Burma/Myanmar is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Its civilian government lasted from independence in 1948 until the military coup of March 2, 1962 staged by late Gen. Ne Win with the claim of saving the country from disintegration through minority secession, incompetent and corrupt civilian rule; strengthen the socialist base of the economy free from the foreign dominance. But during the long military rule none of this objective could be achieved in any credible sense. Instead ethnic tensions increased and rebellions mushroomed, socialism as administered in Burma was eventually an admitted failure. There was a third supportive ‘coup’ in September 18, 1988 to keep the military in power. 

The Burmese military has established large armies. They still consider themselves custodians of national unity, denying any other institution or group, promoting instability and unstable political systems for the growth of militarism and perpetuation of power. They have suppressed the people’s voice, continued civil war, produced IDPs, and caused forced migration and humanitarian disaster. The Rohingya of North Arakan (Rakhine State) are the worst victims of human rights violations facing mass atrocity crimes, including genocide, ethnic cleansing and ethnocide for their ethnicity and religion, and also for their skin and South-Asian appearance. United Nations has described them as “the world’s most persecuted minority.” “Rohingya are listed as one of the ten worlds’ populations in most danger of extinction.” 

Forced migration is where people are forced to move from where they live due to circumstances out of their control. The followings are some of the significant effects of militarism or the causes of Rohingya migration into Bangladesh and other countries: 

1. Existence denied: 

The Rohingya are often described as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh” in utter disregard of their long glorious history in Arakan. The military has declared them non-nationals rendering them stateless in their own homeland though promulgation of oppressive Burma Citizenship Law of 1982. 

2. Xenophobia against Rohingya: 

Under the aegis of the still powerful military the popular slogan in the country is “to be Burmese is to be Buddhist”. Islam is insulted comparing it with animal doctrine. Rohingya are called influx viruses, ugly ogres and dogs by Rakhine academics, in diplomatic correspondence and by Buddhist monks and extremists. 

3. Grave human rights violations 

From 1962 military rule, the Rohingya have been subjected institutionalized persecution, draconian restrictions on their basic freedom – freedom of worship, movement, marriage, education, health care – summary execution and mass murder, rape, destruction of houses and villages, ghettoization, confiscation and looting of moveable and immovable properties, food insecurity, denial and blockade of humanitarian aids, torture, forced labour, forced relocation and forced eviction, involuntary disappearance, arbitrary detention, extortion and relentless taxation etc. 

4. Demographic changes: 

Buddhist settler villages have been established though out North Arakan. Rohingya are depopulated to be populated by Buddhist communities under state programmes. Thus the Rohingya have become increasingly landless, jobless and homeless. 

5. Mass atrocity crimes against Rohingya: 

Unprecedented organized deadly violence occurred and reoccurred in Arakan and other parts of Burma in June-October 2012 and 2016, where the government had been implicit. An estimated 5000 Rohingya Muslims were killed, drowned and missing. Blaming the Rohingya, “President Thein Sein stated on 12 July 2012 that the only solution to the violence would be to send the Rohingya to other countries or refugee camps” thus officially sponsoring “Rohingya ethnic cleansing”. The government is manifestly practicing apartheid policy putting more than 140,000 Rohingyas in apartheid-like concentration camps for nearly 5 years. While the experts in international law have described it crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has refused that no human rights violations against Rohingya have been happened and rejected to accept an independent UN commission of inquiry into human rights violations. 

6. Highly visible refugee movements: 

There were two Rohingya mass exoduses into Bangladesh one in 1978 and another in 1991-92 each with more than 250,000 refugees. Due to international pressures most refugees were repatriated without their deliverance. There has been no durable solution and the influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh and other countries is continuing. From October 2016, under the new civilian government of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi more than 1000 Rohingyas were killed and burned down, most of them women and children. About 70,000 took refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar military burned down several Rohingya villages under the pretext of area clearance to make thousands of Rohingya internally displaced. 

7. Massive irregular migrations and boat people 

Particularly due to military’s policies of exclusion, discrimination and extermination against them, about 1.6 million Rohingya out of their population of more than 3 million have either been expelled or have had to flee persecution to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Australia, Japan, Europe, Canada and United States. Rejected in Burma and unwanted in Bangladesh the Rohingyas in Arakan and Bangladesh have become more desperate to take dangerous voyages by boats across the sea to Malaysia and Southeast Asian countries. 

Conclusion 

The Rohingyas have become stateless within Burma and refugees or migrants beyond its border. Thus it becomes a regional problem with international dimension. It is important that the Rohingya problem must be resolved first and foremost within Burma. While still powerful military is an obstacle for solution, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD government must change its policy on Rohingyas, and it must respect and promote the human rights of Rohingya and treat them justly. For longer term solution, the Burmese government must repeal or amend the 1982 Citizenship Law to conform it to international standards. The political and democratic process in Burma must be all-inclusive and Rohingya should be a part of it. Last not the least, their rights and freedom must be ensured on par with other ethnic nationalities of the country without delay. 

Due to the militarism in Myanmar for almost seven decades, tens of thousands of other ethnic minority people such as Kachin, Chin, Mon, Karen, Shan, etc,. became refugees in the neighbouring countries and internally displaced in Myanmar. The country become one of the poorest in Asia.

YANGON, MYANMAR — Calling Myanmar “a new democracy,” the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA the latest manifestation of increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation is a problem rooted in “the rule of law.”

The early morning confrontation Wednesday began late Tuesday night when a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya were illegally hiding in a house in a Yangon neighborhood, according to local press accounts.

Police who investigated refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims allowed to be there.

Authorities in Myanmar, a Buddhist majority country, consider most Rohingya to be “resident foreigners,” not citizens, according to Human Rights Watch. The majority of them live in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State and cannot travel without special permission.

An Associated Press reporter saw approximately 30 Buddhists, including monks, in the neighborhood. Some were armed with stones, as were many of the area’s Muslim residents. Police fired two warning shots to disperse the crowds, and at least one Muslim man was hospitalized with injuries.

Rule of law

“To me, this is really a matter of the rule of law,” the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, told VOA’s Burmese Service.

Emphasizing that the only information he had about the incident came from press accounts, Marciel said, “What’s important in this case, or any other case like this, is that the law be applied fairly.” He added that it is “problematic to have citizens accompanying law enforcement to look into a possible crime. … It raises a lot of concerns, a lot of problems.”

Calling Myanmar “a new democracy,” Marciel said that the hope would be that “as Myanmar builds the rule of law,” citizens would raise any concerns they have about illegal activities with law enforcement, and that law enforcement “would take over from there so you avoid situations of crowds getting involved to enforce what they see as the law.”

But, he added “it takes time for societies to learn how they want their democracy to operate and what rule of law means.”

The Wednesday night incident was the second one in less than a month in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. On April 28, ultranationalist monks and their supporters forced two Muslim schools to close. Police stood by as the protesters chained the doors of the schools, according to Human Rights Watch. As of May 8, the schools remained closed.

Militant monks

A militant organization of Buddhist monks known as Ma Ba Tha has spearheaded protests against Muslims. Its leaders have been accused of stirring up mob violence leading to the deaths of Muslims and destruction of their property around the country. Most of the anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar since 2012 has occurred in Rakhine State, where the Rohingya are accused of entering the country illegally from Bangladesh.

“It’s a tremendous concern that this is happening in Yangon,” Derek Mitchell, the former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA’s Burmese Service.

Although Myanmar prohibits religious discrimination “it’s very sensitive when you’re dealing with monks in this very highly Buddhist country, a very proudly Buddhist country,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who served in Myanmar from July 2012, and departed March 2016, said that it is difficult to say why the tension is erupting in Yangon.

Broader problem

Mitchell said that while the situation in Rakhine State has attracted the most attention, the incidents in Yangon reflect “a broader issue of anti-Muslim sentiment” in Myanmar, something that cannot be blamed on State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who is the de facto government leader.

“I think she and the NLD government are sincere and are doing everything they possibly can to try to root it out and prevent it,” Mitchell said. “But it’s very difficult to block out and change minds and mindsets.”

This report originated in the VOA Burmese Service.

Among the estimated 75,000 Rohingya who fled their homes in Myanmar into Bangladesh following a military crackdown, Dr. Nur Kabir has become a savior for refugees at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh.

KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, BANGLADESH – A well-known doctor in his community, Nur Kabir was among an estimated 75,000 Rohingya who fled Myanmar into Bangladesh amid a military offensive last October. Yet displacement will not stop his work.

After fleeing the military to a nearby area, the 30-year-old physician briefly returned to the wreckage of his village in Myanmar’s Maungdaw district. He made sure to bring all the medicine he could before joining a mass exodus across the border in mid-October.

Now living among his fellow refugees in the Kutupalong camp in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, Kabir is one of the few trusted doctors in the community, and his skills are needed more than ever.

Lacking Everything

Between those who turn up impromptu at the hut he now calls a home and shares with his wife, five children and extended family, and those who call him on his ever-ringing mobile phone, Kabir estimates that he sees around 30 patients per day.

Like any doctor, he deals with a variety of ailments, but in the conditions of a refugee camp some illnesses are all too common.

While malaria and cholera are the challenges of the present, his work often includes the recent trauma of the past – Kabir regularly checks up to see how those who suffered gunshot wounds fleeing the crackdown are healing.

Supplies are limited. Unaffiliated with any NGO, Kabir buys low-cost pharmaceutical drugs from a local supplier on credit, which he pays back after charging patients a small fee.

Asked what he is short of, his answer is succinct: “everything.”

Rohingya Marginalised

Kabir’s passion for his work is a response to the marginalization of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

The Rohingya, a minority Muslim community in a country that is nearly 90 percent Buddhist, have long been persecuted within Myanmar. They are deprived of citizenship and labeled Bengali immigrants despite a presence in the country dating back generations. They are also subject to limitations on nearly every aspect of life, from movement to education to health provision.

“I realized that when Rohingya people went to non-Rohingya doctors they weren’t given proper treatment,” he said. “It was from this that I realized being a doctor would be a way of helping my community.”

The military launched an offensive in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last October following the death of nine policemen at the hands of an insurgent Rohingya group. The U.N. has documented reports of mass killing and rape by troops, allegations that are denied by Myanmar authorities.

As well as the latest wave of refugees, between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya are estimated to now live in Bangladesh. Some have lived in the long-established parts of Kutupalong camp for decades.

‘The Lady’

Kabir’s view of Aung San Suu Kyi – whose party was voted into power last year and who was seen as a flag bearer for human rights – reflects widespread disillusion among the Rohingya.

“She has political power, but that is the power of speaking, no more,” he said, alluding to the continued influence of a military junta that has long controlled Myanmar despite recent moves toward democracy.

For those who arrived in Bangladesh last winter hoping to return quickly, days have turned to weeks, and weeks to months.

Kabir fears the onset of the rainy season later this month, and the lurking threat it brings of typhoid. However, he remains hopeful that international pressure will allow the possibility of safe return for his people.

One of his patients, however, is not so sure.

Sayeda Khatum, 60, was diagnosed with tuberculosis when she arrived in the camp at a nearby Medecins Sans Frontieres clinic. She believes non-Rohingya doctors ignored her illness back in Myanmar. Despite suffering in the harsh conditions of the camp, she feels her chances of getting treatment are better while displaced in Bangladesh than back home.

And at least in Kutupalong, she adds, the Myanmar military are nowhere to be found. “Here, I can sleep peacefully,” she said.