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Discourses of Exclusion : The Societal Securitization of Burma’s Rohingya (2012–2018)
John P. J. Dussich — Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University, Florida, USA.
The contemporary persecution of Burma’s Rohingya has rapidly evolved from isolated episodes of communal violence into a global humanitarian crisis. The article analyses the evolution of the recent violence in Rakhine State from 2012 to the present. Specifically, I argue that Buddhist nationalist monks, including members of the ‘969’ Movement and Ma Ba Tha, in concert with the Burmese government, have acted as authoritative voices in society, depicting the Rohingya ethno-religious group as an existential threat to the country’s majority Buddhist population. As such, hate-filled rhetoric has provided a politically unstable Burmese regime with an ideological justification for human rights abuses committed in Rakhine State.
This phenomenon is analysed through Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s securitization thesis as a means of better understanding the discursive relationship among Buddhist nationalist monks, the Burmese government and the Burmese Buddhists. Ontologically, this article focuses on anti-Rohingya discourse and major episodes of violence in western Burma’s Rakhine State from 2012 to 2018. As a discursive process, securitization has not merely amplified Islamophobia within Burma, butsignificantly endangers future generations of Rohingya civilians.
The contemporary plight of the Rohingya, well documented by human rights observers and experts in the field, has only recently gained widespread attention from the international community. While periodic surges in Rohingya-targeted violence have been an enduring feature of Burma state/society relations since the 1970s, the recent persecution represents the state’s most systematic effort to remove the Rohingya from the state. Thus, episodes of extreme violence, post-2012, should not be understood merely as the logical culmination of exclusionary government policies over time. Rather, a surge in virulent rhetoric expressed by certain members of nationalist monastic organizations and high-ranking officials in the Burmese government, now represent a systematized attempt to delegitimize the Rohingya’s physical presence in Burma.
Burmese military regimes, past and present, have systematically refused to address widespread human rights violations committed against the Rohingya population. Briefly recognized as ‘legitimate’ ethnic minorities during Burma’s parliamentary democracy period (1948–1962), Rohingya civil rights gradually eroded under Dictator Ne Win’s military regime (1962–1988). In 1974, under Win’s new socialist constitution, the Rohingya were labelled as foreign citizens and mandated to carry registration cards to distinguish them from native Burmans (Ibrahim, 2016, p. 50). This was a crucial step in discrediting the Rohingya as an ethnic group, perpetuating the dangerous myth that the Rohingya are merely Bengalis living in Burma.
Rhetorically, Ne Win’s attitude towards the Rohingya was expressed through his belief that non-Burmans were not to be trusted. As a ‘mixed blood’ race, the Rohingya along with other ethnic minorities were viewed as sowers of division (Wade, 2017, p. 55). Military operations in 1978 initiated under the guise of deporting illegals, led to the exodus of over 200,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. The military junta’s relocation schemes in 1991 and 1997 severely restricted the movement of the Rohingya within Rakhine State, charging locals hefty fees to move from one village to the next (ibid., p. 93).
More recently, as explained in later sections, recent waves of anti-Rohingya violence have been met with complicity at the least, or active participation from Burmese security forces (Tatmadaw). During President Obama’s meeting with former Burmese President Thein Sein in 2012, Sein enunciated 11 principles for reform, one of which was addressing humanitarian needs in Rakhine State (Sullivan, 2014). Since that meeting, living conditions for Rohingya have deteriorated exponentially. Under the guise of a new ‘democratic opening’, State Councillor Aung San Suu Kyi and leading members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party have refused to substantively address the plight of the Rohingya.
As large numbers of ethnic Rohingya continue to live in deplorable conditions in displacement camps, a spokesman for United to End Genocide (2016) writes, ‘The only decisive action the government has taken in Rakhine has been decidedly negative’. Currently, many Rohingya subsist in concentration camp-like conditions with a host of restrictions placed on their freedom of movement. Since 2012, large numbers of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand. Those who survived the journey have typically found few prospects for integration into broader society. Recent Tatmadaw operations in Rakhine have led to the mass exodus of Rohingya civilians, culminating in the United Nations’ declaration that ‘ethnic cleansing’ is currently taking place within Rakhine State (Cumming-Bruce, 2017). To date, United Nations’ estimates show that over 600,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee Rakhine since 25 August 2017. Approximately 800,000 refugees are currently living in squalid conditions in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh (United Nations, 2017).
Finally, while domestic variables are of primary importance in this study, shifting international responses to the Rohingya crisis have, at least in part, shaped the regime’s policies in Rakhine State. Apart from rhetorical condemnation and token sanctions, the international community has done little to hold the Burmese regime accountable for its actions. In the context of a more isolationist United States’ foreign policy, the Burmese military junta has pursued its policies in Rakhine State with relative impunity.
Burma is incredibly diverse, as over 130 distinct ethnic groups are thought to live within the state. Chizom Ekeh and Martin Smith write, ‘Over 2,000 years of crossborder migration and intermixing between cultures has led to the development of diverse ethnic settlements and communities residing both in mountainous frontier zones and lowland plains areas of the country’ (Ekeh & Smith, 2007). Since the British-colonial period, religion has played a dominant role in reinforcing communal divisions. While over two-thirds of Burma’s population is Buddhist, significant numbers of Christians live in the eastern states, while a growing number of Muslims (roughly 4%) live mainly in the West.3 For both administrative and political purposes, the Burmese government officially recognizes only seven ethnic minority groups. The Muslim Rohingya4 are presently not legally recognized as a legitimate ethnic group and are largely disqualified from citizenship as consequence of the country’s 1982 nationality law.5 The social and political implications of this dynamic will be more closely scrutinized in later sections.
The current marginalization and persecution of the Rohingya serves as an example of societal securitization at work. What follows is a brief overview of securitization theory, and its utility in explaining the contemporary conflict in Rakhine State. In the month of October 2012, a series of mob attacks directed against Rohingya civilians erupted in western Burma’s Rakhine State. The violent outbreaks were documented in detail by Human Rights Watch. Eyewitnesses noted the following, ‘The October (2012) attacks were against Rohingya and Kaman Muslim communities and were organized, incited, and committed by local Arakanese political party operatives, the Buddhist monkhood, and ordinary Arakanese, at times directly supported by the state security forces’ (Human Rights Watch, 2013, p. 4).
The attacks themselves left dozens of Rohingya dead and were accompanied by the razing of two villages. The violent episode was triggered by the rape of an Arakanese woman at the hands of a Rohingya man in June of the same year, which led to an upsurge in tension among the two ethnic groups. Human Rights Watch writes :
On October 18, just days before the renewed violence in the state, the All-ArakaneseMonks’ Solidarity Conference was held in Sittwe. The monks, who hold very high moral authority among the Arakanese Buddhist population, issued a virulently anti- Rohingya statement that urged townships to band together to ‘help solve’ the ‘problem’. (ibid., p. 45)
