Why Are The Rohingya Muslims Being Persecuted In Myanmar?

There are increasing numbers of eyewitness reports on the atrocities being committed by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people in the southwestern Rakhine State. More than 1,23,000 have already fled into Bangladesh. What is less clear is why these atrocities are being committed against such a small and impoverished people, described for many years as ¡°one of the world¡¯s most persecuted minorities¡±.

The persecution of the Muslim Rohingya, numbering approximately 1 million, dates back to the foundations of Burmese national identity shaped under British colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Reuters

During the Medieval period, the Burmese kingdom was one of the most powerful in Southeast Asia with its kings serving as the head of a strong military and as protector and patron of Buddhist institutions within their domains. Through three wars with the British beginning in 1824, however, the Burmese kingdom was severely weakened, losing much of its territory before finally surrendering to British forces in 1885.

Also read: It's Better To Die In India Than Returning To Myanmar, Say Fearful Rohingya Refugees

This final defeat was a source of great humiliation for the former regional power as the Burmese royal family was exiled to India. This humiliation was made worse by the British colonial policy of favouring minority communities, such as the Rohingya, over the majority Burmese population in the military ranks and local administration. The British Chief Commissioner in Burma in the late 19th century saw the ethnic Burmans as a hostile population and called the recruitment of Burmans into the military a ¡°gross waste of money¡±. The colonial government also imported large numbers of labourers from India. Many Burmans saw these policies as a means of weakening their position in society due to their history of political and economic domination.

Reuters

In response, Burmese nationalism increasingly grew around Burman ethnic identity and the Buddhist religion, pulling from the mythology of its pre-colonial kingdoms. It equally developed in opposition to the many minority religious and ethnic communities seen to work with and prosper from the colonial administration. This movement promoted the idea that the only true Burmese is an ethnic Burman Buddhist. During World War 2, this led the leaders of the Burmese independent movement, such as Aung San Suu Kyi¡¯s father General Aung San, to ally with the Japanese as they sought to remove the yoke of British colonialism. Many minorities including the Rohingya, however, supported and fought alongside British forces, in some cases against their fellow countrymen.

Aso read: Nearly 87,000 Rohingya Refugees Arrive In Bangladesh As Bloodshed Continues In Myanmar

Following independence in 1948 and the military junta coming to power in 1962, many government policies were enacted to remove the remnants of British colonialism and further entrench the definition of citizenship as both Burman and Buddhist. The military government began to target the Rohingya, as non-Burman and non-Buddhist, claiming them to be ¡°illegal Bengali immigrants¡± who had migrated into present-day Myanmar during British colonial rule. They maintained this idea despite evidence placing the Rohingya in the Rakhine (formerly Arakan) region as early as the 1790s barely a decade after the Arakan kingdom had been conquered and annexed into the Burmese kingdom.

Reuters

In 1978, the junta began a military campaign called Operation Naga Min (the King Dragon which is a protector within Buddhist mythology) for the purpose of ¡°cleansing¡± the nation of illegal and unwanted foreign elements. During this operation, the Burmese military implemented a ¡°four cuts¡± strategy against Rohingya civilians: denial of land, food, shelter, and security. This led to the seizure of their lands, destruction of their mosques, arbitrary arrests, attacks against civilians, and widespread rape with the goal of pushing the Rohingya out of the country. Nearly 2,50,000 Rohingya fled across the Naf River into Bangladesh.

The passage of the 1982 Citizenship Law officially denied the Rohingya citizenship and no longer recognized them as one of the 135 indigenous ethnicities of Myanmar.

The new law required citizens to prove their ancestral lineage in Myanmar back to at least 1823, the year prior to the first Anglo-Burmese War. As a result of this law, the Rohingya lost even the most basic of rights, such as the freedom to travel, get married, have children, and repair their houses of worship. Following this, the government, as it still does to this day, would not even recognize the existence of a Rohingya ethnic group, even banning the use of the word.

Reuters

In 1991, following the failed attempt at democratization after the 8888 Uprising that led to Aung San Suu Kyi¡¯s house arrest, the military government again embarked on a military campaign against the Rohingya. Operation Pyi Thaya (Clean and Beautiful Nation) employed the same strategies as before in order to drive the Rohingya from their homes, with 200,000 again fleeing across the border. Hundreds of thousands of stateless and desperate Rohingya still live in makeshift camps in Bangladesh and other nations in the region.

Also read: Rohingya Muslims Are Living Safely In India, Until Court Decides On Govt's Move To Deport Them

While the election of Aung San Suu Kyi¡¯s National League for Democracy in 2015 brought a change in political regime, it did little to alter the idea of national identity with a number of former high-ranking generals holding many of the key leadership positions in the ruling party. There was, therefore, little change in the status of the Rohingya and a continuation of the same policies of the military junta. This situation is made worse by the entrenched interests of the Burmese military who still control 25% of the legislature, blocking any major legal or political reforms such as the drafting of a new constitution.

Reuters

Despite the early optimism surrounding the democratization of this historically closed nation, Aung San Suu Kyi and her political party have demonstrated their unwillingness to address the historic persecution against the Rohingya and protect them from both local communal violence and the ongoing military operations in Rakhine.

To date, Aung San Suu Kyi¡¯s only comment about the current situation is that it is a ¡°huge iceberg of misinformation¡± with ¡°fake news¡± being spread to promote the ¡°interests of terrorists¡±, with the government continuing to deny access for reporters and aid workers to the region.

The resiliency of these attitudes against the Rohingya among the Burmese political elite underlines the need for international pressure from governments, major corporations, and other international institutions as the only means to halt these atrocities. Without this international pressure, it is difficult to know when the violence against the Rohingya will end in this ever-worsening situation. But a brief glimpse into the background of the Rohingya shows that the current atrocities are not anything new within Myanmar but history repeated.

Harrison Akins is a graduate research fellow at the University of Tennessee¡¯s Baker Center for Public Policy.