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Discourses of Exclusion: The Societal Securitization of Burma’s Rohingya (2012–2018)
Adam E. Howe — Department of Politics and International Relations, Stephen J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, 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, but significantly 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.
