Madam Secretary, Please Don’t Forget the Rohingya by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed

By Akbar Ahmed and Harrison Akins 

American University 

Washington, DC 

Every breath the young orphan girl took brought pain to her body and tears to her eyes. She had been abused by the family she worked for as a servant – probably sexually molested, according to her doctor, and then, so dishonored, pushed into a fire to make her death seem accidental. They knew she had no official papers and therefore could not complain to the authorities. She was unceremoniously dumped at the gate of the Lada refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, where doctors in the camp cared for her. Horrible as her case was, the doctors knew that she was but one of many similarly burned young women they would see that month and were realistic about her slim chance of survival, lacking money for food or advanced treatment. Besides the volunteer doctors and other camp staff moved to donate money to buy her eggs or medicine, it seemed no one cared whether she lived or died. Her existence did not matter. 

The story of this young Rohingya girl was told to us by an American colleague who works at Georgetown University after her recent visit to the refugee camp on the border between Bangladesh and Burma. She described the filth and squalor of the camp which Bangladesh does not recognize. This meant that no official aid or papers can be given to the refugees. They cannot legally work and their children cannot be educated. Every time the American recounted the plight of the Rohingya girl she cried. The violated, scarred and frightened young orphan girl is an apt metaphor for the plight of her people. 

The only ray of sunshine in her life may be the arrival in Burma of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is due to visit early next month. Known for her courage and compassion on human rights we, the authors, hope Clinton will take up the case of the Rohingya. 

Secretary Clinton’s imminent visit, the first such visit since the military junta took power in 1962, is a seminal signal of democratic reform within the military-backed government as well as a positive change in the policy of the United States towards engagement rather than further isolation. We applaud these developments which augur well for the future. 

However, the continued tragedy of the un-recognized Rohingya, both in Burma and as refugees abroad, casts a dark shadow over the bright hopes and prospects for democracy in a country plagued by violence and civil war. 

The “forgotten Rohingya”, whom the BBC calls “one of the world’s most persecuted minority groups”, are the little-publicized Muslim people historically located in the coastal Arakan State of western Burma, dating their ethnic lineage in this region over centuries. The intermittent media spotlight is mostly placed on the Rohingya refugee experience, exiled from their homeland into countries where they are welcomed with outright hostility and violence or, at best, complete negligence. 

Less attention is brought to the underlying cause of their flight abroad: the violence and cultural oppression at home implemented with the intention of forcing them outside of Burma as a result of being Muslim and ethnically non-Burmese. While many ethnic minorities in Burma face persecution, the Rohingya stand apart in that their very existence is threatened. The choice for the Rohingya is either face starvation and violence at home or starvation and violence abroad. 

When the military junta under General Ne Win, an ethnic Burmese, came to power in 1962, it implemented a policy of "Burmanisation". Based on the ultra-nationalist ideology of racial “purity”, it was a crude attempt to bolster the majority Burmese ethnic identity and their religion Buddhism, in order to strip the Rohingya of any legitimacy. They were officially declared foreigners on their own native land and erroneously labeled as illegal Bengali immigrants. 

With the passage of the military’s 1982 Citizenship Law, the government established new and stricter definitions for Burmese citizenship which deliberately excluded the Rohingya. They became a stateless people in their own ancestral homes and effectively ceased to exist legally. 

By officially denying them citizenship, the government institutionalized the long-held and un-official discriminatory practices in the Arakan State. As a result, the Rohingya have no rights to own land or property and are unable to travel outside their villages, repair their decaying places of worship, receive education, or even marry and have children without rarely granted government permission. In addition to the complete denial of their rights, the Rohingya were subjected to modern-day slavery, forced to work on infrastructure projects which include constructing ‘model villages’ to house the Burmese settlers intended to displace them. 

For the past three decades, the Burmese military has also worked to drive the Rohingya across the border, waging physical and cultural war against them. 

The initial push of the military’s ethnic cleansing came in 1978 under Operation Naga Min, or Operation King Dragon, conducted by the military. The purpose of this operation was to scrutinize each individual within the state as either a citizen or alleged “illegal immigrant” and take action accordingly. This resulted in widespread rape, arbitrary arrests, desecration of mosques, destruction of villages, and confiscation of lands among the Rohingya people. In the wake of this violence, nearly a quarter of a million Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh, many of whom were later repatriated back to Burma where they faced torture, rape, jail and death. 

Again in 1991, the second push, known as Operation Pyithaya or Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation, was launched with the same purpose as Naga Min, resulting in further violence and another massive flow of 200,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh. 

The international community was alarmed by these tragic events, which led the Burmese military to revise its strategy to avoid international scrutiny. Its new strategy was to push a “gradual flow” of refugees into Bangladesh. This strategy has eventually emerged as an effective one since the second push in 1991, as the steady flow of refugees in Bangladesh reached an astounding number. The non-governmental organizations from Europe and North America put the number at an estimated 300,000. Only 35,000 of these Rohingya refugees live in registered refugee camps and receive some sort of assistance from NGOs. The remaining, over 250,000, are in a desperate situation without food and medical assistance. Torrential rain and flooding in each monsoon takes a heavy toll in the unregistered and unprotected makeshift camps with the most deplorable and inhumane conditions. Outbreaks of epidemics of waterborne diseases from lack of sanitation and flooding in the monsoon in the make-shift camps have shocked the NGOs and the international community. 

There are many horror stories of the Rohingya who, no longer able to face the utter hopelessness of their lives, set forth on makeshift rafts into the sea. Too many such journeys have been abruptly ended by Thai and Malaysian naval patrols that force these rafts into deeper waters and then leave them to die. 

After 9/11, every government in the region has been quick to catch on to a formula that is guaranteed to win American sympathy. By suggesting that Al-Qaeda lurks among a certain group, fear and distrust of it are immediately created and it is ostracized. So it has been with the Rohingya. 

Because the United States has targeted Islamic charitable organizations in order to dry up any possible funding for Al-Qaeda and other such groups it has caused Muslims to become wary of giving to charity. The normal Muslim sources, that may have helped the Rohingya, therefore, have been largely absent. Muslim Aid is one of the only organizations allowed to operate in the camp where the young girl was burnt, and they provide the only small and overworked clinic and child feeding program for thousands of refugees. 

The Rohingya predicament underlines a paradox for the world’s great faiths such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Each one of them emphasizes compassion and kindness and yet we see little evidence of this in their dealings with the Rohingya people. 

As we are currently involved in a study of the Rohingya, we recently interviewed Dr. Wakar Uddin, Chairman of The Burmese Rohingya Association of North America. A gentle and learned man, he is an energetic ambassador for his Rohingya people with a firm grasp of regional history. All the Rohingya want is re-instatement of their citizenship in their own land, revoked by the former dictator General Ne Win, and the dignity, human rights and opportunities that come with it. 

The United States should engage with the Rohingya, the Burmese government, and the National League for Democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi to ensure that the democratic reforms extend beyond the ethnic Burmese and are inclusive of all ethnic minorities. Only then can a democratic Burma be legitimate in the eyes of its own people, the South Asian region, and the international community.