The case for the Rohingyas

Book review of 'The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide'

The Rohingyas

Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide

Azeem Ibrahim

Speaking Tiger

141 pages; Rs 454

The contours of the Rohingya issue have become clearly black and white. Understandably so. A population of 700,000 does not cross into another country, no matter how easy it is, for a picnic, unless they are sure they face grave dangers back home. 

Also, since the total population of the Rakhine state in Myanmar is just about three million, that means of good proportion of them has upped and fled. A migration of this scale spread over what some claim as less than a year to a more charitable period of decade, doesn’t happen too often in this world. Words like ethnic cleansing or genocide seem to fit the bill. 

Author Azeem Ibrahim starts out from the latter premise. His book The Rohingyas; Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide makes this clear. It is more of a pamphlet of 141 pages that makes no attempt to disguise that he wears his heart on his sleeve on the topic. The book was originally written in 2014 but has been “revised and updated” now as a South Asian edition. The Scotsman has been an advisor to Pakistani politician Imran Khan, is a Yale World Fellow, heads a hedge fund and has had deep links with the US White House. So one can be sure his voice from these pages will be heard. He thus expends his energy on the present, in the process brushing off the chiaroscuro of Burmese history as one to dubiously claim the Rohingyas existed as a separate racial group over a millennium whom he places in contradistinction to the Rakhines who according to him are Buddhists. Its a position the Rohingyas themselves would be surprised with as they rightly claim to be a part of the rich interplay of the Arakan valley’s history where Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists have all played their part. An earlier review by this reviewer had dwelt on this in detail (Myanmar’s ethnic nightmares, Business Standard,  September 28).

Like a good orator, Mr Ibrahim marshalls his argument on a key central point. It is that the Rohingyas face a human disaster like that of Rwanda and others such of the 20th century. “The charge in this book is that Myanmar now stands on the brink of genocide”. He goes on to argue Myanmar was moving in this direction since its independence in 1948 from the British rule. It has intensified especially since 2008, he says when the country adopted a Constitution that paved the way for the restoration of democracy. He pins blame on it for exacerbating the issue of denying citizenship to Rohingyas. 

Constructed like a speech, each of the seven chapters is brisk. The author makes it clear to whom he is addressing in the book which is the US government and the Western European states. There is no mention in the book of the possible role of India. China, too, is mostly absent and significantly, the author makes clear his disdain for any role Bangladesh, host to the entire refugee population from Myanmar, can play to shape the future events in Myanmar. The examples of genocide are consequently drawn from Rwanda and Nazi Europe. Not that it makes a difference but he makes a distinction in the chapter “Genocide and International Law” with what had happened in Cambodia or other pogroms less visible to the Western eye. 

“In Myanmar, the preconditions for genocide are firmly in place…The way the state thinks about this minority is also fundamentally racist…the Rohingyas are now seen to be an existential threat to the chosen religious identity of the state.” To his credit the way the Myanmar army and police have moved into the state does little to dispel this impression. But to attribute the entire problem in this part of South Asia as a decade old fight between an unforgiving Buddhist state (which it is not) and a hapless Muslim minority locked into one corner, is highly simplistic. In any case the problem was created by the British occupation and the Second World War that drove a wedge between the local communities.

It misses out on the subsequent developments where a fledgling nation state lost its entire political leadership in one terrorist attack and the slide into anarchy thereafter. 

The enormity of these problems and now the redemption, including the emerging development narrative within Asia around Myanmar, need to be factored in. Countries right up to South Korea are now deeply invested in this nation so the international sanctions that he advocates, which might appear simple to apply to US and European companies (mostly locked out of the Myanmar market so far) are not that open and shut cases for Asia. Having built up a strong argument for the Rohingyas till this point, his one-way slant detracts from the book.