The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar — The Silent Genocide of 2017

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar (formerly Burma), concentrated in the western state of Rakhine with about 1.33 million Rohingya in Myanmar in 2014. They are a minority group described by the United Nations as “virtually friendless” amongst Myanmar’s other ethnic, linguistic and religious communities.

Courtesy of Al-Jazeera

• Rohingya are known as the “World’s Most Persecuted Minority”.
• Rakhine’s radical Buddhists vs. Rohingya Muslim population
• Myanmar (also known as Burma) officially recognizes 135 ethnic groups — but the Rohingya Muslims have been rendered stateless and stripped of their citizenship — as a result their rights to:

Study

Work

Travel

Vote

Marry

Practice their religion

Access health services are also stripped.

• The Muslim minority is the target of a national hate campaign with politicians failing to address human rights abuses.
• They are an ethnic Muslim group in the majority Buddhist country and almost all live in Rakhine, one of the poorest states, with a population of 3 million and they face:

Persecution

Rape

Forced labor

Extortion

Land confiscation on a daily basis.

• Many Rohingya who live in the Rakhine state live in internment camps that they cannot leave without government permission.
• Myanmar views its Rohingya population as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants even if their forefathers have been born in the country.
• Media and aid agencies access to NRS are tightly restricted — Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (MSF-H) and Malteser International, two organizations that had provided the bulk of healthcare in both NRS and in the camps, were expelled from Rakhine in February and March 2014, following a campaign against them by Buddhist radicals.

Leadership and the Rohingyas:

• Myanmar’s former President Thein Sein has been praised easing the Rohingya humanitarian crisis and so that it is nowhere near the top of his agenda. Instead, his policies have often been overtly anti-Rohingya.
• In October 2012, in the wake of violent riots, he asked the UN to resettle the Rohingya in other countries, saying, “We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but Rohingya who came to Burma illegally are not of our ethnic nationalities, and we cannot accept them here.”
• The Rakhine Buddhists, meanwhile, considers themselves a distinct race, separate from the majority Burmese — they call the Rohingya “Bengalis”.
• Since 2012, the UNHCR estimates that more than 110,000 people, mostly Rohingya, left on flimsy boats to countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia — in the first 3 months of 2015, the number of refugees, or “boat people” as they were collectively dubbed, doubled from a year earlier to 25,000.
• The political party of Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has taken power in a historic election on November 8, 2015, the first to be openly contested in 25 years — little has changed for the Rohingya and Ms. Suu Kyi’s repeated failure to condemn the current violence is an outrage. “The point is that Aung San Suu Kyi is covering up this crime perpetrated by the military.”
• On December 4, 2015, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak questioned Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Prize, given her inaction.
• Rohingyas were the “most marginalized minority” in Myanmar but were ignored by Western media, which is known as a “one-sided humanitarian passion”.
• In Bangladesh, which borders Rakhine state, Amnesty International says hundreds of fleeing Rohingya have been detained and forcibly returned to an uncertain fate since October 2015.
• The UN human rights office recently said twice in 2015 that abuses suffered by them could amount to crimes against humanity.

2012 Rakhine State Riots:

• A series of conflicts primarily between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar, though by October 2012 Muslims of all ethnicities had begun to be targeted.
• The riots finally came after weeks of sectarian disputes including a gang rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by Rohingyas and killing of 10 Burmese Muslims by Rakhines.
• State of emergency was declared in Rakhine, allowing military to participate in administration of the region.
• As of August 22, 2012:

88 casualties — 57 Muslims and 31 Buddhists.

2,528 houses were burned — 1,336 belonged to Rohingyas and 1,192 belonged to Rakhines.

Rape As A Weapon of Mass Destruction [for Women]:

• Sexual violence crimes are facilitated by a near total lack of accountability, and no institutionalized complaint mechanism.
• Media and local groups reported numerous incidents of rape and other sexual assault of Rohingya women and girls committed by security forces during the “clearing operations” in Maungdaw district.
• February 3, 2017: an 8-month-old, 5 year old, and 6 year old — -knifed to death by soldiers.
• The government denied all reports of sexual violence, and the military lockdown has prevented independent investigations into the abuses.
• Women have been marginalized in the government’s various peace process initiatives and their concerns have been noticeably absent from the negotiations.
• 47 of the cases documented rapes were gang rape >>> 28 of the women were either killed or had died of their injuries.
• More than 100 women and girls raped by the army.
• The Kachin Women’s Association Thailand had documented more than >>>115 cases of sexual violence by Myanmar government soldiers, another 30 cases involving 35 women and girls.
• Soldiers are sent to villages to rape and then burn down their house.
• 38 different army battalions were implicated — reported cases were only the “tip of the iceberg” as many cases went unreported.
• The use of sexual violence in conflict is a strategy and an act of warfare that has political and economic dimensions that go beyond individual cases.
• Sexual violence is used as a tool by the Burmese military to demoralize and destroy ethnic communities.
• “Their widespread and systematic nature indicates a structural pattern: rape is still used as an instrument of war and oppression.”

Events of 2016:

• Burma’s new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a part of the National League for Democracy (NLD), took office in March 2016 after sweeping the November 2015 elections >>> her inaction about the issue has been criticized for her inaction and silence.
• Fighting between the Burmese armed forces and ethnic armed groups intensified or flared up in several regions during the year — -resulting in abuses against civilians and massive displacement.
• The military retained autonomy from civilian oversight and extensive power over >>> Government and National Security, with control of the Defense, Home Affairs, and Border Affairs Ministries.
• It is guaranteed 25% of parliamentary seats, which constitutes:

An effective veto over any constitutional amendments.

Authorized to assume power in a national state of emergency.

• Government forces have been responsible for serious abuses such as:

Extrajudicial killings

Torture

Sexual violence

Destruction of property

Arson

Forced recruitment of children

• Government shelling and airstrikes have been conducted against ethnic areas, in violation of the laws of war.
• Violent attacks by unknown insurgents against border guard posts on October 9, 2016 in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine State, resulted in the deaths of 9 officials — -sparked the most serious humanitarian and human rights crisis in Rakhine State since the October 2012 “ethnic cleansing” campaign against the Rohingya.
• Satellite imagery in November 2016 revealed widespread fire-related destruction in Rohingya villages, with a total of 430 destroyed buildings in three villages with an estimated 30,000 Muslim villagers remain displaced.
• 4 years after the 2012 violence, about 120,000 Rohingya remain displaced in camps in Rakhine State.
• Humanitarian conditions for both remaining IDPs and newly resettled persons remain dire due to restrictions on movement and lack of access to livelihoods and basic services.
• Aung San Suu Kyi refuses to refer to the name Rohingya as their proper name and instead refers to the group as the “Muslim Community in Rakhine State,” and has requested that international stakeholders, including the United States, European Union, and United Nations, follow suit.
• EU decided not to introduce a resolution at the UN General Assembly in November, underscoring the international community’s softening approach.

Courtesy of BBC News