Burma’s Rohingya minority get attention from Obama’s visit

Olivia Ward
The Star
November 20, 2012

For decades, Burma’s Rohingya Muslims have suffered discrimination and harassment, and recently, arson, rape, violent attacks and murder. Dozens have drowned in an effort to escape by sea; others have been pushed back from Bangladesh, or kept in bleak camps where malnutrition is rife.

But the obscure minority has received little attention from the international community — until this month.

On his historic trip to Burma on Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama went to bat for the stateless Rohingya, who live in Burma’s Rakhine State on the border of Bangladesh.

“For too long the people of this state, including ethnic Rakhine, have faced crushing poverty and persecution,” Obama told an audience Monday. “But there’s no excuse for violence against innocent people, and the Rohingya hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do.”

The speech threw a spotlight on the Rohingya, some one million Muslims whose citizenship was cancelled by Burma in 1982, but who have remained in obscurity in spite of numerous allegations of attacks and repression by majority Buddhist groups or others with links to Burmese security forces.

Almost 200 people have been killed, and more than 100,000 displaced, since fighting sprang up between the Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine groups in June. The Rakhine — and the Burmese government — claim that the Rohingya are migrants from Bangladesh, while the Rohingya point to evidence of centuries of settlement in the region.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others have called for investigations and an end to the violence against Rohingya. Some have accused Burma of ethnic cleansing, as villages were reportedly burned to the ground, women raped, and Rohingya farmers and fishermen attacked by local mobs. Those who have fled to camps on both sides of the border have received little food or care.

Aid workers are especially worried about inaccessible groups in northern and eastern Rakhine, said Stephen Cornish, executive director of MSF Canada (Doctors Without Borders), who was in Rakhine this summer.

“They are being denied medical care, and many are suffering from malnutrition,” he said.

Although the makeshift camps for displaced people are gradually receiving care, he said, “there was a 7 ½ per cent severe acute malnutrition rate. There’s poor water and sanitation. But (outside the camps) because of roadblocks and lack of travel access, people in those (blocked) communities have no access to markets, and can’t go anywhere.”

The government has used the blocks to separate the two ethnic communities and tamp down violence, he said.

MSF evacuated the area when the new round of violence flared this fall, and they received threats and intimidation. Some staff have since returned, but parts of the state are still no-go areas for aid groups.

Although the Rohingya have been treated as Bangladeshis by Burma, the Bangladesh government has dealt harshly with refugees. Humanitarian aid was curtailed, and a Canadian government program for refugees ended when Bangladesh refused to grant exit permits to them.

As Burma liberalizes, there are signs that it may be ready to reverse its stance.

In advance of Obama’s visit — the first by an American president — Burmese President Thein Sein reportedly condemned violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya as “senseless,” in a letter to the UN. But he blamed “nationalist and religious extremists.”

Thein Sein said that he would consider solutions “ranging from resettlement of displaced populations to granting of citizenship.” Until now only those whose families settled in Burma before independence in 1948 were considered citizens.

Burma could make an immediate gesture to alleviate the Rohingya’s suffering, Cornish says.

“More than 100,000 people are at risk in addition to the 100,000 in camps. Access to health care is a huge issue.

“There are toddlers with malnutrition. People don’t have access to wood for cooking, and have to share what food they have with others. We’re particularly worried about people with HIV and TB who have no access to medicine, and several hundred thousand a year have been treated for malaria.

“We are jointly conducting health clinics in the camps with the ministry of health, but there is more to be done to ensure that those who are intimidating and interrupting care don’t carry the day — and that we get our access back.”