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The Road to Genocide: Violence Against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma
By rne Furlong — Press Secretary at Office of the Minister of National Defence, Ottawa, Canada.
“We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but Rohingyas who came to Burma illegally are not of our ethnic nationalities and we cannot accept them here.” – President Thein Sein
Violence and discrimination against Burma’s Rohingya Muslim community has been long entrenched in the country’s history. While Burma recently transitioned from a fifty year period of military rule to a nominally civilian-led government, ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya population continue to take place in the country’s Rakhine state. Ethnic tensions between Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslim minority have led to violent sectarian clashes throughout the state, leaving hundreds of people dead and thousands displaced (Global R2P 2015). While the Burmese government has maintained that it seeks reconciliation between its ethnic communities, attacks against the Rohingya persist with impunity, often with the support or involvement of state security forces and government officials (Wagley 2014, p.43). Moreover, the Rohingya are denied Burmese citizenship, rendering them stateless and subject to detainment in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps (Human Rights Watch 2013). With ongoing violence and a lack of accountability for perpetrators, the Rohingya remain at risk for even greater mass atrocity. While former UN Special Rapporteur Quitana (United Nations 2014, para.51) suggested that the widespread violations in Rakhine may constitute “crimes against humanity,” Andrews and Sullivan (2014, p.10) further contend there is nowhere in the world with “more known precursors to genocide than in Burma today.” This essay argues that the ongoing human rights violations endured by the Rohingya Muslim population puts them at risk for genocide. By examining the political, social and economic factors influencing the discriminatory conditions within Rakhine state, the essay contends that greater action on the part of the international community is urgently needed if genocide is to be prevented.
History of Persecution : Although the Burmese government maintains that Rohingyas are “illegal immigrants” who migrated from Bangladesh during colonial rule, the Rohingya have ancestral heritage in Rakhine that can be traced back to as early as 1799 (US State Department 2013; Zarni and Cowley 2014, p.689). In the early years of Burma’s independence, the Rohingya were recognised as an ethnic group by the state. However, after the military took control in 1962, it began a large-scale campaign aimed at separating “nationals from non-nationals” in an effort to divest the Rohingya of their right to citizenship (ibid, p.700). This operation marked the beginning of large-scale violence against the Rohingya, and saw hundreds of thousands flee to Bangladesh (ibid). The introduction of the Citizenship Act in 1982 entrenched a list of 135 officially recognised ethnic groups, excluding the Rohingya. The Act directly violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as it rendered the Rohingya population stateless, further subjecting them to practices that violated their fundamental rights and freedoms (Zawacki 2013). Some of the abuses experienced by the Rohingya as a result of this legislation include restrictions on movement, forced labour, land eviction, as well as constraints on “marriage – Two-Child Policy, employment, health care and education” (ibid, p.19). While the Burmese government introduced democratic reforms in 2010, this discriminatory legislation has yet to be repealed.
