The Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar have been facing escalating levels of violence in their country since the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked 30 police posts on Aug. 25.
According to Newsweek, an estimated 400,000 Rohingya people have fled the Rakhine State in Myanmar in the past three weeks alone, due to escalating violence and persecution.
In a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights explained that, “Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators the current situation cannot yet be fully assessed, but the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Myanmar authorities are laying landmines along the border with Bangladesh and shooting fleeing civilians.
Meanwhile, refugees who have fled are only allowed to return if they can provide proof of nationality.
Given the efforts over the past few decades to strip the Rohingya people of their civil rights, Al Hussein described these measures as “a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return.”
As with many ethnic conflicts, the solution to this problem is unclear.
The Ontarion spoke to U of G political science professor Ian Spears to get an academic perspective on potential solutions to the Myanmar conflict.
Spears explained that in this case there are solutions, but none of them are palatable.
He began by introducing a problematic concept popularized by Chaim Kaufmann, which states that if a population is going to be ethnically cleansed from one state, the international community should help.
While this seems controversial due to the common association between ethnic cleansing and genocide, the term ethnic cleansing refers more broadly to the deliberate removal of an ethnic group from a territory. Kauffmann’s underlying argument is that if a group of people is leaving a country en masse because their safety is at risk, the United Nations should help facilitate their relocation.
The second option, which is frequently the position of the UN according to Spears, is that it is not up to the international community to decide who gets to stay where. In simpler terms, this position asks, “Why can’t you just get along?” On that note, Spears explained that, “If that’s the case, then you are in a sense sustaining a conflict where the Rohingya will always be vulnerable.”
A third option, which was utilized in Sudan fairly recently, is to negotiate a succession agreement. This option, however, is extremely unpopular for a regime according to Spears, because they run the risk of “presiding over the dismantling of their country.”
Evidently there is no simple way to end the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, but there are steps that can be taken to minimize the consequences of this conflict, according to the United Nations. Al Hussein called on the Myanmar government to cease their brutal operation, on Bangladesh to keep their borders open to refugees, and on the international community to help receive the refugees of this conflict.
Photo courtesy of Pexelbay CCO.