As a Mandalay-born dissident with deep roots in Buddhism, I find it revolting that thousands of Buddhist monks, human rights dissidents and the public in my hometown of Mandalay staged an anti-Rohingya rally this past weekend [2 Sep 2012].<\/p>\n
They mimicked the regime\u2019s discourse that promotes \u201cnational security\u201d and \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d, while espousing an anachronistic view of blood-based citizenship as opposed to the notions of multicultural citizenship.<\/p>\n
Where has the vociferous human rights rhetoric gone when it comes to the persecuted Rohingyas?<\/p>\n
We listened in vain for the metronomic chants of the saffron-robed monks who defied threats and flooded the streets of Rangoon and other towns proclaiming their \u201cloving kindness\u201d for all sentient beings in 2007. \u00a0 Now the very same monks chant mantras supporting exclusive citizenship. When a mob protests against an ethnic group then, it is no longer a citizens\u2019 protest. \u00a0It is a Nazi rally.<\/p>\n
Around the world supporters of democracy in Burma have been shocked by the \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d of the Muslim Rohingyas in the impoverished settlements of western Arakan (Rakhine) state. These are the latest killing fields in a troubled land. Both perpetrators and victims tell of hundreds of Rohingyas, including women and children, being killed, raped, assaulted, detained and driven out by Burmese security forces.<\/p>\n
In a typical self-serving reaction, President Thein Sein characterized the events in June as \u201ccommunal violence.\u201d By focusing exclusively on tensions between the Rohingyas and ethnic Arakanese Buddhists, the government is deliberately trying to conceal the role its own security forces played in the violence.<\/p>\n
But the findings of a damning new Human Rights Watch report reveal a different picture. The language is unambiguous: \u201cBurmese security forces committed killings, rape, and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to protect both them and Arakan Buddhists,\u201d states the report.<\/p>\n
Of course, this doesn\u2019t sit well with the Burmese regime\u2019s new \u201creformist\u201d image. Moving quickly to quell the international furore, a presidential adviser claimed that the government responded to the violence as quickly as it could. Human Rights Watch speaks of a different reality \u2014 of government restrictions on humanitarian access to the Rohingya community that have left \u201cmany of the more than 100,000 people displaced and in dire need of food, shelter, and medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make a bad situation worse, the authorities in neighboring Bangladesh have now told international humanitarian agencies to stop providing aid to Rohingya refugees who fled Burma. It is precisely these provisions of emergency food and medicine that local Arakanese Buddhists are violently opposed to. As far as Arakanese extremists are concerned, \u201cthese animals must not be fed or allowed to exist on Burmese soil.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the government tries to shed its pariah status, the violence meted out to the vulnerable, stateless Rohingyas \u2014 and the populist, racist venom it has unleashed \u2014 should give pause to the rest of the world as to the true nature of the Burmese regime. Underneath the trope of \u201cdemocratic reform\u201d lie some unpalatable truths. Not content with reserved military powers in government, parliament, and national budgets and untrammelled executive control of national security, the regime has mobilized the full arsenal of a self-serving repressive junta to deny ethnic minority communities not just their rights to self-determination but also to their fundamental humanity. Fascism and militarism are the enduring handmaidens of this \u201cnew era\u201d of politics.<\/p>\n
So what does the ongoing violence against the Rohingyas tell us about the nature of political power and the men who still rule the country?<\/p>\n
And, in turn, what does it herald for the prospects for real change, the rule of law, the expansion and consolidation of human rights, and the quality of public life?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no denying that ethnic and political cleavages have deep roots in our turbulent history. But it is equally true that the current resurgence of racism \u2014 both official and popular \u2014 is a direct result of a half-century of despotic military rule.<\/p>\n
The regime\u2019s iron fist policies and its systematic rule by terror are now well enough known, even though there is already selective amnesia about the recent past. Equally important has been the careful construction of an iron cage \u2014 a monolithic constellation of values, an ethos \u2014 that locks in and naturalises a singular view of what constitutes Burma\u2019s \u201cnational\u201d culture. For Burmese society as a whole remains illiberal and potently ethno-nationalist.<\/p>\n
Deeply troubling is how popular, everyday forms of racism and the state\u2019s fascism seem to be mutually reinforcing. This serves the generals\u2019 interest very well. They have fully grasped the atavistic fears and instincts that drive great fault lines into the heart of society and politics. The dominant Burmese worldview continues to rest on an enervating combination of pre-colonial feudalism, religious mysticism, belief in racial purity and statist militarism. This is a potent and poisonous combination.<\/p>\n
The military rulers have effectively preyed on this ethno-religious conservatism of the public at large, most specifically in times of political and legitimation crises. And the same appears true today even as they are praised for their cautious \u201copening up\u201d of the country.<\/p>\n
A full quarter of a century since Aung San Suu Kyi called for the \u201crevolution of the spirit,\u201d nothing spiritually progressive has taken root in the popular Burmese psyche. Sadly, this is the case even among many of the country\u2019s noble dissidents. Burmese human rights defenders who spent half their lives in military jails, mantra-reciting Buddhist monks and the Burmese Buddhist diaspora all sing from the same song sheet on issues of race and minority rights.<\/p>\n
Ironically, ethno-religious mobilization offers the military junta and its allies the chance to refashion themselves as the \u201cdefenders of the faith\u201d and \u201cprotectors of Buddhist communities\u201d\u2014 at least in the eyes of most Buddhists.<\/p>\n
Never mind that these ex-generals were part of the very ruling clique who, during the saffron revolt, slaughtered hundreds of Buddhist monks and raided thousands of monasteries across the country in military-style operations only five years ago. Ethnic minorities continue to be the age-old enemy within. As always the justification for their repression is couched in the jailer\u2019s language of ethno-cultural chauvinism and national security.<\/p>\n
Of course, Buddhist privilege and embedded ethnic chauvinism bears little semblance to the country\u2019s historical reality. Like most modern nation states, Burma has always been multiethnic and multicultural over the course of the past millennium.<\/p>\n
Lying along trade routes between the great Indian and Chinese civilizations, the country has attracted a steady flow of settlers throughout its history. Even our predominant belief system, Buddhism, was a settler religion, which arrived on our soil centuries ago. Our pre-colonial feudal courts, farming communities, merchant classes, cultural teachers and scholars have always come from many different cultural and ethnic groups, both indigenous and foreign.<\/p>\n
There are pockets of Burmese citizens, of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds, who fully appreciate our cultural, religious and ethnic diversity and consider it a great strength. But the voices \u2014 both inside Burma and in the diaspora \u2014 calling for genuine ethnic peace and reconciliation are currently being drowned out by the loud chorus of ethnic fanaticism.<\/p>\n
It is no surprise, of course, that this reactionary refrain is constantly articulated in state media and the presidential office in Naypyidaw. But it is equally pervasive in the Burmese and English language social media where the language of hatred has even fewer constraints.<\/p>\n
These are troubling times. Despite the rush to embrace the \u201creform\u201d process and the optimism surrounding a \u201cnew era\u201d of politics, the deepening of sectarian strife is a very real possibility. The drumbeat of everyday forms of populist racism and the state\u2019s carefully calibrated ideology of closeted fascism is becoming louder and louder. The direction in which the country is currently heading remains both uncertain and disquieting.<\/p>\n
The time is opportune for progressive voices to speak out. Beyond the unequivocal denunciation of all forms of racism, chauvinism and violence that targets Burma\u2019s minorities, far-reaching solutions are urgently needed. In part, this will entail the creation of civic educational initiatives that will help people unlearn their default acceptance of all forms of racism. Beyond this, peace and reconciliation talks with all ethnic minority groups must be put in motion. These must tackle longstanding grievances such as the crushing of legitimate claims to political autonomy, the territorial distribution of power, and people-centered socioeconomic development.<\/p>\n
In other words, there is a need for developing a new \u201cbig tent\u201d model of democratic politics \u2014beyond the understandable focus on institutional and electoral reform \u2014 in order to create a genuinely multicultural democracy.<\/p>\n
Burmese people have survived several historical periods of oppression and depredation. Burmese society will outlive the half-century of tin pot dictatorship. We need not fear national disintegration as the result of cultural and ethnic diversity. The only thing we, as citizens, ought to fear is presence of racism and intolerance in our society, deliberately modulated and whipped up by an unreformable state. Only a society that reimagines itself as an inclusive, multicultural democracy\u2014in which diversity is celebrated as a strength \u2014 can escape the iron cage of oppression.<\/p>\n
________________________<\/p>\n
Dr. Maung Zarni is <\/em>member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n