Jobair Alam. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Volume 39, Issue 1. March 2019.
Introduction
Few contemporary crises of global proportion have solicited world attention as intensely as has the ongoing Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. To escape summary execution, indiscriminate rape and other human rights abuses nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh by mid-August 2018 after a “clearance operation” carried out by Myanmar military on 25 August 2017. In the independent Myanmar, the Rohingya were also expunged in 1978, the early 1990s and 2012. Many, like Holliday argues that the crisis lies with the denial of their “citizenship”. This paper does not assess the merit of such claim but contends that there are a number of reasons ingrained in the (pre and post independent) history of Myanmar which are also responsible for their ongoing crisis.
Myanmar is often been portrayed by the popular imagination as a timeless place and a country of egalitarian Buddhist villages—which is ruled successively by different kings, British colonialists and most recently a military regime. A mix of colonial legacy, decades of marginalization and oppression under authoritarian rule and social and religious factors are associated with many of the challenges it is facing toady including armed conflict, international isolation, gradual consolidation of military government and minority crisis. Likewise, the unending Rohingya crisis is also connected to many of these past legacies. Prasse-Freeman3 mentions about a combination of economic precarity felt by average Burmese people, affective and participatory deficits within Burma’s current democratic experience, ethno-nationalist mobilizations, and Islamophobia4 as the root cause of such crisis.
While “ethnicity” remains mutable in Myanmar, both colonial and post-colonial governments did, however, create a clear distinction between the various Myanmar ethnicities—(taingyintha or “sons of the soil”) and Chinese and South Asians—as the latter conformed to the classically racial physiognomy-based logic of the British census, and the British favoured them economically, making them convenient objects of populist anger. Cheesman has traced the genealogy of the term taingyintha, showing how it has become the precondition of belonging in Myanmar6 and how the current constitution even puts taingyintha over and ahead of citizenship, addressing the political community not as an aggregation of “citizens” but as “national races”. Accordingly, the Rohingya have committed what Prasse-Freeman regarded “dual sin” of having perceived characteristics of “foreignness” (since they are considered as not native by the majority Burmans) while demanding taingyintha status. Cheesman highlights the irony for Rohingya: “the surpassing symbolic and juridical power of taingyintha is at once their problem and their solution”. But while Cheesman declares taingyintha a “term of state”, a “contrivance for political inclusion and exclusion”, and notes how the state thus has the power to include the Rohingya into the category, he underestimates the way that taingyintha, or rather the political belonging it confers, is dialogically constructed through interaction with the public. Hence, even though the state has mainstreamed the taingyintha logic, it no longer decides who would be recognized as such and owing to the strong connection between the Buddhism and nationalism as developed in the colonial era and also in the independent Myanmar, the Rohingya remain unrecognized by the majority Burmans (public). These factors combined to produce the Rohingya not only as foreign—not a part of the fabric of the Myanmar nation – but also as a threat to that nation worthy of expulsion.
Those historical factors (distinction between ethnicities, construction of “belonging” and “otherness”, and “autochthony and foreignness”) are some of the major factors contributing to certain phenomena: (i) exclusion of the Rohingya from the socio-political institutions of Myanmar; (ii) (re)construction of an ambiguous status of the Rohingya; and (iii) unfolding a socio-economic insecurity encircling the Rohingya.
With a demographic profile of the Rohingya, it traces only these historical circumstances from the British Colonial period (post-1885) to the present day through a historiographical methodology (HM) that facilitates the understanding of the crisis. The motivation for going over the colonial period is that the crisis is rooted in the British colonial era (and also on the consideration that the precolonial era-pre-nineteenth century—was considered as “one entity” without significant institutional or social transformations that might have any impact on the current Rohingya crisis). It developed over time for want of any substantive reform in their status. In the independent Myanmar the crisis gained momentum through: (i) their gradual marginalization as an ethnic minority; (ii) their subsequent exclusion from the governmental institutions; and (iii) taking away of their citizenship status and effectively rendering them stateless.
A Demographic Profile of the Rohingya
Myanmar has a population of 54 million and officially recognizes dozens of ethnic groups—but not the Rohingya. Myanmar authorities, including the country’s de facto prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi, refuses to even use the term “Rohingya”. The Rohingya, however, claim themselves as a distinct group with a long history in Myanmar. Yegar and many contemporary authors like Crouch mention that the history of Muslims who today identify themselves as Rohingya in what is now known as Rakhine State dates back to the ninth century, and there are records from at least the thirteenth century onwards demonstrating their presence in the region. Others argue that they are descendants of people whom British colonial authorities, searching for cheap labour, encouraged to emigrate from eastern Bengal (contemporary Bangladesh) to the sparsely populated western regions of Burma beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century (beginning in 1824) and up until the end of colonial rule.
The majority of Myanmar’s Muslims live in urban areas, speak Burmese, have Burmese names, and are Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya are quite different: most are Sunni Muslim and live in rural areas in Rakhine (formerly Arakan) in the country’s Northwest, speak a dialect of Bengali (Chittagongian) and have Muslim names. In Rakhine it is estimated that 35.6% are the Muslim Rohingya, 59.7% are Buddhist and the remainder constitute other religious groups. Today there are around 2.5 million Rohingya who constitute the world’s largest stateless population. Fewer than half a million currently reside in Myanmar; the rest have fled decades of repression and exclusion in several waves, most often crossing the border into Bangladesh and those who can, move on to other Muslim-majority countries. Those who have remained in Myanmar are a subset of the country’s Muslim community that constitutes 4.3% of the population.
Advocates for a distinct Rohingya identity, insist that their ancestors have been natives to Rakhine as early as the eighth or from the ninth century and merit recognition as an ethnic group of Myanmar and full citizenship. They also add that their numbers increased in the sixteenth century when Muslims started settling largely there. The contrast view that they “settled there because they were brought back as slaves”, as the Arakan kingdom expanded all the way to Chittagong which was held until the Mughal invasion 1666. In 1826, the British annexure of Arakan encouraged the people of Bengal mainly Muslims to migrate there as farm labourers. Charney states that “many Muslims fled during Burmese annexure in 1784 (Rakhine too), and people came back after. The main migration of Chittagonians didn’t occur until the 1880s”. The Muslim population may have constituted 5% of the Arakan population by 1869, although estimates for earlier years give higher numbers. During World War II, there were massacres in 1942 as communal violence occurred between the Rohingya and the Rakhine. From then the region became increasingly ethnically polarized. In 1962 Ne Win Government defined 135 distinct indigenous ethnic groups and this is a list still used today. These ethnic groups are classified according to region and utilize an obscure methodology rather than linguistic or ethnic affiliation where the Rohingya were not included.
The country’s last two official censuses in 1973 and 1983 did not list them as part of the population. In 2014 an UN-backed national census was held that counted ethnicity. The Muslim population has fallen from 3.9 percent of the overall population in the 1983 census to just 2.3 percent—a figure that does not include around 1.2 million mostly Rohingya Muslims in western Rakhine State—who were not enumerated. The Muslim minority group was initially permitted to self-identify as “Rohingya” but after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census, the government decided the Rohingya could only register if they identified themselves as “Bengali”. This caused the Rohingya to remain uncounted. Although by quoting from the 2014 census Callahan mentions that “prior to the 2017 crisis, Buddhists probably constituted sixty per cent of the 3.3 million in Rakhine State, with Muslims making up about thirtyfive per cent”.
The Rohingya Crisis: A Historical Perspective
Over the past century the Rohingya have experienced British colonial rule, wartime occupation by the Japanese, independence and faltering parliamentary democracy, and military coups followed by outright dictatorship. The period has also been punctuated by some uprisings (1988 popular uprising, 1974 students gathering around Yangon University and the 2007 uprising limited to the pockets of Yangon), each of them supressed. Finally, in early 2011 the military junta handed over formal power to a quasi-civilian government ruling and trying to reform a semi-federal state. Those historical dichotomies (British rule, Japanese occupation, etc.) have always been the country’s dilemma and brought an obvious impact on the Rohingya’s current situation. Because those periods influenced in making many laws, policies and other governmental decisions which directly and indirectly contributed to the Rohingya crisis of persistent persecution in Myanmar today.
The British Period (1824-1948)
The British annexed Burma in three wars: in 1824-1826, 1852 and 1885. The colonial period lasted a relatively short time (from 1885 to 1948) in its dominance of the whole country. Its impact, however, has been longstanding. The most profound impact is found in the strong nationalist reaction to the foreign domination of that era. This resolutely influences contemporary Myanmar in many dimensions like the ethno-state relationship, the consequential marginalization of ethnic minority group and the recent augmentation of the Rohingya crisis.
In 1885 the British fixed the geo-politic entity of Burma, suppressed several insurrections and instituted a new order. Lieberman mentions that
the colonial intrusion represented a fundamental break in the pattern of Burma’s development. By piercing the country’s age-old isolation and by exposing indigenous institutions to the corrosion of Western values and commercial demands, the British revolutionized an exceptionally insular society that had shown itself incapable of creative growth.
The British took several other economic, security and immigration policy measures emphatically unconnected to Burmese nation building. Smith writes:
Nation building was never a British priority. The British annexation of Burma was piecemeal and always peripheral to the main British concern which was India. Rather, the twin motives were of security and profit, and colonial administrators were to display a destabilising readiness to trade territory.
Furnivall and Alam focus on institutional weaknesses ensued from such indifference nation building process. Myint—U refers to the collapse of many important early modern political and social institutions in the late nineteenth century. These were then replaced by colonial institutions, unrooted in local society, which were themselves shattered in the aftermath of the Japanese conquest of 1941-1942. Thus Burma at independence faced a weak institutional legacy, a vacuum—leading to a crisis of what Davidson coined as “institutional disconnect” at three distinct interrelated and mutually reinforcing levels—“public administration”, “private sector”, and “enterprise management” with a potential political, social and cultural ruptures unnecessary for the harmonious co-existence of the members in a multicultural community like Myanmar.
However, by the turn of the century, a nationalist movement began to take shape in Myanmar. Following the ban of political activity in 1906 the Burmese strategically established the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA)—as a religious organization with a political objective to develop and spur nationalism. This presumes that there was an initial separation of nationalism and religion that was then sutured together strategically, which in turn evidences the early establishment of the link between Buddhism and nationalism. Moreover, the monarchy and Buddhism were so intertwined, that some of the early 1930s rebellions against the British tried to re-establish the monarchy had a religious element. On the question of, if there was any “secular” anti-colonial movement either before or after the establishment of the YMBA in the British Burma, Lewy mentioned that following the “Saya San rebellion” the political monks increasingly lost their previously held position of prominence in the nationalist movement and leadership and initiatives passed into the hands of secular politicians from the late twenties to the end of the thirties.
The Second World War changed many elements of Myanmar. It exacerbated tensions between some of the minorities and the Burmans, for the Karen and the Kachin and arguably the Rohingya sided with the Allies who acted as guerrilla forces behind Japanese lines. The Burmans were officially in league with the Japanese until March 1945 (the Japanese pushed Britain out of Burma in 1942, but the British re-established control in 1945). The Allies were subsequently defeated. It resulted into three major consequences: (i) ended the colonial era (even though it lingered for three more years); (ii) spurred the development of Burmese nationalism; and (iii) the Rohingya were expressly marked as anti-Burmans by siding with the Allies.
Under the Japanese, Myanmar became a pseudo-independent state on 1 August 1943. In March 1945 the Burma National Army turned against the Japanese and helped liberate Burma with the British. The Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) played a crucial role at that time, which carried out the constituent assembly election of 1947, wrote the constitution and devised the democratic system which carried Burma into the era of independence.
The British period witnessed some major episodes including the emergence of Burmese nationalism, World War II and the Japanese invasion having enormous impacts upon Burmese society and self-identification. Certain factors developed within this period may be adduced as contributing to the current Rohingya crisis:
- Due to administrative convenience, the British mapped the country in a manner that split the ethnic races (particularly between the valley and hill peoples), ossified many of these perceived differences and ensured that different races remained on largely different roads to political and economic development. This ethnic categories became increasingly essential and essentialized that has given a wider scope of debate between the majority Burmans and the distant and rural groups including the Rohingya on not only economic development but also construction of the “belonging” of the later.
- The British largely used the Indian pattern of control and through “the Village Act” they divided Myanmar into two: (i) the Ministerial Burma inhabited by the Burmans and directly ruled by the British; and (ii) the Peripheral regions—the home of minorities that were loosely and indirectly administered by the village headman as the lowest representative of the Crown. Those headmen exercised greater control of rural areas, where the minorities lived. This “divide-and-rule” policy resulted in today’s mistrust among the Burmans and the minorities and led to a gradual but steady increase in centralization and government involvement in the daily lives of the indigenous people and destroyed the centuries-old social ties at the myo (non-territorial ties of the indigenous social unit) level. Callahan states, … [S]tate building via the Village Act paved the way for a longer-term of lawlessness and disorder. From the turn of the century onward, Burma became the most dangerous place in the empire … the construction of modern authority eliminated traditional social controls and curbs on lawlessness.
- The British policy encouraged the Bengali inhabitants from adjacent regions to migrate into the then fertile valleys of Arakan as farm labourers. This policy did not mention anything about the status of those labourers (Tomkin found that in Arakan in the British census Muslim majority groups were either recorded as assimilated into the Burmese majority race or as belonging to the Indian race). Rather the racial classification systems dividing populations in nationals/indigenous and aliens laid the foundations for the subsequent racialization of citizenship. That alien immigration was resented by the Rakhine for some reasons. The major reason of such resentment was that the Burmans considered the Rohingya as a threat for: (i) propagating anti-Burman sentiment and nationalism; (ii) their demand to establish a separate Muslim state. These reasons united the Burmans against the Rohingya in 1938 Indo-Burmese riots and 1942 intercommunal violence. A comprehensive policy of recognizing the status for those farm labourers to solve the problem was never considered by the British as the British saw the Rohingya and Islam in Burma as relatively insignificant and posed no threat to the colonial social order.
- The period helped reify ethnicity, resulting in minorities becoming more cohesive entities that had not existed before. This led to ethnic nationalism and the demands on the state for specialized rights. But the British was not in favour of granting any such special rights and persistently relied on the majority Burman to remain in power. This resulted in conflicts between the minority groups and the state sponsored majority Burmans.
- Buddhism was the primordial value of Burman society. But the British by undercutting the position of Buddhism introduced modern secular education (compatible to the Western values) unintegrated with parallel economic and social systems. The educational marginalization of Buddhism together with economic deprivation enhanced: (i) breaking down of collaborative relations and co-existence between different social units; and (ii) economic jealousies and frustrations. Those two factors further spilled into the streets with Monks leading demonstrations against the British and the Rohingya. The Burmans demonstrated against the Rohingya owing to three factors: (a) their incorporation under the minority education programmes (since the Burmans though that the newly introduced education only helped them); (b) perceived insult against Buddhism by them (in the context of conflicting position between the British and the Burmans); and (b) the Rohingya being economically solvent under the Indian dominated trade regime in Myanmar. So, the antipathy of the Burmans to the Rohingya is rooted deeply in history.
Thus, for Myanmar, the colonial experience has come up with an exuberant nationalism, minority-majority debate, ethnic conflicts, discontinuity into the structure of ethnic relations, and diluting the race. This experience in numerous ways influenced the past and the present of the ethnic minorities living there including the Rohingya. The intention to continue the foreign domination in Myanmar strategically motivated the British to support the majority sentiments—who are the Buddhist at the cost of oppressing the minority. This was evident in non-making of any law, policy or guideline for the minority protection including the Rohingya. And all those factors have very likely influenced the future of the Rohingya too. For example, the current anti-Rohingya movement, their denationalization and arguably state sponsored genocide and crime against humanity are strongly a manifestation of long standing grievance of the majority Burmans— rooted and developed in British era which further pursued the successive Myanmar governments to follow the conventional manner of treatment of the Rohingya.
The Modern Era
Myanmar in its modern era (1948 to Present) has gone through many ups and downs. After decades of military rule (1958-1960, 1962-1974, and 1988-2010) and or oneparty-regime (1974-1988), the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar established a basis for new governmental institutions. The 2010 election marks the transition from the military rule to a civilian democracy. A major political reform continued from 2011-2015. Throughout its journey, Myanmar has been carrying many colonial legacies and some of the intricacies have been intensified over time. For example, Myanmar not only failed to address many unresolved aspects of minority issue but also played a role that in turn entangled the whole minority protection paradigm. For instance, the Rohingya were also affected by many laws, policies and governmental decisions made during those times, have gradually been denied various protections as a minority group and under the latest law they have been denied their citizenship. The major elements of the Rohingya crisis emerged and intensified in the modern era are elaborated below.
The Union of Burma (1948-1962)
The Union of Burma was born as an independent sovereign state on 4 January 1948. The civilian government that lasted from 1948 until military coup of 1962 with a military interregnum in 1958-1960 has variously been resurrected as a future guide (if not model) of Burma. Others regard this period with severe limitations restraining what Myanmar aspired to achieve under the 1947 constitution particularly in context of averting minority tensions.
It is pertinent to mention that the different groups that make up the complex ethnic tapestry of Burma were never under the authority of a single government before the arrival of the British. Even during the colonial time they were under different authority and regions (mainstream and peripheral). This allowed them to exercise some autonomy. Myanmar thus emerged as a country deeply divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. And when they were brought under single government as a “Union of Burma” that ethnic autonomy collapsed, and dissatisfaction grew among them. This dissatisfaction grew more later on, owing to the unequal and discriminatory treatment of the ethnic groups and the majority Burmans.
During this period the ethnic minority tensions surrounding the Rohingya had also been on the rise following their gradual exclusion from the state institutions. For example, the Rohingya were allowed to vote in the first Constituent Assembly Elections on 9 April 1947. The Constitution of 1947 also recognized them as the citizen of Myanmar. However, although the U Nu government (1948-1962) adopted Citizenship Act, 1948 recognized them as indigenous race indirectly (on the basis that their two generations living in Myanmar) but from 1962 onward they were marginalized as an ethnic minority.
The 1947 Constitution states that “there shall be only one type of citizenship throughout the Union; that is to say, there shall be no citizenship of the unit as distinct from the citizenship of the Union”. Citizens, as defined by the 1947 Constitution, are persons who belong to an “indigenous race”, have a grandparent from an “indigenous race”, are children of citizens, or lived in British Burma prior to 1942.
The indigenous races were defined in the Union Citizenship Law, 1948. This law identified 8 specific ethnicities as the “indigenous races of Burma”—that were allowed to gain citizenship. The list did not include the Rohingya. But it allowed people whose families had lived for two generations in Burma to apply for citizenship. On the basis of this the parliamentary government (1948-1962) had declared Rohingya as one of the indigenous ethnic groups of Burma. Initially the government provided many Rohingya with citizenship or identification cards under this provision and those who could not provide evidence of their families’ residence in Burma for two generations prior to 1948 were only able to apply for Foreigners Registration Certificates (FRC). But this became restricted after 1962 when the Ne Win’s Government published a list of 135 ethnic groups with an exclusion of the Rohingya. The Citizenship law 1982 (CL) elevated the subsidiary concept of indigenousness contained in 1948 law, making it the primary criterion for citizenship.
General Ne Win, took power following a coup in 1962 and then not only did he nationalize83 the retail trade in Burma, thereby dispossessing some 100,000 Indians and 12,000 Pakistanis and driving them back to their homelands; he also initiated a series of military campaigns aimed at cracking down on “illegal” immigrants. Some authors like, Thawnghmung argued that those initiatives were undertaken impliedly targeting the Rohingya with an object to gain more popularity among the Burmans. Therefore, the Rohingya during the period from 1948-1962 had gone through a politically chaotic time: (i) laws limited their scope to get citizenship; (ii) state policies made them more vulnerable; and (iii) increased their negative commodification and representation in the public domain.
The Socialist Republic (1962-1988)
The military coup d’état on 2 March 1962 marked the beginning of a complex time in Myanmar. This coup in retrospect seemed designated to ensure that the Union of Burma would not be dismantled through minority secession (since U Nu proposed increased autonomy for minority areas). This goal was vital in the pretext that Myanmar society was always a composite of Burmese and other ethnic minority groups. But throughout the 1950s much of the countryside and the ethnic regions were remained under the control of insurgent groups; the relations between the state and society became increasingly dysfunctional. Indeed, a brutal counter insurgency campaign by the ruling administration created a state apparatus that could not guarantee a sense of political equality for all ethnic minority groups. In regard to the Rohingya, the military government undertook a series of policy measures having detrimental effects on them: (i) the way of joining the civil services was made increasingly difficult for the Rohingya; (ii) in the civil service they were harassed by frequent transfers away from their families and other measures; (iii) the Rohingya were made disqualified to join the army; and (iv) the Emergency Immigration Act promulgated in 1974 required all citizens to carry identity cards (National Registration Certificates), but the Rohingya were only offered Foreign Registration Cards (FRCs).
Thus, with an object of beginning as a liberal democratic regime the military transformed into an authoritarian system, which since 1974 has sought to disguise itself as a democracy when the new constitution comes into effect. It is worthy of mention that the previous parliamentary government listed 144 ethnic groups. But, Ne Win government put 135 ethnic groups on a short list. This resulted in the striking out of three Muslim groups of Rohingya, Panthay (Chinese Muslims), Bashu (Malay Muslims) and six other ethnic groups. This was also a direct deviation from the earlier Constitution, because the 1947 constitution kept an option open for the Rohingya to gain citizenship on the basis that either they have a grandparent from an “indigenous race” or liven in British Burma prior to 1942.
In 1982 the CL95 was enacted repealing the Union Citizenship Act, 1948 that allowed people whose families had lived for two generations in Burma to apply for citizenship under section 4(2). Based on this provision, the Rohingya were provided with citizenship. Unlike the 1948 law, the CL was based on jus sanguinis principle. It stratified citizenship into three status groups: Full: nationals such as the Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine or Shan and ethnic groups as have settled in any of the territories included within the State as their permanent home from a period anterior to 1823; Associate: whose application for citizenship under the 1948 Act was pending on the date the Act came into force; and, Naturalized: who could furnish “conclusive evidence” of entry and residence before Burma’s independence on 4 January 1948, who could speak one of the national languages well and whose children were born in Burma. This practically restrained the Rohingya to become a citizen under any of the category. Because, they were not included within the list of 135 “national races” to be an ethnic group nor their application was pending or have any document to satisfy that their forefathers lived there before 1823 (As they are regarded to settle in Myanmar after the first Anglo-Burmese War and subsequent British colonialization in 1824). The result has been a denial of citizenship for the Rohingya effectively rendering them stateless.
Therefore, the Socialist Republic period brought about a prodigious change of the status of the Rohingya—from ethnic minority to the potential of being stateless (in the absence of satisfying the conditions of CL). This, in turn widens the scope of ill-treatment by the majority Burmans and arguably state sponsored violations of human rights of the Rohingya.
The Union of Myanmar (1988-2010)
In 1988, there were a series of prodemocracy demonstrations in Myanmar. Subsequently, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) was formed who seized power in September 1988 and pledged to non-disintegration of the Union and national solidarity. But, the SLORC in its eventual journey had been unable to achieve or countenance effective action in order to remove institutional and socio-political upheaval (necessary to achieve a harmony in such a divided society) across all ethnic and social sectors.
In 1990 although NLD won landslide victory in general election but the result was ignored by the SLORC and continued its own-mapped activities—many of which escalated the sufferings of the Rohingya. For instance, in 1991-1992 some 300,000 Rohingya refugee fled across the border into Bangladesh, claiming that the Military authorities had forced them to leave their homes. Although certain factors were involved: the government’s compulsory resettlement programme with a broader aim of preventing the Muslim population outnumbering Buddhists in certain areas; the SLORC’s concerns about the fact that the Rohingya guerrillas were become more active; and more importantly, a campaign against the Muslims would be popular among the Buddhist population in central Myanmar thus reinforcing its nationalist credentials.
During the Rohingya refugee’s influx in the 1990s, Bangladesh initially provided them with temporary shelters. However, soon the consideration had been that the duration of the refugees’ stay in Bangladesh should be short. In April 1992 Bangladesh took the matter to the Security Council, and the SLORC agreed to take the refugees back on the basis of a Joint Statement signed on April 28, 1992 with Bangladesh.
A careful analysis of the joint statement settled by the SLORC evidenced that the status of the Rohingya had not been specified in any of the stipulations mentioned therein (if they are citizen of Myanmar). In fact, it is argued that such vague stipulations were intentionally kept in order to avoid the acceptance of the Rohingya on the plea that they do not satisfy the conditions of repatriation which is dependent on the proof of Myanmar citizenship. Moreover, over the years, the condition of the Rohingya who managed to repatriate to Myanmar remained dismal. For instance, (i) in 1995, the intensive campaign mounted by the UNCHR to pressure the Burmese government to document the Rohingya resulted in the introduction of a “Temporary Registration Card” (TRC) without any indication of bearer’s place of birth; (ii) in the early 2000s arguably, state-orchestrated attacks on Muslims’ places of worship and schools caused new flight for the Rohingya primarily to Bangladesh and during each of these exoduses, some Rohingya went to other regions; and (iii) in Rakhine state, a two-child policy was introduced in 2005110 solely upon the Rohingya population.
In 2008 the government published a constitution that provides new forms of recognition for certain ethnic groups who continued to be the citizen of Myanmar. However, the provisions of this constitution are obscure in crystallizing who are the ethnic groups. Under this constitution, the status of the Rohingya is unclear too. Regarding gaining citizenship, it has provided with two stipulations: (a) person born of parents “both of whom” are nationals of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and (b) person who is already a citizen according to law on the day this Constitution comes into operation. Satisfying this condition is onerous for the unrecognized ethnic groups including the Rohingya and gaining citizenship is perhaps, impossible.
In 2010 an election was held in Myanmar that restored a degree of representative government, ended the one-party system and elected a new parliament. However, the election neither made it clear to what extent the aspirations of regional and ethnic minority groups might be satisfied through the regional assemblies nor provided any prospective policy or commitment to ensure the protection of the Rohingya as the most vulnerable minority group.
The Myanmar Political Reforms (2011-2015)
Following the parliamentary assemblies in January 2011, the reins of the government were handed over to the “civilianized” government in March 2011. Under the new regime the ongoing conflicts with several ethnic groups remain unresolved, and some have even worsened. In 2012 the number of displaced people in South-east Myanmar was considerably reduced. But it increased dramatically in Rakhine state as a result of communal violence between Buddhists and the Rohingya. Following the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist Rakhine girl hundreds of Rohingya (estimates range between 78 and 650) died and tens of thousands were displaced. This incident eventually triggered a chain of spontaneous reaction directed at the Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims across the country co-ordinated by the Buddhist religious leaders. In order to avoid those predicaments, since 2012, the region’s displaced population, including 140,000 Rohingya, have been kept in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps—supposedly for their own protection, they are not only denied basic freedoms of movement, marriage, reproduction and other aspects of daily life but also blockade on critical aids slowly succumbing them to starvation, disease and despair. It is arguable that the state wants to make things so miserable that 100,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine State by boat, and more than 1000 have died during the journey.
The cause of 2012 incidence lies in several factors. Callahan states:
With deep roots in Myanmar’s political history, Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar has become noticeably more prominent, demanding and popular in recent years. The lifting of military junta controls on free expression and assembly led to populist mobilization of hard-core and deeply felt grievances about Buddhism being under siege from the forces of modernity, globalism and Islam. Myanmar’s rapid uptake of cellular phones enabled proponents of a new and virulent Islamophobia to fill social media with nationalist hate-speech-laden narratives. A wave of anti- Muslim violence swept across the country, beginning in Rakhine State in 2012 then spreading across the country the following year.
The sufferings of the Rohingya were posited to be worse owing to the absence of any policy consideration by the “2011-2015 political reform”. Indeed, those sufferings also testify that the Rohingya constitute a politically and socially persecuted minority. Moreover, there is a close connection between those human rights abuses of the Rohingya and the refugee flows. Because, ensuring protection for the politically and socially persecuted Rohingya—who are nevertheless citizens of Myanmar—could have the potential of not only reducing racial and ethnic tensions but also preventing refugee flows.
The Rohingya Refugee Crisis (2015-Present)
In 2015 U Thein Sein government formally adopted three laws related to race and religion-the Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Act, the Population Control Law and the Religious Conversation Law, which respectively require Buddhist women marrying non-Buddhists to get permission from the authorities, enact population control measures and restrict religious conversations—impliedly targeting the Rohingya. Thus, 2015 became more difficult for the Rohingya and to escape the human rights violations as UNHCR estimated that 25,000 people have been taken to boats from January to March in 2015 by human traffickers who were either abandoned at sea, died or were found in some shallow graves subsequently. Another report of October 2015 revealed an increasing “ghettoization, sporadic massacres, and restrictions on movement” of Rohingya peoples.
The humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya continued in 2016 but the situation became aggravated again in 2017 when in response to the attack of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) of an army base and some police posts the Myanmar army started “clearance operation” and committed wide-scale human rights violations including extra judicial killings, gang rapes, arson—all argued to constitute genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Those again caused nearly 700,000 Rohingya to leave Myanmar who are living in several camps of Bangladesh.
The Rohingya Crisis: A Critical Appraisal of Historical Narratives
The term “Rohingya” is politically charged and historically ingrained. Some Rohingya claim that they are an ethnically distinct group, descendants of the first Muslims who occupied Northern Arakan in the ninth century. Some also add that they are a mix of Bengalis, Persians, Moghuls, Turks and Pathans. They give further evidence of their long settlement in Arakan by stating the fact that the kings of Arakan from 1400 to 1600 took Muslim names.
In Myanmar, their claim to be an ethnic group was first recognized by the U Nu government in the 1950s. But it has been denied by subsequent governments since 1962 who not only repudiated the Rohingya as an ethnic group but also regarded them as Bengalis and recent arrivals. Myanmar historians hold two different notions about the place wherefrom the Rohingya of Arakan came: first, from Chittagong when the British colonial authorities encouraged labour migration during 1891-1931; and second, after the civil war in East Pakistan which led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
During the Japanese occupation, the Rohingya remained loyal to the British and thus were on the opposite side of the pro-independence Rakhine. As a reward for their loyalty, the Rohingya were promised a separate state in northern Rakhine which was not fulfilled. In the wake of World War II communal violence broke out in Arakan. In 1942 thousands of Rakhines and Rohingya died and more fled to India to seek refuge. By 1947 the Rohingya had formed an army and approached President Jinnah of the newly-created Pakistan to ask him to incorporate northern Arakan into East Pakistan (Bangladesh). It was undoubtedly this move that determined the present-day governmental attitude towards the Rohingya: they had threatened Burma’s territorial integrity in the eve of independence and could never be trusted again (except U Nu who accommodated many of the grievances of Burma’s minority through federalist balancing policies and thus the Rohingya were recognized as indigenous race under the Citizenship Act, 1948).
The Rohingya claim that following the 1962 coup a series of measures were undertaken. Those measures had an impact on dissolving their social and political organizations. Owing to the dissolution of those organizations they subsequently became unable to be more united and pursue and protect their socio-political rights as a minority group. This further incited them to leave the country.
In 1977 the government launched a programme called “Nagamin” with an objective to “scrutinize each individual living in the State, designating citizens and foreigners in accordance with the law and taking actions against foreigners who have filtered into the country illegally”. This programme continued for over a decade, almost the whole of Myanmar’s population was registered and provided with identity cards. These cards are colour-coded and divided into four groups: Pink (full citizens); Blue (associate citizens); Green (naturalized citizens); and White (foreigners). The Rohingya held “White Cards” for a long time. They used them to vote in the 2010 general election. But these cards were taken from them before the 2015 election. Following this the Rohingya faced abusive attacks by both the army and local Rakhines.
A year after the “Nagamin” began (in 1978-1979) around 250,000 Rohingya was forcibly pushed into Bangladesh. But this was only the first major push in recent times. The situation was complicated in 1991 by the operations of militarily active Rohingya guerrilla group, the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO). While majority of the ethnic minority areas suffered from state neglect, the Rohingya suffered the most for two reasons: (i) in the pretext of government’s less attention to the Rohingya as a religious minority comparing to many other minority groups, let alone any special consideration necessary to protect their cultural, religious and ethnic differences from the dominant Burmans; and (ii) the lack of integration of the Rohingya into development planning and projects or development being pretext for their domination (this is also complained by the Karen).
In 1988 the military government took the power and then in 1990 the “Multi-Party Democracy General Elections” was held where the Rohingya were allowed to vote. In order to make the election acceptable to the international community, the Rohingya even were allowed to form their own political parties and four Rohingya were subsequently elected as members of Parliament.
Shortly after the election, however, the SLORC announced that the elected representatives would be forming not a parliament but a constituent assembly who would write a new constitution under which new elections would be held. The government’s failure to hand over power provoked demonstrations by monks and students towards the end of 1990. The government needed “a scapegoat, a distraction and common enemy” to unite a disillusioned and angry populace. They chose the Rohingya. In fact, they were so chosen for two major reasons: (i) they were already despicable to the monks; and (ii) a deeply ingrained antagonistic sentiment of the majority Burmans (although no evidence of such sentiment could be found from the lowland Burmans) for the Rohingya could effectively distract the movement from the government to the Rohingya.
The sufferings of the Rohingya increased at the hands of local monks. At the start of 1991 the numbers of army posted to northern Arakan state was dramatically increased. The Rohingya faced summary execution, rape and forced labour at the hands of the military. By March 1992 there were over 270,000 refugees scattered in camps along the Cox’s Bazaar—Teknaf road in Bangladesh. Later on, although the repatriation took place and some Rohingya successfully returned to Myanmar, but their situation had not improved. During the Myanmar Political reforms of 2011-2015 their issue had not taken into account. Therefore, they faced another episode of violence in 2017 and the crisis persist.
It is however noteworthy that the legal status of the Rohingya with the passage of history has also undergone significant change. Those changes brought about by new constitution, constitutional amendment and different laws has not only gradually marginalized them as an ethnic minority but also excluded them from citizenship.
Under the first constitution of Burma, adopted in 1947 the Rohingya were given citizenship status. It allowed “any person” whose families had lived for two generations in Burma to apply for citizenship. Indeed, this constitution under section (iv) conferred citizenship to any person: (a) who was born in any of the territories which at the time of his birth was included within his Britannic Majesty’s dominions; and (b) who has resided in any of the territories included within the Union for a period of not less than eight years in the ten years immediately preceding the 1st January 1942 and elects to reside there permanently according to the Union Citizenship (Election) Act, 1948.
In 1948 a Citizenship Act was promulgated restricting section (iv) to any person “from ancestors who for two generations at least have all made any of the territories included within the Union their permanent home and whose parents and himself were born in any such territories”. On the basis of this many Rohingya registered and were given cards which enabled them to vote during the democratic period between 1950 and 1962. However, after 1962, Rohingya claim that it became increasingly difficult for the children of recognized citizens to receive citizenship. The law required parents to register their children when they reached the age of ten, so that in many families those born before 1952 would have cards, whereas when their younger siblings applied, they simply never received a response. There might be a causal connection of this non-response and the exclusion of the Rohingya in the list of 135 ethnic groups prepared by Ne Win government in 1962.
In 1974, a new constitution was introduced that demarcates Myanmar into seven ethnic minority states (Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen and Mon) and seven predominantly ethnic Burman (Myanmar) divisions (Tenasserim, Rangoon, Irrawaddy, Pegu, Magwe, Mandalay and Sagaing). Critics describe this demarcation and division as a major reason of conflict between the majority and minority, having a direct impact on the Rohingya. Further, this constitution states that to gain Myanmar citizenship one must be either a person who is born of parents both of whom are nationals of Myanmar or who have been vested with citizenship according to existing laws (art 145). The 1974 Constitution did not directly deny citizenship to the Rohingya but removed the provision of the 1947 Constitution that permitted the Rohingya to gain citizenship on the basis that either they had a grandparent from an “indigenous race” or lived in British Burma prior to 1942. These two measures also resulted in denying the Rohingya any specific status collectively as one of the nation’s indigenous ethnic groups. Thus, the effects of the 1974 constitution are subtler than a straight forward taking away of citizenship of a group.
The above provisions made the Rohingya officially stateless and brought about sufferings by the local Buddhists. The military regime also began launching a brutal series of armed campaigns too. Consequently, in 1976 around 200, 000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. The government of Burma claimed that they were all illegal immigrants who fled when they were unable to produce their identification papers during a routine immigration check.
Shortly after the last refugees were forced back to Burma in 1980 (since their number was gradually increasing) the government promulgated a new law called the CL. This law classified citizenship into three status groups and the Rohingya were not eligible to apply for citizenship under any of the status. Both the timing and content of the CL indicate that it was deliberately targeted at the Rohingya. Since the law was made in the wake of the return of the Rohingya and the content of the law were designed in such a way so that they cannot provide legal evidence to gain citizenship status. As a result, the Rohingya became stateless. Furthermore, following this law they easily became the targets of majority Buddhists nationalists. The gross violation of human rights, and arguably genocide and crime against humanity and state sponsored torture were directed against them where the Buddhists nationalists played a major role. The current crisis has become communal in nature in which hateful antagonism exists between the Buddhist and the Rohingya.
However, within the episodic legal instruments having marginalizing impacts on the Rohingya, the latest one is the Constitution of 2008 according to which to be a citizen one has to prove either that he/she was born of parents “both of whom” are nationals of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar or that he/she is already a citizen according to law on the day this Constitution comes into force (art 345). This is a dramatic narrowing down of the grounds on which citizenship could be claimed in comparison to the past constitutions. For example, the Rohingya are now required to prove that either their parents are citizens, or they are already a citizen. However, most Rohingya are not able to meet these requirements as majority parents of the Rohingya do not hold any document to satisfy that they are nationals of the Republic. The far-reaching impact of these changes in the 2008 Constitution became evident on the Rohingya in the Myanmar national election 2015 when the Union Election Commission (UEC) rejected 88 candidates for the election, without giving specific reasons.
The 2008 Constitution and the CL are almost 30 years apart. For citizenship both have emphasized that one needs to prove that they were born to parents who were citizens at the time of birth. However, it is not clear as Archana and Alam raise the question, whether both of them can work together when it comes to proving the status of one’s grandparents or in 2018 does one have to prove that their grandparents were citizens or that their great-grandparents were citizens?
However, in the backdrop of those sufferings and marginalization—which became more prominent in independent Myanmar including their dramatic narrowing down of the legal status and considerable upheaval from the intra-communal violence it is argued that their ordeals are connected to three major historical legacies:
(1) The British policy that eased the Muslims to come to Arakan without any specification about their status there (Arakan). The exchange of populations and enforced internal migration within British India is also relevant. Coletta et al. have described the dramatic consequences of British migration policies:
The indigenous ethnic problems were exacerbated by the British through induced and tolerated immigration. The British encouraged and sometimes subsidized immigration of Indians (meaning all those from the subcontinent) to assist in governance and it staffing some lower and intermediate professional positions and certain occupations. Rangoon became and Indian city, and until World War II the Burma Army was only 13 percent Burman and 37 percent Indian. The reminder of the army consisted of ethnically based regiments from the ‘martial [minority] races’ along the periphery, on the model established by the British in India.
In absence of any specific status the Rohingya were regarded as “Kala” (“foreigner”—specifically one from the west). This later on emerged as anti-Kala xenophobia and the ethnonym of Rohingya got disputed. Their absence of status and a widespread discourse on Buddhism being in danger—that is being under threat from Islam ignited the Buddhists including the monks to fight against the Rohingya. On the 2017 violence, the FFM stated that it resulted from a plan to instigate violence and amplify tensions mainly by radical Buddhist’s organizations who labelled Rohingya as an existential threat that might “swallow other races”. Kingsbury et al noted:
The Rakhine are reacting from a ‘siege mentality’ created by feeling of religious and territorial encroachment by their Muslim neighbours, ‘acute sense of political, cultural, historic, economic, demographic and religious besiegement from … and, more recently, perception that the international community ignore their concerns.
(2) The development of strong nationalist sentiment intertwined with Buddhism in colonial society. Although many authors like Lieberman argued that ethnicity began to form well before the British period. But during the British period it (nationalist sentiment) was horned and later on widely practised in the post-colonial Myanmar (as the decline of an established regime accentuated ethnic divisions, and helped make cultural traits into powerful symbols of political identification) through the resistance of the movement of Rohingya their political participation and restricted religious practice. Moreover, in its current xenophobic form is perhaps a result of nationalist paranoia promoted in the military propaganda for decades under totalitarian rule. Nationalism is thus deeply ingrained not only in the Burman ethnic majority but among ethnic nationalities as well. Such primordial sentiments are easy to use in generating resentment and fear in times of transition and uncertainty and what is seen as Burmanisaton is a danger to ethnic identities.
(3) The British colonial obsession with “nation” and “race”—race having been entangled with nationality. The classification of people on the basis of “race” and “religion” under British rule fostered the idea of monolithic races with an imagined majority race—the “indigenous race” leading and building the nation. The problem is that the colonial rulers imposed their fixed categories on a shifting world and laid the foundations for the later rise of Burmese racial nationalism. Tomkin who investigated the British census practice in Arakan found that Muslim majority groups in Arakan were either recorded as assimilated into the Burmese majority race or as belonging to the Indian race. He summarizes the British racial categories as follows:
The British recognized that the Arakan Muslim community included both ‘old’ settlers from the 15th Century onwards, who were quasi-indigenous, and ‘new’ settlers who arrived during British rule. The former were classified from the 1921 census into an ‘Indo-Burman’ group, thus recognising both their Indian and Burmese heritage (and indeed most of them spoke or used Rakhine Burmese), while the latter were classed among the broader ‘Indian’ Group. By the 1930s the descendants of the ‘new’ outnumbered descendants of the ‘old’ settlers by at least four to one. The ‘old’ settlers included distinct ethnic groups like Heins, Myedu, Zerbaidi and Kamna, while the ‘new’ settlers were ethnic Bengalis mostly from the Chittagong Region.
As Tomkin asserts, the world Rohingya was not to be found in British census records, but why? One explanation could be that the British imposed overlapping categories of Mussulman and Indian obscured Arakanese self-identities which transcend Muslim/Buddhist dichotomy. Indeed, Arakanese Muslims were thought to be racially very similar to Arakanese as noted by Duncan:
There is one more race which has been so long in the country that it may be called indigenous, and that is the Arakanese Mussulman. These are descendants, partly of voluntary immigrants at different periods from the neighbouring province of Chittagong, and partly of captives carried off in the wars between the Burmese and their neighbours. There are some 64,000 of them in Arakan which differ from the Arakanese but little, except in their religion and social customs which their religion directs.
If the Rohingya were similar to the Arakanese there was no need to name them or record them. The traditional colonial classification system was challenged in the 1950s by Leach with his study of the connections between the Kachin and Shan groups. As he put it more than fifty years ago, pre-colonial Burma was a “wide imprecisely defined frontier regions lying between India and China” were
the indigenous political systems which existed prior to the phase of European political expansion were not separated from one another by frontiers in the modern sense and they were not sovereign Nation-States.[…] the political entities in question had interpenetrating political systems, they were not separate countries inhabited by distinct populations.
Against the backdrop of borderless territories and mixed, enmeshed, and fluid identities race and nation appear to be blurred, anachronistic concepts indeed.
In any major political reorientation, there are risks of failure and any addition of such legacies makes the entire situation more volatile to overcome. The Rohingya are closely associated with such legacies—what made the situation more complex and dubious. Therefore, a critical analysis of the history of Myanmar reveals that the Rohingya’s crisis began with the denial of their status as an ethnic minority. As a Muslim minority they had gone through critical moment during the British era following the rise of Burmese nationalism. In the independent Myanmar their sufferings increased following: (i) the absence of any comprehensive minority protection policy; (ii) the dubious and obscure standing of the governments on the Rohingya’s issue; (iii) the social and political marginalization of the Rohingya as a minority group; and (iv) their rendering as stateless or illegal immigrant mainly from Bangladesh.
The Way Forward Towards a Resolution
For decades the Rohingya in Myanmar have been in crisis that, when considered historically, and analysed critically, reveals a bleak conclusion: the Rohingya are gradually being decimated. As an ethnic minority, they have been steadily marginalized, and then excluded from governmental institutions and finally taken away of their citizenship status—who according to the latest law of Myanmar are stateless. The degradation of their status has also come up with some other detrimental consequences including gross violations of human rights-both by the majority Burmans and arguably by the Myanmar state itself. There is no concrete single factor which may be said to be the main reason of the current situation of the Rohingya. There are multi factors involved in it. However, those factors are attributable to the colonial era and in part to Myanmar’s historic socio-political factors.
Two colonial legacies in this connection may be mentioned which led the current ethnic minority crisis including the Rohingya: (i) the legacy of institutional weakness. Simply put, the early socio-political institutions of Burma were replaced by colonial institutions—singularly fragile and unrooted in the local society—leading to fractions rather than harmony in multi-ethnic Myanmar society; and (ii) Burmese ethnic nationalism leading to the political dominance of a Burmese identity that has never allowed the development of a newer identity (for example, the Rohingya) incorporating the diverse peoples inhabiting in the modern state. Indeed, the absence of any state-led policy during that time for the protection of the Rohingya minority had also deepened their sufferings and abuses.
It is undeniable that the independent Myanmar carried some of those legacies. Different laws, polices and governmental decisions made during this time brought a tremendous impact upon their status and consequential sufferings. To be specific, the Rohingya had been recognized as an ethnic group by the U Nu government in the 1950s but it has been denied by the subsequent governments. They had also gradually been marginalized and excluded through the changing of the Constitutions of Myanmar. The first Constitution of 1947 recognized them as citizen then the 1948 citizenship law was promulgated that required some conditions to be fulfilled before they can gain their citizenship status. The 1974 Constitution introduced much stricter condition to prove citizenship. And next the CL was enacted which made the obtaining of the citizenship is onerous on the Rohingya and practically not possible to prove. The latest constitution of 2008 also kept some onerous conditions to be fulfilled before the Rohingya can claim citizenship. Thus, under the domestic legal framework of Myanmar the Rohingya gradually lost their identity and finally became stateless.
The very fact that members of a group are stateless can undermine their exercise of a broad range of human rights. Although in principle most human rights are guaranteed to everyone under the jurisdiction of the State, in practice non-citizens, including stateless persons face obstacles in exercising these rights. The Rohingya are perhaps the best contemporary example in this regard. Under the current state of statelessness, not only their human rights are threatened but also arguably genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are being directed to them.
Conclusion
Myanmar being Asia’s most ethnically diverse states it should perennially have to contend that people are watching to see how the government handles the situation. If the Rohingya become radicalized the entire South Asian region might be destabilized. This juxtaposing narrative is not but with strong reasons. Thus, it is important to contextualize any steps to be undertaken to address the issue.
The first step may be to acknowledge that the existence of the Rohingya in Myanmar is a historical fact. Their status as an ethnic minority needs to be restored and political and social protections of a persecuted ethnic minority, who are nevertheless citizens, be ensured in Myanmar. To date, the problem has tended to be dealt with as a humanitarian issue but the situation requires a holistic political solution. Accordingly, warranting the recognition of their status and granting them citizenship through the amendment of CL and the relevant provisions of the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar would help overcome the crisis. Although legal reform alone would not substantially improve the situation but is nevertheless essential as a norm-setting device. A regional effort may also be effective although an enduring solution requires a well-developed national and regional framework subsumable in international law.