Nyan Win the
National League of Democracy spokesperson Photo: @AFP
As advocates
condemn "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya, officials say no such
group exists.
YANGON, Myanmar —
From the depths of obscurity, Myanmar’s highly beleaguered Muslim Rohingya
ethnicity has become something of a global cause célèbre.
The United Nations
deems the roughly 1 million population group one of the world’s “most
persecuted” minorities. In a report last week, Human Right Watch deployed some
of the most potent language at its disposal in describing their mistreatment:
“ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity.” The online pro-Rohingya call
to arms #RohingyaNOW was, for a brief blip in March, Twitter’s highest-trending
phrase.
Even US President
Barack Obama, in his first and only visit to Myanmar last November, urged the
nation to accept that Rohingya “hold within themselves the same dignity as you
do.”
But these are lofty
expectations from a nation in which the government, much of the general public
and even progressive activist circles contend that Rohingya is a contrived
ethnicity that does not exist — at least not as the people who call themselves
Rohingya and their foreign sympathizers believe they do.
This week, the
government released its official account of Myanmar’s most explosive violence
in recent years: a 2012 wave of killing, maiming and arson sprees waged in
large part by Buddhists bent on ridding their native Rakhine State of the
Rohingya. But nowhere in the official English translation does the word
“Rohingya” appear. The minority is instead described as “Bengali,” the native
people of neighboring Bangladesh.The report insists the stateless group largely
descend from farmers led over during Britishoccupation of Myanmar (then titled
Burma) in the early 1800s. They are described as procreating heavily, failing
to assimilate and inviting over their kin to the dismay of helpless local
Buddhists living under colonial rule. Myanmar’s authorities have since reversed
the British empire’s policy: The Rohingya are now considered non-citizens even
though their alleged homeland, Bangladesh, does not accept them either.
Treating this
native-born population as invaders is roundly condemned around the globe. The
Rohingya, like many persecuted groups before them, have pleaded for support
from Aung San Suu Kyi. The 67-year-old parliamentarian, beloved for challenging
Myanmar’s despotic generals, is traditionally seen as a voice of Myanmar’s
oppressed.
But in an interview
with GlobalPost, the Nobel Peace Laureate’s spokesman and confidante, Nyan Win,
confirmed that Aung San Suu Kyi has no plans to champion the Rohingya cause
despite criticism swirling around her silence on the crisis.
“So many people
blame The Lady,” said Nyan Win, using a nickname for Aung San Suu Kyi made
popular during Myanmar’s police state era, when speaking her name in public
could attract unwelcome government attention.
“For example, in
the Rakhine case, she very rarely says anything about this. She says she was
forced to speak about the Rohingya group,” Nyan Win said. “She believes, in
Burma, there is no Rohingya ethnic group. It is a made-up name of the Bengali.
So she can’t say anything about Rohingya. But there is international pressure
for her to speak about Rohingya. It’s a problem.”
ETHNIC CLEANSING?
Compared to the
officials’ previous rhetoric on the Rohingya — a junta-era official publicly
called them “ugly as ogres” — the government’s new report strikes a much more
empathetic tone.
In pursuit of
“peaceful coexistence,” it recommends expanding psychological counseling,
boosting the troop presence, banning hate speech and improving makeshift camps
for displaced people in advance of a looming monsoon downpour.
Some “Bengalis,”
according to the report, may even be considered for citizenship if they can
prove “knowledge of the country, local customs and language.”
Following
explosions of violence last summer and fall, in which entire Muslim-majority
quarters were torched and razed, roughly 100,000 people are still huddled in
crowded, squalid camps. The official death toll in Rakhine State stands at 194;
Rohingya activists claim far more.
The killings,
according to the report, were racked up by tit-for-tat attacks fueled by
long-simmering cultural feuds: “The earlier hatred and bitterness between the
two sides — which had been created because of certain historical events —
provided fertile ground for renewed tensions, mistrust and violence.”
Missing from the
inquiry are the sickening scenes detailed in the latest Human Rights Watch
investigation into the violence: mass graves, trucks piled high with stinking
corpses and children hacked to
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http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/myanmar/130501/suu-kyi-no-rohingya
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