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Mass Atrocities against Rohingya: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
Prethee Majbahin — Research Assistant (RA), Department of Criminology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
The horrific mass atrocities against Myanmar’s Muslim-minority Rohingyas has stunned the whole world. The Burmese Government has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing and committed atrocities including mass killings, arson, extortion, harassment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual abuse. The people of Rakhine state have been subjected to denial of identity and rights. They have been rootless and victims of calculated cruelty. Decades of dehumanization and state-sponsored systematic segregation resulted in more than half a million Rohingya to flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh. The world has encountered one of the vicious examples of human rights violation and refugee exodus. This paper aims to reflect on the massive acts of violence and atrocities against the Rohingya population. Besides, this study will briefly discuss the reasons, why these actions should be considered not only as ethnic cleansing but also genocide. A ten-stage model of the processes that lead to genocide will be used to examine the atrocities against Rohingya by Myanmar which will help to understand the early warning signs of genocide. Though the international community has emphasized on the word ’’ethnic cleansing’’ to describe the crimes against Rohingya, we should by now be able to recognize the unannounced and accelerating pulse of genocide.
A widely cited study from 1799 described that the ‘Rohingya’ is a term used by the Muslims of Burman Empire which signifies ‘natives of Arakan’. Although Rohingyas claim that they are a distinct ethnic and cultural community who had their roots in Rakhine state before 1823, the use of the term ‘Rohingya’ is highly disputed in Myanmar as majority of Myanmar’s population refers them as illegal Bengali migrants because Bangladesh and Rakhaine state contain populations who have similar culture and also crossed the border several times in Burma’s pre-colonial era.
An estimated one million Rohingya live in Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan. Rakhine state is located between South Asia and Southeast Asia which makes it a ‘frontier culture’ of the Muslim and Buddhist communities. According to an 1826 report, about 30 percent of the population of the Rakhine region was Muslim. The Rohingyas are the descendants of Arab Muslim traders who came to settle in Rakhine state as early as the seven century. Despite sharing the same territory, Rohingya and the Buddhist Rakhine people differ from each other in culture, language, and heritage. There were several religious conflicts between the Muslims and the Buddhist communities from the year of 1826 to 1948. A coup was led by General Ne Win, which instigates an oppressive military rule over the Rohingya. The autonomy of the Rakhine state was abolished in that time. Since 1962, Burma’s all actions against Rohingya ensured the systematical deprivation of their political rights and the history of this discrimination is marked by a couple of destructive massacres and 1982 citizenship act. The first atrocity against Rohingya occurred in 1978 in the regime of military government General Ne Win. Estimated more than two hundred thousand Rohingyas were forced to flee to Bangladesh and ten thousand Rohingyas were killed when the Burmese military launched an operation named ‘Dragon King’.
The second exodus of Rohingya people took place in 1991. Approximately 2,60,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh as wide-spread aggression against Rohingya and forced labor demands made their life miserable. Following the large expulsion of Rohingya, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) repatriated around 200,000 of the refugees to Burma from 1992 – 1999. More recently, in August 2017, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked Myanmar’s police posts and they killed around 30 police officials. This attack had turned the one- sided aggression against a particular ethnic group into a two-sided civil war. Such attribution of evil intent to the victims is called ‘mirroring’ by genocide scholars. United Nations sources (UNHCR) indicate that more than 723,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since then.
It is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes.37 This is what the Myanmar army and government has done. The military killed thousands of Rohingyas and hid the dead bodies into graves or burnt into the fire. The denial also permeates government statements, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s statement, UN Commission inquiry and other neutral observers have been barred from the country.
