GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR

COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR
The systematic, planned and targeted weakening of the Rohingya through mass violence and other
measures, as well as the regime’s successive implementation of discriminatory and persecutory policies
against them, amounts to a process of genocide. This process emerged in the 1970s, and has accelerated
during Myanmar’s faltering transition to democracy.
Part I of this report describes the history, politics and economics of the State’s persecution of the
Rohingya, affording particular attention to the relationship between the Rakhine Buddhist community and
the State. Part II then analyses these processes of persecution using Daniel Feierstein’s delineation of
genocide’s six stages, as outlined in his book, Genocide as Social Practice. 3 Specifically, we will focus on
genocide’s first four stages: 1) stigmatisation and dehumanisation; 2) harassment, violence and terror; 3)
isolation and segregation; and 4) the systematic weakening of the target group.
The systematic weakening process that has accompanied the dehumanisation, violence and segregation
has been so successful that the Rohingya in Myanmar can be described as a people whose agency has
been effectively destroyed. Those who can, flee, while those who remain endure the barest of lives.
Now, the Rohingya potentially face the final two stages of genocide – mass annihilation and erasure of
the group from Myanmar’s history.
The report documents in detail the evidence for genocide, its historical genesis and the political, social
and economic conditions in which it has emerged. It identifies the architects of the genocide as Myanmar
State officials and security forces, Rakhine nationalist civil society leaders and Buddhist monks, and
points to a significant degree of coordination between these agencies in the pursuit of eliminating the
Rohingya from Myanmar’s political landscape.
The report is based on a 12-month period of research, four of which were spent in the field between
October 2014 and February 2015. The research included 176 interviews, observational fieldwork and
documentary sources.
ISCI concludes that genocide is taking place in Myanmar and warns of the serious and present danger of
the annihilation 4 of the country’s Rohingya population.
3 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganising Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas,
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014).
4 Annihilation can be achieved not only through mass killing, but also, for example, through processes of mass exodus, population
fragmentation and the social reconstruction of an ethnic identity. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in the
1940s, did not regard mass murder as essential to a genocidal campaign. His multidimensional understanding of genocidal
destruction includes social, cultural, religious, and economic destruction.
16