Dr. Maung Zarni
DVB News:
April 26, 2013
Dear International
Crisis Group President Louise Arbour,
I am writing to
bring to your attention to the rather disturbing recent developments in Burma.
Within 24 hours of
your organisation’s “In Pursuit of Peace” dinner in New York, Burma’s Minister
of Immigration and former Chief of Police Khin Yi, who was part of the
delegation accepting the award on behalf of President Thein Sein, reportedly
reiterated the Thein Sein Administration’s neo-fascist stance on the highly
controversial 1982 Citizenship Act.
In response to a
question posed by a Rakhine nationalist during his public meeting with Burmese
exiles in New York City this week, Khin Yi emphatically stated that Burma’s
citizenship law is “solely based on blood” and no foreigners or “foreign blood”
officially resided in Burma before the first Anglo-Burmese war in 1824.
Khin Yi was
emphatic when he said Thein Sein’s government will never alter “a single word,
sentence or paragraph of this blood-based citizenship law” as it was written by
lawmakers who allegedly had Burma’s “national security” and “national interest”
in mind. The notions of ‘racial purity’ and ‘blood’ as a basis for citizenship
belong to 1930s Nazi Germany and we know where these ideas led to – a series of
pogroms.
Against this
historical backdrop, the ICG’s peace award recipient, President Thein Sein,
should be held accountable for the views and words articulated by one of the
key members of his cabinet.Indeed, both the timing of Khin Yi’s public remarks
and the defence of the blood-based foundation of Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Act
raise serious issues as to where the ICG stands concerning the policies of the
Burmese leadership.
If the ICG’s award
is about honouring President Thein Sein’s “visionary leadership to effect
profound social, economic and political changes” that will “bring us closer to
a world free of conflict” then the organisation’s empirical understanding of
both Thein Sein’s vision and the ugly realities experienced by the Burmese
people, including the Rohingya, can only be characterised as delusional. This
is to say, the ICG’s understanding of the country as reflected in its Burma
analyses and the laudatory citation of Thein Sein’s vision seem to be devoid of
verifiable and factual truths.
On the question of
the estimated 800,000 Rohingya, whose ethnic identity was officially recognised
by the first independent Burmese government under PM U Nu in the 1950s, the
ICG’s man of peace was reportedly in favour of both establishing an apartheid
state in Western Burma and expelling the entire lot en masse. He reportedly
offered these two policy options to the visiting head of the UNHCR, Antonio
Guterres, last year.
On the same day
your organisation was hosting a black-tie dinner in honour of Burma’s
president, New York-based Human Rights Watch released an empirically grounded
report about the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in June and October last
year.
State security
apparatuses – from local police, inter-agency border patrols, the army and the
navy – helped target Rohingya Muslims during the two bouts of violence,
according to the report. As President Thein Sein presides over the country’s
most powerful coordinating body, the National Security and Defense Council, the
buck stops at his desk.
How could the ICG
reconcile its official commendatory words about Thein Sein’s “efforts to bring
us closer to a world free of conflict” when the Muslim Rohingya, Christian
Kachins, who have been victims of a military onslaught for nearly two years in
northern Burma, and the Buddhist Burmese farming communities in the
resource-rich central Dry Zone are being subject to severe repression by
Burmese state security organisations?
Do you really
believe these conflicts are “a paradox of transitions that greater freedom does
allow these local conflicts to resurface”, as the ICG’s Southeast Asia project
director Jim Della-Giacoma said during an interview with the Associated Press
on March 25 this year, just three days after an organised campaign of violence
targeting Muslims erupted in Meikhtila and 15 other towns and locations across
Burma?
If the ICG’s
relevant experts on Burma and international conflicts take even a cursory
glance at the existing scholarship on the subject of ethnic cleansing they
would realise societal transitions are not necessarily accompanied with ethnic
cleansing or mass atrocities. There are myriad factors that account for ethnic
cleansing in societies under both democratic and undemocratic regimes. One
alternative explanation is that the pogroms are a result of sinister political
calculations created by the transitional government.
Curiously, your
Burma experts have dismissed this distinct possibility with ample corroborating
evidence. Perhaps, they were trying to save the ICG from international
humiliation? In contrast, HRW’s report sheds light on the state’s direct and
indirect involvement in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in western
Burma last year. As Burma’s head of state, shouldn’t your peace award recipient
be held accountable for the mass atrocities committed under his watch?
In fact, the ICG’s
explanation that the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and atrocities against
the Burmese Muslims are, unfortunately, the price Burma is paying for greater
freedoms is as fantastical and credible as the immigration policies of the
Thein Sein regime.
If you and your
organisation’s strategic goal in analytically glossing over the dark side of
Burma’s realities, as evidenced in just about every single ICG Burma report, is
to provide the generals and ex-generals with ‘positive reinforcement’, do you
think your strategy is prodding President Thein Sein’s government and its
military in the right direction?
Judging by the fact
that one of the Burmese guests of honour, Immigration Minister Khin Yi, was
emphatically espousing Thein Sein government’s ‘solely blood-based’ line on
Burmese citizenship in New York within 24 hours of his attendance at your “In
Pursuit of Peace” gala dinner, the ICG’s strategy doesn’t seem to be positively
affecting the character of Thein Sein’s government.
I hope to hear from
you at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Zarni
Visiting Fellow
Civil Society and
Human Security Research Unit
London School of
Economics
www.maungzarni.com
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