GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR

COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR
Independent historians, however, document a longstanding Muslim presence in Rakhine state, which is
corroborated by ancient mosques and the use of coins and Islamic titles by Arakan rulers. The origins
of ‘Rohingya’ terminology are unclear, but the fact remains that the Rohingya and their chosen ethnic
designation were accepted by the Burmese State in the 1950s. The first President of Burma, Sao Shwe
Thaike, a Shan, claimed in 1959 that the ‘Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to the indigenous races of
Burma. If they do not belong to the indigenous races, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races.’ 37
The Rohingya were issued citizenship/ID cards and granted the right to vote under Burma’s first postindependence
Prime Minister, U Nu, and Rohingya held important government positions as civil servants.
In the 1960s, the official Burma Broadcasting Service relayed a Rohingya-language radio programme
three times a week as part of its minority language programming, and the term ‘Rohingya’ was used in
journals and school text-books until the late 1970s. 38
During British colonisation when India and Burma were ruled together, migration of people from
India’s predominantly Muslim state of Bengal to Burma (mainly to Arakan state) increased as the British
sought to cultivate rice production. Many of these seasonal migrants settled permanently, enlarging the
pre-existing Rohingya community. Following the departure of the British, further migration is likely to
have taken place across what is now the Myanmar-Bangladesh border area. Rakhine also migrated to
Bangladesh 39 , a reflection both of the porous nature of the border and that immigration between Bangladesh
and Myanmar was not unilinear. Whatever the exact history, the origins of the Rohingya community
in Myanmar has been used to deflect attention from the State’s undeniable and systematic persecution
of the Rohingya.
ISCI’s fieldwork reveals a persistent memory in some sections of the Rakhine community of historical
animosity between the communities, for example massacres of both groups in 1942-43 in the context of
World War Two, when the Rohingya fought with the British and the Rakhine with the Japanese. These
historic grievances have been resuscitated in a series of State-condoned stereotypes that brand the
Rohingya as terrorists and illegal immigrants intent on Islamising Rakhine state through a campaign of
population growth. The increasing polarisation of the two communities – into the majority, ‘indigenous’
Rakhine Buddhist ‘us’, and the minority ‘interloper’ Muslim Rohingya ‘them’ 40 – has fostered a dangerous
social landscape.
Rakhine oppression
The Myanmar State has long oppressed the Rakhine, themselves a minority ethnic group within Myanmar.
Testimony gathered by ISCI suggests this includes the suppression of the memory, practice and exploration
of Rakhine culture, language and history. Than Mrint, a Rakhine intellectual and Arakan National
Party (ANP) politician, said:
37 As cited by Rogers, B, ‘A friend’s appeal to Burma’, Mizzima, 19 June, 2012: http://archive-2.mizzima.com/edop/
commentary/7349-a-friends-appeal-to-burma.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.
38 Lwin, N. S., ‘Making Rohingya stateless’, AsiaPacific, New Mandala, 29 October 2012: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/
newmandala/2012/10/29/making-rohingya-statelessness/. Accessed 10 October 2015.
39 Majid, M, The Rakhaines, (Dhaka: Mowla Brothers, 2005).
40 Stanton, G, ‘Could the Rwandan Genocide have been Prevented?’ p. 214.
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