Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The systematic persecution of the Rohingyas began in Myanmar in the 1970s. The process began with stripping off citizenship and civil rights of the Rohingyas. The worst military crackdown and the consequent mass exodus began in late August 2017. By 18th March of 2018 more than 836,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Bangladesh. The UN spokesperson cited this episode as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya is an ethnocultural Muslim minority group that has lived in the independent Rohang (officially known as Arakan) state since the middle of the past century; now it is known as the Rakhine state of Myanmar. State-led episodic evictions forced nearly one million Rohingyas to seek refuge in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. Observers have dual opinions about the conflict; one group suggests that the persecution of Rohingyas is due to their historic demand of separate homeland in Rakhine state, while the other argues that the persecution is purely driven by Islamophobia. The latter also refers to the rise of ultra-right Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar, which is known as 969 Movement through the preaching of monk Wirathu. This paper argues that cause of the Rohingya crisis is rooted in Tatmadaw’s (Myanmar military) grand strategy to maintain control of the country by the systematic orchestration of ethnic cleansing. Denials of rights of ethno-religious minorities are the first step in this project and Rohingyas were targeted as early as in the 1970s. It also posits that the rise of nationalist-Buddhism is a recent phenomenon that coincides with Myanmar’s transition to democracy that threatened Tatmadaw’s gradual wane from political power. Thus, the recent crisis is a result of a well-hatched plan where Islamophobia added a new yet powerful dimension to garner Buddhist majority popular support. Data were collected from fieldwork in Bangladesh in 2017-18 and a number of semi-structured interviews that took place in March 2018.