SITTWE , MYANMAR – JULY 17 : A distressed mother named Shamijder (age 30) holds onto her twins aged 1 year whom both suffer from malnutrition in Sittwe, Rakhine State Myanmar on July 17 2015. An estimated 110,000 ethnic Rohingya live in an overcrowded IDP camp in the outskirts of Sittwe. The Rohingya continually make attempts to flee the camps by fishing boat and seek asylum in neighbouring Islamic countries however often fall victim to human traffickers. At current they are a stateless people believed to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. According to the UN the Rohingya are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. (Photo by Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Source: Huffington Post
YANGON, Myanmar — This coming Sunday, Myanmar will hold its first “free” elections for 25 years, an event set to cement the country’s status as one of the world’s newest democracies. If all goes to plan, the poll will complete the country’s recent transition from military to (partial) civilian rule.
It is an exciting moment, not least as there is some hope that the leading opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), could win a landslide victory and reduce the grip that Myanmar’s military-backed ruling elite retain over political life. In such an event, there is some hope that the NLD could work with the military, who are allocated a quarter of the seats in Parliament by law, to build on the reform program established by current President Thein Sein.
But extremely serious allegations leveled against the state suggest all is not well in Myanmar. There is “strong evidence” that Myanmar has committed genocide against a largely Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, according to a recent report by a clinic of Yale Law School for Bangkok-based NGO Fortify Rights. Other reports andexperts have warned that genocide may be on the horizon.
The case for genocide largely rests on an analysis not just of recent violence but of the cumulative effects of decades of state policy.
For decades, the Rohingya have endured abuse, statelessness and apartheid in the western edge of the country. Their plight was brought to the attention of the international media in 2012 when two anti-Rohingya pogroms led to mass displacement and hundreds of deaths. These incidents were described by Human Rights Watch as “crimes against humanity” undertaken as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign in which state agencies were allegedly involved.
Earlier this year, attention was drawn again to the Rohingya when thousands of “boat people,” among them many from the minority, faced starvation and abandonment at sea in trafficker’s boats as part of what became termed ” the Asian refugee crisis.”
But these events are only the most high-profile agonies that the Rohingya have been subjected to. The group have endured at least three ethnic cleansing campaigns since the late seventies, as well as decades of routine abuses at the hands of the state such as torture, rape and forced labor. Their basic rights have been slowly stripped away by state policy, culminating in total disenfranchisement and new laws designed to control births in measures enacted this year. Throughout this period, an unknown number of killings have taken place.
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