The “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, explained (Mei 2024)
Ondanks de vorming in 2016 van een nieuwe democratisch gekozen regering in Myanmar (Birma) onder leiding van Nobelprijswinnaar Aung San Suu Kyi's Nationale Liga voor Democratie, bleef de situatie nijpend voor de vervolgde moslimminderheid van het land, bekend als de Rohingya. Als indicatie van haar inzet om een oplossing voor de problemen te vinden, heeft de regering in augustus 2016 de voormalige secretaris-generaal van de VN, Kofi Annan, aangesteld als hoofd van een adviescommissie voor het uitvoeren van beoordelingen en het doen van aanbevelingen.
Wie zijn de Rohingya?
De term Rohingya werd vaak gebruikt, vooral in de internationale media, om te verwijzen naar een gemeenschap van moslims die over het algemeen geconcentreerd waren in twee noordelijke townships in de staat Rakhine (Arakan) in Myanmar, hoewel ze ook in andere delen van de staat woonachtig konden zijn en zowel in het land als in vluchtelingenkampen in Bangladesh. Er werd geschat dat de Rohingya ongeveer een derde van de bevolking in de staat Rakhine uitmaakte, waarbij Rakhine-boeddhisten een aanzienlijk deel van de resterende tweederde vormden.
Het gebruik van de term Rohingya werd sterk betwist in Myanmar. Politieke leiders van Rohingya hebben volgehouden dat zij een aparte etnische, culturele en taalkundige gemeenschap zijn die al in de late 7e eeuw teruggaat op haar afkomst. De bredere boeddhistische bevolking verwierp echter in het algemeen de Rohingya-terminologie en verwees ernaar in plaats daarvan Bengaals te zijn, en beschouwde de gemeenschap als grotendeels samengesteld uit illegale immigranten uit het huidige Bangladesh. Tijdens de telling van 2014 - de eerste die in 30 jaar werd uitgevoerd - nam de regering van Myanmar een beslissing van 11 uur om degenen die zichzelf als Rohingya wilden identificeren niet op te sommen en alleen degenen te tellen die de Bengaalse classificatie accepteerden. De verhuizing was een reactie op een dreigende boycot van de volkstelling door Rakhine-boeddhisten.Daarbij heeft de regering afstand gedaan van haar eerdere toezegging om zich aan de internationale volkstellingnormen te houden.
As with the rest of Myanmar’s postindependence borderlands that were historically multiethnic and politically fluid, Rakhine state had also suffered from decades of centre-periphery imbalances. On the one hand, Buddhist Rakhines had long felt oppressed by the Burmans, the country’s largest ethnic group, and on the other hand, they perceived the Muslim population to be a palpable threat to their cultural identity. Within the Myanmar context, race and ethnicity were rigid constructs that determined legal, political, and social relations. The debate surrounding the Rohingya terminology had, as such, paralyzed meaningful government recognition of the predicament of the Rohingya community.
Statelessness.
Almost all Rohingya in Myanmar were stateless. They were unable to obtain “citizenship by birth” in Myanmar because the 1982 Citizenship Law did not include the Rohingya on the list of 135 recognized national ethnic groups. The law had historically been arbitrarily applied in relation to those, such as the Rohingya, who did not fall strictly within the list of recognized ethnic nationalities. The legal status of a large majority of Rohingya was rendered even more precarious when Pres. Thein Sein unexpectedly announced in February 2015 the expiry of “white cards,” a form of temporary identity documentation held by many within the Rohingya community.
Intercommunal Violence and Displacement.
Two waves of intercommunal violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state in June and October 2012 led to the displacement of approximately 140,000 people—the large majority of whom were Rohingya—to camps around the state capital (Sittwe) and surrounding townships. According to government figures, the conflicts resulted in 192 deaths, 265 injuries, and the destruction of 8,614 homes, with the impact disproportionately borne by Muslim communities. Human Rights Watch, as well as other nongovernmental organizations, claimed that the October 2012 violence was a coordinated campaign targeting the Rohingya.
Legislative Restrictions.
Following the 2012 violence, other developments, including a series of proposed legislative measures (some of which were passed by Myanmar’s parliament), resulted in further restrictions on the limited rights of the Rohingya. Although those developments had a nationwide application, they were understood to affect mostly the Rohingya community.
In September 2014 an amendment to the 2010 Political Parties Registration Law came into force; the legislation effectively disallowed the Rohingya to form and be members of political parties. Less than six months later, the Constitutional Tribunal delivered an opinion that prevented noncitizens from voting in any national referendum. The legal implication of the decision, formalized in June 2015 with amendments to the election laws, was that Rohingya, who were considered noncitizens, would not be allowed to vote in the 2015 general elections, even if they had cast their ballots during the 1960, 1990, and 2010 elections. The development also represented a final and absolute curtailment of the political rights of the Rohingya.
In November 2014 a package of draft laws popularly termed “laws on safeguarding race and religion” was submitted in the parliament for debate. The bills, which were initially proposed in 2013, were to an extent premised on anxieties over Myanmar’s being surrounded by highly populated countries, a factor that was believed to potentially affect the country’s demographics; on fears that Buddhist women were being coerced or tricked into marriages by and with non-Buddhist men; and on stereotypical views that Muslim families were polygamous and that consequently many children were being born. The bills were conceived as a necessary measure to protect Buddhist women and to address the perceived high population growth rate in Rakhine state.
Between May and July 2015, two of the four bills that permitted the state to regulate birth spacing and family planning, as well as to police the practice of religion within multireligious families, were passed by the parliament. The Population Control Healthcare Bill, which was aimed at Muslim women, could potentially be used to force women to space their births at least three years apart.
