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Abandoned and Apartheid (A case study of Myanmar’s Rohingya Migrants)
By Muhammad Nazir, Department of Social Sciences, Iqra University Islamabad, Pakistan.
State sponsored persecution and subsequent migration of Rohingya has emerged as a serious challenge to existing International system as the international community despite recognizing the fact that Rohingya are subjected to systemic persecution and genocide could only silently witness the burning villages and capsizing boats of Rohingya refugees effectively failing to respond to the crisis. Forced migration of Rohingya has therefore posed serious questions to the effectiveness of incumbent International security regime centered around UNSC; and international human rights regime particularly Genocide convention and International Refugee Convention of 1951. This essay presents to its readers a chronological record of the longstanding crisis surrounding Rohingya and response of the regional as well as international players at different stages of the conflict. Thus, An attempt has been made to understand the anatomy of Rohingya migration crisis with an aim to explore doable options to resolve this protracted humanitarian issue.
This was their third week wandering in the sea, without sufficient food and potable water, the family, like thousands others, had been wandering in the international waters in the quest of a refuge. Asylum is repeatedly denied to them at the shores of Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. These are the Rohingya, a Muslim-majority community of Burma (now Myanmar). According to
United Nations 2013 estimates, Rohingya are the most persecuted minority in the world. Now, the world knows them as Asia’s ‘Boat People.’ They have become ‘stateless’ after promulgation of Myanmar’s 1982 Nationality law. As of 2016 UN report, 1 out of every 7 stateless persons is a Rohingya. Peeping through the history, one can effortlessly conclude that the crisis in Rakhine (former Arakan) state of Myanmar has since the country’s inception been lingering on and has generated waves of Rohingya exoduses in 1970s, 1990s and more recently in 2012 and 2017. Over the period, the protracted conflict has further been exacerbated due to state repression and inability of International community to address the root causes of conflict. At one hand, pictures and footages of wretched Rohingya migrants pose serious questions on international humanitarian conscience; on the other, the protracted crisis requires serious investigation in order to ascertain what are the causes and dynamics of the conflict? What efforts have been undertaken to resolve the issue at national, regional and international level? Why has it not been resolved until now? How does it impact the neighboring countries? What efforts have been made so far to address the situation? And what measures can be taken to sustainably resolve the issue?
Employing case study method, an effort has been made to understand the dynamics of the crisis through using content and contextual analysis techniques to answer the above questions. As a result of the effort, following hypotheses have been put forth: –
- Rohingya refugee crisis is an outcome of protracted ethnic conflict between the Rohingya and Rakhine ethnicities of Burma. British sowed its seeds during Second World War while the conflict is continually infuriated due to [Myanmar] state’s biased policies aimed at total extermination of Rohingya.
- Internationally, it failed to attract international community’s interest for the reason that it remained localized. It could gain global attention only after the advent of social/electronic media when footages of the stateless and apartheid Rohingya fleeing Myanmar got viral.
The essay proceeds in four sections. In the first section, demographic composition of Rakhine state has been described and a chronology of historical events that lead to today’s crisis situation has been made. In addition, an overview of the impacts of the state actions and international response to ensuing crisis has also been provided. The second section deals with analysis of data and portrays results of the study. The third section puts forth available options to improve the refugees’ conditions as well as to address the root causes of the conflict thus leading to sustainable solution to the refugee crisis. The fourth sections sums up the whole discussion in a concise concluding paragraph.
