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The Ongoing Genocidal Crisis of the Rohingya Minority in Myanmar
By John P. J. Dussich — California State University, Fresno, California, USA.
The serious plight of the Rohingya ethnic group’s extreme victimization in Myanmar has finally emerged on the international stage. They are mostly a stateless Muslim minority from the state of Rakhine which, over recent decades, have been abused by severe and repeated multiple human rights violations. There are now approximately 850,000 displaced Rohingya refugees mostly in Bangladesh and surrounding countries with thousands more waiting in peril between Myanmar and Bangladesh. The saga of the Rohingya dilemma has been fraught with complex ethno-religious conflicts between Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu factions exacerbated by the scale of people involved, rapidity of events, recency of occurrences, abject poverty, racial hatred, linguistic differences, confused ancestral rights, severe humanitarian violations, genocidal policies, surrounded by nations themselves struggling with few resources. The present day conflicted leadership in Myanmar between the military and the democratically elected leader of her government, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been severely criticized for their brutal continued ethnic cleansing.
A genocide begins with the killing of one man—not for what he has done, but because of who he is. A campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ begins with one neighbour turning on another. Poverty begins when even one child is denied his or her fundamental right to education. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations. — Kofi Annan, Nobel lecture (2001)
Genocide
The definition of genocide used throughout this article is ‘the use of deliberate systematic measures (as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions, prevention of births) calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group or to destroy the language, religion or culture of a group’ (p. 947). The criteria for using the word genocide in this text are imbedded in the aforementioned definition and especially in the Genocide Convention (refer for more details under the following section Human Rights Issues below). It is the conviction of this author and competent legal international scholars that there is ‘strong evidence that genocide is being committed against the Rohingya people’ (p. 1) and thus this is an appropriate term to use in the case of the ongoing victimizations of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar.
Current Situation
The awareness of the Rohingya’s plight is just recently emerging on the international stage. At the time of this writing, Pope Francis is visiting Myanmar (known as Burma prior to 1989) to speak about the Rohingya people, with the de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar’s commander-in-chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and he then will travel to neighbouring Bangladesh to meet with a small group of newly arrived Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are mostly a stateless Sunni Muslim minority (with also some Hindu present) coming from the southwestern coastal part of Myanmar in the state of Rakhine, which, over recent decades, have slowly and significantly been abused by multiple human rights violations including: forced labour, removal of citizenship, depopulation of their communities, severe abuse of children, elders and women (including use of rape as a weapon), prohibition of freedom of movement, confiscation and destruction of property (includingschools, homes and religious centres), denial of education, religious and ethnic discrimination, restrictions on marriage, systemic persecution and racism, mass rapes, massacres, ethnic cleansings and forced expulsions. It is these grievous human rightsviolations which clearly justify the use of the term genocide.
Recently, within a 3-month period since 25th of August 2017, between 500,000–600,000 Rohingya have escaped en masse from their homeland in the northern part of the state of Rakhine in Myanmar to Bangladesh (mostly to Cox’s Bazar in the south-eastern corner of that country).6 Prior to that date, as far back as 1990 approximately, 300,000 Rohingya had already escaped into Bangladesh, primarily focused in the two upazilas (analogous to counties) of Ukhia and Teknaf. Additionally, many refugees went to the seas (Bay of Bengal) mostly in boats and make-shift rafts trying to find refugees especially in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. In many instances, they were harshly turned away with many not surviving. This recent surge of escaping refugees was in response to the military crack-down on the Rakhine State after a small group of Rohingya militants attacked some police posts in retaliation to the extreme oppression they were enduring at the hands of their government. During the last week in August 2017 at the Myanmar/Bangladesh boarder in no-man’s land along the Naf River, 20 Rohingya bodies were retrieved, 12 were children. The United Nations observers estimated that about 50,000 crossed in that same area in about one weeks’ time. Many more thousands are still stranded trying to flee from the extreme violence now ongoing. Those that have arrived in Bangladesh are mostly women and children traumatized by their experiences, many with wounds from bullets, shrapnel, fire and landmines.
This is a humanitarian emergency of major proportions requiring a significant international response to prevent further loss of life. To date there are approximately 850,000 displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh with thousands more waiting in peril in the isolated space along the Naf River between Myanmar and Bangladesh. This situation ‘has triggered the largest and fastest flow of destitute people across a border since the 1994 Rwandan genocide’ (p. 1). The BBC reports that the UN is calling this the ‘world’s fastest growing refugee crisis’.
Third century CE—1406 AD.—Colonists from other lands settled with indigenous people along the coastal region of Kala Mukh (Arakan) using Sanskrit from India as the written language and having local religious beliefs prevalent there at that time. Fourth to tenth centuries—The Anand Chandra Inscription, an 11-foot monolith in a Nagari script close to the Bengali and northeastern Indian languages is built and the Dhannawadi and Vasali (Brahminical and Mohayana Buddhist civilizations) emerged reflecting the early presence of Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim cultures. 1044–1077—Rise of the Burmese Pagan king Anwardhta in Burma properly with Theraveda political Buddhism, diminished North Arakan from a kingdom to a province of Burma. Rohingyas (Arakani Hindus and Muslims) left Arakan for Chittagong (a large port city on Karnaphuli River on the coast of Bangladesh bordering Burma). Chakma Royal history says that in this war against the Burmese, Chakmas sided with the Bengalis (the Chandras) from Bangladesh but were defeated. The Kingdom of Pagan (also Bagan) emerged from a small ninth-century settlement (in the 1050s). In 1057, eventually the first unified Burmese state was established at Bagan, which lasted approximately 250 years over the Irrawaddy Valley laying the early foundation of the Burmese language and culture.
1210–1287—The Mongols, originating from north central Asia under Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty of China, conquered the Kingdom of Pagan. Under his rule, the Arakanis were again revived as a kingdom. Eleventh century—1430—Tibeto-Burman rule with two separations: Rahkine Mogh and Rohingya Muslim; however, the Arakan began to look east towards its mongoloid Buddhist neighbours and were influenced by them. In the year 1430, the Arakan king Noromi Kla was deposed by the Burmese invasion and he took shelter in the ancient medieval city of Gaurof Bengal to the west of present-day Bangladesh in India. 1431—The last Rakhine kingdom was founded under King Noromi Kla and was supported by the Sultan of Bengal with its capital in Mrauk U. Situated on the border between Buddhist and Muslim Asia, the city became one of Asia’s richest of its time and became an autonomous province of Bengal paying taxes to the Sultan. 1785—The last Rakhine kingdom in Burma came under the control of the Burmese King Bodawpaya, a fervent Buddhist under whose reign began the conflict with the British.
