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The Paradox of Refugee Settlements in the Context of Global Geopolitics : The case of Rohingya Refugee Crisis
A thesis submitted by Tanzim Rachana Student no. 1201001, Department of Architecture Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh, October, 2018
Over the last year, the Rohingya populations have turned into the world’s most persecuted minority. Genocide and brutal torture by the authority have rendered thousands of people refugees. At present most of them are seeking shelters in the neighboring country Bangladesh. According to the latest count RRRC of May 01, 2018, there are approximately 1 million Rohingya populations currently residing in Bangladesh. Refugee crisis by now has turned out to be an issue of global concern.
The Rohingya are a large Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar at the center of a humanitarian catastrophe. Myanmar government does not recognize them as citizens or one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups in the country. Myanmar regards them as illegal immigrants, a view rooted in their heritage in East Bengal, now called Bangladesh.
However, the history of the geographic region of Myanmar dates back to centuries and it is evident from the chronological conflicts that the roots of the Rohingya community belong to that region and the people are subjected to mere communal conflicts. But before discussing their origin the question naturally arises that where did this term “Rohingya” come from. As mentioned by Dr. Nasir Uddin, in his book “To host or to hurt”, ‘After summarizing the unpublished thesis of A.S. Bahar entitled “The Arakani Rohingyas in Burmese Society”, M. A. Alam codify the origin of the Rohingyas as follows: “ Rohang, the old name of the Arakan, was very familiar region for the Arab seafarers even during the pre-islamic days. Tides of people like the Arabs, Moors, Turks, Pathans, Moghuls, Central Asians, Bengalis came mostly as traders, warriors, preachers and captives overland or through sea route. Many settled in Arakan, and mixing with the local people, developed the present stock of people known as ethnic Rohingya. (To host or to hurt, Nasir Uddin)
The history of the region of Burma has seen a sequence of ethnic shifts, conquests, expansion and collapse that is quite typical of the history of most regions of the world. In the last millennium and a half, there has tended to be a core state or core in the Irrawaddy Valley, which repeatedly expanded towards and contracted from the periphery of the modern day territory of Myanmar; therefore by the mid 90’s around one third of the population of Myanmar was made up of ethnic groups distinct from the Burman majority. This naturally reflected the history of interaction with China to the north, India to the west, Thailand and Laos to the east and Indonesia and Malaysia to the south. In particular, the mountainous regions to the north and east of the central Irrawaddy regions have long been home to a diverse range of non-Burmese ethnicities. Some of these groups live exclusively in modern day Myanmar but many live on both sides of the various borders. Up to the nineteenth century, the evidence points to a degree of ethnic and religious tolerance, even as the Burmese regions became increasingly dominated by Buddhism, while more marginal groups retained animist beliefs or adopted Christianity or Islam.
These discussions lead to the fact that it is particularly important to separate the history of Arakan from that of Burma up to the 1800s. The core of the Burmese civilization in central Burma, along the Irrawaddy Valley is geographically and culturally linked to the Tibetan region, southwest China and the rest of East Asia. The south (the modern-day Mon and Tanintharyi provinces) is part of the wider Malaysian Peninsula and has sea links to the south, including Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia. In fact, this was the original vector for the early spread of Buddhism to Burma.
However, Arakan region in the west has always been separated from the rest of Burma by a high and difficult-to-traverse coastal mountain range. As such, for most of its early history, both in terms of ethnic makeup and political economic interaction, the natural links of the region were across the Bay of Bengal to India rather than with the rest of Burma. It was also a relatively poor province, reliant on subsistence agriculture and fishing, so it was generally of little interest to would be conquerors.
This state of isolation only changed from around 1000 AD, when the Rakhine ethnic group moved from central Burma to Arakan. The modern-day province is named after this group. From then until the late 1700s, Arakan had periods of dependence on the rulers of central Burma, periods of independence and even short periods when it dominated neighboring Bangladesh. It seems that the Rohingya were an important part of the ethnic mix of Arakan in this era. Nineteenth century British reports make reference to how the local Muslims called themselves “Rovingaw” or “Rooinga”. More importantly, as early as 1799, Francis Buchanan made reference to “Rooinga” in the area. In 1784, Arakan was formally annexed by the kingdom of Burma. However, this conquest brought the kingdom into conflict with the British who also had an interest in the region. At the end of the first Anglo Burmese war (1824-6), Arakan was appropriated by the British, who once again separated from Burmese rule. However, when British had conquered the rest of Burma in the 1880s, the province was included in colonial Burma. At the same time its administrative title was changed from Arakan to Rakhine. Burma was designated a separate administrative state to India in 1937 and the borders were drawn on the basis of state borders that had existed just before the war of 1824-6. So, the new administrative unit thus integrated Arakan into what was to become, a mere ten years later, the newly independent country of Burma. This purely administrative decision is what led to the situation we are in today.
Burmese nationalists resented the British rule and one source of unrest was the lack of support the British gave to the Buddhist religious hierarchy. The seeds for deep divisions in the country along religious lines had already been sown. Things really came to a head during World War II. Burma became caught up in the war in 1942 when the Japanese invaded the area. Initially their arrival was welcomed by some Burmese nationalists who, as with the Indian Congress Party, saw the defeat of the British Empire as a step on the road to independence. However, the Rohingyas remained loyal to the British (as did many other non-Burmese ethnic groups), leading to significant ethnic strife between the Rohingyas and Burmese ethnic communities. It has been estimated that some 307 villages were destroyed, 100,000 Rohingyas lost their lives and a further 80,000 fled the region as a result.
In turn, the British recruited soldiers from among the displaces Rohingyas, and, looking for allies, promised the Muslims of northern Arakan relative independence and the creation of a Muslim National Area, in exchange for their contribution to the war effort.
In 1947, some Rohingyas formed their own army and sought incorporation of northern Arakan into the newly created East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. This initiative failed, but after Burma achieved its own independence in 1948, some Arakanese Muslims went on to petition the Constituent Assembly in Rangoon for the integration of Maungdaw and Buthidaung districts into East Pakistan. It drove the Burmese authorities to regard the Muslim population of Arakan as hostile to the new regime and to see them as outsiders whose loyalty lay with a different state. These events helped create belief that only Buddhists could really be a part of the new state, an attitude reinforced by the attempt of the Burmese Communist Party to overthrow the new state after 1948.
For the Rohingyas, the period immediately after independence meant restrictions, as the region was deemed a frontier area, reflecting the tensions of the war years and the short-lived revolt of 1947. However, compared to the significant armed revolts by the communists, Shan and Karen tribes, Arakan remained peaceful. Key to the steady increase in the level of discrimination and violence aimed at the Rohingyas has been the shifting legal definition of Burmese citizenship. The story that the Rohingyas are somehow alien to the state of Myanmar now finds its expression even in the constitution and the law of the country. One of the preconditions to genocide is the systematic denial of the standard legal rights to an identified group. A key part of the persecution of and discrimination against the Rohingyas is denying that they are legitimate citizens of the state they were born in ad live in.
The 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma defined citizenship as follows: ‘All persons born of parents both of whom are nationals of the socialist republic of the Union of Burma are citizens of the Union.’ This was a critical step because, since the Rohingyas were not formally treated as citizens in 1947, they could not now be citizens of the state. Their national registration certificates (from the 1947 legislation) were replaced with foreign registration cards. The next legal step was the 1982 Burmese citizenship law, which created four categories of citizenship: citizen, associate citizen, naturalized citizen, and foreigner. Different categories were assigned to the ethnic groups on the basis of their residence in Burma before 1824. Anyone not belonging to these categories, specifically the Rohingyas was deemed to be foreign.
Under the 1982 legislation, the Rohingyas were denied full citizenship due to ethnic classification used in 1948. In addition, legal structures were left vague, with substantial amounts of administrative discretion, and their few legal rights were undermined by the regular passing of Martial Law legislation.
Denial of citizenship led to restrictions on movement and access to education, as well as the loss of land holdings. The 1974 constitutional and legal changes also saw an increase in the levels of violence by the state towards the Rohingyas, and this led to a growth in the number of refugees fleeing to Bangladesh. Soon after this, the 1977 Nagamin (Dragon King) campaign was designed to identify every individual in Burma as either a citizen or a foreigner. In Rakhine, this was interpreted by the Buddhist community and the army as a license for attacks on Rohingya communities, and by 1978 over 200,000 more Rohingyas had fled to Bangladesh. In turn, Bangladesh returned most of these refugees back to Burma.
Political unrest after 1988 revolt and the annulled 1990 elections saw an increased deployment of the Burmese military in northern Rakhine. Nonetheless, some Rohingyas were allowed to contest the 1990 elections on the basis of the 1982 citizenship laws. The renewed attacks in the period 1991-2 saw 250,000 flee to Bangladesh, and again were marked by the use of forced labor, beating, rape and land theft. Not only were the Rohingyas displaced from their villages by the new villages or the army bases, but those forced to return from Bangladesh found their previous communities had been destroyed and re-appropriated by groups favored by the state. Typically, this led to renewed tensions, and subsequently more repression and a continuation of the refugee flow to both Bangladesh and Malaysia.
Bangladesh consistently and forcibly sent back refugees to Burma, including those who had fled in the 1970s and again in the early 1990s, in violation of various UN declarations on human rights and the rights of refugees. Those who fled to Malaysia have often been allowed to stay, but as stateless refugees, since the Burmese government will not accept them back and the Malay officials are prepared neither to force their removal nor to provide them with proper refugee status.
The 2017 Rohingya persecution in Myanmar began on 25 August of that year when the Myanmar military forces and local Buddhist extremists started attacking the Rohingya people and committing atrocities against them in the country’s north-west Rakhine state. The atrocities included attacks on Rohingya people and locations, looting and burning down Rohingya villages, mass killing of Rohingya civilians, gang rapes, and other sexual violence.
Using statistical extrapolations (based on six pooled surveys conducted with a total of 2,434 Rohingya refugee households in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh,) Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimated in December 2017 that during the persecution, the military and the local Buddhists killed at least 10,000 Rohingya people. 354 Rohingya villages in Rakhine state were reported as burned down and destroyed, as well as the looting of many Rohingya houses, and widespread gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against the Rohingya Muslim women and girls. The military drive also displaced a large number of Rohingya people and made them refugees. According to the United Nations reports, as of January 2018, nearly 690,000 Rohingya people had fled or had been driven out of Rakhine state who then took shelter in the neighboring Bangladesh as refugees. In December, two Reuters journalists who had been covering the Inn Din massacre event were arrested and imprisoned.
