‘A government must be judged by how it protects the most vulnerable people’
Ordinary people can educate themselves on the issue, and these complementary books are a good place to start
Regional and national political parties either tacitly encouraged the violence or – like the National League for Democracy, which would win the 2015 elections by a landslide – ignored it. Much more was expected of the National League, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who had spent more than 20 years under house arrest. But the National League’s base is the ethnic Burman elite. Driven either ideologically or by a pragmatic unwillingness to rock the boat, Suu Kyi refuses to acknowledge the Rohingya community exists.
All of this contradicts the western stereotype of Buddhism as a religion of peace, tolerance and non-violence. These principles were important to Buddha himself, but when Buddhism – or any religion
– is tied to a state-building project, morality rapidly takes second place to exclusionary identity politics. Ibrahim argues that Theravada Buddhism is vulnerable to such deformation by its notion that the religion’s strength depends on a state committed to its protection, and to the suppression of other faiths.
Wade considers how another set of western stereotypes – those associated with the Islamophobic War on Terror narrative – have served Myanmar’s fascists, recasting their slaughter of Rohingya as self-defence. In reality, Rohingya, unlike other oppressed groups in Myanmar, have been passive in the face of violence. have seen this before, not only in Syria. Very often an oppressive state’s terrorist scare becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right on cue, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army appeared in 2016, launching attacks on police stations. This provided the pretext for the most recent cleansing of Rohingya, which has attracted the attention of extremists of the Al Qaeda or ISIL strain. This vicious circle can spin much deeper. So what can be done – beyond charity work – to help the Rohingya? Refugees ask for the right to return home, citizenship and freedom of movement. But the first condition is meaningless without the others. Currently they will return, at best, to unbearable oppression.
Myanmar – desiring arms sales and economic investment – could modify its behaviour under international pressure – this is Ibrahim’s argument. China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution calling Myanmar to account. It is to be hoped that Myanmar’s fellow Asean countries, the EU, and Muslim states do better.
People can also educate themselves on the issue, and these complementary books should be read together. Wade is stronger on Myanmar’s inflammatory media, for instance, and the apartheid system of “racialised health care, purposeful and carefully designed”. Ibrahim focuses more on what happens to Rohingya refugees, including their subjection to slavery. Thailand has 500,000 slaves, most of whom are refugees from Myanmar. Ibrahim’s energised polemic isnformative, but Wade’s is more discursive, quoting personal testimonies, creating engaging reading.
In the foreword to Ibrahim’s book, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus takes the liberal (and for many states – including perhaps United States president Donald Trump’s America – seemingly heretical) position that “a government must in the end be judged” not by its enforcement of “identity” nor by the size of its nuclear button but “by how it protects the most vulnerable people in its society”.