Sucharita Sengupta
(Sucharita Sengupta works at Calcutta Research Group and can be reached at sucharitaseng@gmail.com)
2015
was a landmark year for Myanmar. In the first half it made news for all the
wrong reasons and in the second half for a supposedly positive change. The
first half of the year saw tragic deaths of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, who,
although hailing from the Rakhine state situated in the South West coast of
Myanmar, are denied citizenship and hence are ‘stateless’, forced to flee.
Starvation deaths in border detention camps of countries like Thailand,
Malaysia and images of overloaded boats capsizing in the Bay of Bengal evoked
worldwide sympathy for the Rohingyas. The enormity of their being victims of
international trafficking-smuggling rackets also came to the forefront making
it difficult for states to feign ignorance. Amidst criticism from the UNHCR and
other humanitarian agencies, all eyes were fixed on the recent election in
Myanmar, on 8 November 2015. It was believed that a solution would be attained
if Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) comes to
power. On the contrary, however, even after a landslide victory of her party,
Aung Suu Kyi has still now refrained from taking any positive stance on the
issue. In fact, following a report by the UN which states the Rohingyas in
Myanmar have suffered crimes that “amount to crimes against humanity”; the
Myanmar leader has told an UN special Reporter on Human Rights that the newly
elected government, sworn in April 2016, will avoid using the term “Rohingya”
to avoid controversy of any sort. Aung Suu Kyi’s comments clearly indicate the
discomfort that the government has in recognizing the Rohingyas as Myanmar’s citizens,
denoting how even the nomenclature ‘Rohingya’ is a subject of controversy
in the country. The previously military backed government believed the
Rohingyas to be illegal “Bengali” migrants. Although a new committee has been
formed to establish peace and development in May, the plans of the committee
are not clear.
