The “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, explained (Kan 2024)
Til tross for dannelsen i 2016 av en ny demokratisk valgt regjering i Myanmar (Burma) ledet av Nobels fredsprisvinner Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy, forble situasjonen uhyggelig for landets forfulgte muslimske minoritet, kjent som Rohingya. Som en indikasjon på sin forpliktelse til å finne en løsning på problemene, utnevnte regjeringen i august 2016 tidligere FNs generalsekretær Kofi Annan til å lede en rådgivende kommisjon for å foreta vurderinger og gi anbefalinger.
Hvem er Rohingya?
Begrepet Rohingya ble ofte brukt, spesielt i internasjonale medier, for å referere til et samfunn av muslimer som generelt var konsentrert i to nordlige townships i Myanmars Rakhine (Arakan) delstat, selv om de også kunne bli bosatt i andre deler av staten og landet så vel som i flyktningleire i Bangladesh. Det ble anslått at Rohingya utgjorde omtrent en tredel av befolkningen i Rakhine-staten, og Rakhine-buddhistene utgjorde en betydelig andel av de resterende to tredjedeler.
Bruken av begrepet Rohingya var sterkt omstridt i Myanmar. De politiske lederne fra Rohingya har hevdet at deres er et utpreget etnisk, kulturelt og språklig samfunn som sporer stamtavlen så langt tilbake som på slutten av 700-tallet. Imidlertid avviste den bredere buddhistiske befolkningen generelt Rohingya-terminologien, idet de i stedet omtalte dem som Bengali, og anså samfunnet for en stor del å være sammensatt av illegale innvandrere fra dagens Bangladesh. Under folketellingen 2014 - den første som ble utført på 30 år - tok Myanmar-regjeringen en beslutning på 11 timer om ikke å oppregne de som ønsket å identifisere seg som Rohingya, og ville bare telle de som godtok den bengaliske klassifiseringen. Flyttingen var som svar på en truet boikott av folketellingen av Rakhine Buddhists.I prosessen reegjerte regjeringen sin tidligere forpliktelse om å følge internasjonale folketellingsstandarder.
As with the rest of Myanmar’s postindependence borderlands that were historically multiethnic and politically fluid, Rakhine state had also suffered from decades of centre-periphery imbalances. On the one hand, Buddhist Rakhines had long felt oppressed by the Burmans, the country’s largest ethnic group, and on the other hand, they perceived the Muslim population to be a palpable threat to their cultural identity. Within the Myanmar context, race and ethnicity were rigid constructs that determined legal, political, and social relations. The debate surrounding the Rohingya terminology had, as such, paralyzed meaningful government recognition of the predicament of the Rohingya community.
Statelessness.
Almost all Rohingya in Myanmar were stateless. They were unable to obtain “citizenship by birth” in Myanmar because the 1982 Citizenship Law did not include the Rohingya on the list of 135 recognized national ethnic groups. The law had historically been arbitrarily applied in relation to those, such as the Rohingya, who did not fall strictly within the list of recognized ethnic nationalities. The legal status of a large majority of Rohingya was rendered even more precarious when Pres. Thein Sein unexpectedly announced in February 2015 the expiry of “white cards,” a form of temporary identity documentation held by many within the Rohingya community.
Intercommunal Violence and Displacement.
Two waves of intercommunal violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state in June and October 2012 led to the displacement of approximately 140,000 people—the large majority of whom were Rohingya—to camps around the state capital (Sittwe) and surrounding townships. According to government figures, the conflicts resulted in 192 deaths, 265 injuries, and the destruction of 8,614 homes, with the impact disproportionately borne by Muslim communities. Human Rights Watch, as well as other nongovernmental organizations, claimed that the October 2012 violence was a coordinated campaign targeting the Rohingya.
Legislative Restrictions.
Following the 2012 violence, other developments, including a series of proposed legislative measures (some of which were passed by Myanmar’s parliament), resulted in further restrictions on the limited rights of the Rohingya. Although those developments had a nationwide application, they were understood to affect mostly the Rohingya community.
In September 2014 an amendment to the 2010 Political Parties Registration Law came into force; the legislation effectively disallowed the Rohingya to form and be members of political parties. Less than six months later, the Constitutional Tribunal delivered an opinion that prevented noncitizens from voting in any national referendum. The legal implication of the decision, formalized in June 2015 with amendments to the election laws, was that Rohingya, who were considered noncitizens, would not be allowed to vote in the 2015 general elections, even if they had cast their ballots during the 1960, 1990, and 2010 elections. The development also represented a final and absolute curtailment of the political rights of the Rohingya.
In November 2014 a package of draft laws popularly termed “laws on safeguarding race and religion” was submitted in the parliament for debate. The bills, which were initially proposed in 2013, were to an extent premised on anxieties over Myanmar’s being surrounded by highly populated countries, a factor that was believed to potentially affect the country’s demographics; on fears that Buddhist women were being coerced or tricked into marriages by and with non-Buddhist men; and on stereotypical views that Muslim families were polygamous and that consequently many children were being born. The bills were conceived as a necessary measure to protect Buddhist women and to address the perceived high population growth rate in Rakhine state.
Between May and July 2015, two of the four bills that permitted the state to regulate birth spacing and family planning, as well as to police the practice of religion within multireligious families, were passed by the parliament. The Population Control Healthcare Bill, which was aimed at Muslim women, could potentially be used to force women to space their births at least three years apart.
