The Public Loves Myanmars New War

on Muslims

BY POPPY MCPHERSON-NOVEMBER 10, 2016

On a cool night last November, a euphoric crowd surged around
the headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyis National League for
Democracy (NLD) in Yangon. Supporters danced and waved flags
as result after result was announced from a digital billboard. It
was a landslide. Amid the cheers, a man named Than Htay told
me he how he had waited decades to vote freely.
For the first time in more than half a century of a brutal junta,
civilians would be in charge of the country. But a year after the
vote, its not clear just who is in charge in Myanmar and
Myanmars military, once despised, is riding a new wave of

support.
The reason? An enemy propped up for decades by the army has
made a resurgence in the public imagination, if not in reality. The
military is restoring its political power by returning to its war
footing against Rohingya Muslims, a persecuted minority who for
years have been loathed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh,
despite their presence in Myanmar dating back centuries.
The Rohingya have been discriminated against for generations,
but the persecution has grown particularly intense in recent
years.
It was dictatorial Gen. Ne Win who, after seizing power in a coup
in 1962, pushed through the 1974 Emergency Immigration Act
and 1982 Citizenship Law that stripped Rohingya of their
citizenship.
In Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads, Benedict Rogers quotes a
former government minister as saying the junta chief had an
unwritten policy to get rid of Muslims, Christians, Karens and
other ethnic peoples, in that order.
Government prejudice has been mixed with demagogic hatred,
with the Rohingya portrayed as foreigners and, more recently,
vehicles for the spread of jihad. In the era of the Islamic State,
existing suspicions have become bound up with a global narrative
of Islamist extremism. Nationalist Buddhist monks like Ashin
Wirathu have framed Islam as an existential threat to Myanmar,
stoking fears that Muslims are both outbreeding the Buddhist
majority and connecting to international terrorist groups.
The Myanmar military now claims to be facing an organized rebel
insurgency among the Rohingya, chiefly in the western province
of Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. Its true that the far-flung
state has been home to various insurgencies, both Buddhist and

Muslim. In the past year, the Arakan Army rebels, comprised of

Rakhine Buddhists, has fought several skirmisheswith the military.
In the early hours of Oct. 9, scores of assailants armed with
swords and pistols attacked three border posts in Maungdaw
Township, northern Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. Nine
police officers were killed and five soldiers then died pursuing the
attackers. Both the authorities and the public blamed the
Rohingya, with the government accusing the attackers of being
Rohingya Muslim terrorists trained by the Taliban, citing evidence
obtained possibly by force after soldiers captured some of
the alleged culprits. In a later interview, Suu Kyi backpedaled,
saying the claims came from only one person and may not be
reliable.
The subsequent crackdown was swift and, according to multiple
accounts, brutal. There have been accusations of arbitrary
arrests, burned villages, extrajudicial killings, and rape.
All have been met with blanket denials, not only by the
government but by a public already defensive about international
criticism of Myanmars treatment of the Rohingya. Jingoistic
articles have dominated state media and Myanmar-language
Facebook. Insurgents arrested! (Bedraggled-looking men in a
police lineup.) Guns seized! (Decades-old hunting rifles).
For the military, the attack came at a convenient moment, as
other long-standing conflicts with the Kachin rebels along the
Chinese border, and with the Taang Liberation Army in Shan
State are flaring up again. When 30 soldiers were killed this
May in fighting with the Arakan Army, another minority but not
Muslim militia in Rakhine, the military didnt comment. But
following the Maungdaw attack, the authorities have been
warning of a Muslim invasion and promising to arm Buddhist
civilian militias. The plan has fueled fears of a repeat of 2012
violence when Rakhine Buddhist mobs allegedly facilitated by

local authorities set upon Rohingya Muslim communities,

burning down homes and killing scores. For the first time since
the Kokang crisis of early 2015, the military is getting strong
public support for its actions, commented Richard Horsey, a
Yangon-based political analyst, referring to a spasm of fighting in
the north last year which killed more than 100 soldiers and rallied
support for the armed forces.
In the wake of the Maungdaw attacks, Rakhine Buddhists marched
around villages chanting their support for the army, while leading
Myanmar journalists questioned why Rohingya were
uncooperative with the military. A reporter who gave an
interview to the New York Times saying he had witnessed soldiers
shooting unarmed Rohingya later retracted his comments in a
Facebook post that was shared thousands of times. What
pressures he was under to do so remain unknown.
Sittwe, the Rakhine State capital, is an hours flight from Yangon
and five hours away from the operation zone in Maungdaw, which
is off limits to foreign journalists.In the dusty coastal town, its
easy to forget how much Myanmar has changed since 2011, when
the military launched reforms. The junta apparatus is everywhere,
from the hotel whiteboards that listing the names of every guest
and their room numbers, to the secret police and informers.
Checkpoints stand outside derelict mosques, guards watching for
long-gone congregants. Theyre no longer needed, as most of the
Muslim population were driven out of their homes
following clashes with the Rakhine Buddhist majority in 2012,
pelted with fruit by local Rakhines they trudged to the internment
camps on the outskirts of the city where they have been confined
ever since.
Inside the camps, the mood is bleak. In Maw Thi Nyar camp, Noor
Islam, a middle-aged Rohingya community leader, told me he
hadnt heard from his sister from Maungdaw in more than a week.
She told me that her neighbor had already been killed, he said.

During their last conversation, she said, Just pray for us and just
pray for Maungdaw.
He and others were convinced the rebel movement had been
fabricated by the military. Currently, the Myanmar military is
implementing their policy, he said as a small crowd gathered to
listen in. Im just a simple man, so I dont understand, but Im
hearing from my grandmother and grandfather and my father
because this is my ancestral land that the Myanmar
government is trying to ethnically cleanse these people, torturing
people, eliminating people, doing such bad things to these
people.
The next morning, two Muslim men said that they had been
fishing in a local river a few days earlier when they were detained
and beaten by the navy. One of them, Abdul Amin, lifted his
longyi, the long cloth worn by Myanmar men, to reveal purplish
red marks on the backs of his legs. We were just taking a rest
after we pulled in the net and ate our dinner at 8 p.m., he said.
At that time the navy came to us and just bound our hands and
beat us with a stick, made us lie down and beat us with a wooden
stick.
As we spoke, other Muslims gathered around, nodding in
agreement as Abdul Amin said, Its like its government policy to
kill people.
There is no evidence that the Myanmar military faked the murder
of their own border police. But few doubt that their actions over
recent years may have nourished an appetite for retaliation.
Matthew Smith, CEO and founder of Fortify Rights, a
nongovernmental organization, described the militarys divide
and conquer strategy in the region to rally the support of the
regions majority Buddhist population. It has an uncanny ability
to instigate conflict between ethnic groups, and its done that to
great and deadly effect in Rakhine, he said. We havent seen

evidence that the attacks on police were a false flag event but its
clear the military is using the situation to shore up favorable
sentiment.
The allegations [about military atrocities] emerging from
northern Rakhine State are still difficult to verify given very
limited international and media access to date. But they are
broadly consistent with allegations that are heard from other
military operations zones, including in northern Shan and Kachin,
Horsey, the political analyst, commented, referring to two other
long-standing conflicts between the military and minority groups.
But many local Buddhists dont want to see a return to violence of
any kind. Rakhine Buddhists who had fled the fighting against the
suspected Rohingya insurgents in the north and were staying in a
makeshift refugee camp inside a stadium in late October said that
they had been friends with Muslims back in their home villages
and met up for religious ceremonies.
Ronan Lee, a doctoral candidate at Melbournes Deakin University
who has done research in northern Rakhine, said that despite the
events of 2012, many Muslim and Buddhist communities in
northern Rakhine State were keen to work together and they
understood that both their communities were better off when
there was peace and trade between them. Despite the states
natural resources, keeping Muslim and Buddhist communities
separate and restricting Muslims ability to travel has damaged
the states economy.
As the militarys popularity has surged following the attacks, the
civilian governments muted response has left it looking
ineffectual. Shortly after the attacks, State Counsellor and de
facto government leader Suu Kyi flew to India. Last week, she was
in Japan. She has not visited Rakhine and neither has her
president, Htin Kyaw. According to Reuters, the Ministry of
Information submitted a list of questions about the armys
response that went unanswered. There are really two

governments in Myanmar: the civil government and the military

government, said Widney Brown, director of programs at
Physicians for Human Rights, which recently released a report on
northern Rakhine.
The military retains control of vital institutions including the
ministries of defense, home affairs, the police, and immigration.
Thus, there is a very strong military presence along the land
borders, including with Bangladesh, Brown said. This control
coupled with concerns about insurgencies means that the military
government, not the civilian government, is really in control in
northern Rakhine State.
The months leading up to the Maungdaw attacks had brought
rare, civilian-led progress in the search for peace in the state. In
the face of staunch opposition from the military, the government
paved the way for an independent Rakhine commission, headed
by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, to conduct
investigations and file an advisory report. The recommendations
are due in late 2017.
Now that enterprise looks distinctly shaky. The naming of Annan
to head up a state advisory commission is an attempt to shed
light on abuses and set the stage for some reconciliation, said
Brown. However, the ability of the commission to have an impact
was already limited, as it is merely advisory and the recent
violence in northern Rakhine State may have cost the commission
any opportunity to have an impact.
More disturbing than the suggestion that the civilian government
is powerless against the military is the idea that they tacitly
approve. Nobody really knows what Suu Kyi thinks of the
Rohingya, although she has often been criticized for her failure to
act. There is also evidence that other senior NLD officials are
deeply hostile.

After the October attacks, state media, which is run by the

civilian-led Ministry of Information, has carried opinion pieces
condemning fabricated allegations of human rights abuses by
the military and accused journalists of being hand in glove with
terrorists. They have referred to Rohingya as thorns.
On Facebook, Zaw Htay, a spokesman for the government, singled
out a journalist at the national English-language newspaper, the
Myanmar Times, for her reporting on alleged military rapes. We
support and advise government to take legal action against [the
Times] and those who are responsible for fabricating false news,
read one of the many comments. The reporter was fired,
reportedly following calls to the paper by Zaw Htay, a former
soldier who served in the former military-backed administration
but was kept on by Suu Kyi.
A few days ago, Zaw Htay confidently said the government and
army were collaborating on the crisis. And [they have] also the
same policy on it.
Additional reporting by Aung Naing Soe.
Myanmar soldiers on patrol in Maungdaw, Rakhine State, on
October 21, 2016. Photo credit: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images
Posted by Thavam