Written evidence submitted by Ms Alison Winter to assist the International Development Committee with its investigation into the current situation facing the Rohingya People.
Summary Introduction
1. My aim in writing this paper is to draw your attention to some of the background and historical relevance to the situation in which the Rohingya people find themselves in today, and also to warn of future escalation of this conflict.
2. I will not be going into detail as to the statistics and conditions of refugees from the most recent exodus, I am sure you are all aware of the humanitarian situation, and some of you may have visited the area more recently than me. I will however attempt to demonstrate the ongoing campaign of Genocide against this population, based on history and what we know of the Burmese military’s strategies. In this report I refer to the country as Burma, although many use the name Myanmar.
3. I use the term Genocide, not in a light manner, but instead with due thought and having watched this process since my first-hand experience there in early 2007. I will not use the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ as it implies there is something about ethnic people that is dirty. I do not like this implication and believe that this is a serious attempt at Genocide by the Burmese authorities. I also believe that those responsible, whether they be Rohingya, Rakhine or Bamar, must be brought before a court of law and tried for international war and humanitarian crimes, including the crime of Genocide.
4. Much of what I have written is my own humble opinion or that of Burmese friends/colleagues and from documents I have read. I write in my capacity as an Independent human rights activist for Burma, and have lived on the border of Burma and Thailand for most of the last 13 years. During that time I have worked with many different organisations, mainly grass-roots and community based, and have run various projects, including specialising in rehabilitating former child-soldiers from the Burma Army. To do this I gained experience in working with armed opposition groups and analysing Burma Army strategy.
5. The name ‘Rohingya’ comes from the original name of Rohang, meaning people of Arakan and we can see it documented in Francis Buchanon’s comparative language paper of 1799, in the fifth volume of Asiatic Researches. He mentions them as ‘Rooinga’ and lists 50 key words in their language, comparing it with other languages of the area. This documented evidence is indisputable; however there is currently propaganda being spread to say the Rohingya are Bengali immigrants, brought by the British to help fight the Japanese in WW2. The amount of anti-Bengali/Muslim propaganda which exists on the internet currently has to raise questions about the motivation of such attacks/crackdowns.
6. It is also important to note that there is still ongoing civil war to the North-East of the country in Kachin and Northern Shan States. Although many groups have signed a ceasefire, the one group that needs to practice it and is not doing so is the State Army of Burma. They are the ones responsible for numerous attacks on civilian ethnic people throughout this dictatorial period of Burma’s history. The same practices of instilling fear using rape of women and torture and killing of men, destruction of livelihoods, mass displacement, burning of villages etc was a reality in Karen State only a few short years ago and is a reality in Kachin and Shan States today aswell as in Arakan State.
7. An Approximate Timeline
1430- 1666 Chittagong was part of Arakan Kingdom
1666 Moghuls captured Chittagong
1730- 1784 East India company controls
1784 Burma invades Arakan Kingdom
1824 Britain occupied lower Burma in Arakan
1885 Britain captured the whole of Burma
1937 Britain moved the boundary of Eastern India (Bangladesh) to the Naf River therefore creating the indigenous land rights issue for the Rohingya.
Onwards Civil conflict followed by military rule.
Summarised History of Rohingya
8. The most important thing to understand about Arakan State is that it was formerly an independent Kingdom, and functioned in the same way as say, Bhutan or Sikkim Kingdoms. Arakan Kingdom existed for approximately 5000 years as an independent kingdom, before it was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. The majority Buddhists of the time were known as Mughs or Mogh and during the course of Arakan Kingdom’s history they occupied up to, and for some time, including Chittagong regions to the coast and all the southern peninsula of what we now know as Bangladesh.
9. We can see from minted coins and pictures by artists of the time of King Mrauk U, that Arakan Kingdom was a mixture of Buddhists and Islamic population with coins of the time having ancient Burmese pali script on one side and Arabic script on the other side of the coin. We can also see from pictures the extent of Arabic architecture used in the buildings. This rise of this culture in the area is said to have come from a mix of Persian, Arab, Turk, Pathan and Moghol settlers who arrived in 7th or 8th century AD (Irish Centre for Human Rights).
10. With the event of British occupation of India and annexation of Burma, the East India Company needed access to the port of Chittagong and the new boundaries were demarked. The boundary line was drawn at the Naf river which is where we recognise it today. That is why the Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen said, “Rohingya did not come to Burma. But the Burma came to Rohingya”.
11. Fundamentally the Rohingya were indigenous to Arakan kingdom, as it existed on both sides of the river, stretching up through the Chittagong hill tracts. Much the same as many of the currently recognised ethnic minorities in Burma the Rohingya straddled an international boundary. We can see a similar situation of the Karen ethnic groups whose land once encompassed swaths of land now demarked as Thailand- they existed on both sides of the Moei and Salween rivers. The Shan also had many lands inside what is now called Thailand and still have population living as far south as Chiang Rai, in the North-west the Naga are still fighting for lands on the the border, in the same situation due to modern map demarcation, mainly originating in colonial times.
12. In situations where this has happened and minorities find themselves in close quarters with another foreign majority (especially on borders), there is often inter-marriage between the two populations, leaving the offspring of such marriages in disarray about their race and nationality.
Lead-up to, and Current Situation
13. However we now have a situation where Arakan kingdom does not exist and therefore the Rohingya population is effectively stateless. They are not indigenous to Burma or to Bangladesh because these are modern countries and the land area that they originated as a separate group of people has been colonised and dissolved. The majority Rakhine or Mughs (Mogh) also were indigenous to Arakan Kingdom as were other unheard of small tribes who still live in Arakan State today. Their traditional lands, however, fall within what is also currently recognised as Arakan (Rakhine) State, so they have no questions to face regarding citizenship or indigenous rights. However the Rohingya have been occupying the areas around Maungdaw, Rathidaung, Buthidaung and Northern Arakan State for countless years and these areas are now a part of modern day Arakan State, Burma.
14. Another part of the problem and source of fear for the majority Bamar is the fact that at one time, along with many other ethnic groups of Burma, the Rohingya demanded complete autonomy from the State. This call was short-lived and has since been compromised with the call for a Federal Union. There were other acquaintances formed in the past, which were ill-advised, short-lived and curtailed upon more in-depth analysis by the Rohingya Liberation Organisation (RLO) and their armed wing, the Rohingya Liberation Army (RLA). The armed wing, the RLA disbanded many years before I went there and I do not know of any link with the current armed group calling themselves ARSA (the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army).
15. I visited the Bangladesh Burma border in 2007 in my capacity as an independent human rights activist. I made contact with many groups, both Rakhine political exiles and Rohingya refugees, and conducted a three day workshop on human rights documentation with some of the leaders. I visited the Dum Dum Meah camp on the banks of the Naf river and interviewed both Rakhine refugees staying in Cox’s Bazaar and Rohingya refugees staying inside the refugee camps and some staying outside on either side of the border.
16. The conditions inside the ‘unofficial camp’ as it was then were severe with many malnourished children and dire sanitation. They had also only been allowed to erect shelters up to chest high, so they could not stand inside and in rainy season when it flooded had to sleep on the rooves. The only NGO present in that camp was MSF (Medicin Sans Frontier) running a malnutrition programme for babies and other small projects, it barely scratched the surface of the need there with around 12,000 refugees.
17. Many of those I interviewed gave similar accounts of what happened to them then as we are hearing from the current crisis. Multiple accounts of rape, murder, torture and forced labour. Accounts were given by the refugees of the forcible relocation of 200,000 in 1978/79, with estimates that less than half of those forcibly sent back lived, claims that over 100,000 perished at the hands of the army or in prisons. All that I spoke to gave accounts of lack of freedom of movement, even in local areas, and restrictions on marriage. They all faced many difficulties in surviving and there was no education available for the children in the unofficial camp. Even in the official camps the government of Bangladesh had restricted education to no higher than 6th standard.
18. I concluded all the interviews with Rohinyga refugees at that time with two identical questions- firstly do they support Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK) and the NLD; and secondly do Rohingya people want their own state or do they support a federal union of Burma. 100% of the interviewees replied that they support ASSK and the NLD and all but one said that it was impossible for them to have their own state, but instead that they wanted to live alongside Rakhine in a peaceful Federal Union of Burma. The one who did not reply the same had not understood what a federal union was, but once it was explained to him he agreed that was what they all wanted.
19. I have kept in touch with main events since my visit there in 2007, and in my humble opinion have been painfully aware that this situation for the Rohingya people is an ongoing Genocide. The reports I have read since that time of systematic human rights abuses and extreme restrictions, have continued unabated, consistently and constantly, with various surges in the media at times of extreme suffering or specific massacres. These have been well documented over the years by groups such as the Arakan Project, Free Burma Rangers, ALTSEAN and the Kaladan Press network.
20. From my experience in meeting them, and from the many documents I have read I can honestly tell you that the civilians who have been affected by this ongoing conflict and by the recent onslaught of the Burma Army, are simple villagers, not much different from other villagers in Burma. Mostly completely lacking in education, critical thinking and analysis skills, and normally concerned with eeking out a living to feed their families and placate their God. Many rely on the surrounding jungle or agriculture for their daily sustenance. A Rohingya woman I met recently admitted, sadly that one of the mistakes her people had made over the years, was to isolate themselves from their Rakhine neighbours, and not integrate properly into a united society. She attributed the aggression shown by local Rakhine Buddhists to this factor. Unfortunately there have also been isolated reports of killings and rapes inflicted on Buddhist villagers by Rohingya.
21. Some Rohingya are educated: for example some Rohingya grew up in Bangladesh due to family displacement at an early age, and therefore was able to access the Bengali school system or have come from politically aware families. I interviewed one former political prisoner who was an NLD member and had been imprisoned several times for his activities campaigning for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and for a democratic government, led by the NLD. I interviewed a man with the Pen name of A F K Jalani who was the NLD candidate for Sittwe in the 1990 election, unfortunately he did not win. He showed me many books he had written and published, including one about Aung San Suu Kyi and the 1988 uprising.
ARSA and the Armed Conflict
22. There have been many suppositions and conflicting accounts as to who the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) are, what they represent and what level of support they have from the local Rohingya population. Some sources I have heard say they have thousands of fighters, well equipped with guns and ammunition, others say they have 300-500 ragtag villagers, equipped with only knives and spears. There are videos on ‘you tube’ of them being trained and moving from place to place. In the videos I have seen, the picture of a few hundred villagers equipped with only rudimentary weapons is evident, bar a few of the leaders.
23. ARSA/Al Yakin has been operating since 2012/3, led by a man known as Ata Ullah, who was born to Rohingya parents in Karachi, Pakistan and grew up in Saudi Arabia. There are said to be more than 500,000 Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia, so this is no surprise. He is accompanied by a small group of leadership from Saudi. They were formed following a previous crackdown by the army and communal violence that erupted in 2012.
24. A former name for the group is Haraka Al Yakin (meaning faith movement in Arabic) under which they claimed responsibility for the attacks on police posts in October 2016. Following these attacks and the subsequent disproportionate revenge by Burma Army, ARSA visited some Rohingya villages in a recruitment drive, demanding ten able bodied men from each village.
25. Previous to the 2016 attacks little is known about their activities, except that Rohingya villagers interviewed have said they would patrol the village at night with bamboo sticks to make sure everyone had been to the mosque. A respected friend who accompanied me on my trip to the border in 2007 emphatically denies that they have support from the majority of Rohingyas. However it is evident that the Rohingya have been steadily oppressed for a long time and in that situation, when people are being attacked by soldiers with arms, normally people will get to a stage where they are ready to take up arms against their oppressors, so it is natural to assume they have a level of support, although we cannot assume that those who support them understand fundamentally the ideologies they hold or their ultimate motivations.
Conclusion
26. I have worked alongside many armed groups in Burma, and conducted trainings on International Humanitarian Law and the Law of War, Politics, Citizenship and human rights documentation. In all my 13 years of experience with these multi-ethnic groups I have never heard any of them even plan to attack 30 outposts at the same time. I have heard of attacks that have been conducted on two or three outposts at a time, with enormous efforts in coordination. The Burma Army as an established, well- equipped force has never in my knowledge tried to attack 30 locations at one time, in fact the idea of a small inexperienced force even trying to attack 3-5 outposts is daunting! This is a laughable claim by the ministry of information and puts into doubt any further information released by them. To attack 30 outposts in one event, is beyond ambitious, it would be regarded as suicidal for this group lacking in battle experience and resources. Further to that it would not achieve the objective desired, unless that objective was to prompt a massive crackdown on the civilian population. This should not be dismissed as a motivation for further inter-racial violence.
27. There have been some accounts of Burma Army spies having been executed by ARSA, however this is again uncorroborated. We do know that it is a long-held strategy of the Burmese military to put their own people inside opposition organisations from or near to the formation, as this has happened in many ethnic armed groups in the past.
28. Another point to remember about Burma is that it has only recently had a large percentage of the population exposed to international news and whereas news of extremism may be accepted by those in the west as regular occurrences, in Burma they have only just in the last ten to fifteen years been exposed to news of worldwide Muslim extremist attacks and most people in Burma are exceptionally fearful of the threat of ISIS or Al Qaeda
29. In a report released in the past few days Kaladan Press network have exposed the details of the attacks by ARSA on Aug 25th and subsequent reaction by the Burma Army. The report has lists and maps of where ARSA was said to have attacked, and where villagers witnessed any attack. Very importantly this report highlights a building up of reinforcements at many BGF, Police and army posts throughout the region that was affected, suggesting that the ‘clearance operations’ were pre- meditated and planned by the Burma Army.
30. I hope some information I have given in has been helpful to shine a light on a very complex situation for the Rohingya people and their relationship to Burma.