Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide

Identity, History and Hate Speech

Ronan Lee

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755602490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The genocide in Myanmar has drawn global attention as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be presiding over human rights violations, forced migrations and extra-judicial killings on an enormous scale. This unique study draws on thousands of hours of interviews and testimony from the Rohingya themselves to assess and outline the full scale of the disaster. Casting new light on Rohingya identity, history and culture, this will be an essential contribution to the study of the Rohingya people and to the study of the early stages of genocide. This book adds convincingly to the body of evidence that the government of Myanmar has enabled a genocide in Rakhine State and the surrounding areas.

1

Rohingya Roots in Ancient Arakan

‘From time immemorial’ is how Rohingya usually describe their ancestors’ lengthy residence in the Rakhine state area. While this is substantially true, migration during the first and second millennia contributed to their ancestor’s presence in the land many still identify as Arakan, and to the introduction and growth of the Rohingya’s majority religion, Islam. In this chapter, I examine pre-colonial history, from the early centuries of the first millennium until the late eighteenth century, when the independent Arakan kingdom was conquered by Burma. I outline key factors that contributed to the development of Arakan’s Rohingya population by describing its first millennium links with Bengal and India, connections with regional and world trade networks, and the role played by slavery and involuntary migration. I also show how Islam had come to Arakan by the eighth century, likely through pre-existing trade links with Bengal and the Middle East, and how by the time of the Burmese invasion, the Rohingya’s ancestors were a well-established community within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious kingdom.

The impenetrability of the Arakan Yoma mountain range, which separates Rakhine state from the flat central Irrawaddy River plains of Myanmar, has frequently been noted as a key explanation for the area’s economic, political and social development independent of its neighbours to the east.¹ This physical boundary protected Arakan’s kingdoms from land invasion by eastern rivals and helps account for the substantially different demographics of the lands on either side. Arakan’s territory for the last two millennia has included land that is today Rakhine state – although there have been lengthy periods of time when territory north of the Naf River (areas now part of Bangladesh) was dominated by Arakan. Historically, there has been a much greater proportion of Muslims and of people with Indo-Aryan heritage living to the west of the Arakan Yoma than to its east. Geography, combined with the economic and military strength of Arakan’s kingdoms, ensured that for much of the millennium preceding its eighteenth-century political decline and invasion by Burma in 1784, Arakan had largely avoided the authority of the Buddhist kingdoms east of the Arakan Yoma.²

Being bordered to the west by populous Muslim lands helps to explain too how today, Myanmar’s Rakhine state could be home to a substantial Muslim minority. The Muslim population in Rakhine state is a consequence of trade links, multiple migrations (often involuntary) and conversions. Demographic patterns throughout the last two millennia account for the Rohingya’s frequently (yet not always) darker skin tones compared with those of the ethnic Rakhine and Bamar. Skin tone differences, understood to reflect racial difference, have contributed to Myanmar government, military and nationalist assertions that the Rohingya are recent Bengali migrants.³ Contemporary Myanmar newspaper cartoonists reflect this ‘othering’ of Rohingya by portraying Muslims from Rakhine state as having much darker skin than Myanmar’s acknowledged taingyintha. Racial differences were regularly raised with me by ethnic Bamar and Rakhine as evidence that the Rohingya were foreigners and should not be considered indigenous to Myanmar. A simple explanation for differences of appearance between Rakhine state’s confessional groups would be to generalize the Rohingya’s ancestors as having come to Arakan from lands to the west and so having Indo-Aryan heritage, while the Rakhine and Bamar, with their Tibeto-Burman heritage, came from the east of the Arakan Yoma. Yet just as no single migration accounts for the Buddhist population in Rakhine state, neither does any single migration account for the Islamic or indeed Indo-Aryan presence there.

First millennium Arakan

Arakan’s original inhabitants cannot be known with certainty. What is clear is that they were not the direct ancestors of the contemporary Rakhine and nor were they Theravada Buddhists. Archaeological evidence – coins and inscriptions of royal names and titles – in Sanskrit and the ancient languages of Pali and Pyu point to an Indo-Aryan first millennium population with close connections to the Indian subcontinent and Hindu religious traditions. Considered among the greatest scholars of old Arakan, Pamela Gutman traced this history in Ancient Arakan, describing the establishment of Arakan’s first major urban sites in the northern fertile alluvial plains of the Kaladan and Lemro rivers.⁴ In an era characterized by Southeast Asian trade with south India, first and second century Arakan became home to coastal trading centres from which hill tribes sold forest products.⁵ Interruptions to China’s overland trade with Europe, because of conflict between the Roman Empire and Middle Eastern polities including the Sasanian Empire (centred on Iran), further contributed to the expansion of Southeast Asian overland and sea trade routes.⁶ This linked Arakan more closely with global trade networks.

By the fourth century, significant urban sites like Dhanyawadi (Dhannavanti), considered the capital of the first of Arakan’s four major kingdoms (Dhanyawadi, Vesali, Lemro and Mrauk-U), could be identified. While there are traditional claims of royal lines dating back thousands of years, the historical record is regarded to begin around 729 with the Anacandra inscription in Sanskrit on the Shittaung Pillar.⁷ Believed to have originated near the Vesali urban site, it is today housed at the Shittaung Pagoda near Mrauk-U (Mrohaung). Badly damaged in the Second World War, the Shittaung Pillar has since been restored and partly deciphered. The Anacandra inscription details Arakan’s royal Candr...