Gain Access Myanmars Rohingya Conflict Articulated By Anthony Ware In Manuscript

book was a very thorough and considered analysis of the situation in Myanmar, It was rigorous in its research and it also presented solutions for the future rather than merely outlining the human rights problems faced.
The authors successfully balanced the differing narratives and gave adequate weight to all aspects while acknowledging that the Rohingya have been disproportionately targeted.
Approximatelymillion Rohingya are displaced as a result of the intractable, tripartite conflict of the last few decades and repatriation for even half of that amount is currently impossible as names have been struck from household surveys and records.
In order to find a long term solution to the humanitarian crisis the authors argue for many of the recommendations presented to the government inby the KofiAnnan Advisory Commission.
These include depoliticising ethnicity and race, allowing an impartial investigation of human rights abuses, ensuring citizenship allows full political rights and freedoms, and an abolition of the distinctions between types of citizenship.
The Internal Displacement Camps must be closed and freedom of movement delinked from citizenship must be allowed.
Access to justice, education, and healthcare, as well as equal representation must be provided and protection of Rakhines economic interests must be undertaken so that the refugees may be provide for upon return.


Things I learned:
Summary of the violence against Rohingya
The chaos ofhas meant that there are,Rohingya Muslim refugees registered by the UNHCR in camps in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi Immigration and Passports department counts a total of,,muslims from north Rakhine residing in their country.
It is the fastest refugee exodus in modern times,
The first serious outbreak of violence in, the proximal trigger was the brutal rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by Muslim men onMay in a rural village.
However this was the breaking point as tensions were already high due to the Union Solidarity and Development Party attempting to woo the Muslim vote to lock out the Rakhine nationalist party.

The resulting outburst of violence spread quickly with group murders of Muslim men, destruction of homes and the military being deployed using arms to disperse crowds killingpeople and,homes were destroyed.
Two thirds of casualties were Muslim andof homes belonged to Muslims,
The president then posted: We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but Rohingya who came to Burma illegally are not of our ethnic nationalities and we cannot accept them here.

There was then a Buddhist protest against the UNs pro Muslim bias and to show solidarity for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.
This was followed by a large Rakhine nationalist meeting where a radical nationalist manifesto was presented including a call for armed local militia, removal of all Bengali villages and the reclamation of land that had been lost to them.
The desire for ethnic cleansing is clear from ethnic Rakhine and Buddhist nationalist organisations as well as key government officials.

When military control ceased violence erupted again in coordinated attacks on Muslims:dead,injured,,homes destroyed and,public buildings razed.
Violence occurred inof thetownships and the number of internally displaced persons IDPs rose to,withMuslim, they were kept in camps further restricting their movements.
Before this violence they were only allowed to travel by village tracks and had to apply to visit neighbouring villages this was called an open prison even before theviolence.
The increased severity of restriction impacted access to healthcare, education, markets and other services increasing Muslim grievances while allowing the government to treat it as a localised problem.


Summary of violence against/by the Burmese State
There is also a long history of conflict between Rakhine and Muslim nationalists and the Burmese state.
Armed violence erupted inin the Rakhine state between the ArakanArmy AA and the Tatmadaw forces.

The AA is merely the most recent of a long line of armed Rakhine nationalist groups fighting against Burma rulers and the systemic discrimination faced and the neglect of Rakhine development needs apart from resource exploitation.
They seek control of Rakhine States political and economic future without Burman denomination through some form of self rule expressed as a federal union.

ARSA Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is a small largely untrained insurgency group whose targets were Burmese border guard police posts which aimed to secure freedom and independence for Rohingya in the northwest of the state.
Theandattacks were the first large scale attack perpetrated even after decades of marginalisation,
The ARSA was labelled as a terrorist group which allowed the government to justify any violence against all Muslims in Rakhine
The area clearance operations following the two attacks were draconian and the massacres, human rights abuses, and burning of villages sustained well after the area clearing operations were supposed to cease.
An estimated,,Muslims died in thedays after theattack, With a further,due to the outbreak of violence,
There is a requirement for a wide ranging UN investigation by impartial, external figures, It is almost certain that the Tatmadaw have perpetrated rape, physical assault, torture and destruction of property against civilians without concern for connection to militia.
Witness accounts of attacks on Hindus and Rakhine civilians describe the perpetrators as men dressed like muslims with their faces covered.
However, many of those witnesses testified that they do not believe they were their local muslims leading them to speculate

that the violence was accentuated by foreign muslim fighters or even the Tatmadaw in disguise.

Despite the rhetoric of jihad, their initial name meaning faith movement appeals for foreign support and one leader supposedly receiving training from the Pakistani taliban, ARSA does not appear to have yet adopted the language or aims of global Islamic extremism just some of their organisational and tactical strategies.

the Myanmar authorities are neither neutral actors attempting to contain a regional conflict, nor the only perpetrators of violence.

The spread of antiMuslim violence has been rapid and severe,saw a two day riot by a thousand strong mob including monks in robes in whichdied, thousands were injured and several thousand left homeless.


Ethnicity and Indigenous Status
The conflict between the Muslim and Buddhist populations has been an undercurrent for centuries but reached a head in WWII when the Rohingya allied with the British in return for a Muslim state, and the Buddhists allied with the Japanese.

It is an intractable conflict: intractable conflicts are those which involve an irreconcilable clash of narratives.
They are difficult to resolve because the intense sociopsychological dynamics institutionalise collective memories and emotional orientations on all sides.
Historical narratives about when the Rohingya arrives in Arakan, the make up of the MraukU kingdom, whether they are a distinct ethnicity or descendants of assorted colonialera immigrants, are important and so vehemently fought over, as they are crucial to them being granted indigenous status.

It is also a tripartite conflict wherein the Rohingya and Rakhine nationalists conflict with each other as well as the Burmese state as there are wealth, education, infrastructure, and healthcare inequalities.

The NLD government party in power is also in a conflict with the military as they control defence, police, and the border regions without government oversight.
Thus most key portfolios affecting Rakhine State are beyond government control,
There are pathways for Rohingya to apply and be granted citizenship however, many Rohingya refuse this Avenue because they would not be recognised as a Burmese taingyintha offspring of the land or indigenous and thus be granted full political rights and governance over territory.
Being indigenous is recognised as having culture and history established in Burma before the arrival of the British.
The meaning of the term draws on a mythical past in which all the races of Myanmar were united and engaged together in resistance against the coloniser.
In the preamble to theConstitution the political community is not described as an aggregation of citizens but of taingyintha thus elevating it above citizenship status.

Even the muslims who do accept the identification Bengali and gain citizenship that way are left with little protection as their movements are still restricted and they face many other forms of discrimination no access to education, healthcare etc.

Rohingya argue that there has been at least a minimal Muslim settlement in Rakhine from Arab traders and settlers from theth centuries.
Then it is argued that soldiers helped in the founding of Mrauk U due to Islamic language on coins from that period and large amounts of Muslim slaves were brought in by Portuguese.
Therefore there was a large population of Muslim Rohingya living in Rakhine prior to colonisation,
However, the lack of an agreed written script, with very few Rohingya literate in their own language corroborates the idea of slave or agricultural labourer origins brought in by the Portuguese rather than descendants of MraukU kings.
Therefore, it is impossible to determine who is taingyintha and who is not, However, even if all the Muslims in northern Rakhine claim to be Rohingya with ancestry from theth century Arab settlers, a false claim, the authors argue that any extent to which it is used as a political ploy is only in attempt to gain legitimate political rights.

Further, the term Rohingya was not used prior to thes suggesting it is a term to describe an emerging ethnicity forged by the sociopolitical conditions of the last century.
The plight of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims has made international news in recent years, Reports of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are commonplace, The Rohingyas have been denied citizenship and are widely discriminated against, Hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced by violence, or have sought refuge in neighbouring or friendly Muslim countries.
This conflict has become a litmus test for change in this country in transition, and current assessments are far from positive.
Whitewashing by the military, and a refusal by Aung San Suu Kyi's government to even use the name 'Rohingya', adds to international scepticism.
Exploring this longrunning tripartite conflict between the Rohingya, Rakhine and Burman ethnic groups, this book offers a new analysis of the complexities of the conflict: the fears and motivations driving it and the competition to control historical representations and collective memory.
By questioning these competing narratives,
offering detailed sociopolitical analysis and examining the international dimensions of the conflict, this book offers new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable conflict.
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