Genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) - what are the reasons for the historical confrontation that resulted in a bloody war? What is really going on there, why have clashes between ethnic groups so shaken up the entire Muslim world and beyond?
Myanmar (Burma) - what is it and where is it located? Myanmar is a state located in Southeast Asia, on the Indochina Peninsula and has a colonial history. Myanmar only gained independence from Britain in 1948. Previously, Myanmar was called Burma, and this is where this bifurcation came from.
Myanmar is an ethnically very densely populated state, there are 135 ethnic groups. Being in a state of eternal civil war, the Myanmar government managed to make peace between 15 ethnic groups, but the rest, due to some irreconcilable differences, are in armed confrontation with each other. Yet the majority of the population are Buddhists.
Rakhine state is located in Myanmar- the core of the current showdown. The state is a strip of land along the Bay of Bengal and adjacent to Bangladesh. The greatest concentration of people live here Roninja, or Rohingya, is a Muslim ethnic group.
Roninja Muslims and Bamar Buddhists from 1948 to this day they have been in extremely difficult relations. The Rohingya are “settled refugees” because they do not have the right to obtain citizenship in Myanmar and find official work, receive government services, and so on. This caused wild hostility between the “indigenous” Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslims, who are considered separatists there.
Religious clashes and murders are all normal everyday life for Rakain. Armed conflicts between ethnic groups give rise to mass purges from the Burmese authorities. This is what has come to be called the genocide of Muslims in Myanmar.
The Rohingya are forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, however, for many this is their last journey.
Muslim genocide in Myanmar - what happened there in 2017?
The media recalled the eternal civil war in distant Burma on August 25, 2017. Then militants of the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army movement began to massively attack police stations in Myanmar. In response to this, the authorities staged sweeps. About 400 people died in the clashes, Rosbalt reports. The source also informs that in response to this, Rohingya militants attacked Buddhist monasteries and desecrated a temple complex in the village of Nan Tha Taung.
Genocide of Muslims, anti-terrorist operation - whatever you want to call it. So far, ethnic cleansing continues. As Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces, said, “ the army will finish what it did not finish in World War II.".
The world community cannot calmly observe such armed conflicts. Thus, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi condemned the situation in Myanmar and called on the authorities to resolve the conflict as soon as possible.
Genocide of fellow believers. Kadyrov stated the following:
“If it were my will, if it were possible, I would launch a nuclear strike there. I would simply destroy those people who kill children, women, and old people,” REGNUM quotes the words of the Chechen leader.
Kadyrov also “threw a stone at the UN,” accusing the organization of inaction and “concern” only in words.
The day before, hundreds of Muslims came out to an unauthorized rally in support of the Rohingya people - they went to the embassy of the Republic of Chechnya in Moscow and en masse signed a petition addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin about their demand to stop the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar. It is worth noting that the unauthorized rally in Moscow, which was composed mostly of residents of the Caucasian republics, was not subject to police persecution.
Anton Tsvetov
expert at the Center for Strategic Research
— The conflict in Myanmar began during the country’s (then Burma) struggle for independence after the end of World War II. At the same time, clashes began between Buddhists and local Muslims, the Rohingya.
Buddhists in Myanmar are the majority, Muslims are in the minority and live compactly in the western part of Arakan state. This territory is also home to a huge number of refugees from neighboring Bangladesh who have settled here over this long period of time.
The Rohingya almost never lived peacefully in this territory and were always in conflict with the local Buddhist population. This conflict was renewed in rounds, the last round as large as it is now was in 2013.
The current phase has been going on since October last year, starting with attacks by militants from an organization that supposedly represents the interests of the Rohingya. Then it was called “Army of Faith”, now it is called “Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army”. This is a militant organization that carried out attacks four years ago, and on August 25 its people attacked a unit of the Burmese army. As before, these attacks provoked a harsh response from the armed forces of Myanmar, in whose political life the military still plays a very important role.
Support for Myanmar Muslims all this time was quite significant in Asia itself. Throughout the last round of the conflict, that is, since October 2016, we have seen quite a lot of speeches in support of the Rohingya.
The most prominent movement is in Malaysia, where there is a large Rohingya refugee community. There, even the country's Prime Minister Najib Razak is trying to make political capital from the support of the Rohingya. He is in a difficult internal conflict with the former prime minister and is trying to draw attention to his role as a protector of Muslims throughout East Asia. We see that he has already spoken quite harshly and was one of the first to speak out about the situation in Myanmar, and it was he who called what was happening “genocide” of Muslims.
In addition to Malaysian officials, the public in many other Muslim countries has come out in support of the Rohingya people. For example, within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Islamic bloc generally advocates that the Association, on its own behalf, condemn the actions of the official authorities of Myanmar. On the side of the Rohingya are international human rights organizations, the UN refugee and human rights agency, and a strong media apparatus. The most alarming reports on the Rohingya crisis tend to come from Al Jazeera and Gulf media.
Russia's role has historically never been significant in this conflict.
For China, the situation is much more sensitive because Myanmar is its neighbor and zone of influence, China invests resources in the stability of the region by supporting the current government. China has serious economic interests there. For him, Myanmar is one of the countries through which a new route for the supply of goods to Europe could pass.
amendment
The editors have changed the previous incorrect title of the material, which talked about Russia's support for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, we apologize to the readers. In fact, support for Muslims is expressed by the Muslim community of Russia and regional leaders - for example, Ramzan Kadyrov. Officially, Moscow has so far shared China’s position, that is, it has supported the actions of the Myanmar government. And yesterday at the BRICS summit, Vladimir Putin said that Russia condemns all violence in Myanmar, and the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are in no way prohibited from having their own views on foreign policy that differ from the official one.
The words “genocide”, “religious war”, “ethnic cleansing”, supported by photographs not intended for children’s eyes, are frightening things.
But such fear often prevents us from correctly understanding and assessing what is happening, and, consequently, from looking for and finding ways to end the conflict and protect its victims.
Russia does not officially recognize the genocide of the Muslim population in Myanmar and does not restrict contacts with this country and tourist trips to it.
Does our state really justify the killing of unarmed people on religious grounds?
Of course not. But the reasons for the war in Myanmar are deeper and more complex than just religious intolerance.
Roots of Evil
The Rohingya, a religious and ethnic group of about a million people living mainly in Rakhine province, are positioned as victims of genocide in Myanmar.
But different parties to the conflict and even foreign experts have disagreements in identifying the determining factors of this group.
The Rohingya themselves consider only Muslims living in Rakhine to be their group. The rest of Myanmar's Muslims (5% of the country's population) are not Rohingya.
Myanmar's Buddhists say they have nothing against Muslims as believers, but the Rohingya are not Muslims or an ethnic group, but illegal migrants from Bangladesh and their descendants.
There are many extremists and criminals among them. Ethnically they are mostly Bengalis and not a separate people.
They do not have their own language (but speak Bengali), and have nothing to do with the formation of the Burmese state (unlike more than a hundred other nationalities, including those professing Islam).
Recognition of the Rohingya
The international community is ready to recognize the Rohingya as a separate people, that is, not a purely religious or territorial, but an ethnic community. From this definition the concept of “genocide” is born.
The state of Myanmar, using force against the Rohingya, declares that it is not engaged in sorting out interethnic relations, but is suppressing unrest and suppressing the activities of illegal extremist organizations.
The Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army is undoubtedly one of them. In addition, the Rohingya have a very high birth rate, and their community is growing exponentially.
Myanmar is a poor state, and there is no extra housing, work or social guarantees here.
The problem is compounded by the memory of a long-ago tragedy. During World War II, the Buddhist population of Burma (the country became Myanmar only in 1989) supported mainly Japan - the Japanese were seen as liberators from British rule.
Rakhine Muslims (and they were very numerous even then) supported the colonialists and engaged in massive “cleansing” of Buddhist settlements, allegedly for “collaboration.”
They were then already considered as Rohingya, that is, visiting, “not our own” Muslims. In independent Burma, both Muslims from other states and Christians received citizenship rights - there were no restrictions on religion.
But the Rakhine Rohingya remained non-citizens - they were viewed as illegal immigrants and their descendants, not entitled to equality with the original Burmese population.
Military events
War in Myanmar between Buddhists and Rohingyas started in 2012, when a young Buddhist woman became the victim of rape and murder in one of the mixed settlements.
Several young Muslims were blamed for her death (with some reason, but without clear evidence). The same accusations came in response. And a conflict broke out with casualties.
There is no exact data on the extent of the damage, but, in any case, there were dozens of victims, and hundreds of destroyed houses. The authorities had to evacuate several thousand people. There have been attempts to cross the border into Bangladesh in search of asylum.
But there they regretted the persecution of their fellow believers, but they had no particular desire to accept refugees.
On the contrary, migrants continued to arrive in Myanmar by boat from a country that has one of the highest population densities and poverty rates in the world!
At the first stage, the confrontation in Myanmar was still expressed in local manifestations - threats, attacks, fights, damage to property.
The Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army actively participated in the riots, and representatives of the authorities and Buddhist communities did not bother to distinguish just strong young Muslims from militants.
In 2016 A new round of conflict began - a group of militants attacked several military posts on the border. Now the state was simply obliged to intervene.
After this, information began to appear in Western and Arab media about the mass extermination of the Rohingya by the Myanmar army and police, as well as representatives of Buddhist communities.
It was reported that several hundred people were killed, villages were burned to force their inhabitants to flee, half a million Rohingya refugees were staying in Bangladesh, and some parts of the country were closed to entry and exit.
Civil war or genocide
No one doubts that the war in Myanmar is a great evil and must be stopped for the sake of representatives of all interested groups. But the definition of it as genocide of the Rohingya is in great doubt.
There are indeed many Muslims among those killed and injured during the conflict, including children and women. But there are no fewer victims among Buddhists.
The army suppressed pockets of resistance with great brutality, but the Salvation Army militants acted no softer, and there were also casualties among the police and military.
Moreover, the conflict around the Rohingya in 2016-2017. in Myanmar was not the only one. But other groups have long since started negotiations with the government of the country; appropriate agreements were concluded, and tensions subsided.
Rohingya leaders do not agree to negotiations, although the conflict in Rakhine has already led to an increase in negativism towards Muslims throughout the country, which was not the case before.
It is also known that the government of Ghana has offered to help the Rohingya (at least every single one) resettle in their country. Give them a place to settle and provide them with full civil rights.
The Rohingya refused. Their radical ideology demands the separation of Rakhine from Myanmar and the creation of its own state.
The exposure of some Muslim publishing houses in the manipulation of video and photographic materials in order to confirm the fact of “genocide” did not help matters either.
For recording the murders in Rakhine, footage from Thailand, China, Nepal and even the Congo, Nigeria and Rwanda were presented (it is not clear who the readers and viewers were considered to be, who were given Nigerians and Congolese as Burmese!).
Many journalists and public figures began to pay attention to the fact that for some reason other regions of Myanmar do not demonstrate such a degree of anger against Muslims - if hostility occurs there, it is at the everyday level.
They also began to pay attention to the fact that aggressiveness is generally rarely characteristic of Buddhists, who are distinguished by great religious tolerance and all over the world live quietly with neighbors of other faiths.
Bottom line
So is the war in Myanmar a hoax? No genocide? What is there?
The war is not made up - people are dying in Myanmar. But whether it should be called genocide is a question. Both Muslims and Buddhists suffer.
Representatives of the army and law enforcement forces are also dying. People are left homeless and lose their last property.
But there are still good reasons to doubt that Muslims in Myanmar are being burned alive in the streets or killed in entire villages.
It seems that the old ethnic and religious conflict has turned out to be beneficial to representatives of radical Islam, who are training militants for the Rohingya and promoting the idea of an “Arkan state.”
It is unlikely that such figures are interested in how many Muslim or Buddhist children and women will die for the sake of this illusory “great goal.”
The government of the country used very strict measures to suppress the unrest. But it is ready to negotiate with the Rohingya, expecting, however, concessions from them as well.
One can understand the leadership of Myanmar, which does not want to stimulate the rapid influx of migrants from Bangladesh by granting citizenship - the country is struggling to cope with its existing material problems.
Other parties, the Muslim and Buddhist communities, also showed cruelty.
The war must end. But it will end only if its nature is correctly understood and those who are interested in escalating the conflict are identified.
People are being killed in Myanmar, and they will not live from the fact that the conflict that killed them is called genocide.
For such a case, there is an unofficial Russian proverb: “the matter is clear, but the matter is dark.”
Much is still unclear about the essence of the Myanmar conflict. Therefore, the Russian leadership is in no hurry to condemn its colleagues from Myanmar, preferring not to come up with labels, but to contribute to a real resolution of the problem.
Last Sunday, Muslim rallies against discrimination against the Islamic population of Myanmar were held in Moscow and other cities around the world. In August, members of the armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked several dozen military targets. In response, Myanmar authorities launched an extensive anti-terrorist operation, during which dozens of Muslims were killed and which the international community calls genocide of the country's Islamic population. What are the reasons and why this conflict cannot be called religious - in the material of “Futurist”.
What's happening in Myanmar?
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar - this is how the country began to be called recently, having got rid of the military dictatorship that had been in power since 1962. It consists of seven provinces inhabited by Buddhist Burmese and seven national states that have never recognized a central government. There are more than one hundred ethnic groups in Myanmar. The diverse ethnic, religious, and criminal groups inhabiting these regions have been waging civil wars for decades—against the capital and against each other.
The conflict between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists has been going on for decades. The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar. They make up approximately 1 million of Myanmar's more than 52 million people and live in Arakan State, which borders Bangladesh. The Myanmar government denies them citizenship, calling them illegal Bengali immigrants, while the Rohingya claim to be indigenous to Arakan.
One of the bloodiest clashes occurred in 2012. The reason was the death of a 26-year-old Buddhist woman. Then dozens of people died, and tens of thousands of Muslims were forced to leave the country. The international community made no attempt to resolve the conflict.
Another escalation of the conflict occurred on October 9, 2016, when about 200 unidentified militants attacked three Myanmar border posts. And in August 2017, fighters from the local armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked 30 army installations and police stations and killed 15 people. They declared this an act of revenge for the persecution of their compatriots.
The international community calls the retaliatory anti-terrorist operation a genocide of Muslims in the state of Arakan - not only the Rohingya, but also representatives of other ethnic groups. Hundreds of people have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism. According to Myanmar authorities, as of September 1, 400 “rebels” and 17 civilians had been killed. Fleeing refugee camp residents told Reuters the army and Buddhist volunteers were torching Muslim villages, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh. On the morning of September 1, Bangladeshi border guards found on the river bank the bodies of 15 refugees who drowned during the crossing, 11 of them were children. According to the UN, more than 120,000 refugees have crossed into Bangladesh over the past two weeks, creating a migration crisis.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov demanded that the UN intervene and stop the violence. In Moscow, near the Myanmar embassy, Muslims staged a spontaneous rally against genocide.
Why don't Buddhists like the Rohingya?
There are several theories about the origin of the Burmese Rohingya. Some scientists believe that the Rohingya migrated to Myanmar (then called Burma) from Bengal primarily during the period of British rule. The British annexed the aspiring state of Arakan in 1826 and facilitated the migration of Bengalis there as labor. Some of the Rohingya came to Burma after the country declared independence in 1948, as well as after the liberation war in Bangladesh in 1971. Traditionally, this people has a high birth rate, so the Muslim population has grown rapidly. The second theory (followed by the Rohingya themselves) suggests that the Rohingya are descendants of the Arabs who colonized the Indian Ocean coast in the Middle Ages and also lived in the state.
The first serious clash between the Rohingya and Arakanese Buddhists was the Rakhine massacre in 1942. During World War II, Burma, then still a British dependency, was captured by Japan. The Rohingya Muslims remained on the side of the British, while the Buddhists supported the Japanese, who promised independence for the country. The Buddhist troops were led by General Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the current leader of Myanmar's Democratic Party. According to various estimates, tens of thousands of representatives of both sides were killed, but there is still no objective figure. After the Rakhine massacre, separatist sentiments in the region worsened.
The military dictatorship that ruled Burma for half a century relied heavily on a blend of Burmese nationalism and Theravada Buddhism to consolidate its power. Ethnic and religious minorities such as the Rohingya and Chinese were discriminated against. General Nain's government passed the Burmese Citizenship Law in 1982, which declared the Rohingya illegal. With the end of military rule and the rise to power of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's allies at the end of 2015, the Rohingya were expected to receive Myanmar citizenship. However, authorities continue to deny the Rohingya political and civil rights.
How does discrimination manifest itself?
The Rohingya are considered "one of the most persecuted minorities in the world." They cannot move freely throughout Myanmar, receive higher education, or have more than two children. The Rohingya are subjected to forced labor and their arable land is taken away from them. A February 2017 UN report said locals, the army and police beat, killed and raped Rohingya.
To escape violence, Rohingya are trafficked illegally to Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand. In turn, these countries do not want to accept refugees - which is why they are subject to international pressure and condemnation. At the beginning of 2015, according to the UN, about 24 thousand Rohingya tried to leave Myanmar on smugglers' boats. The remains of more than 160 refugees have been discovered in abandoned camps in southern Thailand as smugglers held Rohingya hostage, beating them and demanding ransom for their lives. As Thai authorities tightened controls across the border, smugglers began throwing people into “boat camps” where they died of hunger and thirst.
The refugee problem has not yet been resolved. In particular, the government of Bangladesh in February 2017 announced a plan to resettle all Rohingya refugees on the Tengar Char island, which was formed 10 years ago in the Bay of Bengal - it is prone to floods and there is a complete lack of infrastructure. This caused outrage among human rights organizations.
Aren't Buddhists against violence?
“The world media talks exclusively about Muslims who suffered and says nothing about Buddhists,” says orientalist Pyotr Kozma, who lives in Myanmar. “Such one-sided coverage of the conflict has given Myanmar Buddhists a feeling of being under siege, and this is a direct path to radicalism.”
It is traditionally believed that Buddhism is one of the most peaceful religions. But despite the fact that Buddhists and Muslims are involved in this conflict, it is incorrect to view it as inter-religious. We are talking about the status of a certain ethnic group. Experts say that Buddhists have coexisted with Myanmar's Muslims for centuries: Hindus, Chinese, Malabari, Burmese and Bengalis. The Rohingya, being refugees according to one version of their origin, fall out of this “conglomerate of nationalities.”
In early September, rallies were held in Moscow, Grozny and Hong Kong in support of Muslims in Myanmar. The head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov on September 2 for the first time publicly expressed disagreement with Russian policy: “Even if Russia supports those shaitans who commit crimes today, I am against Russia’s position. Because I have my own vision, my own position.”
“Shaitans” Kadyrov calls the military and state authorities in Southeast Asia - Myanmar, where on August 25 the ethnic and religious conflict between the Muslim Rohingya people and the indigenous population of Myanmar, which professes Buddhism, escalated.
What's happened
Myanmar
Population: 55 million people.
GDP:$74.5 billion ($1,350 per capita).
A state in the western part of the Indochina Peninsula. Until 1989, Myanmar was called the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, or Burma for short. A former British colony that became independent in 1948.
On August 25, militants from the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army attacked several dozen Myanmar police strongholds in Rakhine province. Within a week, the death toll in clashes on both sides exceeded 400.
Myanmar authorities sent troops to the region to conduct an “anti-terrorism operation”, but soon evidence of long-standing abuses of power by the military, unjustified brutality and excessive destruction began to appear in the media.
The authorities justified this by the fact that UN staff focused on the facts of violence and their actions only aggravated the conflict. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi accused the volunteers of providing assistance to terrorists.
In turn, UN representatives are trying to prove their impartiality, are negotiating with the Myanmar authorities and expressing hope for an early resumption of the mission in this country.
What does Ramzan Kadyrov have to do with it?
Russia has no interests in Myanmar, but China has these interests, with which it is trying to establish mutually beneficial cooperation and whose support it expects to receive in the international arena. China conducts active trade with Myanmar and does not want wars and unrest near its borders, therefore it supports the position of the Myanmar authorities and condemns the Rohingya as a source of conflict.
On September 3, Russia and China used their veto power and blocked a resolution on assistance to the Rohingya in the UN Security Council. The next day, Vladimir Putin condemned the violence and called on the Myanmar authorities to take control of the situation. At the same time, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, expressed his own point of view, siding with the Rohingya. Perhaps in this way he was trying to popularize his position as a Muslim leader.
Vladimir Putin responded to Kadyrov’s statement: “Every person has the right to have his own opinion. This is regardless of his official position. As for regional leaders, this also fully concerns them.”
Cover photo: Rally in Grozny, September 4, 2017. Photo: Musa Sadulayev/AP Photo/East News
