Tue, Aug 19, 2014 page6

• ‘Rohingya’ becoming an unspoken word

  NO NAME GAME: The UN, the US and others appear to be caving in to pressure from Myanmar’s government not to use ‘Rohingya’ when talking about the besieged Muslims

  • AP, WASHINGTON
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  Myanmar’s downtrodden Rohingya Muslims have been denied citizenship, targeted in deadly sectarian violence and corralled into dirty camps without aid. To heap on the indignity, Myanmar’s government is pressuring foreign officials not to speak the group’s name, and the tactic appears to be working.

  UN officials say they avoid the term in public to avoid stirring tensions between the country’s Buddhists and Muslims. And after US Secretary of State John Kerry recently met with Burmese leaders, a senior US Department of State official told reporters the US thinks the name issue should be “set aside.”

  That disappoints Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. He said by not using it, governments are cooperating with a policy of repression.

  “How will the rights of the Rohingya be protected by people who won’t even use the word `Rohingya’?” he said.

  Myanmar’s government views the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, not one of the 135 officially recognized ethnic groups. Longstanding discrimination against the stateless minority, estimated to number 1.3 million, has intensified as Myanmar has opened up after decades of military rule.

  More than 140,000 Rohingya have been trapped in crowded camps since extremist mobs from the Buddhist majority began chasing them from their homes two years ago, killing up to 280 people.

  Some see in the communal violence the warning signs of genocide.

  The US has called on the government to protect them.

  When US President Barack Obama visited Myanmar less than two years ago, he told students at Yangon University: “There is no excuse for violence against innocent people. And the Rohingya hold themselves — hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do.”

  Yet neither Kerry this month, nor top US human rights envoy Tom Malinowski during a June visit, uttered the term at their news conferences when they talked with concern about the situation in Rakhine state, where sectarian violence is perhaps worst.

  Buddhist mob attacks against Rohingya and other Muslims have spread from the western state to other parts of the country, sparking fears that nascent democratic reforms could be undermined by growing religious intolerance.

  The state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly, said the US’ position is that to force either community to accept a name that they consider offensive — including the term “Bengali” that the government uses to describe Rohingya — is to “invite conflict.”

  However, the department says its policy on using “Rohingya” has not changed.

  Foreign aid workers have been caught up in the tensions. Buddhist hardliners have attacked homes and offices of aid workers it accuses of helping Muslims and not the smaller number of Buddhists also displaced by the violence. Medicins Sans Frontiers was expelled by the government in February and is still waiting to be allowed back.

  The humanitarian situation has worsened. The UN said the number of severe malnutrition cases more than doubled between March and June, and the UN’s top human rights envoy for Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, last month called the situation “deplorable.”

  She said she had been repeatedly told by the government not to use the name “Rohingya,” although she noted under international law that minorities have to the right to self-identify on the basis of their national, ethnic, religious and linguistic characteristics.

  Burmese Information Minister Ye Htut said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the name had never been accepted by Myanmar citizens. He said it was created by a separatist movement in the 1950s and then used by exile activists to pressure Myanmar’s former military government at the UN in the 1990s.

  While there is a reference to “Rohingya” by a British writer published in 1799, use of the term by the Muslim community in Rakhine to identify themselves is fairly recent, according to Jacques Leider, an expert on the region’s history.

  Rohingya leaders claim their people are descendants of Muslims who settled in Rakhine before British colonial rule, which began after a war in 1823. Burmese law denies full citizenship to those whose descendants arrived after 1823.

  Rohingya were excluded from a UN-supported national census this spring if they identified themselves as Rohingya. They face stiff restrictions on travel, jobs, education and how many children they can have.

  Either because of government prodding or a desire to avoid confrontation, staff of foreign embassies and aid agencies in Myanmar rarely say “Rohingya” in public these days, and may simply say, “Muslims.”

  In June, UNICEF even apologized for using the term “Rohingya” at a presentation in Rakhine.

  “Any humanitarian agency or donor who refuses to use the term is not just betraying fundamental tenants of human rights law, but displaying cowardice that has no place in any modern humanitarian project,” said David Mathieson, senior researcher on Myanmar for Human Rights Watch.
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