6
A Stateless People
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’
Martin Luther King Jr.
THE DESPAIR WAS palpable. Their eyes spoke clearly of their sense of hopelessness, and their testimonies told of their statelessness. One man, a political leader, looked into my eyes and said with genuine fear that he belonged to ‘a people at the brink of extermination’.1
These were the Rohingyas, a Muslim group of Bengali origin who have inhabited northern Arakan State for generations. Thousands have fled intolerable conditions in their homeland, in the hope of a better life across the border in Bangladesh – only to encounter further misery. Approximately 28,000 have been officially recognised by the UNHCR, and are accommodated in two camps. But tens of thousands more live in dire circumstances in temporary, unregistered camps and settlements, or dispersed among the villages around Teknaf, Ukhiya and the southern Chittagong region. They have almost no access to education or health care, and even in the officially registered camps their shelter is poor. In the rainy season, rain drips through the roof and seeps up through the ground, creating a permanent mudbath. For those living outside the UNHCR camps conditions are even worse.
Not only are the Rohingyas oppressed and abused by the military regime, but they are also subjected to racial discrimination. Tension is particularly acute with some of the Arakan or Rakhine people, and some Burmans and other ethnic people, either as a result of their alliance with the Rakhines or because of their own religious and racial prejudice, also treat the Rohingyas badly. At the core of their plight is the fact that the regime does not recognise them as citizens of Burma.2
In Arakan State, there are believed to be approximately 1 million Rohingyas, out of a population of between 2.5 and 3 million. In northern Arakan, their primary location, there are an estimated 725,000, out of 910,000 people. In the major centres of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, they account for 96 and 88 per cent of the population respectively, while in Sittwe, previously called Akyab, the state capital, Rohingyas account for half the population. A further 1 million are living in exile, in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Europe and the United States.3
Without citizenship rights, the Rohingyas face restriction in almost every sphere of life. To travel from one village to another, they are required to obtain permission from at least three local authorities – the village-level chairman, the township authority, and the Na Sa Ka border security force. Such permission can be difficult to obtain and often takes up to five days. A bribe of at least 500 kyats must also be paid, and if a Rohingya wants to travel to another township, the bribe is at least 1,000 kyats. Even after having obtained a permit and paid the bribes, Rohingyas face harassment at checkpoints along the way. Engaging in any meaningful economic activity, or gaining access to education or health care, is therefore severely restricted. Rohingyas seeking treatment at the one large hospital, located in Sittwe, are often refused permission to travel.
They also need permission to marry, and approval can take several years and cost between 5,000 and 500,000 kyats. Those who marry without approval are prosecuted and can be jailed for up to five years.
In the words of one Rohingya, ‘the education system is grim’. Although there are primary schools in every village, in many schools the vast majority of teachers are non-Muslims, because as non-citizens the Rohingyas are not permitted to be employed as government servants, either as teachers, nurses or in other public services. Rakhine Buddhist teachers employed in Rohingya areas sometimes do not turn up to teach for an entire year, so schools are abandoned. There are only twelve high schools in the three Rohingya-majority townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung.
The very few Rohingyas who manage to succeed at school are refused entry to higher education, even if they obtain high marks. Some have been able to follow distance education, but they still have to obtain permission to travel to the only university in Arakan State, in Sittwe, to sit their exams. In 2005 only forty-five Rohingyas were able to sit exams in Sittwe. Since 2005 travel to Sittwe has been systematically denied.
Like Christians, Muslims in Burma have faced persecution at the hands of a fascist military regime which identified itself with extreme Burman nationalism and a perversion of Buddhism for political ends. Rohingya Muslims find it almost impossible to obtain permission to renovate or extend mosques or other religious buildings. According to Rohingya sources, since 1962 very few new mosques have been built. The central mosque in Maungdaw is reportedly still only half-built and without a roof, and between 2005 and 2008 at least twelve mosques and madrasas were demolished. In July and August 2006 the authorities ordered the closure of a large number of mosques and madrasas, on the grounds that they had been built without official permission, or were unable to provide evidence of their funding sources. In north Buthidaung, eight mosques were ordered to close in mid-2006, and a further seventeen mosques and madrasas were ordered to be destroyed at the end of 2006. Eight were demolished. In early 2007, three mosques and madrasas were forced to close in Rathedaung and southern Maungdaw. According to Rohingya expert Chris Lewa in testimony to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2007, at least fourteen people from northern Arakan, including two clerics, are in jail for renovating an Islamic religious building without permission.4
Forced labour, extortion and land confiscation are widespread in northern Arakan as in most of Burma. The difference is that in northern Arakan it appears that the Rohingyas are specifically targeted. Three defectors from the Na Sa Ka border force I met in Dhaka in 2008 confirmed that the Rohingyas were singled out. ‘Throughout my life in the Na Sa Ka, I was used to this system of arresting Muslims, asking for money, torturing them – every day,’ explained one. ‘We only arrested Muslims, not Rakhines.’5 Another confessed: ‘When we saw Muslims, we would arrest them … After arresting them, we forced them to work for us … I did not want to torture and beat Muslim people, but I was ordered to do so. I feel very sorry for what I did. I feel happier now that I have escaped.’6
Extortion, said one Rohingya, ‘is so serious that if we travel from one village to another, we have to bring money to give to the Na Sa Ka, and we have to send the money for our shopping separately. Economically we are completely crushed.’ Sometimes, the authorities find a specific reason for demanding money, accusing Rohingyas of travelling to Bangladesh without permission, or possessing a mobile phone without approval, for example. A few Rohingyas have Bangladeshi mobile phones, but if caught with them, they can be forced to pay between 100,000 and 200,000 kyats. However, often bribes are sought even when the accusations are false. One man had travelled to Bangladesh with permission, but on 27 August 2008 the authorities came to his home and demanded 50,000 kyats from his family while he was gone. And in some instances no reason is even given. People are randomly arrested and a bribe of 1,000 to 2,000 kyats is demanded for their release. The Na Sa Ka come to villages at night, to demand money or livestock. ‘This is happening daily,’ said one Rohingya.
One of the defectors confirmed this. Based in the Na Sa Ka Area No. 1 at Aung Tha Pray, close to the Bangladesh border, he described how at night, his battalion would go to Rohingya villages to look for those who travel to Bangladesh. ‘We kicked open all the doors of people’s homes, and arrested all Muslims, demanding money – whether they had been to Bangladesh or not. We did this every day – one village one night, the next night another village,’ he recalled. ‘Many Muslims are suffering. After arresting Muslims, the Na Sa Ka tortured them. They forced them to give money. The Muslims had to sell their livestock, their cows, goats and chickens, to get the money to give to [us]. If they could not give money, they would be beaten.’
If money or livestock are not demanded, often forced labour is required. ‘We used Muslims to dig bunkers,’ said the former Na Sa Ka officer. ‘Every village had to provide ten or fifteen people. They were not given pay or food. Some families could not
eat at all, because they were forced to work all day for the Na Sa Ka.’7 In July 2008, hundreds of Rohingyas were forced to work on rebuilding the road from Maungdaw to Buthidaung, which had been destroyed by heavy rain. Many Rohingyas have also been forced to buy and plant physic nut saplings or cultivate paddy fields for the Na Sa Ka.
As part of its campaign to subjugate the Rohingyas, the junta has begun to repopulate northern Arakan with Burmans, by constructing a series of what it calls ‘model villages’, or natala. At least fifty of these have been built so far, in eighty-two village tracts in Maungdaw Township, near the Bangladesh border. Usually built with Rohingya forced labour, they are populated by Burman Buddhists. Burmans are offered incentives to resettle, and the plan is that they will then gradually take over ownership of surrounding land and take up leadership positions in area. ‘Our land, which we have cultivated, is being confiscated,’ one Rohingya told me. ‘Muslims are gradually losing lands and becoming landless.’ In some cases, land owned by Rohingyas is confiscated, given to Burman settlers, and then the original Rohingya owner is invited to pay rent to the settlers in the form of five-and-a-half bags of the crop per 0.4 acres, each one fifty kilograms, for the privilege of cultivating the land.
While rape is widespread throughout Burma, experts believe it is not as common in Rohingya areas – although it is extremely difficult to obtain evidence, because in the Rohingya Muslim culture attitudes are very conservative and Rohingya women are perhaps more reluctant to speak out. Nevertheless, wherever the Tatmadaw is present, rape cases occur. One refugee woman who fled to Bangladesh in 1991 recalls a terrible night. Her husband had already escaped, her cousin had been killed by the military and a major operation by the Tatmadaw was underway. ‘At night, soldiers came to our village, house by house, and pulled out the women to rape them,’ she claimed. ‘I screamed out when I heard the soldiers, and local people rushed to help. The soldiers did not rape me, but [instead] they demanded a goat. The next day I left everything and crossed the border.’ On one occasion a local Tatmadaw captain ordered the village men to provide women for him, she added, and when one man refused to give his daughter, he was severely beaten.
A Na Sa Ka deserter confirmed that rapes occur. ‘Sergeants and corporals especially raped Muslim women,’ he told me. ‘They would gather all the men of one village in one place, and we junior soldiers would have to guard them at gunpoint while the officers abused the women. In one village, I had to watch over the men, while a sergeant and some corporals abused their wives.’8
Rohingya activists and resistance groups prompt harsh reprisals from the regime, as with any opposition in Burma. Arbitrary arrest and torture is widespread. In July 2008, a sixty-three-year-old man, Asheraf Meah, from Alethankyaw (Hatchurata) village, twelve miles south of Maungdaw, died after twelve days in police custody. He had been detained without charge, and severely tortured. When he was unable to pay bribes to the police, he was beaten to death.
Typically, extrajudicial killings go unreported. However, on a handful of occasions there have been significant military operations against the Rohingyas, which have resulted in numerous deaths. In 1994, the Tatmadaw launched an offensive in response to the activities of the armed Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), and it is reported that hundreds of Rohingyas from Maungdaw and Buthidaung were massacred in a military camp. Precise accounts have not been obtained, although an artist’s impression exists. Rohingya sources claim that people were lined up in a row in front of mass graves. Soldiers hit each person on the back of the head with a shovel, causing them to fall into the grave. Some died instantly, but many were buried alive.
A senior UN official, who has served in various humanitarian emergencies including Darfur and who, in the words of a foreign diplomat in Rangoon, ‘knows human misery when he sees it’ has described the plight of the Rohingyas in northern Arakan as as bad as anything he has seen ‘in terms of the denial of basic human freedoms’. Médicins Sans Frontières has categorised the Rohingyas as one of the ten world populations in danger of extinction. One Rohingya activist in Bangladesh summed up the situation with these words: ‘The regime is trying to take away our identity. We will not be there in the very near future. The disintegration of our society will take place. Our prime concern is that we must not be eliminated. This is our land and we want to live there with full rights and dignity. We need international help.’ Another concluded that the regime is ‘poised to exterminate’ the Rohingya, with the aim of achieving ‘Arakan land without Muslims’. His people, he warned, are ‘just struggling to survive’.
The Rohingyas’ plight is made worse by a continuing debate over their origins. Even their name ‘Rohingya’ is disputed by many Burmans and Rakhine. Yet these divisions have been stirred by the regime, using its favourite divide-and-rule tactic. A position paper adopted by the NCGUB, the Burmese democracy movement’s government in exile, on 24 September 1992 notes that the regime is ‘exploiting these differences in order to build up public support for a strong army’.9
Although some in the democracy movement refuse to recognise the Rohingyas or at best treat them with undisguised suspicion, others have taken a different approach. The NCGUB affirmed that ‘Muslim Rohingyas have lived in Arakan for centuries’ and that they should have the same rights as all other citizens of Burma. ‘They are citizens of Burma and have in the democratic past participated in Burmese politics. These facts cannot be denied,’ the NCGUB notes.10 And in 2000, one of the Rohingya armed groups, the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), formed an alliance with the National United Party of Arakan (NUPA). In the case of both the NCGUB and NUPA, extremist Rakhines have unleashed bitter attacks on them for even acknowledging the existence of the Rohingyas. NUPA’s President Dr Khin Maung, a Rakhine himself, has been given the nickname ‘Muhammad Khin Maung’ among some Rakhines because of the alliance he has formed with the Rohingyas.
The history of the area is a cause of intense dispute among Rohingyas and Rakhines. Some Rakhines claim that Bengalis only came to northern Arakan State in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that an influx arrived after cyclones devastated Bangladesh in 1978 and 1991.11 Ironically, those are the years of the largest exodus of Rohingya refugees from Burma into Bangladesh. Some believe the Rohingyas have a secret plot to create a separate Muslim state, pointing to the Mujaheed movement in 1947 that did indeed demand autonomy.12 The Rohingyas, on the other hand, claim to have inhabited Arakan for centuries. Bangladeshi historian Dr Abdul Karim claims that the Rohingyas came to Arakan in several phases. ‘Some came as traders from as far places as Arabia and Persia, others came as conquerors and in the train of the invading army, some came as victims of pirates and still others came in peaceful pursuits … In the seventeenth century Arakan reached its pinnacle of glory through the contribution of Muslim poets, Muslim learned men, saints and administrators.’13 He cites an historical report of a shipwreck in the ninth century, suggesting that ‘the Rohingyas have been staying in Arakan for more than a thousand years’.14
Some Rohingyas claim that Muslim kings actually ruled Arakan in 1430 for over a hundred years.15 Martin Smith questions this assertion, noting that this refers to the reign of Arakan King Narameikhla. Smith argues that after King Narameikhla took sanctuary with King Ahmed Shah of Gaur in Bengal during one of the many wars with Burman kings, he and his successors took Muslim titles simply as ‘royal honorifics’ rather than as a result of conversion. What is not in dispute, according to Smith, is that ‘various historians and Muslim scholars have recorded evidence of a Muslim presence or settlement along parts of the Arakan coastline, from as early as the eighth and ninth centuries AD’, and that one of Arakan’s largest mosques was constructed in the seventeenth century.16
Whatever the history, no one can seriously doubt that the Rohingyas have lived in northern Arakan for generations. Exactly how many generations may be debated, but at least we can be certain that they were there before Burma’s independence. The former President of Burm
a, Sao Shwe Thaike, a Shan, is said to have argued that ‘Muslims of the Arakan certainly belong to one of the indigenous races of Burma. If they do not belong to the indigenous races, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races.’17
Although a large-scale anti-Muslim riot occurred in Arakan in 1942, in which 300 Muslim religious centres were destroyed and thousands of Rohingyas fled their homes, in general Rakhines and Rohingyas lived alongside each other peacefully until Ne Win’s rule, and during the democratic period Rohingyas had citizenship rights and played a full part in Burmese society. U Nu, Prime Minister from 1948–1958 and again briefly from 1960–1962, who used the disputed term ‘Rohingya’, authorised the Burmese Broadcasting Service to broadcast in the Rohingya language, and Rohingyas sat in Parliament.18 Their fortunes changed when Ne Win seized power.
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 19