Vanessa Thevathasan – Tell us who you are and the aims of your organization, The Stateless Rohingya.
Mohammed Rafique – My name is Mohammed Rafique and I was stateless for my whole life until I was resettled in Ireland along with 78 members of the Rohingya from a Bangladesh refugee camp by the government of Ireland in 2009.
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Rohingya Community Ireland is a community organization that focuses on the development of Rohingya youngsters and interaction with the people of Ireland from the community to the national level, as well as working with Rohingya and non-Rohingya NGOs from outside of Ireland to bring changes to the Rohingya community as a whole.
The Stateless Rohingya is a blog run from Ireland, which aims to provide authentic, important and day-to-day news on the plight of Rohingya by bringing together news articles, the opinions of Rohingya and non-Rohingya authors, and other media. Its main objective is to make the world aware of the persecution of the Rohingya, who are being forced from being “Natives of Arakan” to statelessness.
How does Myanmar view the Rohingya?
Put simply, as “animals,” “non-human” or “aliens.” Many inflammatory Burmese politicians and authors refer to the Rohingya as a “virus.” Ordinary Burmese people view us as “Illegal Bengali.” There have been decades of propaganda and brainwashing of the general public against Rohingya by various government and non-government organizations. As a result, Rohingya are not accepted as an ethnic group or citizens of Burma.
The Rohingya are internationally recognized are stateless. Can you explain how Myanmar has declassified and revoked their citizenship rights?
Many people who have studied the Rohingya know that the Rohingya were an ethnic group and citizens of Burma, something that is still strongly anchored in the heart of every Rohingya. In 1962, dictator Ne Win came to power and set up plans to declassify and revoke the rights of the Rohingya. He cancelled Rohingya language programs in 1965, which had up until that point been broadcast on the Burmese Broadcasting Service as an ethnic language program. In 1974, he changed Arakan state to Rakhine, an ethnically motivated name. He then introduced the 1982 Citizenship Law that stripped Rohingya of their fundamental rights as citizens of Burma. The law was internationally condemned, but sadly it still remains in the current constitution that makes Rohingya vulnerable to discrimination and persecution.
Statelessness prevents individuals from accessing basic services and is the greatest inhibitor of individual progress. Explain the discriminations and prejudices they face as a result of not having citizenship.
It affects every aspect of their life and makes them highly vulnerable to those who are willing to take advantage of these voiceless people.
It restricts freedom of movement even between villages. The travel restriction greatly impedes Rohingya from doing business and pursuing higher education, which is another discrimination that prevents Rohingya students from studying subjects like medicine, dentistry, history, law and engineering.
Another major discrimination is religious freedom. There are frequent demolitions, confiscations and closures of mosques and religious schools. Religious scholars are given irrational prison sentences, are humiliated by have their beards shaven, or are mutilating. In marriages, grooms with beards are required to be clean-shaven before the marriage is approved.
The two-child policy applies solely to the Rohingya. It has been widely approved by various extremist groups in Burma, despite breaking international law and having come under intense international condemnation.
Confiscation is a common practice. Houses, mosques, shops and cattle are being taken away from the Rohingya and converted to “modern villages” by the Burmese government in Rakhine to depopulate Rohingya districts.
As they are classified as foreigners, forced labor without payment is common, as is torture. Other prevalent practices include arbitrary taxation, denial of access to healthcare, and arbitrary arrest.
Women and girls’ are being raped and attacked without any recourse to justice.
Recognized as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, have you been able to document the human rights abuses faced by the Rohingya?
Documentation has an important role in human rights abuses. Many NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Physicians Human Rights, Medicines Sans Frontier, Fortify Rights and the Irish Centre for Human Rights have documented human rights abuses over the years, especially in recent years when the world came to know the silent human rights abuses of the Rohingya.
The Stateless Rohingya blog has been reporting and documenting the human rights abuses since its launch. The latest violence was sparked in 2012 after Buddhist mobs reacted to the rumor that a Rohingya had raped a girl in a village; this rumor has never been verified. The blog has collected the names of the Rohingya massacred since 2012. It has now passed more than 900 murders, although the government reports that there were only 82 deaths. Without a doubt, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of deaths that have not been possible to document due to the nature or location of the killing.
In short, the Burmese government and extremist groups have committed crimes and have directly violated nearly all 30 articles of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [2]. All violations are well documented.
How does statelessness affect Rohingya children?
Where there is discrimination and persecution, women and children always suffer most. Every Rohingya child born after the 1982 Citizenship Law automatically becomes stateless, which has detrimentally impacted their development.
Children are unable to access proper education from primary to tertiary levels or receive essential healthcare and vaccinations to protect them from communicable diseases.
Since 2012, countless Rohingya children have died in the internally displaced camps from malnutrition and diseases due to the blockade against aid and aid groups by the government and extremist groups.
What challenges have aid agencies faced when trying to reach displaced Rohingya?
To understand the challenges that aid organizations face, you have to understand the situation in the internally displaced camps. The camps are literally open prisons heavily guarded by soldiers and various Burmese law enforcement agencies working within and around the camps, and a number of extremist monk groups, for instance, the notorious 969 terrorist organization and Rakhine extremist groups [3] who decide what aid group or what aid should be allowed into the Rohingya. These extremist groups threaten aid organizations helping the Rohingya, and the government allows this to take place.
When an aid agency wants to provide services to the Rohingya they are told they must first provide services to ethnic residents in Rakhine, people who have committed and are continuing to commit crimes against the Rohingya. Early this year, Medicines Sans Frontier was kicked out of Arakan by the government, backed by extremist groups, who accused the organization of being sympathetic towards the Rohingya. As a result, the camps suffered starvation, malnutrition and disease, with severe loss of life.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has expressed concern that Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims have been excluded from the latest census that the UN Population Fund helped conduct. Are you optimistic that the Rohingya will be included by the next census?
The Burmese government has made promises after promises, breaking them one after another. The UN Population Fund is also responsible for the exclusion of Rohingya from the recent census, firstly providing funds, secondly trusting [the government], and finally not taking action against the government for breaking its promise to include the Rohingya in the census.
There is so much pessimism regarding the next census, and we do not know when it will be held. It is unlikely to happen in this generation. When it takes place, many Rohingya will then be forcibly reclassified, detained in permanent prisons, or forced to flee.
In the latest debate about citizenship cards for the Rohingya, Burmese officials are now saying they will offer citizenship if they agree to be reclassified as “Bengali.” Alternatively they will face detention as illegal migrants. What further obstacles would the Rohingya face is this was to take place?
The debate on the Rohingya citizenship cards has been ongoing for many decades. Until the recent debate, the government warmly welcomed any Rohingya who wanted the citizenship cards by doing a simple trade: “Accept Buddhism, and we will accept you as brothers in a fraction of second.” Now, the trade is at another level.
Indeed, the situation is different now given that a tenth of the Rohingya population is in heavily guarded camps and the rest in the enclosed Rakhine state. The abuses by the government and the extremist groups are escalating since no international action has taken place against them for what they committed in 2012. Unless the international community breaks its silence, the government will force Rohingya to either declassify or be detained as illegal immigrants.
U.S. President Barack Obama is set to visit Burma in November 2014. What are your hopes and expectations from this visit in mobilizing greater international effort to address persecution facing the Rohingya?
President Obama’s previous trip did little to help solve the plight of Rohingya, despite his call for the restoration of equal rights. It is not the time for superficial words or “concerns”; only real pressure and action will compel the Burmese government to [change].
Since you express this as a case of “silent genocide,” what response would you expect from the international community?
The international community should not let the government go unpunished. Their lack of action has not only motivated the government to commit more crimes against Rohingya and other communities but will also encourage other governments to commit similar crimes elsewhere in the world. We do not want another Rwanda. Yet we are letting it happen again.
Perpetrators must be brought to justice, the best way would be to go through the route of the International Criminal Court, to initiate an investigation and obtain prosecutions.
What impact, if at all, have the economic sanctions had in changing the situation for the Rohingya? Are they worth keeping and why?
It is absolutely worth keeping the sanctions. [But] the sanctions should be targeted at the government, it agencies, elites and organizations and companies that all support and enforce discriminatory policies against the Rohingya.
With China as Myanmar’s neighbor and regional economic powerhouse, what has its impact been internally in Burma and how has this affected the Rohingya?
China has tremendous influence in Burma politically and economically, although the West has gained influence in the past few years. China has invested heavily in Arakan, the home of the Rohingya. Chinese state companies have invested billions of dollars in a gas project carrying gas from Kyaukpyu in Arakan to Kunming in southwestern China. This project will further unbalance Rakhine for the Rohingya.
Public attention has been diverted towards the controversial project and the benefits it will bestow on the population, thereby allowing the state and its actors to continue its genocidal acts.
ASEAN has not taken action against Myanmar for its continuing persecution of the Rohingya. What role should ASEAN be playing?
ASEAN is purely a business and developmental platform, although its charter calls for it to promote and protect human rights, and to uphold the United Nations Charter and international laws. Its leaders avoid mingling in members’ internal affairs.
ASEAN should play an active role in providing humanitarian aid to the displaced Rohingya as well as pressuring the Burmese government. It should also apply economic sanctions, which might be more effective than the sanctions applied by the West since ASEAN is Burma’s bread-and-butter.
The worst part of ASEAN is that the leader of the Rohingya genocide, President Thein Sein is now heading the organization.
Vanessa Thevathasan, October 25, 2014
* http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/interview-the-stateless-rohingya/
Follow Vanessa Thevathasan on Twitter @VThevathasan.
Myanmar: The Worsening Plight of the Rohingya
It has been a tragic start to the year for Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority.
The ongoing plight of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya [4] Muslim minority has seen some tragic developments this year.
In the early hours of January 14, a series of events spiralled into the deadliest atrocity against the Rohingya since sectarian violence swept the nation in 2012, when security forces and Rakhine Buddhists reportedly attacked Du Char Yar Tan village in northern Rakhine State, killing 40 Rohingya, including women and children.
The Myanmar government continues to deny that the massacre took place. But numerous reports conflict with the official narrative.
United Nations (UN) high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay said in a statement [5] she had received “credible reports” of killings in Du Char Yar Tan village. Details later emerged that the massacre was discovered when a group of men found the severed heads of at least 10 Rohingya, including children, bobbing in a water tank [6].
Calls for an international investigation were promptly rejected, with presidential spokesperson Ye Htut later invoking the United States’ refusal of an international probe into Guantanamo to justify the decision [7]. An internal inquiry by the Myanmar Human Rights Commission (MHRC) concluded there was no “solid evidence” to prove the attack took place, making the allegations “unverifiable and unconfirmed.” [8]
UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, has questioned the independence of the MHRC and told Democratic Voice of Burma [9], that he “remains convinced that serious violent incidents took place.”
Associated Press (AP) was the first international media outlet to report on the attack in an article headed, “Myanmar mob kills more than a dozen Muslims.” [10] This quickly drew government disapproval. AP journalists in Yangon were summoned by the Ministry of Information for reporting events that “differed from the real situation.” [11]
Evidently, there is a disparity between what the international community is seeing and hearing and what the Myanmar Government wants the world to believe. In handling the January massacre, the government appears to have adopted two strategies — deny that it happened and discredit any conflicting versions of events.
Unfortunately, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is now discovering what happens when you report details that differ to accounts given by the government, while relying on its permission to carry out vital projects. Following the massacre in Du Char Yar Tan village – which “officially” did not happen – MSF reported treating 22 patients for injuries sustained during the violence. The government portrayed this as “wrong information” [12] and last month, scores of protestors took to the streets hurling accusations of Rohingya bias and calling for the international non-government organisation (NGO) to be ousted from the country [13]. Presidential spokesperson Ye Htut told media on February 28 that MSF had become less transparent. ‘‘They even hired Bengalis [Rohingya].’’ He said the government would not be extending its MoU with the medical charity and that it had been ordered to cease all operations in the country.
Past accusations of “bias” favouring the country’s Rohingya Muslims prompted Peter Paul de Groote, MSF’s head of mission in Myanmar, to write a piece for the Myanmar Times [14]. ‘‘If providing medical care can ever be referred to as ‘biased’, it is a bias toward patients. It is a bias that is based on medical need, regardless of any other factor. MSF sees only patients, nothing else.’’
After negotiations, MSF was given permission to resume its projects – except in strife-torn Rakhine State, where about 80 percent of Myanmar’s estimated 1.33 million Rohingya live [15]. In a March 2 statement MSF expressed concern for ‘‘tens of thousands of vulnerable people in Rakhine State who currently face a humanitarian medical crisis.’’
MSF was the major NGO provider of healthcare in the state. Along with supporting local Rakhine, the medical group offered a lifeline to the segregated Rohingya who have difficulty accessing medical services because of travel restrictions and discrimination that prevents them from being treated at public hospitals. Human Rights Watch has slammed the move as “simply deplorable.”
The latest news from the Myanmar Times [16] indicates that the expulsion of MSF from Rakhine State will be temporary, but could last at least seven months. A state government official said that if MSF were allowed to stay in the state, the organization’s workers, and government staff, could be targeted by Rakhine community groups carrying grievances of bias. The article notes that a number of international NGOs and UN agencies have been subjected to online threats since the suspension of MSF’s operations.
Policies of Persecution
Damning revelations in a new report by independent human rights group, Fortify Rights [17], implicate government authorities in policies that discriminate against and repress its Rohingya minority.
The report, Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar [18], draws on leaked official documents to expose the government’s hand in human rights abuses. For two decades UN envoys have reported widespread rights violations against the Rohingya, describing the abuses as “systematic” and resulting from “state policy.” But Fortify Rights has gone a step further, providing evidence of the government’s complicity.
In response to the report, Ye Htut told the Myanmar Times that the government does not remark on “baseless accusations from Bengali lobby groups.” [19]
The government vehemently denies the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, referring to the group, even in official documents, as “Bengali.” This stems from a pervasive belief that all Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, a conviction widely held despite records of Rohingya families living in Myanmar for centuries. Rakhine State, where the Rohingya are concentrated, is a crescent of land sitting along the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Western Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh to the north. The 1982 Citizenship Law does not recognize the Rohingya as belonging to Myanmar and with this reform they were rendered stateless. An appeal by the UN last year, calling on the government to grant its Rohingya minority citizenship was rejected [20]. This should not come as a surprise considering President Thein Sein has suggested that the solution to ethnic enmity in Rakhine State was to send the Rohingya to another country or have the UN refugee agency look after them [21].
Documents obtained by Fortify Rights detail restrictions on the Rohingya relating to: ‘‘movement, marriage, childbirth, home repairs and construction of houses of worship, and other aspects of everyday life.’’ These policies, created and implemented by Rakhine State and central government authorities, apply solely to the Rohingya and are reportedly framed as a response to an “illegal immigration” problem and threats to “national security.”
This notion of national security requires context on the volatile situation in Rakhine State.
Ongoing tension between Rohingya (as well as other Muslims, including Kaman) and Rakhine Buddhists reached tipping point in 2012. Bloody bouts of sectarian violence, including two major waves in June and October, resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people and displaced another 140,000 (the vast majority of those dead and displaced were Rohingya).
Conflict that began as tit-for-tat communal clashes soon escalated into what multiple human rights groups have condemned as ethnic cleansing [22].
June violence was reportedly sparked by the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by three Muslim men. A few days later, a group of Rakhine stopped a bus and beat to death ten Muslims who were on board. A 2013 Human Rights Watch report [23] explains that violence then escalated into mob assaults, with atrocities committed by both sides. However, according to the report, the attacks that occurred in October were more “orchestrated” and were organized, incited and committed by “political party operatives, the Buddhist Monkhood and ordinary Arakanese [Rakhine], at times directly supported by state security forces.” On October 23, “after months of meetings and public statements promoting ethnic cleansing,’ in apparently coordinated assaults, Rakhine men attacked Muslim villages in nine townships across the state, killing residents and razing homes ‘while security forces stood aside or assisted the assailants.”
Gemima Harvey, March 19, 2014
* http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/myanmar-the-worsening-plight-of-the-rohingya/