Preethi Nallu March 15, 2016
▻http://www.warscapes.com/reportage/rohingya-refugees-semantics-politics
“On November 13, his predilection for an unceasing dystopian state of affairs was broken by a historic turn of events in the country. While Orwell’s narrative could not have accommodated the coexistence of Big Brother and the Outer Party in one system, in the parallel real world, the Myanmar military conceded elections to the National League for Democracy (NLD) headed by the iconic Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The seventy-year-old leader spearheaded a landslide victory, with her party claiming enough seats in the parliament to choose the next president.
The recognition is a significant game-changer for a country where every publication, including advertisements, until recently required pre-approval by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRB), part of the Ministry of Information. This draconian rule dictated flow of information from and within Myanmar for 50 years. But, the latest polls, which appear to have been relatively free and fair with substantive local and international media coverage, beckon a new political climate.
However, such progress primarily applies to the Bamar majority in the country. In addition to this group, which constitutes about 68 percent of the population, Myanmar officially recognizes 135 ethnic minority groups. While the Shan constitute the largest such group in Myanmar, with official figures pitting them at nearly 10 percent of the population, hundreds of thousands live unclassified as refugees in Northern Thailand. In parts of Shan State, which constitutes one-fourth of the country’s landmass, fighting resumed between government forces and the Shan State Army (SSA) following November’s polls.
Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s strategy with most ethnic minorities—“vote for NLD and we will represent your democratic rights”—has proven effective, as she won by large margins in the restive borderlands of the country, according to a latest Economist report. At the same time, voting was canceled in large swaths of the ethnic minority regions that have been chronically war-torn since the creation of a Burmese state in 1948. Resolving these discrepancies after the new Parliament convenes in early 2016 will be an uphill battle.
Yet the biggest stumbling block for the leader has been her conspicuous silence on the issue of the Rohingya. The absence of at least 1.2 million Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, from the vote is but one glaring gap in basic democracy in Myanmar.
While the latest polls provided a significant impetus for change for a majority of the population living inside the country, the Rohingya have suffered an even greater setback, with their voting rights suspended by the military backed government ahead of polls. Not a single Muslim candidate is expected to sit in the coming Parliament.
No recognition from the government of Myanmar, no prospects of assimilation in neighboring countries and no means in between—these prevailing conditions that have dominated the experience of the Rohingya community have also earned them the label of one of ‘the most persecuted people’ in the world from UN agencies.”