Phnom Penh: Mohammed Ibrahim took time off selling warm roti on the crowded streets of the Cambodian capital to greet a fellow Rohingya man who was arriving in the country under Australia's controversial $55 million agreement to resettle refugees from Nauru. 

Mr Ibrahim felt empathy for the single man in his early 20s who had decided to abandon hopes of reaching Australia to take a one-way ticket to one of the world's poorest nations.

"I want to help him ... life is very difficult for us here," he said, as he waited at the gate of Phnom Penh's airport on a stifling hot morning in June.

But the man and three other Iranian refugees – the first and only group so far to arrive from Nauru – were whisked past him in a van and taken to a luxury villa in a Phnom Penh suburb.

Over the following weeks 32-year-old Mr Ibrahim made repeated attempts to contact the newly arrived Rohingya, including asking the Australian embassy to arrange a meeting, but was blocked each time.

Mr Ibrahim says he became increasingly worried that something was amiss, amid reports the man was unhappy living in Phnom Penh, despite being showered with Australian taxpayer-provided benefits, and wanted to return to Myanmar. 

"I couldn't work out why he wouldn't want to meet other Rohingya here," he says.

"It took me a long time to realise the truth."

Fairfax Media can reveal that the refugee was wrongly assessed as a Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar, as Australian immigration officials on Nauru were trying to convince hundreds of other refugees and asylum seekers on the Pacific island to take up the Cambodian offer.

Under the agreement Cambodia has agreed to accept only people assessed as refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries.

The so-called "Rohingya" man left Cambodia in mid-October after his father had flown to Phnom Penh to back his son's new claim that he was not a Rohingya, but in fact a Burmese Muslim.

Myanmar's government does not recognise Rohingya, claiming they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite hundreds of thousands of them having lived in the country's western Rakhine state for centuries.

Myanmar routinely refuses to allow Rohingya to return to the country.

Australia's Immigration Minister Peter Dutton declined to comment on the man's wrongful assessment.

His spokesperson said Nauru is responsible for determining the refugee claims of asylum seekers on the island, referring to Australian-trained and assisted assessors.

Shyla Vohra, deputy secretary of Nauru's Department of Justice and Border Control, said identities claimed by asylum seekers on Nauru are tested in accordance with accepted international practice.

"We note that many Rohingya will use a Burmese alias when in Myanmar," she said.

Phil Robertson, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said there is no way the refugee could have gone back to Myanmar "unless he was not really Rohingya".

"So it's a fair question whether Australia fudged this guy's claim over into the refugee category, to bolster the numbers for its failing Cambodia refugee return scheme," he said.

The recent report entitled Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar by the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), Queen Mary University of London, has identified that Rohingya in the Rakhine state of Myanmar have been subjected to genocide based on Nazism ideology.

The term ‘genocide’ sounds very controversial and many parties may be reluctant to make such a strong and serious allegation. The conventional definition of genocide usually involves mass killing committed by the state. However, ISCI investigation shows that the persecution of Rohingya has developed into genocidal practice based on the historic and current conditions. In other words, the genocide is underway in Myanmar.

This claim of genocide was also supported by a Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School which found that there was strong evidence of state crimes committed against Rohingya.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya community mostly live in the state of Rakhine or its former name Arakan in the north-western part of Myanmar. Rakhine state, which is inhabited by mainly Buddhist community and Rohingya Muslims, is the second poorest state in Myanmar. Rohingya are often referred to as ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’ who came from Bangladesh by the state and in public discourse.

Atrocities facing the Rohingya

In a book entitled ‘Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganising Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas’, Daniel Feierstein outlined six stages of genocide.

ISCI identified that the first four stages have been and still occurring to the Rohingya which are 1) stigmatisation and dehumanisation; 2) harassment, violence and terror; 3) isolation and segregation; and 4) the systematic weakening of the target group. ISCI claimed that the Rohingya potentially face the final two stages of genocide which are 5) mass annihilation and eventually 6) erasure of the group from Myanmar’s history.

There are countless records and witnesses to prove the genocidal process towards Rohingya. These include organised massacre in 2012 and systematic discriminatory policies. For examples, Rohingya need approval to get out from their camps to get medical treatment and they need to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to get marriage approval from the authorities.

Due to the oppressive livelihoods, many Rohingya decided to flee their ‘home country’.

What are the challenges to address Rohingya issues?

No recognition of Rohingya in Myanmar

The fact that there was not a single Muslim candidate (let alone Rohingya who could not even vote in the election) in the recent November 2015 election showed that there is a strong discrimination happening towards the Muslims in the country.

The pro-military junta accused the National League for Democracy (NLD) as a sympathiser of the Muslims and NLD tried to prove otherwise to secure the public votes. Aung San Suu Kyi stated that every individual in the country should be treated in accordance with the law when being asked about the suffering of Rohingya. She also asked the world community not to exaggerate the problems facing Myanmar.

There is a fundamental flaw to her claim of treating everyone according to the law. This is because the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law did not recognize Rohingya as citizens. Therefore, as non-citizens and stateless, Rohingya are not entitled to be protected under the law.

My view is that, there could be two reasons why Aung San Suu Kyi or her party did not want to acknowledge the Rohingya issues - either they thought that it was not politically correct because this would anger the public or they could really believe that the Rohingya were illegal immigrants. This was proven when Aung San Suu Kyi’s aide mentioned that the Rohingya are not the priority as they were all illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

One of the refugees from Myanmar whom I talked to also said that he did not know how to distinguish between a Rohingya and a Bangladeshi when I asked about the integration among refugees from Myanmar in Malaysia. This proved that the stigmatisation against Rohingya has permeated every strata of the Burmese society either in Myanmar or abroad as they have been isolated for many decades.

Hypothetically, even if Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD addressed the Rohingya issues, there was nothing much could be done as they had no leverage. Although NLD won a landslide majority in the recent election, 25 percent of the parliamentary seats are reserved for the military. In fact, the public machineries or proxies have been manipulated systematically to commit violence against Rohingya such as Ma Ba Tha.

The reform, if there is any, by the newly-elected government towards Rohingya, will be very unlikely to take place instantly.

Asean’s lack of strong leadership and institutions

Most people argued that Asean should play a bigger role in this matter especially during theboat crisis early this year. However, it is easier said than done. Non-interference principle is uniquely Asean Way in practicing regionalism although it is no longer relevant.

Despite efforts to give pressure on Myanmar to improve its human rights records especially in treating the Rohingya, these efforts lack of concrete and consolidated plans. This is due to the lack of strong leadership and institutions within Asean itself. I believe that at the ‘regional’ level, only Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia tried to address the plight of Rohingya on the grounds of different independent individual states and not on the platform of Asean.

Just because the other Asean member states were not directly affected, they abide to the Asean Way norm and it is not surprising that Myanmar kept a deaf ear on this. This kind of negotiation gave less pressure than it could be if all Asean members were united with one voice to condemn Myanmar.

Asean also has its own Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights but this commission does not play a significant role in addressing human rights issues in the region. Even though the Asean Human Rights Declaration is a good step to make Asean more than just an economic bloc, the member states have no obligation to abide to this.

A declaration is not similar to a convention which requires state parties to make their commitments to follow the guidelines and rules agreed upon. It is a great shame that all of the great human rights aspirations aimed by the member states are merely rhetoric in the Declaration.

Even though Article 16 of the declaration clearly states that “every person has the right to seek and receive asylum in another State”, we could see that Thailand, Indonesia and including the chairperson of Asean, Malaysia were very reluctant to rescue the Rohingya at sea in the recent boat crisis.

On Nov 21, Asean countries including Myanmar adopted the Asean Convention on Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP). It is hoped that at least the issues of Rohingya who are also being trafficked are addressed to some extent even if not significant.

Conclusion

As humans we do not want to look back and regret in the future for not stopping the genocide occurring in front of our eyes at the moment. Just because the Rohingya are not in the final stage of genocidal practice, it does not give any excuse at all for the world community to wait and see. Practical solutions need to be taken immediately while the Holocaust is recurring in Myanmar now.

ASLAM ABD JALIL is a A Master of Public Policy student at Universiti Malaya.

The polls are closed and the counting is finished. Burma’s Nov. 8 election has resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). The election itself was deemed ‘competitive and meaningful.’ Voters in the country also known as Myanmar were not systematically disqualified, ballot boxes were not systematically stuffed, and voters in rural regions weren’t cowed into voting for the incumbent party. Still, the elections were structurally unfair, given that the military passed an amendment disqualifying Suu Kyi from the presidency. That 80 percent of eligible voters turned out to support the opposition was an undeniable moment of triumph for the forces of democracy and for the determined and dignified voters who stood for hours to cast their ballots.

The historic election is just the beginning of an arduous and fragile democratic transition for this country of 51 million people. In 1990, after a similar NLD landslide, the military vowed to hand over power to any government creating a new constitution. Months later, it backtracked brutally. While many observers expect 2015 to be different because the military now has constitutionally-reserved powers that allow it a continued say in politics, a democratizing future for Burma is hardly assured. The new government will not be formed for several months. Until then, we are likely to see a lot of shrewd bargaining between the incoming government and the military. Looking ahead, the country’s democratic future hinges most critically on these four questions: 

1. Will the Burmese military relinquish political power? 

Genuine strengthening of the democratic transition will require a constitutional reduction of the military’s role in politics. The 2008 constitution affirms that a basic principle governing the country is to allow the ‘Defence Services to participate in the national political leadership of the state.’ The constitution accords the military 25 percent of the seats in the lower and upper parliament, 30 percent of the seats in regional parliaments, and full control over the three most powerful ministries: Defense, Home Affairs, and Border Affairs. Any constitutional change, including change that would enable Suu Kyi to become a future president, requires a super-majority of more than 75 percent of parliament. This grants the military an effective veto over constitutional change.

Changes to the constitutional structure of power will be foremost among the incoming government’s priorities. Yet diminishing the Tatmadaw’s (Burmese military’s) writ of power requires its own acquiescence. Since militaries with histories of coups are more likely to commit subsequent coups, what prospects are there for the military to willingly and enduringly retreat to the barracks?

The military’s desire to bring the country onto the lucrative development path followed by other East Asian tigers has probably contributed to its surprising decision to liberalize politics in 2011. But will the military stay out of power, as has happened in Indonesia? Or will it dive back into politics at the next opportune moment, as happens in Pakistan and Thailand? Indonesia too had military reservations in parliament – 15 percent of seats just before and 7-8 percent of seats just after the 1998 transition. In Indonesia, the military was induced to draw down its parliamentary and economic footprint over the post-transition decade by international pressure, a vigorously free press and a wide array of civil society organizations working on military and political reform. If the Burmese military is to follow a similar path of willing retreat, it will need continual engagement by these same actors. How the military’s role now evolves will be critical to Burma’s democratic future. 

2. How will the incoming government choose to spend its ample political capital? 

Whether Burma travels Indonesia’s path to democracy or Pakistan’s path to perpetual instability will also be determined by whether the new government can successfully govern and thereby undercut any rationale for future military intervention. In many ways, the new government will face challenges similar to those faced by a new government in many poor countries. How will it promote equitable development and stable ethnic power-sharing? How will it jumpstart modernization of its health and education systems? How will it initiate infrastructure development and manage the flood of foreign investment (and the inevitable environmental threats it raises)?

But unlike other poor and politically unstable countries, this election was fought and won simply on the basis of Suu Kyi’s titanic popularity. Consequently, we know very little about the incoming government’s programmatic agenda. Banking upon Suu Kyi’s personal charisma and legacy of sacrifice worked as an electoral strategy, but it will not suffice as a governing strategy. The NLD now possesses enormous political capital but also the weight of sky-high expectations. What will it choose to do first, how will it choose to do it and crucially, can it deliver? 

3. Will the NLD develop leadership capability beyond Suu Kyi? 

Going forward, Aung San Suu Kyi will serve as Burma’s Sonia Gandhi, selecting a mild-mannered president and ruling ‘from above’ while making all the decisions herself. The president will likely be someone similar to the elderly NLD former Vice Chairman Tin Oo who, not unlike India’s Manmohan Singh, is uninterested in developing an autonomous political career.

But regardless of who rules, will the NLD develop capable party leadership beyond Aung San Suu Kyi? Thus far, the signs have not been encouraging. Before the recent elections, the NLD’s executive committee rejected the candidacy of many vaunted leaders of the 1988 pro-democracy movement who had been crucial party supporters. Younger NLD members who were put forth as candidates for this election were gagged from speaking out on any policy issues. This was probably because the party’s executive committee correctly calculated that detailing policy agendas would subject the NLD to unnecessary criticism when relying on Suu Kyi’s popularity could deliver a landslide. But it is worth remembering that no NLD member has ever held an important elective office and that no NLD member has yet become an important leader through the party itself.

If the democratizing trajectory is to continue, this must change. My research shows that a well-organized national party with many experienced leaders was the single most critical explanation for the divergent democratic trajectories of nearby India and Pakistan. Democratic parties that centralize power in one individual are unlikely to remain in power when that leader passes away. Democratic parties that govern for prolonged periods are typically led by leaders whose careers are defined by party service. While Pakistan could not do without Jinnah at the governing helm of its nationalist movement to preserve its young democratic government, India could and did do without Gandhi at the governing helm of its nationalist movement. Will Suu Kyi encourage NLD leaders to emerge who can challenge her and thereby develop the party’s ability to govern without her, as it eventually must? Or will she continue to govern as a charismatic leader whose party will not long outlive her? 

4. Will Suu Kyi finally speak out against Rohingya persecution? 

During the past few years, Suu Kyi has refused to publicly condemn violence against the Muslim Rohingyas, regularly designated the world’s most persecuted minority. Viewing Suu Kyi through the prism of a Nobel Peace laureate and a beacon of moral courage, international supporters have been hugely disappointed at her willingness to condone the rising levels of anti-Muslim violence.

But when seeing Suu Kyi through the prism of a politician whose predominant aim is to move the country away from military control, this decision can be seen as politically instrumental. The outgoing government’s encouragement of Buddhist extremism amounted to a textbook strategy for mobilizing a majority at the expense of a minority. The outgoing government thereby intentionally put Suu Kyi in a difficult position: if she spoke out against powerful Buddhist extremists, she would have lost votes among religious voters. Remaining silent as she did may have maximized votes but brought criticism from both right and left: for coddling Muslims by the influential Ma Ba Tha extremists and for being morally bankrupt by the international human rights community.

This strategy cannot be morally condoned, but it could be politically understood. Now however, armed with an absolute majority in parliament and the still-copious goodwill of the international community, will she spend some of her newfound political capital condemning the Rohingya violence and speaking out in favor of human rights for all those living within Burma’s borders? Or, paralleling Prime Minister Modi in neighboring India, will she continue to be silent and pander to an extremist base? Her actions at this formative moment will have enduring consequences for whether Myanmar will continue on the bumpy road towards democratic consolidation or falter on the basis of minority exclusion.

Maya Tudor is associate professor of politics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. She was in Yangon for the Nov. 8 elections as an international observer with the Carter Center and is currently writing a book on when militaries retreat from governing power.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory in the general election in Myanmar on Nov 8, 2015. The blasphemous question is whether Ms Suu Kyi’s supreme power in the NLD will soon pose a challenge to democratic Myanmar.

Ms Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingya issue has received international censure but her democratic credentials, as opposed to her campaign against the military dictatorship, have seldom been scrutinised. The NLD lacks inner party democracy and history is against Ms Suu Kyi.

It is precisely because Ms Suu Kyi lacks a team, unlike many pro-democracy leaders. The Myanmar pro-democracy movement has been mostly about her. The founder of non-violent mass political movements Mahatma Gandhi never had to participate in governance and, within the Congress Party, democracy was entrenched. Gandhi’s candidate for Congress President Dr Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya, was defeated by Subhas Chandra Bose in the party elections held in 1939.

During 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela became the symbol of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa but the African National Congress in the meantime had been led by distinguished leaders such as Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, etc. The NLD lacked such leaders at home while the government of Burma in exile died a natural death for want of leaders of high stature, among other reasons.

Since her release from house arrest, Ms Suu Kyi has shown glimpses of authoritarianism. Seventeen members of Myanmar’s respected “88 generation” were denied NLD tickets to contest the Nov 8 general election. Earlier, reformist Dr Thein Lwin was sacked from the NLD’s auxiliary Central Committee in February 2015 for lending support to the students protesting against the adoption of the National Education Law supported by the NLD in parliament in September 2014. Ms Suu Kyi called on demonstrators to abandon plans for an ill-fated protest march from Mandalay to Yangon in January 2015 but the students refused. Those who defy or question her decisions have been purged. The statement of Ms Suu Kyi on Nov 10 that the elected president of Myanmar “will have no authority, and will act in accordance with the decisions of the party … because in any democratic country, it’s the leader of the winning party that becomes the leader of the government” may be instructive.

While Ms Suu Kyi may still find a rubber-stamp president, the rule of the majority is unlikely to be handy for dealing with the ethnic minorities who have been waging wars against the majority Burmese for the past five decades.

The NLD could not forge any effective alliances with the ethnic minorities while opposing the junta. An effective alliance for power sharing with them may not last long considering the absolute majority of the NLD in parliament and the aspirations of the ethnic nationalities. Cease-fire agreements signed with seven out of the 15 ethnic minority armed groups in October 2015 remain in place but eight other armed groups including the powerful United Wa State Army and Kachin Independence Army remain outside the canvas.

Experiences from Scotland to Catalan of Spain show the struggle of mature Western democracies with the right of self-determination and resource sharing. Ms Suu Kyi has stated numerous times that she is a politician. Should the peace process fail, resulting in renewed armed conflicts, as head of the government or the ruling party, she is unlikely to hesitate to use the army against ethnic insurgents. Obviously, the Rohingya are unlikely to be her nemesis.

Ms Suu Kyi’s rule will however not be undone by the economy. Expectations remain low and the key economic challenge of Myanmar for the economy has been a reduction of Chinese control, one of the key factors behind the loosening of the junta's grip and the start of the democratisation process to facilitate Western investment to counter the Chinese.

Burmanisation of the economy is not new but has become more complex and challenging. In an attempt to Burmanise the business and administration, over 300,000 people of Indian origin were expelled by the architect of the military dictatorship Gen Ne Win in the 1960s. As Chinese have similar physical features to the Burmese they cannot be expelled like the Indians. Further, China holds a seat on the UN Security Council and the position of the second-largest economy in the world. The Myanmar Peace Centre established by the junta government alleged that the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Army did not sign the cease-fire agreement in October 2015 because of Chinese pressure.

The history of transition of pro-democracy leaders into efficient public administrators is not in favour of Ms Suu Kyi. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the exception of Nelson Mandela, leaders of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, the Arab Spring or the Maoists of Nepal have failed miserably to deliver.

The NLD won because the people of Myanmar abhor the military but the NLD has been all about Ms Suu Kyi with the second in command, Chairman U Tin Oo being 88 years old. The absolute majority of the NLD and the lack of inner party democracy due to Ms Suu Kyi’s supreme power may soon become a stumbling block to a democratic Myanmar.

Suhas Chakma is director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- US President Barack Obama called attention to to the plight of lesser-known refugees Saturday during a visit to a non-governmental educational centre in Malaysia, noting that accepting refugees is not inimical to national security.

Obama met with several refugees from Myanmar, Sudan and Somalia at the Dignity for Children Foundation on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

"The world is rightly focused on the humanitarian tragedy taking place in Syria, but we can't forget that there are millions of other refugees from war-torn parts of the world," he said.

"In fact, 60 million people are displaced all around the world."

Obama downplayed fears that refugees could pose security problems for the host countries following the Paris terrorist attacks last week.

"When I sat there and talked to them and they were drawing or doing their math problems, they were indistinguishable from any child in America," Obama said after talking a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar.

"The notion that somehow we would be fearful of them, that our politics would somehow leave them to turn our sights away from their plight, is not representative of the best of who we are," he said.

Obama said the United States "has shown that we can welcome refugees and ensure our security - that there's no contradiction."

A 16-year-old refugee from Myanmar gave Obama a hug before he left the centre.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees Commissioner for Refugees said there are 153,850 refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Palestine and other countries.

Obama arrived in Malaysia on Friday to attend the two-day Association of South-East Asian Nations leaders' summit, which started Saturday.