Massacre of Rohingya Muslims; A Smooth Path for Terrorism

The people known as 'Rohingya' belong to Indo-Aryan tribes residing in Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) in Myanmar. The population of this state, which was previously called Arakan, is made up of Buddhists, and the Rohingya are in the minority. It is said that about one million one hundred thousand Rohingya live in Myanmar and nearly the same number outside Myanmar. The majority of Rohingya are Muslims, but there is also a Hindu minority among them. The history of Muslims in Myanmar dates back to the 12th century, although some believe the Rohingya have been settled in these areas since the 8th century, while others consider their settlement in Myanmar to coincide with the Bengalis in the early 18th century. The Rohingya language is very similar to Bengali, but the Bengalis, who make up the majority of the Arakan or Rakhine state, refuse to consider the Rohingya as their own and even deny their linguistic similarities. With this description, there is no consensus regarding the antiquity of these tribes' presence in Myanmar (formerly Burma). [Some countries still do not recognize Myanmar's new name and refer to it as Burma]. During approximately 125 years of British rule in this region, which was once considered part of India, immigration of population and labor was considered an internal matter, and the British did not intervene. However, the local population viewed the immigration of individuals from other tribes and clans negatively. With this long history, the Rohingya were not recognized as citizens of Myanmar, both according to the 1948 law and due to other changes that later occurred. Shortly after Myanmar gained independence from Britain in 1948, the Myanmar Citizenship Law was enacted, which determined who were citizens of Myanmar and who were not entitled to citizenship. The Rohingya are not citizens of Myanmar - in 1962, the military seized power in Myanmar through a coup. All citizens were required to have a national identification card, but the Rohingya were only given identity cards that labeled them as 'foreigners,' thus limiting their ability to study and work. A new citizenship law in 1982 worsened this situation, and the Rohingya were not even recognized as one of the 135 ethnic groups of Myanmar. The new law required proficiency in one of several official languages along with documentation proving that they had resided in Myanmar before 1948 as a condition for citizenship. Many Rohingya did not have such documents because they had not succeeded in obtaining them in earlier stages. As a result, they were deprived of the right to education, work, travel, marriage, access to healthcare, and the performance of religious ceremonies and rituals. Even Rohingya who managed to pass the citizenship exam and obtain Myanmar nationality were still considered second-class citizens and deprived of certain civil rights. For example, they cannot become doctors or lawyers or hold positions in the three branches of government. There has almost never been peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims in Rakhine. Since the 1970s, violence against the Rohingya has increased in several phases, causing groups of them to flee Myanmar and seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries. Many of them faced harassment, rape, and torture by Myanmar security forces while fleeing and were killed. Ethnic cleansing - In 2016, during a conflict between border police and Rohingya, nine border police officers were killed, and subsequently, armed men attacked the villages where the Rohingya lived. In November 2016, for the first time, John McKissick, the head of the UN Refugee Agency, accused the Myanmar government of 'ethnic cleansing' of Rohingya Muslims, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights severely criticized the Myanmar government led by Aung San Suu Kyi for its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority. Previously, especially since 2013, human rights activists had accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing and labeled the killings as crimes against humanity, but the UN's emphasis on ethnic cleansing indicated a peak in mass killings. Human rights groups have documented dozens of incidents of burning various locations in Rakhine State or shooting directly at unarmed people. Since 2012, at least 168,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar. Following the violence that erupted last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, 87,000 of them sought refuge in Bangladesh between October 2016 and July 2017. Now a new wave of killings has begun, leading to a mass exodus of Rohingya. One of the most perilous routes for Rohingya is crossing by boat and ship from the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea to reach Malaysia. Between 2012 and 2015, over 112,000 people undertook this dangerous journey. Additionally, UN reports indicate that 420,000 Rohingya refugees are in Southeast Asia, and more than 120,000 are internally displaced in Myanmar. In the latest wave of flight, over 10,000 people are trapped in a piece of land belonging to a border owner that is under no governance. Similar to the events of 2016, in the last week of August, in a new conflict between fleeing Rohingya at the border, 12 Myanmar security forces were killed. The immediate police response resulted in the deaths of 77 Rohingya, sparking a new wave of genocide accompanied by mass flight of Rohingya. At the same time, a spokesperson for the US State Department had urged Myanmar to refrain from any acts of retaliation. By early September, the death toll reached four hundred. Parts of Bangladesh and India, and consequently Pakistan and Afghanistan, could easily witness the presence of elements fleeing the Islamic Caliphate that are being driven out of Iraq and Syria and are seeking to establish their Islamic Caliphate elsewhere. Poverty and dissatisfaction create fertile ground for terrorism, which is nourished by revenge and bloodshed. Until another 'Islamic government' is established in this region, the bloodshed of Rohingya Muslims must be prevented, and solutions must be sought regarding the revival of their identity and rights in Myanmar. The role of Aung San Suu Kyi - Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years of her life in prison under the military rulers of Myanmar, was released from prison in 2010. She, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, managed to secure 80% of the total votes in the 2015 elections five years after her release, winning 348 seats in both houses of Myanmar for her party, the National League for Democracy. However, the military still holds 25% of the parliamentary seats. Aung San Suu Kyi's role is equivalent to that of the President, but according to the law, she cannot become President, and the military still retains many levers of power. Now, with the escalation of conflicts, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar has criticized Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, stating that she has neglected the Rohingya issue and that it is time for her to step forward and resolve the matter. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, four months ago, in an interview with a BBC reporter, dismissed the ethnic cleansing accusations and claimed that Myanmar would welcome back Rohingya who return. Aung San Suu Kyi stated, 'I don't think ethnic cleansing is happening. In my opinion, the use of the term ethnic cleansing for what is occurring is very severe.' In her view, 'Muslims are also killing Muslims.' Last year, Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl who, like Aung San Suu Kyi, is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, along with 11 other Nobel Peace Prize laureates, warned Aung San Suu Kyi that a genocide was imminent. In response to this letter, a multitude of social media users demanded that the Nobel Peace Prize be revoked from Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee cannot and has no precedent for revoking the peace prize from anyone. The committee's justification is that the Nobel Peace Prize is a decision, and with its announcement and awarding, the committee's responsibility ends. Therefore, the committee does not have the authority to revoke the prize. A parallel theory to ethnic cleansing Most observers and experts on Myanmar who follow the issue of the massacre of Rohingya Muslims in this country unanimously agree that the behavior of the Myanmar government can only be described as 'genocide.' However, an article in The Guardian by Saskia Sassen, a sociology professor at Columbia University, introduces a new argument alongside the religious factor into the puzzle of the massacres in Myanmar. This university professor does not deny ethnic cleansing and genocide but believes that alongside it, another disaster is taking shape in Myanmar that targets Buddhists just as it does Muslims. According to this university professor, who presents her argument based on research conducted over several decades, the new economic development in recent decades has caused many small landowners to become victims of large capitalists. In Myanmar, in addition to Muslims, small landowners have also been forced to leave their lands because absolute control is in the hands of the military, who are the ones expelling small landowners from their lands. The macro economy in the mining and forestry sectors, which do not require much labor, is rapidly developing. Since 2012 (the same year tensions escalated), a law strengthened foreign investment in Myanmar. Following that, land occupation without legal prohibition intensified, and they rapidly began to destroy forests. Now, approximately one million hectares of forest land is destroyed and industrially utilized annually. Unlike construction projects that require a large workforce, this type of industrial land use does not need many workers; for instance, a pipeline project in Myanmar was able to secure a billion dollars in investment with only 800 workers. Thus, according to this university professor's argument, alongside the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, the same factors (the military) have also deprived small landowners in Myanmar, especially in the north of the country, both Muslim and Buddhist, of their ownership, leading to their displacement and homelessness. The danger of escalating terrorism The massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar could intensify terrorist movements in South Asia. Despite the fact that North Korea's latest nuclear test has dominated global headlines and fueled concerns about the outbreak of war, it should be noted that the reaction of Muslims worldwide to the humanitarian disaster in Myanmar has also been equally newsworthy. These reactions are particularly significant from the perspective of international security and terrorism. According to Reuters, Khalid Batrafi, reportedly a leader of Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch, has called for attacks against Myanmar government officials and military in support of the Rohingya Muslim minority. He has urged Muslims in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia to rush to the aid of Rohingya Muslims. In Indonesia, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, while the New York Times headlines reported protests by Muslims across the continents of Australia and Asia in support of Rohingya Muslims. AFP reported protests by Muslims in Chechnya in Russia, and TASS reported reactions from Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi condemning the massacre of Rohingya Muslims. Undoubtedly, the reactions of the Presidents of Russia and Egypt are directly related to their concerns about terrorism. In the past, extremist groups in Chechnya in Russia have committed terrorist acts, just as a branch of Al-Qaeda and affiliates of the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS) have done similar actions in Egypt. On September 4, Moscow police detained 17 protesters in front of the Myanmar embassy in Moscow, two of whom were women. The massacre of Rohingya Muslims has entered a sensitive phase. The expansion of this crisis and humanitarian disaster, which has elicited reactions from many countries around the world, is not in favor of any of the actors in the international political arena and must be stopped as soon as possible. Malaysia, Indonesia, and southern Philippines have so far witnessed hundreds of citizens being sent to join the ranks of the 'Islamic Caliphate' (ISIS). Groups like 'Abu Sayyaf' and 'Islamic Community' have been operating in these communities for several decades in a dormant state. Parts of Bangladesh and India, and consequently Pakistan and Afghanistan, could easily witness the presence of elements fleeing the Islamic Caliphate that are being driven out of Iraq and Syria and are seeking to establish their Islamic Caliphate elsewhere. Poverty and dissatisfaction create fertile ground for terrorism, which is nourished by revenge and bloodshed. Until another 'Islamic government' is established in this region, the bloodshed of Rohingya Muslims must be prevented, and solutions must be sought regarding the revival of their identity and rights in Myanmar.