An ethnic group called the Rohingya, who have lived in northern Rakhine State since the beginning of the 19th century, have been banned from using their ethnic name by the authorities in Myanmar for the past three decades.
Even during the Spring Revolution, the military junta still used only Bengali in their bureaucratic apparatus, as the previous authorities had.
Not only that, the Arakan Army, which has been able to dominate northern Rakhine, still defines the Rohingya people as Bengali and does not use the term “Rohingya”.
Thus, an ethnic group does not even have the right to use their ethnic name; there is no such thing as civil rights, and human rights are being silenced; it is living without them.
The Fire of Racial and Religious Extremism Started by the Military Dictators
Starting from the Na-Ah-Pha military regime (the so-called State Peace and Development Council—SPDC), the military dictators orchestrated the misperception of Muslims and to hater them in Myanmar.
786, a number that adds up to 21, has become a tool for military dictators, a number that creates hate speech that could lead to religious conflict for national extremists.
These national extremists had been spreading hate propaganda that 786 meant to forcibly initiate the whole world into Islam in the 21st century.
Under the times of Na-Ah-Pha regime, when literary censorship was too strict, leaflet publications criticizing the religion of Islam, written fearing the ruin of the nation, easily spread widely among the public.
The leaflets contain hate speech, saying that Muslim men target Buddhist women and force them to associate with them to spread their religion.
It was also written that Buddhist women who associate with Muslim men are forced to violate sacred religious rituals and are forced to initiate into Islam.
Such hateful words have infiltrated and spread among the majority of Buddhists in Myanmar, and racial and religious discrimination has been rooted.
Buddhist monks who believed in these hateful words began to use hateful terms against Muslims in their sermons.
In (Burmese) Myanmar’s society, Buddhist monks are worshiped as having the same role as “Buddha” or “Gautama” (known as the Five Infinite Venerables).
Their speech is often considered words that should not be refused by the believers, known as dajaka (male) and dayika (female).
Monks have a great role in Myanmar(Burmese)’s society as they are bowed down to even by kings.
Therefore, monks who can influence the public and are not skilled in worldly affairs such as politics, economics, and social issues were used as fuel for the military dictators to light the fires of religious extremist conflict.
Even if a famous author publishes a book about Islamophobia, it may be difficult for Buddhists in Myanmar to fully believe it, but they easily believe a sermon preached by an ordinary monk using anti-Islamic terms.
This is because of the hundreds of precepts that the Buddha established that are mandatory for monks to follow, which are full of austerities, including the virtue of not telling lies, which is “Mushavada vaeramani samapadam samadhirami”.
The Buddha, who preached to uphold infinite love through the middle way (known as Pali Majjhimāpaṭipadā ), never preached racist or religious words, nor did He ever instruct His disciples to make radical speeches.
However, the monks, who were blinded completely under the overwhelming influence and propaganda of the military dictators, began to make sermons criticizing another religion, fearing that Buddhism would be destroyed.
The regime could prevent these situations, but they intended to use them as weapons.
Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), published in 1994, which aims to prevent discrimination, describes the following statement.
“No one shall be subject to coercion that would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.”
In addition, Article 20 states that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”
However, successive regimes have not signed the ICCPR Treaty, and the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw did not allow the signing of the ICCPR Treaty during the NLD Government.
Hate speech targeting Muslims had spread deeply among Buddhists.
In schools, Muslim students were subjected to discriminatory words, terms and behaviors by other students.
Parents also forbaded their children from interacting with Muslim children.
In addition, while Buddhists in Myanmar (Burma) had the freedom to build religious buildings, Muslims had very few opportunities to renovate and build theirs.
Even the construction of a mosque for worship was viewed by Buddhists as forcing them to practice their religion.
This was the result of the propaganda that the military dictators used to spread the word of hatred to root the thoughts protecting Buddhism.
These consequences became the reasons for the massive hate speech attacks by the people of Myanmar against the Rohingya people, who were helpless due to the Myanmar Military’s genocide.
The 2012 Rakhine Conflict and the Hate Speech Spread by the Military Regime Transformed in Civilian Clothes
On May 28, 2012, a Rakhine woman (also known as Arakan), (Ma) Thida Htwe, from Tha Pyay Chaung Village, Kyaw Ni Maw Village Tract, Ramree Township, Rakhine State, was raped and murdered.
At that time, the regime, which was transformed into civilian clothes, informed the public in the state-owned newspapers about the case of Thida HHtwe,in which an Arakan woman was raped and killed by Muslim men – in terms that could cause ethnic and religious conflict.
It was a time when even private newspapers were not allowed to publish, and the anti-Muslim hate speech spread by the Na-Ah-Hpa military regime against Buddhists in Myanmar (Burma), where gold-coated democratic rights were still few and far under the 2008 constitution, was still taking root.
It was a time when some internet freedom was gained, and Facebook (now Meta) was widely used by many young people. As a result, anti-Muslim hate speech on Facebook had spread terrifyingly.
These hateful words were purposely spread by the state-owned newspapers based on their reporting style, which could lead to ethnic and religious conflicts about the case of Thida Htwe.
The actions of the military dictator were also purposely done to make the Muslim Rohingya people being viewed that they raped and murdered an ethnic woman of the Arakan people.
Humans are the only living species in which good and bad coexist, and one person being bad does not make all people bad.
However, the military dictators had been spreading hate speech for years to make Buddhists hate Muslims, so the news coverage of Thida Htwe led to ethnic and religious conflicts that were about to spread from Rakhine State to the whole of Myanmar.
The regime did not stop there. At a time when hatred among the public was on the rise, it made a news report that further increased the hatred by using terms that would cause conflict.
On June 5, 2012, 10 Muslims were killed in a “Yoema Thitsar” passenger bus traveling from Thandwe to Yangon.
The report that would raise the level of hatred between Buddhists and Muslims to the highest level due to Thida Htwe’s death was issued in the case of Taungkok.
The term “Muslim Kalar” was used, and because of the hatred caused by the news coverage about the case of Thida Htew, many Buddhists at that time could no longer view the incident as a despicable event in which ten people were killed en masse.
People viewed it with revenge and hatred: a Muslim killed their own ethnic woman so that the ten Muslims’ deaths were deserved. They went beyond the limits of humanity and expressed joy over the deaths of ten people who were killed for no reason.
When the political and human rights community came to protest against the government’s hate speech, it was corrected as “domestic Muslims”.
However, the fire of conflict had gained momentum to burn fiercely.
Since May 28, 2012, when Thida Htwe was killed, there had been incidents of mutual violence between the Muslim Rohingya people and indigenous ethnic people, including Arakan people, in cities such as Buthidaung, Maungtaw, Taungkok, and Sittwe in Rakhine State.
At the end of June, there were around 90,000 people suffering from the conflicts in Rakhine State, and many villages and thousands of buildings, including religious buildings, were destroyed by arson.
Hundreds of people were killed on both sides in the conflicts.
These conflicts had been going on for about five months in Rakhine State, fueling the hatred that had already existed before independence between the Arakan and Rohingya people.
Similarly, the news of the conflict spread throughout Myanmar with hateful words, and riots between Buddhists and Muslims continued until 2014 in some townships, including Mandalay, Meikhtila, Okekan, Lashio.
The military government in civilian clothes, which has purposely spread hate speech against Muslims, has revealed that there are people behind the scenes who are purposefully working to cause these to happen.
But it never admitted that it created these conflicts themselves.
Rohingya Genocide which Happened Based on the Rakhine Conflict
After the Rakhine conflict in 2012, some armed forces among Rohingya people in Rakhine State attacked the border guard bases and police stations in Maungdaw Township in October 2016, and the Myanmar Military (so-called Tatmadaw) was responsible for crushing the armed forces.
In that attack, not only the armed forces but also the Rohingyas from the conflict areas were targeted, killing and burning down the villages.
The world’s largest refugee camp had emerged in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, as Rohingyas fled to another country because they could not bear the oppression and viciousness of the Myanmar military.
At that time, the NLD government came to power, and Myanmar enjoyed more gold-coated democratic freedoms.
As a result, the oppressive and vicious crimes committed by the military against the Rohingya between 2016 and 2017 could no longer be covered up, and some independent press reports continuously appeared.
The NLD government not only did not condemn the military’s crimes against the Rohingya but also even arrested and imprisoned two journalists who investigated the brutal killings of the Rohingya by the military – under the Official Secrets Act.
Finally, in August 2017, the military carried out area clearance attacks against the Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which led to the fleeing of other non-armed Rohingyas to another country. Within that month, more than 700,000 Rohingya had to flee.
After these events became known to the world, in November 2019, the Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar for the Rohingya genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Hate Speech Against Rohingyas
After the Rakhine conflict in 2012, the hatred of the people of Myanmar against the Rohingyas in northern Rakhine became more and more intense. It would be seen that the military dictators planned to make this happen.
Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s some actions in 2016 made these hatreds worse.
In August 2017, 700,000 people fled within a month. While the Myanmar Military violated human rights and oppressed the Rohingya people, the people of Myanmar failed to sympathize with the Rohingyas due to these hatreds.
At that time, many Myanmar people supported the operations of the Myanmar Military on Facebook social media, and only a few condemned them.
The reason why this happened was that it was during the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, whom they voted for and believed in as the long-term democratic hope for the people of Myanmar.
In September 2017, Aung San Suu Kyi said in a private interview with ANI News that the people in Rakhine State only called Rohingya people Bengalis and didn’t want to call them by any other name.
Therefore, instead of using an emotional name, it would be better to use Muslim because it is not something that anyone can deny.
Many people in Myanmar saw the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from another country and could not see them on the humanitarian side, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee due to military operations.
During the operation, the Myanmar military committed unforgivable war crimes, including the killing of children and the rape of Rohingya women.
Those cases were revealed by Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh, and in the eyes of Myanmar people, the Rohingyas were lying, and the fake accounts of the military and government propaganda continued to spread hate speech.
Then, among the people of Myanmar, even the word Rohingya was viewed as a word of hatred that causes hatred.
The situation can be judged by looking at a poetically written post on Facebook.
The text of the post is:
- You are the Rohingya of my life,
- You invade my heart,
- You burn my heart,
- You halal my feelings,
- You lie about my history,
- You lie about my mistakes,
and because of you, I am now a refugee on Facebook.”
In addition to the propaganda of the military and government lobbies, the speeches of those who understood history were well-known and had such high political prestige that they did not accept the Rohingya as Rohingya – even if they did not spread hate speech, further confirmed the view of the people of Myanmar on the Rohingya as alien invaders.
It was said that the period when Aung San Suu Kyi represented the state at the ICJ to face the trial was the period when hate speech against the Rohingya was at its peak.
The massive show of support for Aung San Suu Kyi with the words “We Stand with Aung San Suu Kyi” was a hate speech for the Rohingya who were facing genocide.
Among those who supported it were many well-known people who supported the NLD party, as well as people from the political leadership.
At the time, a well-known woman who is deeply involved in the revolution and who currently lives abroad wrote the following:
” I personally saw this in the Netherlands. They (the people who stand for Rohingya) are the dollar-earning traitors who treat (Daw) Aung San Suu Kyi like a murderer in front of the ICJ office. (If they feel for writing like that, they can go to hell. I don’t give a damn.) Even though some people (which probably mean pro-military or national extremists) in the country are still accusing those who have taken such a stand on the Ro Issue for the country as Kalar supports,” she said – regarding the killing of the Rohingya people, hate speech was written and distributed aimed at those who stood for the Rohingya.
The European Court of Human Rights has defined that hate speech includes Hostile nationalism and racist attitudes directed at minorities, immigrants, and people of immigrant descent; Racial hatred, including discrimination and violence; Speaking, publishing, spreading and expressing xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other hate-based sentiments; insinuating that it is right or proper to do so.
In addition, since the time of General Ne Win, the previous governments, including the NLD, did not recognize the term Rohingya and only used the term Bengali in the country.
Therefore, during the period of the NLD government, which can be considered a good time of the gold-coated democracy, the term Rohingya was not allowed, and all the private local media outlets only used the term Rohingya in Bengali. For the Rohingya, such a term has become hate speech.
Ro Nay San Lwin, who is a Rohingya activist, reacted strongly to what the media used as Bengali.
On December 15, 2019, when the debate about the Rohingya issue was rising domestically and internationally, Mr. Ro Nay San Lwin reacted, “I want to strongly warn all Myanmar media that use Bengali, including DVB. Do you stop using Bengali and use Rohingya?” or Do I have to fight your media business completely? Choose the way you like. You have time until December 31st.”
As the term Rohingya has become a sensitive word in the country, when the NLD government took office in 2016, the European Union even announced that it would not use the term Rohingya.
Similarly, in the run-up to the 2020 election, the mVoter app, jointly produced by the EU, IDEA and Asia Foundation, included requirements to describe the race and religion of candidates in their profiles, and Justice For Myanmar protested it.
JFM said that this was done because revealing this information could make the Rohingya stateless and ineligible for representation.
Rohingya or Bengali?
The Rohingyas have proven that they settled in Rakhine about a thousand years ago and have their own literature.
On the other hand, some historians, including Arakan historians, claim that the Rohingyas are people who came to Arakan (Rakhine) from Chittagong during British colonial rule, citing British surveys and denying that there is no such thing as Rohingyas.
During the times of parliamentary democracy and the early days of the Revolutionary Council, there is evidence of the use of the term Rohingya by state leaders such as U Nu, U Ba Swe, and General Aung Gyi and the formation of Rohingya associations at Yangon University.
However, it is also written that U Nu recognized Muslims from northern Rakhine as Rohingya and made them citizens to win votes.
After General Ne Win took over power, the Rohingya’s civil rights were gradually revoked, and after the enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Act, the Rohingya were not even recognized as an ethnic group.
In June 2019, the Citizenship and Human Rights Reform in Myanmar: Immediate Action and Possible Legal Summary document stated the following regarding the Citizenship Act of 1982:
“In particular, the 1982 Citizenship Law is highly discriminatory and one-sided and clearly fails to meet the state’s obligations under international human rights law. The result is widespread discrimination throughout the country and a weakening of the rule of law. In line with human rights and the rule of law, the Myanmar government should and can make the necessary reforms to the civil law to build an inclusive pluralist democracy in which all people can participate.”
However, successive governments after the Ma-Sa-La Government (Burma Socialist Programme Party) have continued to hold onto the citizenship law of 1982, and the Rohingya are no longer free from statelessness.
The Na-Ah-Hpa military regime forcibly changed the name Rohingya to Bengali during the 1992 census. In 1995, they banned Rohingyas from studying at medical and technological universities.
Since then, the Rohingya have been living in an open-air prison, Ro Nay San Lwin commented.
The dictators and politicians of all ages have used the Rohingyas whenever they want to receive benefits, and in the recent military junta led by Min Aung Haling, the Rohingyas have been enlisted and even used as suicide troops in the ongoing war with the AA.
After the military junta enacted the conscription law, they organized campaigns in Rohingya villages in Buthidaung and Maungdaw towns. In reality, they threatened the Rohingya.
“First of all, they (junta personnel) sermoned school teachers and religious teachers and held a meeting. They told them, “This is your country. You have a responsibility to protect your country. That is why you must join the military and prepare yourself.” They said that if you join the military at the rate of one per household, you will be given citizenship rights and issued ID cards,” said Ro Thin Thin Hlaing, a member of the central committee of the Myanmar Muslim Revolutionary Force (MMRF) and in charge of membership affairs.
Currently, the military junta gives the Rohingyas 15 days of military training. When they finished the training, they were not taken to the army and kept in a camp, according to a young Rohingya who attended the military training.
“It is said that we need to be on standby as we must not go home and serve immediately as soon as the order arrives. The military has not yet issued national verification cards as promised,” he said.
The Rohingya youths who attended the military training were given MMK 50000 each as the cost of attending the training. The money that was given was not taken from the state budget, but the ward and village administrators were ordered to collect it from the people.
Under any government, the Rohingyas are like a puppet that is being used politically, and more Rohingyas are coming as refugees due to the fighting.
“Battles are happening between the AA and the military junta. I heard a lot that the AA side achieved success. What I heard after the success was that AA did not start fighting in Arakan villages but camped in Rohingya villages and started fighting from Rohingya villages. When the military troops fired heavy weapons at villages where the AA troops are stationed, the Rohingyas in the villages had to flee. It became difficult to live and get food. Even if they won the battle in that village, Rohingyas would be homeless if they returned,” Ro Thin Thin Hlaing explained her view.
She said the Rohingyas are suffering from the blindness of the people, despite the deaths due to Myanmar’s military and conflicts.
“I want people to see this beyond. Even if the Rohingya villages are all gone, AA has won without being blamed. I can see that they have won their success without being blamed. The military junta has acted like evil. But is the AA doing this in a reasonable way? Does it have a clear conscience? What about the people who want to go to the federal government? Can’t they speak out about this and try to see it? I want to question whether they are reasonable in the path of democracy,” said Ro Thin Thin Hlaing.
In addition, she said that sympathy for the Rohingyas will not be fulfilled just by expressing it verbally, but by going deeply into their sufferings and looking at them with sympathy.
“Does true liberation mean that one can achieve it alone? Only when all the groups here are freed is it really freed. I want to say that applauding what only one is freed is not logical. When the 2017 Genocide happened, letters of apology saying that they were absent to speak out emerged. Now, will they be absent again? Will they apologize from time to time? I accept the confession because they know it’s wrong, but sometimes I see it as a meaningless act. Rather than apologizing after it’s over, I see it as a humanitarian thing to prevent before it happens,” Ro Thin Thin Hlaing said.
Every time they could not take their benefits from Rohingya anymore, governments over the years have denied the Rohingya’s civil rights – saying that calling for a state, asking for secession, etc.
“Throughout the ages, governments, especially the military, have done various propaganda to cause dissension between Rakhine and Rohingya people. Rohingyas have been propagandized to secede from Myanmar and also establish a new country. Until now, the Rohingya have not had such a policy. What the Rohingya want is the ethnic and civil rights they should have gained after the independence of Myanmar,” Ro Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya rights activist, told MPA about the wishes of their ethnic group.
Currently, the Arakan Army can rule over the northern part of the border with Bangladesh, where the Rohingya live. However, the AA does not recognize the Rohingya and still calls them Bengalis.
General Tun Mratt Naing, the AA leader, said in an interview with Irrawaddy News in 2019 that the reason for this is because of the situation where Bangladeshi people can become Rohingyas once they cross the border line.
Similarly, in the last few days, he said that he would continue to identify the Rohingyaw as Bengali on his Twitter (X) account.
Summary
Before 1962, the Rohingyas had full citizenship rights, but after the military coup on March 2, 1962, the Rohingyas began to lose their citizenship rights.
There was no significant information about the loss of citizenship during these periods.
However, due to the Myanmar Citizenship Law enacted on October 15, 1982, the Rohingya became stateless and became a matter of ethnic exploitation by successive military dictators.
“Even though Rohingyas were not recognized as citizens, they used them as citizens. They used them when they wanted votes. When they wanted to be elected by their party, they used Rohingyas as they wanted,” Ro Nay San Lwin said.
In addition to the ongoing fighting in Rakhine State, the military service law was activated on February 10, 2024, due to losses in war and the depletion of military strength in various parts of Myanmar.
Since the law has enacted that all citizens who have reached the age of majority must serve in the military, the military junta has forced the Rohingya in Rakhine State to serve in the military.
“Now when the AA is fighting with them, they are losing war, so they are using the Rohingya as needed, so this has nothing to do with not being a citizen. They have locked these Rohingya in an open-air prison and are using them as needed,” said Ro Nay San Lwin.
He considered that the Rohingyas are only being used as human shields to serve as soldiers, and on the other hand, there may be a possibility of turning the Rohingya into ethnic conflict with the Rakhine people.
“As for the Rakhine people and Rohingyas here, everyone will be focused on the conflict, so I see that this is being done in a way that will give Myanmar’s military a breath of fresh air. Actually, how do they drag these people? They are forcibly arrested and then collected, so everyone understands this. I think that we need to protect everyone in a circle around each other so that this does not happen,” said Ro Nay San Lwin.
Military dictators have oppressed the Rohingya in various ways for ages, and currently, Rohingya youth in Rohingya villages and refugee camps in northern Rakhine State are being pressured by village administrators to join the recruitment.
“Some have no choice at all. Some enter because if they don’t enter, they will be in trouble. The future is quite sad because if they stay here, they will have to continue to live under the influence and control of the military and all the injustice. But if they want to avoid this, they will have to flee the country, so the future of the youth will be worse than before,” said Ronesan Lwin, explaining the current situation. “However, in order to avoid this, they will have to flee the country, so the future of the youth will be worse than before,” said Ro Nay San Lwin, explaining the current situation.
Myanmar’s military has been prosecuted internationally in the ICC and ICJ for torturing the Rohingya in various ways and committing genocide, but no effective action has been taken yet, and it can continue to commit war crimes.
“It’s not only in our Rakhine state; it’s not in Rohingya people. Now, the military has seized power and is killing all kinds of people throughout the country, in the main land and the ethnic areas. We see that war crimes are being perpetrated against humanity continuously. And because the international community doesn’t take strong action, they continue to commit them because they are allowed to go unpunished,” said Ro Nay San Lwin.
As long as the international community does not take effective action against the war crimes committed by the military, it will not be possible to prevent the crimes committed by the military, Ro Nay San Lwin concluded.
He also said that controversial issues can be prevented if we all together find a solution among ourselves to prevent the occurrence of ethnic conflicts that may arise due to the recruitment of soldiers against the Rohingya, who currently do not have the right to citizenship.
Reference
- A series of articles on the Bengali issue in Rakhine State (Irrawaddy News Agency)
- Myanmar’s citizenship and human rights law reform to act immediately and possible legal summary
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
- The indigenous Rohingya of the Arkan Region