Myanmar’s
longest-running civil disobedience campaign against its military, the Tatmadaw,
has created something that was never seen before: a unified Myanmar in the
“burning state.” Not only that, but this solidarity has also changed Myanmar’s
Rohingya ethnic politics. After the coup, most parties have attempted to
reconcile with the ethnic minority population, which has been living a life of
indefinite banishment in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh since 2017 after
being denied citizenship in Myanmar. Therefore, the question is: why are the
winds of change now blowing for the Rohingya community?
Old
narrative
The anti-Rohingya sentiment stems primarily from “historical
grievances” experienced by the Buddhist population prior to
Myanmar’s independence in 1948. During British colonization of Myanmar, Muslims
who had fled due to persecution under the Bamar rule of the Konbaung Dynasty
returned to Burma in the hope of regaining their ancestral lands. Along with
that, there was a significant influx of Indian Muslims into Burma through
British citizens for labor and civil service positions. For the Bamar-Buddhist
people, this was not only oppression imposed by the British, but they also saw
the Islamist expansion in Burma as a calculated
strategy on the part of the Muslim community to rewrite Burma’s
Buddhist history. Such Buddhist nationalism grew during the 1920s and 1940s,
when anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, and anti-Hindu sentiments were on the rise,
as evidenced by anti-Indian riots. The already-existing animosity became
heightened during the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942, which put the Burman
community and Rohingya community on opposite sides, as Rohingyas remained
loyalto their British overlords.
During Ne Win’s military reign, the lessons learned from the
British era were solidified: a true Burma must be both Buddhist and Burmese in
nature. His “Burmese-Buddhist
way to socialism” policies, which he tried to implement by forcibly
creating a Myanmar based on Burmese supremacy rather than accepting Myanmar’s
diverse 135 national races, were a clear depiction of the Burmese fear of
foreign invasion. Ne Win was obsessed with the idea of “taingyintha,” which
means “sons of the soil” and is based on a classification of “national races”
to bring Myanmar’s different ethnic groups under one umbrella. This led him to
launch the “Naga Min” (“Dragon King”) military campaign against Rohingyas in
1978, which caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee to Bangladesh. The
persecution continued further by means of the 1982 citizenship law that pushed
Rohingyas even deeper underground, as it was clearly a political tool of
repression to exclude Rohingya and the Muslim minority group from citizenship
rights. By this point, the already marginalized Rohingya community faced a new
foe in Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD, which shared the military’s view of them as
illegal immigrants.
Finally, Myanmar’s flawed democracy in 2010 ended up sealing
Myanmar’s door to the Rohingyas as inter-communal violence rose, with freedom
of speech turning into hate
speech against them. After that, the xenophobic 969 movements
or the state-led “ethnic cleansing” of 2017 was just one tragedy piling onto
another, with no hope anywhere for the community.
Winds
of change
The whole of Myanmar now faces Tatmadaw’s aggression, and
Bamars, usually on the privileged side, have finally realized that everyone in
Myanmar has the same grievance: Tatmadaw’s authoritarian regime. There has been
an outpouring
of support for ethnic minorities among protesters of the
regime, particularly among the younger generation, who believe that a lasting
peace in Myanmar can only be achieved if it includes all of Myanmar’s citizens,
regardless of class, ethnicity, or religious affiliation. This shift in empathy
has also altered long-held perceptions of the Rohingya.
The National Unity Government (NUG) (representing the
underground NLD government in the resistance) has already publicly
apologized for the Rohingya community’s sufferings during the
2017 military-led ethnic cleansing. Five months after the coup, on Jun. 3,
2021, NUG released a historic
paper addressing the Rohingya community, arguing that they
should be recognized as a legitimate ethnic group in Myanmar and added to the
list of “national races” (taingyintha). It was as historic as it could get, as
neither the military nor the democratic government had even referred to the
community as Rohingya in the political arena prior to the coup because the term
implied they were connected to Myanmar, but here, NUG took a step that
undoubtedly eased the generational curse of statelessness that had befallen the
Rohingya people for generations. Along with the proposition, NUG also promised
to cooperate with
the Court in the ICJ case of Rohingya genocide. This represents a 180-degree
shift from the NLD’s position on the case, as the NUG not only recognizes the
genocide but also rejects its “symbolic” state counselor, Aung San Suu Kyi’s,
statement in 2019 in which she stood in
court to defend the Junta’s actions. This declaration was celebrated by the
youth on social media and in the streets by flash
mobs, as they now want to believe in a Myanmar that is free from the
discriminatory laws and policies of the military and is recognized in the world
as a Myanmar that is equal for all.
The realist perception would be that this is NUG’s strategy to
win international approval and political legitimacy. However, if NUG is given
the legitimacy to fulfill its promises, it will be interesting to see how it
handles the repatriation issues in the future while balancing the past NLD and
current NUG policies. Perhaps this is where Myanmar’s radical political
transformation finds its true essence. Whatever approach it takes, the Rohingya
crisis is undoubtedly a problem for tomorrow for NUG and its allies, as they
are currently trying to survive the junta’s onslaught every minute.
Photo by DFID – UK Department for International Development,via
Wikimedia Commons]
*Sadia Aktar Korobi is a master’s student of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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