By Andrew R.C. Marshall

TAKEBI, Myanmar | Fri Jun 15, 2012

TAKEBI, Myanmar (Reuters) This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition.

But Takebi's residents are not refugees. They are Rohingya, a stateless Muslim people of South Asian descent now at the heart of Myanmar's worst sectarian violence in years. The United Nations has called them "virtually friendless" in Myanmar, the majority-Buddhist country that most Rohingya call home. Today, as Myanmar opens up, they appear to have more enemies than ever.

Armed with machetes and bamboo spears, rival mobs of Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists this month torched one another's houses and transformed nearby Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, into a smoke-filled battleground. A torrent of Rohingyas has tried to flee Rakhine into impoverished Bangladesh, but most are being pushed back, a Bangladeshi Border Guard commander told Reuters on Thursday.

The fighting threatens to derail the democratic transition in Myanmar, a resource-rich nation of 60 million strategically positioned at Asia's crossroads between India and China, Bangladesh and Thailand. With scores feared dead, President Thein Sein announced a state of emergency on June 10 to prevent "vengeance and anarchy" spreading beyond Rakhine and jeopardizing his ambitious reform agenda.

Reuters visited the area just before the unrest broke out. The northern area of Rakhine state is off-limits to foreign reporters.

Until this month, Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to democratic start-up had seemed remarkably rapid and peaceful. Thein Sein released political prisoners, relaxed media controls, and forged peace with ethnic rebel groups along the country's war-torn borders. A new air of hope and bustle in Myanmar's towns and cities is palpable.

But not in Rakhine, also known as Arakan. It is home to about 800,000 mostly stateless Rohingya, who according to the United Nations are subject to many forms of "persecution, discrimination and exploitation." These include forced labor, land confiscations, restrictions on travel and limited access to jobs, education and healthcare.

Now, even as the state eases repression of the general populace and other minorities, long-simmering ethnic tensions here are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured a generation ago after communism fell.

SUU KYI 'TIGHT-LIPPED'

Even the democracy movement in Myanmar is doing little to help the Muslim minority, Rohingya politicians say.

Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi last week urged "all people in Burma to get along with each other regardless of their religion and authenticity." But she has remained "tight-lipped" about the Rohingya, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya leader and one-time Suu Kyi ally who spent more than seven years as a political prisoner. "It is politically risky for her," he said.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win wouldn't comment on Suu Kyi's position, but said: "The Rohingya are not our citizens." Suu Kyi is now on a European tour that will take her to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991.

The violence could disrupt Myanmar's detente with the West, however. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on June 11 called for "Muslims, Buddhists, and ethnic representatives, including Rohingya . . . to begin a dialogue toward a peaceful resolution."

The United States suspended some sanctions on Myanmar, including those banning investment, in May as a reward for its democratic reforms. But the White House kept the framework of hard-hitting sanctions in place, with President Barack Obama expressing at the time concern about Myanmar's "treatment of minorities and detention of political prisoners."

The European Union, which also suspended its sanctions, said on Monday it was satisfied with Thein Sein's "measured" handling of the violence, which the president has said could threaten the transition to democracy if allowed to spiral out of control.

ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

Rohingya activists claim a centuries-old lineage in Rakhine, which like the rest of Burma is predominantly Buddhist. The government regards them as illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. "There is no ethnic group named Rohingya in our country," immigration minister Khin Yi said in May.

Communal tensions had been rising in Myanmar since the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman last month that was blamed on Muslims. Six days later, apparently in retribution, a Buddhist mob dragged 10 Muslims from a bus and beat them to death.

Violence then erupted on June 9 in Maungdaw, one of the three Rohingya-majority districts bordering Bangladesh, before spreading to Sittwe, the biggest town in Rakhine. Scores are feared dead, and 1,600 houses burnt down.

One measure of the pressure the Rohingya are under is the growing number of boat people. During the so-called "sailing season" between monsoons, thousands of Rohingya attempt to cross the Bay of Bengal in small, ramshackle fishing boats. Their destination: Muslim-majority Malaysia, where thousands of Rohingya work, mostly illegally.

Last season, up to 8,000 Rohingya boat people - a record number - made the crossing, says Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group based in Thailand. She has studied their migration patterns since 2006.

BANNED IN BANGLADESH

The violence in Rakhine could cause a surge in Rohingya boat people when the next sailing season begins in October, Rohingya leaders say. "The amount of boat people will increase and increase," said Abu Tahay, chairman of the National Democratic Party for Development, a Rohingya political party.

In what could be the start of a regional refugee crisis, many Rohingya are already attempting the shorter voyage to neighboring Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, like Myanmar, disowns the Rohingyas and has refused to grant them refugee status since 1992. Now, according to a Bangladeshi commander, hundreds have been turned away.

At Shah Pari, a Bangladeshi island on the Naf River dividing Bangladesh and Myanmar, Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hassan of the Bangladesh Border Guard said the force has sent back 14 wooden country boats since the violence flared in early June, bearing a total of some 700 men, women and children.

Hassan said the boat people were given food, water and medicines before being turned back. His men are now holding back local Bangladeshi villagers and limiting how far fishermen can go out into the river to prevent them from helping would-be "illegal intruders." Peace has been restored since Myanmar imposed its state of emergency, he said, and his men are telling the boat people it is safe to return.

Asked to explain why majority-Muslim Bangladesh did not feel an obligation to take the Rohingyas in, he said: "This is an over-populated country. The country doesn't have the capacity to accommodate these additional people."

WAITING FOR DEMOCRACY

Government officials say they already harbor about 25,000 Rohingyas with refugee status, who receive food and other aid from the United Nations, housed in two camps in southeastern Bangladesh. Officials say there are also between 200,000 and 300,000 "undocumented" Rohingyas - with no refugee status and no legal rights. These people live outside the camps, dependent on local Bangladeshis in a poverty-plagued district for work and sustenance.

Among them is 48-year-old Kalim Ullah, a Rohingya father of three living in an unofficial camp where children bathe in a chocolate-brown pond. He fled here in 1992, after violence that followed the watershed 1990 vote won by Suu Kyi and overturned by the military. He holds up a hand to show a half-stump where his thumb had been before he says it was shot off by a Myanmar soldier.

"They tortured me and I was evicted from my house so we came to Bangladesh," he said. "Now I am waiting for repatriation, I am waiting for democracy in my own country."

Myanmar's neighbors have quietly pressed the country to improve conditions in Rakhine to stop the outflow of refugees. Perhaps as a result, Thein Sein's government this year began easing some travel restrictions, says Rohingya leader Kyaw Min. But these small gains look likely to be suspended or scrapped after the recent bloodshed.

The Rohingya in Myanmar are usually landless as well as stateless, and scratch a living from low-paid casual labor. Four in five households in northern Rakhine State were in debt, the World Food Program reported in 2011. Many families borrow money just to buy food.

Food insecurity had worsened since 2009, said the program, which called for urgent humanitarian assistance. A 2010 survey by the French group Action Against Hunger found a malnutrition rate of 20 percent, which is far above the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization.

UNDER THE 'NASAKA'

The Rohingya are overseen by the Border Administration Force, better known as the Nasaka, a word derived from the initials of its Burmese name. Unique to the region, the Nasaka consists of officers from the police, military, customs and immigration. They control every aspect of Rohingya life.

"They have total power," says Abu Tahay, the Rohingya politician.

Documented human-rights abuses blamed on the Nasaka include rape, forced labor and extortion. Rohingya cannot travel or marry without the Nasaka's permission, which is never secured without paying bribes, activists say.

The former military government has in the past called these allegations "fabrications."

"There are hundreds of restrictions and extortions," says Rohingya leader Kyaw Min. "The Nasaka have a free hand because government policy is behind them. And that policy is to starve and impoverish the Rohingya."

Burmese officials say the tight controls on the borders are essential to national security. Speaking in Myanmar's parliament last September, immigration minister Khin Yi made no mention of alleged abuses, but said the Nasaka was vital for preventing "illegal Bengali migration" and cross-border crime.

'ANNIHILATE THEM'

At Takebi's market, an agitated crowd gathered before the violence erupted to tell a reporter of alleged abuses by the authorities and ethnic Rakhine: a Rohingya rickshaw driver robbed and murdered, extortion by state officials, random beatings by soldiers at a nearby army post. The stories couldn't be verified.

Some Burmese officials have betrayed bias against the Rohingya in public statements. Rohingya people are "dark brown" and "as ugly as ogres," said Ye Myint Aung, Myanmar's consul in Hong Kong, in a 2009 statement. He went on to extol the "fair and soft" complexions of Myanmar people like himself.

Last week, the state-run New Light of Myanmar published a correction after referring to Muslims as "kalar," a racial slur.

The sectarian hatred in Rakhine towns and villages is echoed online. "It would be so good if we can use this as an excuse to drive those Rohingyas from Myanmar," one reader of Myanmar's Weekly Eleven newspaper comments on the paper's website.

"Annihilate them," writes another.

A nationalist group has set up a Facebook page called the "Kalar Beheading Gang," which has almost 600 "likes."

Meanwhile, the Kaladan Press, a news agency set up by Rohingya exiles in the Bangladesh city of Chittagong, blamed the violence on "Rakhine racists and security personnel."

BOUND FOR MALAYSIA

Not far from Sittwe is Gollyadeil, a fishing village with a jetty of packed mud and a mosque that locals say dates back to the 1930s. The stateless Rohingya villagers here face fewer restrictions than their brethren in the sensitive border area to the north. They can marry without seeking official permission and travel freely around Sittwe district.

Even so, jobs are scarce and access to education limited, and every year up to 40 villagers head out to sea on Malaysia-bound boats. They each pay about 200,000 kyat, or $250, a small fortune by local standards. But the extended Rohingya families who raise the sum regard it as an investment.

"If they make it to Malaysia, they can send home a lot of money," says fishmonger Abdul Gafar, 35.

Many Rohingya in Myanmar depend upon remittances from Malaysia and Thailand. A Takebi elder with a white beard tinged red from betel-nut juice said he gets 100,000 kyat ($125) every four months from his son, a construction worker in Malaysia.

Remittances have lent a deceptive veneer of prosperity to Takebi, where a few houses have tin roofs or satellite dishes.

Ask shopkeeper Mohamad Ayub, 19, how many villagers want to leave Gollyadeil, and he replies, "All of us."

For every Rohingya who makes it to Malaysia, hundreds are blocked, or worse.

Many are arrested before even leaving Myanmar waters. Others are intercepted by the Thai authorities, who last year were still towing Rohingya boats back out to sea, Human Rights Watch reported, "despite allegations that such practices led to hundreds of deaths in 2008 and 2009."

"When someone tries to enter the country illegally, it's our job to send them back," says Major General Manas Kongpan, a regional director of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command, which handles the boat people. "Thailand doesn't have the capacity to take them in, so people shouldn't criticize so much."

Sayadul Amin, 16, set sail in March 2012 in a fishing boat crammed with 63 people, a third of them boys and girls. The weather turned bad, and Sayudul's boat was pounded by waves.

"I felt dizzy and wanted to throw up," he said.

By day five, they ran out of water and his friend, also a teenager, died. They prayed over his body, he said, then tossed it overboard.

THE UNCOUNTED

The boat eventually ran aground somewhere on Myanmar's Andaman coast, where local villagers summoned the authorities to arrest the boat people.

The adults were jailed in the southern Myanmar town of Dawei, while immigration officials escorted Sayadul and the other minors back to Sittwe by bus. The journey took several days and he saw more of Myanmar than most Rohingya ever do. "There were satellite dishes on all the houses," he said with wonder.

On her historic visit to Myanmar last year, Hillary Clinton praised the country's leaders for trying to resolve decades-old wars between government troops and ethnic rebel armies. But the Rohingya stir far greater nationalist passions that could prove even more destabilizing and intractable than conflicts in Kachin State and other ethnic border regions.

Rohingya leaders have long called for the scrapping of the 1982 Citizenship Law, which was enacted by the former dictatorship and rendered stateless even Rohingya who had lived in Myanmar for generations.

"We are demanding full and equal citizenship," says Kyaw Min, the Rohingya leader.

Judging by the inflammatory rhetoric pervading Myanmar, that demand is unlikely to be met before next year's potentially controversial census.

The last one, in 1983, left the Rohingya uncounted.

(Additional reporting John Chalmers in Shah Pari, Bangladesh. Editing by Bill Tarrant and Michael Williams)

(Anurup Titu, File/ Associated Press ) - FILE - In this June 13, 2012 file photo, a Rohingya Muslim man who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, cries as he pleads from a boat after he and others were intercepted by Bangladeshi border authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh. Asia’s more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home. The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, while Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

BANGKOK — They have been called ogres and animals, terrorists and much worse — when their existence is even acknowledged.

Asia’s more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.

In Myanmar, shaken this week by a bloody spasm of violence involving Rohingyas that left dozens of civilians dead, they are almost universally despised. The military junta whose half-century of rule ended only last year cast the group as foreigners for decades — fueling a profound resentment now reflected in waves of vitriolic hatred that are being posted online.

“People feel it very acceptable to say that ‘we will work on wiping out all the Rohingyas,’” said Debbie Stothard, an activist with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, referring to hyperbolic Internet comments she called “disturbing.”

The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact many of their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

“This is the tragedy of being stateless,” said Chris Lewa, who runs a non-governmental organization called the Arakan Project that advocates for the Rohingya cause worldwide.

“In Burma they’re told they’re illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they’re told they’re Burmese who should go back home,” Lewa said. “Unfortunately, they’re just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it’s only getting worse.”

That fact was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the latest violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Rohingyas have clashed with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and each side blames the other for the violence.

The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh has defied international calls to let them in, saying the impoverished country’s resources are already too strained.

A few have slipped through, however, including a month-old baby found Wednesday abandoned in a boat after its occupants fled border guards. Three other Rohingyas have been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the Bangladeshi town of Chittagong, including one who died.

The unrest, which has seen more than 1,500 homes charred and thousands of people displaced along Myanmar’s western coast, erupted after a mob dragged 10 Muslims off a bus and killed them in apparent retaliation for the rape and murder last month of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman, allegedly by Muslims.

On Thursday, Rakhine state was reportedly calm. But Rohingyas living there “very much feel like they’re trapped in a box,” said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. “They’re surrounded by enemies, and there is an extremely high level of frustration.”

The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Myanmar has roots in a complex web of issues: the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.

Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians — not the government — are more tolerant. But even there, the Rohingya are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.

Myanmar’s government has the largest Rohingya population in the world: 800,000, according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around other parts of the world, primarily the Middle East.

Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas are routinely discriminated against. In Myanmar, they are regularly subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Rakhine who inhabit the same area, Lewa said.

The Rohingya must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and even to marry. Apparently concerned about their numbers growing, authorities have also barred them from having more than two children.

In 1978, Myanmar’s army drove more than 200,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, according to rights groups and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Some 10,000 died in squalid conditions, and the rest returned to Myanmar. The campaign was repeated in 1991-1992, and again a majority returned.

The Rohingya last garnered world headlines in 2009, when five boatloads of haggard migrants fleeing Myanmar were intercepted by Thai authorities. Rights groups allege they were detained and beaten, then forced back to sea, emaciated and bloodied, in vessels with no engines and little food or water. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.

The same year, Myanmar’s consul general in Hong Kong — now a U.N. ambassador — described the Rohingya as “ugly as ogres” in an open letter to diplomats in which he compared their “dark brown” skin to that of the “fair and soft” ethnic Burmese majority.

The latest unrest has focused fresh attention on the Rohingyas’ plight, but it has also galvanized a virulent new strain of resentment.

Many Burmese have taken to the Internet to denounce the Rohingya as foreign invaders, with some comparing them to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

While vitriol has come from both sides, what makes the latest unrest unique is that virtually “the entire population is openly and completely against” them, said Sai Latt, a writer and Myanmar analyst studying at Canada’s Simon Fraser University.

“We have heard of scholars, journalists, writers, celebrities, even the so-called democracy fighters openly making comments against Rohingyas,” Sai Latt said.

One Burmese actress posted “I hate them 100%” on her Facebook wall on Monday as the fires burned. By Thursday, her comment had nearly 250 “likes.”

Prominent Burmese language journals have reported “only the Rakhine side,” Sai Latt said. And many people have lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of getting the story wrong.

Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner released in January, has said Rohingyas should not be mistreated but added they “are not an ethnic group in Myanmar at all.” He blamed the recent violence on illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

The Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect similar to one spoken by residents of southern Bangladesh. And physically, they are almost indistinguishable from their Bangladeshi counterparts, said Lewa, of the Arakan Project.

But their history — specifically the amount of time they’ve lived in Myanmar, and who among them qualifies as a legitimate resident — is bitterly disputed.

Some say the Rohingya are descended from Arab settlers in the 7th century, and that their state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Later waves arrived from British-run colonial India in the 1800s, but like the colonists themselves, they were regarded as foreigners.

That view persisted through half a century of military rule, which finally ended last year. Myanmar’s post-junta government does not recognize them as one of the country’s 135 indigenous national ethnic groups. And many people stridently believe they are not even a real ethnic group — rather, they are only illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

President Thein Sein, who has instituted a state of emergency and sent in troops to contain the violence, has warned any escalation could jeopardize the nation’s fragile democratic reforms.

The International Crisis Group said that ironically, the nation’s newfound freedoms may have helped contribute to the unrest.

“The loosening of authoritarian constraints may well have enabled this current crisis to take on a virulent intensity,” the group said. “It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast.”

___

Associated Press writers Xinyan Yu, Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck contributed to this report.

We are very grateful to all who are present here to support and to stand side by side and hand in hand against the crimes committing in a relatively unknown place called Arakan in western part of Burma, a place where the world most persecuted people, Rohingya are living for hundreds of years, a place where birth rights are denied, a place where Rohingya are wipe out from being citizen of our own country, a place where Rohingya have been under systematic discriminations, a place which is currently under immense terrors from our sister community called Rakhine.



It is the saddest moment for all people of Burma to see the current crisis when the country has taken steps towards Democracy after half a century rules under dictator and junta. Some groups of people specially Rakhine extremists are creating the communal tensions with Rohingya, and directly affecting the national commitments and the national reconciliation for all the ethnic people of Burma.


It is the saddest moment for all Rohingya and those who respect peace and human rights to face the organized, systematic atrocities created by Rakhine along with Burmese military under the leadership of the rightist, the extremist and the racist leaders of Rakhine. These people have the history of creating racial tensions with Rohingya under numerous and various operations like of 1942 genocide before our independence, 1949 massacre after the independence, 1978 and 1992 ethnic cleansing during Ne Win dictatorship and now 2012 ethnic wipe out under the new civilian government. These operations on Rohingya have led killing of hundreds thousands of Rohingya and made more than half of Rohingya population to seek refuge in different parts of the world.


It is the saddest week for all Rohingya and all peace loving people around the world to see the crackdown of a peaceful demonstration and turning it into violence by the Burmese police and boosting the so called Rakhine extremists who are ready to attack and ready to cleanse Rohingya from our native land. The current crisis started on 8th of June when a group of Rohingya people were heading towards mosques to pray for the soul of 10 Muslims brutally killed on 3rd of June while they were returning home in Yangon from Arakan state. The demonstrators were intervened and shot fired killing two people. The pre-organized Rakhine people have started attacking Rohingya and burning their houses.


I would like to tell you one thing here that we, Rohingya are not allowed to be police or army officers and thus making police department with almost full of Rakhine people. With the supports of the police force, Rakhine have burnt and killed many Rohingya on the first day. Soon, the situation has got worse by spreading to all over the state. By the night, curfew was applied and then Marshell law or state of emergency was announced.


It is the saddest feeling for defenceless Rohingya people to face the Marshall law and curfew applied to one and only Rohingya while Rakhine people are freely able to attack, burn, loot, vandalize and kill Rohingya and their properties. It is reported from our Rohingya people on the ground that Rakhine people are fully supported by their police and army forces while Rohingya people who are trying to go out are shot on the spot and Rakhine people are freely able to move 24 hours a day burning, looting Rohingya properties. I have called so many Rohingya in the state, and they described the current situation the most horrible. They also said that they are very afraid of losing more than half of Rohingya inside the state. Furthermore, due to the Marshall law and curfew, Rohingya are dying starving because of no food and water, people are shot dead if go out and people are burnt alive at night if they stay inside.


It is the saddest experience for all ethics following mass media to see and read many Burmese and their affiliated media which are fabricating news against Rohingya. These media are reporting by manipulating the real situation. They report burning of Rohingya houses and villages as Rakhine houses and villages. They report Rohingya dead bodies as Buddhist monk by shaving the heads of deceases and wearing monk sarongs. They report interviews done only on Rakhine and never approach to Rohingya. Most importantly, they are going to report the upcoming planned program in which Rakhine people will be wearing Muslim dresses and Rohingya people who were forced by army and police to hold arms and dress like terrorists.


This is ultimately creating immense phobia and racism against defenceless Rohingya people.It is the saddest treatment for all Rohingya to see our neighbour Bangladesh who have pushed back over 300 boat people who were trying to escape from being brutally killed in their home state and making them to fall again into the dead zone. This showed Bangladesh have betrayed as being a good neighbour as well as violating international laws and codes of humanity to provide shelter to defenceless people.


I would like to end here with what we want to seek from the government of Burma as well as from the international communities. We would like to see the urgent stopping of violence, ethnics cleansing and protecting Rohingya in Arakan state. We would like to see rule of law.


We would like to see stopping of racism, discrimination and restoration of citizenship rights.


We would like to see the local and the international media to be present in the state and report without bias by including Rohingya people who are trapped inside the houses. We would like to see providing food, water and medical helps. We would like to see opening up of the national commitment and reconciliation along with Rohingya. And last not the least opening a real inquiry on the killing of Rohingya by Rakhine with cooperated police forces.


With my greatest thanks to all of you who are present here and my sincere prayers for the peace, justice and safety of Rohingya brothers and sisters in our state, Arakan.

By Dr. Abid Bahar

RB Opinion

June 15, 2012

Burma's ethnic problems is over half a century's old. Rohingyas are a tiny minority who in Burma live mostly in the Arakan state in Western Burma. There are records of genocidal campaign against Rohingyas going on from the 30's. It is obvious that under many decades of xenophobic military rule with majority of Burma's people not over 5th graders and Burmese military's 30% personnel from hardcore ultra nationalist Rakhine Mogh background one can't expect something better either from the government or from the Rakhine populace for the racially different Rohingya community. As a result the ever present perpetrators now blame the victims as the perpetrators. Every indication shows that the present massacres were systematically planned and executed by Rakhine leaders one that is frequently mentioned in the media is Dr. Aye Chan. He has characterized Rohingyas a "influx viruses" requiring extermination." He is known in the Rohingya community as the "Doctor of death." (1)

Unfortunately, Rohingya massacre is not a new phenomenon, it was there in 1942, 1978, 1992 and now in June 2012. Due to the influx of refugees from Burma, both Rohingya, Rakhine and Chakmas, the Southern Chittagong of Bangladesh historically has been flooded (up to Sangha River) by Burmese refugees, most of whom however eventually became Bangladeshi citizens.. Despite this historic trend, Rakhine Moghs still claim that Rogingyas of Burma are Chittagonians.

In our time, to escape the oppressive Burmese regime's atrocities, when Burmese refugees both Rohingyas and the other Burmese ethnic minorities floating all over the world for shelter, the ever proud Burmese government shows neither any remorse nor responsibility. From Rakhine Mogh's repenting relentless anti Rohingya campaign, we see their comments on the internet. The New Mandala records the Rakhine reaction to a map drawn by the BBC showing the existence of Rohingya people in Arakan.The following quotes written in Burmese illustrate the nature of the campaign It records the Rakhine reaction:

Kick out all Muslim Kalar [Rohingyas, South Asians/Indians] from Burma. If this doesn’t work, then kill them to death. It’s time for Arakan to unite with each other.

Don’t assume that I won’t sharpen my knife. I am ready to make it sharp for the sake of protecting our nation, religion and races against those Bengali cheaters.

There is no Kalar in Burmese national races. These bastards run into Burma during good time and also in time of starvation. Beggers, they should be kicked out but do not deserve national identity card [citizenship].

Why does BBC create problem like this? I cannot imagine why. Real Burman like myself cannot feel [accept] it. I feel like my [ethnic] relatives and siblings have been given away into the hands of Kalar. Whichever history we look at, Rohingyas are not among our ethnic siblings.

F@#$-ing Kalar, we will slap your face with shoes and cut your heads. Don’t criticize the god with little of what you know. We will set you on fire to death and turn the mosques into wholesales/retail pork markets…

The New Mandala adds: "The main messages of the campaign, therefore, are that there is no Rohingya in the Burmese history; the name Rohingya was “invented” as if it should have existed in time immemorial to be valid; Rohingyas are culturally and religiously different illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who are cheating the history to claim the land of Arakan; and Rohingyas (or Bangali-Muslim-Kalars) are threatening to take over Burma. The intense campaign against Rohingyas shows that minority people supposedly the victims of oppression are willing to enact oppression on another oppressed group."The anxiety is so strong that the map and the article are taken to be giving away the country, its religion and nations to Rohingya. What is most noticeable in this campaign is not simply their rejection of Rohingya as an ethnic group of Burma, but their strong, public comments with a genocidal tendency."(1)

A neutral reader would see most of them have no understanding of what is human rights. Human rights is understood here as being the rights of their own group only but not a reciprocal obligation to their fellow citizens belonging to other groups.

In denying the Rohingya existence in Arakan, a border land, these Rakhine ultra nationalists surprisingly fail to understand that there are also Rakhine people settled in Bangladesh as late as during the British period who are now Bangladeshi citizens.

In their anti Rohingya remarks above we see some people show signs of naive savages. Of course the tendency is historic for which Arakan was called the "Mogher Mulluk" (land of anarchy.) Thus, a valid question to ask: In the contemporary events in June 2012, who were the leaders that were organizing the vigilantes, helping the Rakhine police, and distributing imported arms from behind? Additionally, if the military backed Burmese government is not involved, ( it brands Rohingyas are foreigners) why can't its deployed military men can't stop the ongoing violence?

There is no doubt that in most cases of dealing with state sponsored genocide, the international community acts largely on political grounds. This is true even about the UN's performance.in certain cases. However, it some UN organizations such as UNHCR, and some NGOs are the few places Rohingyas get assistance.

It seems that for the Rohingyas, in the land of anarchy, the 1942, 78, 92 still revisits them in the 2012's and it will continue to revisit them unless the international community find the provocateurs that first organized few hundred people to kill some Burmese Muslim people traveling by bus. In the short term, it is also important to catch those who planned and executed the subsequent genocidal activities in Maungdou and in Akyab and take them to the International Criminal Court. In the long term, to help Burma develop law and order, and mutual respect and tolerance among citizens, it is necessary to help Burma change its military imposed age old xenophobic education system tailored to rule the country through divide and rule policy. (3)

It is true, something is truly wrong in Burma and in the contemporary crisis, the UN should closely monitor the developments in Arakan. As for the Rohingyas in particular, relying on the military backed government for protection is as if trusting the crocodile to babysit the Rohingya chicks. If Burma has a future against its over half a century of ethnic problem, truly, it has to be only through Aung San Sui Kyi's democratic reforms and "the lady" they call her has to deal with every Burmese people as if like a mother to her children, for, the military government has sufficiently spoiled some at the cost of others sufferings.(4)

Endnotes

(1) The New Mandala, "BBC under fire on Rohingyas," Link: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2011/11/03/bbc-under-fire-on-rohingyas/; 

Racism in Burma: Aye Chan’s “Enclave” with “Influx Viruses” Revisited, Link: http://www.rohingyablogger.com/2009/08/racism-in-burma-aye-chans-enclave-with.html

(2) The New Mandala, "BBC under fire on Rohingyas," Link: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2011/11/03/bbc-under-fire-on-rohingyas/

(3) Tell Me, What is Rohingya Genocide in Burma? Link: http://burmadigest.info/2012/01/18/tell-me-what-is-rohingya-genocide-in-burma/,

(4) Abid Bahar, Burma's Missing Dits, the Emerging face of Genocide. 2010.

KUALA LUMPUR (June 15, 2012): About 2,000 protesters, mostly of Rohingya origins, gathered in the Malaysian capital to condemn the violence against their people in the Arakan state by the Rakhine ethnic which was highlighted last week.

Previously living under the radar, they unite in the wake of the killing of 10 Muslims on June 3 in Taungup, Myanmar by ethnic Rakhines that led to Myanmar Junta to enforce a curfew period since June 8.

Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHROM) President Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani said they were deeply concerned about the continued killing and violence towards the ethnic group including rape, looting and kidnapping.

"We applaud the United Nations (UN)'s move to send top envoy Mr Vijay Nambiar to Arakan State to assess the situation.

"However we are worried whether he is able to assess the real situation as he was escorted by military official at all times," he told the reporters during the rally.

National Democratic Party for Human Rights in exile South East Asian General Secretary Mohamad Sadek @ Aung Naing disputed the report saying that the numbers killed had reached tens of thousands since the start of June.

"We have reports from our people that a whole town had been razed down and they have to dig a mass grave of 12,000," he said.

Coalitions of Malaysian NGOs to Save Rohingyas Chairman Azmi Hamid said the current Arakan crisis is the latest in the history of the Rohingya tragedy which started with their forced expulsion from the area.

"The Rohingya have since been displaced, made stateless, humiliated, dehumanized, terrorized and massacred since 64 years ago.

Yesterday in Rangoon I witnessed firsthand the tensions that are gripping not only Arakan State but also, increasingly, other parts of Burma.

Walking around the city, I saw Buddhists and Muslims smiling as they came and went from temples and mosques that were full of people praying for peace. At the same time, however, I noticed that police had been deployed near Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the city’s most famous religious shrines.

Beneath its calm exterior, Rangoon seems to be bracing for an outbreak of sectarian conflict. The question on everyone’s lips is whether the violence in Arakan State will spread to Burma’s largest city, which is home to people of many faiths, including Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus.

Full Transcript  can be found here

Victoria Nuland

Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

June 13, 2012
QUESTION: Just – can we get back on the issue of Burma?

MS. NULAND: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: As we discussed yesterday, there have been a number of calls by the United States for an end to the violence, but specifically on the issue of Bangladesh, there have been some concerns about whether Bangladesh is giving access to Rohingya fleeing Burma. Is there anything that the U.S. has to say about its communication with Bangladesh on the issue?

MS. NULAND: Thanks for that, Shaun. We are concerned that Bangladeshi authorities appear to have intercepted and turned back persons fleeing the ethnic and religious violence in Burma. So we have been urging the Government of Bangladesh to respect its international obligations under the relevant refugee conventions and to continue its longstanding policy of non-refoulement of refugees. So those are points that we are making. We are also continuing to make the point to all sides in Burma that it is important to settle these issues not through violence but through dialogue, and to put down their arms and start talking to each other.

QUESTION: What was the word you used? Its longstanding policy of non-refoulement?

MS. NULAND: Refoulement. R-e-f-o-u-l-e-m-e-n-t. That’s a good Scrabble word.

QUESTION: What’s the level of communication with the Bangladeshis? Has it been through the Embassy in Dhaka or --

MS. NULAND: Yes. And I believe that we’ve also had communication from this building as well.

QUESTION: Is – this issue has come up now upstairs with the Indian foreign minister as far as situation in Burma is concerned?

MS. NULAND: They did talk about Burma and they did talk about the ethnic issues and the Rohingya issues when the Secretary had her brief meeting with Foreign Minister Krishna before starting the broader Security Dialogue.

Q&A between journalists and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi regarding the current conflict in Rakhine state.