Photo: AP Khin Maung Win
By
AP
February
25, 2014
YANGON, Myanmar: An independent human rights group said Tuesday it has obtained
official documents that directly implicate the Myanmar government in abusive
and discriminatory policies targeting the country's long-persecuted minority
Rohingya Muslim community.
Matthew
Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights, said analysis of a dozen leaked
official and public records detail restrictions on the right to travel freely,
practice religion, repair homes, marry and to have families — the only place in
the predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million that has limited parents to two
children.
While
these policies have long been known, in some cases dating back decades, this is
the first time the orders have been made public, he said, describing the
chilling effect of seeing them in writing.
"It
represents a level of planning and knowledge among Myanmar authorities that
raises the abuses to the threshold of crimes against humanity," said
Smith. "These abuses have been carried out for years with complete
impunity, driving the population into the ground."
There
was no immediate reaction from the government.
Myanmar,
which only recently emerged from a half-century of brutal military rule, has
been hit by sectarian violence since it began its bumpy transition to democracy
in 2011. As many as 280 people have been killed, most of them Rohingya attacked
by Buddhist mobs, and another 140,000 forced to flee their homes.
Nowhere
have Rohingya — described by the U.N. as one of the most persecuted religious
minorities in the world — been more zealously pursued than in the northwestern
state of Rakhine, which sits along the coast of the Bay of Bengal and is cut
off from the rest of the country by a mountain range.
It's
home to 80 percent of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya. Some descend from
families who have been there for generations. Others arrived more recently from
neighboring Bangladesh. All have been denied citizenship, rendering them
stateless.
Confidential
documents published in the 79-page report reveal that official orders issued by
Rakhine state authorities from 1993 to 2008 outline consistent state policies
restricting Rohingya.
Some
of the "regional orders" — dated 1993, 2005 and 2008 — are copied to
various departments falling under state and central government jurisdictions.
However, they also have been discussed on the record since 2011, the group
said, adding that to the best of its knowledge almost all the policies are
still in place and enforced.
The
report says the orders laid the groundwork for a two-child policy enforced in
Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, requiring Rohingya "who have permission
to marry" to "limit the number of children, in order to control the
birth rate so that there is enough food and shelter."
One document gives detailed instructions for officials to
confirm women are the real mothers of infants, forcing them to publicly
breastfeed if it's suspected that they are trying to claim others' children as
their own.