Abid Bahar Ph. D.
Well, the above can't be my statement. Those of you, who know me, know, I have been working with the Rohingya people and Burma for the past 31 years. But surprisingly Burmese people who lived with the Rohingya people are the ones who clam that they have never heard of the name "Rohingya." It is as if saying I have never met my brother, or I have never seen my neighbour; sounds strange to me but not funny. Such assertion about an ethnic group aimed at intentionally ignoring them is called xenophobia, fear of the stranger. When Rohingyas as Burmese are made into strangers by the Rakhine gentlemen like Aye Kyaw, Aye Chan and the monk Ashin Nayaka in their statements and in their writings, it is more than xenophobia but is called racism. A matter of extreme intolerance: an idea that also goes against even Buddhism.
What is behind all this?
1. Burma is a huge country with more than 130 ethnic groups. Rohingyas are not included within them by the military government and their collaborators because the xenophob's assertion that they entered Burma after 1824 when the British occupied Arakan.
2. How is this possible, the recently arrived Rohingya refugees show some of them are not even as old as 5 years to enter Burma in 1824. Strange logic indeed, against some people's birth rights. Well, the real story is Rohingyas as the Arakani Muslims are racially and religiously different from the racially Asian and religiously Buddhist Arakani and the Burmese majority population. The Karen Christians have similar problems in Burma because of their religious differences. .
3. The fact is Arakan had an Indian kingdom first Hindu, later on Mohayana Buddhist (See the history of Mohamuni of Buddha statue now in Mandayay, see in the research work of Martin Smith "Muslim Rohingya of Burma). This is similar to Mohayana Buddhism in Bengal of the time. The Rakhines (also known as the Moghs identified in British history took the official name Rakhine during the 40's) recorded to have entered Arakan with Theravada Buddhism in the 10th century much later than Rohingya Muslim's arrival in Arakan.
Where did all these people called Arakani Muslims go who began to settle in Arakan from the 8th century?
Where did the decendents of the soldiers of Wali Khan and Shandhi Khan who married with the local women go? These army of 30,000 by Wali Khan and 40, 000 by Sindkhan that went to Arakan to help the Arakani king and later settled in the Kaladan valley. Where did the decendents of the captured Bengalis forcefully brought to Arakan by the Portuguage in the 15th century to work in agritural lands go?
Well, they were all there settled all over Arakan. But after the 1942 Arakani Muslim genocide most of the Arakani Muslims came to the north of Arakan called the Mayu frontier and the Rakhines in the South. Then the situation was made more complicated when the British identified all the Arakani Muslims as the Indian Muslims because India and Burma were under the one British empire. In 1937 Burma was seperated from India and the Arakani Muslims's fate was also alloted with the Burmese country.
To avoid the anti-foreigner movement that began in Rangoon by Otama, an Arakani reactionary monk, Rohingya leaders began to seperate their British labelled identity (of being as Indian immigrant Muslims settled in Rangoo. In order to do that they officially adapted an existing Burmese name called the "Rohingya " used by the Arakani Muslims before Britain occupied Arakan. The leaders officially adapted the name during the 50's.That was a smart move by the Rohingyas but to the military it was another excuse to attack the lamb as if like in the wolf Vs. lamb story. This provided the military the excuse that they have never heard of the name "Rohingya." "They must be "Bengalis" immigrant "Kula."
4. Surprisingly, the name "Rohingya" was heard by Francis Buchanan in 1798 in Burma, recorded in Francis Buchanan, in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla, (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1992), 82.
Jacques Leider calls Arakan a "frontier culture." Rohingyas are as if the Shans of Burma who have their Thai causin across the border.
5. No wonder, there are still some Burmese people in Arakan says "We have never heard the name "Rohingya."Well, my question to a Burmese who says " I have never heard of the word "Rohingya" (a) Did you hear the news of Rohingya exodus of 1978 when 200,000 Rohingyas were forced out from Burma who were carrying NRC (national Registration Cards) because I personally varified their NRC cards in refugee camps in Ukiya Bangladesh. Burmese government was forced to take back Rohingyas due to the preasure from international body because Rohingyas were carrying documents. (b). Did you also hear that in 1982 Burmese military government through a constitutional Act officially denied Rohingyas's Burmese citizenship? (c) Did you hear that in the 1991-92 there was another huge Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh. This time Burma made sure that Rohingyas don't carry any NRC?
If you are still not sure of the name Rohingya, it is your problem because you are most likely not informed of your country; In that case I can not help in your ignorance.
Worst of all if you as a xenophobe is acting strangely it is called hypocrisy. In that case if you are a citizen of Burma, you are intentionally keeping yourself ignorant, so that you can pretend, surely you are a hypocrite.
But if you are promoting this pretension, "I have never heard the name" Rohingya," they must be foreigners" and you are helping the military to exterminate them, and let me tell you, even if you have deserted a Burmese government job in a foreign embassy and is now a powerful democracy movement leader in USA or in UK, you are more likely to be a double agent, a war criminal that demads to be investigated and exposed to the world.
If you say to me "I have never heard of the word "Rohingya" before." in your role of denying a people's birth right, and helping the military to exterminate them, you can not be a democracy movement leader.
In the mean time,
The …exodus is a deep, sustained trickle of low visibility. The Rohingyas progressively leave Burma in small groups,
families or individuals…. Little by little, the population is being forced to leave Arakan because of a deliberate policy of cleansing."- says FIDH International Federation of Human Rights.
In that situation an observer lately commented about the Rohingya situation "The life of a Refugee is like a foot ball, kicking from bar to bar. One goal bar is on the soil of east Naf River and another is west Naf River. The Naf River is a foot ball ground."
Revolutionaries are not shy people. They know the difference between democracy-lovers and the reactionaries. As a matter of duty to Burma's democracy movement and to discourage the growth of xenophobia, reactionaries and their pretensions especially by responsible people should be brought to public attention.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
(Dedicated to the spirit of Stephen(UK) a friend of Burma, "Rise up for 4 Burma" and also to those who despice the cyber bullies (both the Rohingya and non Rohingya); the latter, the hudlums find pleasure in making the Rohingya image on the rohingyanet and in elsewhere their ultimate victim)
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