Starved. Left without education. Used as slaves. Detained without trial. Abused and threatened. Killed by racist squadrons. Deprived of documents and the right to vote. Obliged to obtain special permission to be treated or give birth in hospitals, with the consequent death of pregnant women and newborns due to “bureaucratic delays”. Rohingya Muslims’ is a story of constant exclusion in Myanmar, where Bamar people, the dominant ethnic group, is Buddhist. The country told it’s on its way towards democracy, but continues to deny this ethnic minority citizenship and impose an apartheid regime to it.
The latest UN report, signed by High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, talks about “systemic discrimination” and “ongoing human rights violations” that may be more seriously judged in the future as “crimes against humanity”.
The outline of the situation
The Rohingya face persecution since 1962, when the Burmese military junta took power. From 2010 to today, exactly during the so-called democratic transition, persecutions worsened. In 2012 minority communities of Rohingya Muslims that live in the western state of Rakhine (once Arakan) were attacked by Buddhist extremists: their villages were razed to the ground, hundreds were killed and tens of thousands were dispersed. In 2015 the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea became the scene of a migration crisis, managed by human traffickers. Today refugees in the squalid camp of Arakan (in the Burmese territory) are estimated to be 130,000, in Malaysia are more than 53,000, and about 370 Rohingya Muslims and Bengalis died in shipwrecks. Other exiles disappeared.
The Western world celebrated the crushing victory of the National League for Democracy last year. It exulted at the election of Htin Kyaw as President and of historical leader Aung San Suu Kyi as Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, the Western world itself has difficulty in accepting the dark side of these elections. Champion of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon of the opposition against Myanmar’s military junta, continues to ask for time and space and for this reason she has been criticised by human rights defenders. In 1982 the junta made a law that granted citizenship to 135 ethnic groups, except for Rohingya people. Today over a million people is “invisible” to the State that improperly considers Rohingya Muslims as “illegal migrants” and “Bengalis”. However, even in Bangladesh, the Rohingya aren’t accepted. The only place where they can live at the moment is the ghetto.
