For over 40 years, the Burmese state has been engaged in wholescale persecution of the Rohingya; denial and deprivation of their nationality; denial of their history and identity; restrictions on marriage and children; forced malnutrition and forced labour; restrictions on education, healthcare and movement; arbitrary arrests and killings; all with the cumulative intent of denying their participation in society, driving them out and destroying them. This systemic and structured persecution has been interspersed with waves of acute violence carried out by state and non-state actors alike – in 1978, 1991, 2012, 2015; and has been fuelled by the most vitriolic propaganda campaign which has brainwashed a country into reviling and fearing the most vulnerable and downtrodden among them. [...]
The arbitrary denial and deprivation of Rohingya’s Burmese nationality has played a pivotal role in how they are perceived and treated. Rohingya have faced targeted exclusion and persecution at least since the 1970s; but it was the 1982 citizenship law which entrenched their statelessness. The Rohingya were denied citizenship because they are an unwanted minority. Once made stateless, this was used to reinforce the dominant narrative that they are not from Burma, that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Their statelessness was drawn on to deny their identity (they are Bengali, there are no Rohingya) and their history. It became the justification for the suffocating restrictions imposed on them. It mattered not, that there was no international law or historical basis for any of this. [...]
There is however, another way of perceiving her. She has not been silent. She has used her voice to stoke hatred against the Rohingya, to ridicule the testimonies of survivors of genocide. To accuse humanitarian actors of colluding with terrorists. To justify the denial of the Rohingya identity. she is only silent in her unwillingness to speak the name ‘Rohingya’. And so, she no longer has any moral authority to speak of. She is a failed leader, who is watching her country burn, her people turn against their neighbours, her military perpetrate the most unspeakable and atrocious crimes and who has taken a calculated and cynical decision to stand with the oppressors.
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