a recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) suggests, Thai officials have learned little and haven't improved their overall attitude to those in vulnerable situations.

HRW has called on the Thai government to immediately end the detention under inhumane conditions of more than 1,700 ethnic Rohingya, who are being kept in overcrowded cells in immigration detention centers around the country. The statement followed the release of shocking video footage of an immigration facility in Phang Nga province, aired by ITN Channel 4 News on May 31.

“The ITN program showed 276 Rohingya men living in extremely cramped conditions in two cells resembling large cages, each designed to hold only 15 men,” HRW said in a statement. “They barely had enough room to sit. Some suffered from swollen feet and withered leg muscles due to lack of exercise. The men said they have not been let out of the cells in five months.”

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra should be reminded that in January she agreed to permit Rohingya arriving by boat from Myanmar to stay temporarily, initially for six months, until they could be safely repatriated to their places of origin or resettled to third countries. She needs to understand that she can't go around making these promises to the international community and then turn a blind eye to the appalling conduct of her officials.

Moreover, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has not been permitted to screen the Rohingya in Phang Nga. The embarrassment that would be caused by revelation of the dreadful holding conditions is likely the same reason why the government is reluctant to permit foreign governments and international organizations like the U.N. from visiting the violent deep South, where a Malay-Muslim insurgency has raged since 2004. There are just too many things to hide, like the culture of impunity and extrajudicial killings by government and pro-government officials.

Five years ago Thai security officials on the southern coast sent a boatload of Rohingya back out to sea, where many had already died. Shortly after that there was another incident in which video footage showed how Thai officials lined up Rohingya refugees in the open under a blazing sun.

In response to these back-to-back incidents, local media were brought in to report on Thai doctors and aid workers “pampering” the new wave of Rohingya boat people. But more keep coming and the end is nowhere in sight. It's nowhere in sight because no one in the region is willing to take up the issue and discuss the root cause of the migration problem, which is the statelessness of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

The Rohingya are stranded along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Southeast Asia's construct of “nation-states” has passed them by. Post-colonial governments drew up national maps, most of which were in line with boundaries left by the European powers. Neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh wants them, thus making them one of the most pitiable people in the world. And neither country seems willing to do anything about resolving the problem.

While emerging countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh seek to administer the territory within their political boundaries, they don't always want the people that come with it — especially if they are from a different cultural and linguistic stock from the ruling majority.

The stateless hilltribe people along the northern and western Thai border are not much different from the Rohingya. The only difference is that most, if not all, of the northern hilltribes have been documented, even though they might not have been granted citizenship and the privileges that come with it.

But documentation is a start. And perhaps this is where Myanmar should begin. The Rohingya issue should be about legality. It's a humanitarian crisis that stems from an unwillingness to give them legal status anywhere.

The National

March 29, 2013

Some 2,600 tons of food aid have been delivered to Muslims in Myanmar thanks to the Khalifa bin Zayed Humanitarian Foundation, according to Wam, the state new agency.

It is the third and final phase of an emergency relief project that has seen 5,200 tons of relief items delivered in Myanmar's Arakan state. About 850,000 people have benefited from the relief parcels.

The project was launched under the directive of Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE, to provide emergency aid to displaced Rohingya Muslims in the wake of injustices against them.

The aid, bought from the local market and shipped by sea to Arakan, included basic food items and clothing for men, women and children.

The National

December 18, 2012

Too often the spotlight of international attention alights on a particular situation only after years have passed. The barbarous excesses of the Assads, both father and son, against their own people, for instance, were well-known for decades. So too, with the Muslim Rohingya of Rakhine state in western Myanmar, a community that has suffered under various rulers, varying from the unsympathetic to the brutal to the criminally apathetic - which is the most charitable description of the current government's attitude towards violence against the Rohingya. 

This has been the state of affairs since the original kingdom of Arakan, as the region was historically known, was annexed by the present-day state of Myanmar in the late 18th century. 

The world is now taking notice of their plight - 100,000 people displaced, villages torched and scores dead since the rape of a Buddhist woman in May sparked the latest rounds of violence. The attention is because of the opening of Myanmar, both in its political and civil society spheres. 

The country was until recently seen entirely in black and white terms. One of the many charges laid against the military regime that took power in 1962 - which only relinquished control (in name only, some would argue) when a former general, Thein Sein, became president in 2011 - was its continuing persecution of Myanmar's many ethnic minorities, particularly in the border regions. The list of atrocities the army stands accused of runs from systematic rape to forcing locals to clear fields of landmines by walking across them. 

A Myanmar that has begun the process of democratisation and is loosening the grip of one of the world's most notorious police states has been embraced by western nations, but perhaps precipitously. With Aung San Suu Kyi free, able to stand for election and at last accept her Nobel Peace Prize in person, all would be well, seemed to be the view. One of the most admired women on the planet would surely usher her country into the community of nations as a peaceful, liberal, enlightened state, living in harmony with its neighbours and internally with the mosaic of ethnic groups. 

But the clarity of "good" and "evil" has given way to the shades of grey that colour most political landscapes. Ms Suu Kyi has been notably unforthcoming about the aggression inflicted on the Rohingya, and the injustice that a community dating back centuries has been denied citizenship since 1974 by Myanmar. Officials routinely declare Rohingya to be Bengali immigrants. 

Ms Suu Kyi is a politician now and has to take note of the realities, which include the prejudices of her fellow Burmese against the non-Burmese who make up 30 per cent of the population. While she has mouthed platitudes about "people getting along with each other", the spokesman for her party, the National League for Democracy, was more direct. "The Rohingya are not our citizens," said Nyan Win in June, a position he has since maintained. 

There is a lazy, sentimental western stereotype that Buddhists are peaceful people with a somewhat otherworldly predilection for constant meditation. But of course, they are quite capable of inflicting violence, as both the Muslim minority in neighbouring Thailand's south and Rohingya in Myanmar know all too well. 

Myanmar is an example of a state whose boundaries are more fixed in international law than they ever were historically. The Shan States in the north-east, for instance, may have paid allegiance to the Burmese throne, but their princes enjoyed considerable autonomy and, according to the country's post-independence constitution, had the right to secede from the Union of Myanmar after 10 years (General Ne Win's 1962 coup put paid to that). 

Geographically isolated by the mountain range that cuts it off from the rest of Myanmar, Arakan had been home to a Muslim community since at least the 16th century. While their numbers were undoubtedly swelled by those who crossed over the relatively porous border with Bengal, their language and identity were and are distinct. 

The 1931 census recorded 130,000 Muslims in the area and there are now about 800,000 Rohingyas in Rakhine State, as it was renamed in 1989. They are not troublesome immigrants, but a persecuted ethnic group in a country where the majority has never accorded equal status to the many minorities. 

Democracy in itself is not going to be enough. Indeed, it can perpetuate majoritarian attitudes by sealing them with the approval of the ballot box. If Ms Suu Kyi is to a fulfil her potential as a politician, both she and her party must lead the way in changing not just the system of government but the attitudes of Burmese towards non-Burmese, and of Buddhists towards those of other religions. 

For decades, the country's woes could be blamed entirely on the generals. As they slip into the shadows, however, it is time for the new Myanmar to prove it is worthy of the international community's friendship. Recognising the Rohingya as citizens and extending to them the protection of the state would be a good start. 

Sholto Byrnes is editor of Think, the quarterly international magazine of Qatar Foundation, and a contributing editor of the New Statesman