What is Myanmar
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in South East Asia. It neighbors are Thailand,
Laos, Bangladesh, China and India. It has a population of about 54 million, most of
whom are Burmese speakers, although other languages are also spoken. The country
gained independence from Britain in 1948. It was ruled by the armed forces from
1962 until 2011, when a new government began ushering in a return to civilian rule.
Why it is also called as Burma
The ruling military changed the country's name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989.
The two words mean the same thing but Myanmar is the more formal version. Some
countries, including the UK, initially refused to use the name as a way of denying the
regime's legitimacy. But use of "Myanmar" has become increasingly common. And in
2016 it was said that it did not matter which name was used.
Ethnic Groups in Myanmar
Myanmar is a country of great ethnic diversity. The Burmans, who form the largest
group, account for more than half of the population. They are concentrated in
the Irrawaddy River valley and in the coastal strips, with an original homeland in the
central dry zone. The Karen are the only hill people who have settled in significant
numbers in the plains. Constituting about one-tenth of the population, they are the
second largest ethnic group in Myanmar. The Shan of the Shan Plateau have little
ethnolinguistic affinity with the Burmans, and, although historically led by hereditary
rulers, their society was less elaborately structured than that of the plains peoples. The
Shan represent a small but significant portion of the country’s population. Numerous
small ethnic groups, most of which inhabit the upland regions, together account for
roughly one-fifth of Myanmar’s population. The ethnographic complexity of the
highlands occasionally leads to misgroupings of some of the
smaller communities with their more prominent neighbours.During the period of
British colonial rule, there were sizable communities of South Asians and Chinese,
but many of these people left at the outbreak of World War II. A second, but forced,
exodus took place in 1963, when commerce and industry were nationalized. In the
early 21st century the Chinese constituted a small but notable portion of Myanmar’s
people.
Religion
Although Myanmar has no official religion, nearly nine-tenths of the population
follows Theravada Buddhism. The vast majority of Burmans and Shan are Buddhist.
There is, however, a significant Protestant Christian minority, concentrated primarily
among the Karen, Kachin, and Chin communities. Many of the other hill peoples
practice local religions, and even those who adhere to world religions typically
incorporate local elements to some degree. Muslims, mostly Burman, and Hindus are
among the smallest religious minorities.
What is Rohingya
The Rohingya are one of Myanmar's many ethnic minorities. Un secretary general
described it as “one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world.” The
Rohingya, who numbered around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one
of the many ethnic minorities in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest
percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, with the majority living in Rakhine state.
They have their own language and culture and say they are descendants of Arab
traders and other groups who have been in the region for generations.
But the government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, denies the
Rohingya citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census, refusing to
recognise them as a people.
It sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Since the 1970s, Rohingya have migrated across the region in significant numbers.
Estimates of their numbers are often much higher than official figures.
In the last few years, before the latest crisis, thousands of Rohingya made perilous
journeys out of Myanmar to escape communal violence or alleged abuses by the
security forces.
Genocide of muslims in burma
The world we live in was supposed to be civilised with no space for barbarianism. We
thought ethics and respect for humanity would reign supreme in the 21st century.
Alas! The fate of the majority of the world’s population, in particular minorities, still
hangs in oblivion. They are treated like slaves, killed without any evidence and
annihilated for nothing. From South Africa and the Middle East to East Europe and
Indonesia, minorities of all sorts have been abysmally subjected to sheer hatred,
socio-economic oppression, mental torture, physical abuse and ultimately genocidal
annihilation. The most recent case, in this respect, which has been appearing on social
media, is of Myanmar (Burma) where the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have
witnessed the worst kind of genocidal operation at the hands of extremist Buddhists.
This massacre movement for the eradication of the Rohingya has been taking pace in
Myanmar since 2011. The former is a Muslim racial minority living in the Arakan
state of western Burma. They have been facing severe maltreatment and oppression
by the state and national regimes for decades. There are around 1.33 million Rohingya
living in Burma but the Burmese state’s 1982 Citizenship Law refutes their basic right
of citizenship in spite of the fact that the Rohingya people have been living in Burma
for ages. More importantly, the president of Burma, Thein Sein, clearly denies the
presence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group of Burma, labelling them Bengalis,
which is historically incorrect since the Rohingya community has been residing in the
northerwestern part of today’s Myanmar since pre-colonial times. The British
consolidated their residential status as farm labourers in the 16th century. Hence, to
argue that the Rohingyas are illegal migrants from Bangladesh is a conscious
distortion of historical facts.
Having sensed the gravity of the humanitarian situation, a non-Muslim state, Norway,
took a much-needed initiative the other day by holding a two-day day session that
called for an end to the ongoing oppression of Rohingya Muslims in Burma. The
participants, who included seven Nobel laureates, termed the Muslims massacre in
Myanmar as being no less than genocide. For example, Desmond Tutu, the
frontrunner of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, requested for a
stop to the gradual genocide of the Muslims in that country. Tutu’s appeal was
enlarged by six more fellow Nobel peace laureates that included Jody Williams from
the US, Shirin Ibadi from Iran, Tawakkol Karman from Yeman, Mairead Maguire
from Northern Ireland, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel from Argentina and Leymah Gbowee
from Liberia. These noble voices concluded that “what Rohingyas are facing is a
textbook case of genocide in which an entire indigenous community is being
systematically wiped out by the Burmese government”.
By and large, the two-day discussion at the said conference concluded that the pattern
of systematic human rights abuses against the ethnic Rohingya people entails crimes
— genocide included — against humanity, the Myanmar government’s denial of the
existence of the Rohingya as a people violates the right of the Rohingya to self-
identify and the international community is giving privilege to economic interests in
Myanmar and failing to prioritise the need to end its systematic persecution and
destruction of the Rohingya as an ethnic group. Moreover, the Oslo session, called
upon the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other
related international players to take required measures to stress upon the government
of Myanmar to immediately end its policies and practices of genocide, restore full and
equal citizenship rights of the Rohingya Muslims, institute the right of return for the
displaced Rohingyas, provide the Rohingyas with necessary protection, and promote
and support reconciliation between communities in the Rakhine region.
Pakistan, though belatedly, has also expressed grave concern over the genocidal
persecution of the Muslims in Myanmar. To what extent the Muslim world, including
our own country, can help the Rohingyas is still to be seen. Besides, the US’s assistant
secretary for population, refugees, and migration affairs, Anne Richard, expressed
grave concern over this Muslims genocide in Burma. Anne, during a press session
held in Putrajaya a few days ago, argued that relocation of Rohingyas in a third
country is not the right response to the swelling tide of fleeing people in Southeast
Asia and urged the Burmese state to grant citizenship rights to the Rohingya Muslim
community. However, it has been terribly shocking to see the silence on part of Aung
San Suu Kyi, the liberal Burmese politician, Nobel laureate and human rights activist.
“San Kyi is probably silent on the genocide done to the Rohingya Muslims in order
not to antagonise her powerful Buddhist electoral community on whom she is relying
for the upcoming elections,” commented BBC Urdu the other day.
In reaction to the abovementioned humanitarian call to end the Rohingya genocide,
the foreign ministry of Myanmar stated in the aftermath of the Oslo conference that
such remarks turned a visionless eye to the efforts of Burma on reconstructing trust
between Muslims and Buddhists in the western Rakhine state and “granting
citizenship through the national verification process to those Bengalis living in Burma
for many years”.
However, the fact of the matter is that the Burmese state does not identify the
Rohingyas as an ethnic community and terms them as immigrants from neighbouring
Bangladesh. They are being denied citizenship and other fundamental human rights.
Circa 100,000 are restricted to internal displacement camps. Owing to the latest acts
of brutality that include the rape of both male and female Muslims irrespective of age,
slaughtering them alive and later mutilating the corpses, the plight of Rohingyas
became a regional crunch when thousands of people landed on the seashores of
Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, with many others still supposed to be stuck at sea.
To conclude, the ongoing genocidal movement against the Rohingya Muslims is not
the first but second planned genocide against the Muslims in Myanmar. The
international community was silent over the issue the last time and is behaving
likewise with the mentioned minor exceptions. However, it is the need of the hour on
the part of world powers to come forth by not only terming the Muslim genocide as
immoral, inhuman and illegal but also taking immediate, practical measures to put a
permanent end to it. The Muslim world, including Pakistan, should do the same.
Remember, it is not a question of one religious community targeting the other; it is a
question of unarmed and innocent human beings being brutally killed in a genocidal
fashion. Lest it should become a norm, we must be vigilant and mobilised to preserve
and protect human rights.
Root of Conflict
The Myanmar military government was claimed that the Rohingya were not
indigenous people but they were came from Bangladesh. Although the Rohingya were
had identity cards and British-issued ration cards and that is evidence that they are
citizens of Myanmar. Unfortunately these cards were taken by force to deny their
legal identity. In 1978 junta launched a large scale program named the operation
Dragon king and end with persecuted the indigenous Rohingyas via killed in cold
blooded and over two hundred thousands of Muslims pushed to Bangladesh on the
excuse that they are not indigenous and that was a lie because the Rohigyas were
there for hundreds of years and the bones of their great grandparents are buried there.
Interestingly after independence there were numbers of Muslims members of the
parliament and they were ministers in the cabinet until 1962 military coup. During
junta regime from 1962 until 1995 there weren’t any Muslim appointed even as
deputy minister and this is discrimination against the Muslims. The military bullied
the Muslims and there weren’t any Muslim appointed a judge in any court. In addition
there were no schools and all Muslims teachers were replaced with Buddhist teachers.
In other word the Muslims human rights was lost as well as political rights and the
opportunity of government service. Even the Muslims concentrated on trade and
cottage industry the army continuous to try to dislocate them from Arakan. 11 What
happen in Rakhine the state that have 3,2 million Muslims or more is described by
Human Rights Watch as "ethnic cleansing” . It appears that the main guilty in the
conflict were affiliated with Rakhine Buddhist. What happen in 2012 was disaster for
muslims and there were a lot of deaths and the numbers is unreliable and many of
them went to isolated camps. Even the violent is desolating, their freedom is
restricted. Many years and the tensions remained and in 2015 there were more than
14000 of Muslim fled to camps from their homes. 12 The government of Myanmar
has been accused of using "scorched earth" tactics against civilians, most notably in
Kayin State. The accusations included burning down entire villages, planting
landmines, using civilians as slave labour, using civilians as minesweepers, and the
rape and murder of Karen women.According to a report by legal firm DLA Piper,
whose report was presented to the United Nations Security Council, these tactics
against the Karen have been identified as ethnic cleansing.
Political interest and violence
ernment, and called for the release of political prisoners. Unfortunately UN, US and
EU did not change the role of junta. In 2008 there was a referendum on a new
constitution and the new one paved the way for multiparty elections in addition to
give the military substantial seats in the government such as one quarter of all
parliamentary seats and several ministry position also crucial emergency controls. In
other word the new constitution was created mainly to perpetuate the junta's control.
Tomas Quintana (the UN envoy to Burma ) strongly condemned human rights abuse
in the country and recommended that the UN begin an inquiry into war crimes and
crimes against humanity at the UN human rights council in Geneva, in march 2010.
Quintana stated that planned elections in Burma could not be credible until human
rights abuse were addressed. Burma officials strongly protested against Quintana's
recommendations. As reaction the government moved to limit the participation by
voters. In 2010 exactly in September, the media announced that five states would not
polling they were: Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon and Shan. Suu Kyi announced she
would refuse to vote in the elections if her party the NLD was not allowed to
participate. In 2010 the multiparty elections proceeded and the NLD did not
participate in the elections because junta’s refuse to make changes to the constitution
and election laws. The result was that the union solidarity and development party won
882 out of a total of 1145 seats in all legislative bodies and that because the support of
the country's ruling junta, the opposition parties and the UN announced that the
election results were fraudulent. After 20 years under house arrest, Suu Kyi was freed
on November 2010. she quickly filed a motion to have her NLD party reinstated, Suu
Kyi had been either jailed or detained multiple times by the burmese government
since the 1990 general elections, when the NLD won a substantial victory. signaling
that her efforts to bring democracy to Burma were far from over, Suu Kyi pressed
Burma's military rulers to release all remaining political prisoners. In 2013 Arakan 15
League for democracy joint with RNDP to form the Arakan National Party (ANP).
And this ethnic party has no Muslim support and the leader was interested in limiting
the electoral rights of Muslims. The national parties could gain the support of
Muslims if their voting rights were promoted. Put they increase the ethnic tensions to
make it harder for Muslims to vote. The government was fear from lose the support of
Buddhist if they extend the rights of voting for Muslims. ANP leaders declare that
they will not give any political role to the Muslims in Rakhine and they hope Muslims
to migrate from the country. The aim of the ANP is to gain the authority and control
the parliament of Rakhine then sharing the revenue. In 2015 the government
withdraws the citizenship status of the Muslims and let around of 700000 of people
destitute from nationality. Moreover it prevents Muslims from standing of the
elections. These steps from the government help the ANP to success. Prohibit the
Muslims from voting was before a short time from starting the election in 2015 in the
same time they encourage the ostensibly law of protecting race and religion. On
November 2015 the ANP was win with 12 seats from Rakhine State in the national
parliament and ten seats in the upper house. The ANP leaders’ have dominated on
politics in Rakhine State and it seems to give them a strong basis to maintain ethnic
Rakhine superiority over the Muslim population and to look further devolution of
power.
International Response
A report published by UN investigators in August 2018 accused Myanmar's military
of carrying out mass killings and rapes with "genocidal intent".
The ICJ case, lodged by the small Muslim-majority nation of The Gambia, in West
Africa, on behalf of dozens of other Muslim countries, called for emergency measures
to be taken against the Myanmar military, known as Tatmadaw, until a fuller
investigation could be launched.
Aung San Suu Kyi rejected allegations of genocide when she appeared at the court in
December 2019.
But in January 2020, the court's initial ruling ordered Myanmar to take emergency
measures to protect the Rohingya from being persecuted and killed.
While the ICJ only rules on disputes between states, the International Criminal Court
(ICC) has the authority to try individuals accused of war crimes or crimes against
humanity. The body approved a full investigation into the case of the Rohingya in
Myanmar in November.
Although Myanmar itself is not a member of the court, the ICC ruled it had
jurisdiction in the case because Bangladesh, where victims fled to, is a member.
Myanmar has long denied carrying out genocide and says it is carrying out its own
investigations into the events of 2017. The country's Independent Commission of
Enquiry (ICOE) admitted that members of the security forces may have carried out
"war crimes, serious human rights violations, and violations of domestic law", but
claimed there was no evidence of genocide.
Its full report has not yet been released, but questions have been raised.
What’s happening now
With more than half a million Rohingya believed to still be living in Myanmar's
northern Rakhine province, UN investigators have warned there is a "serious risk that
genocidal actions may occur or recur".
The situation that led to "killings, rapes and gang rapes, torture, forced displacement
and other grave rights violations" in 2017 remained unchanged, the investigators said
in September, blaming a lack of accountability and Myanmar's failure to fully
investigate allegations or criminalise genocide.
Rakhine province itself is the site of an ongoing conflict between the army and rebels
from the Buddhist-majority Rakhine ethnic group.
Issue of refugees
The massive numbers of refugees who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 joined hundreds of
thousands of Rohingya who had fled Myanmar in previous years.
Kutupalong, the largest refugee settlement in the world according to UNHCR, is
home to more than 600,000 refugees alone.
But in March 2019, Bangladesh announced it would no longer accept
Rohingya fleeing Myanmar.
While an agreement for the return of refugees was reached in early 2018, none
returned. They said they would not consider going back to Myanmar unless they were
given guarantees they would be given citizenship.
And as a BBC investigation showed, even those considering returning in the future
may not be able to, with villages destroyed to make way for government facilities.
Fmous personalities who worked for muslim minority in burma
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri could not have done a greater disservice to the
Muslims of Myanmar when, in early September, he claimed that he was going to
“raise the flag of jihad,” or holy war, across South Asia. That would, he said, include
actions in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and in the Indian states of Assam, Gujarat and
Jammu and Kashmir. Not surprisingly, the London-based Burmese Muslim
Association issued a statement shortly afterward, saying that “the Muslims in Burma
will never accept any help from a terrorist organization, which is in principle a
disgrace and morally repugnant.”
Mr. Zawahiri, a 63-year-old former Egyptian eye surgeon, is known for issuing long-
winded video clips, but the al-Qaeda he now leads has lost most of its muscle since its
founder and former leader Osama bin Laden was killed inside his residence in
Abbottabad, Pakistan, by a squad of US naval special warfare troops on May 2, 2011.
Since then, al-Qaeda has become more or less irrelevant, and statements such as Mr.
Zawahiri’s should be seen as a desperate attempt by the group to show that it is still
alive and kicking—especially in view of the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
(ISIS). Or, as the BBC reported on Sept. 4, the once-feared terrorist group has
withered while ISIS “has grown into everything al-Qaeda tried—and failed—to be.”
It is highly unlikely that Mr. Zawahiri, who is also most probably holed up in a safe
house in Pakistan, would be able to carry out his threats. The only proven link
between al-Qaeda and Muslims in Myanmar goes back to the early 1990s, when the
Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) had a camp in Ukhia between Cox’s Bazar
and Teknaf in southeastern Bangladesh. At that time, Afghan militants visited the
camp and RSO did arrange for some Muslim refugees from Rakhine State to be sent
to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. Tellingly, among the more than 60 videotapes
that the American cable television network CNN obtained from al-Qaeda’s archives
in Afghanistan in August 2002, one marked “Burma” showed Muslim “allies”
undergoing weapons training. But the RSO has never had any camps inside Myanmar,
only across the border in Bangladesh. That was where the tape was shot—and among
the purported RSO fighters were militants from the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student
wing of the fundamentalist Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. The activities at the now
closed Ukhia camp had more to do with Bangladeshi politics than any ethnic or
religious conflict in Myanmar.
In more recent years, a Muslim firebrand calling himself Abdul Kuddus al-Burmi and
claiming to be from Myanmar issued video clips with himself speaking in the
Myanmar language, followed by footage of armed Muslim fighters on parade. But he
is based in a madrassa in Karachi, Pakistan, and the footage was either shot in Ukhia
in the early 1990s or in a camp run by Indonesian militants from Jamaah Ansharut
Tauhid on Gunung Biru, or the Blue Mountain, in Poso on the island of Sulawesi—
thousands of kilometers away from Myanmar, or Bangladesh for that matter.
Apart from such anomalies, Myanmar’s Muslims have never been of the rebellious
kind in a religious sense. According to Moshe Yegar, an Israeli academic and former
diplomat, Muslim seamen from the Arab world first reached Myanmar in the 9th
century. Some became traders while others served as horsemen for Myanmar kings,
among them Anawratha. Most of them were men, so they usually married local
women and became integrated into society. In the 19th century, King Mindon made
sure his Muslim soldiers were served halal food and many helped clear the land for
buildings in the new capital, Mandalay. Mindon also appointed a Muslim called
Kabul Maulavi to be a judge in charge of Muslim affairs. Apart from being soldiers,
many Muslims were traders and shopkeepers.
During the British time, many Muslims emigrated from British India, but they also
took part in the independence movement. The most prominent was M.A. Raschid, a
close friend of Gen. Aung San’s. Mr. Raschid was born in Allahabad in India but
grew up and was educated in Myanmar. In 1936 he became the first secretary general
of the Rangoon University Students’ Union and later its president. During the
parliamentary era, 1948-1962, U Raschid, as he was then known, served in several
ministries under Prime Minister U Nu. Like other state leaders, he was interned for
some time after the 1962 coup. And two Muslims were among the martyrs who were
assassinated along with Gen. Aung San on July 19, 1947: U Abdul Razak, a native of
Meikhtila and a cabinet minister, and his young body guard Ko Htwe. U Kha, another
prominent member of Yangon’s Muslim community, served as minister of education
in the 1950s.
And who would forget Maung Thaw Ka, the former naval officer turned popular
writer and poet, who was one of the original founders of the National League for
Democracy? He was arrested in July 1989, beaten and tortured and died in Insein Jail
on June 11, 1991. He is buried in Yangon’s Sunni cemetery beside his brother, U Ba
Zaw, or U Gholan Marmed, a Myanmar army captain.
During the darkest weeks after the massacres in August and September 1988, people
of different religious persuasions got together and formed the Burma Interfaith Relief
Committee. In a unique show of inter-religious harmony, they delivered supplies to
Yangon’s poor neighborhoods in a battered, World War Two-era truck with a banner
displaying symbols of their respective faiths: the Buddhist dhammachakka wheel, the
Christian cross, the Muslim crescent and star, and the Hindu om symbol. Although it
was never registered as such, the group could be seen as one of modern Myanmar’s
first community-based NGOs. Among the leaders were S.A. Ginwalla, a Muslim, and
U Bo, the head of the well-established Young Men’s Buddhist Association.
According to Chris Lamb, Australia’s ambassador to Myanmar at the time: “They did
not come from particular designations within their faiths, but rather everyone wanted
to make sure that the IFRC had the capacity to reach the most vulnerable irrespective
of their religion or other status.” Piety, not fanaticism, was the guiding principle of
those NGO pioneers.
On the more humorous side, everyone in Myanmar loves U Shwe Yoe, the jolly
dancer with his broken umbrella and ill-fitting longyi who for almost a century has
been a major figure in any pwe (traditional dance troupe performance). The character
was invented in 1923 by Ba Galay, a prominent Myanmar actor, comedian, dancer
and cartoonist. Ba Galay was a Myanmar Muslim, born in Pathein, and his other name
was Mohammed Bashir. And is there anyone who would seriously suggest that U
Shwe Yoe was or is a jihadist and a proponent of shariah law? Zawahiri may be
fooling himself, but nobody else, when he issues silly videos like the one recorded
from his hideout in Pakistan in early September. There is no fertile ground for that
kind of gobbledygook in Myanmar.
Reaction of Pakistan
Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed its concerns over reports of the
increasing number of deaths and forced displacement of Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar and urged its government to take action to ensure their safety.
"Such reports, if confirmed, are a source of serious concern and anguish on the eve of
Eidul Azha," the Foreign Office said in a statement released on September 3 2017.
According to a report released by UNHCR, more than 27,000 Rohingya Muslims
have fled violence in Myanmar in recent days as corpses of people who drowned in
desperate attempts to cross the border river washed up on Bangladeshi soil on Friday.
Massacres, communal violence and the systematic torching of villages by security
forces – as well as by militants – have further amplified tensions, raising fears that the
situation is spinning out of control.
The foreign ministry has urged authorities in Myanmar to investigate reports of
massacre, and hold those involved accountable and take necessary measures to protect
the rights of Rohingya Muslims.
In line with its consistent position on protecting the rights of Muslim minorities
worldwide, the ministry assured that they will work with the international community
in particular the OIC to express solidarity with Rohingya Muslims and to work
towards safeguarding their rights
