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Mass Departures in the Rakhine-Bangladesh Borderlands
Dr. Jacques P. Leider is Lecturer, Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO, French School of Asian Studies) and Head of the EFEO Bangkok Center.
The 2017 exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh was the latest in a series of escalating trans-border movements. As they reference physical harassment, systemic exclusion, de-facto statelessness, and earlier mass flights, Rohingyas have condemned the recent exodus as a deliberate attempt to extinguish their group. Since the 1990s, mass departures have commonly been described as the outcome of military crack-downs. However, while characterizations underscore the violence of the state-ethnic contest, they pass over transnational aspects of the conflict dynamics.
This brief looks at the departures of 1942, 1948-49, 1959, 1976-78 and 1991-92, happening in different political contexts from World War II to the end of Myanmar’s military regime in 2011. Yet each crisis was triggered and unfolded within the same area at nearly identical locations in Cox’ Bazaar district (Chittagong Division) and Maungdaw sub-district (in the former Akyab district). Mass departures were cyclic with recurrent acts of atrocity and destruction of livelihood perpetrated against Muslim civilians. But they were also singular events to be explored within their own contexts of overlapping complexity of territorial and identity politics. The descriptive analysis below highlights how past events are ‘emboxed’ in the present context. It points to a dynamic of arbitrary and unrestrained violence within a continuum of shifting power relations, weakening civilians and strengthening the hand of the state. The diachronic perspective proposed undercuts the narrative of a “relatively peaceful nature of Arakan” that has falsely embellished the memory of Burma’s parliamentarian regime from 1948 to 1962.
‘Mass departure’ is defined here as an unforeseen massive exodus of North Arakan Muslims across the Naf River into the Beng East Pakistan/Bangladesh borderlands happening over several months. Mass departures were central, eruptive events within violent cycles which matured, burst, and resulted in gradually thornier relations between the two countries. Repetition suggests a lack of opportunities, lack of will, or indifference to durable solutions. The state’s failure to act as a moderator is apparent and its role as a predator raises an array of questions. Categorizing actors within uniform groups of perpetrators (‘military’) and victims (‘Rohingyas’) fits a moral-cum-legal grid preferred by media and advocacy groups. However, agency is multiple and drivers complex: Muslims and their leaders did never form a single homogenous group, both departures and repatriation were contested; rebel groups tried to exert influence on policies and their interpretation. Poles apart, Burmese army and police under central command, regional Rakhine authorities, and local Buddhist residents might share prejudice and condone anti-Rohingya/Muslim violence, but they did not have identical interests. The narrative of mass departures triggered by state-induced violence is also underpinned by a record of otherwise shared Buddhist-Muslim grief about multiple state dereliction.
Each of the five mass departures was set in motion by reported acts of physical aggression reaching an intolerable level (rape often being highlighted). Each exodus was (1) linked to a background of anterior conditions (conveniently, but inadequately described as ‘tensions’); (2) extended over several months entailing the creation of camps across the border; and (3) followed by a formal or informal process of partial return, on the one hand, and incremental diaspora formation on the other. When return processes are included, periods ascribed to each exodus are bulging: 1942-47, 1948-1956, 1959-1960 (?), 1978-1979, and 1991-2005. Considering the known but poorly documented flow of single or small-group departures taking place at the interstices, the accumulated human cost conditioned by these inherently destructive cycles looks immense.
Myanmar authorities presented state-led campaigns in North Rakhine State as administrative operations to check identities, prevent illegal migration, enforce border security and fight rebels. Mass flights were variously characterized as the escape of illegals. Repatriation raised suspicion bearing the risk of new illegal entries.
Muslim victims described their maltreatment early on as ethnic and religious persecution, increasingly linking it to the denial of constitutional recognition. After the 1982 citizenship law, expulsion was interpreted as the ultimate step of a process of disenfranchisement. As testimonies of horrific crimes were recorded at each cycle, the accusation of ethnocide or genocide was repeatedly raised by Muslim leaders since 1951.
While the host country pushed for repatriation, resistance has been a recurrent phenomenon. Like the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (known as ‘ARSA’) in today’s camps, the Rohingya Patriotic Front in 1978, and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation after 1991, militated strongly against a return while advertising their political demands. The issue of a fair and safe repatriation came to involve a growing number of voices. Its implementation generated mandates of the UNHCR in co-operation with other humanitarian organisations.
