The Rohingya count amongst the most persecuted groups on earth. Stateless in their own country, denied basic rights, forcibly displaced, and now massacred. Understandably, much of the recent coverage has
focused on the atrocities in Rakhine State. But in order to really understand the situation, one must start by looking at why many in Myanmar believe that the recent events are a historical correction.
The Rohingya, a Muslim Indo-Aryan ethnic people, don't look, sound or pray like their neighbours the ethnically Arakanese Buddhists. Their migration into Myanmar has occurred over centuries. But when the region was subsumed by British India the pace of migration quickened and the new arrivals quickly became a useful labour force for British administrators. Soon the Rohingya were being associated with British rule and becoming the targets of anti-colonial animosity.
Then the Second World War broke out, and this muddied the waters even further. Many locals actively supported Japanese efforts to dislodge the British. In fact, Japan even trained and armed Burmese insurgents to fight against British rule, including the revolutionary Aung San and his anti-colonial activists. And when the Japanese Imperial Army finally expelled the British from Myanmar (or Burma as it was then known) in 1942, they did so with the blessings of many Burmese, particularly the Rakhine people.
As a rearguard action the retreating British army decided to heavily arm the Rohingya - hoping to use them as a buffer between Japanese forces and the rest of India. What followed next is one of the least-known massacres of the 20th century. In 1942 Rakhine State witnessed an extraordinarily brutal campaign of inter-communal violence between the Rakhine and the Rohingya. Each, armed by a foreign empire, killed and displaced the other - by the tens of thousands. The best estimates suggest that at least 50,000 Rakhine and perhaps as many as 40,000 Rohingya were killed.
As the war turned and Allied forces gained the upper hand, Aung San switched allegiances. The storied revolutionary and activist had only one aim: to see a free and united Burma. He correctly calculated that British rule could not outlast the war by much. So in the shadow of the war he strove to unify Burma's patchwork of ethnic groups and eventually negotiated a British handover. But he never got to see his vision realised - Aung San was assassinated six months before Myanmar's independence, leaving behind a fractious country.
Today, his oldest surviving daughter Aung San Suu Kyi is a world-reknown leader and the winner of the 1991 peace prize for her non-violent protests in support of democracy. The state her father had tried to build had fallen in a coup in the 1960s ushering in a half-century of military rule. During bloody riots in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi became a symbol of peaceful resistance. For her role she then spent 15 years under house arrest. But her popularity never dropped, and international pressure on the junta kept building. She was finally released in November 2010 and went on to lead her party to form a majority government in 2015.
But the pro-democracy movement never did bring the Rohingya under its wing. In 1982 they were stripped of their right to citizenship, a move that meant they were now foreign infiltrators with a history of killing Burmese. The fact that some Rohingya have been
waging a low-intensity insurgency against Naypyidaw (the capital of Myanmar) hasn't helped either. Perhaps this is why, to the dismay of her followers, Aung San Suu Kyi has responded to their persecution with silence, lies and equivocation.
The disaster today is vast. Myanmar's Rohingya population numbers 1.1 million.
Nearly half of them are crowded into refugee camps in Bangladesh. Any respite they get there will be a miracle since their new host country is inundated by floods and is too poor to feed even its own citizens. Now, the United Nations has been banned from sending either aid or observers to the conflict zone, further compounding the humanitarian crisis. And ASEAN is powerless to intervene.
The outrage at Aung San Suu Kyi's abandonment of the Rohingya has been absolute. Columnists around the world have demanded that her
Nobel prize be rescinded. Even Malala Yousafzai and Desmond Tutu have lined up to condemn her. But such commentary seeks low-hanging fruit. While we are not exonerating Suu Kyi for her lack of response, it is very apparent that the problem in Myanmar is not just about one person - no matter who she may be.
