Rohingya Crisis and Suu Kyi’s Moment of Reckoning
- In Current Affairs
- 11:22 AM, Sep 17, 2017
- Kishor Narayan
Late last year, I had written about how the Rohingya citizenship issue was fast metamorphosing into the toughest challenge ever faced by Myanmar leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar army commonly known as the Tatmadaw had unleashed excessive force against the Rohingya found in the Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh, forcing a lot of them to cross the border and arrive in Cox’s Bazaar. This year too, the wave of violence has resurfaced and it appears to be even more ruthless than ever before.
Rakhine is a coastal Myanmar state bordering Bangladesh with a population of 3.1 million as per the 2014 census. Out of this, about 1.1 million are said to be Rohingya Muslims. In the new violence that has engulfed the region in the past couple of months, the UN estimates that about 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. This implies that close to 40% of Rohingyas today are refugees outside Myanmar. These figures are saddening as much as shocking. Although a young democracy, Myanmar is still grappling with sectarian conflicts and the oppressed minorities fighting back against the institutionalized forces. The only response that the army seems to know has been resorting to a ‘scorched earth’ policy resulting in a massive damage and destruction to the entire population, their belongings and their lands. Such tactics whenever employed by states against their populations earlier have been condemned and this time too the United Nations has severely rebuked the Myanmar government.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi the most powerful leader in Myanmar today has taken up the non-constitutional role of State Counselor since the current constitution brought in by the army prohibits citizens with foreign spouses and kids from holding governmental posts. Despite the non-ceremonial nature of the post she occupies, the nation and the world still considers her to be highly influential. It is in this backdrop that the world now has started showing displeasure about Suu Kyi’s silence over the entire issue. However the matter is not as simple as it looks and needs far greater analysis.
Ever since the last wave of violence, Suu Kyi herself requested former UN Chief Kofi Annan to head a commission to look into the issue of Rohingyas. The commission gave a report less than a month ago recommending Myanmar government to put an end to all restrictions imposed on the Rohingyas and also providing those with verified credentials all the benefits of citizenship. The commission that took a year to present its findings also suggested that the disenchantment in the state between the 2 ethnic groups (Arakan Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims) was very high and that this could lead to radicalization, an outcome the state was ill prepared to handle. Daw Suu Kyi had welcomed these proposals.
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At about the same time as the commission was submitting this report, the Rakhine state had erupted into a new cycle of violence all over again. Unlike earlier when the Rohingya were seen targeting government and army posts, this time though they targeted fellow Buddhists and Hindus. This resulted in the Buddhists and Hindus fleeing their villages fearing for their safety. What followed was the usual heavy-handed army response unleashing brutal force forcing a new wave of migration of Rohingyas into Bangladesh. This time though, there were reports by reporters and journalists in Bangladesh of mine blasts being heard from the Myanmar side of the border.
The world capitals have a strange way of reacting to the Rohingya crisis. We hear condemnations and disapprovals coming from them only when there is a wave of refugee migrations happening across the region. Once the spotlight shifts to another part of the world, the world capitals conveniently forget about the issue until the next cycle of violence. It is these interim periods that the radical groups seem to have taken advantage of. Harakah-Al-Yakin (or Faith Movement) a new Jihadi group seems to have taken shape in Rakhine state in the past 2 years. Founded by Ata Ullah, a Pakistani born to a migrant Rohingya father before moving as a child to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, this group claimed responsibility to the attacks on the policemen in 2016. This group has now renamed itself as Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and has specialized itself in guerilla warfare and has been successful in launching attacks on the government and the rest of the Rakhine population. The stated goal of this group is for a separate homeland for the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state.
This brings to memories the bloody episodes of insurgency movements witnessed in this region ever since Myanmar Independence in 1948. Pakistan (Bangladesh was East Pakistan until 1971) encouraged these Muslim fighters in the Rakhine state to wage a war against the Burmese army. However, this lasted until the early 1960s when the Pakistani and the Burmese governments began negotiating on how to deal with the insurgency issue. Much later in the 1990s, a new set of organizations like the Rohingya Solidarity Organization were set up in the bordering cities and districts of Bangladesh to fight against the Burmese army but is now largely defunct. The Myanmar army and the Myanmar government does not seem to have forgotten those old and painful chapters in history and therefore are excessively circumspect of any such secessionist tendencies.
Myanmar government claims that Ata Ullah got trained in guerilla warfare from the Taliban in Pakistan and has continued to get financial and logistic support from the Inter-Services Intelligence, the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. In addition, Ata Ullah continues to have strong links with Saudi Arabia where he was enrolled in an Islamic school.
All these developments have now convinced the Myanmar government in general and Daw Suu Kyi in particular that this is now an issue of national security (with a terrorist group trying to wage a war against the state) rather than a political issue that it was for all these years. In other words, the issue that was mainly about granting citizenship rights to the Rohingya has now metamorphosed into an insurgency issue with wider national and regional ramifications. While the government has to be condemned unequivocally for resorting to large scale destruction to life and property of Rohingyas, the actions from the other side are only making it tougher for the government to consider backing down.
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Politically too, within Myanmar, Rohingyas are a group with which no other group wants to co-exist. None of the political parties or religious and ethnic groups support the claim of citizenship of the Rohingyas. As a result, Daw Suu Kyi cannot afford to alienate her core voters to appease the Rohingyas unless she is willing to step on a political minefield.
In the midst of all this, the United States that had put in tremendous efforts for a smooth transition from army rule to a civilian rule doesn’t want to see the civilian government be embarrassed on any global forum just yet. Hence, there have not been any major statements from the Department of State regarding the recent crisis. China too has its hands full with the North Korea issue and has never been a major advocate of human rights in any case. However, its efforts to woo the Myanmar government to agree to a construction of a dam in north Myanmar with Chinese help has been met with stiff resistance in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar. Hence the Chinese silence in this issue has been extremely deafening and worrying for people who keenly watch this region. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was quick to latch onto this issue last year by publicly calling on Suu Kyi to grant citizenship to Rohingyas in open rallies in Kuala Lumpur. However, the lack of sustained efforts on his part has made his critics and opponents believe that he has latched onto the emotive Rohingya issue only to boost his sagging political image ahead of the 2018 general elections in Malaysia. Bangladesh that has faced the maximum brunt of the refugee influx, has always maintained that these refugees will have to be taken back by Myanmar. Myanmar on its part has flatly refused to even consider a retake. India has strongly supported the Myanmar government’s stand and there is a lot to gain with a healthy and positive relationship between New Delhi and Naypyidaw. Less than a decade ago, India had faced a similar situation when Sri Lanka was rebuilding after its decisive victory in its civil war against the Tamil Tigers. While the world was casting doubts on the Colombo government for having committed large scale human rights excesses, New Delhi blinked and stayed aloof only to see China take away it’s place as a valuable partner in the growth story of Sri Lanka. This partially explains why New Delhi has decided to put its weight firmly behind the government in Naypyidaw while Beijing is looking the other way.
Internally, Tatmadaw, the Myanmar Army, which holds 33% of seats in all the legislative bodies across the country, still manages to tightly control policies related to defense and internal security. This too is a reason why Suu Kyi has been unable to prevail on the Tatmadaw to not resort to large-scale violence on the Rohingya. As things have unfolded, it has been the reputation of Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi that has been shattered with global condemnation for her silence. There have even been calls for her to be stripped off the Nobel Peace Prize she had received ironically for standing up to the Tatmadaw fighting for democracy.
As things stand now, Suu Kyi has blinked under tremendous international pressure by announcing that she will not be heading to the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. Instead, it has been announced that she will be giving a national address on television on the Rohingya crisis. Myanmar can ill afford more painful cycles of violence as it finds its feet as a young democratic nation and Suu Kyi has to step up and rein in both the insurgent groups and the Tatmadaw. Will she be successful, only time will tell? But with the world’s patience running out, Suu Kyi can’t wait for a more opportune moment than now to establish long lasting peace in the country.
Pic Credit : By Foreign and Commonwealth Office [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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