Khonoma is a village of Angami Nagas. The Angamis are a major Naga ethnic group who were the first of the Nagas to come into contact with the British. The Angamis are known for building terraced fields on hill slopes. Like most of Nagaland, most of them are now Christians, the vast majority now belonging to the American Baptist Church.

What I found remarkable, reading Charles’s book, is the success of Khonoma’s reconciliation process among clans and families in the village. Conflict began within the village with the British occupation of Nagaland and the subsequent handover to the Government of India in 1947. Some clans and families accepted British and Indian rule, started working with or in the state apparatus, while others resisted or rebelled. 

Nagas had obtained a promise from the British that their land would become autonomous, but that promise was lost when the Government of India took over. This caused a divide; some Nagas thought that they needed Indian support before they could create their own state and infrastructure, while others believed they should fight for independence from the start. This divide led to violence that engulfed the village. Fast forward to 2000, and over the course of ten years, the Khonoma Public Commission facilitated face-to-face meetings between perpetrators’ families and victims’ families. The reconciliation process addressed 22 of the killings, decades of blood feuds and deep clan divisions, leading to forgiveness, restitution and renewed unity. We asked Charles Chasie what made this possible.

Roberta Campani: Explain the conflict that happened in Khonoma and why this made the reconciliation process necessary? How did it begin? How did it unfold?

Charles Chasie: Khonoma had long been a warrior village whose clans were bound by codes of honor in which the duty of revenge passed down generations without time limit. This tradition of revenge tore apart the very fabric of the Naga national movement. When Angami Zapu Phizo and Theyiechüthie Sakhrie — both from Khonoma, both believers in Naga sovereignty — fell out over means rather than ends, the village found itself at the epicenter of a conflict that was at once political and intensely personal. When Sakhrie was abducted and killed in January 1956, this became the first fratricidal killing of leaders in the Naga national movement history, triggering ancient instincts and splitting the Khonoma into armed camps along clan and khel (cluster of clans) lines.

What followed were years of mutual siege, displacement and accumulating grief. The Indian Army burned Khonoma to the ground more than once. Those who went underground starved in the forests, and those who remained behind faced blockade and harassment. When the fighting subsided, the four khels did not return together but settled in separate locations, living effectively as four villages for nearly a decade. The wounds did not heal with time. It was only when a younger generation, tired of having their elders remind them of hatreds they had not chosen, asked to be given their future back, that the village resolved to face what it had buried.

Roberta Campani: What triggered Khonoma’s need for reconciliation after such a long and bloody conflict?

Charles Chasie: The immediate trigger for reconciliation in Khonoma was a request made by the young men of the village asking the elders to “Give us our future.” In the wake of the Naga National Movement — as the struggle for autonomy/independence from India came to be known — and the resulting division, many intra-village killings had taken place, which continued to poison the life of the village over many decades. Every time the young people wanted to do things together as fellow villagers, they were reminded of old enmities. 

Over time, the young became fed up with this continued bitterness and wanted the elders to heal these divisions. The village elders felt they could not ignore such a request from the younger generations. This led to a three-day seminar on the theme Healing the Soul of Khonoma. This seminar enabled the participants to take a frank look at where the village stood. The areas of division were drawn up, and the young men wrote to the village authorities to help heal these divisions. The authorities set up the Khonoma Public Commission (KPC) to go into each of these divisions with the objective of achieving healing and reconciliation through forgiveness so that the future of the village could be secured.

Roberta Campani: The KPC took on 22 cases of killings, plus numerous other instances of social divisions. What surprised you most about how people responded when they finally sat face-to-face after decades of enmity? Can you describe the process and the reconciliation sessions?

Charles Chasie: We, the members of the KPC, were representing our individual clans as well. We sat down with our clansmen who had either committed or suffered wrongs to hear their stories. In each case of wrongdoing, KPC members would examine the past with the involvement of clan members themselves. In other words, KPC members who met a victim’s family included those who were from the victim’s clan. Likewise, those meeting a perpetrator’s family included KPC members representing the perpetrator’s clan.

The NPC reviewed each case thoroughly, examining the background, the details of the events and the legacy passed down. Where actual perpetrators or victims were no longer alive — in some cases, about half a century had elapsed since the events — the stories relied on the testimonies of women and elders who knew what had happened in the past. In each case, the story would be reviewed minutely with the family concerned. Only with their readiness and full consent would the case be taken to the next step.

The KPC also met and reviewed each case to see if the stories from the two opposing families found commonality. In the event of common ground, expression of genuine sorrow and readiness to forgive, the KPC would proceed to set up meetings of the concerned families for reconciliation. Usually, the KPC would facilitate meetings in the family home of the victim. We prayed together before kicking off such meetings.

When families of victims and perpetrators met, each would tell their side of the story. Often, such a retelling was not necessary, as the KPC members would have informed each party of the other side’s story, and an expression of sorrow was enough. The perpetrator’s family would ask for forgiveness and the victim’s family, in turn, would pronounce forgiveness. The two families would then have a cup of tea together, which symbolized a full and proper reconciliation. In Khnoma’s social code, partaking of food or drinks together for the two families was taboo because of the family feud. A cup of tea in this context means much more than mere tea. In fact, it is an outcome of a peace process and symbolizes the end of a simmering feud.

At such meetings, both families signed a simple written agreement that was drafted by the KPC, declaring an end to the feud and a promise not to raise the issue again. KPC members representing both families/clans would vouch for their family/clan members and bring closure to the feud. Traditionally, one’s word was enough in Naga society. The KPC took the extra step of a written agreement to ensure the peace settlement was binding. We would end the meeting with another prayer together, asking God’s blessings for one another.

The process usually took many meetings, both at the family/clan levels and at the KPC level. Sometimes, the process took several years, especially when the concerned perpetrators/victims were dead and the fog of time had made their stories unclear. Yet what usually stood out in our reconciliation process was that everyone demonstrated goodwill. Once people sat face-to-face, there were usually no surprises, and the final formal act of reconciliation took place smoothly. They usually shook hands. Where those reconciling were Christians, they sometimes exchanged the Bible as well.

The experience was different for each reconciliation. For me, the genuine act of contrition and the deep desire of each family to leave behind a legacy of peace stood out, especially given the fact that these families had done unspeakable things to one another in the past. It took them tremendous courage to squarely confront past facts and painstakingly examine them to ensure a better future freed from the toxic legacies of bygone feuds.

Roberta Campani: You write about how the traditions of Khonoma Village made it almost impossible to reconcile issues such as clan feuds. But you mention other traditions that were helpful and how the KPC drew on these to begin the reconciliation process. What were some of these customs and traditions?

Charles Chasie: Although killings and clan feuds were never reconciled because vengeance was considered a filial duty, the notion of reconciliation always existed in Khonoma. As a community-based society, people in Khonoma practiced forgiveness in daily life. 

In Khonoma, social ostracism instead of laws or the police is the main way norms are enforced. The of being excluded from social, economic and civic life is very real. In the past, such was the high level of trust among the Angami Nagas of Khonoma that homes had no locks on doors, the village had no jails and family granaries were often outside village precincts because there was no fear of theft.

The Angamis lived for their progeny and future generations. The family tree was key, and people did what they could to keep that tree healthy. Angamis would inherit their home and fields from their father, but these were to be held in trust for future generations. The Angamis could not sell them. Villagers could use their homes and fields to make a living and feed their families. There was an expectation from Angami villagers to improve both their homes and their fields for the benefit of their inheritors. This sense of immovable multigenerational property not only gave Khonoma Angamis a sense of belonging but also identity. This strong sense of identity and community made reconciliation possible.

Furthermore, Khonoma Angamis are devout Christians, and religion forms the warp and woof of life. Villagers say the on a daily basis, in which they ask God to forgive their trespasses and promise to “forgive them that trespass against us.” This facilitated reconciliation as well.

In addition to their Christian faith, pre-Christian beliefs helped with reconciliation, too. Khonoma Angamis believe in life after death. Per tradition, those who live a good life are rewarded by becoming shining stars in the night sky. Living a good life has great rewards in the afterlife. So, forgiveness and reconciliation are good deeds. 

In a nutshell, a strong sense of community, the Christian faith and traditional beliefs all helped Khonoma Angamis achieve reconciliation. 

Roberta Campani: Traditional Angami culture required blood vengeance: “life for life” with no time limit. Yet Khonoma villagers broke this cycle. Did Christianity help in breaking this cycle of vengeance, which traditionally had been held to be a sacred duty?

Charles Chasie: It is true that traditionally, vengeance was considered sacred and a filial duty that was passed down the generations from father to son. British colonials compared the Angami blood feuds to Corsican vendettas or worse. 

[Roberta Campani’s Note: The Corsican vendetta was a deeply entrenched tradition of inter-family and inter-clan blood revenge on the island of Corsica, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. A killing obligated the victim’s family to kill in return, which would then oblige the other family to do the same, and so on. These cycles could persist for generations and devastate entire communities. The Corsican tradition became so notorious across Europe that the word “vendetta” (originally just the Italian/Corsican word for “revenge”) became synonymous in English with this specific kind of prolonged, hereditary blood feud. By the 19th century, it was a stock reference in European writing — Prosper Mérimée wrote about it and so did Alexandre Dumas — so very much part of the cultural vocabulary of British colonial officers.]

However, it is important to note that reconciliation did exist in Angami culture. It was extremely rare, though, and only occurred after the intervention of a third party, usually after both sides had exhausted themselves! 

As mentioned above, Christianity helped, but so did tradition. At the KPC, we drew on both faith and tradition to end the culture of vendetta.

Roberta Campani: You describe a crucial moment — the village-wide day of silence in August 2004, when even the animals seemed to fall quiet. What shift did that silence cause among the people of Khonoma that made reconciliation possible?

Charles Chasie: “Speak Lord, for Thy Servant Heareth” is the prayer of Samuel in the Bible. There is a certain quality to prayerful, or even reflective, silence that only practitioners understand. Explanations cannot capture the effect of reflective silence to those who do not cultivate the practice. 

In August 2004, we observed a day of silence, and it had a profound effect. “Even the animals seemed to sense something solemn was happening and had fallen quiet,” said one villager after another. 

There were cases of individuals being moved by the silence to put things right in their own lives, things that did not necessarily fall within the mandate of the KPC. For some, it was just a period of quiet repose and nothing more. For others, it was a time to renew their faith. People did not work in the fields, did not talk to strangers and spent time in communion with God. But what seemed clear was that this collective silence set a certain mood in the community, creating an openness where people were willing to do what was right instead of trying to find excuses or justifications for past actions. 

The apology of Sebi Dolie, the eldest son of the Dolie Clain, is a case in point. 

Roberta Campani: Tell us more about Sebi Dolie, an 88-year-old, nearly blind man taking moral responsibility for his clan’s role in the assassination of the legendary leader Theyiechuthie Sakhrie. Sebi’s apology on behalf of his clan was pivotal. What enabled him to do what political leaders often refuse to do?

Charles Chasie: Sebi Dolie’s time of quiet has already been described in the book, Healing the Soul of Khonoma, in his own words. On the morning of the period of silence, Sebi later told a younger friend, when he got up and opened his door, he noticed “the silence and the absence of the pigs, chicken, dogs, etc., usually scavenging for any eatables lying around. He felt goose bumps and his hair standing on end, and he thought God had surely come down to our village today.” With this thought, Sebi went to the nearby church to pray and reflect. He also decided to rededicate his life to God.

The relationship between Sebi’s clan, called Dolie, and the Sakhrie clan had become estranged ever since Theyiechuthie Sakhrie, or T. Sakhrie, was assassinated in January 1956. T. Sakhrie was the general secretary of the Naga National Council (NNC) while Phizo of Dolie clan was the president. The NNC fought for Naga self-determination. Sakhrie was widely acknowledged as the ideologue of the movement, while Phizo was the charismatic figure who managed to establish direct emotional touch with the people. 

Sadly, their beliefs in the means to achieve the Naga goal differed. Sakhrie was a staunch believer in nonviolence, while Phizo was more focused on keeping up the momentum of the Naga struggle by using arms to fight. At a meeting in the village, Phizo described Sakhrie as a hurdle to the Naga goal. Sebi, who had witnessed this as a young man, had felt Phizo had gone too far. When Sakhrie was assassinated by unknown gunmen, people recalled Phizo’s words. Phizo, even as the president of the NNC, failed to own his moral responsibility for Sakhrie’s killing. Sakhrie’s clan had already decided to forgive his killers, but the silence from Phizo and the rest of the Dolie clan prevented proper rapprochement between the two clans. 

Now, fifty years later, as the eldest in the Dolie clan, Sebi felt it was his responsibility to set things right. Note that Khonoma also has the institution of the khel, a cluster of clans, and comprises three khels. At a meeting of their khel, Sebi expressed that he would have felt exactly what the Sakhries had felt all this time. He not only apologized but also asked to be told, in friendship, of any unspoken hurts his clan may have caused. Sitting in the same meeting was the eldest person from the Sakhrie clan, who got up and said, “Sebi, I have to shake your hand. We have stopped thinking your side will say anything like this that you have said today.” 

This magnanimous gesture of shaking hands by the two eldest persons from the embittered clans and khels rolled away years of bitterness. Later, when the eldest person from the Sakhrie clan was asked about the incident, he replied, â€ÂŮľ±łŮłÜłú±đ,” meaning that is exactly what happened.

What may need to be mentioned here is that the matter of Sakhrie’s assassination had also led to the first division among the Naga people and in the NNC. The rapprochement in the matter of Sakhrie’s killing, thus, was not only an inter-clan or intra-village matter but had wider ramifications. Later, Khonoma village put up a stone memorial for Sakhrie in the village, which was unveiled by the president of the Naga Hoho, a federation of Naga tribes from four Indian states, namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, and some parts of Myanmar.   

Roberta Campani: You write that reconciliation worked in Khonoma but has failed elsewhere in Nagaland. What specific conditions or particular choices made Khonoma different?

Charles Chasie: There was nothing especially different about Khonoma except the collective determination of villagers to put the past behind them. Some other villages had also tried reconciliation in their own way, but most had failed. What made Khonoma succeed was that villagers completely rooted out the causes of hate and bitterness so that division and vendetta never reappeared again.

Today, Nagas are devout Christians, and Christianity is all about reconciliation between God and man. Sadly, Christians often have an inadequate understanding of reconciliation. One easy example is the saying, “forgive and forget,” which is often used as a mere punchline. By removing contrition and restitution, which are vital parts of reconciliation, this saying thwarts true reconciliation. For that, there has to be genuine forgiving and a clear sense of being forgiven. If somebody is not sorry, where is the point of forgiveness? 

As Nichaloas Frayling has pointed out, such forgiveness is bad theology and does not happen in real life. People can forgive, but they do not forget. Neither are they meant to. Instead, Frayling recommends “forgive and remember” (pardon and peace) so that the same mistake is not repeated.

Also, quite frequently, many who pray to God do little or nothing to further their own prayers. As I pointed out earlier, the Lord’s Prayer says, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If you pray for peace and leave it to God alone, peace will not fall from heaven unless you do your part in putting right the wrong and upholding justice. The difference between Khonoma and other villages is the fact that people here had the courage to face the past and set things right so that future generations will not have to face the same problems again. Thus, a legacy of peace won the day.  

In Khonoma, we experimented with one more step. The people not only reflected upon the mistakes they made, or the wrongs they suffered, but they also reflected on when and how they might have provoked others to do wrongs to them. This exercise in empathy helped the people to walk in the shoes of the other person!   

Roberta Campani: Every conflict feels unique to those who are trapped in it, yet you suggest Khonoma’s experience holds lessons beyond Nagaland. What would you say to communities elsewhere, whether in Northeast India, Myanmar or beyond, who are trapped in cycles of revenge and counter-revenge?

Charles Chasie: True, every conflict is different, as are the cultures of the people who find themselves trapped in various conflicts. This is why we should be very careful about passing quick comments or judgments. But human nature is also the same everywhere. It is only the trappings of modernity or what have you that are different. I must be able to recognize that I have the same abilities to commit the heinous crimes that others have committed. Such realizations should make us humble. For instance, the colonial British came with their canons and ability to kill in great numbers from a distance, behaving as if everything belonged to them. Seeing our spears and daos (machete), they called us “barbaric” because they felt superior.

In the story of the British Empire, colonial forces trampled upon the rights of others and killed large numbers. Our people were killed indiscriminately with no sense of who or what was right or wrong. The of 1879 is a classic example of British oppression. Yet we Nagas have to remember that we have the same human capacity to inflict violence and oppression.

Whether it is Khonoma or Palestine or Ukraine, human suffering is the same. What worked here, I believe, will work elsewhere too. If you are willing to forgive and actually take steps to do so, you may find that your enemy, too, is only human! Sadly, the perspectives we see in the world today are topsy-turvy. People demand respect and subservience from others. The saying that there is enough in the world for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed is almost a cliche, but, unfortunately, too real. It is this lust for revenge, power and greed that we have to avoid.

In the context of reconciliation, Maya Angelou’s message that “history despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived” is true, but I would add that history faced with courage need not be lived again. This worked for us, the people of Khonoma. I am confident it will work for others, too, who are willing to try it.

I end with a poignant story about a man from Khonoma village, who had decided and even attempted to exact vengeance for his cousin’s killing. After agonizing for many months, he said, “If I can have the courage to kill a man, why can’t I also have the courage to love him enough to make him a different man?” This man then went to his intended victim and asked forgiveness for his bitterness. The two went on to become friends. In a nutshell, attaining the courage to forgive is the challenge for every man of good conscience.

The uniqueness of a grassroots-led reconciliation in Khonoma reconciliation

The Khonoma experience resonates within a broader global tapestry of truth and reconciliation efforts. Similar efforts include South Africa’s landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) under Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Liberia’s post-civil war healing process; Rwanda’s community-based justice system, gacaca; and Colombia’s transitional justice mechanisms. 

Khonoma is unique when it comes to truth and reconciliation efforts because the village relied on a bottom-up, grassroots-led process. In South Africa, the TRC was state-sponsored. Almost all truth and reconciliation have been state-sponsored, even if they have community involvement. Khonoma pioneered a community-driven and a community-led truth and reconciliation process rooted in indigenous social structures. This process relied greatly on both the villagers’ devout Christian faith and intergenerational dialogue.

While national commissions often grapple with political constraints and institutional inertia, Khonoma demonstrates that meaningful reconciliation can emerge organically when ordinary people choose to confront their shared history with honesty and courage. The lessons from Khonoma complement, rather than replace, other frameworks for truth and reconciliation frameworks. In particular, Khonoma offers a model that is replicable in settings where formal institutions are absent or distrusted.

However, for this knowledge to truly serve as a blueprint for others, it must be documented, shared and critically examined alongside similar experiences. We invite other communities — whether in Northeast India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Rwanda, banlieues in France, inner cities in the US and elsewhere — to record their own reconciliation journeys. Are there other villages  —  grey zones, suburbs or any other living communities —  that feel stuck in broken cycles of vengeance or violence? What methods worked, and what failures taught hard lessons? By collecting these stories through interviews, oral histories and community archives, we can build a living repository of peacebuilding wisdom that transcends borders and cultures. 

To the readers of this interview: If your community has walked a similar path, we encourage you to share your experience. Your story may be the catalyst another village needs to find its own way out of the shadow of the past. As Charles Chasie reminds us, “history faced with courage need not be lived again” — but this is only possible if we take the time to listen, learn and pass on what we have learned from the past.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO Interview: The Khonoma Reconciliation Process appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Given these constraints, the of approximately 55% in participating constituencies is relatively high for a country affected by widespread displacement, armed violence and political polarization. The military authorities presented the elections as a step toward restoring political order and ending open hostilities, though critics remain skeptical about their inclusiveness and intent.

The political process was also closely watched by neighboring countries, including India, as the situation in Myanmar is increasingly shaping not only border security and refugee flows, but the geoeconomic ambitions of regional players, as well.

Consolidation of power

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), closely associated with Min Aung Hlaing’s military regime, won the majority of the contested seats. The USDP now has a majority in both chambers of Parliament. They secured 232 of the 263 seats in the lower Pyithu Hluttaw and 109 of the 157 seats announced so far in the upper Amyotha Hluttaw. Combined with the constitutionally mandated allocation of 25% of parliamentary seats to unelected military appointees, this outcome gives the military junta effective control of the legislature and forecloses meaningful parliamentary opposition. In practical terms, the election has reinforced existing power structures, lending formal political cover to continued military authority rather than altering the balance of power.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to certify or endorse the election, stating that conditions for a credible and inclusive process were absent and confirming that no ASEAN observer mission would be deployed. Meanwhile, neighboring states that have direct security and economic interests in Myanmar took a more pragmatic position.

China publicly welcomed the completion of the election and reiterated its support for stability and continued bilateral cooperation, framing the vote as part of a domestic political process. India had previously support for Myanmar’s plan to hold elections in a “fair and inclusive” manner and sent monitoring teams. These actions and rhetoric reflect New Delhi’s priority for stability and sustained engagement over diplomatic isolation. Vietnam and Cambodia also sent observers, signaling a willingness among some regional actors to maintain channels of contact with Naypyidaw despite broader international skepticism. This position reflected longstanding divisions within the bloc regarding engagement with Myanmar’s post-coup authorities.

Myanmar’s instability and India’s security

For New Delhi, developments in Naypyidaw are directly related to domestic security concerns. The Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram share a 1,643-kilometer border with Myanmar. The conflict in Myanmar has intensified since 2021, creating instability in weakly controlled border regions, such as Mizoram and Manipur.

Indian law enforcement agencies have reported an increase in cross-border crimes, including weapons and drug smuggling, militia infiltration and the establishment of insurgent training camps. In Mizoram’s Champhai, Saiha and Lawngtlai districts, operations have led to the seizure of explosives, weapons and narcotics. Between September 2025 and January 2026, the value of confiscated illegal substances $15.5 million. Further north, Manipur authorities 22 drug smuggling cases and 12 arms trafficking cases in the first quarter of 2025 alone.

The instability in Myanmar, caused by conflict between the junta and the NUG as well as deep internal divisions between local national insurgents fighting on the side of opposition forces, creates conditions for a growing number of refugees and causes civil and ethnic unrest.

In mid-2025, clashes between the Myanmar militia groups Chin National Front (CNF) and Chin Defense Force (CDF) up to 4,400 people to flee to the Indian state of Mizoram. By March 2026, the number of officially registered Myanmar nationals in Mizoram had 28,355. Of these, 27,574 had passed biometric registration. The total of Myanmar asylum seekers in India is more than 86,000. Despite the deep ethnic kinship between the majority Mizo people in Mizoram and the Chin people in Myanmar, this prompted the deployment of additional police and Assam Rifles units.

The influx of Myanmar refugees has led to growing tension amongst the locals due to the increase in competition for limited job opportunities as the state grapples with rising youth unemployment, which is to be around 12%. Furthermore, the situation is worsening due to the rising crime rate. In June 2025, Mizoram Home Minister K. Sapdanga that more than 50% of criminal cases in the state were linked to individuals who had entered the country illegally or as refugees.

The rising cost of internal strain

While Mizoram is more tolerant of refugees from Myanmar, neighboring Manipur is notorious for ethnic violence. On May 3, 2023, a dispute between the Meitei majority in Manipur and the Chin communities over Scheduled Tribe status escalated into a . Rooted in territory and identity, the situation was significantly exacerbated by the influx of approximately 10,000 refugees from Myanmar, resulting in at least 260 deaths and the displacement of over 60,000 people. Meitei groups also the growth of new settlements and a 30% increase in poppy cultivation as evidence of a “narcoterrorist” threat from Myanmar. This the Indian government to scrap the Free Movement Regime, which allowed local tribes to travel freely without visas, and to start construction of a border fence in February 2024.

This situation poses a significant threat to India’s domestic security and challenges its geoeconomic ambitions. Regions affected by conflict, such as Manipur in India, which borders Chin state, one of the three regions bordering India, are of particular concern as they are along the India–Myanmar–Thailand . This route is a flagship connectivity project under India’s Act East policy. New Delhi has invested over $250 million in the project directly and has extended more than $1 billion in credit lines for broader ASEAN connectivity initiatives.Ěý

Studies on ASEAN-India cooperation that extending these corridors to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam could generate up to $70 billion in additional regional GDP and create around 20 million jobs by the middle of the decade. India is to benefit from this expansion through increased trade and development in its northeast region. However, persistent insecurity in Myanmar and its derivatives continues to construction, raise costs and cast uncertainty over the project’s long-term viability.

Elections in the border regions

Ahead of and during the electoral process, the junta pursued local negotiations with ethnic armed organizations to secure ceasefires or tacit noninterference, thereby enabling limited polling, particularly in border areas. These efforts yielded mixed results. Chin State was almost entirely excluded from the electoral process because resistance forces linked to the NUG and local People’s Defense Force units retained significant territorial control there. These armed groups rejected the vote outright, preventing the establishment of conditions for polling.

In Sagaing and Kachin, the situation was similarly fragmented. Armed actors repeatedly attempted to disrupt the election by targeting logistics and security deployments. In Sagaing, 11 of the 34 townships were from voting due to security concerns, and clashes were reported in seven others during the election. In Kachin State, elections could not be held in four townships and additional incidents were recorded in two more.

While areas immediately adjacent to the Indian border remained relatively calm during the initial phase, security conditions deteriorated further inland as the process continued. Myanmar Witness over 150 conflict-related incidents in townships that were officially designated as “active” or “stable” for voting. Insurgent groups sought to derail the process by threatening officials and voters, attacking supply routes and otherwise intimidating people.

An unsettled outcome

Although the junta held elections in most accessible areas and established institutional control, stability remains elusive because the NUG and affiliated insurgent groups have invested significant resources in preventing ceasefires and disrupting electoral activity rather than facilitating political de-escalation.

The elections showed that the war in Myanmar won’t stop in the short term and that political dialogue is the only way forward. All foreign actors should assist in this dialogue, and the idea of “isolation” should not be supported. The election was a reminder to all critics of Min Aung Hlaing’s military regime that the USDP has its supporters, even if their number is less than the official electoral statistics indicate. It’s impossible to ignore this part of the population and their interests. Otherwise, the situation will be mirrored, and the NUG will become another totalitarian regime.

The stance of key international actors, such as India and China, has reinforced the rationale behind taking a calibrated and pragmatic approach to Myanmar. India’s strategy prioritizes stability, dialogue and reducing violence over ideological positioning, aiming to achieve tangible results. New Delhi continues to engage with the authorities in Naypyidaw, not to endorse military rule, but to preserve border security, sustain humanitarian access and maintain channels for political de-escalation.

This stance contrasts with that of several ASEAN members, whose refusal to engage with the junta has enabled opposition forces to reject ceasefires and disrupt the electoral process through armed conflict. Only a change in approach among ASEAN countries and mediation could bring peace closer. Without offering feasible political solutions, isolating the Naypyidaw authorities could prolong the conflict and have regional consequences, including human casualties and destroy Myanmar’s economic potential for years. Moreover, it will affect neighboring countries with escalating refugee crises and ethnic tensions, as well as undermine projects that would promote social and economic growth in Myanmar and throughout Southeast Asia.

[ first published a version of this piece on February 6, 2026.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Myanmar’s Elections and the Future of India’s Act East Strategy appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The Rohingya: an endless exodus

The Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, were stripped of citizenship and rights by a . Victims of what the described in 2017 as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” over 740,000 people to Bangladesh. Today, approximately one million of them in the Cox’s Bazar district, home to Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee camp. The 2021 shattered any hope of repatriation, fueling a desperate, multi-stage journey toward Southeast Asia.Ěý

This hell begins in Teknaf, on the coast of Bangladesh. There, refugees brave the deadly currents of the Naf River on small, overcrowded boats that frequently . Those who survive fall into the hands of traffickers, who clandestine departures toward the Andaman Sea from hidden mangrove inlets, packing hundreds of people onto fishing vessels to evade the Coast Guard.

Welcome aboard the “ghost” ships

Once at sea, the operational phase known as the “Ghost Protocol” begins. This involves the Automatic Identification System (AIS) — a tactic technically referred to as “going dark.” By switching off these electronic transponders, traffickers eliminate all traceability of the vessel’s route and position. By becoming invisible to radar, the vessels into floating prisons. Deprived of Wi-Fi, traceability and legal protection, refugees are ammassed in fish holds. This lack of connectivity is not a technical limitation, but a deliberate strategy by smugglers to prevent the reporting of abuse and torture used to extort money from families.Ěý

In this technological limbo, the crews themselves invisible slaves, recruited through deception and forced into months of sailing without pay. The of going dark eliminates any chance of assistance: In the event of a breakdown, no signal exists to guide rescuers. Data from 2025–2026 confirms the lethality of the Andaman Sea route: One in five people is missing or dead. With over 600 victims in the past year, the true toll remains tragically uncalculable.

The Junta link: the ship-to-ship operations fueling the airstrikes

Myanmar’s instability has transformed the Andaman Sea into a military corridor disguised as a migration route. The networks Rohingya south toward Malaysia and Indonesia are often the same ones that, through ship-to-ship (STS) operations in international waters, the military junta with sanctioned fuel (Jet A-1). Without these maneuvers, the regime would be unable to power the Chinese-made jets and drones responsible for bombing civilians. Precisely because it is prohibited, the junta must rely on STS operations to bring fuel into the country while concealing its origin.Ěý

Large “mother ships” loaded with crude oil from the Russian Federation or Iran — countries officially under international sanctions — transfer their cargo on the high seas to the Burmese shadow fleet, which operates on behalf of the junta. Once there, the fuel is “” by falsifying documents to make it appear to have originated from legitimate Southeast Asian ports: a proven mechanism that finances authoritarian regimes through these invisible fleets.

Justice at sea: the cynical game of bouncing and reflagging

The tragedy is amplified by “.” In the absence of a coordinated Search and Rescue (SAR) system, such as the one in the Mediterranean, boats are bounced between the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Extreme abuses have been documented, including refugees forced to into the open sea and swim for miles back toward Myanmar under armed threat. Despite the High Seas Treaty () entering into force in January 2026 — adopted by the UN — the protection of human life in Southeast Asia remains a mirage.Ěý

While the treaty aims for transparency, Myanmar’s instability and the region’s fragmented sovereignty allow shipowners to bypass all oversight. By changing flags () with staggering speed, vessels mask their maritime criminal records. By exploiting “shadow states” like the Comoros, Panama or the Cook Islands, they operate within a bureaucratic gray zone. Small island nations become involuntary accomplices in a system that guarantees impunity. International authorities find themselves chasing not physical ships, but “ghosts” that switch identities every time they approach a new port or a refueling operation, making their capture nearly impossible.

While the International Court of Justice in the Hague with the genocide case against Myanmar, the Rohingya tragedy in the Andaman Sea remains the result of a criminal architecture that exploits the physical and digital geography of Southeast Asia. As long as the world permits the existence of a ghost fleet beyond any rules, the sea will continue to be a place of silent violations. To save lives, we must first turn on the radars, enforce on-board connectivity and recognize that every deactivated AIS signal is a potential crime against humanity. Breaking the cynicism of the “bouncing game” is the only way to restore dignity to these people that the world has left invisible for too long.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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My forthcoming bookĚýWinds of ChangeĚýbegan at Mong Khet, Myanmar, at the heart of the “”—the world’s most populous region. Lee Kuan Yew University professor Danny Quah once described it as an extraordinary encirclement of humanity, a dense cluster of 4.2 billion souls. First, there was COVID, starting from the same Valeriepieris circle, killing hundreds of thousands across Southeast Asia and around 7 million globally.ĚýEarthquakes and high geopolitics between India, China and the US shape the surrounding waters. Natural disasters merely turn a page in the ongoing upheavals — poverty, hunger, malnutrition and political-economic crises. Myanmar itself is a continuous struggle for stability, its people enduring a brutal civil war that has ravaged the nation. According to the UN, 17.6Ěýmillion people in Myanmar required humanitarian assistance, where 1.6Ěýmillion were internally displaced, with over 55,000 civilian buildings and infrastructure destroyed since 2021. The international community, having long cut off Myanmar, now finds itself reaching out to assist in the ongoing natural disaster — a fragile, fleeting gesture of humanity amid isolation.

Mandalay’s vulnerable foundations

The building shook for a few seconds, long enough to conjure mortality in the minds of those inside. People rushed out, some crying others silent in their fear. I joined them, moving with humanity’s current toward the open space. I witnessed mothers carrying their children, their eyes shadowed by the fear of death. What struck me was not the panic but the order, no pushing, no trampling — just a somber acceptance of the chaos. A discipline, perhaps ingrained into the fabric of their culture, revealed itself in those fleeting moments.

To be honest, I was ready for death. Just a few days earlier, I had completed a final act — burying my mother’s ashes. I had delayed it for nearly a year, postponed by during the previous government in Sri Lanka. The weight of that unfinished duty had hung over me, but now, with it done, I felt a strange calm amidst the turmoil.

I survived. Like many others, I was caught in the quake’s fury, just as the earth continued to tremble beneath us. Mandalay, lying on the eastern end of the Alpide Belt — one of the world’s most active seismic zones — has always been vulnerable. Yet vulnerability rarely prepares one for the shock. Thousands lay dead, more than 3,600 injured. The numbers, still uncertain, would only rise as rescue teams unearthed the buried from their cement graves. As I watched the scene unfold, I couldn’t help but see a reflection of the geopolitical tremors I had written about. The shifting alliances, the silent aggressions — fragile structures that seemed permanent until they suddenly weren’t. The earthquake was more than just a natural disaster; it was a reminder that instability waits for a moment to break free beneath the surface, whether of the earth or nations. Today, the people of Myanmar lie buried beneath rubble, but perhaps we are all buried under the same rubble of our own making.

The under-construction headquarters for the Auditor General’s office was the only building that collapsed among the many non-quake-resistant structures sitting on the soft soil of Bangkok. Another tremor of a similar magnitude would have taken down the apartment building I was staying in, where cracks had seeped through on every floor. Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar killed over a hundred thousand, floods and landslides continue to claim lives, and yet, disaster preparedness in the region lingers as an afterthought.

Transcending politics in times of crisis

Leaders of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation () gathered in Thailand. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive, speaking of resilience, shared responsibility in the Bay of Bengal region, and BIMSTEC’s vision for collaborative disaster management. Afterward, Modi continued to Sri Lanka, where the new Marxist president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, awaits. Politics will resume, but the earth has imposed its brutal order, disrupting human plans with indifferent force.

A Sri Lankan journalist I interviewed in Colombo shared a striking story. A Chinese fishing vessel, , capsized, resulting in the deaths of several fishermen. Sri Lankan naval officers salvaged it using a U.S.-donated vessel and salvage and diving training from India. This episode highlights a crucial lesson: when human lives are at risk, we set aside geopolitical competition in favor of synergy — a collective human responsibility toward a greater cause.

As people lie buried under rubble from the devastating earthquake, nations have come together, putting aside internal geopolitical tensions, including the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, to assist and save lives. In times of catastrophe, humanity transcends politics — a rare but powerful reminder of our shared fragility.

[ edited this piece.]

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Recently, Amy Sood, a reporter for South China Morning Post, claimed that Rohingyas are facing a “” in Bangladesh, which is falsified and misleading because it sounds like Bangladesh is targeting and killing Rohingyas.

Bangladesh has taken every action it believes possible for the vulnerable refugees — but as international donors and humanitarian organizations keep showing their backs, it’s getting nearly impossible for the developing country to make itself a safe haven for the Rohingya community without stretching its own resources beyond the breaking point.

Since Myanmar on foot during the 2017 military campaign against them, which has been recognized as by many in the international community, nearly one million Rohingya have been hosted by Bangladesh. Since then, there’s no doubt that the persecuted community has gotten a lot of attention, aid and sympathy from across the world, but with time, all of that has come to sound more like lip service.Ěý

The struggles of the impoverished and less-educated community seem to be of less concern, as international donors are now focused on refugees who share racial and ethnic similarities and have sought refuge in their affluent European surroundings, such as Ukraine.

The congested and unhygienic nature of the camp is a boon for diseases and has become a fire hazard too- last March, 12000 Rohingyas became because of a sudden fire in the camps. If this wasn’t enough, the recent aid cut for the community has been like rubbing salt in the wound. Since the pandemic hit in 2020, international funding for necessities has dropped as donor fatigue sets in. In 2023, the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis Joint Response barely gathered 40 percent of the required funds.

Lack of resources and rise in crime

Shrinking budgets have forced the UN and international NGOs to lay off refugees from paid volunteer roles, which are one of their few of income. The UN has had to vital food assistance by one-third, from $10 to $12 per person per month in March to $8 per person per month by June — meaning only $0.27 per day is allocated for each Rohingya.Ěý

As Bangladesh is already going through a crisis of , this cut will further add to the widespread malnutrition in the camps. Mothers are concerned about how to limit the size of their children’s meals further and how much longer they can sustain such reductions.

Conditions in the refugee camps are getting more dire by the day for the Rohingya. Education opportunities for the children are very limited, especially considering that many of them have grown up in these camps in the last six years. Due to Bangladesh’s issues of climate change, the refugee camps of significant heat waves, floods and tornados with nowhere to run.Ěý

Such poverty and hopelessness, allied with the vicious cycle of violence in the camps, have further worsened the situation for the refugees. The Rohingyas, particularly young men, have been involved in various crimes, including kidnapping, drug peddling, illegal trading of counterfeit money, robbery and gold smuggling, and armed groups, fueling more violence. They joined to receive a monthly payment of BDT 5,000 (approximately 50 USD) for active participation.

Over the past six years, have occurred in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, along with more than 500 kidnappings. These can be linked to the criminal activities of different separatist groups like the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO). Locals reveal that these groups enter the camps every evening with arms while torturing and stealing from other Rohingyas. The government-appointed Armed Police Battalion (APBn) raids become ineffective as the groups take positions in different hideouts and return at night once the operations end, continuing their havoc.

These insurgent groups set up their bases in the camps since their arrival in Bangladesh, but their increasing illegal activities have a deepening basis now: their antagonism towards repatriation efforts, the drug and arms trade in Rohingya camps , and establishing superiority in the camps.Ěý

Rising tensions: The Rohingya’s continued desperation

To escape this violence and for a better life, many Rohingyas have been heading eastward by sea to Muslim countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. The UN it tracked a 360% spike in the number of Rohingya risking their lives on these dangerous boat journeys in 2022 — from 700 to 3,500. These people choose the risk of being detained, trafficked, seasick, hungry and lost in the sea with no hopes of being rescued to live off charity in the refugee camps anymore.

With the skyrocketing crime rates, panic and fear are also rising in Cox Bazar on the southeast coast of Bangladesh. Host versus the Rohingyas tension is on the rise. Residents of Cox’s Bazar are considering that their safety is at risk as the vast number of Rohingyas in the district has made the locals a minority. 

Bangladesh authorities have tried their utmost to address all these issues to the best of their ability. The camps have transitioned from scorched earth to paved ways like cities. To increase the security of both the locals and the refugees, authorities have placed barbed wire fences and deployed security forces. They have also more than 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char camps to deal with the severe overcrowding in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. The country has already $1.69 billion in 2022 alone to support Rohingya refugees.Ěý

While Bangladesh struggles, the perpetrator of the whole tragedy, Myanmar, keeps beating around the bush about Rohingya refugees and their citizenship. Still, Bangladesh is trying to adhere to the principle of non-refoulement — not returning refugees to a place where they would face persecution. But the international community, instead of taking strict political and legal actions against the brutal Junta, is busy showering it with FDI. from 2017 to 2020 was than that of Bangladesh.Ěý

Another year has passed- Bangladesh celebrated its biggest festival, Durga Puja, and the world is busy with the Ukraine and Israeli war, but Rohingyas stand still in a state of limbo. We cannot forget, and neither can the international community. The pledge to protect human rights above all should be reminded to the world humanitarian services, and a political solution to the resettlement of the Rohingyas must be encouraged. 

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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For most of its history since independence in 1947, India has been ruled by the Indian National Congress (INC) party. Leadership of the party passed from father to daughter to son to son’s widow to grandson as the INC has dominated Indian politics for 40 years. During the rule of the Nehru dynasty, India maintained close relations with the Soviet Union and followed socialist policies, without the bloody purges of its big brother. 

The INC first lost power in 1977 and opposition parties came to power in coalitions but the grand old party of Indian politics could always stage a comeback. In 2014, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) triumphed and the INC-led coalition lost power. Since then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has presided over a blossoming economy and is still exceedingly popular. The BJP is now the dominant party in the country like the INC.

Modi is widely expected to win the 2024 election. If he does, he will become only the second prime minister in Indian history to win three elections. Jawaharlal Nehru did so in 1951–1952, 1957 and 1962. Given the BJP’s likely victory, what can we expect from a third Modi term?

What to expect from Modi III

The Modi government will probably take steps to address slow job generation, especially in the manufacturing sector. In the past, poor physical and power infrastructure limited India’s ability to boost this sector. Today, the roadblocks are high cost of capital, labor and land. Another challenge facing the Modi government is the poor civic management of India’s cities. Presently, Indian cities are difficult to live in due to congested roads, crazy high air pollution and a lack of clean drinking water.

The Modi government would also have to tread carefully in its relations with foreign partners. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently blamed India for the assassination of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia. Similarly, the US believes that India was involved in an attempt to murder an American citizen. In India’s eyes, the two assassinated gentlemen were Sikh terrorists advocating the dismemberment of the Indian state. Both immigrated from India, the Canadian on a false passport.

Despite the diplomatic tiff, Washington and Ottawa are keen to maintain close ties with Delhi. They want to bring together all democracies in the Asia-Pacific to create a united front against China. However, India is more diffident about the West. Modi may keep the US at arm’s length, instead engaging closely with middle powers on bilateral terms. The government may also prefer a transactional foreign policy rather than a values-based one.

India’s troubled neighborhood

China is India’s northern neighbor and is indeed a threat.China disputes Indian territory in the Himalayas and has seized Aksai Chin, which India claims as part of Ladakh. India may no longer be able to rely on trade deals and economic relations to keep the peace with China.  India needs to reassess its defense architecture to deal with China.

Myanmar is currently in the midst of a civil war. In the past, militias based in Myanmar have caused trouble in the northeastern Indian states of Manipur and Nagaland. India may need to fortify its border to prevent the spillover of the Myanmarese civil war into India.

Nepal, which traditionally has close ties with India, is now trying to balance relationships with both India and China. India’s challenge is to keep Nepal firmly in its sphere of influence and prevent the expansion of Chinese influence in a country where the local communist party has become quite powerful.

Maldives recently asked India to remove its 89 soldiers and support staff. The country is growing increasingly Islamist and hostile to India. China will be all too happy to step into the vacuum but Maldives is in India’s sphere of influence. As in Nepal, India will compete with China for influence in Maldives.

Finally, relations between India and Pakistan have been deteriorating due to Islamabad’s sponsorship of cross-border terrorism. As Pakistan’s economy goes into free fall, Modi may have the opportunity to improve relations by securing a Pakistani pledge to discontinue these operations.

Modi certainly has his work cut out for him. Rising to these challenges will be crucial for the success of his third term.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Meanwhile, China has engaged in intense diplomatic negotiations with the Myanmar military junta, urging them to address the Rohingya crisis to avoid potential repercussions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Myanmar faces charges, brought by the Gambia, of genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minorities. The UN described the genocide of the Muslim Rohingya as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” which Myanmar has repeatedly denied.

An exodus of millions

The genocidal campaign sparked the worst refugee crisis in South Asia, forcing a million to flee from the restive Rakhine state in Myanmar. Bangladesh has struggled to shelter 1.2 million Rohingyas in squalid camps in the southeast of the country.

The Rohingya: When the Land You Love Burns

An estimated 3.5 million Rohingya have dispersed worldwide, of whom a large percentage are in Bangladesh. Others are in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. An estimated 600,000 Rohingya who remain in Rakhine State are victims of the Myanmar security forces’ , deliberately confined 140,000 to guarded camps and villages without freedom of movement, and access to adequate food, health care, education, and livelihoods for more than 10 years.

Bangladesh, unfortunately, does not recognise these stateless people as refugees and instead describes them as “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.” Dhaka has yet to ratify the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, which protects the rights of asylum seekers. HRW has that Bangladeshi authorities are also intensifying restrictions on work, movement, and education, creating a coercive environment designed to force people to consider premature returns.

Myanmar’s “all-weather friend” China stands beside the regime as it tries to weather a series of economic sanctions from the West, which slammed it after its persecution of Rohingyas and ouster of the country’s former democratically-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since the military coup in February 2021.

China has been pushing the junta to initiate a so-called “family-based repatriation” project, aiming to repatriate nearly a thousand refugees in the first phase.

Myanmar has an untrustworthy plan

Myanmar’s military junta wishes to appear as if it has undergone a sudden change of heart, ostensibly displaying compassion by committing to repatriate 6,000 Rohingyas by the end of the year. Myanmar has deemed these individuals foreign intruders or “illegal migrants,” denying them citizenship and subjecting them to abuse and discrimination.

In March, a delegation of Myanmar officials visited refugee camps in Bangladesh to conduct interviews and carry out a “verification” process for the pilot repatriation initiative.

“The figure of 6,000 Rohingya is a drop of water in an ocean,” says Asif Munier, a Rohingya refugee expert. The repatriation is a face-saving project of Myanmar amid country-wide embattlement with ethnic rebellions and economic crises that have worsened after economic sanctions by the United States, Canada and several European countries.

A delegation of Rohingya refugees, along with Bangladeshi government officials, toured the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp and Kyein Chaung resettlement camp in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw township on May 5. After the day-long “go and see” visit, the delegation expressed their dissatisfaction over the arrangements and facilities made by the Myanmar authorities.

Rohingya and Bangladeshi representatives seem to have two different interpretations of what they saw there. Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, who led the delegation, opined that “repatriation is the only solution to end the refugee crisis.” Rahman said Myanmar authorities did indeed prepare settlements for Rohingya under a pilot project. There are homes, employment opportunities and schools for Rohingya children as described by Myanmar officials.

The junta claims in the booklet that the UN Development Program, the UNHCR, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be involved in the pilot project  Altogether 3,500 Rohingya will be accommodated in 15 villages, says Rahman.

The delegation, however, found that their villages have been erased from the map and instead security forces occupied their lands and erected military and police barracks, outposts and check-posts. The authorities “even changed the name of my village in Rakhine,” a frustrated member of the delegation complained. Rohingya refugees are reluctant to return to Myanmar to “be confined in camps” again. They will only repatriate voluntarily if their security is guaranteed and they will be granted citizenship.

The Other Ethnic Crisis in Myanmar

Rohingya don’t want to return to their country to be placed in glorified cages. They want to return to their own villages, from which they were forced to flee during the ethno-religious strife of August 2017. “Myanmar is our birthplace and we are citizens of Myanmar and will only go back with citizenship,” said refugee Abu Sufian, 35, father of three children told Reuters. It is not enough to move the refugees from one temporary camp in Bangladesh to another, concrete one in Myanmar. Without freedom of movement and guarantees of citizenship rights, the program is a non-starter.

Second-class citizenship for Rohingyas, if that

Refusing full citizenship to the ethnic minority, the authorities offer the Rohingya a consolation prize: a national verification card (NVC), which Rohingya refugees regard as insufficient protection. The draconian Citizenship Law of 1982 requires individuals to prove that their ancestors lived in Myanmar before 1823, and refuse to recognize Rohingya Muslims as one of the nation’s ethnic groups or list their language as a national language.

“We don’t want to be confined in camps,” Oli Hossain, who was among the refugees who visited Rakhine State in early May. He said they will never accept the NVC, which would effectively identify Rohingya as foreigners.

“Myanmar officials said that the confirmation of citizenship is a long process and would take more time to complete. Therefore, Myanmar won’t provide citizenship to the Rohingya people who want to repatriate under this pilot project,” Rahman told Turkish news agency Anadolu.

The booklet “Resettlement of Displaced Persons on their Return under the Pilot Project,” dated April 2023 and written in Burmese, English, and Bangalee, states that returnees will be housed at the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp for up to two months, then relocated to one of two resettlement camps with prefabricated houses or a land plot in one of 15 “designated villages,” where they can build a home through a cash-for-work program.

Since the crisis, Bangladesh has been trying to repatriate displaced Myanmar citizens with rights and dignity. Several attempts to repatriate the refugees fell flat in 2018 and 2019. After the failed attempts, Bangladeshi authorities echoed the UN Refugee Agency catch-phrase of safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable repatriation of 1.2 million Rohingyas.

In April, in a crucial tripartite parley between senior Foreign Minister officials of Bangladesh, China and Myanmar in Kunming, China, the parties decided to expedite the repartition process to avoid further . Whether this will see any effects on the ground remains to be seen.

An official team from Myanmar arrived in Bangladesh for the second time in three months to build confidence among Rohingyas in early June. After the return of the Myanmar delegation from the camps in Cox’s Bazar, the refugees have been agitating to cancel the piecemeal plan, calling instead for ensurance of a dignified and sustainable repartition.

The UN Refugee Agency, after the visit of diplomats from eight ASEAN countries including Bangladesh to Rakhine State last March, said that “conditions in Rakhine State are currently not conducive to the sustainable return of Rohingya refugees,” adding that no refugee should be forced to return. Bangladesh’s hopes that the UN may be able to bring about a quick solution to the quagmire by going along with Myanmar’s pilot plan have been frustrated due to ongoing western sanctions against the military regime.

Why Joe Biden Must Act on Myanmar

In a flurry of diplomatic consultations in Dhaka in early May, Bangladesh’s foreign minister sought the opinion of several European and North American diplomats, as well as the UN Refugee Agency. The diplomats insisted that Myanmar should restore the citizenship of Rohingya and ensure safety, security, and access to livelihood, education, healthcare and freedom of movement which were restricted after they were declared “alien” more than 40 years ago.

Western, Bangladeshi, Myanmarese, Chinese, and UN officials are all pushing for a resolution to the crisis, but the path forward remains unclear. What is certain is that no one wants a resolution more than the Rohingya people; still, they will not sacrifice their safety, liberty, or dignity for the sake of speed.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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How Deep Are the Roots of Democracy in Southeast Asia?

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When the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Min Aung Hlaing at the leaders’ summit back in October, it resulted in the quick of over 5,600 political prisoners. However, it also precipitated resistance to ASEAN’s plan for a non-violent ceasefire. This was characterized by the of the request by ASEAN’s envoy to Myanmar, Dato Erywan Yusof, to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained leaders. With more verdicts , what will ASEAN’s next steps be?

Bitter Pill

It is easy to berate ASEAN for its delayed response to the February coup and to what has now become a , with nearly , 200,000 displaced and 3 million in need of assistance. However, the immediate move by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom to enforce economic sanctions on Myanmar has not produced the hoped-for results.

Although economic sanctions affect many industries across the country, such as the military conglomerates Myanmar Economic Corporation and Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, they have done little to nudge the military leaders toward a ceasefire. Instead, repression and bloodshed intensify by the day.

The inefficacy of economic sanctions is a difficult pill to swallow, but it forces us to confront two realities. First, the military leaders assign very low importance to economic growth vis-à-vis the pursuit of their political agenda. In this crisis, the main of the military leaders is to right what they believe is wrong, namely nurturing a “true and disciplined democracy” based on the claim that the landslide NLD win in November 2020 was rigged.

The verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi is an indicator that despite a persistent international backlash, the economy has taken a backseat and will continue to be compromised if it means that the junta can legitimize its position.

Economic and travel sanctions like those implemented by the , the , and the , among others, will limit the movement of the military leaders and hold businesses in a tight chokehold. As the fight for survival continues, economic sanctions will only cause the skyrocketing of prices on goods most people will no longer be able to afford. Along with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this will only help to drag half of Myanmar’s population into in 2022.

Secondly, curtailing Myanmar’s dealings with global actors like the US, the EU and the UN is not as fruitful as many would like to think. To offset the newest round of sanctions, Myanmar’s military leaders have linked arms with superpowers on the other side of the political spectrum, like and . Therefore, the remaining challenge for ASEAN is to develop a that can bring a quick end to the bloodshed while making room for negotiations aimed at giving the people of Myanmar a say in their own future.

From 1988 to 2021

Despite the suppression of the , when a military junta again seized power, and the ensuing crackdown on civil rights, then-Burma was to ASEAN in 1997. The move was not without controversy, with continuing international pressure to make the admission contingent on democratic concessions from Yangon, but drove ASEAN’s decision. Unsurprisingly, Myanmar’s accession opened a new set of challenges for the bloc, especially vis-à-vis its non-interference principle.

The discourages states from intervening in the internal affairs of fellow members, including criticism of state actions against its citizens, and condemns those perceived to be in breach of the non-intervention principle. It also denies support to any rebel group seeking to destabilize the government of a neighboring state, providing political support and material assistance to members to counter disruptive activity. To put it broadly, the non-interference policy means that all member states tend to take a hands-off approach when it comes to the national affairs of their regional counterparts.

As a result, one of the main criticisms faced by ASEAN over the decades has to do with its in interfering in regional emergencies, like the 2015 Rohingya crisis that was later identified as by the United Nations. Thus, it was only by 2005 that ASEAN arrived at a to bar Myanmar from the 2006 chairmanship to void a by the West, with the US and the EU condemning the military’s refusal to implement democratic transition and release Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1990 election but was placed under house arrest instead of assuming office.

The association’s silence on its member states has become a significant liability for ASEAN’s reputation. Seeking to enhance the bloc’s international standing and to attract financial support and foreign investment, ASEAN nations finally had a common cause to for the sake of regional stability. Myanmar’s eventual agreement to give up the chairmanship that year also meant the bloc was effective in keeping the military leaders updated on its incremental steps in having a more active approach for the sake of the social and economic stability of all member states.

Fast forward to February 2021, and both Myanmar and ASEAN find themselves in a near-identical predicament. After international criticism fueled lengthy discussions that lasted over two months, ASEAN reached the as its action plan. The surprise election of as the bloc’s special envoy for Myanmar outside the original list of nominees followed, demonstrating not only the internal divides within the bloc but also indicating that Yusof was the only sound choice for ASEAN to of all stakeholders and to make decisions with required caution.

These moves show that have been taken in order for ASEAN to reach a consensus with the Myanmar leaders and, more importantly, for ASEAN to ensure Myanmar was still included in the process. The Five Point Consensus is a gradual strategy that offers a way for ASEAN to begin negotiations with the Myanmar military through diplomatic engagement and respecting the hard-fought national independence of other member states.

Middle Ground

To find a middle ground, Yusof has proposed measured, non-violent strategies that would begin with humanitarian assistance and policy guidance through the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Centre, followed by a more substantive discussion with the junta in exchange for full . ASEAN is currently playing a calculated game of push-and-pull. The military leaders need their relevance in Myanmar politics to be acknowledged, which ASEAN has already indirectly provided; in response, the junta’s lack of cooperation and reciprocity to the consensus protocol provided room for ASEAN to plan its next step. 

In comparison to the economic sanctions, by barring Myanmar’s representatives from this year’s summit, ASEAN has taken a more calculative approach in allowing the junta to consider the consequences of non-cooperation. Simultaneously, ASEAN‘s secretary general, Dato Lim Jock Hoi, that humanitarian assistance “should not be politicised.” At the end of the October leaders’ summit, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah that “Myanmar is an integral part of the ASEAN family and their membership has not been questioned.”

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Despite repeated urgency for stronger action, ASEAN recognizes that coercive strategies are not effective in seeking a final resolution. As much as this is a race against time, it is also unproductive to rush political negotiations that can result in more harm than good. It is clear that ASEAN has moved beyond its non-interference principle and is exercising both caution and effort as the sole moderator in this crisis. Ultimately, continuous criticism can only achieve so much.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post ASEAN’s Myanmar Strategy, Slow But Steady appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Myanmar: What Comes Next for Minority Groups?

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To be fair, the US has not always or entirely been sanctimonious. The historic integrated China into the liberal postwar order. It facilitated investments into, transferred technology to and trained manpower in China. Under Deng Xiaoping and his successors, China continued its peaceful rise. Xi Jinping, the current Chinese president, has ended that peaceful rise and destabilized the world order.

Missing Out on Myanmar

The US approach to Myanmar has been muddled and inconsistent. During the Cold War, Washington was happy to deal with allies in Asia that were military dictatorships. Under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the US was happy to deal with a communist regime.

In contrast, Burma was a parliamentary democracy from 1948 to 1962 when Ne Win led a military coup. For the next 26 years, the country was ruled by the Tatmadaw, the official name of the country’s armed forces. In 1988, nationwide broke out. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Oxford-educated daughter of Burmese independence leader Aung San, emerged as the leader of a pro-democracy movement. The National League of Democracy (NLD) went on to win the 1990, 2015 and 2020 parliamentary elections.

In comparison with China, Myanmar’s regime has been far less oppressive. There is no counterpart to the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. The Tatmadaw has yielded to public pressure and held largely free and fair elections. In elections, even members of the Tatmadaw have voted for Suu Kyi’s NLD. Yet the US and its Western allies have ignored the strategic importance of Myanmar in the Indian Ocean region in general and the Bay of Bengal in particular.

Chinese Influence Wanes and Waxes

In the past, the US and its allies put pressure on the Tatmadaw by imposing sanctions on Myanmar. Instead of weakening the Tatmadaw, sanctions hurt the people and pushed the country into the arms of China. Between 2004 and 2007, a generational change in the Tatmadaw caused a rethink in Myanmar’s relationship with China.

The younger officers of the Tatmadaw decided to decrease dependence on Beijing. They tried to reduce Chinese influence in political and military governance. They attempted to transition to some form of democracy and improve relations with the West and neighbors like India. In 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by Myanmar. President Barack Obama twice in 2012 and 2014. By 2016-17, the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in the country’s Rakhine state, was in the news and relations between the US and Myanmar were already souring.

Yet this was a relatively good time for the country. Even financial such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened their purse strings. During this brief honeymoon period with the West, China found itself on the back foot for the first time since 1988.

In 2011, Myanmar suspended the construction of the , a controversial hydroelectric project financed and led by a state-owned Chinese company. In 2015, Myanmar’s general led to yet another victory for Suu Kyi’s NLD. This was an opportune moment for the West to build relations with Myanmar and counter China. The Tatmadaw had ceded ground to elected officials. Washington could have cultivated both of Myanmar’s centers of power: the NLD and the Tatmadaw.

But the US missed this opportunity. From 2017, the Rohingya issue clouded Myanmar’s relationship with the West and allowed China to regain its clout in the country. The military in February this year strengthens China’s hand further.

China has already been strengthening its hand by following its tried and tested policy of investing in infrastructure. The China–Myanmar Transport Corridor is the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. Roads, railways, river navigation, oil and gas pipelines are deepening economic ties between Myanmar and China. It is part of the Middle Kingdom’s “Look South” policy that seeks to draw Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan into the Chinese arc of influence.

The military coup in Myanmar presents a great opportunity to China and represents the first major foreign policy challenge to President Joe Biden’s administration as well as the Quadrilateral Security Alliance, the informal strategic dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India known as the Quad.

The US Still Has Some Cards

China may be in the ascendant right now, but the West still has clout in Myanmar. Suu Kyi studied at Oxford, lived in the UK for decades and married an Englishman. People from Myanmar have immigrated to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. So, the West commands what Joseph Nye has calls “soft power” in the country. Burmese people want to immigrate not to China but to the US.

Yet American foreign policy to Myanmar has squandered this soft power prodigally. Obama is the only American president who gave Myanmar the attention it deserved. His foreign policy pivot to Asia was a strategic masterstroke, but Donald Trump abandoned Obama’s outreach not only to Myanmar but the rest of Asia.

The military coup is a wake-up call for the US to act. China is now firmly in the saddle in Myanmar. The Tatmadaw is finding ferocious resistance on the streets. There is another overlooked problem. Like many postcolonial states, Myanmar is a bewildering patchwork of cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups. Many of them have been fighting for independence or autonomy for years.

Few in the West realize that a savage might be about to break out. About 20 rebel groups, including the United Wa State Army, Karen National Union, Kachin Independence Army and Arakan Army, control 33% of Myanmar’s territory. Many of them have condemned the coup. In response, the Tatmadaw has launched airstrikes in Karen state. With drugs and arms flush in rebel areas, Myanmar might be about to become the new Afghanistan.

The Quad leaders’ joint statement on the website emphasizes “the urgent need to restore democracy and the priority of strengthening democratic resilience” in Myanmar. This mention is heartening, but the Quad and the US need to do more. Opening dialogue with the Tatmadaw would be a good start. Intelligence sources report that most young officers favor multi-party democracy and are wary of Myanmar turning into a Chinese tributary.

A carrot-and-stick approach by Washington could still work. The World Bank has payments to projects after the military coup. International condemnation has rattled the Tatmadaw. Pressure to reach a political reconciliation might bear fruit. Carrots in the form of infrastructure funding and development assistance could prove attractive. Involving Asian nations such as India, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, as well as member states of ASEAN, could pave the path to Myanmar’s transition away from military rule.

Despite foreign policy blunders, economic woes and internal division, the US is still the undisputed top dog in the world. With the help of its Asian and European allies, Washington can counter China, prevent civil war and restore democracy in Myanmar. The time has come for Biden to act.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Joe Biden Must Act on Myanmar appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Rohingya Refugee Camps Are the Next Frontline in COVID-19 Fight

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Min Aung Hlaing’s statement is telling. It reveals that China is putting unprecedented pressure on its neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It is important to note that Min Aung Hlaing praised China as an “eternal friend” during a visit to Beijing in 2019. He thanked China for its and for countering international pressure on Myanmar over its treatment of Rohingya civilians, a Muslim minority in Rakhine State.  

The senior general has turned on Beijing at a sensitive time. China is facing international criticism for the spread of the COVID-19 disease, its of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region and for its aggression toward its neighbors. Yet it could be seen as part of a longer pattern in Myanmar.

Turning Away from China Not Easy

More than 10 years ago, the then-ruling military junta decided to reduce Myanmar’s economic dependence on China. At the heart of this decision was the goal of reducing China’s excessive influence in Myanmar.

When retired General Thein Sein was president from 2010 to 2015, he ushered in initiatives to repair relations with India, the West and ASEAN. At first, these initiatives led to increased international aid, but it was short-lived due to the military crackdown on the Rohingya insurgency in the Rakhine state. Myanmar has faced international condemnation, isolation and sanctions since. By 2017, the brief “honeymoon” was over and China was back to its old games, with the West losing its window of opportunity in Myanmar.

China has been known to support the United Wa State Army (UWSA). The UWSA is an armed force of an ethnic minority that runs an autonomous region with little interference from central authorities. As per the , the “UWSA’s relationship with China is a pillar of its autonomy.” China uses the UWSA to exert leverage within Myanmar. It also benefits economically because minerals from the Wa area are exported across the border to China.

The UWSA is one of the many insurance policies Beijing uses to retain its eminence in Myanmar. Today, it has cultivated the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate who was once the darling of the West. She wants to reverse Thein Sein’s decision in 2011 to suspend work on the Myitsone dam. Beijing’s State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) was supposed to build this $3.6-billion dam at the source of the Irrawaddy River.

The Myitsone area is said to be the birthplace of the Kachin people, after whom the state is named. They have fought the Tatmadaw since 1962, making itis one of the longest civil wars for a resource-rich region. The Kachin oppose the dam because it could put large parts of their region under water and threaten their livelihoods. As the reports, Suu Kyi “needs to establish prosperity and peace if she is to convince the Burmese people of the benefits of democracy.” The dam might provide irrigation and electricity, boosting the ruling NLD.

Suu Kyi is to China because the West has abandoned her. The days when former US President Barack Obama visited Myanmar and kissed her cheek seem distant. The Rohingya crisis has been roundly criticized by Western media and brought allegations of .

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stepped into the vacuum and visited Myanmar earlier this year. China has been planning the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor (CEMC) as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. It includes infrastructure such as railways and a deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu on the Bay of Bengal. This port will help China avoid the more vulnerable Straits of Malacca, where it fears being choked off.

The West Must Change Tack with Myanmar

Since 1990, Western powers have imposed sanctions on Myanmar for a variety of reasons ranging from human rights violations to lack of democracy. At the same time, they rushed to engage with China despite the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Myanmar became an outcast even as China won investments, joint ventures and a red carpet welcome to the World Trade Organization.

Unlike China, which has had no election for 75 years, Myanmar has held three major elections in 1990, 2010 and 2015. A fourth is due in October this year. Suu Kyi’s NLD has won the past three elections.

When it comes to the treatment of minorities, China has been worse than Myanmar. Its treatment of Tibetans has been terrible and its persecution of Uighurs makes daily headlines. Therefore, Min Aung Hlaing’s revelation that China is championing the Rohingya — a majority of whom are now sheltering in Bangladesh — is deeply ironic. China is supporting the Arakan Army and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army to destabilize Myanmar and win their support in the future. This policy of interference in Myanmar has implications for both India and Bangladesh. It is in keeping with the Chinese policy of destabilizing India’s northeast region.

China’s strategy of destabilizing Myanmar even as it makes it an economic vassal has lessons for others. Western powers must provide Myanmar with much-needed investment. The Tatmadaw, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, clearly wants to avoid Chinese domination. Suu Kyi is also no natural ally of China. They have both been pushed into Chinese arms by Western intransigence. Along with investments, a security arrangement involving many countries such as India, Bangladesh and Western powers would help.

Currently, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or the ) is the best vehicle to guarantee Myanmar’s security. It must thwart the development of CMEC. Otherwise, the Chinese navy will be sitting on India’s doorstep and the Quad would lose strategic advantage in the Indian Ocean. India has already been strengthening its relationship with Myanmar under its “Look East” or “Act East” policy. The relationship has been on the upswing since 2010 and is set to improve further.

Yangon is sensitive to India’s strategic and security concerns. India has shown the same degree of understanding. For India, Myanmar is the archway to ASEAN and the far east. With the Chinese causing mischief at its borders, Myanmar has increasing strategic importance for India.

The West must join India in its constructive engagement with Myanmar. In the October elections, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD is expected to win again. This victory could usher in an era of stability, economic progress and development. Myanmar’s civil and military leadership has no desire to embrace vassal status. It is up to the West to step up and give Myanmar a choice. With the Chinese menace rising by the day, failure to do so would be a historic blunder.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The West Must Help Myanmar Escape China’s Embrace appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The year 2018 was a dire and desperate year for the Rohingya minority from western Myanmar. Two-thirds of the population that had been living in western Rakhine State before the end of 2017 remain displaced in crowded camps in Bangladesh. The several hundred thousand who remain in Myanmar face serious restrictions, and what the chair of an independent, international fact-finding mission as an “ongoing genocide.”

What will the year 2019 have in store for the Rohingya? Here are key developments to keep an eye on and some thoughts on what must be done to improve the outlook.

Rohingya Returning Home?

Repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar is both the most necessary solution to the Rohingya crisis and the most controversial. It is not a question of whether Rohingya should be able to return to their homes; it is a question of when and under what conditions. To be clear, those conditions do not currently exist. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Rohingya in Myanmar continue to face restrictions and abuse. And there is little sign of accountability or a path to citizenship as demanded by Rohingya who have been forced to flee. In fact, more than 15,000 Rohingya have continued to flee conditions in Myanmar for Bangladesh in 2018.

More than 40 humanitarian organizations working on the ground in Bangladesh have that returning the Rohingya to their homes now would be dangerous and premature. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has been clear that current conditions in Myanmar are not “to the voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable return of refugees.”

Still, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh have pushed for returns to move forward. A bilateral deal to start returns by November 15, 2018, fell apart only because Bangladesh was unable to find Rohingya willing to return voluntarily. Pressure for returns will continue through 2019, but the reality is that, more than likely, most Rohingya will not and should not return by the end of 2019. Whether returns can take place in line with international standards — that is safe, voluntary and dignified — will depend mostly on what the government of Myanmar does or does not do.

Reforms in Myanmar?

The government of Myanmar has it within its power to create the conditions conducive to safe returns of Rohingya to Myanmar. It also has a blueprint for how to do so. The Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, released a in August 2017 that was endorsed by the government of Myanmar. The report included recommendations for freedom of movement, recognition of basic rights and a path to citizenship for Rohingya in Myanmar.

By taking these steps, opening access to humanitarians and independent media and human rights monitors, and working with UNHCR, it may be possible to begin thinking about returns in 2019. But the window for doing so is quickly closing as the next election in Myanmar draws near in 2020. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, already reluctant to reform and address the Rohingya crisis, will be even more so as the military’s party seeks to capitalize on anti-Rohingya sentiment. As this dynamic plays out, it will be even more important that pressure for change comes from outside — the sooner the better.

Accountability for Genocide?

The push for accountability for the crimes committed by Myanmar’s security forces against the Rohingya gained momentum in the last month of 2018. The and the that carried out a US State Department survey of the Rohingya independently concluded that there was strong evidence that crimes against humanity and genocide were committed. The State Department has not yet made a determination, but the 394 to 1 to declare the crimes as genocide.

In August 2018, an international fact-finding mission, authorized by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), that Myanmar’s top military generals, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, must be investigated for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The UNHRC then mandated the creation of an independent mechanism to collect evidence of abuses for future prosecution. Now it is vital that this mechanism receive the funding necessary to carry out its mandate.

The International Criminal Court has also begun an investigation into the crimes committed against the Rohingya. And international human rights groups continue to push for a mechanism for carrying out prosecutions. What forms of accountability are ultimately achieved will remain to be seen, but efforts will not go away in 2019.

It is also possible that the US State Department will be pushed to finally make a determination that crimes against humanity, if not genocide, have taken place. This would prompt further targeted sanctions. The United States has already placed sanctions on a handful of Myanmar military and border guard officials and the two army battalions that led the attacks on Rohingya civilians. But these sanctions need to extend to the highest levels, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

Monsoon and Cyclones

One of the greatest fears faced by Rohingya in Bangladesh through much of 2018 was the risk of a direct cyclone hit on the Rohingya camps. The worst was avoided in 2018, but flooding and high winds destroyed shelters, injured dozens and displaced thousands. With hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remaining in fragile shelters in crowded camps, that fear will be renewed with the 2019 monsoon and cyclone seasons. Beyond a direct hit, heavy rains will threaten land slides and flooding, not to mention the risks of rapid spread of water-borne diseases.

The humanitarian community and government of Bangladesh made great efforts to move the most vulnerable Rohingya to new areas in 2018. But, as highlighted by , coordination and preparedness were limited by restrictions on the side of the government of Bangladesh and inefficiencies on the side of UN agencies. The Bangladeshi government continues to restrict the types of materials available to build more durable shelters. It also continues to push plans to move at least 100,000 Rohingya to Bhashan Char, an island in the historic path of cyclones and prone to flooding through much of the year.

Due to government restrictions, UN agencies have also struggled with a complex, hybrid coordination structure, rather than the usual refugee response. Efforts are underway to assess the response and incorporate lessons learned for the UN response. The outcome of the recent general election in Bangladesh may create further space to address these issues. What is certain is that the 2019 monsoon and cyclone seasons will arrive and the extent to which space has opened and lessons been learned will be tested.

Another Boat Crisis?

Finally, 2019 will likely see an increase in Rohingya fleeing conditions both in Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat for other countries like Malaysia and Thailand. With increased maritime monitoring and a break up of trafficking networks, we are unlikely to see something on the scale of the May 2015 crisis, in which thousands of Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees and migrants were abandoned at sea. But the same questions of whether countries in the region will accept any abandoned boats or push them back to sea as they did in 2015 will have to be tackled. Already have taken the journey.

Beyond boats, trafficking networks will prey on women in the Rohingya camps. The longer they remain in the camps in Bangladesh, the more vulnerable they will be to such networks. This underscores the regional aspect of the Rohingya crisis. How well Myanmar’s neighbors in Southeast Asia work together to tackle trafficking and pressure Myanmar to improve conditions for Rohingya will greatly influence how the Rohingya crisis plays out in 2019.

The Rohingya will continue to face dire conditions in 2019. But there are ways that their plight can begin to be addressed. Above all, a positive path forward will depend on the ability of international actors to pressure and encourage Myanmar to create the conditions conducive to returns for the Rohingya.

In the meantime, the government of Bangladesh and UN agencies must continue to work together to improve the conditions for nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees living in the country. The year 2019 will not likely be the year that the Rohingya crisis is resolved, but with the right steps there is hope that, a year from now, we can say that the Rohingya have a better outlook for 2020.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Rohingya Crisis: What to Watch for in 2019 appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

With more than fleeing their homes, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority by the Myanmar military has reached unprecedented proportions. But patterns of serious human rights abuses and restrictions on humanitarian aid at the hands of the military are neither unprecedented nor limited to the Rohingya. This fact not only reinforces the need for international pressure on Myanmar, but also highlights the urgent need to address an unsustainable situation that, if ignored, could lead to a rapidly deteriorating human rights and humanitarian crisis in another part of the country.

Some mostly Christian people continue to live in displacement camps in northern Myanmar, . Even as a new round of national peace talks approaches, fighting between the Myanmar military and groups that have not signed a national ceasefire agreement, including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), has ratcheted up. As recently as Christmas Eve, Myanmar military shells in Kachin State.

Most of the 100,000 people in Kachin and northern Shan States have been displaced since 2011 when a 17-year ceasefire between the military and the KIA, one of Myanmar’s strongest ethnic armed groups, ended. Many have been displaced multiple times. In January 2017, for example, Myanmar military shells fell near a displacement camp causing thousands to flee across the border into China before being pushed back and making their way to a new camp high in the Kachin hills. are estimated to have been displaced just since the end of December 2017.

Access Denied for Life-Saving Aid

Nearly half of the displaced population in northern Myanmar is living in areas beyond government control, mainly in the hands of the KIA and along the border with China. As in a recent — rare for an outside group — visit to these areas, this vulnerable population faces an increasingly precarious situation. Since May 2016, the government of Myanmar has forbidden any international aid delivery and denied virtually all access for the United Nations and international humanitarian groups. Local groups are still able to deliver aid but at a much higher cost and without the expertise and capacity that international humanitarians can provide.

At the same time, international donors have decreased the overall amount of aid to those national groups. The result, as found in Refugees International interviews with displaced persons in Kachin State, has been an increased sense of desperation expressed by displaced persons and borne out by increased reports of disease, higher dropout rates among students in schools set up for displaced persons, and increased numbers seeking livelihood opportunities in China, where they face growing risks of trafficking and exploitation.

In short, the dangerous mix of less international aid, more restrictions and waning global attention to displacement (going on seven years) has created both a humanitarian and protection crisis.

Conditions have even been worsening for displaced persons living in government-controlled areas. While not facing the near blanket restriction on international aid and services like those in areas beyond government control, these displaced persons face a dramatic increase in restrictions in the form of onerous bureaucratic requirements and delayed travel authorizations. As reported, “Over the last year, there has been a dramatic deterioration in the amount of access granted by the Government for humanitarian workers in Kachin and Shan states.”

Nor has the pattern of increased restrictions been limited to international humanitarians. Local humanitarians and media are also facing greater difficulties and intimidation. In 2017, two for showing international journalists where a Myanmar military shell had landed on a Catholic church.

This links to a broader national trend of a crackdown on media. In December 2017, for allegedly illegally obtaining documents related to abuses against the Rohingya. The government of Myanmar also continues to insist that it will not grant access to the fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council, and it recently from any further visits.

International Pressure Needed

The trajectory of recent events, from arrests of journalists to resumed shelling even near displacement camps, suggests the government and military are not prepared to take steps toward peace and respect for human rights whether in Rakhine or Kachin and northern Shan States. In the absence of internal policy change, the need for international pressure will only become more necessary and urgent.

The holding of emergency sessions at the UN Human Rights Council and UN Security Council and the US — the general previously overseeing the ethnic cleansing campaign in Rakhine State — are welcome steps. But more must be done, including further targeted sanctions, suspension of military to military cooperation and imposition of a multilateral arms embargo.

The ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the Rohingya community previously living in Myanmar already begged all of these steps and more concerted international pressure. The ongoing plight of other minorities in Myanmar should not only reinforce the need for that pressure, but also remind us of broader risks of insecurity and even greater civilian suffering.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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As the world’s attention is focused on the tragedy of Aleppo, a small pocket of western Myanmar is witnessing a genocide of its own in the making. In response to recent attacks against the police by Rohingya militants, the recently-elected government has moved in against the Muslim minority group, armed with everything from fire torches to helicopter gunships. As in most conflicts, the majority of victims—of rape, torture and murder—are women, children and the elderly.

The 1.3 million Rohingya live in Rakhine state and are falsely classified as illegal immigrants by both the Myanmar government and the militant Buddhists, who launch attacks against them. The group has been denied citizenship and even its name itself is recognized neither by the government nor its Nobel Peace Prize-winning international superstar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who herself spent 15 years under arrest during the military dictatorship.

As Suu Kyi turns a deaf ear to the plight of the Rohingya community, the 120,000 who are already displaced are now being followed by , fleeing collective punishment and facing more “.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The US State Department’sĚýrecent declaration of the Ěýagainst groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims,Ěýcaptured headlines across the globe. The newsĚýcame out of a .

However, the biggest story out of that report was not about IS, but rather the failure to find anything more than “discrimination” and “persecution” against the Rohingya in western Myanmar. Such a shockingly understated conclusion and downplaying of atrocities against Rohingya sends a dangerously mixed message at a time of important transition.

It is not so much that the State Department did not find that the Rohingya are facing genocide. Proving intent is always a difficult and controversial barrier for genocide determination. Rather, the greater damage is in the blatant minimization of the plight of the Rohingya and what it means for increasing the risk of further atrocities against them.

The Evidence

The threat is real. The Early Warning Project at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, a sophisticated system of state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative analysis, continues to place Myanmar at theĚýtop of its . Multiple independent human rights group reports, including by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Fortify Rights,Ěý, and ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, have documented abuses and warned about the high risk of genocide and mass atrocities in Myanmar. Yale Law School’s Human Rights Clinic has foundĚý“”Ěýthat genocide is already taking place.

Even if one disagrees with such a determination, it is clear that the risks are high and that the Rohingya face much more than your run of the mill “discrimination” and “persecution.” United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng hasĚýwarnedĚýabout rising religious hatred and marginalization of the Rohingya and the need to address the situation “or face the risk of further violence and potentially, more serious crimes.” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in his last report on Myanmar to the UN General Assembly,ĚýcitedĚýno major improvements to “.”

Even the Ěýitself lists a litany of abuses that beg for a stronger and more accurate conclusion. The report cites the deaths of over 200 people and the displacement of 140,000 in intercommunal violence targeted against the Rohingya in 2012. It states, “There have been numerous acts of violence against Rohingya over the last few years,” and cites the UN Refugee Agency’s estimates that 160,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar by sea since 2012. The report finds that government policies continue to restrict freedom of movement, access to vital health care and education services, and rights to marry and have children. It further finds that the government “restrict(s) access for humanitarian agencies providing life-saving services” and that the government has “enabled discrimination and targeting of members of the Rohingya population.”

Blatant Minimization

Yet the State Department findings leave out significant events and fail to add up to an adequate conclusion. Strangely, the crisis in 2015 that saw thousands of Rohingya and other migrants and asylum seekers trapped at sea gets no mention. Similarly, the fact that hundreds of lives were put at risk when the Burmese government expelled Doctors Without Borders in February 2014 goes unmentioned. While the group has been allowed back in, it is at a much reduced scale and with greater restrictions. continues toĚýreportĚýon “preventable deaths due to lack of access to emergency medical treatment.” Exact estimates of deaths are difficult given the ongoing access restrictions, but the report’s authors do not seem to make the connection between the stated restrictions and the very real loss of life.

President Barack Obama had a perfectly good opportunity to emphasize treatment of the Rohingya not only to Myanmar, but to all of its neighbors when he hosted regional heads at the US-ASEAN Summit in February. But the Rohingya did not even make the agenda.

The minimization is particularly striking coming in parallel to the strong language on the Islamic State. Whereas the State Department’s report comes to the damning conclusion that IS has committed mass atrocities, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, the Rohingya are treated like an afterthought, getting the surprisingly low key summary sentence: “Meanwhile, we remain concerned about current acts that constitute persecution of and discrimination against members of the Rohingya population in Burma.”

While freely referring to atrocities committed by IS, the report seems to go out of its way to avoid the use of the word “atrocities” in regard to abuses against the Rohingya. Key subheadings refer to “atrocities in the Middle East,” but just “theĚýsituationĚýin Burma” (emphasis added). While the IS determination was rightfully deemed of such great importance that it required an address by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Rohingya determination came up only in a cursory exchange with the State Department’s spokesperson at the prompting of a reporter.

The Dangers of Minimization

So what does this all mean?

First, such minimization sends a dangerous note to the new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). Shortly, after the NLD’s historic electoral victory in November 2015, NLD SpokesmanĚýĚýsaid the Rohingya would not be a priority and suggested talking to Bangladesh about returning them. Suu Kyi has answered questions about the Rohingya by saying their .

Many Rohingya are optimistic about their future under an NLD-led government, but with such statements, it is not at all clear that their situation will be any better. This is all the more reason for the US to clearly include treatment of the Rohingya as an essential part of US-Myanmar bilateral relations. The US State Department report muddles that message at best.

Second, the report sends a dangerous message to Myanmar’s neighbors, those who have taken in tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. The initial reaction by member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the boat crisis in May 2015 was woefully inadequate, and the status of Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in those countries remains tenuous. If Myanmar’s neighbors get the message that the situation faced by the Rohingya is not so dire, then why should they provide refuge?

Obama Must Speak Out

Sadly, this appears to go above the US State Department. President Barack Obama had a perfectly good opportunity to emphasize treatment of the Rohingya not only to Myanmar, but to all of its neighbors when he hosted regional heads at the US-ASEAN Summit in February. But the Rohingya did not even make the agenda.

When Obama first visited Myanmar in November 2012, addressing the situation in Rakhine State was one of 11 commitments made by now outgoing President Thein Sein. In the final days of the Thein Sein administration, it is clear that the Rohingya situation has not gotten any better. The question remains: Will Suu Kyi and the NLD do anything about this? As long as that is a question, President Obama must be clear in his message that she must.

The bar for doing better in regard to the Rohingya is not high, but the consequences for not doing better may just be genocide and mass atrocities, the very threats that the State Department seems so intent on ignoring.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The post Ignoring the Plight of the Rohingya is a Mistake appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

With a new parliament sworn in and the date for selecting a new president fast approaching, ’s National League for Democracy (NLD) is now tasked with laying the foundation forĚýthe country’s democratic development. At the heart of this challenge liesĚýcurbing religious extremism and integrating the Muslim Rohingya minorityĚýinto Burmese society.

Budding Buddhist Extremism

In the last few years, has gained momentum in Myanmar. Ma Ba Tha, an anti-Muslim group of Buddhist monks, in many ways surpasses its predecessor, the 969 Movement. If the 969 Movement was a loose network of anti-Muslim monks, Ěýwith regional chapters and a TV channel to broadcast its sermons.ĚýExperts in politics, law and technologyĚý for the group’s activities, such as drafting bills that ban inter-religious marriage and require government approval for religious conversion, as well as fiercely lobbying until they are passed into law.ĚýMa Ba Tha also maintains close relationships with government and military officials whoĚýĚýthe group’s eventsĚýand openlyĚý.

A more worrisome indication of the group’s influence, however, is that and the NLD are willing to yield to its demands. Leading up to the 2015 election, the partyĚýĚýits event after dozens of monks protested against scheduled speeches of Muslim speakers.ĚýMembers of the NLDĚýĚýthat the party intentionally did not nominate Muslim candidates in order to avoid a possible backlash from hardline Buddhists.

The rhetoric of Ma Ba Tha does not differ too much from that of other extremists elsewhere in the world. The group’s sermons provoke fear of Muslims by characterizing Islam as an existential threat to Myanmar, claiming that Muslims are “”Ěýand “.”ĚýThe group also attacks its critics through an “us vs them” dichotomy, using the termĚý“.”ĚýHuman rights group members have received death threats from Ma Ba Tha for criticizing discriminatory legislations, and the group accuses the NLD and Suu Kyi of being Islamist.

It is unlikely that Burmese people are aware of the mismatch between this anti-pluralist message and the nation’s progress toward democracy. A 2014ĚýsurveyĚýshows that the has yet to associate democracy with equality, and 35% think that unpopular political parties should not be allowed to hold meetings. An even greater number—41%—said they would sever ties with friends who joined unpopular parties.

Fomenting Animosity

If we think about how fear and hatred can make people give up liberty and reject equality even in advanced democracies, the fomenting of animosity in the fledgling democracy of Myanmar comes as a considerable concern.

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Further, violence on one side often sows seeds of radicalization on the other. Currently, the Rohingya—who are segregated, denied citizenship and subject toĚýĚýviolence—do not have any means to make their voices heard.ĚýBut it is unrealistic to expect them to remain forever victimized and stigmatized; the long, still-expanding list of worldwide riots, wars and terrorist activities motivated by ethnic and religious tensions suggestsĚýotherwise.

Even though no organized resistance occurs, small incidents—whether inspired orĚý—can lead to largescale violence. This has already happened in 2012, when a rape and murder of a Buddhist woman, allegedly by threeĚýMuslimĚýmen, snowballed into sectarian violence that resulted in more thanĚýĚýand a mass displacement ofĚý—Ěýof whom were Muslim.

The presence of fearmongering agitators is an obstacle to development as well, since it distracts both the government and the people from other important issues. Myanmar has multiple social and economic maladies to deal with—fromĚýĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýĚýłŮ´ÇĚýĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚý.ĚýPolitical reform and ethnic reconciliation are two other long-term projects that the new government should embark on.

Worse still, in the process of tackling these issues, the NLD has to negotiate with the military, which still occupies a quarter of the seats in parliament and controls key industrial resources. In such a situation when the government needs to shore up maximum effort and public support, escalating ethnic tensions will only drain valuable resources.

Inter-Religious Peace

Of course, a great number of monks have opposed military rule and called for inter-religious peace. But many of them haveĚýĚýdue to arrests, exile and criticism from within the clergy for not being “true Buddhists.”ĚýOnly too aware of this fact, extremists try to recruit these monks byĚý.ĚýIn fact, when even leaders like Suu Kyi, beloved and honored home and abroad, tell people not to “” the Rohingya problem, there are not many who can stand up and carry the burden of openly denouncing violence against the religious minority.

It may have been partially inevitable that Suu Kyi and the NLD refrained from speaking on the Rohingya issue, since winning a majority in parliament was the utmost priority until the election. But such a position should only be a temporary political strategy. Continued apathy toward systemic violence and yielding to the demands of groups like Ma Ba Tha give the wrong signal to the public that certain religious or ethnic groups deserve alienation and subjugation.

An NLD leaderĚýĚýthat the party has many urgent tasks to prioritize over the Rohingya problem, such as “peace, the peaceful transition of power, economic development and constitutional reform.”ĚýHowever, something that NLD leaders are overlooking is the potential danger that racial tension tangled with religious extremism poses to Myanmar’s development. Although the problem is not something that can be solved in a short period of time, the government should put all of its effort into making sure that the current humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya does not evolve into a substantial obstacle to the country’s future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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By most accounts, November 8 marked a in Myanmar’s struggle for democracy. For a country with a long history of military rule, there are plenty of reasons for pro-democracy forces to celebrate.

With an estimated 80% voter turnout, most electoral observers declared the voting process to be largely smooth and peaceful. Despite structural disadvantages and credible reports of some electoral irregularities both before and during the election, ’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was able to repeat a landslide victory, reminiscent of the party’s 1990 electoral success.

Most importantly, the military leadership, as well as the ruling Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP), indicated that they would accept the results. Unlike the ill-fated 1990 elections, the NLD will finally be able to form a new government.

The Military’s Democracy

Despite this positive outlook for the NLD, the real fight over the political direction of the country is only just beginning. Critically, since reforms began in 2011, Myanmar has not been transitioning to what would commonly be considered a genuine “democracy.” Rather, it has been undergoing a carefully controlled transformation toward the military’s version of a “disciplined multi-party democratic system.”

Under the military-drafted 2008 constitution, this multi-party system is underpinned by several “disciplined” features, notably the institutionalization of a permanent political role for the military in any further governments. Three key cabinet portfolios (minister of defense and security, minister for home affairs and minister of border affairs) are directly appointed by the commander-in-chief. This ensures that the military continues to exert control over areas that reflect its core interests—the army’s continued influence over Myanmar’s political economy, but also on issues of political stability, sovereignty, national and border security, and relations (or lack of) with the country’s armed ethnic groups and its international neighbors.

The military is also guaranteed 25% of seats at all levels of parliament, which effectively allows the army the power to veto any significant changes to the 2008 constitutional framework. Any attempt to remove pro-military biases within the constitution will require more than 75% of the votes by both houses of parliament before any proposed amendments are voted in by a popular referendum.

In short, unlike the situation in 1990, the military no longer needs to rule directly, nor resort to repressive tactics to ensure its core interests are protected. Under a disciplined “democratic” system, even when a new government is formed in 2016, the military would likely continue to yield immense political power—at least in areas of its predominant interest, likely with little civilian oversight.

Further, although Suu Kyi clearly has the electoral mandate, she is constitutionally barred from becoming the next president on account of her sons having foreign citizenship. She has, however, already indicated that she would be “above the president” and will essentially lead any NLD government. In the long-run, this could have the potential for a political (and constitutional) crisis.

But more pressing perhaps is how the new NLD government will balance its commitment to introduce an inclusive democratic system, while ensuring that the military stays on board with the new government—relations that are crucial for Myanmar to achieve genuine reconciliation.

An Inclusive System

Aside from addressing the difficulty of creating sustainable civilian-military relations, unresolved issues between ethnic groups remain one of the biggest challenges, with growing anti-Muslim sentiments throughout Myanmar, as well as ongoing conflict in the ethnic peripheries, where fighting has not only resumed, but intensified in recent years.

Significant numbers of ethnic minorities, including the Kachins and the , remain in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion (popularly known as Ma Ba Tha) failed to make any significant dent on the NLD’s electoral success and have clearly lost significant grassroots support. Yet Ma Ba Tha have shaped a dangerous ultra-Buddhist nationalist narrative at the expense of shrinking citizenry and representation for the country’s Muslim populace.

Leading up to the elections, hundreds of thousands of Muslims had their right to vote stripped, while others, including domestic and overseas migrants as well as those living in conflict zones, were also disenfranchised. In a country with at least a 5% Muslim population, not only were Muslim candidates underrepresented in the elections, but none of the 20-odd Muslim candidates were able to win any seats.

Thus, although the voting process was mostly fair, as indicated by the overwhelming victory of the NLD, it was certainly not free—instead marred by a systematic exclusion of various minority groups.

How and whether the new NLD government would eventually tackle these problems will indicate whether Myanmar is moving toward a more inclusive and genuine democratic system, or whether the military’s way to democracy prevails.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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On November 8, voters went to the polls in Myanmar to elect a new parliament. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD)—Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s party—scored an impressive victory. According to the early returns, the NLD is on track to win over 80% of the vote and capture a sizeable majority in parliament.

And yet the election carries with it an asterisk—just like the New England Patriots’ 2015 Super Bowl victory (deflated footballs) or Barry Bonds’ home run record (steroids). In Myanmar’s case, the asterisk involves the 25% of seats set aside for representatives of the military. This bloc also holds veto power over any constitutional changes. And, according to the constitution, Suu Kyi can’t be president.

Because of these asterisks,ĚýThe Washington Post’sĚýĚýused Myanmar as Exhibit A in his criticism this week of the Obama administration’s coddling of dictatorships:

“It nevertheless is becoming clear that the regimes on which Obama has lavished attention have greeted his overtures with a counter-strategy. It’s possible, they calculate, to use the economic benefits of better relations to entrench their authoritarian systems for the long term, while screening out any liberalizing influence. Rather than being subverted by U.S. dollars, they would be saved by them.”

Tell that to all the people celebrating in the streets of Myanmar’s capital and throughout the country. The ruling party may well believe that it’s created the façade of democracy in order to secure foreign investments and maintain its hold on power. But that doesn’t mean that its perception jives with reality. Nor does it follow that the Obama administration’s gambit is a faulty one. Diehl thinks that he’s as cunning as the Burmese junta in identifying the weaknesses of President Barack Obama’s strategy. More likely, Diehl is as intellectually torpid and politically blinkered as the junta is.

Also, democracy with asterisks is more the rule than the exception. And when it comes to tricky transitions, such asterisks can be a useful compromise. Just ask the Poles.

The Case of 1989

The Polish opposition negotiated a compromise in 1989 very similar to the one embraced by the Burmese dissidents. And, at the time, plenty of critics responded with the same kind of hostility as Jackson Diehl. The Solidarity trade union, the skeptics lamented, had made a lousy deal with the devil.

In spring 1989, Solidarity activists sat down with government representatives in the legendary . Out of those discussions, the two sides agreed to parliamentary elections on June 4. All of the seats of a newly created Senate would be up for grabs. But the Communist Party and its satellite parties retained two-thirds of the seats in the more important chamber known as the Sejm (considerably more than what the Burmese junta demanded).

The election results were a surprise. Very few people expected that Solidarity would win virtually every seat it contested (it lost a single Senate seat to an independent). Since they formed a parliamentary majority in the Sejm, the government-affiliated parties selected the president—the architect of Martial Law, Wojciech Jaruzelski—who then proposed his right-hand man, Czeslaw Kiszczak, as the prime minister. But, in another surprise, Solidarity managed to woo away several of the satellite parties to create a ruling coalition and undermine support for Kiszczak.

In other words, what had started out as a major democratic asterisk turned into one of the most exhilarating exercises of democracy in modern history. In September 1989, Solidarity formed the first non-communist government under Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. It was just a matter of a month or two before the rest of the region followed suit in spectacular fashion.

Other Asterisks

All democracies, at some level, deserve an asterisk or two. It’s in the very definition of democracy that they are works in progress.

Consider democracy in the United States. At most,ĚýĚýof the population in the 18^thĚýcentury was eligible to vote. After all, women, slaves and white men without property were all barred from the polling booths. And that situation lasted many decades. Formally, African Americans received the right to vote in 1865 with the 14^thĚýamendment, but in fact many African Americans would only begin to vote with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Women, meanwhile, had to wait for suffrage until 1920 and the passage of the 19^thamendment. Felons remain disenfranchised to this day.

Virtually all democracies created in the 18^thĚýand 19^thĚýcenturies had a restricted franchise. In the 1780s, for instance,ĚýĚýof the population of England and Wales formed the electorate. Of course, many asterisks continued into the 20^thĚýand 21^stĚýcenturies as well. Women won the right to vote in Iraq in 1980, the Central African Republic in 1986, in Qatar in 1999 and just this year in Saudi Arabia.

Democracies are also subject to more structural problems. The inordinate influence of money on American elections, exacerbated by the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court in 2010, has reinforced the sad reality that only the wealthiest citizens, or those capable of attracting the support of the wealthy, can successfully run for office in the United States. Government restrictions on the media—as is the case in Russia, among other places—also produce questionable election results. The prior approval of candidates by unelected officials—in Iran, for instance—has also limited the full exercise of political freedoms.

Aung San Suu Kyi is not just whistling in the dark. She can count on people power from below and superpowers from abroad. The next task is to expand her maneuvering room. Gradually eliminating the most prominent asterisk attached to Myanmar’s democracy … is no doubt on the top of her agenda.

Democracy is about learning from mistakes. Even in our “advanced democracies,” we continue to commit unpardonable errors that our wiser heirs will identify and correct (or not).

Back to Burma

The military junta in Myanmar, as Diehl argues, has made what it considers a careful calculation. When it comes to investment, the gamble has proven a profitable one. WritesĚý:

“From 1988 to 2012 only 477 foreign companies invested in Myanmar, with a total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of US$4.1 billion.

“In the last fiscal year, this figure has doubled to over US$8 billion and 895 companies from 38 countries have invested in the country, according to a new report from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC),ĚýForeign Direct Investment In Myanmar: What Impact On Human Rights?

“Real estate pricesĚýin downtown Yangon now rival those of Manhattan. And the Asian Development Bank expects Myanmar to have one of the region’s fastest growth rates ofĚýseven to eight per cent per yearĚýin the coming decade.”

Diehl makes a fundamental mistake in connecting this foreign investment to the continued political fortunes of the ruling elite. Rather, as in every other country in transition over the last 25 years, the elite is trading its political status for economic enrichment, using insider knowledge and contacts to find a secure place in the new order. If I were an unscrupulous ruling party official in Myanmar, I would welcome the opportunity to hand over all of the country’s most challenging problems of governance to the opposition and focus instead on making boatloads of money in the oil or lumber industries.

“Our USDP lost completely,” one member of the ruling party, Kyi Win,Ěý. “The NLD has won. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has to take responsibility now.” That means that Suu Kyi and the NLD must take responsibility for myriad armed conflicts, an antiquated economy, rampant corruption, drug problems galore, a challenging relationship with China and much, much more.

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The victory of the NLD will not, after all, magically pull Myanmar together. If anything, it may well accentuate the divisions in the country, as democracy often does. Suu Kyi has barely said anything on , the dispossessed Muslim minority living in the Rakhine state that abuts Bangladesh. The NLD alsoĚý onto their election list. Even so, the extremist Buddhist party Ma Ba Tha—and you thought all Buddhists were peace-loving meditators?—tried toĚý.

The Muslim-Buddhist conflict is but one of many in Myanmar. There areĚý, largely structured along ethnic lines: the Karen, Kachin, Karenni, Chin, Mon, Rakhine, Shan and Wa. And there are just as many breakaway groups from these major groups.

In October, the government signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with eight paramilitary groups, effectively ending armed conflict throughout much of the country. It’s the first time any armed faction representing the Karen people has participated in aĚý. That’s the good news. The bad news is that seven armed factions—including the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Army—refused to sign the agreement.

It’s not clear whether the NLD will bring any greater credibility to the negotiating table, particularly when dealing with the issues underlying the insurgencies. For instance, Suu Kyi was put in charge of a commission looking into aĚý responsible for confiscating thousands of acres from farmers, relocating 66 villages, providing little in the way of compensation and polluting the environment. The commission endorsed the project, and local protests continued.

Ignoring the Rohingya, keeping Muslims off the NLD election list, backing a controversial mining project: Suu Kyi has indicated in so many ways that she’s not interested in remaining an icon dressed in saintly white. She fully intends to be a politician and wrestle around in the mud.

So, though she can’t become president for now, she won’t hesitate to wield as much power as she can manage. “If I’m required to field a president who meets the requirements of section F of the constitution, alright then we’ll find one,” sheĚýĚýafter the preliminary results were in. “But that won’t stop me making all the decisions as the leader of the winning party.” Maybe Hillary Clinton, who met with Suu Kyi in 2011, has had more influence over the Burmese leader than she ever anticipated.

The NLD has to be careful. The party also won back in 1990, but the government at that time refused to acknowledge the results. The military could decide to hit the replay button. But the government already respected the semi-democratic by-elections in 2012. And, as Suu KyiĚý: “The times are different, the people are different.” The military has a number of incentives to let the current election results stand. It’s not just the influx of foreign investment. The military also finds it useful to have the support of the United States and Europe to counterbalance the giants in the neighborhood, China and India. And, unlike in Egypt, the military can’t portray the opposition as a threat to Western interests.

Aung San Suu Kyi is not just whistling in the dark. She can count on people power from below and superpowers from abroad. The next task is to expand her maneuvering room. Gradually eliminating the most prominent asterisk attached to Myanmar’s democracy—and proving Jackson Diehl wrong about the country’s political future—is no doubt on the top of her agenda. But given all the other challenges facing Myanmar today, that’s probably the least of her problems.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Al Jazeera English recently , which was supported by a report, that accused the Myanmar government of an orchestrated campaign to trigger communal violence, and it claimed there was “”Ěýof genocide against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority situated in the country’s Rakhine State.

Much of what the report discusses is nothing new to those who have been following the issue over the last few decades.ĚýTo some extent, the findings justify the fears of many who had warned that Myanmar’s journey of “transitional democracy” was at best weak or at worst a superficial attempt at misleading the international community.

What the report and documentary do highlight is the embarrassing situation world powers find themselves in having not heeded these warnings.

Led primarily by British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama, the international community has fallen over itself to “reengage” with Myanmar and to normalize relationships, while fulfilling childhood fantasies of meeting Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.ĚýIn this haste, countries such as Britain and the United States have turned a blind eye to the violence meted out to the Rohingya and have had muted responses to the Andaman sea refugee crisis earlier this year.

Much has been made about the transition to a democratic process after the first set of elections in 2010, which brought to power the military’s civilian proxy, and the first for 25 years taking place on November 8, 2015.ĚýIt was assumed that that this would be the watershed moment for democracy in Myanmar.ĚýYet the for minority groups like the Rohingya casts a shadow on what is already a deeply contested and controversial process.

In its quest to encourage Myanmar to come in from the cold, the international community somehow failed to remember simple things.ĚýThe country needed to conquer the longstanding fear of outsiders—an effect of decades of isolation, with an internalization of the regime’s propaganda.ĚýThe fact that the population, which has so far been insulated, would have to learn to interact with far more non-Burmese, non-Buddhist and indeed Muslim communities should have been handled during this transition, offsetting the rhetoric coming out of the Buddhist clergy.

The report also exposes a weakness in the process the international community proposes as a country transitions into becoming more open.ĚýAs with what happened in the Central African Republic, the emphasis is usually on holding elections as this seems to be the litmus test of democracy and a return to some normality.

However, as with many other countries in the region, democracy is not just about holding elections. It is about understanding the concepts of shared societies, which means developing socially cohesive societies that respect diversity.ĚýThis process about understanding universal democratic principles and human rights should have been the focus, as opposed to allowing the consolidation of power based on religious-ethno-nationalist markings.

In From the Cold

The international community has also been woefully let down by its over-romanticized perceptions of Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).ĚýIncidents over the past few years clearly show an apparent breakdown in the moral logic of Myanmar’s internationally vaunted opposition. This is equally a problem of the international community as it is with Suu Kyi and the NLD.

There are some serious questions we must ask ourselves: Have our own perceptions of the pro-democracy movement been colored—in terms of representing their battles against the junta as some sort of pure quest of good vs evil—when all they represented was just an opposition to the regime but not necessarily anything better? Did we mistake their opposition to the junta to be an acceptance of universal human rights and a commitment to tolerance?

These questions point to a deeper malaise within Burmese society that needs to be tackled, perhaps even from a deep theological basis.

This offers little respite to the people on the ground at the receiving end of violence.ĚýThe fear is that the crisis will continue, thereby leading to another wave of refugees—or worse to support radicalization and militancy in the region.

The international community faces an interesting paradox:ĚýHow do world powers deal with a new government in Myanmar knowing fully well that a portion of the voters were excluded?ĚýShould the ruling party return to power, how could they be dealt with knowing that they orchestrated a genocide campaign?ĚýShould Suu Kyi’s party come to power, how does she morally and ethically stand up to the scrutiny that she will be under to act on the report’s findings?

Either way, these are all unanswered questions that point to an uncertain future for Myanmar, its democratic journey and its treatment of minorities, especially the Rohingya.

Much of it lies in economic and security interests that Myanmar offers, particularly for world powers. Countries like Britain—as has been recently illustrated with the visit of the Egyptian president—are much more immune to these concerns, especially if there is an economic interest involved.

Whichever government comes to power following the November 8 elections in Myanmar, it will be one that is diluted by the fact that a portion of the voters were disenfranchised and that the lead-up to the vote was marred by an orchestrated campaign of genocide.ĚýThe international community should do well to remember this when it engages and further encourages Myanmar to come in from the cold.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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For the last six decades, Myanmar’s political history—like its neighbor, Thailand—has been volatile and authoritarian at best. It has largely existed as a one-party, military-led state since 1962, when General Ne Win led a military coup that saw the abolishment of the federal system and the inauguration of “the Burmese way to socialism.”

Myanmar’s last three elections were not free and fair. They only allowed for limited participation, and they were clearly orchestrated to prevent power from being transferred from the military to civilian hands.

The 1990 elections saw the junta refusing to acknowledge the landslide victory achieved by Aung Sang Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and the subsequent exclusion of the NLD in the 2010 elections.

The 2015 elections, however, are shaping up to be different compared to earlier attempts to move toward a period of transparent democratic politics. Campaigning across the country has never been more vibrant, and have caught on the election hype and interest. Over 10,000 local and international , diplomats and journalists have registered with the Union Election Commission to observe the vote and ensure that elections unfold in a free and fair manner.

Minority Representation

More importantly, this round of elections has been the most inclusive and pluralistic, with two-thirds of the 92 registered political parties representing ethnic or religious minorities.

The issue of ethnic representation is more prevalent than ever due to events earlier this year. In , clashes between Kokang separatists and the military in Shan state left nearly 50 soldiers dead, and in June, thousands of Rohingya Muslims were in Rakhine state.

On November 8, 644 seats will be contested across 14 administrative regions—consisting of seven regions that are ethnically Burmese, as well as seven states that have higher proportions of minority ethnic populations.

As shown by the Myanmar government’s to marginalize the country’s minorities, the difference in ethnic composition has important implications on electoral results, as ethnicity is highly political and deeply ingrained in the political infrastructure of the country.

The main battle-lines will be drawn between the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—formed in 2010, and a successor of the military-created Union Solidarity and Development Association—and the NLD.

President Thein Sein’s main opponent will not be Aung Sung Suu Kyi, who is from becoming president. Instead, it will be former USDP Chairman Thura Shwe Mann, who was a mere three months ago. There is that Shwee Mann will collaborate with Suu Kyi to push for genuine political reforms and constitutional amendments.

Given the inter-religious and inter-communal tensions that have plagued the country despite it “” opening up in 2011, things on the ground are more nuanced and complicated.

As of October, the number of areas deemed “unfit” for elections remains sizeable. Voting has being cancelled in nearly 600 village tracts, mostly in the Kachin and Shan states. The UEC has cited that the “lack of security” in these villages endangers the quality of voting. The commission did not provide an exact figure on the total number of voters that will be excluded from voting, but it is estimated that millions will not have the .

“Strong Evidence” of Genocide in Myanmar

Despite the overwhelming number of ethnic parties participating in these elections, the playing field is fundamentally not a leveled one. Although Muslims make up 5% of the country’s 51 million residents, nearly all have been by the UEC based on weak grounds; they have even been dropped by the NLD.

Final voting lists have still not been , and the large number of external election observers does not guarantee that mass-rigging of votes will not occur. Thousands of “” by soldiers and civil servants have already been cast, and hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens living beyond capitals in other countries have also been left out of voting.

To top it off, recent reports purporting “” of genocide against Rohingya Muslims has just about overshadowed the elections.

The reports of mass killings and explicit exclusion of the Rohingya, however, should not divert attention away from the underlying that exists within Myanmar. While international investigations should be encouraged to look into these allegations further, boycotting the regime at such an important juncture of the country’s political development will only lead to more tension and political incoherence.

There is much at stake in this round of elections, and it can only be hoped that one step of progress will be made for millions of Burmese who will be voting for the first time. It is up to the people of Myanmar to hold their candidates accountable for the promises they have made after months of campaigning.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The brown and yellow races mingle where the borders of Bangladesh, Myanmar and India meet. Less than seven decades ago, these lands were part of the British Empire. Largely autonomous tribes that had intermittently warred in small-scale conflict were squashed together as the British forged European-style state systems and exploited natives for economic gain. Now, these natives are turning on each other and religion is adding a toxic element to the conflict.

Eric Arthur Blair, who went on to be known as George Orwell, served in Myanmar. He was an officer in the Indian Imperial Police and hailed from a family of imperialists. His father worked for the of the imperial government, forcing Indians to grow opium for the Chinese market. It is the same trade that Afghan farmers try to ply today without the British Empire’s political and economic nous. The aftershocks of British actions continue to this day from Palestine to Myanmar.

The collapse of the British Empire in South Asia was brutal and bloody. Communal violence erupted as British India gave way to India and Pakistan in 1947. It led to the and exponentially higher deaths than all the subsequent wars in the region since. Pakistan itself imploded soon thereafter, and Bangladesh was born in 1971 because Bangladeshis were tired of the by Pakistani troops.

It seems it is now the turn of Myanmar to emulate Pakistan. This week, a report published by Ěýconcluded that “the abuses of Rohingya Muslims’ human rights in Myanmar’s Rakhine State amount to genocide.”

An estimated 1Ěýmillion Rohingyas live in Rakhine, a state bordering Bangladesh on the Bay of Bengal. In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, the British brought Bengali Muslims to work the paddy fields of the region, just as they had taken slaves to Jamaica and indentured labor to Fiji to work on sugar plantations. Thant Myint-U, a historian of Myanmar, records that as many as 480,000 Indians were arriving in Rangoon in 1927. For a time, Rangoon beat New York to become the biggest immigration port in the world. An celebrates a telephone call from a pining husband in Rangoon to his wife back home. The song reflects the reality of its time. Myanmar was administered as a province of British India and Indians formed a majority in the country’s biggest cities.

Naturally, such a huge influx of immigrants led to tensions. In Rakhine, animosity emerged between Buddhist natives and Muslim newcomers. The situation turned so tense that the British set up a commission to investigate immigration in 1939. In 1942, the British armed the Rohingyas to fight the Japanese, but this resulted in full-scale communal violence with the natives coming off worse in the process. After the British packed their bags, Rohingyas demanded secession from Myanmar and a merger with Pakistan. When Pakistani leaders did not give them much support, they launched a jihad for an autonomous Muslim state.

After the 1962 military coup in Myanmar, General Ne Win decided it was payback time. The military started hunting the Rohingyas with ferocity and many had fled to Bangladesh as refugees.

Today, Myanmar is gearing up for elections as the military steps into the shadows but, as in , ethnic is now on the rise. Rohingyas have become convenient whipping boys in the process. Ma Ba Tha, also known as The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, is an ultra-nationalist xenophobic group that is becoming increasingly powerful. Ashin Wirathu, a charismatic monk who is known as the “Burmese bin Laden,” has been warning about the impending Muslim takeover of Myanmar.

The extremists are backed by elements in Myanmar’s military who seek to retain power through creating a climate of fear. Islamophobia is so strong in Myanmar that iconic Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has not selected a for her party.ĚýThe forthcoming election in Myanmar is certainly not going to be fair, and it is highly unfair to Muslims who will not be represented by a single candidate.

As the Yale Law School observes, security personnel, government officials and Rakhine natives have targeted Rohingyas and subjected them to arbitrary detention, torture and rape. In one of Orwell’s stories, the protagonist bitterly hated “,” but still felt that “the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts.”

It is such priests that are fueling paranoia against Rohingyas, who themselves are falling prey to their own charismatic Muslim clerics and taking to violence. On May 28, 2012, riots broke out after three Rohingya men a local 27-year-old seamstress. Thereafter, a Buddhist mob killed ten Muslim men in retaliation, leading to riots where both sides slaughtered each other with fanatical zeal.

The Rohingyas have suffered enormously because the military backs the native Rakhine community. While the military supportsĚýBuddhist reactionaries, Saudi money is Ěýin Myanmar and toĚý—where most Rohingyas trace their roots—promoting puritanical Islam. , Saudi-inspired radicalization is pouring fuel into the fire, and religious fanaticism on both sides is increasing the risk of a broader conflict.

Rakhine is relatively peaceful compared to South Sudan. Investigators from the (AU) have discovered mass graves and recorded testimony of “the extremely violent nature of the rape of women and girls – that in some instances involved maiming and dismemberment of limbs.” Details of “killings, abductions, disappearances, rapes, beatings, stealing by forces and being forced to eat dead human flesh” have emerged.

President Salva Kiir, a Dinka leader, appears to have sanctioned the slaughter of Nuer men because Riek Machar, his rival and former vice president, is a Nuer leader. The formation of Westphalian European-style states in Africa is far too often a ruthless struggle for power and patronage that results in bloodlust. South Sudan is no exception. Although Kiir and Machar have signed a peace agreement, conflict still continues.

Even as violence rages elsewhere, “.” Yet as points out, mainstream media is largely ignoring the phenomenon. Nearly have been detected in Indonesia in 2015. Along with the trees, the land is burning too because Indonesian forests sit on great domes of peat. When fires penetrate the earth, they can smolder for months, releasing toxic amounts of methane, carbon monoxide, ozone and exotic gases such as ammonium cyanide.

Since September, Indonesia is per day than the US. More than (20,000 square kilometers) of forestĚýhave been reduced to ashes. More than 500,000 people are suffering from respiratory ailments and at least 19 have died. Even neighbors such as Malaysia and Singapore are enveloped in haze. Orangutans, clouded leopards, sun bears, gibbons, the Sumatran rhinoceros and Sumatran tiger are among the many endangered species under threat of extinction.

It is a great tragedy that these fires are man-made. Like Myanmar, Indonesia is a former colony where European powers arrived to extract resources. Even today, its economy continues to rely on commodities. Consequently, annual fires are set off to clear forests so that the land can be used to produce palm oil and paper. Writing in the , Erik Meijard has called Indonesia’s fire crisis the of the 21^st century. Indonesian President Joko Widodo has cut short his Ěýto deal with the fire crisis that his government has handled with spectacular incompetence.

As Indonesia suffers damage to the tune of multiple billions of dollars, none of the richer countries areĚýchipping in to give cash, share expertise or send resources to fight a disaster that is devastating the planet. More importantly, few are questioning an economic system based on wasteful consumption that is wrecking the environment.

Despite the raging fires, Marco Rubio, a promising presidential candidate in the US, helpfully points out thatĚýhuman activity is not really . For many leaders of the world’s biggest polluter, combating climate change is not worth the cost to the economy.

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visitĚýĚýand enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

“Strong Evidence” of Genocide Raises Stakes in Myanmar

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Genocide is the most serious charge that can be levied in international law and should not be taken lightly.

The existence of persecution, severe human rights abuses and a high risk of mass atrocities has long been recognized in Myanmar. But now a newly released assessment finds “strong evidence” that genocide may already be underway.

These findings both raise the stakes for Myanmar’s embattled Rohingya minority and beg the question of why a push for protection and an international investigation to ensure accountability have not been launched.

The assessment, carried out by Yale Law School’s Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic, and featured in a newĚýAl Jazeera English documentary, finds that the Burmese government deliberately triggered communal violence, incited anti-Muslim riots and targeted the Rohingya minority. It is based on evidence collected by Al Jazeera English and the Southeast Asia-based advocacy groupĚýFortify Rights. Their investigations include a mix of eye witness and victim testimonies, confessions of former officials and confidential government documents.

The violence and high risk of atrocities in Myanmar…

What Erdogan Does Next

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The future of Turkey hangs in the balance, and society is more polarized than it has ever been under the AKP.

Since the general election of June 2015, which led to a hung parliament, Turkey has found itself embroiled in three instances of terrorism. In each case, the disproportionate victims have been Kurdish in origin. The Diyarbakir bombing in early June killed four people. The Suruc bombing in July took 33 lives. The Ankara bombing on October 10, in the nation’s capital city, killed at least 128 mostly young people. The last tragedy happened just three weeks before another general election on November 1, where the outcome is likely to remain the same as it was in June.

It is still unclear who is behind these terrorist attacks or what it all means for the immediate future of Turkey, although considerable focus has pointed toward the Islamic State (IS).

Many observers and critics have blamed IS for the Ankara bombings which, for some others, implicates the current Turkish government…

The Folly of Israeli Apartheid Knows No Boundaries

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The aim of the resistance is to free Palestine and to give Palestinians the rights they deserve, says Miko Peled.

The courtroom in Jerusalem was small with whitewashed walls and a few simple, uncomfortable wooden benches. The air conditioner didn’t work well, so the room was either too cold or not cool enough. The atmosphere was very causal. No one announced or stood when the judge entered. The prosecution and the defense council were too busy with their papers, and the defendants—me among them—were caught by surprise as the door to his chambers opened and the judge entered and sat in his chair.

Under the circumstances, the whole thing seemed a waste of time. There I was, along with two other defendants, charged with participating in disturbances in a protest in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank in 2012. Considering that during the month of October, armed Israeli vigilantes and soldiers have been killing and injuring young Palestinians wholesale and getting away with it…

Challenges Facing the EU Today

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With a refugee crisis, a banking union and the prospect of a Brexit, the European Union is faced with a host of questions. Former Prime Minister John Bruton explains.

We are in a time of war—not in Europe itself, but close enough to its borders to have led to massive outflows of refugees into the continent. The situation was described at the EPP Congress as the “most serious crisis for the European Union since its creation.” This is not an exaggeration.

The refugee crisis has reached an unprecedented level, because the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts are at a ferocity and intensity not seen since World War II; up to 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian Civil War alone.

Most of these people are not coming to Europe for economic reasons, or because they are on a mission of any kind, but because they are in fear of their lives. They are seeking refuge. They are the human embodiment of the price of war. Their plight is…

Modi Should Denounce Sectarian Violence in India

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Sikhs across the globe are up in arms over sectarian violence in India and are calling on Prime Minister Modi to respond.

On October 14 in Punjab, northern India,Ěýviolence erupted amid a peaceful protest. The protesters were Sikh, from a religion native to the region but with followers all over the world. The violent actors, who killed two and injured some 80 or more, were local police.

When I first saw my fellow Sikhs adopting the hashtag #SikhLivesMatter, despite my initial wariness at their cooption of the moniker used by African American activists, I accepted it. I assumed there was a direct comparison being made between unwarranted state action, the devaluation of human life and a call for accountability.

Over the past few weeks, as the global Sikh community exploded with anger and concern, I was shocked to see how my community focused on issues that were beside the point.

Time was lent in major media outlets, after anĚýon-air protest, to assess the concerns as they were actually…

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The existence of persecution, severe human rights abuses and a high risk of mass atrocities has long been recognized in Myanmar. But now a newly released assessment finds “strong evidence” that genocide may already be underway.

These findings both raise the stakes for Myanmar’s embattled Rohingya minority and beg the question of why a push for protection and an international investigation to ensure accountability have not been launched.

The assessment, carried out by Yale Law School’s Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic, and featured in a new , finds that the Burmese government deliberately triggered communal violence, incited anti-Muslim riots and targeted the Rohingya minority. It is based on evidence collected by Al Jazeera English and the Southeast Asia-based advocacy group . Their investigations include a mix of eye witness and victim testimonies, confessions of former officials and confidential government documents.

The violence and high risk of atrocities in Myanmar have been well-known. Reports by the (UN), the and numerous human rights groups have documented rampant hate speech, blocking of aid and restrictions of basic rights. In 2014, United to End Genocide released a based on fact-finding missions to western Myanmar, concluding that nowhere in the world were there more known precursors to genocide.

The more than 1 million Rohingya living in western Myanmar have long faced persecution, and people have been living in squalid displacement camps with severely restricted rights after their homes and villages were burned to the ground in 2012. In 2014, the government kicked out Nobel Prize-winning group Doctors Without Borders, the main provider of health services to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, leading to an increased number of deaths. The group has been allowed to return but at a much more restricted level. The conditions are so desperate that Rohingya have taken a to flee the country; are believed to have died at sea or in the camps of human traffickers.

What is new are the revelations of official documents and testimony of former officials that link the violence to state policies and organized efforts to target the Rohingya, amounting to much more than random communal violence. Confidential military and government documents reveal language stoking anti-Muslim fears by warning of “nationwide communal riots” and the danger of Myanmar being “devoured” by Muslims. A PowerPoint presentation used for military training demonizes Muslims, using a highly pejorative term, and warns against the “threat” of their growing population. Former officials, speaking anonymously, tell of government planning of riots, including paying instigators.

There is also the independent assessment of the Lowenstein Clinic, which carefully dissects the legal evidence of genocide, including the notoriously difficult to prove requirement of proof of “intent.” The clinic cites hate-speech against Muslims—particularly Rohingya—targeting of Rohingya because of their group identity, birth and marriage restrictions, deprivation of aid and evidence of mass-scale atrocities perpetrated against Rohingya. Though careful to indicate the need for a full and independent investigation to definitively conclude that genocide is occurring, the group finds that “evidence strongly suggests that the Myanmar government has acted with the requisite intent to have committed genocide.”

November Elections

The timing of the findings are significant, coming just ahead of much lauded elections in November, which are being viewed by the world as a critical test of the country’s democratic transition. But the finding of “strong evidence” of genocide is a reminder that no matter how well the elections are run, an urgent need for accountability and protection of the Rohingya will remain.

In fact, the elections themselves further validate the report findings of government policies of targeted exclusion. In the run up to the polls, temporary identity cards held by Rohingya and other minorities were invalidated, hundreds of thousands who voted in the bi-elections in 2010 from again voting. Sitting members of parliament who are from running for re-election. A strong movement of extremist nationalist monks is wielding increasing influence and supporting the current military-backed majority party. Its leaders, including firebrand monk Ashin Wirathu, have been very open about their anti-Muslim sentiments, calling Muslims “snakes” and “mad dogs.”

The findings are also significant in terms of their implications for global policies toward Myanmar. Any finding of genocide brings with it an implicit call for action. The United States and European countries have been reluctant to take action against Myanmar as they hope to give space to reformers. But if the “strong evidence” recently found proves true, the stakes are suddenly much higher and the argument to hold back economic and diplomatic pressure is that much weaker.

Genocide is the most serious charge that can be levied in international law and should not be taken lightly. This is all the more reason for an internationally-backed, thorough and independent investigation. As the Yale Law School report recommends, the United Nations Human Rights Council is well-placed to authorize and oversee such an investigation.

The Human Rights Council should launch an investigation, and the international community should push the Burmese government to take measures to protect, not incite violence against, the Rohingya. The government may glaze over criticisms of its democratic transition, but it should not be allowed to glaze over genocide.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Myanmar’s Union Election Commission has announced that elections will go ahead on November 8 as planned, despite earlier reports of potential delays.

The elections are widely expected to result in considerable support for the opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). A decisive victory for the NLD would have positive implications for democratic governance in Myanmar, but could also increase the prospect of military intervention, which would conversely serve to hinder democratic development.

A victory by the ruling, military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) would largely maintain the current status quo and slow the prospect of reforms to the military’s considerable political and economic influence. Popular unrest remains a threat in either outcome, particularly if doubts arise over the integrity of the polls.

Who are the key players?

The elections are being contested by the NLD, USDP and a number of smaller ethnic parties from Myanmar’s border states that make up 31% of available parliamentary seats. The NLD and USDP are the only parties campaigning nationwide, but neither is likely to win enough votes to form a majority government, making a coalition with smaller parties a likely necessity.

1)ĚýThe military orchestrated Myanmar’s political transition to a nominally civilian government in 2011, and maintains a strong political position on the back of a constitution passed in a . The constitution gives the military 25% of parliamentary seats by appointment and, therefore, empowers it with a de facto veto over constitutional changes that require a parliamentary majority of more than 75%. have become a key concern in the past four years and are a major political issue ahead of the elections.

The head of the armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, has given repeated assurances that the military will respect the elections regardless of the victor, yet is thought to favor a USDP-led government, which will serve to prolong its economic and tacit political influence. The military has extensive business interests in Myanmar’s key sectors, including oil and gas and mining, and it will aim to strongly protect these interests regardless of the election result. For instance, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd is a military-managed state-owned company comprising at least 54 subsidiaries, joint-venture companies and factories active in oil and gas, mining, banking, manufacturing, trading, logistics and transportation, steel, pharmaceuticals and other sectors.

2)ĚýThe USDP won an uncontested election in 2010, and it has since been responsible for implementing a series of reforms in Myanmar to free political prisoners, remove restrictions on the media and develop a multi-party political system. USDP leadership consists of former military officials and the party has managed the political transition while serving military interests. Its position is strengthened by its military connections, access to state funding and extensive nationwide network of party offices and staff, allowing it to provide direct financial support to constituencies and promises of tangible economic and infrastructure improvements.

3)ĚýThe NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, is widely expected to win the highest number of votes in the upcoming election. The NLD is strongest in the central and southern regions dominated by the ethnic Bamar majority, the support of whom propelled the party to a landslide victory in historic elections in 1990, with almost 60% of the national vote. Along with many other parties, the NLD boycotted the 2010 elections, citing widespread electoral irregularities.

The NLD established itself as Myanmar’s leading opposition party after gaining 66% of the votes, or 43 out of 44 contested seats, in the 2012 by-election, held to fill vacant seats left by members of parliament promoted to ministerial positions. The NLD has since continued to and the military on many issues, including constitutional reform. The NLD’s successful inclusion in Myanmar’s political process since 2011 is also credited with the withdrawal of international sanctions in 2012 and 2013, opening up foreign direct investment (FDI) that totaled $3.5 billion in 2013-14 and a record $8 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal years.

Myanmar under an NLD-led government

An NLD-led government would signal a positive change for Myanmar’s emerging democracy, challenging the military’s political and economic interests. It would undertake efforts to amend the constitution to limit the military’s veto power, reduce its political presence in government and allow Aung San Suu Kyi to run for president as leader of the NLD. At present, Article 59 (f) of the 2008 constitution bars Suu Kyi from the presidency, as it stipulates that individuals whose spouse, children or parents are foreign citizens cannot stand as candidates. Suu Kyi’s late husband was British and her children hold British citizenship, making her ineligible to run for president despite her widespread popularity.

The speed and extent of reforms driven by the NLD will largely shape the military’s acquiescence to further political changes. The NLD will know that a dramatic promotion of reforms could provoke military action and will likely opt for gradual reforms. At the same time, the military will be conscious of the dangers political intervention in a new government poses to its own economic interests, which could benefit from broader foreign investment.

There remain other important issues that could provoke military intervention in a NLD-led government. An escalation of the ongoing civil conflict with ethnic armed groups in Kachin, Shan or Mon states, or government deals with armed groups perceived to go against the military’s interests, could prompt interference from the armed forces under the guise of national security. Similarly, concessions to ethnic political organizations in Myanmar over the establishment of a federal union, historically opposed by the military but a key demand of many armed groups, could exacerbate civilian-military tensions. In addition, the emergence of mass demonstrations against the NLD by extreme nationalist Buddhists could degrade the party’s popular mandate, prompting the military to intervene and restore order.

There are some concerns that an NLD-led government may have negative ramifications for the country’s economic outlook, increasing short-term uncertainty and operational complications for existing investors during the transition process. Radical changes to business licenses or expropriations are extremely unlikely, but companies in Myanmar may experience delays from the changing bureaucratic and administrative processes in government, including possible retrospective reviews of operating licenses. The on a platform of extensive reforms, including improved transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector, which accounted for $3.2 billion out of the 2014-15 total of $8 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI).

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Under a USDP-led government

A USDP-led government is less likely than an NLD victory if the current administration and the military allow free and fair elections to take place. However, due to its alignment with the military and its 25% share of appointed seats, the USDP would need less than a third of the votes to form a majority government including the military, making it a credible scenario. It could be able to form a wider coalition including ethnic parties, should it win just 15% of the vote.

A USDP-led government would offer political stability in the short-term, but hinder the longer-term opening up of the economy and political environment. The constitutional reforms considered critical for Myanmar to transition to democratic governance would be unlikely in the event of a USDP victory, which could weaken its popular mandate. Businesses would also face a lower short-term risk of unexpected regulatory changes, but this scenario could fuel unrest among NLD supporters that would erode the political stability that the USDP has been able to develop as a conduit between the military and the civilian administration.

Moreover, organizations operating in Myanmar might face reputational implications from association with USDP politicians and ministers, especially if the elections were deemed fraudulent. Despite the presence of international monitors, local media have already drawn attention to and a USDP bias within the Union Election Commission, increasing the likelihood of potential fraud allegations in the aftermath of the vote. A USDP election victory would ultimately maintain the military’s vested business interests, allow it to retain its political position and slow new investment opportunities. This would serve to weaken the competitive landscape and uphold corrupt practices, which have undermined transparency in the past.

Ethnic and Political Unrest

The upcoming elections may have a significant impact on community relations in Myanmar, as the result could fuel popular unrest. Radical nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha has declared support for the USDP ahead of the elections and labeled the NLD as a pro-Muslim party, amid a stronger mandate for Myanmar’s Buddhist majority offered through anti-Muslim legislation introduced under the USDP. This will increase the risk of mass rallies, anti-Muslim protests and rioting by Buddhist extremists already witnessed in Myanmar on many previous occasions, especially if an NLD government seeks to roll back the laws lobbied for by Buddhist groups. Separately, NLD supporters could stage mass demonstrations if the election is deemed fraudulent, or if the NLD achieves a close election victory over the USDP but is unable to form a majority government.

The polls on November 8 represent a watershed event for Myanmar’s emerging democracy, which will have significant ramifications for the pace and nature of political and economic reforms in the country. Free and fair multiparty elections would mark a significant achievement for Myanmar, heralding the possibility of wider changes, including a reduction of the military’s powerful position in government and the economy. However, an NLD-led government is by no means guaranteed, and both outcomes have the potential to cause short-term political instability, largely unseen since the military-backed civilian government came into power in 2011.

*[This article is based on a report by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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On a rainy September afternoon, hundreds of Burmese, mostly women and children, were jostling each other to get into a gated compound of a two-storey modern house in a Yangon suburb.ĚýCampaigning for Myanmar’s elections had started the day before, but this was not a political rally. These people, drenched in sweat and rain, had little interest in conventional politics—they were looking for supernatural blessings from a spirit.

Inside the house was a startlingly realistic, life-size wax model of an elderly Burmese man sitting cross-legged on an altar, before which everyone was trying to bow down to seek its blessings. Outside, on the makeshift stage festooned with flags and balloons, a woman, dressed in a blue blouse and htamein embroidered with gold sequins, danced to the melodies played by a traditional Burmese musical troupe.

“May rains of gems and money fall. May the omens bode well for success of our country,” the woman cried, her voice blaring out from loudspeakers.

The popular event was to mark of the 63^rdĚýanniversary of what believers say was the transmigration of Burmese spiritual leader Bo Min Khaung to a “deathless” higher spiritual state on the demise of his earthly body. The believers claim he appears in different guises to help them when they are in straitened circumstances.

“When I was in distress at work, he has helped me in many ways,” Poe Poe, a 26-year woman in the crowd, said through emotional tears. “He proved his presence to me. It’s indescribable.”

To join the event, she had made her way back to her homeland from Penang in Malaysia, where she had been working at a factory. Poe Poe said the spirits can deliver better guidance for her future than any political party.

“I observed Sabbath and counted beads as I was instructed to by the grandfather. That gave results,” she said, referring to the revered Bo Min Khaung. “Politics is something I don’t understand.”

The tradition of spirit worship runs deep in Myanmar, and its popularity has not been dented by the country opening up to the outside world since 2011, when a semi-civilian government came to power, enacting limited reforms after half a century of military rule.

Parliamentary elections scheduled for November 8, the first to be contested by all main opposition parties, mark a crucial next step in the impoverished nation’s stuttering transition. But many potential voters prefer to invest their hopes for the future in the realms of mysticism than the arena of politics.

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Superstition

Although the majority of people in Myanmar profess to follow Buddhism, a pantheon of spirits that have been worshipped for centuries occupy shrines in many households, with people mingling spirit worship with Buddhist practices.ĚýThey regularly hold festivals to seek the blessings of the spirits, better known as nats, sometimes breaking the limits of their finances in their spiritual quest.

Dressed in maroon robes and a turban of the same color, a middle-aged Buddhist nun officiating as the medium at this spirit event was showered by worshippers with stacks of Myanmar kyat notes and US dollars.ĚýWith a rosary tied around her left hand, and her eyes fixated on the ceiling as if possessed by the spirit, she extended her hand to pat each visitor’s forehead—a sign of blessing received with a great veneration.

Asked what she wished for, Hnin Khaing, a 71-year-old real estate broker who was one of the visitors, said: “Money. I asked him to give me money. And I wished for the welfare of all as well.”

She said she always invokes the support of the spirit before she undertakes any of her business deals. “It always works. Just trust him,” she said.

The event was organized by the Shwe Than Lwin multimedia company, owned by Kyaw Win, a well-known tycoon, which had recently sponsored a lavish ceremony to ordain 7,000 Buddhist monks that was .

Held on the ninth day of the ninth month, the event in Thingangyun was also faithful to Myanmar’s widely held superstitions over numerical figures. The number nine, in particular, is regarded as lucky.

This may have had some influence on why the latest round of the country’s protracted peace talks began at 9am on that very day in the capital, Naypyidaw, between a nine-member delegation of the government and nine leaders of armed ethnic groups.

“The number nine is a powerful lucky number. We call it the immortal number,” said Min Thu, an astrologer working in downtown Yangon.

Political Apathy

On September 8, the official election campaign kicked off for about 90 political parties, including the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

It seems that except for places where Suu Kyi made appearances and delivered speeches, the campaign activities of her party and other political parties were met with scant public interest.ĚýA by Asia Barometer Survey of more than 1,600 people found that more than 53% of respondents viewed economic development as being more important than democratic progress. This was evident at the spirit event.

By sunset, the crowd had swelled beyond the capacity of the house and compound, resulting in a stampede in which some women collapsed. One reason why the free event attracted so many people was that the organizers had promised to give out “nine” gifts, including a blanket and a cooking pot.

A woman in the crowd named Myint Myint San, 51, said she has been worshipping spirits for a long time. The spirits, including Bo Min Khaung, had visited her in her dreams and gave her lucky numbers for the lottery.

“I have won lotteries for a number of times with their help,” she said, adding she was hoping to win more money that she could devote to making donations to Buddhist temples and monasteries. “Now, I want to pray for the opportunities to propagate religion,” she said.

But when asked if she would pray for Myanmar to get democracy or for the political party she supports, she shrugged dismissively and said, “democracy is just [a] recent thing.”

*[This article was originally published by .]Ěý

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The Economist recently highlighted the contrast between post-revolt societies in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Here, many countries have struggled through prolonged, messy and bloody transitions that are pockmarked by revolt and counter-revolt, sectarianism, the redrawing of post-colonial borders and the rise of retrograde groups as revolutionary forces.

Almost 30 years after they brutally crushed pro-democracy student protests, Korean police are projecting themselves as K-cops—the counterpart of K-pop, South Korea’s most popular cultural export and successful soft power tool. Today, Korean police are largely everything that Middle Eastern and North African security forces are not.

Restructuring Korean police and ensuring that its legitimacy and credibility was publicly accepted was no mean task. Much like Middle Eastern and North African security forces, South Korean police emerged from regime change as the distrusted and despised enforcer of repression that had brutally suppressed dissent, killed hundreds if not thousands and tortured regime critics.

It took almost a decade for Korean police to launch deep-seated structural reform that gave substance to a public relations campaign designed to recast the force’s image and engender public trust. By contrast, transition in the Middle East and North Africa is in its infancy, and given state and institutional resistance, change will likely take far longer than it did in South Korea and Southeast Asia.

Learning Lessons

Even so, there are lessons to be learned from the Asian experience in political transition, which has progressed to the point where South Korea is projecting its K-cops internationally as models of professionalism in crowd control and the management of protest. The Korean police force has ditched the use of tear gas in favor of the lipstick line: unarmed female officers deployed as a front line defense to defuse tensions with protesters. Big-eared cartoon mascots are ubiquitous on all the police’s insignia, including traffic signs.

The message underlying the approach to policing, as well as the marketing campaign, is as much driven by a desire to capitalize commercially on South Korea’s success as it is by a desire to enhance the country’s prestige—the notion that policing in line with standards of freedom of expression, protest and dissent and adherence to human rights is more likely to ensure public order than brute force. Despite the fact that regimes in the Middle East and North Africa largely see heavy-handed repression of dissent as key to their survival, some countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman have engaged the Koreans’ advisory services in a bid to put a better face on what remain autocratic regimes.

The appeal to autocracies is that smarter policing reduces the risk of repression boomeranging with resentment of security forces becoming a driver of protest as it did for youth groups in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. By the same token, the risk for activists is that failure to reform security forces in the immediate aftermath of the toppling of an autocrat by a popular revolt could create the circumstances conducive to a reversal of hard-won political change. Early stage security sector reform would also help enhance the credibility of a post-revolt government and confidence in its sincerity and willingness to initiate structural changes aimed at breaking with the autocratic past.

The failure to reform security forces in Egypt was at the heart of the reversal of the gains of anti-government protests in 2011, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Two years later, the police and security forces played a major role in persuading the military to overthrow Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, and introduce a dictatorship even more repressive than that of Mubarak.

Political scientist Terence Lee, in his recently published study of military responses to popular protests in authoritarian Asia, used the examples of the brutal repression of protest in Korea in 1987, Burma in 1998 and a year later on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to argue that the military is the ultimate arbiter of whether a popular revolt succeeds. In doing so, Lee appears to assume that the role of the military and security forces is interchangeable. That may be true for Asian countries like China and Myanmar where police, security and armed forces are effectively branches of the military.

In the Middle East and North Africa, where the military and law enforcement are separate entities with different vested interests, protesters need to play one against the other and adopt different post-revolt strategies toward each of them. The need for differentiation is reinforced by the fact that Middle Eastern and North African leaders, irrespective of whether they hail from a dynasty or the military, distrust their armed forces.

Maintaining Control

To maintain control, Middle Eastern and North African rulers have adopted strategies toward their militaries that include emasculation; provision of economic perks; reliance on elite units populated by members of the ruler’s tribe, clan or family; hiring of mercenary forces; and the creation of parallel armed forces that keep each other in check. Ironically, if Myanmar were in the Middle East or North Africa, it would have been in a category of its own as the only autocracy ruled directly by the military in uniform.

© Shutterstock

The flip side of the rulers’ different strategies is that not all Middle Eastern militaries are likely to act as monolithic units in case of a popular challenge to the regime—as was the case in Tunisia and Egypt, and Myanmar in the case of Southeast Asia—or contain a reformist faction strong enough to swing the balance against an autocrat in places such as the Philippines and Indonesia or Syria, Yemen and Libya. In Arab countries where the military was built around tribe, sect and clan, mass protests have descended into civil war or anarchy.

For protesters, forging an alliance with the military is a double-edged sword, particularly in the aftermath of the toppling of an autocrat, when the interests of demonstrators and soldiers diverge. Protesters run the risk of being marginalized, because they are ill-equipped and do not have the time and ability to make the transition from contentious street politics to power and backroom electoral politics.

In a perverse way, Tunisians owe the fact that their country emerged from the Arab Spring relatively successfully to their ousted ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Under Ben Ali, who rose from the ranks of the security forces, the military saw its budget significantly reduced, its manpower downsized and its top leadership sidelined, if not physically eliminated.

As a result, the interests of the militaries in Tunisia and Myanmar were not dissimilar. In Tunisia, marginalization meant the military had a vested interest in a change of regime that would dismantle the security force state. In Myanmar, liberalization—albeit with retention of some degree of behind-the-scenes control—was needed to eliminate the cost of international isolation for the nation and the ruling generals themselves.

In Egypt, Mubarak’s effort to create a dynasty of his own by grooming his eldest son, Gamal Mubarak, as his successor posed a threat to the military. Not only was Gamal a man who had not risen in the ranks of the military, but he was a neoliberal that threatened the statist interests of the military, the largest force in the Egyptian economy.

Alliances in political transition between militaries and activists tend to be short-term and short-lived. That is evident from the transitions in both Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. The interests of the two diverge as soon as an autocrat has been toppled.

For the militaries in, for example, Myanmar and Egypt, change was not about the ideals of the revolt, but about restructuring an autocratic system in ways that ensured their vested interests were protected. Myanmar appears to be a process of two steps forward, one step back. Egypt has been one of regression that led it from military rule to the election of the country’s first democratically elected president to a military coup against him and the rise of a repressive regime that makes the Mubarak era look benign.

Post-Revolt

There are no easy solutions to the management of post-revolt diverging interests. Popular forces do not have the time or the experience to make a quick and effective transition from contentious street politics to the backroom dealings of power or electoral politics. That is true even if layers of civil society that had developed over time in countries like Myanmar played a key role in forming an opportunistic alliance with the military. It is certainly true in the Middle East and North Africa, where the main drivers of the revolt were not the usual suspects—workers and trade unions or political groupings and parties—but what sociologist Asef Bayat called social non-movements such as soccer fans.

Acknowledging the post-revolt divergence of interests, however, does not answer the question of why countries like the Philippines and Indonesia were relatively successful in making a political transition toward democracy, irrespective of how imperfect those democracies may be. Lee boils the answer down to what he calls increased personalism of the autocrat, as well as within the Filipino and Indonesian militaries.

In Lee’s view, the popular revolts provided an opportunity for some senior officers who were unhappy with the emergence of military personalities and the personalization of their country’s autocracy to hitch their political ambitions to those of the protesters. That may be true for the individual motivations of dissenting officers. It explains dissatisfaction within the military with Marcos’ interference in appointments and promotions. Lee is also right in his observation that in Asia, the militaries remained loyal to the autocratic regime like in Burma in 2007 and on Tiananmen Square because there was an absence of personalism.

Yet the aspirations and gripes of individual officers can only be part of the picture, and not all autocrats interfered with military appointments; in fact, a majority of autocrats in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa did or do not.

Similarly, the fact that Marcos failed to build institutions that would have fortified autocracy fails to provide a satisfactory answer. Neither does the fact that senior military officers close to General Suharto enjoyed political and economic perks that others in the command did not. Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh also avoided embedding their authority in institutionalized power-sharing.

By the same token, Suharto’s tactic of divide and rule resembles those Arab militaries that were organized around a core of elite units bound by tribe, clan or family—as was the case in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The difference was that the disenfranchised in those militaries were not members of the tribal, clan or family elite that uniformly benefitted from the autocrat’s perks, but rather the military’s rank and file. As a result, the interests of the military’s command and key units and those of the regime remained in-sync in times of domestic political crisis. The defection of senior officers or even key units in Syria and Yemen during the recent uprisings and subsequent violence do not fundamentally question that notion.

The cases of the Philippines and Egypt demonstrate, moreover, that the military’s relationship with its US counterpart plays an important role. In both the Philippines and Egypt, a US decision to drop Washington’s support of the autocrat influenced military thinking. The relationship with the United States was important to the Egyptian military, given that it was independent of and not supervised by the Mubarak government. The military relied on annual US aid to the tune of $1.3 billion, as well as arms deals that satisfied its appetite for weapons and equipment and underwrote the armed forces’ military industry.

As a result, the notion of personalism as an impetus for militaries to embrace political change leaves unanswered the question of why personalism that characterizes Middle Eastern and North African autocracies has not played a role in attitudes of the military or key segments of militaries in the region.

Key Difference

One difference between Asia and the Middle East and North Africa is the concept of neo-patriarchy developed by the late Palestinian-American scholar Hisham Sharabi, which serves to popularize autocratic personality cults. In Sharabi’s analysis, Middle Eastern and North African autocrats, unlike their Asian counterparts—with North Korea as an exception—positioned themselves as authoritarian father figures who franchise their authoritarianism throughout the society. The autocrat is the father of the nation who sits on top of a pyramid of authoritarian fathers such as the head of government, the provincial governor, the village head and the paternalistic head of the nuclear family.

© Shutterstock

In characterizing Asian autocracies, Lee draws a distinction between two kinds of autocracies: ones that are built around the person of the autocrat; and ones that are built around a sharing of power by underlying institutions. In Lee’s view, autocrats who build their power around themselves like in the case of Marcos and Suharto are more prone to the risk of the military siding with protesters.

That theory seems to be invalid in the Middle East and North Africa, where except for perhaps in the case of Iran, power-sharing is not the norm. More frequently, there is deliberate competition between institutions—as in the case of Syria’s multiple security services—that is designed to keep various forces in check.

Attempting to develop a conceptual model that enhances frameworks developed in recent decades and explains why, when and how militaries turn against the autocratic status quo and opt for political change is important not only as a key to understanding developments in the Middle East and North Africa and predicting of the role of militaries in popular revolts, but also to deepening knowledge about civil-military relations.

The contrast in the analysis of Asia as opposed to the Middle East and North Africa is stark.

Intellectuals and scholars accepted until the eruption of popular revolts in 2011 the notion that the Middle East and North Africa were exceptional in their autocratic resilience and stability. F. Gregory Gause III, a political scientist and Gulf scholar, wrote:

“Academics directed their attention toward explaining the mechanisms that Arab states had developed to weather popular dissent … We in the academic community made assumptions that, as valid as they might have been in the past, turned out to be wrong in 2011 … Academic specialists on Arab politics, such as myself, have quite a bit of rethinking to do … Explaining the stability of Arab authoritarians was an important analytic task, but it led some of us to underestimate the forces for change that were bubbling below, and at times above, the surface of Arab politics.”

By contrast, Asia became the hand maiden of contemporary concepts of protest, with the Philippines in 1968 coining the phrase: people power.

Other factors that influence the attitudes of militaries toward popular revolts and highlight differences between Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are national identity, the role of regional powers and donor support of civil society in autocratic societies.

As a summary outline, national identity in the Middle East and North Africa has proved to be far more fragile and contentious than in Southeast Asia. That has raised the specter of a redrawing of borders in the Middle East and North Africa and the emergence of new states based on ethnicity or sect.

That is not to say national identity is not a factor in Asia. Yet Singapore, traumatized by its departure from Malaysia, has successfully managed communal relations, while identity politics remain prominent in Malaysia itself as well as in Myanmar and southern Thailand. Nonetheless, unlike the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asian nations are not looking any time soon at re-drawing their borders.

Similarly, transition in Southeast Asia benefited from the absence of regional powers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, all of which sought and seek to impose their will on other countries in the region.

Finally, Arab autocrats—with Egypt in the lead—successfully restricted donor aid to civil society organizations in ways their Southeast Asian counterparts appear not to have.

All of this amounts to a first tentative stab at developing an agenda for research that would enhance scholarly and policy understanding of the why, when and how of the role of militaries in processes of political change. Southeast Asia and Korea have the benefit of hindsight. The Middle East and North Africa is a messy and bloody work in progress.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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As Burmese citizens prepare to cast their vote in October 2015, Myanmar isĚýmantled in a discernible fervor of anticipation.ĚýIn a country that has been embattled in the residue of a disintegrating democracy, the prospect of a free and fair election is more of a foregone ideal than a prospective reality.

The democratic process in Myanmar has been ridden with a multitude of conflicting ideologies with no clear collaboration, and as a result, the violation of civil and political rights is undertaken with relative ease. It is in this context that the safeguards of human rights, civil liberties and socioeconomic empowerment have lost their ground and the populace is left at the mercy of an almost floundering government.

Myanmar’s Rule of Law

The term “rule of law” has been used vociferously by political opposition groups in Myanmar.ĚýIt has captured the imagination of the populationĚýas an almost mystical instrument of effectuating positive change in a political milieu that has long stood steadfast in its rejection of a just and equitable process.

But what exactly does the opposition seek to obtain through the incorporation of this “rule of law” in all systems of administration?

William H. Neukom, the president of the World Justice Project, has the concept of the rule of law as: “The foundation for communities of opportunity and equity—it is the predicate for the eradication of poverty, violence, corruption, pandemics and other threats to civil society.”

This definition, although articulate in its subtext, falls short of characterizing a tangible goal toward which objective progress can be measured.

In an alternative definition, United Nations Secretary GeneralĚýBan Ki-MoonĚýprovides a more description. He suggests that the rule of law is “a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards.”

The central idea that seeks to be propounded by both definitions is an idea of the rule of law as a system of governance that is not determined by the whims of men, but by a measurable standard of normative justice. This standard cannot be altered by a majoritarian opinion or by the exercise of executive action within the higher echelons of power. Rather, it must remain unwavering in the face of political change.

Thein Sein / Flickr

The Thick and Thin of It

The contextual debate that surrounds the nature and the extent of the rule of law is integral to aiding members of Myanmar’s political opposition to actualize their demands without being influenced by competing political factions. In this regard, there have been contradictory opinions overĚý“thick” and “thin” interpretations of the rule of law. While an expansive interpretation allows a significant amount of discretion by both citizens and authorities, a restrictive one delimits the ambit of its application to merely procedural matters. For example, during the era of apartheid in South Africa, the law itself institutionalized discrimination, and therefore, state action could not be criticized for being devoid of justice in its rejection of the human rights and civil liberties. The Honorable Arthur Chaskalson, former president of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief justice of South Africa, aptly : “Without a substantive content, there is no answer to the criticism that the rule of law is an empty vessel into which any law could be poured.”

The rampant violation of fundamental freedoms and civil liberties in MyanmarĚýhas been similarly institutionalized to a large extent. The pandemic increase in forced labor, the recruitment of child soldiers, sexual violence and extrajudicial killings, combined with torture, have resulted in over a million displaced asylum seekers. These acts cannot simply be condemned. Rather, they require concrete efforts to effectuate systemic change in governance, or what is now being portrayed at least as a free and fair democratic process.

As by UN Special Rapporteur Rasjoomer Lallah on the situation of human rights in Myanmar in 1998: “These violations have been so numerous and consistent over the past years as to suggest that they are not simply isolated or the acts of individual misbehavior by middle and lower-rank officers but are rather the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.”

The World Justice Project, in its Rule of Law Index, has developed four universal principles, each of which areĚýcritical to the economic, political and legal development within the country.

First, the government and its officials are accountable under the law. Second, the laws must be clear, publicized, stable, fair and be able to protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property. Third, the process by which the laws are enacted, administered and enforced must be fair, accessible and efficient. Fourth,Ěýthere must be unrestricted and equitable access to justice, provided by a competent, independent and ethical collegium of judges, who have sufficient resources and bear in mind the ideologies of the communities they serve.

The Opposition in Myanmar

In the run up to the 2015 election, Myanmar has come under international scrutiny as the world waits with bated breath for a long oppressed populace to cast their vote and make their voice heard. This election is not only reflective of new hope, reinstated vigor and restored faith in the democratic process. Rather, itĚýis also instrumental in aiding the establishment of an accountable and legitimate institutional leadership.

President Thein Sein, in his October 2014Ěýradio broadcast, said: “If the ceasefire is not signed and political dialogue cannot start before 2015, the chance of political stability, transition and a general election in 2015 would be slim.” This almost seemed to confirm suspicions of a postponement or cancellation of the general elections and reverberated with a tone of autocratic usurping of power that was almost reminiscent of the regime of the military junta.ĚýThe lack of a nationwide ceasefire agreement seems to be fueling fears of a return to an almost post-anarchic state, where the power of might supersedes the institutional veracity of justice and equity.

The Union Election Commission (UEC) did, however, confirm that the elections will be undertaken as planned.

The dubiousness of the president’sĚýstatement has hardly gone unnoticed. As with every election across the world, there have been contentious aspects that have come to the fore. These have, at least up until now, been resolved in keeping with a just and fair process.

As political parties prepare themselves to contest in the political rigmarole that is the general elections, the battleground already seems tilted. In July 2014, the UEC issued a directive stipulating specific restrictions for campaigning during the elections. The time period of 30 days, which was objected to by political parties, was eventually extended to 60 days.

However, other restrictions remainĚý: candidates are required to seek permission from the township election commission office before holding any campaign events, and they must provide a proposed lists of speakers, the location and number of participants. These details would be vetted by both the commission and the regional government, and permission must be sought at least 15 days in advance.

Toward the end of October 2014, Myanmar’s lower house started debating the voting systems proposed by the Electoral Review Commission. The commission indicated two systemic proposals to be incorporated within the election process which, according to them, would be most appropriate for the Burmese sociopolitical milieu. These proposals sought to combine the “first-past-the-post” (FPTP) system, as well as the proposed “proportional representation” (PR) for the 2015 elections. The Union Solidarity and Development Party supports the PR system, within which voters select political parties, not individual candidates, subsequent to which parties nominate their candidates depending upon the percentage of votes secured.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) opposes the system. ItĚýbelieves a referendum should be held to validate a change in the system. However, the issue is still to be decided through a parliamentary vote.

Beyond Aung San Suu Kyi

The United States has called for an “inclusive and credible process.” However, in the interest of maintaining the basic tenets of state sovereignty, it has refrained from advocating the inclusion of prime contender who, although having declared her ambitions, would be eligible only if Article 59(f) of the constitution is amended before the election. Under Article 59(f), an individual whose spouse or children “owe allegiance to a foreign power” cannot become president. Her children retaining foreign citizenship thus makes Suu Kyi ineligible to contest the election.

Another candidate, Thura Shwe Mann, the speaker of the Union Parliament andĚýthe leader of theĚýUnion Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has maintained a working relationship with Suu Kyi and has taken an active interest in constitutional amendments, as well as the government’s peace initiatives with ethnic groups.

The other two candidates, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlang and President Thein Sein, present an alternative narrative to the future of the democratic process within Myanmar. Hlang has been more forthcoming politically and has initiated the military in peace talks with ethnic groups. President Sein has been lauded as a reformist and hopes to sign the ceasefire agreement before the commencement of the upcoming elections.

The conclusion to this almost inspirational political evolution remains to be seen. It is, however, a noteworthy and rather commendable step forward in the establishment of a just, fair and equitable system of governance in Myanmar; one that seeks to mitigate instances of institutionalized violence and deprivation of human life, liberty and dignity.

The world thus waits with bated breath as democracy is allowed to take shape within the contours of a formerly oppressive regime that once turned its back on the most significant manifestation of normative justice: the rule of law.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ěý/ĚýĚý/Ěý

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Imagine the choice between throwing your fate into the hands of notoriously abusive human traffickers or staying in a place facing the highest of genocide in the world. This is the choice faced by hundreds of thousands of people from the minority in western , or Myanmar, today.

The reality of their trials was brought to life for me recently in a crowded home of refugees in , where an estimated 100,000 Rohingya have now fled. Each has a slightly different , but the following accounts are fairly typical.

Stage 1: Intimidation and Poverty

Salim, a 30-year-old fish and vegetable trader in western Burma, is detained by local authorities and beaten—not for any crime, but for choosing to self-identify as a “Rohingya” during the 2014 census. The government of MyanmarĚýdenies the existence of Rohingya, choosing to label them as undocumented “Bengalis” from neighboring Bangladesh, despite the fact that many Rohingya can trace their origins in Burma back several generations. Local authorities tell Salim he has a choice: He can either pay for passage out of the country or face the risk of death.

Bibi Khadija, 20, and her husband worry about the lack of food, medicine and education for their children in the displacement camps they’re forced to live in.

Some Rohingya in western Burma have fled their homes since violent clashes erupted between local Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya in 2012, disproportionately affecting Rohingya. They’ve been forced by the government to live in displacement camps that have been described as open-air . Stories spread throughout the camps of the promise of a better life in Malaysia, encouraging Bibi Khadija to approach the well-known “agent” in their camp. There’s such an agent in every camp, more than willing to help—for a , typically the equivalent of $100 to $200.

Stage 2: Trial by Sea

Not far from the city of Sittwe, a small boat takes Bibi Khadija, her husband and their two small children out to a larger boat with some 200 other Rohingya. Many of the ships are much larger, containing more than 1,000 passengers. Armed human traffickers typically overcrowd the ships and deny the passengers adequate food and water. The voyage is usually seven to ten days but can vary considerably.

Bibi Khadija and her family will be at sea for 33 days. Five people will die from starvation along the way. Another boat takes off near the Bangladesh border holding Salim and nearly 700 other Rohingya. He witnesses the armed traffickers strike anyone who asks for water over the head with iron rods. Nine will succumb to the beatings and be dumped into the sea along the way. Four others will die of starvation.

Stage 3: Hell in the Jungle

After over a month at sea, Bibi Khadija and her family arrive in Thailand and are forced to march for two days and two nights, deep into the jungle. They will remain there in a trafficker camp with hundreds of others for more than three months. There are thousands of Rohingya in dozens of camps in , described as “tropical ” in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters report from a few years back. Once they arrive, the women and children are separated from the men.

The men find out the money they paid at the beginning of the trip does not apply here. They’re beaten daily until they can get word to relatives to pay between $1,000 and $2,000 for their freedom. If after six or seven months no money arrives, they’re beaten and discarded or sold to rubber plantation owners.

Salim describes living with some 800 other people under a leaky plastic sheet and surviving off daily rations of just a little bit of rice. After several months, he’s able to reach relatives who pay for his release.

For the women it’s often worse. Salim tells of a beautiful woman he traveled with who was sold into prostitution. Sex trafficking is an all too common fate for the Rohingya refugees.

Flickr

Sitting before Bibi Kadijah, the reality of the horror comes shockingly clear. She averts her eyes, revealing in a near whisper that she’d been raped by the traffickers. A dark mass of broken blood vessels covering the left side of her face bears testament to the recentness of the traumatic experience. Sexual assault is another all too real and all too common fate for the women who take the voyage.

Stage 4: Exile

After months in the traffickers’ camp, Salim is able to get word to family members in Malaysia, who send nearly $2,000 for his release. He’s been in Malaysia for two months now but has lost contact with his brother, who will remain in the hands of the traffickers until he can get word to his family. “I am ready to pay,” he tells me. “I just need to hear from him.”

In Malaysia, Salim finds a network of support from other Rohingya exiles, but he faces the daily threat of detention as an illegal immigrant or exploitation by corrupt authorities who demand bribes. A spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said it receives “regular of abuse, intimidation, and exploitation of Rohingya refugees” in Malaysia.

Bibi Khadijah and her family arrived in Malaysia just days ago. They now share a small house with two other Rohingya families—a total of 16 people sharing three rooms, one kitchen and one bathroom. They face severe challenges in obtaining education and health attention. And like Salim, they live with the daily threat of detention.

The Lucky Ones?

The people I met in Malaysia are the lucky ones. They have family who were able to pay for their freedom or were fortunate to escape when a police raid scattered the traffickers. There is a community of support here and a government that, while not exactly welcoming, does not seem intent on their eradication.

As one aid worker helping the Rohingya tells me, there is much that needs to be done to help the Rohingya in Malaysia, but the ultimate solution to this crisis must be in Burma. The government in MyanmarĚýmust recognize the Rohingya as a people with rights and hold accountable anyone who would persecute them.

As I absorb the stories of these various families, I ask each a final question: Given all of the dangers they’ve risked, from drowning to rape and beatings, would they recommend the journey to those still in Burma?

Without hesitation, they all answer yes.

*[This article was originally published byĚý.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ěý/

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The joint announcement that and would “take in” approximately 7,000 migrants adrift on the high seas implies that they have taken some of legal responsibility. But the gesture is subject to strict limitations — and the countries behind it are doing little to honor the responsibilities they so clearly bear.

In fact, they have been shown up by some of their poorest citizens. As thousands of refugees remained stranded in the seas of , fishermen and their families living on the Indonesian island of Aceh, which is still recovering from the devastating tsunami of 2004, exhibited something that the national governments of the region have so far failed to show: basic humanity.

Even as these countries’ leaders refused to let boatloads of an estimated 8,000 stricken migrants land, actually going so far as to tow boats of increasingly desperate people back to sea, local fishermen and their families — many of whom live in serious poverty — stepped in to around 1,300 “boat people” ashore. Many applauded them, but not everyone was pleased.

Indonesian military spokesman Fuad Basya that fishermen could deliver food, fuel and water to the boats or help with repairs to see them on their way, but that bringing the migrants to shore would amount to facilitating an “illegal entry” into Indonesia.

Horrifying reports of starvation and of violence, on what the United Nations has referred to as “floating coffins,” were dismissed by the Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai governments in the name of protecting national borders from those “i±ô±ô±đ˛µ˛ą±ô.”

So who or what has jurisdiction for the deadly crisis at this point? And are the migrants actually “illegal”?

Indonesia and Malaysia have made it clear that their rescue agreement is a one-time-only offer, and that it guarantees no future landings of migrants arriving by boat. Crucially, they are not offering asylum, but merely temporary refuge for migrants pending “resettlement and repatriation,” which they expect to be conducted by the “international community” within a year.

While they have apparently taken responsibility for the immediate crisis, it turns out that Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed merely to allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees () to “process” these people and send them either back to or to other countries — if any willing to host them can be found.

Flickr

At the time of writing, the Thai government remains resolute, bolstered by the Malaysian demand to stop further irregular migration across the Thai border into Malaysia, a route for migrants seeking employment. On May 17, Major Gen. Sansern Kaewkamnerd of the military-backed Thai government ĚýthatĚý“under Thai law, all illegal immigrants must be repatriated or sent to a third country.”

Despite the Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai protestations that the are illegal migrants fleeing poverty, all three countries have nonetheless acknowledged at least some legal responsibility to assist them.

It is widely acknowledged that the Rohingya are fleeing at the hands of the BurmeseĚýstate, which denies them access to citizenship and does not protect them from violence.

This places them squarely within the terms of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which defines a refugee as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Signatories agree to the fundamental principle of Ěý— meaning that no one shall expel or return (in French, refouler) a refugee against her or his will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where she or he fears threats to life or freedom.

It should come as no surprise that Indonesia, Malaysia and have never ratified this convention — but even so, they should not be able to hide behind this to abdicate their responsibilities, since all three operate a de facto situation of recognizing the right to asylum.

Whither Moral Responsibility?

While neither Malaysian, nor Thai immigration law explicitly recognizes the right to asylum or humanitarian protection, the UNHCR — whose mandate is implementation of the 1951 Convention — has long worked in both of these countries, offering assistance to refugees including Rohingya. In 2014, approximately Burmese refugees, including Rohingya, were registered in Malaysia. A further were registered in UNHCR camps in Thailand along the border with Myanmar, and they were processed for resettlement in third countries.

Even leaving aside their de facto recognition of the right to asylum, Malaysia and Thailand continue to profit from the labor of the hundreds of thousands of these migrants, including Rohingya. The so-called “smuggling or trafficking routes” have long the electronics, plantation and fishing industries in these two countries. Ironically, it was a renewed Thai effort to disrupt these routes that led to the current acute crisis.

Indonesia, on the other hand, explicitly recognized the right to asylum in a 1998 government , so even without ratifying the 1951 convention, the country’s implied legal responsibilities are clear. And the country has long acted as an island bulwark against the thousands of migrants heading in rickety boats for Australia, itself an infamous pioneer of naval “.”

While 8,000 migrants may now have had their lives saved from drowning, starvation or violence at sea, the crisis sparked by Thailand’s action against so-called “traffickers” is far from over. Given the current stances of the European Union and the United States on migrants arriving on their shores, the UNHCR is likely to struggle to find anyone in the “international community” willing to resettle the Rohingya.

In practice, that will leave these individuals languishing in camps and detention centers in which rights abuses are . Migrants in Malaysia and Thailand who find themselves outside these camps and centers will be at constant risk of arrest, detention and deportation.

This has been the unsatisfactory status quo for too long. For decades now, the UNHCR has merely “”Ěýrefugees for resettlement in third countries — and once again, in the face of one of the most serious migrant crises in the region for decades, that’s all it seems the commission is able to offer. Its support is to be warmly welcomed, but all those concerned need to take a stronger line.

It must be supported not only by other states, but also by the multitude of other international organizations in the region that have a mandate to support migrants, including the and . While it doesn’t have a human rights mandate, the also has traction with many governments in this region.

But ultimately, as things stand, too many states are being let off the hook. It is time for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to ratify the 1951 Convention and come up with properly resourced national asylum systems. If they don’t, there is little hope for a real change or for the thousands of people who remain stranded at sea.

*[This article was originally published byĚý.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Just five years ago, was isolated from the rest of the world. Considered a pariah state, the nation was ruled with an iron fist by a military junta with no regard for human rights.

US-led international sanctions ensured that few Western firms did business in the country — although illicit smuggling meant that globally recognized brands such as Coca Cola could be found in the capital Yangon — and just a smattering of garment manufacturers, fulfilling limited overseas orders, maintained a presence there.

Yet winds of change were blowing. The release of pro-democracy leader from house arrest in 2010 and a transition to a reformist, although still military-dominated, government aided the easing of trade embargoes by 2012.

In 2011, the number of garment factories had grown to 200, from 120 the previous year, and the country was exporting clothingĚýworth a total of $770 million, industry website just-style . Today, it is estimated that the industry employs more than 200,000 workers, which is a tenfold increase since 2010 and double the number employed before US sanctions were toughened in 2003. An average of two new factories are opening every week, according to the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association, which says that exports soared to $1.5 billion in 2014.

But it is not just the newly opened borders that are enticing garment producers back to Myanmar. With some of the lowest wages in Asia — only is lower — cheap labor is driving the attraction to a country controlled by the military since 1962. There is currently no minimum wage in Myanmar, despite ongoing stakeholder discussions, and garment workers in Yangon are typically paid an average of $80 a month once overtime is included, according to Burma Partnership, a nongovernmental organization.

Outsourcing

Alex Moodie, Burma Partnership’s advocacy and research officer, says that base wages are “extremely low,” forcing people to work extremely long hours just to make ends meet. “There’s this complex system of overtime and bonuses and money being cut from wages which means that basically most workers have to do overtime every day, so they’re working 10, 11, 12 hours a day six or even seven days a week just to get up to that average,” he says.

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This latest push into Southeast Asia’s poorest and most dysfunctional state is symptomatic of the way garment manufacturers — and the big name brands who contract to them — have been chasing cheap labor around the world for the decades.

In the post-World War II period, Western countries began to look to outsource apparel manufacturing, and by the early 1960s, Japan was the preferred garment-producing hub. The next shift in the 1970s saw , and take center stage until the 1980s, when rose to dominance.

According to Pietra Rivoli, a professor of finance and international business at Georgetown University and the author of The Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy, garment production often stays in a country just long enough to take advantage of low-cost labor.

“China is still by far the global leader but there is upward pressure on wages there too, so we see a lot of apparel production shifting to countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam,” adds Rivoli.

According to ANZ Bank, an Australia-based financial institution, Myanmar is now clearly also in manufacturers’ sights. The bank released a report in late April, “ASEAN: The Next Horizon,” that says cheap labor in Myanmar, which along with Cambodia and Laos makes up what it calls the “Mekong frontier,” will help to drive a manufacturing boom in Southeast Asia in the next decade.

“Southeast Asia will take up China’s mantle of the �world’s factory’ over the next 10-15 years as companies move to take advantage of cheap and abundant labor in areas such as the Mekong,” the report’s economists predict.

Legacy of Human Rights Abuses

Not all garment manufacturers chases low wages, according to Rivoli, who points to Italy’s success in luxury apparel production as an example, but it is very much the business model for fast fashion producers. “It’s driven by the competition for consumers in the Western countries. You have consumers who are price sensitive, so you therefore have firms that are price sensitive,” she explains.

Some of the world’s biggest fast fashion brands are already taking notice of Myanmar. Swedish apparel giant H&M placed test orders in 2013 and began sourcing from the country in earnest last year. Its now lists 13 factories in Yangon and Bago where its garments are manufactured or processed.

Clothing firm Gap was the first major US apparel retailer to establish a presence in Myanmar, announcing in June 2014 that two South Korean-owned factories in Yangon had begun producing jackets and vests for its “Old Navy” and “Banana Republic” lines.

Meanwhile, sportswear retailer Adidas updated its global supplier list in January to reflect that it had also begun sourcing from a Yangon-based factory following two years of “extensive stakeholder engagement.” Bill Anderson, the head of social and environmental affairs for Adidas in the Asia Pacific region, acknowledges that Myanmar has a “legacy of human rights abuses including the use of forced labor, child labor” and that the company had to tread carefully.

“With the lifting of international trade sanctions against Burma, we asked ourselves a simple question: “If we want to do business in Myanmar, should we do more in our assurance process?” The was: “Yes, we need to set the bar higher.”

These retailers’ entry into the market is almost certain to prompt others to follow suit. But the garment industry has faced major issues in neighboring countries, most notably the collapse of the factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed more than 1,100 people and injured thousands more. And last January, government security forces shot dead five garment workers during mass demonstrations for better pay and conditions in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

In Myanmar, Moodie says, the sweatshops condition endured by many garment workers are reminiscent of those found in British factories during the Industrial Revolution.

February saw a wave of worker in Yangon as thousands walked out to call for better pay and conditions, which led to clashes with police and saw two union leaders arrested.

Race to the Bottom

Although H&M declined to comment for this article, Gap has acknowledged issues with compliance at its factories. Its “Responsible Sourcing in Myanmar” released in August 2014 revealed that initial assessments of the two factories it had engaged identified issues with health and safety procedures, excessive forced overtime and disciplinary procedures.

The retailer stated that it is training management and workers in an effort to improve conditions, but noted that at one of the factories: “Due to Myanmar’s isolation and lack of exposure to international practices, they have limited experience with adopting new business methods or complying with current international standards.”

According to Moodie, the biggest hurdle that remains is a lack of adequate legislation. Despite laws on labor organization and labor disputes being passed since 2011, the legal and institutional framework fails to properly protect workers.

“This industry is going to grow and grow and grow in Burma,” he says, adding that the situation in Cambodia and Bangladesh is “the last thing Burma needs or wants.”

“It can be a model for sustainable business practices where the rights of workers are respected and companies that invest get a lot out of it … but it needs political will from the government and it also needs a commitment from the private sector too,” he says.

Daisy Gardener, a policy adviser at Oxfam based in Yangon, says that the global race to the bottom for cheap laborĚýmeansĚýemployers must treat their workers fairly. “Manufacturing jobs will increasingly provide important employment opportunities for young people in Myanmar, but they will only be able to lift themselves out of poverty if these jobs provide fair wages and conditions,” she says.

Gardener says brands can also make a difference by providing stable, long-term orders to factories and giving them a reasonable amount of time to fulfill those orders. “If brands push suppliers to produce quickly and cheaply, this translates into downward pressure on the workers who then have to work into the night to finish orders and they are told they can’t ask for higher wages because the factory can’t afford it,” she says.

Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed, a book that explored the fast fashion industry, says the manufacture of such cut-priced clothing is not only problematic for workers in developing countries — it can also be harmful to the very shoppers in the West driving the trend.

“Fast fashion is sometimes made with toxic dyes, as Greenpeace has , so there’s the issue of fast fashion’s impact on our health,” she says. “I think it’s also harmful to the consumer on a spiritual level. Purchasing cheap clothes is a habit and a compulsion that is shown to give consumers little long-term satisfaction — we buy it because it’s cheap and novel and it appeals to our basest instincts In other words, it doesn’t make us truly happy.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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As a traveler exploring , the scale and pace of development in the country is hardĚýto miss. Wherever youĚýlook, there is some form of construction or renovation — from old office blocks getting new paint jobs to new luxury hotels being built next to them.

Money is flowing into Myanmar at a staggering rate, and no time is being wasted in putting it to good use. At least that is how it appears on the surface. However, there is more to the country than what its enthusiastic tourists see.

With an 8.5% growth expected in 2015, ĚýMyanmar’s economy is doing quite well. Deregulation and financial incentives have made it easier for both national and international businesses to set up shop. Foreign investors, with at the top of the list, are flooding into the country. For the first time, services such as cellular carriers and Internet companies are gradually expanding outside main cities, connecting the rural and remote areas to the outside world, which in itself generates more business opportunities for everyone. ATMs, which were rare outside majorĚýcities until recently, are now available throughout most of Myanmar.

Politically, too, the country has moved forward considerably. The release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, the comparative freedom of the press and the revival of political debates in parliament have impressed the world, which looks on with both enthusiasm and caution. The National League for Democracy’s (NLD) self-imposed ban on tourism has been lifted, and travelers have begun pouring in, introducing locals to foreign ways and customs, while simultaneously contributing their two cents to economic growth. Peace treaties are being negotiated in a bid to end the numerous insurgencies.

There are signs of progress all around, but that is to be expected from a country coming out of 50 years of isolation. However, can Myanmar keep this up? All positive signs aside, the answer to that question is far from certain.

Concerns for the Economy

Infrastructure-wise, there are a myriad of challenges Myanmar has to deal with. Due to prolonged isolation, the country’sĚýinfrastructure is severely underdeveloped and is unequipped to meet logistical demands. Roads, railways, ports and airports all need expansion and modernization. MyanmarĚýseverely lacks decent public transportation systems. The roads of Yangon, the former capital and main trading hub, are vexed by traffic jams. The city’s circular railway, unchanged for , is unequipped to deal with present-day commuter demands. There are talks of building a modern subway, but it is unclear when construction will start, if at all.

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Education is another hurdle as the country is desperately in need of an educated and skilled workforce, as well as institutions to train them. Apart from that, Myanmar suffers from corruption, illegal trade, data-insufficiency, lack of transparency and the absence of a solid legal system — all of which need reform to support a stable free-market economy.

On a positive note, Myanmar’s transformation has resulted in world powers such as China and the trying to pull it into their respective spheres of influence. Additionally, Myanmar’s membership to the (ASEAN) has pushed its focus more toward Southeast Asia, especially since it became part of the ASEAN Economic Community launched in January 2015. Benefits aside, this also leaves the country more vulnerable to the ups and downs of the global economy, which hasĚýseen better days.

Whither Democratization?

Myanmar’s democratization process is laudable, and the country has made a lot of headway in the past five years. However, it would be unwise to assume that Myanmar’s plan to transition to democracy will be one as ambitious as in 1998. An indicator is its military, the Tatmadaw, which holds 25% of the Union Assembly and its state and regional legislators – reminiscent of Indonesia at the height of authoritarian rule, instead of its reformation period.

It is important to remember that Myanmar’s military leadership has firmly entrenched itself in the newly-built capital, Naypyitaw. This makes the new capital somewhat of a paradox: Why would the Tatmadaw go through the trouble of building a new and secure administrative center for itself, but reduce its own power by initiating democratic reforms not ten years later?

It raises further questions as to how far the Tatmadaw is willing to democratize, and whether or not it is moving toward a pseudo-democracy like or . If the latter is true, the next question would be why the Tatmadaw opted for democratization — out of choice or out of self-preservation?

Among the most pressing internal issues Myanmar faces today is the status of its people. The 2014 Rakhine State Action Plan — which only grants citizenship to those Rohingyas who register themselves as Bengali, despite been born and raised in Myanmar — has further deteriorated their position. The government has assured the community it will revise the plan in 2015, but that does not guarantee the betterment of the Rohingya situation, especially amid religious extremism and the government’s nonchalance. Democratic reforms are showing signs of slowing down as general elections inch closer.

For thisĚýsame reason, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is silent on the Rohingya issue. Since her release, she has changed from a symbol of peace and progress to that of a politician more calculative of her actions.

Identity

Considering its past, most of Myanmar can be viewed as a post-conflict society, though ethnic conflicts haven’t ended everywhere. A lion’s share of the population, however, is now in the process of defining its identity.

Technological inroads have slowly begun to play a more defining role in that process. Following years of isolation, the sudden surge in people-to-people contact with the outside world has influenced the development of Myanmar’s cultural identity. has already been identified as a trend, and it is especially visible among the youth due to the popularity of Korean cinema and K-pop. Globalization comes to the fore, particularlyĚýin the application of thanaka paste on the face, along with cosmetics and Western clothing.

Additionally, is a noticeable trend that needs to be addressed. Myanmar is the scene of a major heroin epidemic, especially in Kachin State where the problem has grown to such proportions that used syringes litter river banks and spill out of metal garbage cans. Fueled by ethnically motivated insurgency and the proximity of Myanmar’s biggest jade mines, the use of heroin and opium have become widespread among over 65% of the poverty stricken population. Rows of people are getting their fix out in the open without fear of prosecution.

Government officials blame the ongoing insurgency, which keeps them from implementing more programs that work toward eliminating drugs in the region. Local Christian communities stepped upĚýto fill the gaps, but they are fighting an uphill battle, while many recovering addicts quickly relapse after rehabilitation treatment.

This makes it ever more important for a balance to be found in giving every ethnicity a place in Myanmar’s society. It is on this issue the country currently struggles with the most. Rohingyas were not the only minority excluded from Myanmar’s 2014 census. Sadly, plans for a more federalized Myanmar, including incorporating insurgent armies into a Federal Army, are progressing slowly and experiencing setbacks. On February 17, President Thein Sein handed over power to the military and a three-month period of martial law in Kokang Region, northeastern Shan State, following intense fighting between ethnic-minority rebels and the army.

Myanmar has not set itself up for an easy task, and progress remains vulnerable to setbacks. It will take time, and most likely no substantial change will occur before the new government assumes office after the December 2015 national elections.

However, the country has momentum and is spurred on by the international community to keep reforming itself. There appears to be reasonable willingness from various actors within Myanmar to reform the country by working together rather than against each other.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The that started in 2011 brought the world’s attention back to the diverse nature and processes of democratization, with more recent events in , and Ěýputting the region underĚýthe spotlight of democratic developments. While news fromĚý remains on the periphery of global media, the democratic shortcomings in the region are too often analyzed and explained through a Western lens.

Grounds for Optimism?

A look at statistical data on the development of democracy in the region offers some ground for optimism. Today, more than a decade into the 21^st century, among the 11ĚýSoutheast Asian countries there are fewer authoritarian regimes than there were in the early 1990s. Here, the most notable example is set by Indonesia that shed the three-decades long dictatorship under President SuhartoĚýat the turn of the millennium, and has recently successfully completed another round of . With East Timor regaining sovereignty in 2002, the slow but steady opening up of Myanmar’s to the international community after 2010, together with Malaysia’s relative political over the last few years, marked more successes for democratic processes in the region.

Today, seven of the Southeast Asian nations are counted as at least “partly free” by . In addition, when looking at long-term development, Southeast Asia’s education and media systems have shown an overall Ěýover the last few decades, as increasinglyĚýmore people have access to information and the prevalent use of in the region has allowed greater transnational communication. Hence, judging from a quick glance at the numbers alone, and based on the global discourse of Asian nations taking charge of their own political futures, Southeast Asian democracy should be a promising story of success.

However, if one risks a closer look at the details, it quickly becomes apparent that not all that shines is golden. The 2014 of Reporters Without Borders shows that in all Southeast Asian countries, with the only exception of East Timor, freedom of information is in a “difficult” or even “very serious situation”, the two worst categories of a total of five. Besides, the unstable political situation in Thailand has led to an increased censorship of the country’s media, and Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s largest country in terms of population and area – actually lost its ĚýFreedom House status ofĚý“fully free.”

The argument goes that the value systems of Asian countries stand in direct opposition to Western ideals such as democracy, a line of thought that is similar to the argument thatĚýĚýdo not go together.

It is thus worthwhile to take a look behind the scenes and what mainstream global news media usually offer as information on Southeast Asia.

Why Democracy Might Not Work in Southeast Asia

The academic, journalistic and political discourse of the last four decades has developed three main explanations why democracy and Southeast Asia might not be a naturalĚýfit. First, there is the historical explanation: Similar to other parts of the non-Western world, the Southeast Asian colonial experiences automatically led to the development of authoritarian regimes after the suppressed populations gained independence. Therefore, even Thailand –Ěýthe only Southeast Asian country that did not experience colonial rule – could not escape the inherently systemic, all-encompassing vacuum that replaced the pre- power structure. As a consequence, political strife has been constant and coup d’états have been a frequent characteristic of the Thai political order.

Second, there is the explanation based on an ideological perspective. Here, the Asian value that started in the 1980s can be seen as the main case in point. The argument goes that the value systems of Asian countries stand in direct opposition to Western ideals such as democracy, a line of thought that is similar to the argument that do not go together. Following this logic, the development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (), the region’s multilateral institution, cannot follow the example set by the European Union (EU). In the past, some politicians referred to the concepts of mushawaraĚýand mufakat, which loosely translate into consultation and consensus, when arguing for an that was different from others. On a national level, and serve as perfect examples, since their argument for limiting individual rights such as press freedom or democratic participation, in order to guarantee the safety and security of the many, is based on the same logic.

Third, and lastly, there is the pragmatic explanation that argues that national economic development or nation-building is much more important than democracy development — a post-colonial argument, if looked upon strictly, that is still often repeated today. From this point of view, although democracy could be an ideal worth striving for, so long as the countries in the region have closed the gap to the economic achievements of industrialized Western nations, loftyĚýideals are much lower in ranking than economic development. Naturally, until today, this logic allows many elites in Southeast Asia to publicly proclaim their belief in democracy, while actually enforcing the status quo of insecure democratic rights, thus mollifying the middle classes mostly content with the little political freedom as long as economic progress is not hindered.

Aside ofĚýBrunei and Singapore, whichĚýhave developed stable political systems without granting too much freedom,Ěý and Indonesia provide a good exampleĚýofĚýsharing a characteristically strong military and a democratization process that very much lags behind the legislatures’ promises. Of course, it needs to be conceded that these countries are on two different levels of democratic development. Even considering its many flaws, Indonesia’s democracy can show for accomplishments on a level that Myanmar has yet to reach. Although the junta is slowly opening up the country’s economy to foreign investors and seems to be willing to allow free elections some time down the road, Myanmar’s regime is still counted among the world’s mostĚýrepressive.

What Next for the Region?

Looking at the arguments elaborated above, the conclusion seems fairly straightforward. As a historical fact, following the worldwide power vacuum after the Second World WarĚýand the respectively, Southeast Asian countries seemedĚýbound to end up in political turmoil and many in the West predicted that authoritarianism would be the logicalĚýoutcome. Furthermore, the values of Asia are in fundamental opposition to the Western concept of democracy and even if some social groups opt for democracy, the economic elites are likely to limit their appeal by curbing individual freedoms in order to secure national (economic) development. Thus, Southeast Asia and democracy seem to be two poles in an antithetic relationship.

It should be acknowledged that there has been an overall advancement of individual rights since the middle of the 20^thĚýcentury, given the region’s experiences of European colonial suppression, Japanese aggression, being the site of proxy wars during the Cold War, and putting up a good fight in the struggle to catch up with the West’s industrialized achievements.

This conclusion disregards the nature of democratic processes and is based on false premises: democracy is neither an state in the sense of Max Weber, nor is it a straightforward process without any ups and downs. Even in the long-established Western democracies like the , or , democracy is constantly under pressure from various social actors. The acquisitiveness of Ěýproponents in general and espionage networks in specific are a case in point. Some people might even argue that since 9/11, particularly the USĚýand UKĚýhave developed into , moving awayĚýfromĚýthe rule of law.

These considerations need to be borne in mind when evaluating the progress of democratization in Southeast Asia, particularly as the waxing and waning of democratic principles is amplified in new democracies. It is as wrong to argue from an extreme clash of cultures position, seeing democracy and Asian values as incongruent, as it is to regard Southeast Asian democracies from a Eurocentric perspective, assuming that the Western world already completed its democratization process. , for instance, seen as synonymous with democracy today, whereasĚýfrom the middle of the 19^th century and until the end of the Second World War,Ěýthe concept was viewed by many social groups as fundamentally non-German and alien.

Although it might not just be a matter of time, it is also not only a matter of historical, ideological or pragmatic antitheses. Democracy and Southeast Asia are not simply two opposing poles, although this simplification is often used by those who benefit from the current status quo. For the democracy-bound Southeast Asian societies, this means that they not only aspire to build states following the examples of Western democracies, but they also need to cope with the current demands on the rule of law that change much faster than they used to in the 20^th century. The historical setting and the socio-political developments have allowed the Southeast Asian elites to suppress many calls for more political rights and freedoms. It is thus right and necessary to criticize Southeast Asia forĚýits democratic shortcomings, but this should not lead to the dismissal of the region’s many successful contemporary democratic movements that started with the 1980s in the Philippines and continues until today.

The relationship between Southeast Asia and democracy should, therefore, be a matter of perspective, taking into consideration the difficult situation the region’s democratic movements have had to overcome. It should be acknowledged that there has been an overall advancement of individual rights since the middle of the 20^th century, given the region’s experiences of European colonial suppression, Japanese aggression, being the site of proxy wars during the Cold War, and putting up a good fight in the struggle to catch up with the West’s industrialized achievements. Although there is much to be achieved in the process of democratisation across the region, one can see thatĚýSoutheast Asia has indeed come a long way on the road to democracy.

The views expressedĚýin this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflectĚý51łÔąĎ’sĚýeditorial policy.

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The days here start early. At 4am, the docks of Lan Ma Daw jetty in are already bustling with people, from blurry-eyed students to laborers unloading basket-loads of food. It is a setting that has remained unchanged for decades, one that might shift with the recent turn of ’s political and economic isolation.

For now, the docks seem to paint a picture of ’s lower- to middle-class society. All walks of life converge here. One of the boatmen, a man named Khin Maung Than, describes his feelings about the community using a saying, which loosely translates to: “Die not different, live not separate.” He will continue to work as long as the jetty is here. “It’s the only profession I know,” he says.

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Leveraging their longtime presence and hefty government backing, businesses eager to hedge their risks in and find new offshore production bases and markets are rushing into , setting up factories and taking on mentoring roles across a wide range of industries, from stock trading to rice growing. This latest economic “frontier” is all about the country’s potential — consultancy McKinsey estimates Myanmar’s current gross domestic product (GDP) at only 0.2% of Asia’s total, about the same size as those of or Johannesburg.

Myanmar’s opening to foreign investment with the end of sanctions imposed by Western governments against the former military-led regime was well-timed. Just as the new leadership in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was looking for a way to reduce growing sway over the economy, new leadership, under Prime Minister , was seeking a foothold in a new emerging market. Countering the regional influence of China, given Tokyo’s frictions with Beijing over a territorial dispute, was an added bonus for the Abe government.

“The current investment opportunities [in Myanmar] are in pre-manufacturing, and more along the lines of infrastructure and agriculture,” says Edwin Keh, a lecturer in Wharton’s Operations and Information Management Department. A former chief operating officer of Walmart global procurement, Keh previously managed a consulting group that worked with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Myanmar.

Myanmar’s opening has brought on something akin to a “gold rush” of Japanese business people looking for opportunities. In 2013, some 66,187 Japanese visited the country, triple the figure two years earlier. But Japanese businesses, aware that good intentions are no guarantee of success, are approaching Myanmar with caution. So far, Japanese private corporate investment in Myanmar is still mainly confined to big infrastructure projects and logistics, and other services.

“Myanmar investments by Japanese are still small because of the infrastructure problems, such as shortage of electricity and a lack of proper industrial parks for company set-up,” notes Eitaro Kojima, an expert on Myanmar and acting director of the Asia and Oceania Division at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). “Moreover, the country lacks clarity of legal systems and various rules and regulations,” adds Kojima, who worked in Yangon as head of JETRO from 2007-11.

China’s $14.2 billion accumulated investments in Myanmar are mainly in oil and gas production and pipelines, dams, and related roads and port facilities.

In these early days, it is the biggest Japanese corporations — huge trading houses like Mitsubishi Corp., Marubeni Corp, Mitsui & Co Ltd and Sumitomo Corp — that have been moving aggressively ahead since the sanctions were lifted and Tokyo forgave billions in Myanmar debt, clearing the way for fresh borrowing.

A Long History

Japan has a long history in the country, dating back to its invasion during , which was followed by a period of reparations and development projects. Those projects were frozen after the crackdown in 1988, when the military fired on pro-democracy protesters. But many of the bigger Japanese companies kept a presence in Yangon while awaiting better times.

Within two weeks after Abe took office in late December 2012, Finance Minister Taro Aso was in Yangon, standing posed with his hand pointing forward during a visit to the Thilawa trade zone, which is being built by a Japanese-Myanmar joint venture. Marubeni, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo hold a joint 49% share of the company running the zone. Hiroshima-based Penta-Ocean Construction Co has the construction contract.

“On the public side, the sums are vast by standards,” says Sean Turnell, a professor at Macquarie University and an economist and expert on Myanmar. “The scale of involvement dwarfs that from the US or Australia.”

´ł˛ą±č˛ą˛Ô’s desire to sell infrastructure and to expand overseas production bases dovetails with Myanmar’s top priorities of building a modern economy, and creating factory and service industry jobs to absorb an expected doubling of its urban population in the coming 15 years. China’s $14.2 billion accumulated investments in Myanmar are mainly in oil and gas production and pipelines, dams, and related roads and port facilities.

Oil and gas fields in northern Myanmar could be the biggest attraction, but any products that require a significant amount of transportation will need big investments in ports, roads and trains before they are exportable, Keh said in a 2011 Knowledge@Wharton on Western companies doing business in Myanmar.

While it vies for infrastructure projects, Japan is also gearing up for low-cost manufacturing and the consumer market. Its cooperation with Myanmar stretches from help for farmers, food aid and disaster prevention to dispatching financial experts to counsel the country on setting up a modern stock exchange and other financial institutions. Japanese companies are involved in building telecommunications networks, construction of bridges, airports and other infrastructure, in food and consumer goods retailing, logistics — just about every sector.

South KoreaĚýwas the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the nine months ending December 2013, with a 29% share, followed byĚýSingapore, with about 28%.ĚýThailandĚýaccounts for 19.2%, and theĚýUKĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýVietnamĚýabout 7% each. Japan trailed with 1.7% and investment from China was at 0.8%.Ěý

Figures compiled by the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry show 161 members as of May, up from about 51 in March 2011. More than a third of those members were involved in logistics and other services, about a quarter in construction, slightly more in manufacturing and the rest in finance and trading.

Shifting Investment

Despite the high degree to which it is “embedded” in Myanmar, Japan still lags behind other major Asian countries in terms of overall investment. In the fast-expanding hotels sector, for example, Hong Kong and other Asia-based hotel chains have snapped up opportunities to develop prime sites, including the ornate but rickety Yangon Railways headquarters, which the Peninsula Hotels chain has agreed to redevelop. Keppel Land, Accor, Daewoo Group, Shangri-La and Vietnam’s Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group, or HAGL, all have big projects already underway.

was the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the nine months ending December 2013, with a 29% share, followed by , with about 28%. accounts for 19.2%, and the and about 7% each. Japan trailed with 1.7% and investment from China was at 0.8%. China’s share in accumulated FDI was more than 90% in the 2011 fiscal year, but had dropped to 31.5% as of January 2014 after the sharp cutback in investments in 2013, according to Myanmar’s Central Statistical Organization. Total FDI in Myanmar was estimated to be $4 billion for the fiscal year that ended March 31.

Investment flows are shifting away from mining and energy and into manufacturing and services, reflecting the government’s emphasis on trying to build up an industrial sector to deliver faster growth and more jobs — following the example set by China and, more recently, by Vietnam. In 2013, Myanmar attracted $1.8 billion in investment in manufacturing, accounting for 47% of the total. Other leading areas were transport and logistics and hotels and tourism, followed by energy and property development.

Although Japan has lagged other countries, such as Thailand and Singapore, in plunging into this new economic frontier, Myanmar leaders are repaying ´ł˛ą±č˛ą˛Ô’s forgiveness of billions of dollars in unpaid debt with a red carpet welcome. “Japan helped Myanmar when it needed help, and we will help Japan when it needs help,” U Win Aung, chairman of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told a recent Japanese business delegation organized by JETRO to showcase the Thilawa Special Economic Zone, a pet project of both governments. “Once this project is completed by mid-2015, this will help more Japanese companies to move into Myanmar,” JETRO’s Kojima says.

Thilawa is little more than a 400-hectare expanse of red, leveled dust — the preliminary groundwork having just been completed — but it represents Myanmar’s ambitions for a built-by-Japan manufacturing boom.

The Used Car Connection

For now, however, used autos are by far ´ł˛ą±č˛ą˛Ô’s biggest export to Myanmar, at more than 80% of the total, followed by construction materials and then a range of manufacturing components like textiles, electronics and steel. From Myanmar, Japanese imports mainly clothing, followed by seafood and other food-related items, timber and gems, according to data from JETRO. As two-way trade rocketed by 75% in 2012 from the year before to $1.93 billion, ´ł˛ą±č˛ą˛Ô’s longtime deficit with Myanmar swung to a surplus of $585.6 million.

Myanmar needs an average growth rate of about 7% and cumulative investments of about $650 billion by 2030, according to the McKinsey report. A large share of that will come from domestic savings, but about $170 billion will need to be from foreign investment.

Looking ahead to the days when Myanmar drivers will be buying new rather than used autos, Toyota and other major automakers are setting up showrooms there. For now, they mainly cater to expatriates such as diplomats, officials of NGOs and government officials who can afford to pay six figures for an SUV. But eventually they expect to serve Myanmar’s emerging market of newly affluent private local buyers.

Expanding that vision beyond Yangon, Mitsubishi Motors Corp, parent company Mitsubishi Corp and Yoma Strategic Holdings, the flagship of tycoon Serge Pun, have set up an auto after-sales service center in Yangon, saying they plan to set up facilities in the national capital, Naypyitaw, and in Mandalay.

But however optimistic Japanese officials are over the potential for Myanmar as a new consumer market and low-cost manufacturing base, the gold rush of investors into Yangon already is driving prices sharply higher, potentially narrowing profit margins.

Costs for land and rents in the city are already at levels comparable with downtown Tokyo, at more than $100 a square foot, up from a fifth of that level just two years ago, and compared with about $75 in New York City — and for much lower quality. Wage levels have more than doubled from about $50 a month for a factory worker in 2013 to more than $100 a month in 2014, factory managers say.

“Land prices have gone through the roof due to speculation, or in anticipation of more investments coming into the country,” notes Keh. “Lack of infrastructure is slowing down export manufacturing ambitions for the time being.”

McKinsey & Company, in a 2013 report, identified seven sectors it says have the potential to quadruple the country’s GDP: energy and mining, farming, manufacturing, and infrastructure are the four largest. Others such as tourism, telecommunications and financial services will grow faster, though from very low levels, the report says.

Myanmar needs an average growth rate of about 7% and cumulative investments of about $650 billion by 2030, according to the McKinsey report. A large share of that will come from domestic savings, but about $170 billion will need to be from foreign investment. That compares with the $40 billion in foreign investment Myanmar drew from 1989-2012, most of it from China.

Food and Timber

Apart from Thilawa and other export assembly zones, other niches with growth potential include food and timber processing and financial services. Trading house Mitsui & Co plans to set up joint-venture rice processing facilities in Yangon with Myanmar Agribusiness Public Corp, or MAPCO, to help raise the value-added of Myanmar’s rice exports as it ramps up production.

Before World War II, nearly half of Myanmar’s GDP came from agriculture, mainly rice exports. Farming still accounts for about 40% of all business activity in the country, and plans call for output to increase to the point where Myanmar could export 5 million tons a year. With exports forecast at 1.1 million tons in 2013-2014, and rural regions reporting shortages of farm labor, that appears a distant prospect, however. If Myanmar carries out reforms to modernize its agricultural sector, which have so far lagged other industries, ´ł˛ą±č˛ą˛Ô’s main farm machinery manufacturers, Yanmar and Kubota, would likely be looking to expand sales there.

In processed foods, Osaka-based noodle-maker Acecook, collaborating with trading house Marubeni, has set up an office in Yangon. It has plans to build a factory by 2017, expanding from its earlier overseas venture in Vietnam, where the company says it has sold more than 3 billion noodle meals so far.

Myanmar will need to watch carefully to avoid the pitfalls Vietnam has run into as it opened its economy to foreign trade and investment, Moody’s Ratings says in a report.Ěý

Japanese trading companies are likewise involved in investments in Myanmar’s still barely developed timber processing industry. As the source of half of the world’s teak, Myanmar faces pressure to curb illegal exports of raw tropical hardwood, especially into China. Building a local industry to process the teak would be part of the process of bringing that illicit trade under control, and helping wean conflict-stricken border regions of their reliance on illegal trading in timber, opium and gems.

No Shangri-La

Japanese businesses remain relatively cautious for good reason: Myanmar is no Shangri-La. The latest survey by the government-affiliated Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO, ranked the country 182^nd of 189 countries in terms of ease of doing business in 2014, with deteriorations in such areas as construction permit approvals, electricity supply, financing and business registration compared with 2013. For logistics, Myanmar ranked 129^thof 155 countries surveyed. There are some signs of improvement, though, with international corruption watchdog Transparency International recording an improvement in perceptions of corruption over the past three years.

But the advantages appear to be winning over many investors. Wages, though rising quickly, are still generally the lowest in the region.

“I’m often asked if it’s the right time to invest in Myanmar. It depends on which sector you are in,” says Aung Thura, CEO and founder of Thura Swiss Ltd, a Myanmar-based consulting and research company. For energy and telecom — which are key infrastructure areas — now is the right time, he told a recent conference in Yangon. “If you’re in manufacturing where you need electricity, it might be too early because we don’t have reliable electricity yet.”

While the retail market is wide open, with few foreign or domestic competitors for most consumer products, the country’s distribution systems are archaic and complex, and banking services rudimentary to non-existent, notes Ramon Meguro, a professor of marketing at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Writing in the Nikkei Asian Review, he recommends partnering with local firms, such as brewery Asahi Group Holdings’ joint venture with local beverage maker Loi Hein.

Whether Myanmar will realize its potential as an emerging economy and fast-growing consumer market remains uncertain. It’s easy enough for hardware to “leapfrog.” The ubiquity of mobile phones across the developing world, where landlines have never been installed, attests to that. But ensuring consumers have the wherewithal to pay for air time is another issue, Aung Thura points out. “We cannot leapfrog in the development of purchasing power.”

Foreign investors have allies in Myanmar’s new entrepreneurial class of business people, many of whom are foreign-educated returnees. “What we try to tell lawmakers is to open up,” notes Tun Thura Thet, the founder of software company Myanmar Technology, who spent more than 15 years running his business under the former military regime before seeing things open up under the current government. “In China, they try to protect local businesses. We don’t want to do that. We want to move past that. We want to leapfrog.”

The key is to get foreign investors to create jobs, says Tun Thura Thet. But filling those jobs can be a challenge given the scarcity of skilled workers after so many long years of economic isolation, he adds. Those working in Yangon speak of government civil servants skimping on sleep to try to get more work done as the country prepares to host the ASEAN summit later this year. “The limits are in human resources and capacity.”

Heavy government regulation, an opaque legal system and very weak physical infrastructure are other constraints. “For financial institutions and insurance companies starting up here, the most difficult thing has to be the lack of clarity in the legal system,” says Robert Walsh, managing partner at S&S Project Management in Yangon. “As yet, many necessary laws have not been drafted, let alone the accompanying implementing instructions. So any such company setting up here is running the risk of having their basis of operations cut off should new laws be passed that proscribe their activities.”

According to a recent Knowledge@Wharton on Chinese investments in Myanmar: “This severely underdeveloped and misgoverned nation faces serious uncertainty over its true ability to transform and to leapfrog into today’s technologically advanced and fast-paced markets.” Reforms in Myanmar “will take place at the pace the Myanmar generals are comfortable with,” Vibhanshu Shekhar, a research fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi, said in Knowledge@Wharton article on the country opening its doors to foreign investments.

Myanmar will need to watch carefully to avoid the pitfalls Vietnam has run into as it opened its economy to foreign trade and investment, Moody’s Ratings says in a report. Vietnam’s Achilles heel has been its weak institutional framework and inadequately regulated banking system, which have not kept pace with the demands of a rapidly growing economy, according to the report.

The huge sway held by companies and business people with connections to the military and the massive concentration of wealth in their hands is a daunting barrier for newcomers, both local and foreign, the report notes. Investment laws requiring hiring of local workers are putting huge pressures on would-be new businesses. Under the rules, local workers must constitute three-quarters of a company’s skilled workforce by the end of its sixth year of operations.

Capital is also in short supply. Myanmar has four state-owned banks and 22 private banks, but so far none of the 35 foreign banks with representative offices in Myanmar have been allowed to begin operations, restricting the availability of financing for foreign investments.

Inevitably, the devil will lie in the details of how Myanmar manages this transformation from isolated backwater to a bustling market economy. With civil conflict still ringing its heartland, stemming from violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the east and fighting along other borders, the government’s ability to ensure stability will be key.

“Initially, it was executives flying in to this nice, unspoiled, exotic location,” says Turnell. “Now, it’s the nuts and bolts: degraded infrastructure, high rents. The initial hyper-confidence … has come off a bit. The real threat is the violence.”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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A (UN) statement in January demanding an impartial probe into the killings of Muslims by Buddhists in Myanmar, has once again brought the issue of Rohingyas — widely accepted as the most persecuted minority group — to the fore. The alarming frequency with which reports have been emerging over the past several months, detailing an unmistakable campaign of suppression of the community, is highly worrying. 

The clergy, known for their nonviolent values, have taken to violence in an attempt to rid the state of Rakhine of Rohingya Muslims. Why have the clergy in Myanmar opted for violent means? And why is the government in Naypyidaw silent on the matter?

Increasing Islamophobia

The friction between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingyas began as a mild form of xenophobia in 1824. It has now evolved into a full-blown violent campaign of driving out the "settlers," who have now lived in the region for generations.

Although, superficially, the situation appears to be similar to several other ethnic conflicts, the Rohingya issue stands due to the active participation of the Buddhist clergy. 

The primary force driving this pogrom is the rising Islamophobia among the clergy and masses in Myanmar. The paranoia among Rakhine Buddhists of a potential Islamization of the country — as with Indonesia and Malaysia in the 12th and 15th centuries, respectively — is deeply-entrenched. 

While the core essence of Buddhism lies in its principles of nonviolence, inclusiveness and flexibility, the applied measures of these principles vary from one school of thought to another. Despite Mahayana Buddhism (as practiced in Tibet and Mongolia) being more flexible and inclusive, Theravada Buddhism (as practiced in Myanmar and Sri Lanka) is rigid in its structures. Furthermore, the attrition rate in schools of Theravada Buddhism is high, with very few schools in practice in today’s world, as compared to other models of Buddhism.

This forms the basis of thought in Myanmar that their culture is under threat. Also, a threat from an "outsider" is often perceived as more immediate and of greater priority to thwart, as opposed to a threat from an "insider" (in this case, the "insider" is the attrition rate). 

However, this does not translate into the notion that some forms of Buddhism accept violence. 

What Role for the Clergy?

Adding to the complexity of the issue is the role of the clergy in Myanmar's politics. A large section of Burmese society comprises of monks, as many enlisted in monasteries to escape poverty and/or orphanhood during the junta years. The Saffron Revolution of 2007 saw a surge in numbers of those enrolled in monkhood.

Having played a role in somewhat filling a void in the absence of a benevolent and accountable government, the Buddhist clergy holds a moral high ground in Burmese society, while they are also seen as a powerful force.  

When tens of thousands of monks are taught nonviolent means but are, at the same time, systematically made paranoid of losing their faith due to an onslaught of a completely different culture, eventually, regardless of the nonviolent teachings, they prepare themselves to fight off the "enemy."  

Such a "nonviolent radicalization" among the clergy in Myanmar has affected the shaping of a generation that is willing to inflict violence as offence, as opposed to in-defense that Buddhism essentially prescribes. 

This does not automatically mean that all Buddhists are violent; but the recognition that Buddhist monks or not, they are human beings too, and they have the same emotions as the rest.

Once this view is recognized, it does not take long to understand the basic problem in Rakhine: there exists an ethno-religious conflict, and the side that currently has the upper-hand is trying its best to weed out from its roots what it sees as a problem. 

Why Does Naypyidaw Not Intervene?

Myanmar's government has its own apprehensions over the Rohingya issue. On the social front, assimilating these people into the country would mean earning the wrath of the clergy — which enjoys considerable clout with the masses — who believe their culture is under external threat.

The economic costs of including hundreds of thousands of impoverished people into its citizenry would be substantially high. Faced with the daunting task of simultaneously improving the economy, democratic structures, public services and so, and tackling armed cessation struggles, the state's resource basket is heavily strained.

For Naypyidaw, as long as the large Rohingya population is deemed as illegal immigrants, the government technically is not responsible for providing for them.  

Unfortunately, what seems to be unfolding in Myanmar is a plausible Faustian pact between the clergy and the political class — a deadly quid pro quo agreement that will only lead to worse days ahead.

What is more dangerous of the two, however, is the nonviolent radicalization aspect of this issue — an emerging but noticeable trend in Asian ethnic conflicts.

*[This article was originally published by the , New Delhi. The article was updated on March 15, 2014.]

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Despite independence in 1948, Burma has been plagued by problems since the military junta took state control in 1962. Power struggles, conflict, occupation, resource extraction and ethnic tensions have all incited Burma’s displacement issue. While exact numbers are unknown, estimates are in the region of 1 million internally displaced and 1 million .

Recently, the media has recognized the crisis that is happening in Rakhine State, Burma, where Buddhist and Muslim tensions have forced many Rohingya to flee, even though their safety options elsewhere are limited. However, Burma is made up of 136 and many that are unrecognized — the dominating group being the Barma (the indigenous majority). Many tribes belong to one overarching regional group; but even within that group, tribal rivalries exist.

Making it in Malaysia

Returning from a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I volunteered at a school set up for Burmese refugee children. The school consisted of children between the ages of five and 12, all from the Matu tribe of the Chin group. The Chin are the largest Burmese ethnic group in Malaysia and have fled Burma due to military occupation and persecution by the Barma.

The school was housed in an unkempt apartment in the backstreets of Bukit Bintang (downtown Kuala Lumpur’s main shopping street), and was given some assistance by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Although true, they relied heavily on volunteers and private generosity for funding. Seventeen-year-old Sara coordinated the school, and she, like many others, was waiting for resettlement and seeking English language skills needed to prepare her for the US.

There are nearly residing in Malaysia. They often live in squalid conditions in overcrowded apartments within the capital, or in makeshift camps on the outskirts of the Klang Valley and the Cameron Highlands. In order to survive, they work in the informal sector on low wages in occupations that make up the three Ds: dirty, dangerous, and difficult. Many employers exploit their vulnerable situation and do not pay them at all. Children do not have access to formal education, but some do attend community-run learning centers like the one Sara ran. Refugees can access healthcare services, but they are not free and are far too costly for most. They have no access to benefits, as Malaysia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and the general registration process closed in 2006.

Due to the squalid conditions in which they live, disease is widespread, and they experience pervasive abuse from the authorities who continually threaten them if they are caught extracting bribes or subjecting them to physical abuse. However, the Malaysian government does cooperate with the United Nations, and the UNHCR office still exists. Displaced persons can still register with the office in order to gain resettlement in a third country, as Sara did.

Communal Responses Ěý

Holding a UNHCR card does not provide irregular migrants with protection or access to benefits and services, so these groups have to rely on forming communities for the provision of informal services and for coordinating help from NGOs. The ethnic tensions that divide Burma were not left at home, but instead exported to Malaysia.

The school that Sara coordinated had a maximum of 15 children of mixed ages. Children were split between kindergarten and “the rest.” This made delivering lessons suitable for everyone challenging, as children as young as seven were included in grammar sessions for teenagers. While Sara’s efforts are highly commendable, the education model is far from ideal and could be improved if two or more schools were to collaborate and combine resources. Michael, one of the main volunteers, commented that there was no chance of another school collaborating with this school, as the children are from the Matu tribe and hated by other tribes. Therefore, collaboration could never happen.

However, there are some organizations that are trying to overcome this problem in order to gain common goals. The Alliance of Chin Refugees, for example, is an informal NGO that tries to unite different Chin groups in order to provide a community center, so issues can be resolved constructively. They have helped the wider Chin community by acting as a correspondent for the UNHCR resources and registration of newly arriving NGOs providing healthcare clinics. They organize schooling and help women to market their handicrafts. Another group, the Chin Emergency Relief Group, was also formed to tackle social issues within the community — homelessness, in particular. The Chin Refugee Committee works closely with the UNHCR to assist and facilitate their operations in Kuala Lumpur, providing a safe house for Chin people in need.

The second largest ethnic group from Burma currently present in Malaysia is the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group from Rakhine state. Rendered stateless by the Burma Citizenship Law of 1982, they have been subjected to persecution, discrimination and intrusive restriction on their rights to marry and have families. Like the Chin in Malaysia, they have no access to benefits or services and no protection even if they are registered with the UNHCR. The separation of the Rohingya by the international community and by Burmese groups has led to an overall lack of support, resulting in extreme illiteracy, substandard health and living conditions with little hope for improvement. Due to their lack of status, children do not have access to the school system, nor may they share services with the Chin.

There has been some civil society response, however, and , the Burmese Rohingya Refugees Community Malaysia (BRRCM) was set up with their headquarters in Penang. They work on key issues affecting the Rohingya — for example, status: the Rohingyas’ situation is further complicated because they are “stateless,” and not recognized by any country. The BRRCM work with the UNHCR to enable registration of refugee status along with their own “registration letter,” claiming they are asylum seekers.

The effect this has in protectingĚýRohingyaĚýfrom RELA (a civilian para-policing group that tackle illegal immigration) and the police is unclear, but they feel this is better than nothing. If members of the Rohingya are detained, they work with organizations such as Suhakam (the Malaysian Human Rights Commission) and UNHCR to mitigate any violence or abuse they may have encountered. They also collect data to inform their work and provide a platform for interested parties such as students or film-makers, to gain knowledge on the plight of the Rohingya and their experience in Malaysia.

In order to join forces when possible, they have formed part of the organization named the All Burmese Muslims Council Malaysia (ABMCM), which they set up in 2009 to enable them to pursue common goals. With regard to basic services such as health, BRRCM links to local organizations to help organize provision of services such as free medical camps for basic health screenings and to tackle emergency health problems. In 2008, there were nearly 350 seriously sick Rohingyas, who were immobile and unable to seek medical treatment. BRRCM informed a local group, who immediately sent a team of doctors and ancillaries to attend to them in Bagan Dalam, Butterworth. The doctors diagnosed their illnesses and provided them with antibiotics, iron tablets, ointment and multi-vitamins.

What’s Next?

Community and civil society-led provisions are only drops in the ocean toward providing migrants from Burma with the dignity of living a free and fair existence – one where they can fully realize their human rights. Ultimately, the solution to this is for the Burmese government to be called to account or take action on the abuse within Burma.

The international community will have to focus its humanitarian and political lens on this area so there is a safe place to return to. Within Malaysia, non-cohesive services between the two groups or any other Burmese ethnic groups, cause disparities in the level of services available to minority ethnic groups.Thus, both groups seem to encounter similar problems around access to formal services. UNHCR provides no guarantee of protection and this needs to change. The national authorities must recognize their status and refrain from detaining individuals. Therefore, the Malaysian government must ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and establish an official process.

The Rohingya seem to have the added disadvantage of not being recognized as belonging to a state – they belong niether to Burma or Bangladesh. Their particular situation and long-standing persecution should mean that the UNHCR and resettlement countries revise their policies to include the Rohingya more centrally in resettlement programs. This might create incentives for destination countries such as Malaysia to provide more sustainable solutions for populations who cannot return and are forced to remain refugees.

Donors also have a role to play, as they can urge governments to ease restrictions on the Rohingya and support programs that will lead to more self-reliance. Though complex, the issue of tribal rivalry and xenophobia amongst Burmese groups should be tackled, even outside of Burma. Not only would more solidarity enable them to survive and cope better within interim host countries such as Malaysia, these refugees will eventually have to move on to other countries where such attitudes would not be tolerated. Therefore, there is a role for impartial NGOs to mediate between groups and provide education on social and racial cohesion.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright © . All Rights Reserved

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Internally displaced in a country that officially demotes them to the status of undesired immigrants, the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state have faced a long and recently publicized history of persecution.

Historically Muslim, the Rohingya find themselves as a minority amongst an Arakanese Buddhist majority. There are approximately 1 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar; roughly 5 percent of the total population. Though not the only Muslim population in the country, they make up the largest concentration in any single region. The capital of Rakhine state, Sittwe, once boasted a Muslim population of 73,000. Today, fewer than 5,000 remain.

This demographic shift in the capital is representative of the whole region. This begs the question, where have these people gone?

The Rohingya

According to Refugees International, approximately 229,000 Rohingyas reside in Bangladesh, with only 29,000 in official refugee camps. The other 200,000 live in unofficial camps. In Myanmar, there are officially around 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, at least 120,000 of whom are internally displaced. Others have attempted to flee to other countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Wherever they go, these refugees are met with mixed receptions. Thailand, also a Buddhist majority country, has documented problems with its own Muslim minority in its southern provinces. Moreover, although its immigration facilities are allegedly saturated, Thailand has been accused of sending away boatloads of Rohingya asylum seekers — back to a hazardous fate at sea.

Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim-majority countries, offer sympathy to their fellow Muslims, but nevertheless shrink at the idea of opening their doors to an influx of stateless refugees.

To top things off, as a minority denied the same rights of other citizens of Myanmar, many Rohingyas have struggled for access to education. They are thus stuck in a cycle of poverty and lack of opportunity not only in Myanmar — the country they have called home for their entire lives — but also in these other countries as they don the mask of the refugee.

In the aftermath of large scale communal violence between Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese Buddhists in 2012, the plight of the Rohingya has held moments of attention in the international media spotlight.

This spate of violence, however, represented only the tip of the iceberg. The problem has been brewing for decades. The country’s 1982 citizenship law, put in place by the ruling military junta, set standards requiring one’s ancestors to have resided in the country prior to 1823. As a result, it has been difficult for Rohingyas to obtain full rights as citizens.

The general view of the Arakanese is that they are the sole original inhabitants of the area; Rohingyas are considered illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. The Rohingya claim to being one of many legitimate ethnic entities of Myanmar are thus painted as irrelevant. On one hand, the Arakanese claim may hold some truth, as during the British rule of Burma (1824-1948), the number of agricultural laborers from Bangladesh to Rakhine state greatly increased. On the other hand, there is proof that there have been Muslims in the area since at least the 15th century.

Either way, the majority of Rohingyas are currently stateless. Those who attempt to escape to Bangladesh are forced to turn back, and whilst those who remain in Myanmar can, in theory, obtain citizenship so long as they meet the criterion of being third generation ”immigrants,” the requirements state dubiously that they must “be of good character” and “sound mind.”

Refugees: Both Rohingya and Arakanese

Since 2012, the bleak situation of Rohingyas has become an issue of international interest. According to the Myanmar government, 211 people have been killed in Rakhine since June 2012; although Rohingya activists estimate the number to be closer to 1,000. There are 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs); 94% of whom are Muslim.

The majority of these people now reside in refugee camps that lack sufficient humanitarian aid, offering refugees little more than a hopeless situation. International charitable organizations fear working in these camps as harassment and violence against those aiding Rohingya Muslims is common.

Largely left to their own devices and dependent on private aid, much of which is coming from Yangon Muslims, there is fear that youth growing up in these conditions risk being seduced into extremism.

The government’s response to problems — which includes proposing to support the resettlement of Rohingyas in other countries — has not contained the violence, which is instead spreading to new areas and spilling across borders. Meanwhile, Rohingya refugees in Rakhine are forbidden to leave their camps.

Contrastingly, the 7,300 ethnically Arakanese IDPs are free to travel and have been assured they will soon receive new permanent housing; a comfort not offered to Rohingya refugees. This may be partially due to the fact that the smaller number of Arakanese refugees is easier to deal with. However, it fails to explain or justify the neglect of social care within Rohingya camps.

Religion or Poverty?

The extreme poverty of the state affects not only the Rohingya, but also the Arakanese, who, as the largest ethnic group, number around 3 million.

Despite being one of the most resource rich areas of the country, Rakhine is the second poorest state. Although divided by religion (Islam and Buddhism), this itself is not the root of the problem. In Myanmar, there are officially no restrictions built on the basis of religion. Islamaphobia, nonetheless, seems to be on the rise in Myanmar, as Muslims of other ethnic groups in different areas have been targeted by violent extremists. On the other side, there is evidence that since 2000, links have developed between some Rohingya extremists and al-Qaeda.

The Rakhine region has a long history of multiculturalism. The Buddhist Mrak-U Kingdom ruled from 1429 to 1785, and boasted a multicultural court with Muslim and foreign courtiers. In fact, the court was dependent upon Muslim trade and mercenaries, which is highlighted in the adoption of Muslim titles as well as Theravadan Buddhist ones — at least until 1622.

Despite often being covered internationally with language defining the violence as a religious issue, the true root causes seem to lie elsewhere. Poverty creates divided social strata, while ascribing moderately to a religion has far fewer implications.

In Rakhine, where the livelihoods of the majority depend on agriculture — mainly the rice crop — land ownership has always been a source of tension between different communities. Therefore, Myanmar’s issues seem primarily about socioeconomics. Even then, the riots of 2012 have only worsened the economic situation for the Arakanese, who now face a shortage of Rohingya laborers. And although not primarily religious in nature, as Rakhine falls increasingly further behind in terms of economic development and redistribution of wealth, the next generation could see divisions along religious lines grow.

If this indeed takes place, it will undoubtedly make the situation far more difficult to resolve. This would not only have grave implications for Rakhine, but it would also seriously threaten Myanmar’s current path to democracy.

The government’s two-child policy for Rohingya families, implemented in 1994, has been condemned as discriminatory and against human rights by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Those supporting the policy argue that Rohingya families have tended to bear more children than they can support, and that the policy is therefore in their own interests. However, as has been the case in China, such policies can have dangerous repercussions, including the rise of unsafe abortions — resorted to in order to avoid the harsh repercussions of breaking the law. The law also misses the target in another respect: It is the problem of poverty and, in turn, the lack of education and healthcare development, which needs to be tackled first and foremost.

International Response

The international community has reacted with great concern over the situation of Rohingya Muslims. Although Myanmar has recently made political strides towards democracy with the election of the first civilian president, Thein Sein, in 2011, after a near half century of military rule, the country has remained blighted by its human rights record. Notably, in 2012, Myanmar was re-designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act.

It remains difficult to say what exactly the international community can do, however. Economic sanctions have been enforced in the past by the US, EU, and ASEAN countries. But in 2009,Ěý Hilary Clinton pointed out that economic sanctions were not constructive in stopping human rights violations or encouraging the democratization of the country.

Apart from this, Myanmar’s main trading partners in the past have been Thailand, India, China, and Japan, thus rendering the effectiveness of US economic sanctions questionable. This is not to say that the international community cannot have a positive effect on Myanmar, but this would perhaps best be done by engaging in socially responsible investment and social initiatives, rather than economic punishment.

Equal Rights

The future of Rohingya Muslims is currently hard to predict, but the solution to work towards should be normalized pluralism. The Rohingya Muslims first need to be properly incorporated into a modern Myanmar as citizens with equal rights. President Thein Sein has recently stated that tackling poverty is one of his top priorities; offering micro-finance loans to poor households being part of the plan.

Such initiatives will remain unavailable to the Rohingya as non-citizens, however, so they will naturally be excluded from Myanmar’s economic development and will continue to fall further and further behind.

Myanmar can no longer ignore its Rohingya population; the future generations need and deserve to be educated and treated as equal citizens. Their current stateless situation will only fuel the creation of a fully marginalized population stuck in a cycle of poverty, social and economic exclusion, and potential sparks of religious extremism.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Long regarded as one of the world’s most reclusive and authoritarian states, the southeastern Asian nation of Myanmar (also known as Burma) is witnessing a period of cautious political and economic liberalization. Rich in oil and natural gas and an array of minerals vital to the world economy, Myanmar’s steady opening is attracting growing interest from foreign investors and trading partners eager to gain a foothold in one of Asia’s most isolated societies. The ruling regime’s decisions to release longtime democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest in 2010 and allow for her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party to contest the April 2012 elections, were also seen as signs of imminent change in Myanmar.

US President Barack Obama’s landmark state visit to Myanmar in November 2012 – the first visit by a sitting US president to the country – serves as a testament to the growing strategic importance of Myanmar to the United States and the international community. Obama’s trip followed a December 2011 visit by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s visit represented the first by a senior US official to Myanmar in 50 years. The United States has also moved to soften the economic sanctions restricting American investment in Myanmar. The United States implemented a series of economic sanctions on Myanmar beginning in 1988 in response to a violent crackdown by the ruling military junta against opposition demonstrators and related concerns over human rights. The European Union (EU) and a host of other countries imposed their own economic sanctions on Myanmar. Following in the footsteps of the United States, the EU announced on April 22 that it would be lifting all economic sanctions on Myanmar. In response to the overtures from Brussels, Naypyidaw subsequently released dozens of political prisoners on April 23.

A host of restrictions governing American and European interactions with Myanmar, however, including sanctions and embargoes governing arms sales, remain in place. Concerns over Myanmar’s human rights record have not dissipated. Myanmar continues to be the subject of severe international criticism over the circumstances surrounding the treatment of its ethnic Rohingya community. Inhabiting Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, the predominantly Muslim Rohingya population, which shares ethnic and cultural links to the peoples of India and Bangladesh, has been the target of repeated attacks by ethnic Rakhine nationalists, who are predominantly Buddhist. Sectarian and ethnic animosities sparked a series of violent riots in 2012. An apparently organized campaign of violence and pogroms targeting the Rohingya population has led to hundreds of dead and tens of thousands of refugees. At the same time, most indications suggest that the steady normalization of relations between Myanmar and the West will proceed. Once considered as a mainstay friend of China and North Korea and a pariah state by much of the West over its human rights record, incremental social, political, and economic change in Myanmar represents an important geopolitical trend that warrants closer attention. Equally important, the US engagement of Myanmar is very much reflective of the much touted “pivot to Asia” declared by the Obama administration that involves the refocusing of US foreign policy toward Asia.

Outlook

Myanmar’s incremental normalization with the international community is already having a profound impact on the southeastern Asian strategic landscape.  Myanmar’s significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas are attracting the attention of global blue chip energy majors eager to exploit these resources amid sustained international demand for hydrocarbons. Naypyidaw announced in April that it plans to auction off the rights to 30 offshore oil and natural gas exploration blocks to foreign companies. Equally important, Myanmar has also committed to offering the opportunity for foreign companies to gain full access to a limited number of exploration blocks. This decision represents a departure from previous policy that required foreign energy interests to forge partnerships with the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

Myanmar is also rich in other key natural resources, including copper, zinc, coal, uranium, and timber, as well as precious stones such as jade, ruby, and sapphire. It is also endowed with ample potential for hydropower and establishing deep-water seaports along one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors. All of these attributes are attracting the attention of investors keen to expand their presence in southeastern Asia. Due to its borders with China, Thailand, India, Laos, and Bangladesh, Myanmar’s geographic placement alongside busy trade and communication routes is also raising its geopolitical profile. The United States and India are increasingly viewing better relations with Myanmar as a means in which to check Chinese influence in southeastern Asia. Consequently, Myanmar’s geopolitical standing is certain to rise in the years ahead.

Risks

Despite the notable political and economic changes in Myanmar, years of entrenched authoritarianism, corruption, institutional weakness, and underdevelopment pose significant obstacles for foreign investors attempting to break into the local market. At the same time, Myanmar has set out to mitigate some of the concerns related to corruption by signing on to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Based in Norway, the EITI is a voluntary framework that focuses on encouraging good governance, financial transparency, and environmental responsibility.

Even as Myanmar moves to broaden its foreign relations, Chinese influence will remain strong for the foreseeable future. Chinese influence is particularly apparent in the economy. China is responsible for about half of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Myanmar’s economy, and over a quarter of its overall foreign trade relations. China is not likely to stand idly by as a host of foreign interests challenge its preeminent position in Myanmar’s economy.

As the crisis in Rakhine State escalates amid growing international humanitarian concerns related to the Rohingya population’s plight, companies operating in Myanmar face a series of reputational risks. Myanmar’s domestic security situation also remains a concern in parts of the country. In addition to the simmering ethnic and sectarian conflict in Rakhine State, Myanmar is also beset by numerous insurgencies led by an array of political opponents of the military regime and advocates for various other ethnic and sectarian causes.

Opportunities

The political and economic pitfalls of breaking into Myanmar are clear and reflective of many of the problems that confront investors who are seeking to expand into emerging markets. At the same time, Myanmar’s cautious political and economic opening promises to yield a wealth of potentially lucrative investment opportunities down the road. Myanmar’s rising geopolitical profile, especially in the eyes of the United States and Europe, will help propel this trend.

"" has been reproduced with the permission of , Inc.  Copyright 2013 Helios Global, Inc.

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Myanmar has recently become the center of attention in the growing competition between China and the US for influence in South East Asia, dubbed by D. Suba Chandran as the Eastern “Great Game.” Following the relatively successful elections of 2010, Myanmar (Burma) has been praised by Western powers, especially the US, for its commitment to democratization. Call it democracy with Burmese characteristics if you will, but the lingering strength of the military in Burma, as well as consistent fighting in the ethnic autonomous regions, still remains and poses a serious threat to continued reforms. Despite their differences, the population of Myanmar does seem to be united in one regard; that is in the ongoing push back against Chinese investment and development in favor of improved economic cooperation and diplomatic relations with the West.

Fragile Peace

Myanmar’s push back against Chinese influence culminated in August 2011 with the very public closing of the Chinese-funded Myitsone Dam by President U Thein Sein. During the announcement, President Sein indicated that he was merely listening to the "the will of the people.” This statement marked the waning of China’s influence in Myanmar in favor of the new government’s desire to establish its democratic legitimacy. According to , a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution, China was caught off guard by the announcement and has considerably misjudged the situation in Myanmar. The Chinese had assumed that Myanmar would remain loyal to their investments and funding in exchange for political cover and investment. According to Sun, this serious miscalculation occurred because the Chinese underestimated the strength of the democratic movement in Myanmar and level of anti-Chinese sentiment among the public. 

Following the lifting of Western sanctions, Myanmar has experienced an influx of investment interest and diplomatic attention from formerly unfriendly nations. Landmark visits from former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama, President U Thein Sein’s recent visit to the US, and ASEAN’s commitment to support Myanmar’s position as chair in 2014, display the warm reception the reformist Burmese government is now receiving, going from pariah to role model in just a few short years.

However, the government of Myanmar should be wary of its newfound popularity. The peace in Myanmar is fragile. Fresh rounds of fighting between ethnic Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine State are part of a conflict. The Kachin Independence Organization of Kachin State has been in and out of Chinese mediated talks for some time, while the United Wah State Army in Shan State has reportedly been preparing for an imminent government military . New political freedoms, such as freedom of the press, have also brought a renewed sense of responsibility and added pressure to the Burmese political environment. If any of Myanmar’s numerous internal problems were to escalate, Myanmar’s response would be closely monitored by major regional and global powers. Any response deemed improper by the international community, whether due to the use of force or a reversal of democratic reforms, could lead to Myanmar finding itself on the outside looking in yet again.

International Relevance

Myanmar’s ongoing ethnic and religious conflicts represent a massive threat to its stability and its delicate position within the international community. In similar situations in the past, where internal conflict has led to international condemnation, Myanmar could be forced to turn to the nation it is now choosing to shun: China. The US Japan, South Korea, and the EU should be regarded, at best, as fair weather friends. While the US equation may be different thanks to its "pivot" to the region, and apparent attempts to rebalance influence away from China, it is unlikely that it would be willing to overlook any reversion to the former junta style of . However, if the US is seriously attempting to "contain" the rise of China, as so many in China believe, it may be willing to stick it out in Myanmar for the right price. That price could mean some amount of prolonged military presence as collateral for assistance in stabilizing the nation, among other possible scenarios suggested by Berntil Lintner .

In the former situation, where the US and its allies distance themselves from Myanmar, what other option would the Burmese government have but to turn to China for support? It is fair to say that China has been excessively generous to Myanmar in the past, providing pivotal preferential loans and subsidized infrastructure investment, albeit in the pursuit of resource security, access to the Indian Ocean, and prosperity for Western China. If Myanmar were to become isolated from Western nations, it would be safe to assume that Beijing would not be so charitable this time around. The closing of the Myitsone Dam and anti-Chinese sentiment are fresh wounds in the minds of the Chinese, and would surely influence their diplomatic and economic approach.

By effectually ostracizing Chinese diplomacy and investment in favor of democratization and international approval, Myanmar’s new government is putting itself in a vulnerable position. During President Sein’s visit to China in April, he reiterated that Myanmar . At the same time, public disapproval for Chinese projects in Myanmar is becoming stronger thanks to recent democratic reforms. Increased public participation will put more pressure on U Thein Sein, Aung San Suu Kyi, and their National League for Democracy to deliver on a myriad of political initiatives. News that the joint Chinese-Burmese gas and oil pipelines running to Yunnan may be  due to ethnic conflict and local protests underscores the complications of developing of democracy in an unstable population and the risks it poses for both the government of Myanmar and Chinese investors.

Stability and Risk

While President Sein says that Myanmar respects and accepts Chinese investment and development, the Burmese public does not. Regardless of whatever economic and geostrategic potential Myanmar has, and no matter what the Myanmar government may say, the truth is that the government is incapable of guaranteeing stability or minimizing risk for investors. Soon, it will not be just Chinese companies that find themselves answering to the Burmese public. American, Japanese, and other foreign owned enterprise will also face similar scrutiny.

U Thein Sein’s National League for Democracy Party would be best served by not straying too far from China, keeping the US and its allies at a distance, and concentrating its political capital on solving Myanmar’s complex and numerous internal difficulties. The international interest in Myanmar’s geostrategic importance and economic potential is not going anywhere. However, the terms at which those goals are pursued, with assistance from China, the US, or both, are largely dependent on how the Burmese government handles its domestic responsibilities. Myanmar should adopt a cautious approach to foreign policy so as to not overplay their position between China and the US. The new popularity of the government in Myanmar certainly offers the opportunity to create unprecedented growth and prosperity, but it also presents the opportunity for a serious setback. They should therefore tread very carefully, not get carried away by the Western mystique, and focus on their internal responsibilities.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The plight of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar – whom some label as victims of “ethnic persecution” – is threatening to blow up in the face of ASEAN, just weeks before the regional grouping convenes its 21th summit this month in Cambodia. To help defuse the humanitarian fallout from the Rohingya crisis, ASEAN has offered to work closely with the Myanmar government and the United Nations in the same way this tripartite arrangement effectively provided relief to the victims of Cyclone Nargis in 2008.

But Myanmar has rejected the offer on the ground that the conflict is an internal affair, according to Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan. He cautioned that the atrocities, if not ended, could radicalise the Rohingya Muslims and destabilise Southeast Asia.

ASEAN Reactions

Dr Surin’s warning bell is timely. There are signs of growing agitation, especially within the Muslim communities of Southeast Asia, at the seeming lack of peace efforts on the part of the Myanmar government and the international community. There have been protests in Jakarta outside the Myanmar embassy and calls by NGOs in the region for ASEAN to address the violation of human rights of the stateless Rohingya. The Myanmar government does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens.

While Myanmar’s rejection of external assistance is not surprising, ASEAN should sustain its persuasive approach to contain and defuse the crisis so that it does not spill beyond the shores of Myanmar. The Rohingya issue will complicate efforts by ASEAN to preserve peace and stability in the region. “If the international community, including ASEAN, is not able to relieve the pressure and pain, (the Rohingya) could become radicalised and the entire region could be destabilised,” said Dr Pitsuwan.

ASEAN has been exercised by the violence since June between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state where many Rohingya have died and at least 100,000 of them displaced. There has been long-standing animosity between the Buddhists and Rohingya and thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar over the years, 2 with many of them seeking shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh and Malaysia.

In the face of the growing concern in the region ASEAN foreign ministers issued a four-point statement on 17 August 2012. They said they were following closely developments since the incidents on 28 May and 3 June and were ready to lend humanitarian assistance “upon the request of the Government of Myanmar”. A week earlier, Dr Surin disclosed he had proposed that ASEAN foreign ministers once again offer humanitarian assistance as had been done in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis which left 138,000 people dead or missing. Individual ASEAN states were also offering assistance separately to the Rohingya.

Just before the ASEAN statement, Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa raised the issue at an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca on 14-15 August which declared the violence on the Rohingya as “crimes against humanity”. “The Myanmar government’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims is not in line with its recent efforts towards democracy. Any act of discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity is unacceptable,” Dr Marty was quoted by Antara as saying.

The OIC subsequently announced that it was given the greenlight by Myanmar to provide humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya. The Myanmar government, however, later reversed the decision following protests by Buddhist monks and laymen. Aung San Suu Kyi has taken a neutral stance despite pleas from the European Union.

Implications for ASEAN

The unexpected outbreak of the ethnic crisis in Rakhine state is an unwelcome strain on ASEAN which is still preoccupied with closing its ranks over internal divisions sparked by Cambodia’s controversial handling of the South China Sea disputes in July. How Myanmar addresses the Rohingya issue and the growing international concerns will impact on confidence in its chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014.

"Myanmar becoming the chair of ASEAN will be the focus of attention (on) how it is handling such an issue," Dr Surin said. “ASEAN cannot be perceived to be standing by without taking any action on such a big scale of humanitarian difficulty,” he added. However, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are likely to adopt a softer approach towards Myanmar on this issue as they are wary of international involvement in issues affecting their handling of their own Muslim minorities and are sympathetic to the concerns of their domestic Buddhist majorities. Should Myanmar clash with other ASEAN members on the Rohingya issue, the current cracks within ASEAN caused by the South China Sea issue could worsen and complicate internal fault lines, which ASEAN can ill afford. Likewise Myanmar cannot ignore the growing concerns of the regional and international community over the plight of the Rohingya.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy

*[This article was originally published by  on November 2, 2012].

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By Venessa Parekh 

Even as the world smiles benignly at the democratic opening up of Myanmar and the extended foreign tour of its Leader of the Opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s complex domestic dynamic, hidden for years, has surfaced. The spillover of the sectarian violence that began in early June has simultaneously exposed the difficulties of democratisation and the plight of Myanmar’s many underprivileged ethnic minorities.

The clashes between Myanmar’s majority Buddhist population – backed by the border security force, the Nasaka – and the 800,000-strong Rohingya Muslim community, locally referred to as Bengalis, highlights the issue. The violence is the culmination of nearly half a century of government-sanctioned discrimination against the Rohingyas who are not accepted or recognized as Myanmarese citizens. They aren’t the only ones. Almost never discussed is the plight of third and fourth generation Indian and Chinese immigrants who have lived in Myanmar for decades but like the Rohingyas, are considered illegal settlers.

There are two separate groups of minorities vying for recognition in Myanmar. One is composed of numerous ethnic minorities, such as the Karen, whose allegiance to the State, not their nationality, is in question. Frequent military reprisals have caused large sections of this group to flee to Thailand over the years, where they have settled in camps along the border. The second group comprises those who have lived in Myanmar for generations but are simply not recognised as citizens – like the Rohingya Muslims, and those of Indian and Chinese origin.

Both the Indians and Chinese have been in Myanmar for at least a century. Indians, in particular, came after the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1824-26, encouraged by the British Empire to relocate from Bengal, Bihar and South India to Myanmar in an attempt to develop the country. Persons of Indian descent came to dominate the Myanmarese economy as traders, civil servants, merchants, river pilots, soldiers, indentured labourers and moneylenders.

Financial prosperity combined with high positions in the British bureaucracy and their role as money-lenders made the community a target of Burmese nationalist sentiment.

Once independence was achieved, however, the British left Myanmar without making provisions for the grant of official citizenship to these migrants. Latent tensions intensified by the racial and religious differences between the communities – the Indians were dark-skinned and continued to practice Hinduism or Islam in Buddhist Myanmar – making intermarriage and communal mingling rare.

The military coup in 1962, led by General Ne Win, and his ‘Burmanisation’ policy, completely destroyed the already precarious balance between the different communities. The economy was overhauled, Indian and Chinese businesses and trade contracts were rescinded, and the Indian-majority Cabinet was dissolved. Although they had lived in Myanmar for many generations and had no connections with their original societies, approximately 100,000 Chinese and 300,000 Indians were forced out of Myanmar. Those left behind were the poorer immigrant groups, without the wherewithal to flee or start over again.

In 1982, a new Citizenship Act was passed, dividing Myanmarese into three categories. Naturalised citizenship would only be granted to those who could furnish “conclusive evidence” of entry and residence in Myanmar prior to the British annexation; those who were proficient in one of the national languages; and whose children were born in the country. Although many minorities fulfil these requirements, hardly any can supply documentary proof, partly as a result of decades of exclusionary policies and practices.

Consequently, there are over 2 million stateless persons scattered in villages and rural areas across Myanmar. A report published in the year 2000 by the Indian government reveals that about 400,000 are of Indian origin. Without official recognition, they have limited or no access to education, employment and healthcare, and their right to travel, marriage, reproduction and communication is severely restricted.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi recently promised Myanmarese citizenship to refugee groups in Thailand. But when asked about the Rohingya, she replied that she “didn’t know” whether or not they belong to the country – an ambiguous position representative of the Myanmarese majority’s indifference to its stateless. Last week, Naypyidaw issued a statement categorically refusing to recognise the Rohingyas as citizens. This official disregard cements the animosity between Myanmarese minorities and the majority.

Breaking the stalemate is vital to the democratic process in Myanmar, and to give the government credibility. The country is planning social and political reform, and has just opened its markets to foreign investors and companies. This is the moment for Myanmar to begin rehabilitating its minorities, and for its neighbouring countries to help advance such an endeavour.

The initial impetus for the acknowledgement of its citizens must of course come from within Myanmar itself. Naypyidaw, supported by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, should reformulate immigration laws, make provisions for the settlement of these groups, and grant them all the rights that come with citizenship. Given the history of the stateless in Myanmar, as well as the significance of this new phase of co-operation and dialogue among the neighbouring nations, the process of rehabilitation can become a joint initiative between the South and Southeast Asian countries.

India has already launched infrastructure projects to facilitate greater connectivity between its North East and Myanmar; bilateral trade is estimated to double by 2015 to $3 billion. As these agreements are negotiated, and cross-border activity picks up, the potential for conflict will grow. In the past, New Delhi has discreetly discussed the minority issue with Myanmar and successfully gained citizenship for approximately 20,000 stateless persons of Indian descent. India must use its increased business investment in Myanmar to press for equality for the rest.

China already has a large economic presence in Myanmar – and its profile is sure to increase over the coming years. India and China can together use the invitation they have to participate in Myanmar’s rejuvenation, to nudge the process forward with some quiet but effective diplomacy.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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