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Report on the Crimes against the Rohingya from August to December 2017 in the Rakhine State (Myanmar)
Report Submitted by Gitpa.org , USA.
This report is the first by an organization that specializes in indigenous rights. It provides verbatim the accounts of Rohingya refugees interviewed in March of 2018. The data collected during this inquiry contradicts the report findings of several human rights NGOs.
- The 2017 crisis should not be isolated, but placed in the context of a long-lasting series of conflicts that have been occurring since the 40s.
- As often during situations of mass violence, the historiography, including the demographic history, remains disputed and polarized. Reliable demographic figures, except those of the British censuses during the colonial period, are hard to find, which is both cause and effect of this polarization. However, the Muslim presence in Arakan (today’s Rakhine) is ancient, as primary sources show.
- From the 25th of August 2017, the Burmese army (Tatmadaw) clearly sought to clear out the townships of (1) Maungdaw and of (2) Buthidaung (both in the Maungdaw District),as well as a (3) micro-region of Rathedaung (Sittwe District) that is adjacent to Maungdaw of their majority Muslim populations. It conducted a campaign of terror that included group executions, rape, atrocities, and at least two massacres.
- The modus operandi for the violence generally follows a pattern: (1) the army enters into a village, shoots at the villagers, sets areas afire, and sometimes commits atrocities; (2) the villagers then flee and hide themselves in one or several muro (forests, mountains) for several days; (3) the army does not follow them; (4) finally, the villagers set off walking, sometimes for many days, to the Bangladeshi border.
- Violence against women is irrefutable, as proven by testimonies. However, the campaign of terror’s main targets have been men; young men between 20 and 30 years of age are disproportionately the main victims of this mass violence.
- Two sets of explanations have emerged: either the Burmese army launched a counterinsurgency fight, or their actions were premeditated. The former evokes the ”functional approach” (the idea that the repression is improvised and follows a historical course); the latter corresponds to the ”intentionalist paradigm” (the notion that the policy of repression was premeditated and motivated largely by anti-Rohingya racism). Only an thorough investigation of the Burmese side of the crisis will be able identify the reasons and authors of this episode of mass violence. It seems clear, however, that the officers and soldiers from Tatmadaw were the main actors, followed by the border police (Border Guard Police, BGP). Some Maugh civilians (Buddhists, non-Burmese) sometimes participated in the acts of violence.
- The lack of representation, leadership, and interlocution from the Rohingya is a significant anthropological fact that is politically detrimental to them under current circumstances.
- All of the Rohingya we questioned want to return to Rakhine, but only on the condition that they be formally recognized as Burmese citizens.
We thankfully acknowledge the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Health and Education for All (HAEFA), an NGO working in the Rohingya refugee camps since 2017 – www.haefa.org, for their generous technical and logistical support.
Starting August 25th, 2017, the Burmese army (Tatmadaw) led an unprecedented several-week long crackdown against the Rohingya, a minority of Muslim faith in the north of Rakhine state (ex-Arakan, western Myanmar). Tens of villages were burned down by the army. Testimonies report various acts of violence and rape. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled towards Bangladesh and to this day live in camps in the far south of the country (Cox’s Bazaar region).
According to Burmese journalist Moe Myint (2018), the north of the Rakhine state has been cleared out of 90% of its Rohingya population. The humanitarian organization Médecins sans Frontières (MSF, 2017) estimates the number of deaths between August 25th and September 24th at 6,700, of whom 730 were children under the age of 5. The methodology used by MSF covers a population of 503,698 people. This report first provides a short historical context of the situation. We then chose to transcribe verbatim the testimonies of some of the Rohingya we interviewed –not only to give voice to the Rohingya, but above all to give freedom to readers to form their own opinion- before highlighting the main trends of this mass violence.
The Rohingya are a patrilineal, patrifocal, patriarchal, and strictly endogamous population. Apart from a small minority of a few hundred Hindus, the Rohingya practice a pious version of Islam. They also are a differentiated population, a fact hard to discern in the massification generated by their exodus and life in the camps. Rohingya distinguish themselves from the Muslim population adjacent to the province of Chittagong (Bangladesh) by dress customs; culinary habits; and their language, derived, yet clearly distinct from Chittagonian. The rural houses and mosques in Rakhine are also decorated with different styles than those of Chittagong.
It is also a largely rural population. This geographical and socio-economic distribution has been reinforced by government policies that have, at least since 1982, reduced their access to education and geographic mobility. Therefore the 2017 killings occurred almost exclusively in rural areas.
Since the Second World War (see below), the Rohingya have concentrated in the northern part of Rakhine and the vast majority of them live in three townships: Maungdaw, where, before the summer of 2017, they would have formed 94% of the population; Buthidaung, with 86%; and a group of 16 Rathedaung villages nearby Maungdaw (6% of the total population of Rathedaung but the large majority in the sub-region in question).
No real ethnography has been published on the Rohingya. (Anthropologists and ethnographers have neglected this subject, which has tended to be taken over by historians who have neither the methods nor the tools to grasp culture and collective identity questions and bypass human interactions with Rohingya.) In addition, their ethno-genesis is a disputed subject that sees two opposing versions. On one side, the population recognized today under the self-denomination ”Rohingya” would mainly be composed of descendants of two groups: the Muslim communities already present in the Arakanese Kingdom before 1785 (year of the Burmese conquest of Arakan) and, essentially the descendants of Indian migrants brought over by the English after 1825 (e.g. Jacques Leider, 2004, 2013, 2017). Observations of colonial administrators, particularly Paton (1828) and Burney (1842), and finally of the WWII English pilot Irwin (1945) corroborate this version. In addition, the Muslim population in Arakan was fragmented into several identities at least up until the Second World War (Leider, 2013:242-3).
On the other hand, according to Azeem Ibrahim (2018) and Bangladeshi authors, including Siddiquee (2014), Karim (2000), and Alam (2014), the Rohingya are first and foremost the descendants of the Muslims of Arakan (before the British colonization). This being said, even Ashraf Alam (2014:54) recognizes that the Rohingya ”are not an ethnic group that emerged from a tribal affiliation, but descended from a diversity of origins.” Abid Bahar (2014:256) agrees. The name ”Rohingya” does not appear before 1963, apart from a brief reference in 1799 (see the meticulous work of J. Leider, 2014). We cannot, however, rule out the possibility that the ethno-genesis of this group is the recent product of hostile policies and collective negotiated interests. Anthropologically, the linguistic and social dissimilarities between the Chittagonians and the Muslim Arakanese are measurable enough to suggest a separation that is not recent. The emigrants who came from Chittagong during the colonial period, whatever their numbers, had to adapt to a Muslim culture already in place.
