Myanmar – Genocide of the Rohingya

What

Image courtesy of The World Factbook 2021 (Central Intelligence Agency) is unmodified and located in the public domain.

Myanmar, then called Burma, achieved independence from Great Britain in 1948 and was democratic until the military seized control through a coup in 1962. [1] The armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, established a military junta which was dissolved in 2011 amidst mass protests and international pressure. [2] While in power, the junta oppressed dissenters and ethno-religious minorities through systemic discrimination, killing protestors, and stifling freedom of speech. [3] Armed ethnic organizations have fought against Myanmar’s military government since its establishment due to persecution and a desire for autonomy. This has resulted in the world’s longest-running civil war. [4]

The military maintains significant power over the current civilian government, and human rights abuses continue. Ethnic Rohingya and Karen people are subjected to summary execution, severe torture and rape, forced labor, extortion, and displacement. [5] In 2017, Myanmar’s armed forces systematically attacked the Rohingya, killing tens of thousands, burning their villages, and displacing hundreds of thousands in a region-wide refugee crisis that observers have labeled genocide. [6]

Nearly a million Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. [7] Bangladesh refuses to take in more Rohingya. [8] Rohingya who remain in Myanmar face violence, forced internment, and severe discrimination. [9]

The Myanmar military overthrew the country’s elected government in 2021, arrested the democratically-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, cracked down on peaceful civilian demonstrations, refused to hold elections, and expanded attacks against civilians and ethnic minorities. [10] War continues between the Tatmadaw, anti-government armed organizations, and ethnic militias.

Where

Myanmar is the second-largest country in Southeast Asia, bordering China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. It features mountain ranges, highland plateaus, forests, and large rivers like the Irrawaddy, which serves much of the nation’s population. It was called Burma until 1989, when its name was changed to Myanmar. This article refers to “Burma” before 1989 and “Myanmar” after that date, although the U.S, government continues to use “Burma.” [11]

The majority of Myanmar’s 57 million people are Buddhist. [12] There are over 135 ethnic minority groups, more than 100 languages, and two-thirds of the population identifies as Bamar (Burman). [13] Major ethnic groups include the Rohingya, Kachin, Karen, Rakhine, Karenni, Mon, Shan, and Chin. Several states are majority ethnic-minority, including Rakhine State, which houses most of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

When

The Pro-Democracy Movement

In 1962, a military coup overthrew Myanmar’s democratic government. Since then, the Tatmadaw has suppressed pro-democracy movements and dissent by denying food, funding, and information to those who oppose it. [14] In this country of widespread poverty, dissenters are easily co-opted into military service with promises of sufficient food; this tool has silenced much opposition.

Monks protesting during Saffron Resolution in Yangon, 2007. Image courtesy of racoles is cropped and licensed under CC BY 2.0.

During widespread demonstrations in 1988, security forces arrested and killed thousands of protestors, tortured detainees, and reduced space for opposition. [15] In 1990, the government held the nation’s first free elections in almost thirty years. The National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 392 out of 489 seats. [16] The Burmese government later annulled the results. [17] The junta placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in 2000 and sporadically held her captive for the next decade. [18]

In 2007, an anti-government movement called the “Saffron Revolution” encouraged increased freedoms. [19] Elections were held in 2010, and Tatmadaw announced that its proxy parties had won the election and 80% of governmental seats. [20] Pro-democracy groups alleged that the military committed fraud to achieve this result, and outside observers regarded the election as a sham. [21] Thein Sein, a former army official, became president the next year. Democratic elections were held in 2015, and the NLD won, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. [22] However, the military still controlled the government’s legislative and executive operations. [23]

In 2021, the military initiated a coup and re-established the governing military junta. [24] Democratic suppression ensued: the Tatmadaw imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi again, attacked protestors, and increased persecution of political dissidents. [25] It enlarged military actions against civilians and ethnic minorities and implemented a compulsory service law. [26] Dissenters united to form the National Unity Government (NUG), a multi-ethnic coalition that declared war on the Tatmadaw. [27]

The junta declared a state of emergency in 2021 which continues today, despite promises to hold elections after the “crisis” ended. [28]

The Karen Ethnic Minority

Red Karen, a subgroup of the Karen, women wearing traditional dress, 1985. Image courtesy of Linda De Volder is unmodified and licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

During World War II, the Karen fought alongside Great Britain against the invading Japanese, who the Burmese-led government aided. [29] The Allies recaptured Burma in 1945. The Karen thought that they would earn an independent state by assisting the British, but this never happened, and the Karen have fought for independence and autonomy ever since. [30]

In their struggle to maintain power in the 1980s, the Tatmadaw tried to negotiate agreements with ethnic armed organizations inside Burma. Karen groups refused to participate and the government retaliated by launching various offensives against the Karen throughout the 1990s. [31] Over the next few decades, hundreds of thousands of Karen were displaced. [32]

Across the 2000s, the Tatmadaw burned villages, shelled communities, conducted sweeps, and implemented forced labor schemes against Karen civilians. [33] In 2012, Myanmar and Karen rebels signed a ceasefire. [34] Despite this, the government limits Karen autonomy through media suppression, attacks continue, and they face persecution due to their Christian beliefs. [35]

The Rohingya Muslims

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar. In 2017, there were 1.1 million Rohingya in Myanmar, or approximately 4% of the nation’s population. [36]

In 1978, the Burmese military carried out killings, rape, and arson against the Rohingya, forcing 200,000 to flee. [37] Four years later, the government framed the Rohingya as “illegal immigrants” and stripped them of citizenship through the Myanmar Citizenship Law. [38] This left the Rohingya stateless, with restrictions placed on their freedom of movement, property ownership, access to education, and ability to hold public office. [39] They were later stripped of voting rights. Rohingya now need government approval to marry, have restrictions on numbers of births allowed per family, and non-Buddhist men are banned from marrying Buddhist women. [40]

In 2012, political officials, some radicalized Buddhist monks, and security forces committed mass killings and destroyed Rohingya villages. [41] They demolished thousands of homes and buildings, [42] displacing 140,000 Rohingya. [43]

In 2017, the situation escalated significantly. The Tatmadaw, with Buddhist nationalist mobs, burned hundreds of Rohingya villages and killed tens of thousands of civilians. [44] Thousands more died trying to escape by sea. [45] The Tatmadaw used mass sexual violence, targeting Rohingya men, women, and children for various forms of assault. [46] Evidence points to the genocidal intent behind these atrocities, with Burmese soldiers describing how superiors ordered them to “[k]ill all you see, whether children or adults.” [47] Many organizations and governments have labeled these crimes against the Rohingya genocide. [48]

A Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. Image courtesy of John Owens (VOA) is unmodified and located in the public domain.

This conflict resulted in the region’s largest refugee crisis in decades as over 700,000 Rohingya fled, mostly to Bangladesh. [49] Estimates place the number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh close to a million, and Bangladesh refuses to take more. [50] Life inside Bangladesh is arduous, with food, water, and medicine scarce and restrictions on movement. [51] Violence from black market gangs and human trafficking operations pervade camps and take Rohingya lives. [52] In 2020, Bangladesh forcefully relocated thousands of refugees to Bhasan Char, an isolated island prone to cyclones. [53] Repatriation efforts have made little progress. [54]

In Myanmar, dire conditions for Rohingya persist. The Tatmadaw interns hundreds of thousands within camps in Rakhine State, where inhumane conditions prevail. [55] The government failed to evacuate Rohingya when Cyclone Mocha hit the country and curbed emergency aid to them. [56]  Discriminatory government policies against Rohingya continue, including forced military service. [57] The group still faces violence from the military and other ethnic armed organizations.

Myanmar recently imprisoned two Burmese journalists for seven years for investigating mass killings of Rohingya men. Many regarded the trial and harsh sentencing as a farce. Aung San Suu Kyi turned a blind eye to the issue and called the journalists “traitors” in private. [58] Suu Kyi also denied visas to United Nations human rights teams investigating the crisis and prevented international organizations from delivering aid. [59] The men were freed in 2019. [60]

Other Ethnic and Religious Minorities

Myanmar persecutes other ethnic and religious groups. Over 2 million people are internally displaced persons, many of them minorities forced to leave their homes because of armed conflict. [61] The junta has threatened to revoke the state identity cards of Kaman Muslims should they refuse to join its military, and it holds them in the same internal camps as Rohingya. [62] Since 2011, the military has systematically attacked Karenni villages, killing hundreds and arresting hundreds more. [63] Chin people have endured extrajudicial slaughter, sexual violence, evictions, and forced conversion. [64]

These are selected examples of the maltreatment that Myanmar’s non-Bamar people undergo.

How

Religious Ethno-Nationalism, Islamophobia, and Genocidal Rhetoric

Religious ethno-nationalism and Islamophobia disseminated via state and non-state propaganda incite atrocities against Rohingya and Myanmar’s other minorities. Government officials have denied Rohingya equal status as citizens across the nation’s history, demonizing them as “aliens” who seek to exploit its resources and “replace” the Bamar majority. Immense anti-Rohingya rhetoric preceded 2017’s violence. [65]

In 2012, Buddhist citizens and monks established the 969 Movement, aimed at “protecting” Myanmar’s Buddhist identity and ostracizing Rohingya people. [66] The group’s leader, Ashin Wirathu, claimed that Muslims control Myanmar’s economy, plan to forcefully convert Buddhist women, and want to transform Myanmar into an “evil Islamic nation.” [67] The government eventually banned 969, but sister organizations, like MaBaTha, still perpetuate Islamophobia. [68] Military and civilian leaders support these entities and use similar language to discuss Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya—Aung San Suu Kyi, for instance, refused to refer to the Rohingya by name when responding to allegations of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). [69] State-run newspapers publish anti-Rohingya articles. [70]

Facebook provides the most potent forum for spreading this hatred. Anti-Rohingya figures use the site to share misinformation about the Rohingya, deny junta atrocities, and support violence. [71] The website’s algorithms popularize this content, enabling and inciting genocide. [72]

Land Appropriation

The Tatmadaw’s desire for economic gain also motivates violence. Resource-rich land blankets Myanmar’s ethnic states and the junta appropriates these regions through force. Under a so-called privatization effort in the 2000s, the state took millions of acres of land from Shan, Kachin, and other groups and built pipelines and other infrastructure on minority properties without consent. [73] Former Rohingya villages were converted to settlements for government forces following Rohingyas’ 2017 expulsions, and similar efforts continue today. [74]

Even where ethnic minorities remain on their land as it is exploited, the government retains full control over the project and denies payment to residents. [75] Ineffective safety regulations contribute to environmental disasters like landslides, which take hundreds of lives. [76]

Government Denial

Aung San Suu Kyi was known for her democratic advocacy, but she has not stood up for minority rights as Myanmar’s leader. Suu Kyi blamed the violence in Myanmar on “terrorist activities, which was the initial cause of events leading to the humanitarian crisis,” and denied violence against Rohingya, either denying its existence or repeating propaganda about the group. [77]

Several organizations revoked awards given to Aung San Suu Kyi because of her inaction on the persecution of the Rohingya. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum withdrew the Elie Wiesel Award that it presented to Suu Kyi in 2012, citing her refusal to stop or condemn the mass killings of the Rohingya. [78] In 2018, the Canadian House of Commons declared the Rohingya crisis a genocide and stripped Suu Kyi of her honorary Canadian citizenship. [79] She was formally deprived of the Freedom of the City of Oxford Award, Freedom of Dublin Award, and Freedom of Glasgow Award. [80] A global petition campaign with over 400,000 signatories called on the Nobel Committee to rescind Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize, but the Committee deemed a retraction impossible. [81]

Other government officials and general citizens in Myanmar practice total denial.

Response

Various nations and organizations have implemented sanctions against Myanmar. [82] Australia, the United Kingdom the European Union, and the United States impose financial penalties on the Burmese government and individual perpetrators. [83] In 2022, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2669, calling for an end to violence within Myanmar and steps to address the Rohingyas’ plight. [84]

In October 2017, the US withdrew military assistance to Myanmar after the Rohingya crisis began, and a month later, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared the violence against the Rohingya to be ethnic cleansing. [86] The U.S. government has since declared Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya a genocide. [87]

On August 25, 2018, the UN reported that the Tatmadaw’s actions against the Rohingya “undoubtedly amount[ed] to the gravest crimes under international law.” [88] It urged an international court to bring Myanmar’s army commander and five other top generals to trial for genocide. [89]

In 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) approved investigations of violence perpetrated against the Rohingya for crimes against humanity charges. [90] The Gambia filed a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide against the Rohingya. [91]

In 2020, the ICJ issued provisional measures, ordering Myanmar to take all possible measures to protect the remaining 600,000 Rohingya Muslims from genocide. [92] While the ruling is binding, no enforcement mechanism exists. [93]

Under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, Argentina’s federal courts opened a case in 2019 of genocide against the leaders of Myanmar. [94] In 2024, an Argentine prosecutor asked the Buenos Aires federal court to issue international arrest warrants for 24 Burmese leaders accused of committing genocide against the Rohingya. [95]

Future

Civil war continues and the Tatmadaw is accused of human rights abuses. No ceasefire attempt has been successful. [96]

Rohingya filed lawsuits against Facebook, seeking damages for their role in the genocide. These cases had mixed success, and they continue today. [97] For more on the role of social media and Facebook’s culpability in Myanmar read here.

The Gambia’s ICJ suit against Myanmar slowly advances. In 2023, the Maldives, France, Germany, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK submitted declarations to intervene on the side of The Gambia in the dispute. [98] Myanmar is due to file its counter-arguments before the ICJ by the end of 2024, likely initiating the case’s next stages. [99]

Updated by Bekir Hodzic, October 2024.

References

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