[chottala.com] Rakhine: Violent test for Myanmar reform

Violent test for Myanmar reform

By Brian McCartan

Sectarian strife gripping Rakhine State offers a distinct test for Myanmar's quasi-civilian government. President Thein Sein's efforts to calm the situation have won some praise, but there are calls to do more. The real test will be whether his government can ensure long-term stability while continuing a reform drive that is removing controls that served to suppress past communal tensions.

Hundreds of Muslims are reported to be fleeing Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh, which has has reinforced its land border, and with coast guards watching the River Naf, used by fleeing Rohingyas using small boats desperate to seek safety, CNN and other media reported. Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on Wednesday said her country was not willing to give shelter to Rohingya refugees, CNN reported.

Before the recent killings and arson attacks, tensions had been building between the Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine communities. The inciting incident for the violence was the rape and murder of Ma Thida Htwe, a 27-year-old Buddhist Rakhine woman on May 28 in Taunggote township.

Soon afterwards, three Muslim men were arrested for the crime, even as pamphlets began circulating in the region blaming Muslims for the incident. On June 3, 10 Muslim pilgrims were taken off a Yangon-bound bus and beaten to death by a several hundred-strong mob of Rakhine Buddhists. The mob claimed they were looking for the woman's killers.

In the aftermath, violence in the Muslim-majority western portion of the state spiraled, with mobs of Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine clashing in villages and towns. State media appealed early for calm while the government investigated. In a turn, civil society organizations appealed to the government to step in, show responsibility, and bring stability to the region.

As violence spread to other townships and the state capital at Sittwe, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was declared in four Rakhine State townships and additional police and troops were called in to contain the violence. Media reports indicate security forces had to resort at times to firing in the air to disperse rioters. However, violence continued, with fearful villagers and townspeople arming themselves with knives, swords and sharpened bamboo poles to protect their homes.

As the situation grew more unstable, thousands fled to internal refugee camps in Maungdaw and Sittwe. The United Nations has temporarily relocated non-essential staff from the region, and state media reports indicate that air travel and shipping to the region have been suspended.

At least 21 people have been killed, as many seriously injured and more than 1,600 houses burned in the violence, according to government media outlets. Both Rakhine and Rohingya activists claim many more have been murdered, but reports are almost impossible to verify given the highly charged nature of the violence.

Beyond beefing up the region's security presence, Thein Sein has taken other steps to deal with the violence that some feel have bolstered and others feel have undermined his reform credentials. A committee was formed on June 7 under Deputy Home Affairs Minister Kyaw Zan Myint to look into the deaths of the 10 Muslims and report back to the president by June 30.

On June 10, Thein Sein made a nationally televised speech announcing a state of emergency in Rakhine State, the first time such a rights-curbing measure has been invoked since his elected government took power last year. Significantly, the move allows for the military to take over the administrative functions in the state.

In his speech, Thein Sein called on the people, political parties, religious leaders and the media to assist the government with restoring peace and stability to the region. He went on to warn of the negative effects violence based on hatred and revenge could have on the stability and development of the country as a whole.

Military control
The state of emergency has been greeted with some trepidation given the country's very recent move away from military rule. Human rights and civil society groups worry that, under the military's leadership, security forces may resort to the heavy-handed tactics they have used in the past to break up protests and round up opposition figures, including firing into crowds and arbitrary arrests.

At the same time, if the military can manage to quell the violence without undue force and return administration to the state government in a timely manner, it could demonstrate the military's commitment to backing Thein Sein's reform efforts.

The situation has placed popular opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a difficult position. The Muslim issue, particularly the Rohingya, is a divisive issue in Myanmar, where anti-Muslim sentiment often runs high.

Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has often deliberately attempted to avoid involvement in Muslim-related issues. However, as a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights and democracy advocate, Suu Kyi has been forced to wade into the issue.

In a statement on June 6 calling for calm and understanding, Suu Kyi alluded to the difficulty in discussing the Muslim issue by saying, "Maybe some people wouldn't like me saying this but I have to say what I must say regardless of whether they like it or not. When you are the majority in society, then you are the strong party. If you are strong, then you must be generous and sympathetic. I would like to see all people in Burma [Myanmar] get along with each other regardless of their religion and ethnicity."

Suu Kyi left this week on her first trip to Europe in 24 years, arriving in Geneva on Wednesday on the fist leg of her tour, during which she will formally accept the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to her in 1991.

Myanmar's has been home to Muslims for centuries, most originally hailing from South Asia. Under British colonial rule, the population increased as Indians were brought in to work in the bureaucracy and military while others arrived seeking business opportunities. Many others worked as indentured laborers.

Many of these Indians were Muslims and to many people in Myanmar the two terms have become almost synonymous when talking about the country's Indian-descended population. Today, most Muslims in the country can point to several generations of ancestors resident in Myanmar, speak Myanmarese , and have adopted many of the country's customs, yet they have not been accepted by the majority of the population.

Many Myanmarese maintain social and commercial ties with Muslims, popular attitudes based on negative racial and religious stereotypes abound. These stereotypes and a general belief that Muslims are illegal economic migrants were actively reinforced by the military regime that took power in 1962.

During a pogrom against people of both Indian and Chinese descent in 1962, thousands were forced to flee the country. This history has created an environment where negative ethnic-based sentiments often easily rise to the surface, as seen in Rakhine State over the past week. The Muslim population has become a convenient scapegoat for problems in the country and over the years a useful way for the government to let off pressure caused by its own economic and political mismanagement.

Over 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 1978 and over 250,000 again fled in 1991-92. Although many returned under a program organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 30,000 still reside in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

In 1997, violence against the Muslim community was perceived by some Myanmar watchers as a move to draw public attention away from a major military offensive in Karen State at the other side of the country and growing criticism over accusations that military leaders had pillaged several Buddhist temples in search of sacred rubies.

The current violence has been accompanied by an alarming amount of anti-Muslim vitriol in Internet forums and public protests. Signs at recent Buddhist protests at Yangon's famed Shwedagon pagoda have labeled Rohingya as "terrorists".

Many comments left on media sites such The Voice journal and the Eleven Media Group have used the racial slur "Kala" to refer to Muslims and made calls for their expulsion and extermination. The government mouthpiece, New Light of Myanmar, was forced
to retract the use of Kala in a June 5 article that appealed for calm.

The current strife is the most violent since anti-Muslim riots in 2001. Starting in the central town of Taungoo, the riots soon spread to other towns including central Prome, Bago and Pakokku, as well as Kyaukpyu in Rakhine State. Many saw the hand of the military behind that surge in violence. There were widespread reports of military intelligence officers wearing monk's robes and the distribution of inflammatory pamphlets with claims of supposed Muslim atrocities against Buddhists.

The riots were considered to be an effort to divert public attention from widespread discontentment over the plummeting value of the currency, spiraling inflation, food shortages and the lack of progress in talks with Suu Kyi. In this case, as in most previous incidents of anti-Muslim violence, the Muslim community was largely powerless to fight back.

Although the present violence appears to be a local affair ignited by months of simmering tensions, rumors have spread of military personnel disguised as either Rohingyas or Rakhine participating in violent activities such as the burning of homes, presumably to sustain the violence and play up the need for military-led emergency powers.

Persecuted minority
Officially Muslims make up only 4% of Myanmar's population, although they represent an estimated 25% of the population in Rakhine State. Of that percentage, an estimated 800,000 are Rohingya.

The Rohingya have been particularly hard hit by the military regime's anti-Muslim policies. Their citizenship was revoked in 1982, denying them access to even basic public benefits. Additional restrictions were placed on their ability to own land, travel and even marry.

These restrictions have left the Rohingya community without adequate access to education and health facilities and caused frequent food shortages in their areas. The overall effect has been a climate of fear and frustration. In recent years, thousands have fled over land to Bangladesh or by boat to Thailand and Malaysia in search of work.

The problems in Rakhine State come at a time that Thein Sein's government is dealing with public protests over electricity shortages in several cities as well as strikes at factories outside Yangon and among silver miners. In sharp contrast to the previous military regime, the government has so far shown a tolerance for the protests. The violence in Rakhine State, however, presents a somewhat different challenge, both because of its escalation and the ethnic nature of the conflict.

Thein Sein has made reconciliation between the government and the country's many ethnic minorities a national priority. Ethnic-based violence, however, has been a fact of life in Myanmar since World War II. Most of the tensions have been between the largely Burman majority and different ethnic groups, but as the events in Rakhine State have shown there are also tensions between ethnic minorities.

Rarely, however, have those tensions erupted into sectarian violence. The exception is the period during and immediately after World War II, when sectarian violence between Burmans and ethnic Karen in the Irrawaddy Delta region resulted in massacres of villagers by both sides perpetrated by ad hoc village militias.

Much of Myanmar's ethnic-based violence has taken on the form of self-determination struggles by ethnic insurgent political organizations and their "regular" armies pitted against a government that from their point of view served only Burman interests. While racial stereotypes persist and attacks on ethnic villagers by the Myanmar Army sometimes take on ethnic overtones, ethnic cleansing was never a government or insurgent policy, despite propaganda by all sides. Incidents of communal violence committed by civilians of one ethnicity against another have been rare, with the exception of the pogroms against Indians and Chinese in 1962 and against Muslims since.

Thein Sein's reform drive has had the unintended consequence of removing many of the social and political controls that previously suppressed ethnic tensions. In most cases, those tensions are not of the same level of those between the Rakhine and Rohingya, and the chance of sectarian violence is relatively low. Still, tensions stoked by uneven economic, social and political development could inflame these feelings as the government relaxes controls, encourages economic development and cuts deals with ethnic political organizations.

It was a fear of ethnic strife and disintegration of the union that in part motivated the 1962 coup that brought the military to power. Military officers have long been taught that without the military the country would break apart and the new bout of sectarian violence will have only reinforced these ideas. Should sectarian conflicts spread, it could provide the excuse hardliners within the military need to reassert control and oust Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration.

The Rohingya issue will be difficult to resolve unless the government is willing to rescind a decades-old policy of treating the minority group as illegal migrants mostly from Bangladesh. Without acceptance of their status as citizens of Myanmar, it will be difficult to create any effective dialogue. The government has yet to show any initiative in finding a solution to the tens of thousands of Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

This places Thein Sein in a reform bind. While there are legitimate reasons to crackdown on both the Rohingya and Rakhine, the suppression will need to be carried out in ways that does not result in the arbitrary arrests and killings that soldiers and police were notorious for under military rule.

Instead, his government will have to arrive at a solution that simultaneously calms the tensions between the two ethnic minority groups, appeases a domestic population largely unsympathetic to the plight of Muslims, reinforces its claims to reconciliation, and maintains its reformist credentials with the international community.

The violence has shown that national reconciliation with ethnic minorities needs to go beyond simply addressing economic development issues. In ceasefire negotiations with ethnic insurgent groups and in discussions with ethnic political parties and civil society groups, Thein Sein's government needs to address underlying social and political issues or risk future and potentially more widespread sectarian strife.

Brian McCartan is a freelance journalist. He may be reached atbpmccartan1@gmail.com.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NF15Ae02.html

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