Myanmar’s increasingly internationally maligned de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi signaled a neo-populist turn in her speech on Monday to the Asia Europe Foreign Ministers (ASEM) meeting held at Naypyitaw.
Echoing similar statements from Islamophobic populist leaders in Europe, the United States and Australia, Suu Kyi said, “conflicts around the world are giving rise to new threats and emergencies; illegal migration, spread of terrorism and violent extremism, social disharmony and even the threat of nuclear war.”
Without mentioning the exodus of over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the August 25 attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Front (ARSA) sparked a harsh security force response, Suu Kyi conflated illegal migration with terrorism, a core justification of the military’s abusive treatment of the minority.
In more subtle fashion than her shrill state media machinery, which insists on referring to ARSA as “extremist Bengali terrorists”, Suu Kyi insinuated unchecked illegal migration from Bangladesh represents an existential threat by swamping the Buddhist majority nation with Muslims.
The state counsellor’s speech echoes recent arguments made by the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, and the radical Buddhist clergy, the nationalist bookends of a culture of denial over the horrific treatment of the Rohingya.
In recent weeks, one of Myanmar’s most revered and popular Buddhist abbots, Sitagu Sayadaw, delivered a sermon to army officers and their families at the Bayinnaung training camp in Kayin State in which he told the story of a Buddhist Sinhalese king who slaughtered many ethnic Tamils in an epic battle.
The king’s Buddhist advisors, the sermon said, justified the slaughter by affirming that only those who followed Buddhist precepts could be considered humans.
It was a chilling example of what scholar Matthew Walton, writing in Foreign Affairs, claimed to be religious justification for mass killing of non-Buddhists, as Sitagu “is so influential and revered that his words could provide the final cover for Myanmar’s Buddhists to ignore international criticism and cloak themselves in the righteousness of holy war.”
Last week, the Myanmar military’s ‘True News Information Team’ released a report that exonerated security forces from claims of widespread human rights violations in their northern Rakhine state security operation.
The denial came even though the military is under investigation by the United Nations for crimes against humanity, the United States is considering sanctions, and Amnesty International has in a report released today accused the government of ‘apartheid’ in their treatment of the Rohingya.
Commander in Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing posted comments on his Facebook page last week in which he insisted that any of the people who have fled into Bangladesh who wish to return must be full citizens, a small minority of the hundreds of thousands who have fled.
This will make Suu Kyi’s plans for mass repatriation in a deal reportedly brokered by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi between Dhaka and Naypyidaw problematic.
In sum, the government, military and clergy’s statements speak to an increasingly xenophobic defiance of international criticism and blame shifting onto the Rohingya themselves. This has infused the national debate with racism and a refusal to countenance the scale of the humanitarian crisis.
The long-standing scenario of a neo-Malthusian nightmare of unchecked migration from Muslim Bangladesh to Myanmar has infused Islamophobic rhetoric for years, equating Rakhine state as the West Bank of Myanmar, or as some ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks call it, the ‘Western Gate.’
In a recently released book published by Myawaddy (the Tatmadaw’s media company), the transcript of a seminar on “Talk on Rakhine Issue: Discussions on Finding Solutions” which included a discussion between the historian Jacques Leider and former presidential advisor Ko Ko Hlaing, the moderator opened with the parable of “The Arab and the Camel.”
A man is inside a tent, the camel asks to just stick his head in, and very soon the whole body of the camel has pushed out the man, “so the proposal of the Muslim enclave in the northern part of Rakhine would seem like the same story.” This was related at a two-day seminar in September in which Western defense attaches were invited to hear the government’s position on the crisis.
The celebrated local cartoonist Harn Lay, who for years penned sharply satirical caricatures of military leaders, recently published a cartoon which depicts what appears to be Bangladesh prime minister Sheik Hasina squeezing out a multitude of babies who crawl from under a tattered Myanmar flag.
The cartoon portrayal then shows them returning back as older men, dark skinned and wretched looking, begging in front of corpulent well-dressed white men who are taking photos of them.
This crude depiction of Bangladeshi mass breeding, illegal immigration, and international complicity resonates throughout Myanmar, where the Rohingya evince little sympathy for their perceived dishonesty in claiming a long connection to Rakhine state and citizenship rights within Myanmar.
Suu Kyi has so far avoided outright racist rhetoric. In 2016, she called on diplomats and aid workers to refrain from using the term Rohingya, but also instructed officials to stop referring to them as Bengali. She was then seeking to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric around the Rakhine issue.
That sensible, if not value-shy, approach has now been relegated to secondary importance over national security, with the statements from her office replete with racist rhetoric, conflating immigration with terrorism, and blaming the victims of the Tatmadaw’s abusive operations.
Suu Kyi’s speech retreated from moral leadership to one based on fear and paranoia. It will make the resolution of the Rakhine conflict and Rohingya refugee crisis even more insurmountable than it now appears.
David Scott Mathieson is a Yangon-based independent analyst
They are trying to contain China. Rakhine port has been an important sea port that would become more important if China tries to develop it for its use, to access Indian Ocean. I guess India wouldn’t like it either. Myanmar should stay neutral as a small country. Unfortunately, it has been the target.
With the ‘Riohingya’ Bangalis, they’d bring terrorism into Buddhist land.
Michael Tint I must agree with Kram Yar Gil .
Rohingyas have been in Arakan long before the Burmese. It was a part of Chittagong for more than a hundred years. So you would expect some population overlap across such borders. There are tibeto burman tribes in Bangladesh who fledgling various conflicts in burma many years ago. Be assured, Bangladeshis don’t care a hoot about a wild, lawless country like Burma – we should build a high wall to stop Burmese riff raff who have a long history of piracy and thuggery in our coastal areas – get yourselves educated. Btw, Bangladesh’s birth rate is close to replacement level – well below that of our neighbours.
The Royinga issue represents for US, a new point of entry into the region and leverage against the Myanmar government.
Kram Yar Gil, Yes we gave them shelter when Myanmar people want to destroy them and that will continue for unknown lenth of time. If Myanmar as a state wanted to get them out there are legal ways, if some of them are criminal they could arrest them and punish in a legal manner. But killing innocent people can’t be justfied. We had to take shelter in 1971 in India, we know the hardship. I guess, Myanmar people are largely Buddhist which is a very humanitarian persuit of life, but what we see now is opposite to the basics of teachings of Buddha!
Myanmar has been ruled by Army for long time, the citizens doesn’t really know their rights. They couldn’t even set their leader to have real authority. People there doesn’t understand such conflicts are always created by the Army to give a so called patriotic issue in front of mass people and most cases they hire religious leaders for provocation. In Bangladesh, we have experienced many such cases. Hope people of Myanmar will realize soon.
In the mean time Myanmar is becoming a playing field for the super powers like China, India, USA, Russia. If at this point they fail to resist them to become benifactors, soon we will see tragic consequences. Myanmar people seems to be happy to send some so called Muslims or Bangalees(Bangalee mean the people whose mother tongue is Bangla), but they loose a lot which they can’t measure at this level.
Micah Shapiro you are biased Mr. Shapiro… The Burmese government and the Burmese people themselves shoiuld decide theoir destiny and point of action. No foreigner can dictate or lecture on them what is right or wrong. Back off!! I am a Filipino and i respect the right to self determination of the Burmese people. Your country has no moral ascendancy to lecture them what is wrong or right.
Ken Nguyen I have never stated the complicity of any power nor the lack of others in this narrative. Having lived in Myanmar I know the whole situation and how its people and its government feel about this. However, due to my own interest and those of my Myanmar friends, I want to remain neutral in this respect. The Myanmar people have to decide this, so let others keep their their comments to themselves. ‘Too many cooks spoil the soup’.
Think, millions of destitute people waiting on the border. They need food, they need safe place. Their houses were burnt, their females were raped, their men and even children were killed. In such context, Bangladesh gave them shelter. If anyother people come to any of the borders in such condition, Bangladesh will probably shelter them without asking their origin. Bangladesh has huge population but the army of this country is not trying to push their citizens to other country. Anyone can find the difference of standard.
The problem lies much deeper than projected by the western media. Bangladesh is the mother of all illegal migration in India as well, where an estimated 50 million bangladeshi had migrated. In the state of Assam alone over 5 million illegal migrants have settled. The erstwhile Tripura kingdom which is now a state of India, the indigenous Tripuri people have been out numbered by the illegal migrants, the Tripuri people rediced to just 31% percent of the population. Most of the ethnic tensions in the north eastern states of India are due to Bangladeshi migrants.
Ridwan Quaium you are not learning anything but the false "foreigner" narrative the army propogated decades ago
History ensures a great number of Indo-tibetan nomads takes shelter in Indo-pak subcontinent since early nineteen century. They have settled down given citizenship,occupied important post and enjoyong administrative powers, why should Rohinghys be singled out with one thousand years of living tenure,they were very much the citizen of Mynmer which has been revoked.The perpettrators among them must be tried and punished within the purview of the existing law of the country but the whole community can not be persecuted for that uprooting, torching,raping bear witness to ETHNIC CLEANSING and crime against humanity as referred to by intl. community.
Victor Rajendra you are right. This is the first time in my whole life I am learning that Bengali ccome from Punjab!!!! What a statement!!!!
It would better for the West to regime change its crony Suu Kyi especially now it wants to create the chaos dynamics with the Jihadist Rohingya. Otherwise, the Suu Kyi will just string along the Sheik Hasina agreement on the Chinese peace formula.
Myanmar has little care for the US and EU sanctions, it cannot make any impact on Myanmar. As long as Bangladesh cannot control its population boom, they will overflow into its neighbouring including Myanmar and these migrants will claim themselves as the fake rohingya of Myanmar and they are also the ethnic people of this country.
Ken Nguyen where and which part of history/geography does it state " Bengali come from Punjab"? The two are thousand mile apart, moreover, one is a language and another a state in India. Kindly state facts properly or else ‘Myanmar will become Chinese’ in your statement.
Micah Shapiro
Bengali come from Punjab. There was probably a few thousand Bengali living there for a long time but not 600,000. Most of them are recent illegal immigrants drawn there by the more favourable environment of Myanmar. This do not give them the right to take over a portion of Myanmar and massacre the indigenous Burmese people.
That’s only relevant if you believe in the narrative that the Rohingya are just Bangali foreigners that don’t belong there in the first place, which is a narrative the Myanmar army propogated long ago to justify strict measures against ethnicities -including the Rohingya- that were more loyal to the British. It’s another case of a byproduct and world-view shaped out of society by British colonialism. The narrative is false. I find it concerning that you speak of demonisation of the Myanmar government when there’s a textbook case of genocide going on against the Rohingya, who are the one’s being demonized to the maximum extent.
AP has made a correction to their mistake. It’s time you apologize to Daw Suu and the readers for your article based on the wrongful story.
Rohingya never existed as a people. Rohinga is a language created by the Kamans who became an ethnic of Rakihine State. Kamans are muslims. Nobody discriminated against them and that’s why they are an ethnics. Bengalis came illegally. But took the name Rohingya as a people. This kind of fake can’t be tolerated because they want the land and have killed thousands of the natives already. The truth doesn’t go anywhere even though the world doesn’t care about it.
The best option is for bilateral talks and efforts between Myanmar and Bangladesh to resolve this issue of Bangladesh people illegal immigrants or inhabitants in Myanmar. This has been proposed by China which also call for material and economic development aid to both nations to assist the efforts.
Sanctions, armed intervention and demonisation of Myanmar government and military only make the problem worse and destabilise Myanmar.