US President Barack Obama looks upwards at the the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit plenary session at the International Convention Center, Yanqi, on Tuesday in Beijing (AFP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)
When US President Barack Obama enters Myanmar’s highest level ASEAN summit Wednesday, observers will be waiting eagerly for a single word: Rohingya.
Since 2012, when deadly inter-communal violence broke out in Rakhine state, Muslims in western Myanmar and their supporters have rallied around the term. But as much as it is an ethnic identity, the word itself — rejected by the Buddhist-dominated government — is a minefield. In the western state of Rakhine, the mostly Buddhist majority ethnic group has helped turn the term into a dangerous taboo avoided even by some of the world’s biggest humanitarian groups.
It is into this highly charged linguistic standoff that Obama walks. Already, he is being lobbied to employ the word at the international summit in Naypyidaw, and — in doing so — to speak up for the Rohingya, thousands of whom are currently fleeing the country on boats, feeding a regional human trafficking and refugee crisis.
International non-government organizations (INGOs) and branches of the United Nations working in Rakhine state have long skirted controversy by simply omitting the name — which is off limits in discussions with the government and has come to be referred to as “the R-word”.
Some see this as undermining the Rohingya’s right to self-identify, but aid workers say they favor a pragmatic approach to the issue given the sensitivity of foreign aid and its necessity. According to the UN, more than 300,000 people in Rakhine state are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including almost 140,000 people living in temporary camps — the majority of them Rohingya.
A belief among the Rakhine that aid agencies are biased in favor of the Rohingya led to the banishment of major healthcare provider Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (MSF) from the state in March, and riots that targeted international organizations’ offices in the state capital Sittwe the same month. Since then, all aid projects in Rakhine state have been subject to approval by an emergency coordination committee. The incident has led to a humanitarian crisis.
In June, the UN children’s fund, Unicef, was forced to “clarify” an incident where its staff reportedly apologized to Rakhine officials in a meeting for using the term in a presentation. The use of the term was “an oversight, as Unicef had no intention of engaging in a discussion on the sensitive issue of ethnicity at that forum,” the clarification said.
Pierre Peron, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yangon, declined to comment on what the UN’s policy on the word Rohingya was, other than to say by email that: "We follow the principle that any minority group has the right to self-identify and must be able to call themselves whatever they want.”
But in reality, while the UN secretary general and the UN’s human rights envoy to Myanmar continue to use the term Rohingya in statements issued from New York and Geneva, it is absent from public statements issued locally by UN agencies.
Unspoken Agreement
“When dealing with government or if they are present, using the word 'Rohingya' just means that they get irritated and the discussion stalls, so UN and INGOs use Muslim when talking to the government and the government uses Bengali,” a former senior manager at an INGO working in Rakhine state told ucanews.com. The term Bengali is used widely by the government and the Rakhine to refer to Rohingya, and implies that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
“This is an unsaid agreement on terminology.”
The INGO manager, who asked not be named so as not to jeopardize future employment opportunities, said the policy “makes their lives easier and they don't get any flak”.
He recounted hearing an INGO representative using the word “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya in a meeting with officials.
“Some of us winced but no one pulled him up on it,” he said.
MSF is not using the word Rohingya in its public statements as it seeks to negotiate its return to Rakhine state. MSF’s Myanmar office declined to comment.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), meanwhile, refers only to “the Muslim community”.
ICRC’s spokesman in Yangon, Michael O’Brien, defended the policy because it allows the organization to provide much-needed aid to people in Rakhine state.
“There’s a lot of poisonous language around this issue, and frankly it doesn't contribute to any of the major issues facing the communities in the region,” O’Brien told ucanews.com.
“It’s secondary to what’s really important. I think that is the way most people would see it.”
David Mathieson, senior researcher on Myanmar for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said it was understandable for aid groups and UN agencies to exercise “prudent flexibility” on the ground if the safety of their staff was put at risk by using the word Rohingya.
“But what protects aid workers at a ground level is senior leadership who make clear their commitment to humanitarian principles and use the term, not as confrontational but out of respect, and stand their ground against fanatics and bullies,” Mathieson said by email.
“Being dehumanized by the government and Rakhine extremists is bad enough without international diplomats and aid workers timidly endorsing this strategy, jettisoning a principle for the Rohingya that they arrogantly protect for themselves: the right to be called what you see yourself as.”
Rohingya families load their belongings on to a truck as they prepare to return back to a temporary camp, in the village of Thetkaepyin on the outskirts of Sittwe, in May 2013 (AFP Photo/Soe Than Win)
A Unified Political Identity
The origins of the word Rohingya are highly contested. As a report last month by the International Crisis Group (ICG) explained, the word has in the past been used by the Myanmar government, but was not included in a list referred to in Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, which sets out the “national races” that one must belong to in order to be entitled to citizenship by birth.
Many Muslims who may not have used the term in the past are drawn to identifying as Rohingya in the face of increasing oppression, the report said.
In addition to the sporadic violence that has hit Muslim communities in Rakhine state in the past two years, their access to healthcare and education have been curtailed, their movements have been restricted, they are at risk of arbitrary detention, and they face numerous other discriminatory government policies including limits on how many children they are allowed to have.
“Now, there is an overwhelming sense among Rakhine Muslim communities and their leaders that with the current pressures and threats they face, it is vital to have a strong and unified political identity. More and more Muslims in Rakhine state, with the exception of the Kaman [another Muslim group living in the state], are identifying as Rohingya,” the ICG report said.
“Rohingya leaders see defending their political identity as vital to gain Myanmar citizenship and ease discrimination and denial of rights. They see international use of the term as an important source of legitimacy and support for their rights.”
Yangon-based Rohingya activist Wai Wai Nu told ucanews.com that international actors should not legitimize the rejection of the Rohingya ethnic identity, which she sees as “an attempt to deny our existence”.
“Mainly, they are doing it because they don't want to give these people their rights — the full citizenship that we enjoyed in the past,” said Wai Wai Nu, director of the Women Peace Network - Arakan.
She said that in Rakhine state’s Myebon township — the first area where a citizenship verification process has been attempted — among 3,000 applications only about 1,000 were even considered under the government’s strict criteria, which requires the applicant to agree to be categorized as “Bengali”. Of those, only about 40 received full citizenship, with another 169 people qualifying for naturalized citizenship, a category that denotes limited rights, she said.
“They can reduce our status to foreigners to be able to put these people as second-class citizens forever,” she said.
‘Say Their Name’
The quasi-governmental US Commission on International Religious Freedom last week called for Obama to use the word Rohingya during his visit and to push for the Myanmar government to do more to improve the situation for the minority. And an online petition using the hashtag #justsaytheirname, set up by the US group United to End Genocide, has been signed by more than 7,000 people.
A White House readout suggests that Obama did use the term in a phone call to Myanmar president Thein Sein on October 31, but campaigners are insisting that he says it inside the country.
Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Thailand-based group that focuses on the crisis in Rakhine state, said Rohingya people were looking to Obama for recognition.
"President Obama used the R-word during his 2012 visit and the Rohingya people would be extremely disappointed if he avoids it this time,” Lewa said by email.
“More important, however, is that President Obama uses his influence to pressure the Myanmar Government into putting words into actions in Rakhine state to resolve the conflict and guarantee rights and freedoms for the Rohingyas as equal citizens.”
