Burma: Did the Government Incite the Racial Violence Targeting the Rohingy?

7/31/2019 Burma: Did the Government Incite the Racial Violence Targeting the Rohingy?

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Burma/Myanmar: Did the Government Incite the

Racial Violence Targeting the Rohingya?

Dr. Maung Zarni - TRANSCEND Media Service

Following this summers [2012] rioting in western Burma, all eyes have been fixed on

the governments handling of the unrest in Rakhine state. With external pressure

mounting, most specifically from the Islamic world, Burmese officials from President

Thein Sein in Naypyidaw to local security troops in western Burma have been

playing ostensibly the humanist and humanitarian card with the Rohingya.

If the findings from various investigative missions turn out to be little more than public

relations white-wash for Naypyidaw, more than a few Rohingya have expressed their

concerns to me that their communities the bulk of whom are barely surviving under

the recently imposed martial law will explode again.

When an oppressed and downtrodden people feel they have absolutely nothing more to

lose but their captive lives in the iron cage of refugee camps set up by the predatory

and repressive state, radicalism and violence are just a step away. After all, the

Rohingyas are surrounded and outnumbered by exceedingly hostile Rakhines

[Arakanese], who reportedly and repeatedly told the touring US Ambassador Derek

Mitchell and his inquiry team that the Rakhines are not at all prepared to live on the

same land which they in fact share with the Rohingya. Worse still, neighbouring

Bangladesh has consistently slammed its gates each time there is a wave of Rohingya

refugees fleeing from Burma.

Seen from the Rohingyas perspective, the fact-finding missions including

Naypyidaws own team represent more than investigative tours. They are, ultimately,

the last straw for a people who feel they are drowning in the sea of Burmas popular

Buddhist racist nationalism.

So, naturally, the Rohingya are pinning their collective hopes on the inquiries and that

the findings by the independent investigation will mark the beginning of the end of

their plight as the most persecuted minority in the country and a first step towards

securing humane living conditions and legal rights as citizens in Burma, where they

were born and have lived for generations.

Understandably, deep anxieties over the situation remain. Already some Rohingya are

expressing their concerns that Burmas government may not be coming clean. Theypoint to the generals well-documented pattern of lying, distorting facts and

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manipulating domestic and international opinions during previous foreign relations

crises from the use of jailed dissidents as political bargaining chips to blocking

emergency and humanitarian aid to two million cyclone victims to the slaughter of

Buddhist monks during the Loving Kindness uprising in 2007.

For any politically and historically informed local, Rohingya victims or Burmese

dissidents, Naypyidaws real intent behind its international cooperation with UN aid

agencies, the OIC and US inquiry teams is to absolve itself of the ultimate

responsibility to protect the most vulnerable community in the country and to

reinforce its latest official spin that the plight of the Rohingya is the result of popular

Buddhist racism and racial violence instigated by Rakhine nationalist extremists.

However, many locals suspect President Thein Seins quasi-civilian government was

the real culprit behind the racial violence and the resurgence of the countrys popular

xenophobic racist nationalism.

Independent Burmese researchers on the ground who have been engaged in

below-the-radar investigations, who have spoken with local security troops made up of

Rakhine and Burmese Buddhists, police officials, local eyewitnesses and Rakhine and

Rohingya victims of violence, have recently uncovered fresh evidence lending

credence to the Rohingyas collective suspicion.

Their hitherto unpublicised evidence pokes gaping holes in the Thein Sein

governments official narrative that claims the racial violence was the result of

simmering sectarian hostilities. Most troublingly during Daw Aung San Suu Kyis tripto the US, she, who along with her senior NLD colleagues was the target of the

regime-orchestrated mob violence at Depayin in May 2003, repeated with shocking

naivety Naypyidaws deceptive narrative that the latest wave of state-sponsored

violence against the Rohingya was sectarian. She should know better. In fact, the

findings by the team of my in-country research collaborators point to a very real

possibility that Naypyidaw manufactured the trigger for the worst ethno-religious

violence in Burma since the military came to power in 1962.

To start off with, what these local researchers have uncovered calls into questionNaypyidaws official narrative about how and why the Rakhine-Rohingya ethnic



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conflict started. For instance, according to the official state newspaper the New Light

of Myanmar (dated 4 June) and the governments official report entitled: Situation in

Rakhine State in Myanmar issued by the Ministry of Border affairs, the news of the

unspeakable rape and murder of a Buddhist Rakhine woman, named Ms Thida Htwe,

on 28 May by three Muslim men, triggered the initial mob violence in Rakhine state

five days later.

What followed was the violent murder of ten out-of-state Muslim pilgrims who were

dragged onto a busy town street from an inter-state bus and slaughtered by a mob in

broad day light in the predominantly Rakhine Buddhist state in western Burma.

In sharp contrast, the government doctor, a civil servant by definition, who under

duress signed the official post mortem report on Ms Thida Htwe said, in no uncertain

terms, to one of the in-country Burmese researchers that there was no trace of rape on

her murdered body.

Why then did Myanmars Ministry of Information which micro-manages all official

publications and broadcasts went on to characterise incorrectly the three perpetrators

as Muslims whereas in fact one of them, Mr Htet Htet, was a Buddhist?

Additionally, why did the Ministry go with the fabricated medical report about Ma

Thida Htwe, which made the patently false claim that she suffered violent sexual

assault before being looted and murdered?

Rape as a violent crime may be prevalent in all societies. In Burmese society, of all thecrimes, rape is considered the absolute worst. Rapists are reviled. Once in jail, they

are taunted and physically attacked even by other inmates.

So what was the rationale behind the Ministry of Information amplifying, without

verifying, the fabricated local notice reportedly put out by local anti-Rohingya Rakhine

extremists, that Muslim men intentionally raped a Rakhine Buddhist woman, when it

published the fabricated story approvingly in the Burmese and English language

official mouth pieces on 4 June?

Even more curiously, the authorities declared that Htet Htet committed suicide in



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police custody, awaiting his trial. Burmese jails and police interrogation centres are

infamous for the torture and deaths that occur in their halls, not inmates successful

suicide attempts. Thousands of the countrys former political prisoners will attest to

the impossibility of taking ones own life behind bars.

Something even more mysterious seems afoot.

Three days after President Thein Sein authorised the formation of a Rohingya-Rakhine

Riot Inquiry Commission made up of prominent public figures including dissidents and

academics, Htet Htets widowed wife was found dead in a well. Did she accidentally

fall into the well and drown? Or was there something dodgy going on?

Furthermore, according to the official narrative, the Buddhist Rakhine mob killing on 3

June of ten Muslim pilgrims during the formers return bus trip from Rakhine state to

Rangoon was in response to and as a retaliation against one Rakhine woman being

gang-raped by three Muslims on 28 May.

According to local eyewitnesses interviewed by Burmese researchers, there were

altogether six buses travelling on the same route at about the same time on 3 June.

And yet, the mob about 300 men, according to the estimate by the official Myanmar

News Agency (New Light of Myanmar, 4 Jun) seemed to have known exactly which

bus to attack.

Recently, I pressed an official from Burma as to why no one has been arrested, tried or

charged by the authorities for the slaughter of the ten Muslim men. According to thelocal official, the Rakhine refused to collaborate with any police investigation. No one

would come forward to share any information about who might be involved in actual

killings of the ten innocent Muslim men.

But successive military regimes in Myanmar have never needed eyewitnesses to arrest

and jail political dissidents. For they spend an inordinate amount of resources, in

monitoring, photographing and videoing any mob formation or mob action. In 2005

and 2006, I spent a little over one month in total as a guest of the military

government in officers guesthouses in military intelligence depots in Rangoon andMandalay. Every morning I saw young intelligence agents leaving various units,



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carrying point-and-shoot digital cameras in small shoulder bags in order to record the

days events especially in public spaces such as markets, bus and train stations and

other surveillance spots.

Why have the authorities not tried to access photographic evidence or video records of

the 3rd June slaughter of Muslims on the streets in broad day light, which they must

certainly have in their police and intelligence archives? Perpetrators who would have

been most certainly caught on either intelligence digital cameras or video cameras

could easily be identified.

Judging from Naypyidaws official inaction, the regime doesnt want to see justice

carried out, insofar as the slaughter of the Muslims is concerned. There is then little

wonder that President Thein Seins government is said to be stonewalling any and all

attempts even by its own Riot Inquiry Commission to conduct proper investigation into

the racial violence. Deceptively, during his speech at the UN General Assembly in

New York, Thein Sein showcased the multi-faith, multi-ethnic make-up of his Inquiry

team, emphasing how esteemed the bulk of the presidential commissioners are.

According to the sources close to the Commission, the Ministry of Border Affairs in

charge of Rohingya matters has so far failed to grant the Commissions request to

allow unfettered access to security forces stationed in western Burma. They have also

failed to provide immunity for any Rohingya and Rakhine interviewees and have

blocked access to the two remaining Muslim men behind bars who were convicted of

the alleged rape and murder of the Rakhine woman.

Instead, Naypyidaw has transferred many key commanders and officers in charge of

various security units from western Burma to remote areas such as Hpaan in Karen

state, thereby making it more difficult for the Commission to do a thorough job before

its November deadline.

It seems as if Thein Seins government has decided that a serious investigation led by

Burmese nationals on its own official commission has greater potential to get to the

bottom of the racial violence that erupted in western Burma. Local Commissioners are

certainly best positioned to excavate not only the mass graves, if there are any, butalso to uncover the ugly truths about how President Thein Seins government may



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_______________________

Dr. Maung Zarni is member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and

Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a

visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit,

Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His

forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 3.0 United States License.


Burma: Did the Government Incite the Racial Violence Targeting the Rohingy?

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