Pakistanis protest Rohingya suffering
MYANMAR REPRESSION
UNTIL recently, most Pakistanis knew little to nothing about the problems of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Except in one place: an impoverished pocket of Karachi, the huge port city on the Arabian Sea, where tens of thousands of Rohingya migrants have lived peacefully for half a century, working on fishing boats or docks. The older ones originally fled a repressive military regime, escaping on foot or by boat.
Two weeks ago, word began to reach the Rohingya community in Karachi that something terrible was happening in their homeland. On social media, relatives described military troops raiding and torching homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. News videos showed thousands of people leaving. Soon almost 300 000 had fled to Bangladesh.
In Karachi, a Rohingya fisherman named Noor Mohammed, 50, said that three members of his family had been killed in Rakhine in the past week. A woman said her sister had tried to reach Bangladesh by boat but was being held by boat owners demanding a large payment.
The Rohingya Muslims are a stateless minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which has a powerful military. After political violence erupted last month, the military said its crackdown was in response to insurgent attacks on police posts. Yesterday the UN human rights commissioner called the repression “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
By last week, the outrage had spread far beyond Karachi’s fishing community. In cities and towns across Pakistan, people were suddenly organising demonstrations to protest Rohingyas’ plight – lawyers, tradesmen, civic groups, clerics, journalists, tribal leaders and university communities all joined in.
The phrase “Rohingya genocide” flashed across nightly newscasts.
“This is a human crisis of grave proportions. It is hard for me to believe what I am reading, hearing and watching,” said Sajid Ishaq, chairman of the Pakistan Interfaith League. “I urge the UN to stir from its slumber and react as it did in the case of East Timor,” he said.
The former Portuguese colony faced bloody suppression in a struggle for independence from Indonesia, which it won in 2002.
On Friday, thousands of demonstrators converged on Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, after weekly prayer ceremonies, clashing with riot police near the high-security diplomatic zone.
They attempted to reach the Myanmar embassy but were stopped by shipping containers placed across key streets. The march turned into a peaceful sit-in that lasted until late evening.
On Monday, leaders from religious and secular political parties joined rallies across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to urge the “civilised world to stop the mass execution of Burmese Muslims”; call on the government to cut ties with Myanmar; and condemn Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader and former democratic crusader, for her “criminal silence” on the repression.
RECENT weeks have seen an escalation of violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine, the poorest state in Myanmar.
A tide of displaced people is seeking refuge from atrocities – fleeing on foot and by boat to Bangladesh. And this latest surge of displaced people was worsened by the recent activity of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa).
Religious and ethnic differences have been widely considered the leading causes of the persecution. But it is becoming increasingly hard to believe there are not other factors at play, especially since Myanmar is home to 135 officially recognised ethnic groups (the Rohingya were removed from this list in 1982).
Analysing the recent violence, Western media have focused on the role of the military and the figure of leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Her status as a Nobel Peace prize laureate has been questioned since the latest evidence of atrocities emerged.
She continues to avoid condemning the systematic violence against the Rohingya.
At least the media gaze has finally shifted towards their plight. But some issues are still not being explored. It is also critical to look beyond religious and ethnic differences to other root causes of persecution, vulnerability and displacement.
We must consider vested political and economic interests as factors that contributed to the forced displacement in Myanmar not just of the Rohingya people but of other minorities such as the Kachin, Shan, Karen, Chin and Mon.
Land grabs and confiscation in Myanmar are widespread. It is not a new phenomenon.
Since the 1990s, military juntas have been taking land from smallholders across the country without compensation and regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Land has often been acquired for “development” projects, including military base expansion, natural resource exploitation and extraction, large agricultural projects, infrastructure and tourism.
For example, in Kachin state the military confiscated more than 200ha of villagers’ land to support extensive gold mining.
Development has forcibly displaced thousands of people – internally and across borders with Bangladesh, India, and Thailand – or compelled them to set out by sea to Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia.
In 2011, Myanmar instituted economic and political reforms that led to it being called “Asia’s final frontier” as it opened up to foreign investment.
The next year, violent attacks escalated against the Rohingya in Rakhine and, to a lesser extent, against the Muslim Karen.
Meanwhile, the government of Myanmar established several laws relating to the management and distribution of farmland.
These moves were severely criticised for reinforcing the ability of large corporations to profit from land grabs. For instance, agribusiness multinationals such as Posco Daewoo have eagerly entered the market, contracted by the government.
Myanmar is positioned between countries that have long eyed its resources, such as China and India.
Since the 1990s, Chinese companies have exploited timber, rivers and minerals in Shan state in the north.
This led to violent conflict between the military regime and armed groups, including the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and its ethnic allies in eastern Kachin state and the northern Shan state.
In Rakhine, Chinese and Indian interests are part of broader China-India relations. These revolve principally around the construction of infrastructure and pipelines in the region.
Such projects claim to guarantee employment, transit fees and oil and gas revenues for the whole of Myanmar.
Among numerous development projects, a transnational pipeline built by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) connecting Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, to Kunming, China, began operations in September 2013.
The wider efforts to take Myanmar oil and gas from the Shwe gas field to Guangzhou, China, are well documented.
A parallel pipeline is also expected to send Middle East oil from the Kyaukphyu port to China. However, the neutral Advisory Commission on Rakhine has urged the Myanmar government to carry out a comprehensive impact assessment.
The commission recognises that pipelines put local communities at risk. There is significant local tension related to land seizure, insufficient compensation for damages, environmental degradation, and an influx of foreign workers rather than increased local employment opportunities.
Meanwhile, the Sittwe deep-sea port was financed and constructed by India as part of the Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project. The aim is to connect the north-eastern Mizoram state in India with the Bay of Bengal.
Coastal areas of Rakhine are clearly of strategic importance to both India and China. The government of Myanmar therefore has vested interests in clearing land to prepare for further development and to boost its already rapid economic growth.
All of this takes place within the wider context of geopolitical manoeuvring.
The role of Bangladesh in fuelling ethnic tension is also hotly contested. In such power struggles, the human cost is terribly high.
In Myanmar, the groups that fall victim to land grabs have often started in an extremely vulnerable state and are left even worse off. The treatment of the Rohingya in Rakhine is the highest profile example of a broader expulsion inflicted on minorities.
When a group is marginalised and oppressed, it is difficult to reduce their vulnerability and protect their rights, including their property.
In the case of the Rohingya, their ability to protect their homes was destroyed by the revocation of their Burmese citizenship.
Since the late 1970s, about a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar to escape persecution. Tragically, they are often marginalised in their host countries.
With no country willing to take responsibility for them, they are either forced or encouraged to continuously cross borders. The techniques used to encourage this movement have trapped the Rohingya in a vulnerable state.
The tragedy of the Rohingya is part of a bigger picture which sees the oppression and displacement of minorities across Myanmar and into neighbouring countries.
The relevance and complexity of religious and ethnic issues in Myanmar are undeniable. But we cannot ignore the political and economic context and the root causes of displacement that often go undetected. – The Conversation
Forino is a PhD candidate in disaster management at the University of Newcastle
Von Meding is a senior lecturer in disaster risk reduction at the University of Newcastle
Johnson is a PhD candidate in disaster vulnerability at the University of Newcastle