It is time for Canada to stand up for Rohingya

The battle has been expected and feared for weeks.

As former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan prepared last Thursday to release a yearlong study on the ethnic turmoil that has plagued Burma’s northwestern Rakhine state, Burma’s military was already stepping up preparations for new “clearance operations” against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

For two months, Burma’s military had been increasing troop levels in Rakhine state and had reportedly armed radical Buddhist militias that demand the expulsion of the Rohingya.

Since late July, a number of Rohingya communities had been blockaded by the militias, preventing people from going to work or fetching food and water.

Human rights groups and international aid agencies warned of a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since last October, when Rohingya villages were burned; nearly 1,000 people were killed; thousands of refugees fled to Bangladesh and Burma’s military was accused of crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing, the systematic use of rape, torture, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.

The explosion finally came just hours after the independent commission headed by Annan released its report Thursday.

After a year of consultations, Annan’s commission urged Burma’s government to act immediately to prevent violence, maintain peace and foster reconciliation in Rakhine state.

“What is needed is a calibrated approach — one that combines political, developmental, security and human rights responses to ensure that violence does not escalate and intercommunal tensions are kept under control,” the report said.

The 63-page report urged Burma to create a path to citizenship for the Rohingya, who became the world’s largest stateless group when a 1982 law suddenly stripped them of their citizenship and branded them illegal immigrants.

The Rohingya, who number about 1.1 million people, have lived in Burma for generations, but Burma’s predominantly Buddhist population view them as foreign intruders from Bangladesh and have worked to persecute and marginalize them for decades.

Since 1982, the Rohingya have systematically been denied most elemental rights: citizenship, freedom of worship, education, marriage and travel. When forced by repeated bouts of violence to flee the country, they remain unrecognized by Bangladesh and are widely regarded as the world’s most persecuted people.

Annan’s report also told Burma to ensure “dignified living conditions” for more than 100,000 Rohingya who have been bottled up inside Burmese displacement camps for more than five years without access to health care, work or education.

It also called for greater political representation for ethnic minorities and demanded freedom of movement for all people “irrespective of religion, ethnicity or citizenship status.”

Annan’s report diplomatically refused to mention the Rohingya by name, calling them instead “the Muslim community in Rakhine,” but the report stressed the need for Burma to act immediately.

“Unless concerted action — led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society — is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalization, which will further deepen the chronic poverty that afflicts Rakhine state,” Annan said. Within hours, Rakhine state was aflame with violence. A Rohingya insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), claimed responsibility for attacks on 25 police and military posts in the state on Thursday night. A dozen security forces were killed by assailants armed with machetes, homemade bombs and some handguns.

Military counterattacks, using helicopter gunships, have claimed the lives of another 92 people and, according to the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Bangkok, about 5,200 refugees have crossed into Bangladesh since Friday.

Thousands of other terrified Rohingya villagers remain trapped on the border, blocked by Bangladeshi border guards and fired on by Burmese soldiers using mortars and machine guns.

Tens of thousands of other Rohingya in Burma have had their food supplies cut off, as international aid agencies have recalled all non-essential staff from the conflict zone.

Now, perhaps more than ever, countries like Canada need to stand up for the Rohingya and urge a peaceful and just end to their decades of deprivation. Otherwise, the situation in Burma could become even more violent and dangerous.

“After years of insecurity and instability, it should be clear that violence is not the solution to the challenges facing Rakhine state,” a dejected Annan said Friday.