The president of Burma, Thein Sein, on August 19, 2012, named a 27-person commission under the leadership of Myo Myint, the retired director of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, to look into the causes of violence and to make recommendations for improving communal relations. The United Nations Secretary General has welcomed the creation of this commission and promised U.N. aid, if desired. The U.N. human rights secretariat has experience in fact-finding in situations of violence and abuses of human rights.
Unfortunately, the government of Bangladesh has closed the three main international humanitarian aid organizations working with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, fearing that the aid given would make the refugees better off than the local population, thus becoming a “pull” factor for additional refugees from Burma. It is not clear at this stage who, if anyone, will be able to do detailed interviews with the refugees in Bangladesh to understand better the background and the events which led to their flight.
This follow-up blog is necessary, in part, because there has been a good deal of speculative writing on the web concerning the events in Burma, using such terms as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” and calling for solidarity with the Muslim population. While people who merit our concern and aid are suffering in Burma, the violence is not a case of genocide but a fear-led popular reaction against economic migrants from Bangladesh — the term “Rohingya” being a local term for Bengalis — people coming from Bengal. Bengali-speaking people would be the more correct term since the Bengalis are not a single ethnic group but a mixture of different populations speaking a common language. However, even in India and Bangladesh, people refer to “Bengalis”, I will do so as well.
During most of the English colonial period, India and Burma were jointly ruled. Burma as a British colony was governed from the Bengal city of Calcutta. A good number of Bengalis, starting in the 1870s and 1880s, went to live in Burma, merchants to the cities and larger towns, farmers to the relatively good farm and forest lands of Arakan state.
At independence in 1948, the new Burmese government played a “nationalist card” and pressured many Indian and Chinese merchants to leave the country. These expulsions led to an economic decline but were popular moves. At independence, there was no particular pressure against the Rohingas, who as small farmers, had a much lower profile than merchants in the cities.
Pressure against the Rohingas came later, in the late 1970s, culminating in the 1992 violence and the first refugee flow when some 200,000 people left for Bangladesh. As of 1958 (officially, 1962) the military came to power in Burma. The officer corps is largely Burman (the majority ethnic group which gives its name to the country). However, 45 or so percent of the population of the country are “national minorities” living in an arc on the frontiers with Thailand, China, India, and Bangladesh. Most migrated from south China and Tibet starting about 1000 years ago. One finds the same or related minorities still living in south China and in the Indochina states, Thailand, Bangladesh, and northeast India (1).
In order to justify military control of Burma, the army used a “we against them” policy, playing on Burman pride and creating a negative image of the “foreign” national minorities. The army did not have to try too hard; many of the prejudices were already there. The army did little, if anything, to better relations among the majority and minorities. Now that some of the pressure of military authoritarian rule has been lifted, the fears and prejudices come to the fore, often in violent ways.
The Rohingyas, as the newest arrivals of minorities, only about 100 years, were easily singled out, and a law in the military-led parliament in the 1980s stripped the Rohingas of their Burmese citizenship, claiming that they were “illegal migrants” from Bengal. The Rohingas were thus “stateless” not being recognized as citizens of Bangladesh and deprived of whatever (slim) rights the military gave to Burmese citizens.
While economics does not explain everything, it is necessary to place situations in their economic context. Similar economic conditions can give rise to similar reactions. Thus this August 2012, at the same time that there were the refugee flows of Rohingyas to Bangladesh after local riots, there were riots against Bengalis living in Assam, northeast India, and some local Assam political authorities are calling for the expulsion of the “illegal” Bengalis from Assam to Bangladesh. The most serious rioting has taken place in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts, a subdivision of Assam state in which the majority of the population are Bodo who have a strong tribal communal structure. The leadership of the Bodos are Christians, the majority of the population follow traditional religious practices — usually covered by the ill-defined term of “animist” — while a few have become Hindus or mix Hindu practices with traditional beliefs. Thus the violence also is interpreted as a religious division. Some 300,000 Bengali Muslims have been uprooted and are largely living in quickly-assembled refugee camps.
The rioting and refugee flows have had an impact within India. Muslims have set upon people from Assam — most of whom are not Boro — working in Indian cities which have significant Muslim populations such as Bangalore, Chennai (ex Madras), Mumbai (ex Bombay), and Pune. Many workers have returned to their northeast India homes to see how the situation develops.
Bangladesh has a high population density and very little unsettled farm land. Thus there has been migration to Burma, and much more to northeast India. The Indian government has tried at great financial cost to prevent migration from Bangladesh into the Indian state of West Bengal by building a high fence and guarding the frontier with police and army units. Thus it has been easier to pass from Bangladesh into northeast India with its long and relatively open frontiers.
From northeast India, some Bengalis then move to other parts of India and to Pakistan. It is estimated that there are some two million “illegal” Bengalis in India, which is not many given the overall Indian population. But it is enough to create fears of a “flood” of Bengalis to northeast India taking over farm land. Northeast India is home to a large number of tribal groups which have a communal form of landholdings rather than private ownership. This leads to conflicts over who has authority to sell land to others, who can call for the expulsion of persons who settle on unused land etc. Thus the fear exists that Bengali settlers will undermine an already complex land ownership pattern as well as possibly adding to ongoing insurgencies such as that of the Naga. In addition, the Indian government fears that among the Bengali are Pakistan-trained agents who could provoke violence or terror attacks within India.
The complex economic-political-religious condition of Bengalis migrating to Burma and India requires regional cooperation and regional planning. The complexities posed by transnational movements of people require transnational analysis and responses. The migration of people across borders points to major discontents and economic difficulties. These realities are challenging concepts of citizenship, of national borders, of respect for diversity, and the social protection of unauthorized migrants. The U.S. also faces many of these problems, and some skills and policies developed within the U.S. might be of help to Burma and northeast India.
As I mentioned in the earlier blog on the Rohingas, it may be that U.S. Buddhist and Muslim groups have people with skills in dealing with migration issues and who might be able to help NGOs in Burma and northeast India. I do not know enough about U.S. Indian reservation policies to know if there are policies and skills that could be useful to countries such as Burma, Bangladesh within its Chittagong Hill Tracts, and parts of northeast India where the issues of communal and private land ownership interact. These are avenues worth exploring.
Rene Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, is representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens. He lives in Gravieres, France.
Footnotes:
1) For a lively picture of some of the minorities seen through the eyes of a U.S. woman painter, see Edith Mirante Burmese, Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution (Grove Press, 1993, 333 pages)
1) For a lively picture of some of the minorities seen through the eyes of a U.S. woman painter, see Edith Mirante Burmese, Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution (Grove Press, 1993, 333 pages)
Photo: Burmese President Thein Sein at the 2009 ASEAN summit. Licensed by the government of Thailand,Wikimedia Commons
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