Asia’s ‘boat people’

Away from the mainstream media, the tragic persecution of the forgotten Rohingyas  is unfolding in neighbouring Myanmar. The recent flare-up was of a scale that prompted the UNHCR (the UN's refugee agency) to intervene and censure the Myanmar Government, "to ensure the protection and dignity of all civilians on its territory in accordance with the rule of law and its international obligations". This purge is especially ironic as it takes place under the watch of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Su Kyi, as the 'First and incumbent State Counsellor' (a creative designation that overcomes her inability to be formally anointed as President, owing to a constitutional provision). Oddly, Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize citation had mentioned "her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights". Today, the Muslim Indo-Aryan race of Rohingyas is facing systemic disenfranchisement in the latest democracy in the world, as indeed, violent backlash from the majority non-Muslim Rakhine people that has led to over 100 confirmed deaths and displacement of 30,000 Rohingyas.

The Rohingyas have been subjected to an identity crisis for centuries, as their disputed claims of nativity to the Rakhine State (a coastal strip that is contiguous to the Chittagong division of Bangladesh) in Myanmar, are buttressed with  documented records of Bengali labour imports during British rule and by the multiple exodus  warranted by the Bangladesh liberation war, into the bordering Rakhine State. Their Muslim identity, separatist movements (including a failed one to join Jinnah's Pakistan in 1947) and the popular perceptions of imminent demographic changes with their burgeoning population has always posited them with suspicion and discrimination. Theravada Buddhism and Myanmar nationalism have ensured that the fractured and diverse society of Myanmar is able to close ranks against the Rohingyas from the days of the Burmese junta to today's ostensibly, pacifist government of the National League for Democracy. The Bamar majority of Myanmar is openly in favour of denying the Rohingyas citizenship, with even Suu Kyi maintaining a populist and partisan stand of refuting any genocidal tendencies and stating that there is a general "climate of fear" caused by "a worldwide perception that global Muslim power is very great". (Courtesy of thestatesman.com)