AT last somebody in an official
position has said something. United Nations human rights chief Navi
Pillay has called for an independent investigation into claims that
Burmese security forces are systematically targeting the Rohingyas, a
Muslim minority community living in the Arakan region. Even the Burmese
government says at least 78 Rohingya Muslims were murdered; their own
community leaders say 650 have been killed.
Nobody
disputes the fact that about 100,000 Rohingya Muslims (out of a
population of 800,000) are now internal refugees in Burma, while others
have fled across the border into Bangladesh. As you would expect, the
Buddhist monks of Burma have stood up to be counted. Unfortunately, this
time they are standing on the wrong side.
This is perplexing. When the
Pope lectures the world about morality, few non-Catholics pay attention.
When Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran instructs the world about good and
evil, most people who aren’t Shiite Muslims just shrug. But Buddhist
leaders are given more respect, because most people think that Buddhism
really is a religion of tolerance and peace.
When
the Dalai Lama speaks out about injustice, people listen. Most of them
don’t share his beliefs, and they probably won’t act on his words, but
they listen with respect. But he hasn’t said anything at all about what
is happening to the Rohingyas — and neither has any other Buddhist
leader of note.
To be fair, the Dalai Lama is
Tibetan, not Burmese, but he is not usually so reserved in his
judgments. As for Burma’s own Buddhist monks, they have been heroes in
that nation’s long struggle against tyranny — so it’s disorienting to
see them behaving like oppressors themselves.
Buddhist monks are standing
outside the refugee camps in Arakan, turning away people who are trying
to bring food and other aid to the Rohingyas. Two important Buddhist
organizations in the region, the Young Monks’ Association of Sittwe and
the Mrauk U Monks’ Association, have urged locals to have no dealings
with them. One pamphlet distributed by the monks says Rohingya Muslims
are “cruel by nature.”
And Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the woman
who spent two decades under house arrest for defying the generals — the
woman who may one day be Burma’s first democratically elected prime
minister — has declined to offer any support or comfort to the Rohingyas
either.
Recently a foreign
journalist asked her whether she regarded Rohingyas as citizens of
Burma. “I do not know,” she prevaricated. “We have to be very clear
about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them.”
If she were honest, she would
have replied: “Of course the Rohingyas are citizens, but I dare not say
so. The military are finally giving up power, and I want to win the 2015
election. I won’t win any votes by defending the rights of Burmese
Muslims.”
Nelson Mandela, with whom she is
often compared, would never have said anything like that, but it's a
failure of courage on her part that has nothing to do with her religion.
Religious belief and moral behavior don’t automatically go together,
and nationalism often trumps both of them. So let’s stop being
astonished that Buddhists behave badly and just consider what’s really
happening in Burma.
The ancestors of the Rohingyas
settled in the Arakan region between the 14th and 18th centuries, long
before the main wave of Indian immigrants arrived in Burma after it was
conquered by the British empire during the 19th century. By the 1930s
the new Indian arrivals were a majority in most big Burmese cities, and
dominated the commercial sector of the economy. Burmese resentment,
naturally, was intense.
The Japanese invasion of Burma
during the World War II drove out most of those Indian immigrants, but
the Burmese fear and hatred of “foreigners” in their midst remained, and
it then turned against the Rohingyas. They were targeted mainly because
they were perceived as “foreigners”, but the fact that they were
Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country made them seem even more
alien.
The Rohingyas of Arakan
were poor farmers, just like their Buddhist neighbors, and their right
to Burmese citizenship was unquestioned until the Burmese military
seized power in 1962. However, the army attacked the Rohingya and drove
some 200,000 of them across the border into Bangladesh in 1978, in a
campaign marked by widespread killings, mass rape and the destruction of
mosques.
The military dictator
of the day, Ne Win, revoked the citizenship of all Rohingyas in 1982,
and other new laws forbade them to travel without official permission,
banned them from owning land, and required newly married couples to sign
a commitment to have no more than two children. Another military
campaign drove a further quarter-million Rohingyas into Bangladesh in
1990-91. And now this.
On Sunday
former general Thein Sein, the transitional president of Burma, replied
to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay: “We will take responsibilities for
our ethnic people but it is impossible to accept the illegally entered
Rohingyas who are not our ethnicity.” Some other country must take them
all, he said.
But the Rohingyas
did not “enter illegally”, and there are a dozen “ethnicities” in Burma.
What drives this policy is fear, greed and ignorance — exploited, as
usual, by politicians pandering to nationalist passions and religious
prejudice. Being Buddhist, it turns out, doesn’t stop you from falling
for all that. Surprise.
— Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment