In this photo taken on Sept. 8, 2012, Muslims gather during a visit by a
delegation of American diplomats including U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar
Derek Mitchell, unseen, at a refugee camp in Sittwe, Rakhine State,
western Myanmar. Three-and-a-half months after some of the bloodiest
clashes in a generation between Myanmar’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and
stateless Muslims known as Rohingya left the western town of Sittwe in
flames, nobody is quite sure when -or even if- the Rohingya will be
allowed to resume the lives they once lived here. (AP)She came, she saw,
she conquered. The photograph of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi standing proudly with America’s smiling political elite at her
Congressional Gold Medal ceremony last month in Washington, D.C.,
provides a powerful image of this heroine of democracy. She has
justifiably caught the world’s attention and earned its love. Arizona
Sen. John McCain called her “his personal hero.”
In Suu Kyi’s visit to American University where she received an honorary
doctorate during her U.S. visit, we are provided with another powerful
image of her, that of a supplicant Buddhist kneeling before a dozen
monks to receive their blessing. She has not only become a voice for
freedom and political leadership but a voice of Buddhist compassion for
the Burmese people and the ethnic minority groups on the periphery who
have long suffered under Burma’s oppressive government.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burmese founding father Aung San, was known to
rely on her Buddhist faith for a sense of inner freedom during her 15
years of captivity after rising to power during the 1988 student
uprising. After her release in 2010, she continued her work for
democracy, stressing the “loving kindness” of Buddhist teachings for
Burma’s democratic transition in place of feelings of hatred and
revenge. She was elected to the Burmese Parliament representing the
National League for Democracy, and in recent weeks, she has expressed
her willingness to continue to serve her nation as the next president of
Burma with elections scheduled for 2015.
With Suu Kyi’s near universal appeal and star power, she is in a unique
position for both political leadership in Burma as well as a voice of
Buddhist compassion and an ally for the oppressed. Buddha stressed that
compassion lay at the heart of a Buddha nature and demonstrates one’s
respect for the dignity of life.
Yet, Suu Kyi has remained curiously silent on one of the most urgent
humanitarian issues facing Burma, the plight of the Rohingya people.
The Rohingya, whom the BBC and many NGOs call “one of the world’s most
persecuted minority groups,” are the little known Muslim people of the
coastal Arakan state of western Burma. Over the past three decades, the
Rohingya have been systematically pushed out of their homes by Burma’s
military government and subjected to widespread violence along with the
complete negation of their rights and even identity. They have become a
stateless minority.
Many hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries. The
Rohingya are surrounded by adherents of the great faiths - Buddhism,
Islam, Hinduism, and Christianty - all of which emphasis compassion and
charity for the needy. Despite these compulsions from their faiths, many
Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians in South Asia have treated
the Rohingya with nothing but outright hostility.
The current situation of the Rohingya is a challenge not only for all in
the region to adhere to the demands of their faiths but a challenge for
Aung San Suu Kyi and the Buddhists of Burma to treat the suffering
Rohingya with “loving kindness,” of which they have seen little.
The widely reported violence in July 2012 against the Rohingya by the
neighboring Buddhist Rakhine people in which over 1,000 Rohingya were
killed and entire villages burned to the ground must be understood in
the context of this sustained campaign of oppression against the
Rohingya. The violent actions of the Rakhine were committed with the
complicity and, at times, participation of the government security
forces.
Even the new democratic reforms have not altered the perception of the
Rohingya with President Thein Sein stating in July 2012 in the wake of
this violence that he would not recognize the Rohingya or their rights
and wished to turn over the entire ethnic group to the United Nations’
High Commissioner for Refugees. Buddhist monks, contrary to the
teachings of Buddha, staged anti-Rohingya marches in September to
declare their support for the president’s proposal. The Burmese
government has blocked the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)from
opening an aid office to assist displaced Rohingya due to the violence
in Arakan state.
While many ethnic minorities in Burma, with non-Burmese peoples
comprising over 30 percent of the population, have been the victims of
the military junta’s oppressive measures, the Rohingya stand apart in
that their very existence is threatened.
When General Ne Win and the military junta came to power in 1962, the
central government began to shift away from the inclusive vision of Aung
San and towards a nationalist ideology based on the Burmese ethnicity
and the Buddhist faith. The Rohingya, as both non-Burmese and Muslim,
were now stripped of any legitimacy and erroneously and incorrectly
labeled “illegal Bengali immigrants.”
The initial push of the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign came in
1978 under Operation Naga Min with the purpose of scrutinizing everyone
in the state as either a citizen or alleged “illegal immigrant.” For the
Rohingya people, this resulted in widespread rape, arbitrary arrests,
desecration of mosques, destruction of villages, and confiscation of
lands. In the wake of this violence, nearly a quarter of a million
Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh, many of whom were later
repatriated to Burma where they faced further rape, imprisonment, and
torture.
In 1991, a second push, known as Operation Pyi Thaya, or Operation Clean
and Beautiful Nation, was launched with the same purpose, resulting in
another mass exodus of 200,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, with
nearly 300,000 refugees remaining today, many without food or medical
assistance from a Muslim population ignoring the demands for compassion
in their faith towards their fellow Muslims.
With the passage of the 1982 Citizenship Law, the Rohingya were
officially denied Burmese citizenship and effectively ceased to exist
legally. With their loss of citizenship, the Rohingya found their lives
difficult to lead. They were barred from travelling outside their
villages, repairing their decaying places of worship, receiving an
education in any language or even marrying and having children without
rarely granted government permission, often procured through bribes
which few are able to afford. The failure to receive permission for any
of these innocuous acts lands the offenders in prison where men are
beaten and women routinely raped.
Women who become illegally pregnant are forced to either flee the
country or resort to dangerous back-alley abortions, where many die
because of their inability to get adequate medical treatment due to the
severe travel restrictions.
The Rohingya are also subjected to modern-day slavery, where they are
forced to work on infrastructure projects, such as constructing “model
villages” to house Burmese settlers intended to displace them. Women are
susceptible to forced prostitution by the Burmese security forces.
U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the
House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
applaud after Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi finishes
her speech during a U.S. Congressional Gold Medal presentation ceremony.
(GETTY IMAGES)While many efforts have been made by the Burmese
government towards the creation of an open and democratic political
system, there is still much more to be done. Suu Kyi, following the
example of inclusive leaders like Nelson Mandela, should reach out to
the Rohingya people and set a positive precedent for an all-embracing
society which welcomes the participation of the Rohingya as well as all
the ethnic minorities of Burma. In this way, she will also be living up
to the ideals of her Buddhist faith to show compassion towards those who
suffer. Where she leads, others will follow.
Only when the systematic violence against the Rohingya ends can a truly
democratic Burma be legitimate in the eyes of its own people and the
international community.
But the first step is for Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma to acknowledge the
Rohingya exist.
Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American
University and former Pakistani High Commissioner to the United Kingdom
and Ireland. Harrison Akins, an Ibn Khaldun Chair research fellow at
American, is assisting Ahmed with his forthcoming book, “The Thistle and
the Drone: How America’s War on Terror became a Global War on Tribal
Islam .”
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