THE partial liberalisation of Myanmar towards an open market economy has caused a sad paradox by the unleashing of anti-Muslim chauvinism within its Buddhist majority. Recently, many of the Rohingya people have been denied both full Myanmar citizenship and, most recently, the right to vote. The Naypyidaw government will only allow Rohingyas who can prove that their families have lived in Myanmar for 60 years or more to become naturalised citizens, while those who cannot will face deportation.
The “resettlement” plan put into practice by the Myanmar government originates from the notion that the Rohingyas are virtually all immigrants from Bangladesh who settled in Rakhine (Arakan). But according to the Rohingya version, they are the descendants of Muslims who came to this part of Myanmar a very long time ago.
In 2012, the Rakhine state riots resulted in hundreds of Rohingyas being killed after a clash with the Rakhine Buddhists. The latter claimed that they would soon become a minority in their own ancestral state. This propelled the beginning of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. To date, thousands of Rohingyas have been killed and the genocide continues, leaving the Rohingya people no choice but to flee from their own country.
Currently, more than 1.3 million Rohingyas are regarded as stateless. In December 2014, a UN General Assembly resolution urged Myanmar to grant citizenship to its Rohingya residents, but Myanmar has refused to relent. For Rohingyas, the accumulation of setbacks has taken a toll, including the tightening of fishing permits, which has hit them economically and nutritionally.
Facing persecution for their religious beliefs at home in Myanmar, as many as 20,000 Rohingyas have set out to sea over the past months. Unworthy boats filled with more than 2,000 desperate and hungry refugees have arrived in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in recent weeks.
Thousand more migrants are believed to be adrift at sea in overcrowded conditions with lack of food after a crackdown on human traffickers prompted captains and smugglers to abandon their boats. As many as 200 people have died during the journey.
The UN calls the Rohingyas one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. The Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian governments are under pressure to do their humanitarian duty towards the migrants stranded in the sea and have agreed to temporarily shelter them until they can be resettled elsewhere. However, these governments are also right to say that they cannot be expected to bear the burden alone.
The White House’s silence on the issue is exacerbated by the deafening silence of one of Myanmar’s most famous faces. Nobel Prize winner and opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi has kept mum about the issue of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. The calls for her to get involved are increasing.
Controversially Suu Kyi has made claims that, “This is not ethnic cleansing ... Muslims have been targeted, but Buddhists have also been subjected to violence”.
In 2012, Suu Kyi created controversy following an interview in which she said that she did not know if ethnic Rohingyas can be recognised as Myanmar nationals.
Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San, a beloved Burmese nationalist had secured Myanmar’s independence from the United Kingdom before being assassinated in 1947. During the student protests of 1988, most of her supporters were Rohingyas because they believed in her struggle despite the fact that her father ordered the murder of nearly 100,000 Rohingyas and the burning of 300 houses when he was the country’s leader.
Although tens of thousands of Rohingyas have fled Myanmar over the last several years, with most going to Malaysia or Bangladesh, the exodus over the last few weeks seemed to have caught the world by surprise. Many of the migrants are believed to have been abandoned by their traffickers with little food or water.
The fact that so many are at sea at once, however, may be in part an unintended consequence of the Thai crackdown on human trafficking. After the discovery of a mass grave on May 1, believed to contain the bodies of 33 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, officials raided several smuggling camps in southern Thailand and charged dozens of police officers and senior officials with being complicit in the trade. The discovery also brought increased international attention to the issue.
As 6,000 to 20,000 migrants are at sea, regional governments are pointing fingers at one another and declining to take responsibility themselves.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) could only urge regional governments to act urgently to help those stranded at sea.
Thailand has organised its May 29 regional meeting with officials from 15 countries to discuss the “root causes” of “irregular migration in the Indian Ocean”. The one-day meeting in Bangkok is expected to include officials from Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Australia and the US.
However, Myanmar has refused to shoulder the blame for an escalating migrant crisis while casting doubts on whether it will attend the meeting to be hosted by Thailand.
Although many agree that the core of the problem is “the treatment of the Rohingya people by the Myanmar government”, Naypyidaw directly blames Thailand for the current crisis. Myanmar accused that the root cause of the problem is increasing human trafficking and the weak rule of law in Thailand with the migrant graves as a “specific non-Myanmar problem”.
Malaysia has done its part by hosting more than 45,000 Rohingyas over the years. However, Putrajaya has also agreed to take the “necessary action” to deal with the humanitarian crisis and promised action against human traffickers.
The plight of the Muslim Rohingya refugees is atrocious, and must be alleviated immediately. The problem is bound to worsen if the contested status of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the existence of a cruel human trafficking industry in the region are not tackled by the international community in a determined manner.
This will take time, although time is not on the side for the Rohingya migrants as the cries of hunger and desperation continue at sea.
The writer is a former lecturer of Universiti Teknologi Mara, Shah Alam, and International Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak