{"id":43953,"date":"2014-06-30T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=43953"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:33:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:33:44","slug":"the-ethnic-cleansing-going-on-right-now-you-probably-havent-heard-about-burma-aka-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/06\/the-ethnic-cleansing-going-on-right-now-you-probably-havent-heard-about-burma-aka-myanmar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ethnic Cleansing Going On Right Now You Probably Haven’t Heard About: Burma, aka Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled their homes, their leaders tortured and killed. Is this what democracy in Burma was supposed to look like?<\/em><\/p>\n

Two years ago, I stood in searing heat along a dusty rural road in Burma, lined for miles with local people waiting with hope and jubilation for history to be made: Aung San Suu Kyi\u2014daughter of an assassinated Burmese independence hero, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and leader of the democratic opposition\u2014would ride by on her way to cast a vote. In the first legitimate elections since a military junta took power in 1962, she won a seat in parliament.<\/p>\n

By March of this year, in an indication of how sharply divided people have become here in western Burma, where Buddhist Southeast Asia blends into Muslim South Asia, opinion of Suu Kyi had shifted dramatically. Near the town of Thandwe, in the state of Rakhine, a young waiter showed me on his phone a doctored photo of Suu Kyi, a worldwide icon of popular struggle and democracy. She was in the arms of a caricatured, stereotypical \u201cMuslim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone used to love Aung San Suu Kyi,\u201d the waiter, Naing Htoo, said. \u201cNow everyone hates her. She married a Muslim,\u201d he added, erroneously.<\/p>\n

The abrupt turn has occurred since the spread of a virulent ethnic nationalism, a dangerous sequence of events that has led to the displacement of an estimated 200,000 of Burma\u2019s Muslim minority\u2014called Rohingya\u2014many of whom now live in ragged camps near the border with neighboring Bangladesh. At least 192 and perhaps as many as 1,000 were killed in 2012, and 1,345 more have since died trying to flee the country, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, and earlier this month it announced that the exodus of Rohingya fleeing violence and persecution continues, with 15,000 having left in the first four months of 2014. Rohingya refugees have been sold into sex slavery, Reuters reported<\/a> last year; others are reportedly<\/a> being used as drug mules. In April, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights Tomas Ojea Quintana stated<\/a> that the \u201clong history of discrimination and persecution against\u201d the Rohingya Muslim community \u201ccould amount to crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burma today is supposedly undergoing a transition to democracy. Though President Thein Sein\u2019s shift consisted largely of just a veneer of political liberalization, it\u2019s been followed by a wave of investment from U.S. and European companies, effectively funding and supporting Thein Sein\u2019s government while it has sat idly and even abetted a nightmare of religious and racial persecution for at least one of the country\u2019s many minority groups.<\/p>\n

President Obama on May 15 announced the continuation of economic sanctions against Burma. The West had been busy dismantling punitive measures against the junta, but while Obama credited Thein Sein with taking the country \u201cdown a path of both political and economic reform,\u201d he also noted, \u201cThe political opening remains nascent, and concerns persist regarding ongoing conflict and human rights abuses in ethnic minority areas, particularly in Rakhine State, and the continued role of the military in the country’s political and economic activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trouble in Rakhine started a little more than a month after I watched Suu Kyi being greeted by adulation. A 27-year-old Buddhist named Thida Htwe was allegedly raped and murdered in Rakhine. The rape was purportedly committed by a group of young Rohingya. Burma is majority Buddhist; Rakhine State borders Bangladesh, a Muslim nation. The accusation that Muslims had defiled and killed a Buddhist woman brought to the fore a centuries-old resentment of Burma\u2019s Muslim community, unearthing accusations that the Rohingya were illegitimate Burmese and responsible for a host of the country\u2019s problems. Mobs largely composed of Rakhine\u2019s Buddhists burned, looted, and attacked communities of Muslim Rohingya.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to go to their village and us to theirs,\u201d says Rohingya Jamal Hussein, 55, a farmer. \u201cAfter the 2012 riots we felt that if we left the house, we would be killed; when we went to the market we used to get called \u2018kalar.\u2019 \u201d The term is the Burmese version of the n-word.<\/p>\n

As the 2012 violence spread, thousands of Rohingya fled by sea, washing up on beaches in Thailand and beyond. Around 80,000 are thought to have fled in 2012. The violence has continued sporadically ever since.<\/p>\n

Zahida, 25, says she came to Bangladesh a year and a half ago, after Buddhist mobs killed her husband, father, and brother.<\/p>\n

Rakhine Buddhists \u201cburned our village,\u201d she told me in the town of Cox\u2019s Bazar, Bangladesh, near the Burma border. \u201cPeople came and tried to confiscate our property, like our cows. When we refused, they came in a mob and tried to grab the Rohingya women; some were raped.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says her husband fought back and killed one of the attackers. A few nights later, she told me, \u201cmilitary and [others] came to my house and called to my husband. My husband woke up and went out of the house, and they told him, \u2018You have to come with us for a walk,\u2019 so he went with them. After a few days I heard my husband was killed by them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though unverifiable, Zahida\u2019s account is consistent with a Human Rights Watch report<\/a> describing mob attacks and a government vehicle dumping 18 \u201cnaked and half-clothed\u201d bodies at the entrance of a displaced persons camp, \u201csending a message consistent with a policy of ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zahida\u2019s grief is still raw, a year and a half later, as she describes how three of her male relatives were killed in separate incidents. The death of her brother seems particularly affecting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a religious teacher,\u201d she says. \u201cThe government came to his house and said, \u2018You went to spread your religion.\u2019 It was the military border guards.\u201d Zahida cradles her five-year-old son as she wells up with grief.<\/p>\n

A few days later, she continues, \u201canother religious teacher was called by the border guards and asked if he wanted [her brother\u2019s] body. They said, \u2018We have killed him. If you want his body, you can have it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

When the corpse arrived, Zahida says, she saw that her brother\u2019s arms, legs, tongue, and penis had been cut off. She says her grandfather was killed in a similar manner.<\/p>\n

Farmer Jamal Hussein, 55, tells a similar story. \u201cJust over a year ago Rakhine people came and attacked the Rohingya people,\u201d he told me. The local Rohingya community had recently protested an attack on a religious group en route to a nearby town. \u201cIt was a Friday evening. Both my sons were killed by the Rakhines; that\u2019s why I came to Bangladesh,\u201d he continues. On their way to the market one day, witnesses told him, Rakhines stabbed his sons, Karim, 15, and Nurul Islam, 20, to death.<\/p>\n

VIDEO: NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s report from Burma<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rohingya camps like the one where Zahida and Jamal live are on both sides of the border. None offers much in the way of aid. The Burmese camps are largely cut off from the rest of the country, creating a dire shortage of basic food and medical supplies, according to NGOs and press reports. NGOs providing assistance were recently hounded out by Rakhine mobs after a rumor circulated of an NGO member desecrating a Buddhist prayer flag. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kyung-wha Kang called the conditions in the camps \u201cappalling,\u201d with \u201cwholly inadequate access to basic services including health, education, water and sanitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conditions for the Rohingya today may be even worse than when the U.S. Embassy described<\/a> the region as a \u201cvast internment camp\u201d six years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military has effectively sealed the Rohingyas off from the world and keeps them at the bare subsistence level\u2014it is an internment camp,\u201d the embassy reported in cables released by WikiLeaks. \u201cInfant mortality [was] four times the national average; 64 percent of children under five are chronically malnourished and stunted growth is common. Teachers are scarce, with one for every 79 students vs. the 1:40 national average.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the high levels of infant mortality, the government has committed to a two-child policy\u2014but only for Rohingya.<\/p>\n

\"Rohingya<\/a>

Rohingya families crowd a tented camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, Myanmar. (Photo: Paula Bronstein\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Buddhist zealots contend that the Rohingya are a legacy of colonial British rule in the 19th century and not truly Burmese. Yet Michael Charney, member of the academic staff at University of London\u2019s SOAS South Asia Institute, writes<\/a> that Muslims have been in the Rakhine region since \u201cat least the ninth century.\u201d Early Muslim residents were likely transient, but in the late 16th and early 17th centuries Portuguese slave traders brought Bengali Muslim captives to Rakhine, then an independent kingdom. These formed the first settled, agrarian Muslim communities.<\/p>\n

The scapegoating of Muslims came later, when a different South Asian group did arrive with the British; many became successful moneylenders. During the Great Depression, notes Professor Sean Turnell of Macquarie University in Sydney, ownership by this group of agricultural land in the region soared as bankrupt farmers forfeited the collateral they had used to gain financing from the late arrivals from India, known as Chettiar. Thus those of South Asian origin became lumped in together and were \u201ceasy scapegoats not just for the current economic distress but the foreign domination of Burma\u2019s economy,\u201d writes Turnell.<\/p>\n

Burma\u2019s first leader during the transition to independence after World War II was a young, hard-nosed idealist and the father of the country\u2019s current democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San \u201csaid that Muslims and Buddhists were no different,\u201d recalls Mohamed Idris, 60, sheltering from the sun in his new home in the Bangladeshi fishing village of Shamlapur. \u201cHe looked at all people with one eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political rivals assassinated Aung San in 1947. By the time of the dictatorship of Ne Win in 1962, despite his having been a colleague and a \u201ccomrade\u201d of Aung San\u2019s, the government took a radically different approach. Ardent nationalist identity politics and the draconian isolation that the country is only now beginning to emerge from took hold, and soon there were pogroms against different ethnicities. Allegations that the dictator was stoking them were both widespread and credible.<\/p>\n

In 1982 Rohingya were excluded from citizenship, making every day survival difficult, as they were denied basics such as freedom of movement and education. Periodically, the military would persecute Rohingya in organized campaigns. The first major instance, in 1978, was called Operation Dragon King; Rohingya were targeted with extreme brutality, and around a quarter of a million fled to Bangladesh. One refugee I met in 2011 described the purge: She claimed military personnel butchered her eight-month-old son before her eyes.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s government in Burma, which started calling itself Myanmar in 1989, traces its ideological lineage to Ne Win. In 2010, it declared itself the winner of an election it had rigged. Suu Kyi was allowed to take part in a 2012 by-election, in which only a small fraction of the seats were contested. Parliament remains stocked with former military personnel.<\/p>\n

This spring, the government attempted a long-overdue census. Because it has been 60 years since the last accurate count, little demographic data on the country exists. Many Rohingya hoped that the chance to be counted would help assure their place in their home.<\/p>\n

Days before the census was to be conducted, though, the government announced that the word \u201cRohingya\u201d would not be allowed on the census forms, and that those identifying as such would only be allowed to call themselves \u201cBengali\u201d\u2014the term for residents of the region of Bengal, comprising Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. The U.N. agency helping with the count said this contradicted its agreement with the government, and it told The Guardian<\/a><\/em> that government census takers declined to count anyone who identified as Rohingya. Idris told me, \u201cThe women of the village were united in saying, \u2018Even if they kill us, we have to say we are Rohingya. If we say \u2018Bengali,\u2019 they will remove us from [Rakhine] forever.\u201d Idris fled the country shortly after the census, like thousands of other Rohingya, for Bangladesh. \u201cIn our village there are no younger boys or men,\u201d Idris said. \u201cAll men and boys have been arrested, killed, or fled. Some women have left, but most have stayed. At night, [Buddhists] come to our village and attack any ladies they see to rape them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Rakhine town of Thandwe, signs promoting a monk who claims<\/a> that \u201c100 percent of rape cases in Burma are by Muslims; none are by Buddhists\u201d have been erected in front of government buildings. Nearby, an advertisement for a local political party promotes what it calls the \u201cArian group.\u201d The implications and reference are fairly obvious: exclusive race and religion in an exclusive nation.<\/p>\n

A leading member of the government commission formed to look into the 2012 violence broke ranks recently, writing a revealing passage in a U.S. legal journal that accused the government of fomenting anti-Muslim riots as a means of diverting Buddhist monks\u2019 anger at the government\u2019s incompetence. If true, it seems the Burmese junta is the latest regime that, when it finds itself hobbled, becomes desperate to prove otherwise, lashing out with violence. History is littered with national leaders too weak to govern but still capable of brutalizing.<\/p>\n

The democratic opposition has withered in the face of this challenge of populist, xenophobic nationalism, on the whole maintaining an uneasy silence on the issue. Meanwhile, propaganda like that which was so effective on the likes of waiter Naing Htoo has acquired official validation: The wife of the minister who issued the ban on \u201cRohingya\u201d in the census shared on her Facebook page a doctored photo<\/a> of Suu Kyi in a hijab. Her husband later posted an apology to his own page, but the damage was done\u2014the face of democratic change in Burma has effectively been linked with the maligned Muslim minority.<\/p>\n

If Suu Kyi were to voice serious concern over the persecution, she would undoubtedly bolster the impression, long propagated by the government, that she is a \u201cforeigner.\u201d (She spent much of her youth in semi-exile abroad, where she married a British citizen.) For observers such as the chief foreign correspondent of London\u2019s Daily Telegraph<\/em>, David Blair, Suu Kyi\u2019s silence or ambiguity has been \u201cchilling<\/a>\u201d\u2014and surprising, given her prior principled talk of freedom and human rights, let alone her Nobel. Her response to criticism so far has been that she was always just the \u201cleader of a political party,\u201d as she told the BBC.<\/p>\n

This leaves the Rohingya one of the most vulnerable communities in the world, giving Burma the dubious crown of being home to the largest population of stateless people<\/a>. Groups such as Human Rights Watch are continuing to draw attention to the plight of the Rohingya, and awareness of the ethnic cleansing at least enabled\u2014and, according to eyewitnesses I spoke to, committed\u2014by the government of Burma is on the rise since the Human Rights Watch report released in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can people be treated in such a way\u2014hunted down, homes torched, beaten and killed\u2014in the name of a warped sense of nationalism?\u201d asked Desmond Tutu, antiapartheid activist and himself a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Do the perpetrators not know that we are from the same human family?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer may be that ultranationalist rule requires a foreign enemy. To beat Suu Kyi, Burma\u2019s quasi-military rulers need xenophobia, and the Rohingya are their chosen scapegoat.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Joseph Allchin is a journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, who writes regularly for the <\/em>Financial Times. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 takepart.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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