By Poppy McPherson
One year after a historic election put a civilian government in
charge, the country’s army is using brutal methods to regain its
popularity.
On a cool night last November, a euphoric crowd surged around the
headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD)
in Yangon. Supporters danced and waved flags as result after result
was announced from a digital billboard. It was a landslide. Amid the
cheers, a man named Than Htay told me he how he had waited decades to
vote freely.
For the first time in more than half a century of a brutal junta,
civilians would be in charge of the country. But a year after the
vote, it’s not clear just who is in charge in Myanmar — and Myanmar’s
military, once despised, is riding a new wave of support.
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The reason? An enemy propped up for decades by the army has made a
resurgence in the public imagination, if not in reality. The military
is restoring its political power by returning to its war footing
against Rohingya Muslims, a persecuted minority who for years have
been loathed as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh, despite their
presence in Myanmar dating back centuries.
The Rohingya have been discriminated against for generations, but the
persecution has grown particularly intense in recent years.
It was dictatorial Gen. Ne Win who, after seizing power in a coup in
1962, pushed through the 1974 Emergency Immigration Act and 1982
Citizenship Law that stripped Rohingya of their citizenship. In Burma:
A Nation at the Crossroads, Benedict Rogers quotes a former government
minister as saying the junta chief “had an ‘unwritten policy’ to get
rid of Muslims, Christians, Karens and other ethnic peoples, in that
order.’”
Government prejudice has been mixed with demagogic hatred, with the
Rohingya portrayed as foreigners and, more recently, vehicles for the
spread of jihad. In the era of the Islamic State, existing suspicions
have become bound up with a global narrative of Islamist extremism.
Nationalist Buddhist monks like Ashin Wirathu have framed Islam as an
existential threat to Myanmar, stoking fears that Muslims are both
outbreeding the Buddhist majority and connecting to international
terrorist groups.
The Myanmar military now claims to be facing an organized rebel
insurgency among the Rohingya, chiefly in the western province of
Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. It’s true that the far-flung state
has been home to various insurgencies, both Buddhist and Muslim. In
the past year, the Arakan Army rebels, comprised of Rakhine Buddhists,
has fought several skirmishes with the military.
In the early hours of Oct. 9, scores of assailants armed with swords
and pistols attacked three border posts in Maungdaw Township, northern
Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. Nine police officers were killed
and five soldiers then died pursuing the attackers. Both the
authorities and the public blamed the Rohingya, with the government
accusing the attackers of being Rohingya Muslim terrorists trained by
the Taliban, citing evidence obtained — possibly by force — after
soldiers captured some of the alleged culprits. In a later interview,
Suu Kyi backpedaled, saying the claims came from only one person and
may not be reliable.
The subsequent crackdown was swift and, according to multiple
accounts, brutal. There have been accusations of arbitrary arrests,
burned villages, extrajudicial killings, and rape.
All have been met with blanket denials, not only by the government but
by a public already defensive about international criticism of
Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. Jingoistic articles have
dominated state media and Myanmar-language Facebook. “Insurgents
arrested!” (Bedraggled-looking men in a police lineup.) “Guns seized!”
(Decades-old hunting rifles).
For the military, the attack came at a convenient moment, as other
long-standing conflicts — with the Kachin rebels along the Chinese
border, and with the Ta’ang Liberation Army in Shan State — are
flaring up again. When 30 soldiers were killed this May in fighting
with the Arakan Army, another minority — but not Muslim — militia in
Rakhine, the military didn’t comment. But following the Maungdaw
attack, the authorities have been warning of a “Muslim invasion” and
promising to arm Buddhist civilian militias. The plan has fueled fears
of a repeat of 2012 violence when Rakhine Buddhist mobs — allegedly
facilitated by local authorities — set upon Rohingya Muslim
communities, burning down homes and killing scores. “For the first
time since the Kokang crisis of early 2015, the military is getting
strong public support for its actions,” commented Richard Horsey, a
Yangon-based political analyst, referring to a spasm of fighting in
the north last year which killed more than 100 soldiers and rallied
support for the armed forces.
In the wake of the Maungdaw attacks, Rakhine Buddhists marched around
villages chanting their support for the army, while leading Myanmar
journalists questioned why Rohingya were “uncooperative” with the
military. A reporter who gave an interview to the New York Times
saying he had witnessed soldiers shooting unarmed Rohingya later
retracted his comments in a Facebook post that was shared thousands of
times. What pressures he was under to do so remain unknown.
Sittwe, the Rakhine State capital, is an hour’s flight from Yangon and
five hours away from the operation zone in Maungdaw, which is off
limits to foreign journalists. In the dusty coastal town, it’s easy to
forget how much Myanmar has changed since 2011, when the military
launched reforms. The junta apparatus is everywhere, from the hotel
whiteboards that listing the names of every guest and their room
numbers, to the secret police and informers. Checkpoints stand outside
derelict mosques, guards watching for long-gone congregants. They’re
no longer needed, as most of the Muslim population were driven out of
their homes following clashes with the Rakhine Buddhist majority in
2012, pelted with fruit by local Rakhines they trudged to the
internment camps on the outskirts of the city where they have been
confined ever since.
Inside the camps, the mood is bleak. In Maw Thi Nyar camp, Noor Islam,
a middle-aged Rohingya community leader, told me he hadn’t heard from
his sister from Maungdaw in more than a week. “She told me that her
neighbor had already been killed,” he said. During their last
conversation, she said, “Just pray for us and just pray for Maungdaw.”
He and others were convinced the rebel movement had been fabricated by
the military. “Currently, the Myanmar military is implementing their
policy,” he said as a small crowd gathered to listen in. “I’m just a
simple man, so I don’t understand, but I’m hearing from my grandmother
and grandfather and my father — because this is my ancestral land —
that the Myanmar government is trying to ethnically cleanse these
people, torturing people, eliminating people, doing such bad things to
these people.”
The next morning, two Muslim men said that they had been fishing in a
local river a few days earlier when they were detained and beaten by
the navy. One of them, Abdul Amin, lifted his longyi, the long cloth
worn by Myanmar men, to reveal purplish red marks on the backs of his
legs. “We were just taking a rest after we pulled in the net and ate
our dinner at 8 p.m.,” he said. “At that time the navy came to us and
just bound our hands and beat us with a stick, made us lie down and
beat us with a wooden stick.”
As we spoke, other Muslims gathered around, nodding in agreement as
Abdul Amin said, “It’s like it’s government policy to kill people.”
There is no evidence that the Myanmar military faked the murder of
their own border police. But few doubt that their actions over recent
years may have nourished an appetite for retaliation.
Matthew Smith, CEO and founder of Fortify Rights, a nongovernmental
organization, described the military’s “divide and conquer” strategy
in the region to rally the support of the region’s majority Buddhist
population. “It has an uncanny ability to instigate conflict between
ethnic groups, and it’s done that to great and deadly effect in
Rakhine,” he said. “We haven’t seen evidence that the attacks on
police were a false flag event but it’s clear the military is using
the situation to shore up favorable sentiment.”
“The allegations [about military atrocities] emerging from northern
Rakhine State are still difficult to verify given very limited
international and media access to date. But they are broadly
consistent with allegations that are heard from other military
operations zones, including in northern Shan and Kachin,” Horsey, the
political analyst, commented, referring to two other long-standing
conflicts between the military and minority groups.
But many local Buddhists don’t want to see a return to violence of any
kind. Rakhine Buddhists who had fled the fighting against the
suspected Rohingya insurgents in the north and were staying in a
makeshift refugee camp inside a stadium in late October said that they
had been friends with Muslims back in their home villages and met up
for religious ceremonies.
Ronan Lee, a doctoral candidate at Singapore’s Deakin University who
has done research in northern Rakhine, said that “despite the events
of 2012, many Muslim and Buddhist communities in northern Rakhine
State were keen to work together and they understood that both their
communities were better off when there was peace and trade between
them. Despite the state’s natural resources, keeping Muslim and
Buddhist communities separate and restricting Muslims’ ability to
travel has damaged the state’s economy.”
As the military’s popularity has surged following the attacks, the
civilian government’s muted response has left it looking ineffectual.
Shortly after the attacks, State Counsellor and de facto government
leader Suu Kyi flew to India. Last week, she was in Japan. She has not
visited Rakhine and neither has her president, Htin Kyaw. According to
Reuters, the Ministry of Information submitted a list of questions
about the army’s response that went unanswered. “There are really two
governments in Myanmar: the civil government and the military
government,” said Widney Brown, director of programs at Physicians for
Human Rights, which recently released a report on northern Rakhine.
The military retains control of vital institutions including the
ministries of defense, home affairs, the police, and immigration.
“Thus, there is a very strong military presence along the land
borders, including with Bangladesh,” Brown said. “This control coupled
with concerns about insurgencies means that the military government,
not the civilian government, is really in control in northern Rakhine
State.”
The months leading up to the Maungdaw attacks had brought rare,
civilian-led progress in the search for peace in the state. In the
face of staunch opposition from the military, the government paved the
way for an independent Rakhine commission, headed by former United
Nations chief Kofi Annan, to conduct investigations and file an
advisory report. The recommendations are due in late 2017.
Now that enterprise looks distinctly shaky. “The naming of Annan to
head up a state advisory commission is an attempt to shed light on
abuses and set the stage for some reconciliation,” said Brown.
“However, the ability of the commission to have an impact was already
limited, as it is merely advisory and the recent violence in northern
Rakhine State may have cost the commission any opportunity to have an
impact.”
More disturbing than the suggestion that the civilian government is
powerless against the military is the idea that they tacitly approve.
Nobody really knows what Suu Kyi thinks of the Rohingya, although she
has often been criticized for her failure to act. There is also
evidence that other senior NLD officials are deeply hostile.
After the October attacks, state media, which is run by the
civilian-led Ministry of Information, has carried opinion pieces
condemning “fabricated” allegations of human rights abuses by the
military and accused journalists of being “hand in glove” with
terrorists. They have referred to Rohingya as “thorns.”
On Facebook, Zaw Htay, a spokesman for the government, singled out a
journalist at the national English-language newspaper, the Myanmar
Times, for her reporting on alleged military rapes. “We support and
advise government to take legal action against [the Times] and those
who are responsible for fabricating false news,” read one of the many
comments. The reporter was fired, reportedly following calls to the
paper by Zaw Htay, a former soldier who served in the former
military-backed administration but was kept on by Suu Kyi.
A few days ago, Zaw Htay confidently said the government and army were
“collaborating” on the crisis. “And [they have] also the same policy
on it.”
Additional reporting by Aung Naing Soe.
10 November 2016