Introduction:
- Tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar in the past year, many of them taking to the sea in the spring of 2015 to try to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
- The latest surge in refugees was prompted by a long-building crisis: the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government in Rakhine State, which have caused hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee since the late 1970s.
- Their plight has been compounded by the responses of many of Myanmar’s neighbors, which have been slow to take in the refugees for fear of a migrant influx they feel incapable of handling.
Who are the Rohingya?
- The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group living primarily in Myanmar's western Rakhine State; they practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam.
- The estimated one million Rohingya in Myanmar account for nearly a third of Rakhine state's population.
- The Rohingya differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously.
- The Rohingya trace their origins in the region back to the fifteenth century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Bengal and the Rakhine territory were governed by colonial rule as part of British India.
- Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya's historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups.
- The Rohingya are largely identified as illegal Bengali immigrants, despite the fact that many Rohingya have resided in Myanmar for centuries.
- Both the Myanmar government and the Rakhine state’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, reject the use of the label "Rohingya," a self-identifying term that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity.
- Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the most widely accepted origin is that "Rohang" is a derivation of the word "Arakan" in the Rohingya dialect and the "ga" or "gya" means "from."
- By identifying as Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group asserts its ties to land that was once under the control of the Arakan Kingdom, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Thailand-based advocacy group.
What is the legal status of the Rohingya?
- The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship status and, as a result, the vast majority of the group's members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless.
- Though Myanmar's 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, the military junta introduced a citizenship law in 1982 whose strict provisions stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship.
- Until recently, the Rohingya have been able to register as temporary residents with temporary identification cards, known as "white cards," which Myanmar's regime began issuing to many Muslims (both Rohingya and non-Rohingya) in the 1990s.
- The white cardsconferred some limited rights but were not recognized as proof of citizenship. Although the temporary cards held no legal value, Lewa says that the IDs did represent some minimal recognition of temporary stay for the Rohingya in Myanmar.
- In 2014 the government held a UN-backed national census—its first in thirty years. The Muslim minority group was initially permitted to self-identify as "Rohingya," but after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census, the government decided the Rohingya could only register if they identified themselves as Bengali.
- Similarly, under pressure from Buddhist nationalists protesting Rohingyas’ right to vote in a 2015 constitutional referendum, President Thein Sein cancelled the temporary ID cards in February 2015, effectively revoking their newly gained right to vote—white card holders were allowed to vote in Myanmar's 2008 constitutional referendum and 2010 general elections. "Country-wide anti-Muslim sentiment makes it politically difficult for the [central] government to take steps seen as supportive of Muslim rights," writes the International Crisis Group.
- Despite the documentation by rights groups of systematic disenfranchisement, violence, and instances of anti-Muslim campaigns, Muslim minorities continue to "consolidate under one Rohingya identity" says Lewa.
- Many Rohingya have sought refuge in nearby Bangladesh, which hosts more than thirty-two thousand registered refugees; more than two hundred additional unregistered Rohingya refugees are believed to live in the country, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates.
- However, conditions in the most of the country’s refugee camps are dire, driving many to risk a perilous voyage in the Bay of Bengal.
What is the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and international actors in resolving the migration crisis?
- No unified or coordinated ASEAN response has been proposed or developed to address the deepening crisis. States in Southeast Asia also lack established legal frameworks to provide for the protection of rights for refugees.
- Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand—all ASEAN members—have yet to ratify the UN Refugee Convention and its Protocol. ASEAN itself has remained silent on the plight of the Rohingya and on the growing numbers of asylum-seekers in member countries largely because of the organization’s commitment to the fundamental principleof noninterference in the internal affairs of member-states. Lilianne Fan of the London-based Overseas Development Institute says that while ASEAN has the capacity to manage this crisis, member states lack the political will to resolve it.
- Advocacy groups like Human Rights Watch, the Arakan Project, and Fortify Rights, a Southeast Asia-based advocacy group, continue to appeal to major international players to exert pressure on Myanmar's government. Some, like New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, argue that the United States should not have normal relations with the country until its persecution of the Rohingya ends. Others, like senior advisor at the United States Institute of Peace and former U.S. mission chief in Myanmar Priscilla Clapp, say that placing sole blame on Myanmar oversimplifies and misrepresents the complexities of the country's historical ethnic diversity. "An international response that consists primarily of assigning blame for this humanitarian tragedy is no longer tenable. It is time for the international community to organize a realistic, workable solution," writes Clapp.
- To date, the United States and other global powers have urged the central government in Myanmar to do more to protect ethnic minority groups from persecution. On a visit to Myanmar in the fall 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama said, "Discrimination against a Rohingya or any other religious minority… does not express the kind of country that Burma over the long term wants to be."
- Though no coherent regional or international response to the migrant crisis has come to fruition, more pointed international pressure appears to be mounting against Myanmar's central government. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Anne Richard said in May that resettlement fails to address the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar. "The answer to the issue is peace and stability and citizenship for the Rohingyas in Rakhine State, and that is the solution."
- The Rohingyas have also tried to overcome their hardships by establishing rudimentary schools; by helping one another find work; and by joining organizations that provide services, advice and a sense of solidarity. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it was supporting 31 “learning centers” across Malaysia for Rohingya children. Other schools operate without United Nations support. It is only seldom that the Rohingyas use their communal solidarity as a form of security for themselves.
- Bangladesh has offered to relocate the 32,000 registered refugees to an inhabited island called Thengar Char, two hours away from the mainland. Not only is such a large scale move logistically impractical, but also the island disappears under floodwater for a few good months during the monsoon and is visited by pirates. Their ‘home country’ Myanmar has banned the community from fleeing, but refuses to address the problem. Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN has suggested for the cause to be taken up to the UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon, and that the recent resolution adopted on Rohingya Muslims at a Ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) be sent to the President of the Security Council. Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to provide temporary asylum to 7000 migrants. Fate of thousands of the beleaguered community remains dark as they flee from one country to another in search of a basic need: an identity.
Source: sspconline.org, wiki
