- Stars (0)
Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar : Seeking Justice for the “Stateless”
A.K. M. Ahsan Ullah, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, Brunei.
This article argues that Rohingyas in Myanmar have been deliberately excluded by its government. The claims of the government and political leaders that Rohingyas are illegal migrants could no way be justified due to the clear fact that they have been a part of long history of Burma. Due to the exclusionary policies, this population group has been systematically marginalized, persecuted, deprived of basic rights, and abused. Available protection space for Rohingya refugees in the region has become extremely volatile due to the reluctance to sign the 1951 Convention and a lack of national legal frameworks in most southeast Asian countries. Despite political pressure from the international community and local activists groups calling for the government to stop the violence, there is no sign to end the violence.
The number of people being forced to leave their homeland is growing exponentially, and by 2015, it has reached to 50 million worldwide (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2016). After Africa and the Middle East, Asia is leading in producing refugees. Southeast Asia (SEA) is one of the highest refugee-generating regions in Asia, and Myanmar is the largest contributor (Ragland, 1994; Ullah & Hossain, 2005, 2011). The Rohingyas are one of the most vulnerable populations in the world by any reckoning (Equal Rights Trust, 2014; Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, 2014; Pugh, 2013; Ullah, 2014; Ullah, Hossain, & Islam, 2015). An estimated 1 to 1.5 million Rohingyas in Rakhine State in Myanmar are concentrated in the three townships of North Rakhine State—Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung (Equal Rights Trust, 2014). Discrimination and unequal treatment are central to the human rights violations suffered by this population group (Lowenstein, 2015).
The word “Rohingya” is a historical name for the Muslim Arakanese. There is still a Muslim village in Akayab (Sittwe) city by the name of Rohingya para (Charney, 2005) (see figure 1). The old name for Rakhine State was Rohang from which the term Rohingya was derived. Today, this terminology (Rohingya) has become politically charged. Two strong blocs in Myanmar have emerged: pro- and anti-Rohingya. The pro bloc takes the view that the Rohingyas settled in Burma in the ninth century, which, through the ages, have mixed with Bengalis, Persians, Moghuls, Turks, and Pathans, in line with the historically pluralistic population of Arakan State (Human Rights Watch, 1996; Zarni & Cowley, 2014). The latter takes the view that the Rohingyas are a modern construct, comprising, principally, of illegal Chittagonian Bengalis who arrived as a by-product of British colonial rule (Human Rights Watch, 1996; Zarni & Cowley, 2014). The term Rohingya however lost its salience since the late 1960s due to the fact that the government uses the term Bengali, which implies immigrant status. The Rohingyas—Muslims and ethnically different from the rest of the ethnic groups in Myanmar—are not recognized as “citizens” of Myanmar. They are considered as “resident foreigners.” The 1982 Burma Citizenship Law divided citizens by three different categories: citizens, associate citizens, and naturalized citizens.
Citizenship status comes with three color coded citizenship scrutiny card (pink, blue, and green, respectively; Human Rights Watch, 2009; Ullah, 2011, 2014). The previous parliamentary government (before 1962, the civilian government, headed by Prime Minister U. Nu, a social democratic politician) listed 144 ethnic groups in Burma. But General Ne Win put only 135 groups on a short list, and then was approved by his Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) regime’s constitution of 1974 (Charney, 2005). In its census, Myanmar deliberately excluded Rohingyas from the list of the country’s 135 official ethnic groups. One of the most important arguments Ne Win’s government put forth in favor of the exclusion is that the citizenship law recognizes as citizens those whose families had settled in the country before independence in 1948 (Tran, 2015). In addition, some other events rendered them stateless such as Operation Nagamin, which was launched in 1978 (Equal Rights Trust, 2014), when many Rohingyas had their official documentation taken away by inter-agency teams of inspectors. Subsequently, the military regime promulgated the 1982 Citizenship Law (Equal Rights Trust, 2014).
Under Section 6 of the 1982 Law, persons who were already citizens at the time the law came into force would continue to be so. The law also provided for “Associate” and “Naturalised” citizenship, the former being for those whose citizenship applications were being processed at the time and the latter being those who are not citizens but can establish that they and their predecessors lived in the country prior to independence (Equal Rights Trust, 2014). Thus, all Rohingyas for whom Myanmar was home should have been able to continue to enjoy/acquire Myanmar nationality either under Section 6 of the Act, or as naturalized or associate citizens.
However, although most Rohingyas would be able to trace their ancestry, at least, to the colonial period, the lack of adequate documentation meant that the vast majority have not been recognized as citizens. Those who were qualified for citizenship under the 1948 law would no longer qualify under this new law. Therefore, they would be considered associate citizens if they had applied for citizenship in 1948 (Human Rights Watch, 2009). To become a naturalized citizen, one has to have evidence that he or she (applicant or their parents) entered and resided in Burma prior to independence in 1948. Rohingyas were not subjected to any laws (such as the Foreigner Act [Indian Act III, 1846], the Registration of Foreigners Act [Burma Act VII, 1940], and the Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1948) related to Registration of Foreigners before or after Burma’s independence. Under national quota, Rohingya representatives were elected during colonial administration from North Arakan as Burmese nationals. In 1946, as an indigenous people, General Aung San assured full rights and privileges to Muslim Rohingyas saying that native people should not be divided (Zaw, 2009).
Citizenship is a necessary category condition for claiming full entitlements of rights in a sovereign state. The theoretical constructions of citizenship, according to Bosniak (2000) and Bloemraad, Korteweg, & Yurdakul (2008), encompass four primary dimensions of the concept: legal status, rights, (political) participation, and belonging. We will examine where Rohingyas figure in the category of citizenship. Establishing mono-religious nationalist ideology may be is in the mind-set, and ethnic cleansing is the way of creating such nation (Pugh, 2013). Implications for the lack of full citizenship are far reaching. They become subject to abuses, including restrictions on their freedom of movement, discriminatory on access to education, forced labor, and arbitrary confiscation of property.
