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Internally displaced ethnic Rohingya Muslim in Baw Du Pha field in the state of Arakan (Burma). November 3, 2012 © Carlos Sardiña Galache.
June 21, 2013
This month,
hundreds of ethnic Arakanese Buddhist protesters marched through the streets of
Sittwe calling on authorities to enforce a two-child limit on Rohingya
Muslims—that is, to demand a discriminatory population control regulation that
restricts Rohingya from choosing how many children they have.
President Thein
Sein had a chance to speak out against Arakan State’s overtly discriminatory
policy and order local authorities to revoke it. But instead he remained
silent—prompting speculation among Burma watchers that, despite earlier claims
from his office that he was still deciding whether to support the policy or
not, he was fully in favor of it.
Last week, the
president reinforced that when Burma’s Minister of Immigration and Population
Khin Yi publicly endorsed the two-child limit. Once again, the president did
not say a word. His silence is deafening and dangerous.
Arakan State’s
discriminatory two-child limit for Rohingya Muslims was first introduced in
2005 in the western state’s Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships. Since last
year’s sectarian strife, between Arakanese and Rohingya and other Muslim
minorities, there have been renewed calls for its enforcement since mid-May.
The lone political
voice in opposition to the two-child policy has been Aung San Suu Kyi. But when
she pointed out that the policy violated human rights, Arakanese members of her
National League for Democracy (NLD) party quickly decried her, and demanded the
policy’s implementation.
Support for the
two-child limit is often couched in the kind of progressive rhetoric used by
Khin Yi, who claimed the policy was introduced to “benefit the ‘Bengali
women’”—using a term meant to disparage Rohingya—who he said had large numbers
of children for whom they could not provide adequate nutrition, schooling and
other care. But the barely concealed rationale for the policy is the fear among
the majority Arakanese that Rohingya women have a disproportionately high birth
rate that will over time alter the demographics of Arakan State.
To claim that the
two-child policy is intended to advance the rights of women who are confined to
a life of poverty because they have so many children is both erroneous and
dangerous. According to a 2007 Fertility and Reproductive Health Survey jointly
conducted by the Ministry of Immigration and Population and the United Nations
Population Fund, a lack of education, poor health awareness and access to
contraception were factors influencing decisions about family size. The survey
found that women with greater levels of education opt to have fewer children.
It also found that awareness about modern methods of contraception and access
to them was the poorest in Arakan State, where only 32 percent of women who
were married at the time of the survey reported using any form of modern
contraception, demonstrating the desperate unmet need for such services there.
The 2007 survey
shows that the largest suppliers of contraceptives in the country are
government hospitals (25 percent), drug stores (22 percent), private clinics
(13 percent) and government nurses and midwives (11 percent). But because the
government effectively denies Rohingya citizenship and as a result severely
limits their freedom of movement and access to government services, they are
often forced to rely on traditional methods of contraception—the withdrawal
method or abstention.
Last year the
Rohingya in Arakan State were targets of a government-supported campaign of
“ethnic cleansing” that involved crimes against humanity, greatly exacerbating
the lack of access to services. At least 140,000 Rohingya and other Muslims
were displaced and many fled to camps, where conditions are poor. The
government has done little to facilitate access to humanitarian assistance as
documented in August 2012 and April 2013 Human Rights Watch reports. On many
occasions Arakanese have threatened and obstructed foreign aid workers and
humanitarian agencies’ work. According to UN aid workers, Arakanese midwives
routinely shun Rohingya, refusing to provide them care. In May, the
international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) issued a statement
saying entire villages were cut off from basic services. MSF said pregnant Rohingya
women were dying needlessly because they had no access to health care.
Such preventable
deaths, poor health and high birth rates have little to do with Rohingyas being
content with “overpopulation” and poverty or plotting to change the
demographics of Arakan State by producing babies. These are outcomes of
oppressive and short-sighted government policies.
Rather than
addressing the education and health care needs of the Rohingya, for nearly two
decades Burmese authorities have imposed a system of pre-marriage government
authorization for Rohingyas, administered by the Nasaka, an abusive
inter-agency border security force.
The system is
plagued by corruption and long delays, where Rohingya couples wait years to get
marriage approval and pay hefty bribes. The two-child rule that was added by
Arakan authorities in 2005, which required couples to state in writing that
they would not have more than two children, has done irreparable damage to
women and children. Flouting the two-child restriction is punishable with fines
and imprisonment.
Many Rohingya women
who get pregnant while they wait for government approval to marry or beyond the
two-child limit abort pregnancies using unsafe ways to prevent getting caught.
For example, a Rohingya woman who fled from Burma and is residing in a camp in
Bangladesh described how her daughter got pregnant before getting an expensive
marriage license, was frightened about getting caught, tried to abort her
pregnancy at home, and died. After giving her a root drink, a relative gave the
pregnant woman a “rough abdominal massage” to help her abort. She started
having fits and bled to death.
Rohingya women who
chose to have their babies illegally were either forced to register their
children with other Rohingya parents who had not exhausted their “limit” or
were left with no choice but to give birth and hide their children. Hidden or
unregistered children get no government benefits. They are excluded from all
services.
Supporters of
Burma’s two-child policy for Rohingya say it is neither discriminatory nor a
violation of human rights, and some have wrongly cited India, the Philippines
and China as examples to bolster their case.
India has no
mandatory policy that directly limits the number of children, but seven states
introduced eligibility criteria for local government elections that prevent
those with more than two children from running for local office. At least three
of those states have revoked such criteria, and the Indian central government
has written to state authorities asking the holdouts to revoke any such
policies.
India is in fact
moving away from approaches to family planning that might create a coercive
environment. It refocused its family planning program in July 2012 to expand
access to contraceptives through a door-to-door campaign, emphasizing birth
spacing rather than sterilization. In May, the Indian government issued orders
that all women and girls should be provided access to free maternal health care
under government schemes irrespective of their age or the number of children
they have.
The Philippines also
has no policy restricting the number of children. In December 2012 the
Philippines Congress overcame decades-long opposition to reproductive rights by
the Roman Catholic Church and enacted a law that allows for the expanded
provision of reproductive health services, including the distribution of
contraceptives. The law states that “each family shall have the right to
determine its ideal family size,” and casts an obligation on the state to
“equip each parent with the necessary information on all aspects of family
life, including reproductive health and responsible parenthood, in order to
make that determination.”
Only China has a
policy limiting the number of children a couple may have, and China’s brutal
one-child policy is globally condemned. It has long been used to force women to
abort pregnancies, abandon children and incur heavy fines. But even China’s
policy was not used as a method of targeting and controlling an ethnic
minority—it was enforced across China. In recent years the Chinese government has
taken some steps to relax its one-child policy.
Ultimately, the
Burmese government needs to address the abuse and discrimination against the
Rohingya by ending discrimination in citizenship and related access to
services. President Thein Sein should stop being a silent spectator and revoke
the two-child policy once and for all. He should demonstrate his commitment to
human rights by expanding access to health care and education for the Rohingya,
and press Parliament to grant them citizenship rights on an equal basis with
all other people in Burma.
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