Rohingya of Burma February 2009

Stateless and Suffering: The Rohingya People of Burma

Kevin Boyd

Prof. MartinIntroduction to Humanitarian Crises

17 February 2009

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A military junta has ruled Burma, officially known as the Union of Myanmar, since

General Ne Win led a coup that topple the government of U Nu in 1962. Following its

consolidation of power, the junta advanced an ideology called “The Burmese Way to Socialism,”

which was xenophobic in character and formulated by the intensely nationalistic Burmese

Revolutionary Council. The goal of this program, still evident to this day, is the

“Burmanization” of the country, referring to the majority Bamar people.1 Today, the State Peace

and Development Council (SPDC), as the government is called, recognizes 135 “national races”

living in Burma and possessing Burmese citizenship. This list, however, is not representative of

all the peoples living in the country, and one group in particular is often singled out by the SPDC

as explicitly non-Burmese: the Rohingya people of Burma’s northwest.2 Their exclusion from

Burmese society has major implications for the physical safety of the hundreds of thousands of

Rohingya who have fled persecution, as well as the stability of the wider South and Southeast

Asian region. The purpose of this paper is to, first, review the forces within Burma that both

created and perpetuate the Rohingyan refugee crisis, and, second, to report on the conditions they

face outside Burma, primarily in neighboring Bangladesh.

Origins: The Rohingya, their land, and their status

Although the SPDC claims the Rohingya are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants that began

entering their territory following the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824, most historians of the region

1 Holmes, Robert A. “Burmese Domestic Policy: The Politics of Burmanization.” Asian Survey. Vol. 7, No. 3. Mar. 1967, University of California Press. p188.

2 Myanmar: The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied. Amnesty International. 19 May 2004. <http://amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA16/005/2004/en>. 13 Feb. 2009. p2.

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place their actual arrival in the region between the 7th and 9th centuries. The ancestry of the

Rohingya can traced back Arab, Mughal Indian, and North African traders and mariners made

contact and settled in the region known then as Arakan.3 They were the subjects of the ruling

Rakhine people, a Buddhist minority group after which Arakan takes its current name: Rakhine

State. These Rakhine kingdoms were politically independent of the Bamar peoples until 1784,

when the Bamar king Bodawpaya conquered the territory of Mrauk-U, the last Rakhine king.4

The Rohingya are now among the most persecuted groups in Burma, and are in many

ways easy for the SPDC to alienate. The Northern Rakhine State, where the Rohingya are

concentrated, is bordered by a mountain range to the east, which separates it from the rest of the

country, and to its west lays the Bay of Bengal. The Northern Rakhine State shares a border and

linguistic ties with Bangladesh, as the Rohingya primarily speak a Bengali dialect similar to the

one spoken across the border in Chittagong.5 Furthermore, 80% of the 800,000 people in the

Northern Rakhine State are Sunni Muslim, while the majority of the Burma practices Theraveda

Buddhism. The Rohingya, furthermore, differ in some aspects of physical appearance from the

majority Bamar population, as they are of originally of South Asian ancestry.6

All of these differences have been seized by the SPDC in their campaign to, quite simply,

get the Rohingya to leave.7 The first step taken to this end was to remove them from Burma in

3 “Assessment for Rohingya (Arakanese) in Burma.” Minorities at Risk. University of Maryland. 31 Dec. 2003. <http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/assessment.asp?groupId=77501>. 12 Feb. 2009.

4 Myanmar: The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied. p2.

5 Montlake, Simon. “Thailand accused of mistreating Muslim refugees.” The Christian Science Monitor. 23 Jan. 2009. <http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0123/p04s01-wosc.html>. 10 Feb. 2009.


7 Rohingya: Burma’s Forgotten Minority. Refugees International. 18 Dec. 2008. UNHCR Refworld. < http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/494f53e72.html>. 14 Feb. 2009.

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legal terms by revoking their citizenship. The 1982 Burma Citizenship Law established three

classifications of citizenship: full, associate, and naturalized. The Rohingya do not qualify for

full citizenship because, as mentioned earlier, the junta does not recognize them as a national

ethnic group. In order to qualify for associate citizenship under the 1982 law, you must have

been both eligible and applied for citizenship under the 1948 Union Citizenship Act, which most

Rohingya were unaware of at the time, and certainly unaware of its future implications. And

finally, the Rohingya cannot qualify for naturalized citizenship because they lack, as a group, the

necessary documentation to prove that they or their ancestors resided in Burma prior to 1948.

They have family lists that contain the members of households, but those only give the date of

birth and names, not places of birth. The law seems to have been declared in order to strip

Rohingya of their nationality, as it was announced shortly after many Rohingyas returned after

fleeing in 1978.8

The legal status of the Rohingya is dire. They have no citizenship in their country of

origin, and the hundreds of thousands of them who have fled to Bangladesh and other nearby

countries find themselves caught in limbo. None of the countries in the region are signatories of

the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which requires its parties to grant its

nationality to a person born on its territory that would otherwise be stateless.9 This, as we will

see later, has important implications for accessing social services, such as elementary education

and healthcare. Even though they escape Burma, in many cases they continue to lack travel

documents, or even government identification documentation from their host countries, which

leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, and more importantly, without clear legal recourse.

8 Myanmar: The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied. p9-10.

9 Ibid. p10.

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Push and Pull Factors: Anti-Rohingya actions and their consequences

The revocation of citizenship for the Rohingya was only one component of the SPDC’s

strategy to alienate and remove them from Burmese society. Intense ethnoreligious-based

violence preceded the 1982 law, beginning in 1978 with Nagamin, the King Dragon Operation.

The Burmese military, called the Tatmadaw, directly and deliberately targeted civilians,

particularly Rohingyan Muslims, for killings, rapes, and the destruction of places of worship.

Their aim was “scrutinizing each individual living in the state, designating citizens and

foreigners in accordance with the law and taking actions against foreigners who have filtered into

the country illegally.”10 The rhetoric mirrors directly language used by Burmese officials today to

describe the Rohingya: illegal immigrants, foreigners, and non-citizens. As a direct result of the

King Dragon Operation, over 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. The vast majority of these

Rohingya were repatriated by 1982, in this instance.11

The most recent major outflow of Rohingya from Burma to Bangladesh occurred in

1991-1992, and has resulted in a humanitarian crisis that has lasted for nearly twenty years.

Those fleeing to Bangladesh reported “widespread forced labour, as well as summary executions,

torture, and rape.” Security forces, including the Tatmadaw, forced Rohingyans to work on

infrastructure projects under harsh conditions and without pay.12 During this period more than


11 Bangladesh: Analysis of Gaps in Protection of Rohingya Refugees. UN High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR Refworld. May 2007. <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/472897120.html>. Feb. 13 2009. p12.


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250,000 people, almost one third of the entire Rohingya population, fled the country.13 This

influx of refugees was largely contained within twenty camps near the Burmese border, near

Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. These camps will be discussed in the next section. The period

between 1993-1997 saw the repatriation of 236,000 Rohingya, many of which were allegedly

coerced into returning by the Bangladeshi government, with the consent of the Burmese

government.14 Their return, however, in no way signaled an improvement in their condition

within the country.

Northern Rakhine is one of the most heavily militarized regions in Burma, despite very

low levels of armed conflict.15 The United States Department of State describes the plight of the

Rohingya as discrimination of “the severest forms.”16 Their freedom of movement is non-

existent, as they require official permission to leave their home villages, and may under almost

no circumstances travel outside of Northern Rakhine. They are subject to arbitrary restrictions of

religious freedom, forced labor (particularly in winter months), arbitrary arrests, and extortionate

taxes on births and deaths.17 Individuals are even forced to carry out sentry duty for the villages,

essentially doing the work of the Tatmadaw for them. In addition to restricting travel and

expression, the Rohingya are constantly living with the threat of having their lands confiscated

13 “Bangladesh-Myanmar: Bleak prospects for the Rohingya.” Integrated Regional Information Networks. 29 Oct. 2008. UNHCR Refworld. < http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/490ad4d3c.html>. 14 Feb. 2009.

14 Bangladesh: Analysis of Gaps in Protection of Rohingya Refugees. p12.


16 “Population of Arakan (Rakhine) State vulnerable to violations and forced displacement.” Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Feb. 2008. <http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpEnvelopes)/63B7BD97BD5738A8C12573E0007556A9?OpenDocument>. 15 Feb. 2009.

17 Rohingya: Burma’s Forgotten Minority.

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and turned into so-called “model villages,” planned agricultural communities for poor Bamar and

Rakhine families, usually large enough for 100 families. The majority of these villages are built

on Rohingya land. Intimidation is rampant in causing families to leave their land, but the

government also pursues legal means of removing Rohingya by strictly enforcing old zoning

laws, for example by destroying a house built on land zoned for rice cultivation.18

While the violence is largely localized to the Northern Rakhine state, the policy has

strong connections to the SPDC. The one acronym that comes up again and again in refugee

interviews when discussing the perpetrators of abuses is NaSaKa, or Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye. This

domestic security force was deployed in 1992, originally to operate exclusively in Northern

Rakhine, and is made up of police, military intelligence, internal security, and customs officials.

It implements the “model village” policy for the Ministry of Development of Border Areas and

National Races.19 With the full force of the state brought to bear on them, the Rohingya look to

international groups for protection. Asylum seekers in Bangladesh have said in interviews that

the international organizations working in Burma are their chief protection from the predations of

the Burmese state. Unfortunately, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) only has two expatriate officers working in the state, and their capacity to act without

intimidation in such circumstances, or to even reach all the areas of concern is also limited.20 It

seems that the SPDC has shown no signs of relaxing these repressive policies, which in turn

prevents the Rohingyas living outside Burma from returning, and prevents international

18 Myanmar: The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied. p23-25.

19 Ibid. p4.

20 Rohingya: Discrimination in Burma and Denial of Rights in Bangladesh. Refugees International. UNHCR Refworld. 21 July 2006. <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/47a6eede0.html>. 14 Feb. 2009. p2.

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organizations from aiding them in their repatriation. And so, for the foreseeable future,

thousands of registered refugees, and hundreds of thousands more unregistered, will continue to

suffer appalling living conditions with an uncertain legal, political, and economic fate.

Rohingyas in Bangladesh: Permanent Guests?

After the bulk of the 1991-1992 influx of Rohingya had been repatriated, more than

26,000 refugees registered with the UNHCR remained in Bangladesh. They still remain in two

UNHCR-administered camps: Kutupalong, which holds nearly 10,000 people, and Nayapara,

which holds 16,000.21 Both camps are located in Bangladesh’s Cox Bazaar District, right across

the border with Burma. The area is one of the poorest in Bangladesh, with 50% of the

population living in extreme poverty, and 75% of the children under five years old

underweight.22 As for the population of the camps, there are about six people per household,

more than half the children under five years old suffer from anemia, and more than half the

residents are under the age of eighteen, meaning they were either born in the camps or shortly

after their mothers arrived in them.23 As mentioned earlier, Bangladesh does not confer

citizenship upon otherwise stateless people born in its territory, so the camp populations

represent slowly growing legal lacunas in its territory.

The conditions within the camps have been widely described as dismal. The refugees are

not allowed to leave the camp to seek employment or education, and within the camps are denied

access to formal education. This means all instruction is informal, based on the Burmese rather



23 Ibid. p12.

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than Bangladeshi national curriculum (meaning no Bengali language instruction), and only

continues through the fifth grade.24 The local population is largely resentful of the refugees, as

they place greater strain on already scarce resources, such as fish, wood, and heating oil.25

Women in the camps are particularly at risk, whether it is while to sexual assault while collecting

firewood or domestic abuse, which is not a crime in Bangladesh.26 Until very recently, the

camps were “governed” by something called the Mahjee system, in which small groups of

refugee men would collaborate with local law enforcement to intimidate, abuse, and exploit the

camp populations. The locals used arbitrary arrests to remove men from households, thereby

making it easier to abuse the women. The local detention center in Cox’s Bazaar has a maximum

capacity of 800 inmates but often holds over 3500.27

The conditions inside of the Kutupalong and Nayapara camps are improving, however,

particularly over the last two years. The Mahjee system has been replaced with camp councils,

decreasing the instances of arbitrary arrest and abuse. The rickety, leaking housing is in the

process of being replaced with semi-permanent structures, with fifty percent of them completed.

To decrease instances of gender violence and to increase general safety at night, more than fifty

solar powered streetlights have been installed, along with more secure and sanitary latrines,

shower stalls, and tube wells. The government of Bangladesh allowed UNHCR to give all the

camp inhabitants registered with Bangladesh refugee identification cards, an important first step

in providing them some form of legal identity. UNHCR also has plans to bring the informal

24 Ibid. p29.

25 “Bangladesh-Myanmar: Bleak prospects for the Rohingya.”

26 “Bangladesh: Rohingya Refugee Camps Improved.” Integrated Regional Information Networks. 7 Nov. 2008. UNHCR Refworld. <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/491946b8c.html>. 13 Feb. 2009.


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camp school curriculum in line with the Bangladeshi curriculum. But perhaps most importantly,

non-governmental organizations are allowed to operate within the camps on a much wider scale

than ever before, and have begun providing valuable training to inhabitants, so that they can

begin to supplement their rations with small income generated from tailoring, carpentry, and

other trades.28

All these improvements and programs, along with regular access to food rations and other

essential goods, are provided to those Rohingyas who are both inside the camps and registered

with the Bangladeshi government. There is a group of around 5,000 Rohingya in the camps that

the government never registered, and anywhere between 100,000-200,000 unregistered Rohingya

living in Bangladesh. Many of them live right outside of the camps, driven there by authorities

after voter registration drives revealed their illegal status.29 Countless thousands more live in

desperate conditions that make the poor conditions inside the camp seem almost luxurious. They

have no access to healthcare, no access to steady food supplies, and no form of official

identification. Many of these “self-settled” have attempted to integrate into the local population,

but their positions are tenuous at best, and they stand even less of a chance than the other

impoverished residents of Cox’s Bazaar, who are Bangladeshi nationals, at receiving aid from the

state. Their condition is the direct result of the Burmese junta’s actions, but also indirectly the

result of the ineffective means by which Bangladesh handles displaced people.

Bangladesh does not legally acknowledge the status of the Rohingyas as refugees,

although its Office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner has been delegated

administrative authority in dealing with the UNHCR camps by the Ministry of Food and Disaster

28 “Bangladesh: Rohingya Refugee Camps Improved.”


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Management. Bangladesh is not a party to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of

Refugees, nor its 1967 Protocol. There is no national law regulating the administration of

refugee affairs or guaranteeing the realization of rights of refugees.30 Their 1946 Foreigners Act

and 1952 Control of Entry Act also make no explicit reference to refugees, although Article 31 of

its constitution declares the state’s obligation to extend the protection of law to “every other

person within Bangladesh for the time being.”31 There is no government body designed to

evaluate refugee or asylum claims, nor is there one which refers applicants to the UNHCR.32

This may be due, in part, to the fact that the border between Burma and Bangladesh is incredibly

porous, despite being patrolled by the Bangladesh Defence Riffles Division. There is an annual

movement of people along the border for seasonal employment, and Rohingyas fleeing Burma

can easily get by undetected. Indeed, many Rohingya have reported that it is much easier for

them to reach Bangladesh than it is to travel elsewhere in Burma.33 To its credit, the government

of Bangladesh does not engage in the systematic refoulement of Rohingya asylum seekers, but

that is just the first step toward a positive refugee policy.34 The durable solution sought by both

the government of Bangladesh and the UNHCR is the eventual voluntary repatriation of the

Rohingya to Burma. Unfortunately, this seems less and less likely in the future, as the Rohingya

are still greatly concerned for their physical safety, and continue to flee the country. While the

UNHCR seems to accept this, at least tacitly, the government of Bangladesh has not taken steps


31 Ibid. p13.

32 Ibid. p9.



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to seek to formally integrate the thousands of Rohingya in its territory, despite the relative ease

with which they can assimilate.

Moving Onward: Rohingya Beyond Bangladesh

For many Rohingya, particularly those not housed in Kutupalong or Nayapara, conditions

in Bangladesh are so poor that they attempt to move onward to other countries in the region,

including Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Thousands of them have succeeded in leaving

Bangladesh, but while the physical conditions in their destination countries may be slightly

better, their ambiguous legal status becomes a greater hazard. None of the three countries listed

above are signatories of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967

Protocol. All three have also developed reputations for treating asylum seekers as criminals. In

Malaysia, the semi-official immigration enforcement grou, Rela, routinely arrests Rohingya

asylum seekers on immigration offenses, and has been repeatedly accused of abusing detainees.

In some cases, they are handed over to human traffickers across the border in Thailand, where

the traffickers then demand ransom from family members.35 In Indonesia, human rights groups

frequently pressure the government not to label Rohingya asylum seekers as “economic

migrants,” because that carries with it the potential for deportation and refoulement.36 As in

Bangladesh, there is a severely underdeveloped capacity to process the new arrivals, and to


36 “Indonesia urged not to deport Rohingya refugees.” AntaraNews. 13 Feb. 2009. <http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2009/2/13/indonesia-urged-not-to-deport-rohingya-refugees/>. 13 Feb. 2009.

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provide them with humanitarian services. For example, only 400 of the 13,000 Rohingya

registered in Malaysia have access to primary education.37

As the situation becomes more dangerous in Burma and more desperate in Bangladesh,

Rohingya have taken to the sea in rickety boats in the hopes of reaching Thailand or Malaysia.

In December 2008, the Thai navy intercepted and detained 400 of these boat people on a military

island called Koh Sai Daeng. From there, they were taken out to sea and forced onto a barge

without motors or adequate food or water. They were then cut loose, and left to drift in open

water for twelve days before being rescued hundreds of miles away by the Indian coast guard

near the Andaman Islands.38 Upon rescue, only 100 were left onboard, and there is evidence that

this has been happening since 2007.39 International pressure has led the Thai prime minister,

Abhisit Vejjajiva, to admit the incident did occur, and to call for an investigation. The fiercely

independent Thai military, however, denies any wrongdoing, and claims that they suspect the

Rohingya of providing support to a Malay Islamic insurgency in the southern tip of the country.40

The flagrant abuse of these recent detainees has raised the profile of the Rohingya in the

international community, and as such they will be discussed at the upcoming ASEAN

conference.41 This attention is significant, as the Rohingya have long been excluded from


38 “Time to ratify the UN convention on refugees.” Editorial. The Bangkok Post. 18 Jan. 2009. <http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/9934/time-to-ratify-the-un-convention-on-refugees>. 15 Feb. 2009.

39 Montlake, Simon. “Thailand accused of mistreating Muslim refugees.”

40 “Thailand’s deadly treatment of migrants.” BBC World News. 17 Jan. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834075.stm>. 15 Feb. 2009.

41 “Rohingya Issue Expected to be Raised During Asean Summit.” The Irrawaddy News Magazine. TheIrrawaddy.com 17 Feb. 2009. <http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15129>. 17 Feb. 2009.

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discussions on refugees, including large-scale resettlement programs. They do not have their

own advocacy group; their lack of educational opportunities and legal status has led to a shortage

of qualified youths capable of traveling and organizing a unified movement. The spokesperson

for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it best: “The Rohingya are probably the most

friendless people in the world. They just have no one advocating for them at all.”42 It remains to

be seen if that will change in the coming weeks and months.

42 Ahuja, Ambikaa, and Michael Casey. “Rohingya are Muslim outcasts, not welcome anywhere.” Associated Press. 14 Feb. 2009. <http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPW6vtdfI0ip4z9X2iqfVibBao8gD96BFKV81>. 16 Feb. 2009.

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Rohingya of Burma February 2009

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