Myanmar : A dangerous backdrop

ON MAY 28th a Buddhist woman in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine was raped and killed by three young Muslims as she returned home. Six days later, in apparent retaliation, a bus carrying Muslim pilgrims was stopped in the town of Taungkok by a mob of 300 Buddhist vigilantes. The passengers were herded off the vehicle and ten of them were clubbed to death.

The tit-for-tat violence has since led to ethnic violence throughout Rakhine state. The killing, looting and house-burning have even engulfed the state capital of Sittwe. At least 21 people have been killed, many more injured and thousands of homes destroyed.

The frenzied attacks by both Buddhists and Muslims show just how combustible Myanmar’s regions remain, even after the great strides made in the country’s reform programme led by the president, Thein Sein. The violence also forms a dispiriting backdrop to the much-heralded visit to Europe by the opposition leader and freshly elected MP, Aung San Suu Kyi, who left Myanmar for Geneva on June 13th.

Relations between the majority Buddhist population in Rakhine state and the minority Muslims (known as Rohingyas) have been on edge for decades. The Rohingyas originally came from Bengal to what was then Burma when both were parts of Britain’s vast Indian empire. Even then they were hardly made to feel welcome, and discrimination against them continues to this day. Myanmar denies them citizenship, classifying them as illegal immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have crossed into Bangladesh, fleeing racial and religious persecution not just at the hands of the Burmese authorities but by their supposed Burmese countrymen as well. Indeed, these latest killings did not so much prompt soulsearching among Burmans as a tirade of bigotry against the country’s Rohingya minority.

 

There were also fears that the violence could spill over into other areas, and even that it might retard progress on reform in the rest of the country. Mr Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Rakhine state on June 10th, thus putting the army back in control there. The transfer of power in 2010 from the army to civilian authorities has been one of the main advances of Myanmar’s political transition, so any step back, even if only in a distant corner, has worried reformers.

Military hardliners, many of whom oppose Mr Thein Sein’s reforms, argue that the army must continue to have a paramount role, as it is the only institution capable of holding Myanmar’s shaky ethnic patchwork together. A state of emergency in Rakhine helps their cause. Even the reforming president warned that such ethnic and communal violence could damage democratisation and development in the whole country.

Such concerns will also make Miss Suu Kyi’s visit to Europe more difficult. Her trip to Thailand at the start of June marked the first time since 1988 that she had left Myanmar. She had worried before that, once abroad, she would not be allowed back in. The visit went well enough, but it was a low-key affair compared with the razzmatazz lined up for her in Europe.

Miss Suu Kyi will travel to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize that she was awarded in 1991. She will then address the combined Houses of Parliament in Britain before attending a concert in Ireland hosted by Bono, a rock star.

She will be feted wherever she goes, and that alone is likely to stir jealousy and tension within Mr Thein Sein’s government in Naypyidaw. But there is a more profound problem: the message that she is conveying to foreign audiences is fundamentally different from that of Myanmar’s government. In Thailand she warned against “reckless optimism” about the changes in Myanmar, and advised investors to maintain a “healthy scepticism”.

Those are wise words perhaps, but at odds with the message of many in the government. They are frantically trying to attract as many foreign investors to the country as quickly as possible, to compensate sceptical (and perhaps troublesome) hardliners with quick riches in exchange for a loss of political power. Ethnic violence in western Myanmar and the shadow of more to come will only make those tensions worse.

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Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar can’t be condoned

Amidst speculations that the US is set to station its Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal to checkmate China‘s growing power, Myanmar dispatched troops and naval vessels to the western Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh while its security forces killed over a dozen of Rohinga minority Muslims and injured hundreds other after curfew and emergency rules were imposed last week.

 

 

The latest violence is the worst in the country’s history, compounded further by joint actions against the Rohingya minority Muslims by the Rakhine Buddhists, as well as Myanmar’s military and border guard troopers.

 

 

Hundreds of Rohingyas have already left their domiciles and flocked at various points along the Bangladesh border. Hundreds more are afloat on boats in the Naaf river, according to reports.

Sensing the gravity of the crisis, the UN has requested Bangladesh to offer shelter and succour to the refugees while the USA has expressed concerns over what seems like the worst humanitarian crisis of recent decades in the continent of Asia.

 

 

Curiously, the behaviour of Myanmar’s military-backed regime makes one to believe that the crisis is more geopolitical than humanitarian. Myanmar’s state TV reported that the country’s naval forces took security measures along the nearby coast on the Bay of Bengal, prompting the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troopers to reinforce their presence along the 200 km long porous border.

 

 

Rooted in century old ethno-religious divisiveness, the Rohingya crisis entails serious regional and global ramifications. The Rakhine state comprises of the historic Arakan State, once a sovereign and independent statehood ruled respectively by Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim rulers until the Burmese king Bodaw Paya conquered it on 28th December 1784 AD.

 

 

Sandwiched between the Muslim predominant Bangladesh and the Buddhist predominant Myanmar, the state of Arakan is mostly inhabited by two ethnic groups - the Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslims, the latter having close  ethno-cultural affinity with neighbouring Bangladesh. The state is rich in natural resources and bridges South and South East Asia at the confluence of strategic Bay of Bengal.

 

 

In recent decades, the Rohingya refugee crisis has dogged relationship between Bangladesh and Myanmar and called for Chinese diplomatic interventions a number of times. Now, a major geopolitical transformation is underway due to Myanmar being a tested friendly state of China and a strategic outpost for Beijing in the Bay of Bengal.

 

 

It also seems plausible that the US’s latest bid to befriend Myanmar has given the military-backed regime an additional aura of authoritativeness and arrogance. The dynamic of the latest round of violence does give rise to such misgivings. 

 

 

Look how the latest crisis churned out of control about three weeks ago, following the alleged rape and murder of a young Buddhist girl, reportedly by three Muslim youths. Long before an investigation into the incident could be concluded, radical Buddhist activists, reportedly under state-sponsorship, distributed anti-Muslim pamphlets to up the ante.

 

 

More ominously, on June 3, 10 Muslims were killed by a group of Buddhist terrorists who attacked a bus carrying the victims from a religious gathering. The attackers set on fire dozens of Muslim residences, stabbed people in groups and looted properties. 

 

 

As the military-backed regime failed to take appropriate measures in stopping the pogrom, one of the many since the late 1970s, hundreds of refugees began to move toward Bangladesh borders to avoid indiscriminate shooting by marauding security forces.

 

 

Despite that, officials from Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, maintain they have no intent to allow the rushing influx of refugees to enter Bangladesh. One official said, “We already have had more than our fair share of the burden.”

 

 

There is reason for having such a tough stance on the plight of fellow human beings. According to a recently released UNHCR report, Bangladesh still hosts more than 29,000 refugees from Myanmar, who are stranded indefinitely since over 250,000 of them entered the country amidst another brutal military crackdown in 1991. 

 

 

To make things worse, Myanmar’s military junta even dared to conduct a surprised and audacious raid deep inside Bangladesh to dismantle a Bangladeshi border outpost to facilitate the exodus of Rohingya Muslims during the 1991 clampdown.

 

 

That being the backdrop, some analysts believe the latest outbreak of violence may be related to Bangladesh’s reported consent to allowing the US’s Seventh Fleet to station near Bangladesh’s territorial water. They think, by generating a fresh influx of Rohingya refugees, Myanmar may be seeking to strangulate Bangladesh into a discomforted strategic loop. 

 

 

Bangladesh is the most thickly populated nation on earth. Yet, according to one concerned Bangladeshi official who requested not be named, besides the UNHCR-registered refugees, another about 200,000 unregistered Rohingyas live inside Bangladesh without any legal status and ‘create undue burden on availability of works for the locals.’ 

 

 

And, this is not the first time the Rohingyas faced systematic onslaught on their lives and liberty, making the prolonged and mysterious silence of the global community on their recurring plights almost unforgiving. Their routine persecutions and systematic ethnic cleansing have also been one of the least reported episodes in the global media. 

 

 

As the new Myanmar regime seeks to open up to the world outside, its accountability with respect to human rights needs to be ensured first.  The global community can not have one set of principles for the safeguard of minorities in other parts of the world while the Rohingyas face virtual obliteration and dismemberment in the hands of a brutal, autocratic regime.

 

 

This is an issue that deserves immediate global attention. According to rights group, total Rohingya population in Myanmar numbered about 3.7 million in the 1960s, of which less than a million survived the repeated onslaughts and the brutal ethnic cleansing orchestrated jointly since the 1980s by the Rakhine Buddhist radicals on one hand, and, a military regime with little respect for human rights, on the other. 

 

 

As many of the uprooted Rohingys settled gradually in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Thailand and Malaysia, the UNHCR claims only about 800,000 of them now remain in the three contiguous districts of the Rakhine state abutting Bangladesh.  

 

 

Insisting on anonymity, one senior Rohingya leader said, “A blue print is at work to eliminate us altogether.” Given that the Rohingyas remain stateless at large - neither Bangladesh, nor Myanmar, recognizes them as citizen – such an apprehension can not be trivialized.

 

 

Abu Tahay, chairman of the Rohingya’s main political platform, National Democratic Party for Development, said the curfew and the emergency rules are ‘being abused by the Myanmar security forces to ransack Rohingya houses and round up suspects.’ He claimed more than 300 Rohingyas went missing in Maungdaw alone.”

 

 

“It’s very dangerous for them. If anyone talks to the media, the authorities take action. People are scared to speak,” Tahay said from an undisclosed location.

 

BY :   M. Shahidul Islam.

Bangladesh’s toxic politics : Hello, Delhi

It is up to India to try to stop Sheikh Hasina ruining Bangladesh.

THE Punch-and-Judy show of Bangladeshi politics, in which the ruling party—run by the daughter of a former president—bashes the opposition—run by the widow of a former president—before swapping places with it, has been running for decades. The outside world rarely pays attention because nothing seems to change.

Recently, though, the squabbling has turned into a crisis which threatens to make life still worse for the 170m poor Muslims who suffer under one of the world’s worst governments. Since Bangladesh’s political leaders show no interest in their fate, outsiders need to do so.

When Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League and current prime minister, and Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), alternated in power in the 1990s, things were pretty bad, but in the past decade they have got worse. The administration Mrs Zia headed from 2001 to 2006 was a brutal kleptocracy. It was followed by army-backed unelected technocrats. Then in 2008 the Awami League swept to power in a landslide victory. The League has 229 of 300 parliamentary seats compared with 31 for Mrs Zia’s BNP. Sheikh Hasina has used this mandate to consolidate power and hound her enemies, real and imagined.

There has been a spate of mysterious disappearances. This month 33 senior members of the opposition were arrested on charges of vandalism and arson. A war-crimes tribunal to investigate the atrocities in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971—some of the bloodiest in modern history—now looks like an attempt to discredit the BNP and its Islamist allies. And the hounding of Mohammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance, creator of the Grameen Bank and a Nobel laureate, is seen as payback for his temerity in 2007 in trying to launch a “third force” in politics. Meanwhile, journalists and activists face intimidation and worse, and the vibrant NGOs that keep the spirit of democracy alive worry that proposed legislation would leave them at the mercy of government whims.

Last year the League did away with the provision that caretaker administrations should oversee elections. The arrangement was not ideal. In January 2007 protests led by the League, convinced that the BNP would rig an election, led to a coup. But without some assurance of fair play the BNP will boycott the next election, due in 2014. So there is the prospect of yet more protests, which in Bangladesh often take the form of crippling strikes. There is also the real prospect of utter political paralysis, risking even worse turmoil on the streets.

The only voice in Dhaka

The outside world is trying to do its bit. The World Bank has scrapped a deal to pay for a big bridge because of its suspicions of corruption. EU ambassadors have denounced the treatment of Mr Yunus and the harassment of activists. Hillary Clinton flew to Dhaka this month to stand by Mr Yunus.

But the government seems unmoved. In a snub to Mrs Clinton, it announced a review into ownership of Grameen, a move to take over (and probably destroy) the bank. The only country to have much influence in Dhaka is India. Until recently the regional superpower tolerated Sheikh Hasina’s excesses, in part because Bangladesh has cracked down on Islamists. India now seems to be hedging its bets between the two parties. 

But if it still wants to have a functioning democracy next door, it needs to speak out far louder in favour of it.

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Politics in Bangladesh : Banged about

The prime minister sets the country on a dangerous path.

INCHING through the crowded streets of Bangladesh’s capital brings both exhilaration and frustration. Dhaka’s garishly painted tricycle rickshaws, battered buses, occasional goats and luxury cars somehow all manage to creep onward. Drivers skilled at furious honking are also masters of compromise and smiles.

If only the bitter politicians could prove so deft. Some 18 months before a general election, Bangladesh suffers street protests. Opposition leaders are sent to jail, and disappearances and murders are widely blamed on an old rivalry for power. A confrontation over the next poll—who should oversee it, and whether it will be fair—is already so strident that some observers doubt a contested one will be held at all. Meanwhile, Bangladeshis fret over prices of food and fuel, chronic power cuts and broken promises of new roads.

As the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Khaleda Zia, tells it, all ills lie at the government’s door. She ticks off a list of wicked acts she blames on her antagonist in an ancient rivalry, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. A young BNP politician abducted a month ago and very probably murdered. Two others killed earlier. Some 33 opposition figures, including senior MPs, dumped in jail this month over a trumped-up case of arson. In all, she says, 3,000 BNP members have been arrested. “It is to intimidate, to create a sense of fear.”

There is plenty more darkness about. In recent months Bangladesh has endured a spate of other mysterious killings—a Saudi diplomat shot dead; a trade-union activist tortured and murdered; a pair of journalists butchered after investigating corruption. This correspondent was trailed in Dhaka by a pair of secret-service men on a motorbike. A rumour of a bizarre coup attempt, in January, was used by the government to get closer political control over the army.

One of the country’s best known figures, Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, has been harassed for some time. An increasingly paranoid Mrs Hasina sees him as a political threat. This month in Dhaka Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, met the Nobel laureate and assured him of her support. It brought no relief. Ministers snipe at him, and the government has just ordered yet another official review of his bank.

“We are very worried that the commission has been formed and terms of reference include ownership,” says Mr Yunus. In effect, the government is seeking ways to grab Grameen, which is 97%-owned by its poor members, many of them women. Officials are also bent on settling scores with Mr Yunus, who oversees an ungainly charitable empire that includes a telecoms company as well as the bank. Over a lavish dinner, a group of government spies brags of having a thick file of allegations ready against the “money-monger”.

Engine trouble

The list of gripes against the government is long. Corruption is pervasive enough for donors to be alarmed. The World Bank has scrapped funding for a bridge over the Padma river. Japan, the largest single giver of aid, has just sent its deputy prime minister to Dhaka to demand a clean-up. In a case of recent graft, a railway minister, who quit after police found sacks of cash in his aide’s car, was suddenly cleared by an internal inquiry of any corruption and reinstated to the cabinet. Meanwhile, strong doubts persist about the fairness of democracy. The United States’s ambassador in Dhaka this week repeated Mrs Clinton’s warning that the next election must be “participatory”, ie, run fairly so the opposition will take part.

Most telling would be a shift in India’s attitude. Long a close ally of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League—cheering her crackdown on Islamic extremists and insurgents from India’s north-east, and being open to more trade—India’s ruling Congress party may now, sensibly, be hedging its bets. Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister, called on Mrs Zia recently, inviting her back to Delhi. Mrs Zia chuckles that she will go after Delhi’s summer heat is past. She also calls the neighbour a “friend”, a possible hint of change in a party that often seeks popularity by bashing India.

As Sheikh Hasina looks ever more strident, people may start tiptoeing away from her. Not every ill in Bangladesh can be laid at the prime minister’s door. Although she did mess with the constitution, scrapping arrangements she had previously insisted on in opposition for a neutral caretaker to run the government for three months before election day, she now appears to want to keep her options open, possibly in order to be better able to skew the outcome of the next election. Meanwhile, Mrs Zia’s party orders street protests and hunger strikes, and threatens angry mass rallies in June. The sad result is that politics grows more polarised and confrontational.

Still, Mrs Hasina is not quite the all-powerful bogeywoman her bitterest opponents suggest. Certainly she seems set on cracking down on civil groups, for example with a new bill to put non-government organisations more firmly under political control. But it is hard to see how the murders and attacks on activists and journalists help her government, other than to spread a general sense of intimidation.

The opposition, too, has a reputation for thuggery, corruption and intimidation, and does not bother much to hide it. A veteran leader of the BNP says that, should his party boycott the next election, 20 days of street protests by BNP supporters would then be followed by violent attacks by his party workers on their rivals.

The shame of it all is how little heed the squabbling politicians pay to what should matter more: keeping the economy growing and reducing poverty further. In the face of electricity shortages, blocked roads and land disputes, the Bangladesh economy has been doing remarkably well. Its clothing industry has the potential to generate over $40 billion a year from exports, according to McKinsey, a consultancy.

Indicators of well-being have been improving. If annual economic growth of over 6% is sustained, a country that not long ago was a byword for poverty can contemplate reaching middle-income levels in barely a decade. But that needs single-minded focus by the government on dealing with the country’s economic bottlenecks and social needs. Instead, like Dhaka’s wretched roads, politics looks jammed. Uncertainty leading up to the next election, and growing anxiety among diplomats and foreign observers of Bangladesh, suggest a hard, tense time ahead. More than anyone, blame the driver.

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Pranab Mukherjee’s visit: the same empty rhetoric

THE two-day visit of the Indian finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, to Bangladesh went as predictably as it could. His articulation of the Indian government’s willingness to enter into an agreement on Teesta water sharing or his assurance that India’s river-interlinking project ‘would not be harmful for Bangladesh’ had no new twist or turn by and large; his colleagues in New Delhi, including the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, have said similar things over and over in the past three years or so. In fact, it may have been unrealistic to expect anything revealing or reassuring from him in the first place; after all, he was in Dhaka primarily to attend the concluding ceremony of the 150th anniversary of the birth of poet Rabindranath Tagore.

The only novelty, albeit essentially on a cosmetic level insofar as bilateral relations are concerned, may have been his fallacious and feeble attempt at apportioning the blame for New Delhi’s failure to conclude the Teesta water-sharing agreement on the Congress Party’s allies in the United Progressive Alliance government and the opposition parties in India. According to bdnews24.com, Mukherjee told a select group of editors during a meeting on Sunday that the deal had run aground because of such ‘ground realities’ as the Congress’s lack of majority in parliament. He sounded as if his party had always had the best intentions for Bangladesh at heart, a proposition that would be difficult to prove empirically. Moreover, it is inconceivable that all the members of the ruling alliance and the opposition in India are hostile to Bangladesh’s concerns and interests. Overall, his conclusion appeared geared more towards his domestic audience than anything else.

However, the Indian finance minister or, for that matter, his government needs to realise that New Delhi’s assurances and reassurances have increasingly fewer takers in Bangladesh. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition in Bangladesh, during their meetings with Mukherjee, categorically said that India should sign an agreement on the sharing of Teesta water and hold a credible study soon on its plan to construct the Tipaimukh Dam on the trans-boundary river Barak. In fact, the prime minister appeared uncharacteristically blunt when she said that most people in Bangladesh did not understand the centre-state relations in Indian politics and that ‘it is easy for them to misunderstand the intent of the government of India over the delay in the conclusion of the Teesta agreement.’

The prime minister rightly pointed out that the construction of the Tipaimukh Dam and the river-interlinking project had become issues of grave concern for the public in Bangladesh.

Suffice it to say, the concern is rooted in findings and conclusions of experts, not only in Bangladesh but also in India, about the threat that the mega projects pose to the life and livelihood, the economy and ecology of the people on either side of the border. Worrying still, the Indian government has thus far displayed not only apathy but also antipathy to the concerns and interests of Bangladesh. Continued torture and killing of Bangladeshis by the Border Security Force; India’s persistent refusal to remove tariff and para-tariff barrier to exports from Bangladesh; and address trade imbalance, etc bear testimony to this end.

Overall, the Indian government needs to realise that the people at large in Bangladesh have very few reasons to keep faith in what it says and that it is time that it started delivering on its assurances and reassurances. 

Meanwhile, conscious sections of society in Bangladesh need to reach across the border and forge alliance with like-minded groups in India that are also concerned about the economic and ecological fallout of their government’s river-linking and Tipaimukh plans so as to sustain pressure on New Delhi to shelve the projects.

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