RAKHINE
RIOTS True
stripes revealed in Myanmar By
Francis Wade
CHIANG MAI - The timing of
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's
return to Europe after a 24-year absence could
have been better. She leaves her country amid
turmoil in its western Rakhine State, where
sectarian rioting has claimed scores of victims.
The period of unrest has shed a rare light on the
volatile tensions that have simmered for years
between the country's dominant Buddhist population
and its Muslim minority.
The week of
rioting has also put Myanmar's much lauded
democratic transition under new international
scrutiny. A realization seems to be emerging of
the many shortcomings of President Thein Sein's
reform program that, for all its surface glint,
has failed to address the deep underlying
grievances among the country's many ethnic groups.
At the same time, the situation presents
the most challenging
test in years of Suu
Kyi's ability to heal rifts and lead her people.
Her decision to press ahead with the trip to
Europe, where she will belatedly receive her 1991
Nobel Peace Prize, could represent a political
misstep given that the unrest marks the most
clear-cut threat yet to the fragile reforms that,
ironically, allowed for her election to parliament
and afforded her the freedom to travel.
The violence has also spotlighted a
far-reaching xenophobia within Myanmar's
pro-democracy movement, long viewed by the outside
world as drivers of positive change and equality.
In now infamous comments, Ko Ko Gyi, a former
political prisoner who led the 1988 student
uprising that was crushed by military force,
referred to Myanmar's long-persecuted Muslim
minority group, the Rohingya, as "terrorists" who
are "infringing on our sovereignty."
The
Rohingya, who have consistently been denied
citizenship, have borne the brunt of the rioting.
Medicins Sans Frontieres says that state-sponsored
abuse of the group has put them "in danger of
extinction", but their protectors in Myanmar are
nowhere to be seen. As the United Nations has
noted, they are "virtually friendless".
Suu Kyi, who recently spoke of her
solidarity with the nearly 150,000 refugees from
Myanmar living in Thailand, has so far tiptoed
round the status of the Rohingya, an issue that
has long divided the pro-democracy movement. When
pressed at the World Economic Forum in Geneva on
Thursday to articulate her stance on the issue,
she said only that Myanmar needed "precise laws on
citizenship".
It was fear of illegal
immigration that fueled the violence, she said,
and not an underlying animosity prevalent across
the spectrum of Myanmar politics - from the
post-independence civilian governments of U Nu to
successive junta leaders - that has long kept
Muslims at the periphery of society and the
Rohingya at an even greater length.
Suu
Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party is
yet to release a statement on the riots,
showcasing how sensitive the topic is. Her
assertion that "those worthy of citizenship should
get all the benefits that entails" was
deliberately non-committal, and marks a rare break
with her normally idealistic rhetoric built around
the notion of equal rights for all.
It may
be in keeping with her party's line, however: an
NLD official said earlier this year that the
debate over the origins of the Rohingya was
"delicate", and that "even in our organization the
Rohingya question has not been settled". NLD
spokesperson Nyan Win was more blunt when he said,
"The Rohingya are not our citizens."
Public Internet forums, meanwhile, have
been awash with vitriolic, often racist, reactions
to the violence. Although there are clearly two
sides to the conflict - both Muslim and Buddhist
mobs have torched towns and attacked one another -
the inflammatory rhetoric has predominantly been
directed at the Rohingya.
Myanmar's
exile-run media outlets have been conspicuously
tentative over their coverage of the riots,
perhaps nervous to fan the flames, while leading
domestic news journals have carried demeaning
headlines such as "Bengali Rohingyas prowl around
outside Rakhine city".
It is telling that
one of the more measured responses came from Thein
Sein, a man whose world view was partly shaped by
a career in one of the most notorious military
juntas of modern times. While others used the
riots as a chance to vent against a group
described as among Asia's most persecuted
minority, Thein Sein warned that the situation
could escalate if ethnic Burmese continue to "put
racial and religious issues at the forefront".
At the same time, his government could
benefit from the sectarian violence. The decision
to send in the army, from which Muslims are banned
from joining, is an attempt to cast the country's
most vilified entity as "saviors" of the Rakhine,
who, ironically, have long accused successive
regimes of attempting to colonize their state
through military expansion.
Moreover, it
has somewhat stifled the euphoria surrounding Suu
Kyi's European trip and distracted from the
ongoing military conflict and rights abuses
against ethnic Kachin near Myanmar's border with
China.
Nevertheless, Then Sein's words are
something of an anomaly from a man few considered
an adept tactician. Without appearing to take
sides, he has managed to portray himself as a
non-partisan leader who can bridge an explosive
fissure in the country's psyche - perhaps the
first such head of state to do so in half a
century.
What is of the greatest irony,
and sadness, is that the key drivers of the crisis
are the Burmese themselves. After decades of
proclaiming the need for equal rights amid
stifling military rule, they have now turned on
one another.
Indeed, they risk turning
back the clock on recent democratic gains. By
announcing a state of emergency for western
Myanmar, Thein Sein could spur the military into
wielding greater clout only 15 months after
Myanmar began its baby steps to democratic reform.
In words that now hang heavily over the
country, Suu Kyi said in a 2002 interview: "Our
conviction is that the majority of our people will
support democracy with a greater responsibility."
To be sure, it is a small minority
involved in the unrest but it highlights a wider
sentiment that has continuously divided Myanmar,
and raises doubts about the particular brand of
democracy her movement and others profess to be
fighting for.
Suu Kyi, a fierce defender
of human freedoms, has been the principal moral
force that has kept Myanmar moving forward. But
for all her merits, she and her colleagues have
not shown themselves to be the cultural adhesive
that a country so rich in ethnic diversity needs.
A more substantial response from Suu Kyi
to the recent rioting, as well as a clearer NLD
policy on which minority groups the party believes
should be afforded equal rights in Myanmar's new
democracy, would be welcome and is long overdue.
Francis Wade is a freelance
journalist and analyst covering Myanmar and
Southeast Asia.
(Copyright 2012 Asia
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