Eleven Muslim politicians have successfully challenged their controversial disqualification from contesting the November elections following a surprise reversal by the Union Election Commission.

Their reinstatement after appeal followed concerted pressure from the United States and eight other governments, which had urged Myanmar to hold “a credible, transparent and inclusive election” while expressing concerns “about the prospect of religion being used as a tool of division and conflict during the campaign season”.

One Western diplomat called the reinstatement of the 11 candidates an important development and credited U Tin Aye, the ex-general heading the UEC, with resisting pressure from the Union Solidarity and Development Party to exclude them.

The UEC had disqualified 124 would-be candidates earlier this month,many of them Muslims, following a murky vetting process. Two of those rejected were incumbent members of parliament, including a Muslim representative of the USDP who had applied to run as an independent.

Some of the successful candidates said they had learned on September 21 that their appeals had been approved by a UEC tribunal on September 19. A UEC statement on its website named 11 reinstated candidates. Their religious affiliation was not listed but checks by The Myanmar Times with the candidates and parties confirmed that all were Muslim.

“Perhaps the statement by the nine embassies had some influence,” U Khin Maung Cho, one of the 11 who is running as an independent candidate in Yangon’s Pabedan township, told The Myanmar Times.

But the 64-year-old lawyer, who is of the ethnic Bamar majority, also stressed that the UEC had no legal grounds to disqualify him when it alleged there was no concrete evidence to prove the ethnicity of his parents.

“I hope to get the Muslim vote,” he said, although he noted that the election code of conduct effectively bars him from touching on religion in his campaign rallies. His religious affiliation is however listed on leaflets he is preparing to distribute.

The lawyer’s campaign slogan is “genuine democracy” and he has chosen the scales of justice as his logo.

Ethnic and religious affiliation are likely to determine the outcome of voting in many constituencies, especially in ethnic minority areas, in what some analysts are describing as the most identity-driven elections since independence in 1948.

Under the election code of conduct, parties have committed themselves to “not abuse religion for political purposes” or fuel “sectarian or tribal” divisions.

But quasi-political rallies being held across the country by ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks of the powerful Ma Ba Tha group have in some cases adopted an overtly pro-government and anti-Muslim agenda.

The rise of Buddhist nationalism, fuelled by a radical minority of monks, is widely seen as having persuaded Myanmar’s two largest parties - the USDP and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy – to exclude all Muslim candidates from their ranks.

Nationalist pressure was also behind the government’s U-turn last February when it disenfranchised an estimated 800,000 holders of “white cards” or temporary IDs, mostly ethnic Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Rakhine State.

U Khin Maung Cho said one of the main reasons he had decided to run as an independent for a seat in the lower house was the “pre-meditated policy” of exclusion adopted by the two big parties. He said Ma Ba Tha would surely “interfere” in the elections with its “anti-Muslim propaganda” but he hoped its influence would be limited.

The 11 candidates reinstated this week number two independents, four from the National Unity Congress Party, two from the National Unity Party, two from the Democracy and Human Rights Party and one from the New National Democracy Party.

They join just a handful of Muslim candidates who were cleared initially by the UEC among a total of more than 6000 politicians running for seats in the national and regional parliaments.

An official of the Democracy and Human Rights Party said that it now had three approved candidates out of 18 who had applied. Two of the three were ethnic Rohingya, he said.

Muslims make up around 4 percent of Myanmar’s population according to out-of-date official figures, although the community says the real number could be double that.

In a few constituencies in Yangon, including Pabedan where U Khin Maung Cho is running, Muslims make up the largest religious group. However, they are far from one coherent voice, being divided along ethnic and sectarian lines.

In tea-shops along the majestic and tree-lined avenue of Shwe Bon Thar, known for its concentration of gold and jewellery shops, talk of the elections is heating up although many voters admit to their lack of detailed knowledge of who is running. News that two Muslim independents would be running in the township has yet to filter down.

Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Jewish places of worship lie within a few minutes’ walk of each other, making Pabedan one of the country’s most intensely mixed communities, as it has been for over a century.

“Ma Ba Tha is dangerous,” said one Bamar Buddhist man who described himself as a “broker” in gold, gems and currency, and praised the local community’s peaceful co-existence. He and his companions taking afternoon tea said they all intended to vote for the local NLD candidates, although only one could remember their names.

“The issue of Muslim candidates is very sensitive,” the broker said of the decision by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to bar them. But the broker, who declined to be named, said the biggest danger was the UEC and the fear it would “play tricks” to rig the elections for the USDP.

Nearby, five Hindu Tamils, all gold dealers, agreed the NLD would get their votes.

In the tranquil courtyard of the Mogul Shia Mosque, first built in 1854 by wealthy Iranians and Shia of central Asian descent, some worshippers still speak the Farsi of their ancestors and adhere to the commemorations that distinguish them from the Sunni majority around them.

There too the NLD appears to be making inroads, although one man said his wife, a former military officer, would not be backing the opposition party.

However, Naeem, an activist of the National Democratic Party for Development, a mainly Rohingya party, said the objective of the ruling party and most Bamar Buddhist parties, including the NLD, was “to declare a Muslim-free parliament to Ma Ba Tha”. His party had only one candidate accepted by the UEC, a Bamar Buddhist.

“Muslims in Burma, Rohingya as well, have been in parliament since 1936, long before independence, and are even in the current parliament. This is a very dark page for Myanmar by excluding Muslims and Rohingya in this election. It is a big blow to the democratisation of the country,” he said.

Additional reporting by Ei Ei Toe Lwin

IT is no more a secret that the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are being subjected to flagrant violation of human rights and practices of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination. A few months ago, the United Nations, represented by its Human Rights Council, announced that the Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan state of Myanmar are the “the world’s most persecuted minority.”

Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic community in the western Rakhine state of Myanmar, who have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country, which considers them illegal settlers from Bangladesh. Several international rights bodies, such as Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch emphasized in many reports and on several occasions that these hapless people have undergone sufferings that reached the level of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination. They demanded the intervention of the international community to stop these gross rights violations.

The Western countries, especially the United States and the European Union states, are fully aware of what had happened and is happening in that country, which is closed to the outside world to a great extent. The military junta in Myanmar does not have any concern in safeguarding human rights. The Muslim countries are also aware of the magnitude of atrocities being perpetrated against the Rohingyas. There are several racist groups in Myanmar who are against Islam and Muslims and their aim is to drive Rohingyas out of the Rakhine state, and this with the clandestine support and blessing of the government — from both its civilian and military wings.

The issue of Rohingya Muslims was discussed at the Islamic summit held in Makkah a few years ago. While strongly criticizing the Myanmar government for the ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed against the Rohingyas, the summit demanded the government to stop the persecution of the Rohingya and protect them by restoring their legitimate rights. 

The summit authorized the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to exert every effort to end the persecution. But, unfortunately, the pan-Islamic body failed to carry out the duties assigned to it by the summit. The OIC confined its role to dispatching an envoy to Myanmar to tackle the issue and later called upon the Myanmar government to stop its discrimination against Rohingya Muslims and treat them fairly just like other citizens of the country. It is evident that the solution to this problem can be achieved only through collective pressure on the Myanmar government from the part of the international community as a whole and the OIC in particular.

It is also noteworthy that a series of meetings were held in Malaysia, Thailand and Norway to discuss the plight of the Rohingyas. All these meetings expressed their solidarity with these people and denounced what they are exposed to following injustice, oppression and discrimination. In Malaysia, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad criticized the Myanmar government vehemently for stripping the nationality of inhabitants of the Arakan region who have been living there since several centuries.

In Oslo, a conference was held in May this year with the aim of drawing international attention toward this issue so as to end the increasing persecution and suffering of the stateless Muslims who are ethnically linked to Rakhine state. Several prominent global figures, including philanthropist and business tycoon George Soros, and South African Bishop and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu converged at the Nobel Institute together with pastors, imams, and monks. In his speech, Soros compared the plight of Rohingyas in Myanmar to that of Jews in the Nazi Germany. Addressing the gathering, Tutu said that Rohingya Muslims face slow genocide.

Some American artists, including famous actor Matt Dillon, visited the Rakhine state to have a close look at Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingyas who are languishing at squalid camps. Voicing sympathy at the dismal state of Rohingyas, they called on the international community to urgently intervene to halt the persecution and human rights violations in the country.

The latest visit to Myanmar to monitor the situation of Rohingyas was that of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR). In their second fact-finding mission, the delegation met with a variety of stakeholders to seek out a wide range of perspectives, including those from government, civil society and various ethnic and religious communities. After meeting with different segments of the Myanmar society, the delegation noted that there is no doubt that the recent legislations aimed at depriving Muslims of their right to vote and contest elections are in flagrant violation of the fundamental human rights.

While stating that the religious freedom is apparently under threat in Myanmar, they called on the international community to urgently intervene to pressurize the Myanmar government to roll back from denying Muslim population of their citizenship and stopping racial discrimination against them.

Similarly, nine embassies in Myanmar have issued a statement calling for tolerance ahead of the November election. In the statement, they said: “As the campaign in Myanmar officially begins, however, we, as international partners invested in the success of this country and these elections, are concerned about the prospect of religion being used as a tool of division and conflict during the campaign season. We call for all election rules and regulations to be applied fairly, consistently, and transparently without regard to ethnicity, religion, or political party.”

They specially mentioned the move to bar a Muslim parliament member belonged to the ruling party from contesting elections again. The United States also voiced its deep concern over the government’s decision to mass disenfranchisement of the Rohingya Muslims. However, the Myanmar government paid no heed to these demands or protests. 

As the polling day approaches, incumbent President Thein Shin is almost certain to be reelected. In a recorded tape, he boasted of enacting the ‘Protection of Race and Religion Law’, and taking a series of decisions against Muslims such as denying the OIC, which represents one billion Muslims, from opening an office in the northwest of the country. He also asserted that the international community has been told candidly that there is no such thing as Rohingya Muslims in a country whose inhabitants are only Buddhists. Shin also claimed that he took the country out of its isolation and that he had informed senior world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, that there is no Rohingya in the country and that his decisions have led to a boost of investment in the country.

The open statement about racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing by none other than the country’s president has resulted in the denial of voting rights for 1.5 million Rohingyas in the upcoming elections. This also emboldened the Buddhist extremists to continue the killing of hundreds of Rohingyas and driving out of hundreds of thousands of them. Hence, it is a humanitarian obligation on the United Nations and the entire global community to stop these immoral and inhuman acts and come forward to safeguard these miserable people.

— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at algham@hotmail.com