Myanmar’s own form of apartheid

ROHINGYA FLEEING TO BANGLADESH This is a system designed to make people hopeless – Amnesty

Myanmar’s suffocating controls over its Rohingya population amount to “apartheid”, Amnesty International said yesterday in a probe into the root causes of a crisis that has sent 620 000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

Scenes of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps have provoked outrage around the world as people who have escaped Rakhine state since August recount tales of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar troops.

Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed in principle to repatriate some Rohingya but disagree over the details, with Myanmar’s army chief saying last week it was impossible to accept the number of refugees proposed by Dhaka.

The Amnesty report details how years of persecution have led to the current crisis.

A year-long “state-sponsored” campaign has restricted virtually all aspects of Rohingyas’ lives, the Amnesty study says, confining the Muslim minority to a “ghetto-like” existence.

“Rakhine State is a crime scene. This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty’s senior director for research.

Myanmar’s authorities “are keeping Rohingya women, men and children segregated and cowed in a dehumanising system of apartheid”, she added.

A system of identification cards is central to those bureaucratic controls, with Rohingya routinely issued one form of ID, only to see it later rendered meaningless.

“This is a system designed to make people hopeless,” said Laura Haigh, Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher. – AFP