MyanMars DeMocratic transition:

What does that mean

for the Persecuted Rohingya
People ???

One-Day Open Research Conference, 11 May 2016

Hosted by South Asia Research Cluster,

The University of Oxford
With generous support from grassroots activists, Rohingya
refugees and volunteers

New York Times

THE PROGRAMME
Myanmars Democratic Transition:
What does that mean for the Persecuted Rohingya?
One-Day Open Research Conference, the University of Oxford
Most sessions will be webcast LIVE at
http://live.oxfordvideostreaming.co.uk/myanmarspersecutedrohingya.html

Date: 11 May 2016 (8:30 am 4:30 pm)

Venue: Leonard Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Rd, Oxford, OX2 6UD
https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/
Contact: Dr Maung Zarni, Organizer, at fanon2005@gmail.com
or UK mobile on +44 771 (0)47 3322

Objectives:
To bring together researchers and practitioners in international law,
history, public health, sociology, politics and economics as well as
Rohingya human rights defenders:
1. to scrutinise and debate the meanings of the terms genocide,
persecution, democratisation and their relationships in theory and in
history;
2. to continue shining a critical spotlight of university and independent
research onto what is increasingly recognized as Myanmars slow
genocide of the Rohingya not only by international genocide and legal
scholars but by world icons such as George Soros, Desmond Tutu,
Mairead Maguire, Amartya Sen, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, and
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman.
3. to call attention to recent research into the deplorable human
conditions under which over 1 million Rohingya live in vast open
prisons (i.e., Rohingya villages and towns) and Internally Displaced
Persons (IDP) camps, which the New York Times has called the 21st
century concentration camps;
4. to present evidence to convince Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi
government that the end of decades-long state persecution of the
Rohingya minority should be a top priority; and
5. to brainstorm critical and constructive ideas which may enable
Myanmars democrats to remove one of the greatest obstacles to
genuine democratization the continued destruction of a large
community of people because of their distinct ethnic identity

CONFERENCE AGENDA

Conference Hosts Welcome 8:30 am -8:35 am

Emeritus Professor Barbara Harriss-White, Co-ordinator, SARC, Wolfson
College

Introduction 8:35 am 8:40 am

Dr Maung Zarni, Research Fellow, The Sleuk Rith Institute, Cambodia &
the author of Why do Burmese Generals reform? Or do they?
(forthcoming, Yale University Press)

1ST MORNING SESSION (8:40 am 9:25 am including 10-minutes for

each speaker, with 15 min. of Q & A)

On History and Politics of Identity

Chair: Emeritus Professor Barbara Harrell-Bond, Founder, Refugees
Studies Centre, Oxford University & Director, Fahamu Refugee
Programme, Oxford
Daw Khin Hla, a Rohingya refugee and former middle school teacher from
Rakhine or Arakan State
On Being A Rohingya in Myanmar
Professor Michael Charney, Professor of Asian and Military History,
Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), U.
of London,
State and Society in Arakan since the Fourteenth Century: From Inclusion to
Polarisation and Exclusion
Maung Bo Bo, PhD Candidate from Myanmar, Department of History,
SOAS
Rohingya identity and presence in Arakan, according to Burmas Official
Sources

2nd MORNING SESSION (9:30 am - 10:15 am, 10 minutes for each

speaker, followed by 15 minutes of Q & A)

Public Health, Exploitation, and Human Trafficking

Chair Professor Shapan Adnan, Associate, Contemporary South Asian

Studies Programme, Oxford University & Former Associate Professor of
Sociology at the National University of Singapore and Professor at the
University of Chittagong, Bangladesh
Dr S. Saad Mahmood, MD, Lecturer, Harvard University School of
Medicine, Boston, USA, Public Health Situation of the Rohingya: Findings
from a Harvard Study
Dr Ambia Perveen, MD, Consultant Paediatrician at Sankt Marien
Hospital in Dueren, Germany and Rohingya activist with the European
Rohingya Council, Myanmars Denial of Public Health Services to the
Rohingya

Matthew Smith, Executive Director, Fortify Rights, International Crimes in

Rakhine State: Prevention and Accountability (pre-recorded presentation
for the conference).

TEA/COFFEE BREAK 10:15 AM 10:45 AM

3RD MORNING SESSION (10:45 am to 11:30 am, 10 minutes for each
speaker, followed by 15-minutes of Q and A)

Myanmars Policy and Practices of Rohingya Persecution

Chair, Professor Daniel Feierstein,
past President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (201315) & Director, Centro de Estudios Sobre at the National University of
Argentina and author of Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society
Under the Nazis and Argentina's Military Juntas (Rutgers University Press,
2014)
Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Honorary Fellow, Tasmania Asia Institute,
Australia Rohingya Genocide: International Complicity in Burmas Internal
Violence
Professor Penny Green and Thomas MacManus, co-authors of the 2015
report Genocide in Myanmar: Annihilation of the Rohingya, International
State Crime Initiative, Queen Mary University of London
Dr Maung Zarni, co-author (with Alice Cowley), The Slow Burning
Genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, Pacific Law and Policy Journal,
(2014)

KEYNOTE ADDRESS 11:30 am 12:10 am

(30-minute keynote followed by 15 minutes of Q and A)
Chair Emeritus Professor Barbara Harriss-White

Why The World Must Listen to the Rohingyas

by
Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
University Professor, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society,
Columbia University and a Founding Member of Post-Colonial Studies

LUNCH, Haldane Room, Wolfson College (12:15 pm 1:15 pm)

1ST AFTERNOON SESSION (1:15 pm 1:25 pm)

The Slow Genocide of the Rohingya

A presentation by
Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics (1998)
videotaped at Harvard in November 2014.

Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Philosophy and

Economics, Harvard University.

2ND AFTERNOON SPECIAL SESSION

(1:25 pm 2:10 pm, 20-minutes roundtable followed by 25 minutes of
Q and A)

Genocide Roundtable:
The Politics of the United Nations, International Human Rights and
Sociology of Genocide
Chair Professor Penny Green, Professor of Law and Globalization &
Director, International State Crime Research Initiative, Queen Mary
University of London
Professor Daniel Feierstein, past President of the International
Association of Genocide Scholars (2013-15) & Director, Centro de Estudios
Sobre at the National University of Argentina and author of Genocide as
Social Practice: Reorganizing Society Under the Nazis and Argentina's
Military Juntas (Rutgers University Press, 2014)
Tomas Ojea Quintana, Human Rights Lawyer & former UN Special
Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, (2008-2014)

3RD AFTERNOON SESSION (2:15 pm 3:00 pm including 15 minutes

of Discussions)

Rohingya Persecution, External Players and Perspectives

Chair Dr Maung Zarni, Sleuk Rith Institute, Cambodia
Professor Shapan Adnan, Associate, Contemporary South Asian Studies
Programme, Oxford University & Former Associate Professor, National
University of Singapore (NUS) & Professor, University of Chittagong,
Bangladesh
Azril Mohd Amin, Lawyer & Chief Executive, Centre for Human Rights
Research & Advocacy (CENTHRA), Malaysia
Adnin Armas, Coalition of Indonesian Community for Caring Rohingya,
Acheh, Indonesia
Dr Azeem Ibrahim, Rothermere American Institute Fellow, Oxford
University and author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmars Hidden
Genocide (Hurst, 2016).
COFFEE/TEA BREAK (3:00 pm 3:30 pm)
A Special Presentation by Professor Maya Tudor 3:30 pm 3:45 pm
Reflections on Comparative Ethnic Nationalisms, Associate Professor of
Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
University and an international observer with the Carter Centre in
Myanmar during the November election 2015

CLOSING AFTERNOON SESSION (3: 45 pm 4:30 pm)

What can the international community do to end the

Rohingya persecution?
Chair Mark Farmaner, Director, Burma Campaign-UK
Tun Khin, President, Burmese Rohingya Association UK
Nurul Islam, Rohingya Lawyer and Human Rights Activist, UK
Dr Hla Kyaw, Rohingya Medical Doctor & Activist (European Rohingya
Council)

Speakers Biographies and Abstracts/Summaries of Presentations

Shapan Adnan
Shapan Adnan obtained a BA (Honours) degree in Economics from the University of
Sussex and a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the University of
Cambridge. He is currently an independent scholar based in the UK. He has
formerly taught at the National University of Singapore as well as the Universities
of Dhaka and Chittagong. Shapan Adnan has been a visiting research fellow at the
University of Oxford and is currently an Associate of its Contemporary South Asian
Studies Programme (CSASP). He is a member of the international advisory board of
the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission. The
subjects of his research and publications extend across political economy,
sociology, anthropology and development. He has undertaken fieldwork in areas of
Bangladesh bordering Arakan state of Myanmar, including the Chittagong Hill
Tracts and Coxs Bazar district where most of the Rohingya refugees are located

The Invisible Refugees: Rohingyas from Myanmar in Bangladesh (Abstract) by

Prof. Shapan Adnan
Rohingya Muslims in north Arakan of Myanmar have been subjected to persecution
by the state and the majority Buddhist ethnic groups, resulting in their repeated
exodus to Bangladesh. Despite being international refugees, the bulk of the
Rohingyas do not live in the small official and unofficial camps. Instead, they have
merged into the interstices of the host society becoming, so to speak, invisible
refugees. However, recent events in Myanmar and Bangladesh, including desperate
journeys by Rohingya boat people seeking shelter in Southeast Asia and
Australasia, have eventually caught the attention of international policy-makers
and the media, making them visible under limiting conditions of starvation,
abduction, trafficking, extortion and, frequently, death.
However, even though escaping from brutal persecution in Myanmar, the plight of
the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has not been free of insecurity and danger,
being constantly overshadowed by the fear of arrest and deportation. Those arriving
from the Arakan after 1992 have been denied official recognition as refugees, and
formally restricted from seeking employment. Consequently, refugee men and
women have had little option but to violate these restrictions and devise strategies
for survival. In order to meet subsistence needs through wage work and selfemployment, they have accepted lower wages/prices and poorer job conditions,
compared to workers from the host community. For security, they have become
clients of powerful patrons who can also provide them with some degree of
protection from arrest and deportation by security forces. The refugees have sought
voter registration and national ID cards so as to be included in the electoral roll, as
stepping stones towards gaining Bangladeshi citizenship and obtaining passports.
These processes have been accompanied by chain migration and community
formation, as earlier migrants have helped and guided new arrivals from the
Arakan linked by kinship and village-based ties.

Nonetheless, such achievements of the Rohingya refugees have been precarious

and vulnerable to unfavourable factors and hostile reactions of economic and
political interests adversely affected by their presence and activities. Sections of the
local labour force have resented being undercut by the refugees in labour and
product/service markets and sought to ban them from certain jobs and activities
such as rickshaw-pulling and industrial work. Official restrictions have been
imposed on women wanting to participate in micro-credit programmes and children
seeking enrolment in government schools. Around 100,000 Rohingyas had their
acquired voter IDs cancelled during systematic checks by the military in 2007-08,
automatically leading to their exclusion from electoral rolls and ending prospects of
gaining citizenship. Anti-immigrant campaigns were drummed up by sections of the
national power structure and local media during the early 2010s, with some
quarters calling for their expulsion. With Bangladeshs increasing unwillingness to
shelter the Rohingya refugees permanently, their situation as a stateless people has
worsened. Even though such rejection was a critical factor impelling Rohingya boat
people to seek shelter in third countries, they were rebuffed in most cases by the
governments of Southeast Asia and Australia.

Azril Mohd Amin

Azril Mohd Amin is a Kuala Lumpur-based lawyer and a human rights campaigner.
He co-founded the Centre for Human Rights Research & Advocacy (CENTHRA) in
2014 and had since spent much of his time establishing triadic relationships for
CENTHRA, domestically and internationally. Azril became interested in the plight
of refugees while working to secure access to health and education for Rohingyan,
Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia since 2010.
A brief summary of Amins presentation
I shall first touch briefly on Malaysias views on the Burmese states treatment of
Rohingyas, followed by ASEANs views on the same. I shall also provide CENTHRAs
perspective on Malaysia and ASEAN policies on such treatments, in particular,
whether it is apt to regard it as a simple problem of human trafficking instead of,
as I shall argue, a slow genocide.

Adnin Armas
Adnin Armas graduated in Philosophy in International Islamic University Malaysia,
1997. He holds a M.A degree in Islamic Thought from the International Institute of
Islamic Thought and Civilization-International Islamic University Malaysia in 2003.
He writes articles and a few books on Islam and its Challenges in Indonesia. He is
the editor in-chief in a magazine, published monthly in Indonesia. He is the
chairman of Indonesian Society Coalition Caring for Rohingya.
I will talk about the stateless Rohingya in Indonesia. Some challenges and
recommendations to overcome them.

Maung Bo Bo
A Burmese native, Bo attended the Institute of Medicine where he earned a
M.B.B.S. More passionate about politics and literature, he spent his teenage years
in his family collection of Burmese books. Bo is a fourth generation writer from a
renowned literary family with a very strong progressive view, which has faced
persecution under successive military regimes. His maternal grandparents, Ludu U
Hla and Daw Ahmar, were Leftist comrades of the late Aung San, Aung San Suu
Kyi's martyred father, and other nationalist leaders and founded anti-colonial
journals such as Kyipwaye (Progress) and Ludu (People) since the 1920's. Bo has
been writing for Burmese publications for almost 20 years, covering politics and
history of Burma. Bo holds a MA in history from SOAS and is currently working
on his PhD on the Burmese military propaganda in Burma, from the early Cold
War period till 1962 when the military led by General Ne Win seized state power
and ended the countrys experiment with parliamentary democracy.

Rohingya from Burmese official records (Abstract) - Maung Bo Bo

Rohingya is the most contested identity in contemporary Burma where dozens of
ethnic identities have emerged throughout its complex history. A British travellers
record mentioned Rooinga at the end of the 18th century, as 'one of the native
groups of Arakan" who were Muslims (Mohammadens).
Upon independence from Britain, the name Rohingya re-emerged in the Burmese
official and public discourses, particularly in the 1950's, as Arakanese Muslim
leaders chose to identify themselves the Rohingya. The leaders of the Burma
Armed Forces and the post-independence civilian governments accepted the
Rohingya's choice of their own group identity. As a result, the Rohingya came to be
officially recognized by the state in Burma. The government set up a Rohingya
language service, alongside 3 other native languages of Burma, and, in 1961 began
broadcasting the Rohingya program 3 times a week on the country's sole national
radio station called Burma Broadcasting Service (BBS). The program was
terminated 2 years after the military took power. But all these developments fell
back in 1978 when the military socialist government launched an operation to
tackle war refugees from Bangladesh. Increasingly Burma's Rohingya population
faced greater restrictions as the state was stripping them of citizen rights. The
plight of the Rohingya became worse after 1988 when the military intelligence
service launched Islamophobic propaganda campaigns in general and stepped up
the persecution of the Rohingya amidst international outcry. Burma's successive
military leaderships since Ne Win have denied that the Rohingya were a part of the
country. Very recently,the Foreign Ministry, headed by the Nobel Peace Laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi, "requested" US Government not to use the term "Rohingya.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed that it was the policy of Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi not to recognize the term.
I use primary official sources as well as academic records to argue that the term
Rohingya in Burma had been officially used by the central governments.

Michael W. Charney
Michael W. Charney is Professor of Asian and Military History at SOAS, The
University of London, where he joined the faculty in 2001 after completing a PhD
dissertation on early modern Arakan at the University of Michigan in 1999 and a
two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the National University of Singapore
(1999-2001). He has published monographs on warfare in the premodern South
East Asian region (Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300-1900, 2004), the rise of
monastic, military, and ministerial elites and their impact on the religious and
intellectual life of the precolonial Burmese kingdom (Powerful Learning: Buddhist
Literati and the Throne in Burma's Last Dynasty, 1752-1885, 2006), and a history
of the twentieth century in Burma before and during the lengthy period of military
rule (A History of Modern Burma, 2009). His most recent work focuses on the role
of railways in war, premodern warfare across the Indian Ocean world, and South
East Asia during the Cold War.
State and Society in Arakan since the Fourteenth Century: From Inclusion to
Polarisation and Exclusion (Abstract) - Michael W. Charney
Arakan today is being depicted very much like any other part of lowland Myanmar,
part of a nation-state that today emphasises a Burman, Theravada Buddhist
religious, cultural and political heritage that has dominated the Irrawaddy Valley
from the classical period. Archaeological sites, texts, and other sources are being
remade or expunged to develop a historical record that emphasises an
unchallenged cultural and religious homogeneity to the region Arakan as part of
a greater Burma is an imaginary that has eased Arakans integration into the
Myanmar nation-state but has simultaneously undermined Arakanese society itself
and miscast an area of movement, inclusion, and immigration into one of stasis,
exclusion, and closure. This short presentation highlights some of the major
elements of this change, from a religious and culturally heterogeneous immigrant
society on the crossroads of Bengal and Burma to one that has been mis-imagined
by some as a sort of Theravada Buddhist Burman nativist bastion on the frontiers
of the Muslim world.

Daniel Feierstein
Professor Feierstein is a renowned genocide scholar, and his books and articles
have been critical in the qualification of the crimes committed in Argentina as
genocide, established by 9 different tribunals from 2006 on.
Professor Daniel Feierstein is a researcher at Argentinas National Scientific and
Technical Research Council (CONICET) and a senior lecturer at the National
University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), and the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).
He directs the UNTREF Centre for Genocide Studies, the first Genocide Studies
Research Center in Latin America, founded in 2007. He was also the founder of the
Genocide Chair at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in 2001.
Professor Feierstein is the author of several books on genocide, including: State
Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years (co-edited with Marcia
Esparza, Henry R. Huttenbach); Sobre la elaboracin del genocidio. Memorias y
Representaciones (Working through Genocide: Memories and Representations,

2012); Sobre la elaboracin del genocidio II: Juicios (Working through Genocide II:
Judgments, 2015); Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society Under Nazism
and Argentinas Military Juntas, 2014; Hasta que la muerte nos separe, 2005;
Genocidio: La administracin de la muerte en la modernidad, 2004; and Seis
estudios sobre genocidio, 2000.
His conceptual work on genocide was central to the development of Queen Mary
University of London International State Crime Initiatives research on the genocide
of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
Professor Feierstein previously served as the President of the International
Association of Genocide Scholars (2013-2015), and has been a consultant for the
United Nations on a number of projects on Human Rights. He was a Judge in
various sessions of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal dealing with the cases of Sri
Lanka (2010 and 2012) and Mexico (2014), among others.

Genocide as a Social Practice (Abstract) - Daniel Feierstein

This lecture will move beyond the common conception of genocide as mass killing,
developing instead an understanding of the phenomenon as a technology of power.
Through the machinery of networks of concentration camps, distributed
throughout the whole of society, terror spreads betrayal and mistrust in order to
break the solidarity and reciprocity necessary to create and reinforce social ties.
Drawing on some of the crucial insights of Raphael Lemkin (the Polish Jewish
lawyer who invented the term genocide), Professor Feierstein will discuss how and
why genocide can be usefully understood as a tool to destroy, transform and
reorganise collective identities. The focus on the destruction of identities as the
main objective of genocide instead of analyzing only the process of annihilation, is a
tool to comprehend the long-term consequences of genocide in a whole society. The
lecture will develop the different stages of the genocidal process from the
stigmatization of a group, through the harassment, isolation, systematic weakening
and annihilation and the different ways of symbolical enactment of the
consequences of the terror in the whole society in which genocide happened.

Penny Green
Professor Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation at Queen Mary
University of London, UK, and Founder and Director of the International State
Crime Initiative (ISCI), UK. She joined Queen Mary University in September 2014
following eight years as Professor of Law and Criminology at Kings College London.
Professor Green has published widely on state crime, resistance to state violence,
the genocide of Burma's natural disasters, Turkish criminal justice and politics,
transnational crime and asylum and forced migration.
She is, with Thomas MacManus and Alicia de la Cour Venning, the author of
Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar (2015)

Barbara Harrell-Bond
Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, OBE, Emerata Professor and Associate, is a legal
anthropologist who founded/directed the Refugee Studies Centre (1982-96).
Previously she was conducting research in West Africa from 1967-1982, while
employed by the Departments of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh &
University of Illinois-Urbana,USA, the Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden, Holland, & the
Faculty of Law, University of Warwick. On retirement from the RSC, she conducted
research in Kenya and Uganda (1997-2000), and was Honorary Adjunct Professor,
American University in Cairo (2000-2008). Barbara is also an awardee of the Franz
Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology awarded by the American
Anthropologist Association, and was awarded the Lucy Mair medal for applied
anthropology in 2014. She is now responsible for the information portal,
www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org that promotes legal assistance for refugees
around the world.

Barbara Harriss-White
Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies , Oxford
University and Emeritus Fellow and Co-ordinator South Asia Research Cluster,
Wolfson College, Oxford. A working lifetimes experience of teaching and
researching the political economy of South Asia through fieldwork, focussing on
rural development, the informal economy, Indias capitalist transformations and
aspects of poverty and deprivation. Current research is on waste and on natural
resource crimes.

Daw Khin Hla

Daw Khin Hla was born in 1953 in predominantly Rohingya region called
Buthidaung Township in Arakan State, now known as Rakhine State of Myanmar.
Her extended family included distinguished public servants and politicians who
served in high offices both pre- and post-independence Burma. Her grand-fatherin-law, Sultan Ahmed, served as a prominent MP in General Aung Sans
Constituent Assembly in 1947. She herself worked in the Ministry of Education as
a middle school teacher for more than 20 years. She and her husband, a township
officer in the Ministry of Cooperatives survived the first wave of persecution against
the Rohingya by the military government of General Ne Win in 1979.
Subsequently, they decided to leave Burma. Her immediate family are now
scattered on 3 different continents: N. America, Europe and Australia. She lives
in East London now.

She will discuss her first hand experience of being a persecuted Rohingya.

Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd
Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd (PhD Universit d Ottawa), human geographer, former
Director Centre of Development Studies, Edit Cowan University, Western Australia,
University Associate School of Land and Food University of Tasmania, discipline
geography, affiliated with the Asia Institute University Tasmania has conducted
research in and on Burma for over a decade on arbitrary confiscation of farmers
land.
She will discuss critically the international complicity in Burmas brutal internal
violence.
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
Azeem Ibrahim is an RAI Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford and
Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. He
completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an
International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and
a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world
leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the
European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the World
Economic Forum. He tweets @AzeemIbrahim

Nurul Islam
Nurul Islam was born in 1948 in northern Arakan/Rakhine State of Myanmar. He
studied law in Rangoon and London. He has long been involved in Rohingya
movement for the restoration of their rights and freedom in Myanmar. He has been
living in the U.K. since 2004. Nurul Islam is the current Chairman of the Arakan
Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), which is committed to pursuing a peaceful
political settlement of the Rohingya problem exploring all available avenues.
Summary of presentation by Nurul Islam at Oxford on 11 May 2016
Rohingya are being destroyed due to intolerant state policies and systematic
persecution. They have been rejected the right to exist in Myanmar. Since 2012,
series of state sponsored genocidal onslaughts were carried out against them and
other Muslims. Even the word Rohingya is blacklisted and not mentionable in the
country.
Despite democratic transitions, Rohingyas were excluded from 2014 UN sponsored
national census; their National Registration Cards (NRCs) and IDs were seized and
invalidated depriving them of voting rights and continue to be denied their legal
right to citizenship. Even NLD did not choose Muslim candidates as MPs. The Nazilike extremist Buddhist movements like 969 and Ma Ba Tha are doing colossal
damages to the Muslims.
Over 140,000 Rohingyas are still confined in squalid segregated semi-concentration
camps. In her 18 March report, Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee called upon the
NLD "to take immediate steps to put an end to the highly discriminatory
policies and practices against the Rohingya and other Muslim communities. On 23
March the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution urging the Myanmar

government to repeal discriminatory legislative and policy measures, to lift

restrictions on movement, and to intensify its efforts to address discrimination.
According to legal experts, Rohingya are facing slow but sure genocide. Now the
NLD government has an opportunity to improve the plight of the Rohingya, but
helping the Rohingya is not its priority.

The NLD government must uphold their Responsibility to Protect Rohingya and all
population, and hold accountable all perpetrators of human rights, including those
who have incited ethnic and religious intolerance and violence. It should abolish
the bias Rakhine Action Plan and end institutionalized discrimination against
Rohingya. It must allow unhindered humanitarian assistance to the needy people
in Rakhine state, and facilitate the safe and voluntary return of IDPs to their
communities, and must demonstrably improve the welfare of the Rohingya and
other ethnic and religious minorities. It must repeal 1982 Myanmar Citizenship
Law or amend it to conform to international human rights law and citizenship
standards and restore their citizenship and ethnic rights. The new
government's reform process must include constitutional reform that
addresses the needs of ethnic minorities, as well as the development of an
independent judiciary. The international community should urge the government to
develop a comprehensive reconciliation plan, including establishing a commission
of inquiry into crimes committed against the Rohingya; and neighbouring countries
should offer protection and assistance to Rohingya asylum seekers.

Dr Hla Kyaw
Dr. Hla Kyaw is born and raised in Maung Daw, Rakhine state, where thousands of
Rohingya have been persecuting on daily basis. After finishing high school in
Maung Daw, he was fortunate enough to be allowed to study Medicine in the
University of Medicine, Magwe, Myanmar. He graduated as a Medical doctor in
2007. He left the persecution in 2010, and currently living and working in exile in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The Rohingya Genocide: slow in nature and worse than previous ones, and what
could be done (Abstract) - Dr Hla Kyaw
We are suffering from no less a crime other than what Dr. Zarni et al. described as
a slow-burning genocide. As a victim of the genocide, I have a feeling that the
genocide we are suffering from is worse than the previous ones in the sense that: a)
It is slow in nature; therefore, there is victims psychological adaptation of the
suffering giving the perpetrators a chance to advance the genocide agenda
without a serious resistant from the victims. It is like people in the prison with bar
(physical prison) compared to people in the prison without bar (mental prison).
People in the prison without bar see their prison-hood, and would be serious to
liberate themselves by any means necessary, while the people in the mental prison
are unaware of their prison-hood, and therefore would not be serious enough for
their liberation; b) It is slow in nature; therefore, no external power is serious for
the victims' liberation from genocide although external power is well aware of the
seriousness of the suffering; c) Complete silence from the fellow citizens (including

politicians, scholars and ordinary citizens) of the country. Decades-long military

psychological warfare (propaganda)--Bangalization of Rohingya-- makes fellow
Burmese citizens (different ethnic groups) including Daw Aung San Su Kyi (DASSK)
to psychologically justify genocide of Rohingya. Consequently, Rohingya become
friendless from within. Therefore, we are totally friendless from within Burmese
society. d) DASSs, democratic icon, the Western powers darling, denial of right of
Rohingya to self-identify. To the best of my knowledge, genocide cannot be stopped
without external intervention (fitted ones with the context), and external powers are
showing no signs of seriousness. Therefore, we (scholars, researchers, and more
importantly journalists) need a global move like international BDS movement -- to
push, to make them feel obliged to act or shame external powers including
corporations for their inactions to stop slow-genocide. We need to harness
international solidarity from global citizens like Palestinian activists are doing.
Capacity building to the Rohingya activists would certainly help to professionally
express, write and report their sufferings to the global community, which would
draw international solidarity that could move global power to act. Organizing welldone research conference on Rohingya Genocide like today will surely shakes global
actor. Finally giving scholarly pressure to the current government esp. DASSK
could be of important.
Dr S. Saad Mahmood
As a physician with training in public health, Saad works with Zakat Foundation of
India in its response to natural disasters and 'complex emergencies' in India. He
has provided medical care at, and also fundraised for, a UN supported Rohingya
refugee camp in New Delhi run by Zakat Foundation. His research on the health
status of the Rohingya will be published later this year.
Saad is a physician at Harvard Medical School, Boston and is completing a
fellowship in Cardio-oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He graduated
from the Internal Medicine program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to
coming to Boston, he completed his medical degree, public health degree and
undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.
Dr S. Saad Mahmood's talk will focus on the health status of the Rohingya via
summation of the available data on this vulnerable population.

Thomas MacManus
Dr Thomas MacManus is a Postdoctural Research Fellow at ISCI and is based at
Queen Mary University of Londons School of Law. He holds a BA (Hons) in Law and
Accounting from the University of Limerick (2002), an LLM (with Distinction) in
International Law from the University of Westminster (2005) and a PhD in Law &
Criminology from Kings College London (2011). MacManus was admitted to the
New York State Bar in 2004 and the Role of Solicitors of Ireland in 2008. Following
three months of data collection in Burma/Myanmar in 2014/15, MacManus coauthored the ISCI Report on the situation facing the Rohingya - COUNTDOWN TO
ANNIHILATION: GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR.
MacManus will present and elaborate on elements of this report, which analyses
the persecution of the Rohingya against the six stages of genocide outlined by

Daniel Feierstein. The report concludes that the Rohingya have suffered the first
four of the six stages of genocide.

Ro Shwe Maung
A mechanical engineer by training, Ro Shwe Maung was born and raised in the
predominantly Rohingya region of Northern Arakan or Rakhine, Myanmar. He
was elected to Myanmar parliament in 2010 representing Buthidaung
Constituency, Rakhine State. As an MP he served as a member of Reform and
Modernization Assessment Committee of Pyithu Hluttaw and of Land Confiscation
Review Committee of Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Parliament) until his resignation
in 2015. Shwe Maung is Founder and President of AiPAD (Arakan Institute for
Peace and Development), Board Member of APHR (ASEAN Parliamentarians for
Human Rights) (www.aseanmp.org) and Founding Member of IPPFoRB
(International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief
(www.ippforb.com). He is currently exiled in the United States.
Some concrete ideas for ending Myanmars Persecution of the Rohingya: Summary by Ro Shwe maung
Ex-MP Ro Shwe Maung will share his eye-witness account of the destruction of
whole Rohingya and Kaman Muslim neighborhoods in June 2012 and suggests
concrete steps that the Aung San Suu Kyi government need to take to end
Myanmars Rohingya genocide including stopping all forms of persecution and
human rights violations against Rohingya minority, releasing all Rohingya Political
Prisoners, falsely imprisoned after the 2012 violence, resettle 140,000 Rohingya
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to their original house land and ending
segregration between Rakhine and Rohingya Communities.

Dr Ambia Perveen
Dr Ambia Perveen, MD, consultant pediatrician at Sankt Marien Hospital in
Dueren, Germany. Dr Perveen is a longstanding Rohingya activist, and lobby
member of the European Rohingya Council.
Dr Perveen will discuss her work on the vulnerabilities prevalent among the
Rohingya populations in terms of public health.

Tomas Ojea Quintana

Tomas Ojea Quintana is an Argentine Lawyer who worked at the Inter-American
Commission of Human Rights (OAS) and studied international human rights law
(LLM) at American University USA. He was human rights consultant for the
Interamerican Development Bank. He also worked as international consultant for
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bolivia. He was special adviser to
the Argentine Secretariat of Human Rights. He then worked as an attorney for the
argentine NGO "Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo", as consultant on sexual and
reproductive rights, and as adviser for the Human Rights Committee in Argentine

Congress. He was Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in Myanmar
(2008-2014). He taught human rights law at University of Buenos Aires, at
University for Peace in Costa Rican, and at the Diplomat Institute in Argentina

His presentation will address the question: Is the UN really convinced that
Rohingyas are the most persecuted minority in the world?

Amartya Sen (Pre-recorded presenter)

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of
Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of
Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of
Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University
Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and
Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University.
Amartya Sen has served as President of the Econometric Society, the American
Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International
Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now
its Honorary Advisor. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic
theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement,
decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies.
Amartya Sens books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and
include Choice of Techniques (1960), Growth Economics (1970), Collective Choice
and Social Welfare (1970), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), Commodities
and Capabilities (1987), The Standard of Living (1987), Development as Freedom
(1999), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006), The Idea of Justice
(2009), and (jointly with Jean Dreze) An Uncertain Glory: India and Its
Contradictions (2013).
Amartya Sens awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion
d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito
Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); Aztec Eagle (Mexico);
Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhauer Medal
(USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Matthew Smith (pre-recorded Presenter)

Matthew Smith is a founder and executive director of Fortify Rights and a 2014
Echoing Green Global Fellow. He previously worked with Human Rights Watch
(2011-2013), where he authored several reports on critical rights issues in
Myanmar and China. Matthew also served as a project coordinator and senior
consultant at EarthRights International (2005-2011). His work has exposed
wartime abuses and forced displacement, crimes against humanity, ethnic
cleansing, multi-billion dollar corruption, "development"-induced abuses, and
other human rights violations. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall

Street Journal, CNN, and other outlets. Before moving to Southeast Asia in 2005,
Matthew worked with Kerry Kennedy of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice &
Human Rights on Speak Truth to Power. He also worked as a community organizer
in New York City and as an emergency-services caseworker in Mobile, Alabama. He
has an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Le Moyne College.

Keynote Speaker's bio

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor and Founder of the Institute for
Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. She was educated at
the University of Calcutta, and came to Cornell University in 1961 to finish doctoral
work. Her books are Myself Must I Remake (1974), In Other Worlds (1987), The
Post-Colonial Critic (1988), Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993), A Critique of
Postcolonial Reason (1999), Death of a Discipline (2003), Other Asias (2008), An
Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), and Readings (2014). She
has translated Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1976; the 40th anniversary
edition, re-translated with an added Afterword, has caused considerable
controversy within the discipline) and Mahasweta Devi's Imaginary Maps (1994),
Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999), Ramproshad Sens Song for Kali: A
Cycle(2000) 18th century hymns to Kali that undoes institutional Hinduism; and
Chotti Munda and his Arrow (2002). She has received honorary doctorates from
the Universities of Toronto, London, Rovira I Virgili, Rabindra Bharati, San Martn,
St. Andrews, Vincennes Saint-Denis, Yale, Ghana-Legon, Presidency University,
and Oberlin College. She won the Kyoto Prize (2012), and the Padma Bhushan
(2013). She is active in the International Women's Movement, the struggle for
ecological justice; and has run six elementary schools among the landless illiterate
in India for 30 years. Her influence has been felt in Art and Architecture, Law and
Political Science, in curatorial practices. She works for Humanities education as
the best lasting weapon to combat contemporary disaster; and is engaged in
harnessing the humanities for Development with colleagues at the University of
Ghana-Legon, Kwara State University in Ilorin, Nigeria, and the University of
Nairobi. This work is also effective In her membership of the Global Agenda
Committee on Values of the World Economic Forum.

Why the world must listen to the Rohingya (Abstract) by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
As an activist from the region, I will be giving witness rather than offer fresh
information for public awareness. I will emphasize why this is a genocide. I will
suggest that all of us need to go beyond passive digital intervention because of
information overload. Whatever our area of involvement, we must now situate the
oppression of the Rohingyas within the global map of injustice. I hope to learn
from the experts in the area during my brief stay in Oxford.
Maya Tudor
Dr. Maya Tudors research investigates the origins of stable, democratic and
effective states across the developing world, with a particular emphasis upon South
Asia. She was educated at Stanford University (BA in Economics) and Princeton
University (MPA in Development Studies and PhD in Politics and Public Policy).

She has held Fellowships at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs and Oxford Universitys Centre for the Study of Inequality and
Democracy.
Her book, 'The Promise of Power' (Cambridge University Press, 2013), was based
upon her 2010 dissertation, which won the American Political Science Associations
Gabriel Almond Prize for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics. The book
investigates the origins of India and Pakistans puzzling regime divergence in the
aftermath of colonial independence. She is also the author of articles in
Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, and Party Politics.
Before embarking on an academic career, Maya worked as a Special Assistant to
Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz at the World Bank, at UNICEF, in the United
States Senate, and at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. A dual
citizen of Germany and the United States, she has lived and worked in Bangladesh,
Germany, France, India, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and
the United States.
She will reflect comparatively on the mobilization of ethnic nationalisms and
racisms to shed some critical light on the case of Myanmars persecution of the
Rohingya people.

Ro Tun Khin
Ro Tun Khin was born and brought up in Arakan State, Burma. His grandfather
was a Parliamentary Secretary during democratic Period of Burma. Although wellestablished and respected, alongside a million other ethnic Rohingya, Tun Khin
was rendered stateless by a 1982 nationality law that excluded the Rohingya from
a list of groups considered indigenous and therefore eligible for Burmese
nationality. He is current President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK which
has been a leading voice for Rohingya people around the world. Tun Khin has
briefed officials on the continuing human rights violations committed against
Rohingya populations at the US Congress and State Department, British
Parliament, Swedish Parliament, European Union Parliament and Commission, the
UN Indigenous Forum in NY and the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Tun Khin has been a featured speaker on Rohingya rights for the BBC, Sky Al
Jazeera, and many other outlets. He has also published opinion pieces in the
Huffington Post, Democratic Voice of Burma and Mizzima
Burmese Media outlets. Tun Khin received a leadership award from Refuges
International Washington DC in April 2015 for his relentless effort working on
Rohingya issue.
He will discuss first-hand knowledge of the 6-methods Myanmar governments have
used systematically to destroy his Rohingya people: laws which discriminate
against us; incitement and encouragement of hatred against us; to disenfranchise
us from any political representation; to starve us by stopping economic activity and
restricting humanitarian access; to use state violence against us; and to encourage
and allow non-state violence against us

Maung Zarni
Zarni or Maung Zarni has been a Burmese activist, organizer, scholar and educator
for almost 30 years. He is an outspoken critic of his countrys autocratic rulers,
an opponent of Buddhist racism and hate speech and an advocate for minority
rights. In the last 4 years, he has developed and run a genocide education program
for Burmese religious leaders through the Sleuk Rith Institute of Cambodia and
organized three previous international conferences on the Rohingya persecution at
the London School of Economics (LSE), Harvard University, and the Norwegian
Nobel Institute. In April 2015, Zarni delivered the Annual Owen Kupferschmid
Memorial Lecture at Boston College School of Law on the Rohingya genocide. For
his contributions to global interfaith social movements through a combination of
scholarship and activism Zarni was awarded the Cultivation of Harmony award
by the worlds oldest interfaith organization, the Parliament of the Worlds
Religions, in 2015. He has written extensively on Burma and held leadership,
teaching, research or visiting fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation,
Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, LSE, Institute of Education at the University of
London, Chulalongkorn University, the Universiti Malaya and the Sleuk Rith
Institute of Cambodia. He holds an MA from the University of California and a PhD
in the sociology and politics of education at the University of Wisconsin where he
developed a keen interest in the rise of Fascism and ideological movements. With
Professor Daniel Feierstein, Zarni served as a Judge on the Permanent Peoples
Tribunal on Sri Lanka (2013).

Why do Buddhists kill? And How? (Abstract) by Zarni

Unlike the increasingly mainstreamed view of Muslims and Islam as violent and
extreme, the world holds a rose-tinted view of the world of Buddhists. Based on
my on-going multi-year research on the systematic persecution and popular
violence and hatred of the Rohingya minority in particular and racisms in Buddhist
South East Asia, I will argue that the Orientalist views of Buddhists is deeply
problematic and warrants a rigorous, empirical examination. A crucial component
in the process of Buddhist killing any "Anthropological Other" involves Buddhist
killers, monks and laymen and -women alike, performing a mental acrobatics
whereby they construct their targets, other Muslims or Rohingya Muslims as an
existential threat'. I will stress that episodes of large scale violence are both
organized and organic. Finally, I will argue that they are a direct outcome of an
evolving symbiosis between the state and the society at large and an interface
between history, economy and culture or ideology.

Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing,
3 December 2015 (New York Times)