Myanmar: from Aung San Suu Kyi to the brink of genocide
AS LONG as there remains little political will within Myanmar to avert the bloodshed in Rakhine state, the situation of the Rohingya will continue to deteriorate despite a widespread international outcry and growing calls for action.
The recent spike in violence is indicative of a renewed campaign to remove the Muslim minority group from Myanmar. Until institutionalised and widespread discrimination against the Rohingya – sustained across decades – is meaningfully challenged within Myanmar, violence will continue to be legitimised and the Rohingya will always seemingly stand on the brink of genocide.
The present bloodbath, however, is far from an isolated occurrence and should not be labelled merely as an overzealous reaction to the killing of nine border guards in an attack by unidentified gunmen on October 9, which provided the initial spark for the onslaught.
Instead, the current campaign follows decades of systematic discrimination, persecution, and dehumanisation.
According to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, its occurrence is defined as when specific acts – such as killing, or deliberately seeking to make life intolerable for certain elements of the population – are “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The UN definition allows considerable room for interpretation when applied in practice – assigning a specific moment or certain number of deaths after which a campaign of killing should be labelled as “genocide” is not easy, and the boundaries will remain indefinitely blurred.
However, the plight of the Rohingya appears to be heading in this direction.
How did we get to this desperate stage, where a country which had seemingly embraced democracy after the 2015 election of human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi stands on the verge of being complicit in genocide against a minority group living within its borders?
The primary cause of their marginalisation dates back to the country’s 1982 Citizenship Law, drawn up by the military government of General Ne Win. The law lists 135 ethnic groups that are officially recognised as having permanently settled within the boundaries of modern-day Myanmar prior to 1823.
Notably, that list excludes the Rohingya.
The Citizenship Law still applies today and serves to deny the Rohingya citizenship, which effectively renders the minority group’s 800 000 members in Myanmar stateless.
As a result, the Rohingya are denied even the most basic of rights – they have been prevented from travelling to other parts of the country and have been denied access to education, healthcare, land ownership and job opportunities. Samaoen Osman Crawford