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A Legal and Structural Analysis of the Violence in Rakhine State against the Rohingya Muslims
By Karen Pimentel Simbulan — Program Director – Rakhine Conflict Sensitivity Facility at RAFT Myanmar
On May 28, three Rohingya Muslim men raped and killed an Arakenese woman from the Yanbye Township in Rakhine State (formerly Arakan State), Myanmar. Purportedly because of this criminal offense, on June 3, 2012, hundreds of Arakenese Buddhists surrounded a bus carrying Muslim pilgrims in Taungup Township, Rakhine State, forced ten Muslim men off the bus, and proceeded to beat the men to death. According to the Myanmar government, these two events caused riots to break out in Sittway, Maungtaw and Buthidaung Townships, leaving 77 people dead and 109 people injured. A total of 4,822 houses, 17 mosques, 15 monasteries, and schools were also burnt down. Human Rights Watch estimates that the violence has also led tothe displacement of 100,000 people, among them 75,000 Muslims, and the mass arrests of hundreds of Rohingya Muslims.
Several months later, from October 21-24, Arakenese Buddhists again rioted and attacked villages populated by Rohingya and Kaman Muslims in Rakhine State. Houses and mosques were burnt to the ground and at least 70 Muslims were killed in Mrauk-U, including 28 children. An additional 37,000 people were also displaced, bringing the total number of displaced personsfrom Rakhine State to 120,000 people. President Thein Sein claimed that the October riots were unexpected.5 But an examination of recent Myanmar history reveals that the attacks against the Rohingya Muslims that occurred in June and October of 2012 were not isolated incidents but part of a recurring pattern of antagonism and violence against the Rohingya that has been perpetuated mainly by the State.
This paper will endeavor to place the violent events of June and October 2012 in Rakhine State, Myanmar into context by examining current government policies. Using Johan Galtung’s triangle of violence6 as a point of reference, this paper will focus on the laws and policies of the Myanmar government, analyzing them as manifestations of the structural violence that has institutionalized discrimination and promoted a culture of intolerance and social exclusion against the Rohingya. From this perspective, the direct violence that occurred in June and October 2012 that primarily targeted the Rohingya could hardly be surprising. Following Galtung’s theory that “[g]enerally, a causal flow from cultural via structural to direct violence can be identified,” it was only a matter of time before direct violence occurred given the atmosphere in Myanmar that has been permeated by both structural and cultural violence against the Rohingya. In this sense, the Myanmar government has set the stage for the commission of all three kinds of violence – direct, structural and cultural – against the Rohingya.
In 1982, the Ne Win government enacted the Citizenship Law, which recognizes 3 types of citizenship in the country – full citizenship, associated citizenship, and naturalized citizenship. Full citizenship is accorded only to those from Myanmar’s 135 recognized national ‘races’ or ethnic groups, or whose ancestors settled in Myanmar before the British occupation of Rakhine State in 1823. Alternatively, associate citizenship is granted to a person who applied for citizenship under the 1948 law. To become a naturalized citizen, a person must be able to provide ”conclusive evidence” that a parent entered and resided in Myanmar prior to independence in 1948. People who have a parent who holds one of the three types of Myanmar citizenship are alsoeligible for Myanmar citizenship.
The Rohingya are not among the 135 recognized national races and are thus not entitled to full citizenship. The stringent requirements (“conclusive evidence”) for acquiring associate or naturalized citizenship have also effectively barred the Rohingya from being recognized as associate or naturalized citizens. Consequently, approximately 800,000 Rohingya from Rakhine State were denied citizenship under this law.9 Even Rohingya children born in Myanmar are denied citizenship since a child can attain Myanmar citizenship only if one of the parents already holds one of the three types of Myanmar citizenship.
The rationale for excluding the Rohingya from the recognized national ethnic groups is the commonly-held and widely-propagated belief that the Rohingya are not native inhabitants from Myanmar but are immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Time and again, the highest-ranking government officials from Myanmar have made statements to this effect. In 1998, Myanmar’s then Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt, in a letter addressed to UNHCR, wrote: “These people are not originally from Myanmar but have illegally migrated to Myanmar because of population pressures in their own country.”
More recently, on July 12, 2012, President Thein Sein, in a statement posted on the Myanmar government website after the violent events in June, stated that the Rohingya are not welcome in Myanmar. “We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but Rohingyas who came to Myanmar illegally are not of our ethnic nationalities and we cannot accept them here…The solution to this problem is that they can be settled in refugee camps managed by UNHCR, and UNHCR provides for them. If there are countries that would accept them, they could be sent there.” Similarly, in a report released by the Rakhine State Conflicts Investigation Commission, the committee tasked by President Thein Sein to investigate the violence that occurred in June 2012 in Rakhine State, the Commission insinuated that the violence was attributable in part to the high population growth of the “Bengali people,” as the report called the Rohingya.
Contrary to the findings of the Rakhine State Conflicts Investigation Commission, Human Rights Watch and various UN agencies attribute the denial of citizenship to Rohingya as a root cause of the violence in Rakhine State. By consistently portraying the Rohingya as foreigners or illegal immigrants, the Myanmar government has branded the Rohingya as outsiders and, worse, as illegal migrants – as a people who have no cultural, religious, or social ties with Myanmar and therefore, do not belong in the country. This characterization has been the basis for subjecting the Rohingya to various inequitable government regulations that violate international human rights law, specifically the fundamental rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Given that the UDHR is generally believed to have attained the status of customary international law,15 it is thus binding on all subjects of international law, including Myanmar.
