Myanmar’s minorities deserve citizenship

[Zomi for Federalization and Democratization of Bur]

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The Brutal Bamar Buddhist Fascist Mercenary Terrorist Rapist (BBBFMTR)
Government of Nga Ne Win started discriminating against non-Bamar
people and non-Buddhist religions, and continued by the BBBFMTR
governments of Nga Saw Maung, Nga Than Shwe, and Nga Thein Sein.

The BBBFMTR governments isolated Burma. But no man, and no country, is
an island.

Burma should practise no discrimination against any ethnic races,
against religions, and against any poor farmers.
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November 21, 2012 6:35 pm

Myanmar’s minorities deserve citizenship

David Pilling By David Pilling

It was in 1982 that the Muslim Rohingyas were stripped of their
Burmese citizenship and became the stateless, persecuted minority they
are today. Their misery has intensified in recent months as mobs of
Buddhists, incited to violence by local politicians and even monks,
have attacked Rohingya villages in the western state of Rakhine. In
incidents apparently sparked by the rape and murder of a young
Buddhist woman in May, at least 170 Rohingya have been killed and
100,000 driven from their homes into camps.

The violence comes at a time of unprecedented – and mostly justified –
optimism in Myanmar. In the past 18 months, the country has undergone
an astounding transformation, from a reviled dictatorship to a fragile
democracy worthy of an official visit by Barack Obama, the US
president. The new sense of freedom may have, ironically, allowed
previously suppressed communal hatreds to bubble horribly to the
surface.

A Muslim group of Bengali origin, many of the estimated 800,000
Rohingyas in Rakhine state have lived there for generations, although
some may be relatively recent arrivals. There are claims by some
Rohingya that Muslim kings ruled the region for more than 100 years
from as early as the 15th century. That is not how most of the ethnic
Rakhine Buddhists who live in the state see it. To them, the people
who call themselves Rohingya are simply Bengali interlopers – recent
Muslim arrivals trying to take their land. According to this version –
shared by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority population – Rohingya arrived in
the past two centuries, brought by the British from the Chittagong
region of Bengal to work in the paddy fields. Many Buddhists reject
even the term Rohingya, regarding it as a modern-day invention.

Many Burmese who thought Mr Obama’s speech at Yangon University this
week inspirational said they disliked his reference to the Rohingya
issue. In a powerful section of his address, the US president conceded
that “every nation struggles to define citizenship”. There was no
excuse, however, for violence against innocent people, he said, and
universal principles applied to everyone, no matter what religion they
practised, where they came from or what they looked like. Contrast
that with the message of U Ye Myint Aung, former Myanmar consul-
general in Hong Kong, who in 2009 contrasted the Rohingyas’ “dark
brown” complexion with the “fair and soft” skin of the Burmese. “In
reality, Rohingya are neither ‘Myanmar people’ nor Myanmar’s ethnic
group,” he said, adding that they were “as ugly as ogres”.

The Myanmar of 2009, an isolated and despised junta, is a world away
from the country today. Myanmar is opening and liberalising at a pace
rarely seen in modern history. The government, led by President Thein
Sein, now has the chance to show to the world just how far it has
come. The Rohingya problem, which has the makings of a human
catastrophe on a truly horrible scale, presents the government with
the opportunity to prove that it cannot only meet the aspirations of
its people but also lead from the front.

In June, the government declared a state of emergency and sent
thousands of troops to the state to protect the Rohingya. This is an
extraordinary development. The army, which for years led the assault
against ethnic minorities, now finds itself protecting one of the most
vulnerable groups in the country.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, has not covered herself with
glory over the issue. She has called for the establishment of law and
order but has stuck to the formula that “both communities have
suffered human rights violations and both have also violated human
rights”.

That is true. But it is rather like saying that whites as well as
blacks violated human rights in apartheid South Africa. The comparison
is not far-fetched. Since the Rohingya were stripped of their
citizenship they have been classified as temporary residents, required
to buy registration cards and to seek permission to travel between
villages, to marry and even to have more than two children. Those
Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh have been ruthlessly turned back
to Myanmar or herded into stinking internment camps.

In recent days, Mr Thein Sein has begun to move in the right
direction. In a letter to the UN, he said the government would
consider all solutions “ranging from resettlement to granting of
citizenship”. Rakhine state would also be fully open to humanitarian
aid, he said, after complaints from relief agencies that they cannot
reach many of the affected people.

Myanmar’s biggest challenge – greater even than the move to democracy
– is to settle the ethnic minority issue by establishing a federal
union and ending permanently some of the longest-running insurgencies
in the world. War with the Kachin in the north of the country still
rages. But unlike other minorities in Myanmar, including the Kachin,
Karen, Karenni, Chin and Shan, the Rohingya are not regarded as a
legitimate ethnic group. That makes the stakes all the higher. The
government should grant the Rohingya citizenship. On that basis it
could defend their rights as citizens. It would not be popular. But it
would be the right thing to do.




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