Military coup in Myanmar: a further burden for the Rohingya?

Throughout its history, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has struggled with repressive military rule, years of isolationist and socialist economic policies, widespread poverty, and civil war with ethnic and religious minority groups.

Therefore, the country presents and recognizes more than one hundred different ethnic groups. However, if on the one hand, the majority of them belong to the ethnic Burmans which have enjoyed privileged positions at the social, governmental, and military level. On the other hand, many ethnic minority groups have been victims of systemic and institutionalized discrimination, citizenship denial, mass killings, hunger, lack of shelter and economic development in their regions, minimal representation in government, violence, and abuses carried out by Myanmar’s authorities and the military.

In the last 5 years, nearly one million people are believed to have fled abroad and hundreds of thousands are displaced internally. Most of these refugees in recent times have been the Rohingya people, an ethnic Muslim minority that has faced decades of repression and persecution whose purpose has been depicted as an outrageous ethnic cleansing. Even the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described the Rohingya as “one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world”, and UN investigators have warned there is a “serious risk that genocidal actions may occur or recur”.

Nowadays, the Rohingya are crowded into the world’s largest refugee camps in Bangladesh and their diaspora represents one of the most dramatic issues in the world. It is estimated that about 600,000 Rohingya still remain in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The brutal situation they are forced to live into is leading to the violation of a wide range of human rights concerning thousands of people and especially the most vulnerable: children and women. Amnesty International has several times claimed that the Myanmar military – known as the Tatmadaw –has raped and abused Rohingya women and girls and that it has been constructing camps in the Rohingya villages they razed. Furthermore, in 2017 the military engineered brutal crackdowns targeting indiscriminately Rohingya people, which resulted in the death of approximately 24,000 Rohingya innocent civilians. According to a survey undertaken by Médecins Sans Frontières, approximately 9,400 Rohingya were murdered in Rakhine State solely between 25 August and 24 September 2017, with at least 730 of the victims, children.

The living conditions within those refugee camps are very precarious: drinking water and food are scarce, the hygiene situation has deteriorated, thousands of families sleep outdoors because they have nowhere else to go. Moreover, the Myanmar government refused to grant the Rohingya returnees citizenship, residency rights, or other legal protections.

To make matters worse, the democratic transition and reforms that started in 2011, after Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed as State Counsellor of Myanmar, seem to have arrived at an end. In February 2021, the military staged a coup and officially retook control over the country, leaving the hopes for democratic progress at the margins, and it justified the sudden coup by talking about fraud in the recent elections held in November 2020, with the promise of new fair elections.

As a reaction, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations have harshly condemned the fact but, still, many ask themselves why the army has carried out a coup d’état to seize the power that, de facto, it already had.

According to human rights activists, the military coup further puts the Rohingya in a very difficult position, and the Covid-19 pandemic is making things still worse. The feeling of discouragement and uncertainty within the Rohingya community is growing under increasing pressure from the Bangladeshi government, which places ever greater restrictions on freedom of movement and communication and life inside the camps is difficult. Returning home to the state of Rakhine is a widespread desire, but equally widespread is the awareness that there are no conditions for it to be “safe, voluntary, sustainable and dignified”, as the United Nations invokes. And it seems that it will not be in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, the United Nations fears the coup will worsen the situation for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya living in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. As declared by the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, “there are about 600,000 Rohingya those that remain in Rakhine State, including 120,000 people who are effectively confined to camps, they cannot move freely and have extremely limited access to basic health and education services”.

There is a desperate feeling of panic and uncertainty among the Rohingya as to whether or not they will be able to return home. Hossain Juhar, President of the Burmese Rohingya Association in Queensland, Australia, has stated that, despite being too early to establish what the consequences will be, there is the fear that “the coup will add one more layer of uncertainty and confusion”.Other activists, by contrast, have expressed optimism towards the military coup in the way it could lead to heightened international pressure, which might make recognition of Rohingya citizenship and repatriation more likely.

It is pivotal to mention that the Rohingya have never been accepted by the majority Buddhist population, who even rejects the name “Rohingya”, preferring to call them “Bengali of Muslim faith”. Even long before the coup, Aung San Suu Kyi had been accused of complicity and had become unpopular around the world precisely because of her defense of the military in the persecution against the Rohingya. In order not to irritate the Buddhist majority, the military regime has always fought the Rohingya by claiming that they entered the country as immigrants and that they have no right to reside in Myanmar. However, this is not the truth, as attested by numerous documents and research.

Actually, no one can tell what their future will be. As unlikely as it was that Suu Kyi’s civilian government would have allowed the return of the Rohingya “en masse”, it is almost impossible to foresee any return in the short term. However, not all the hopes of seeing the Rohingya return to living in peace and safety at home are vanished. People involved in the current Civil Disobedience Movement have publicly apologized for failing to stand up for the Rohingya: in a sense, it can be observed that decades under an undemocratic regime have resulted in the oppression and military repression of both the Rohingya people and the majority of Myanmar’s population.

Although the humanitarian assistance and support to the Rohingya will continue, the international community seems to be reluctant or unable to take effective measures to ensure respect for liberal values and democracy in Asia. The only solution to these dramatic issues is the adoption of democratic and inclusive values and ideals which can lead towards the recognition of a multicultural and multi-ethnic society, the emergence of solidarity and freedom, and the end of conflicts and hatred based on differences of religious, political, ethnical or social traits.