THE ROOTS OF GENOCIDE
The persecution of the Rohingya has been hundreds of years of complex regional history in the making. Robin Yassin-Kassab unravels its causes with the help of two illuminating new books
The Rohingya Muslims are the world’s most persecuted minority. Since last year at least 625,000 of them – more than half the population – have fled slaughter in Myanmar. This is only the latest wave in a series of killings and expulsions that started in 1978. The United Nations calls the situation a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing.
Two recently-published books provide required background to the Rohingya tragedy. Francis Wade’s Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim ‘Other’ gives the political and historical context to events. Azeem Ibrahim’s The Rohingyas: Inside
Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide covers similar ground and, as the title suggests, convincingly argues that Myanmar “stands on the brink” of genocide, a crime defined by the UN as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The Rohingyas have been designated as “foreigners” since 1978. Myanmar today describes them either as Indians imported by the British or as recent illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Both books dispute this revisionism. Ibrahim begins Rohingya history as far back as 3,000BC, when Indo-Aryan people arrived in what is now Arakan – or Rakhine province – while Wade presents evidence of an 11th century AD Muslim community composed of stranded Indian, Arab and Perisan sailors.
Ibrahim’s account of ancient and colonial history is the most detailed. Rohingya lived alongside Rakhine people who were connected linguistically and religiously to the Burman, the dominant ethnicity in today’s Myanmar.
Although Arakan was influenced by the ancient Burmese kingdom, it wasn’t conquered until 1784. Over the next four decades, 30,000 Muslims fled Burmese-Buddhist rule, until the British annexed Arakan in 1826. Burma – with Arakan and its Rohingyas attached – won its independence in 1948.
The Rohingyas entered the new state at a disadvantage. Their loyalty to the British during the 1942 Japanese invasion had sparked conflict with the Rakhine. Nevertheless they participated in national life, some joining the army and others serving in parliament. They were included as an ethnic group in the 1961 census.
In 1962, Myanmar’s military seized power. At this point, Wade’s book takes the lead in describing the rage for national homogeneity that motivated Burmese generals, in a country where minority groups make up 40 per cent of the population. The army waged wars to subdue the Shan, Kachin and Karen peoples, among others. In the 1960s, they expelled Indian and Chinese residents.
The state also sought legitimacy as guardian of the Theravada version of Buddhism, especially when it tried to deflect attention from the socalled Burmese Road to Socialism’s economic disasters. The military spent less than 3 per cent of the national budget on health and education, but devoted energy and resources to converting the animist and Christian populations. Wade describes state-run mass-conversion ceremonies in which the profession of Buddhism is rewarded by rice and a National Registration Card.
The Rohingyas, marked as “other” by darker skin as much as by religious difference, were steadily deprived of all civil rights. Paradoxically this process only worsened after the partial return to democracy in 2010.
The first reason for this, as Ibrahim points out, is that the military still governs remotely – in parliament through its Union Solidarity and Development Party, or on the streets by backing Ma Ba Tha, an organisation of hate-preaching monks which orchestrates boycotts of Muslim businesses and anti-Muslim violence. But Wade explores a more disturbing issue – how populist hyper-nationalism may transform democracy into a “tyranny of the majority”. “Should the forces that inevitably result from liberalisation,” he asks, referencing the extremist monks, “and which can aid the opening of a country as much as they can imperil it, be constrained, or should they be allowed to run free?” After decades of propaganda, most people in Myanmar fear and resent Rohingya, believing these farmers and fishermen to be extremists, bent on the destruction of Buddhism.
Wade and Ibrahim recount the sorry results. During the 2012 and 2013, anti-Rohingya pogroms, police and soldiers watched as mobs burnt homes, raped women and beat children to death. Thereafter, Rohingya were driven from urban areas and segregated in camps.