A Sense of Belonging … ?

In Australia, we are currently engaged a public “debate” over to what extent same gender attracted people are going to be allowed to belong to Australian mainstream society – i.e., will lesbian, gay and, in the case of same gender attracted relationships, bisexual Australians be allowed to partake of the socio-legal institution of formally recognised marriage?

It is an important and powerful issue – not an issue of religious rights vs. LGB(TIQ) rights, as there are religions which actively support Equal (access to) Marriage whose religious freedoms are currently being suppressed (and thus the granting of Equal Marriage would, at most, trade one set of religious freedoms for another), but an important issue from the point of view of belonging, and sending a signal to end the current oft-violent homophobia and transphobia that too many Australians evince.

Nearly 7,000 kilometres to our north, there is an another powerful and even more violent struggle over competing senses of belonging, a struggle centred on the Rohingya.

According to Wikipedia, the Rohingya have been in the area now known as Rakhine state since the 8^th Century – and they were, according to at least some sources, full citizens when Burma gained independence from the British Empire, an independence which included the internally agreed Panglong  Agreement, which explicitly made provisions for some minorities in Burma, but (in part because of the [administrative] divisions created by British Imperial rule) excluded the Karen, Karenni, Mon and Rakhine, and saw the Pa-O, Palaung and Wa subsumed into the Shan states (the failure of that agreement has led to what has been described as "the world's longest running civil war").

The Wikipedia article shows a complex history for the Rohingya. Tens of thousands fled from what was then called Arakan to what was then called Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1785 to escape the persecutions when the expansionist Burmese dynasty of that era invaded (i.e., a violent military exercise) the region. In the 1800s, as the British gradually conquered Burma in a series of wars, some Rohingya people were encouraged to move back to Arakan. Attitudes towards that return are significant, and draw to mind the debates in West Asia over Palestinian return and the rights of Jewish people to a portion of the land that so many were violently expelled from two millennia ago.

• How completely do a people need to be expelled from an area before they can be considered dispossessed? A “simple majority” (i.e., 50%+1)? 90%? 99.999%? Some Jewish people remained in Palestine after the destruction of the Roman Province of Judea; not all Rohingya fled Arakan; not all Palestinians left modern Israel when it was created. Or does this concept of “dispossession” relate more properly to the loss of political, social and economic power, no matter what the numbers are?
• How long do a dispossessed people have to be gone from an area before later inhabitants assume (or usurp) the rights to occupation of the original inhabitants?
• What about the population growth of a people seeking to return? What rights do the descendants of a displaced people have? This issue is probably most clearly perceived by Westerners in the context of the Palestinians, but the same issue also exists in terms of the Rohingya.

According to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his [sic] nationality nor denied the right to change his [sic] nationality.

(I had been going to refer to Article 12, which refers to protection of family and home, but other Articles also apply, and the issue of nationality is probably the summit of these various aspects.)

So ... who has deprived the Rohingya of their nationality?

Well, Burma – Buddhist (allegedly!) Burma.

No matter what the arguments are about the history of where the Rohingya were, and when, at the time of establishment of the modern nation of Burma (now generally referred to as Myanmar, although I choose not to do so, as I don’t consider the regime has yet earned that), the Rohingya were clearly established and resident in what is now called the Rakhine state of that nation. Furthermore the Rohingya:

(a) had been there for at least a century, and possibly more than a millennia, and

(b) had not - as far as I know - violently invaded that area, unlike the antecedent Burmese Empire.

By right of peaceful, well-established occupation and Article 15, I therefore consider that there is a strong argument that the Rohingya have the right to be considered a part of the nation they were in at the time of its establishment: to argue otherwise is as nonsensical as the Terra Nullius rubbish that plagued Australia for a couple of centuries.

So what is behind the violence that has been shown by Burmese towards the Rohingya since 1785?

Well, as a first point, Burma’s predominantly Buddhist religion has clearly not been a pacifist influence. As a former Buddhist, it pains me, but Buddhism is not always peaceful – as has been shown by events in Sri Lanka in the last (e.g., see here) and current (e.g., see here) century (see also here, here, here, here, here, and here; the corruption shown by Buddhist figures in Thailand hasn’t helped either – I also know from personal experience that not all Thai Buddhists are bad: a colleague who was a Buddhist from Thailand had a strong, beneficial influence over my practice of that religion in the 1980s; see also here) – nor always progressive. It has often been a strongly nationalist – for instance, in Tibet (probably the best known in the West and most supportable instance), Viêt Nám, and Burma. In the case of Burma, these influences have included (I understand) prior to independence, and also prior to the military coup which violently ended the thoroughly discredited and inept socialist regime and replace it with a repressive military dictatorship, and prior to the partial restoration of democracy.

Thus, by association if nothing else, Buddhism does not come out of the violence being shown by Burma towards a wide range of people with anything like a benevolent mien.

It is easy to portray the Burmese violence against the Rohingya as part of the current global trend towards Islamophobia, but, as with the current misrepresentation of Australia’s “debate” over Equal Marriage, that is a simplification: not all Rohingya are Muslim (a significant number are Hindu), and the violence clearly predates (all the way back to 1785, when violence force a similar, albeit smaller, exodus across the Naf River - and there have been other, subsequent events) this current century’s xenophobic reaction to violent extremism.

Furthermore, although the violent origins of the current exodus lie in what some are describing as genocide by Burma, some of the official reactions in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh are also far from welcoming.

In the case of Bangladesh, a poor and struggling nation still, in many ways, the imposition of so many additional mouths to feed is obviously going to cause strain: no matter how welcoming some Bangladeshis are, or wish to be, the arrival of half a million terrified, hungry, impoverished, often injured people, is going to give rise to some pause. (I just hope none of the reaction shares my nation’s latest reincarnation of its White Australia border policies [which I dispute have anything to do with saving lives at sea: if that was the issue, realistic and effective management of asylum seekers at locations prior to passage across the sea would have been implemented, as happened with Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s].)

Burma, however, has no such excuse.

Stripped of religious excuses, Burma’s now genocidal attitude towards the Rohingya, as with the homophobia being dressed up as “religious discrimination” in Australia, can only be described as, in my view, hate.

That takes the behaviour and situation out of the realm of political rationality and debate (the same applies for parts of Australia's "no" campaign, perhaps), and into other realms – as with the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and the ethnic cleaning during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, both of which ended under military impetus, external, in the case of the latter.

I don’t consider it likely that anyone will get involved militarily in this situation: the Burmese military has had over half a century to cement its position, none of its neighbours are free of internal problems and motivated towards intervention (unlike Viêt Nám with the Pol Pot regime), and no imperative Western interests (such as oil) are involved.

That leaves action to a coalition of the United Nations and the small-but-willing-to-achieve-change, as happened against South Africa’s apartheid regime, and, to some extent, Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians.

Ideally, a public education campaign would, perhaps over a couple of generations, change the attitudes of hate in these situations. Unfortunately, while that is the ideal long term cure, it does nothing for the short term: for that, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comment

“It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless”

is perhaps more applicable.

The principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is clearly being breached, but … is anyone likely to take action on that, other than condemnation in the UN (and calls for aid to assist Bangladesh with Burma’s displaced Rohingya)?

International law is a fairly complex matter: nations don’t necessarily have to have signed up to a treaty or law or to be considered bound by it. If enough nations agree that a matter is an established (“customary”) part of international law, then everyone will be considered bound to that standard – even more strongly, in the category of jus cogens law, which includes the prohibition of slavery, piracy, torture, genocide, war of aggression, and crimes against humanity.

That suggests that there may be grounds for a case to be brought against Burma in the International Court of Justice (which Burma is a party to), but that will require significant funds, legal staff, etc.

On the other hand, simply looking at the list of treaties that Burma has signed up to suggests – to this non-lawyer – quite a few potential grounds for action:

• the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property (including the customs of a people, their practices, places, objects, artistic endeavours and values, with parties undertaking to respect such including within their own territory, and to refrain from any act of hostility directed against such property) in the Event of Armed Conflict, although this is probably weakened by the conflict being internal;
• the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) (a large number of fleeing refugees have drowned);
• the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, which is stretching a point quite considerably, but some of the refugees are now exposed to such risks as a result of having to flee Burma;
• the Convention on the Rights of the Child (children’s rights are being infringed by them being forced to be refugees); and
• the Genocide Convention, which Burma ratified in 1949.

It would also be of interest to know whether any Burmese officials have breached the United Nations Convention against Corruption – including by deception or dishonesty.

These events perhaps also call into question Burma’s membership of the International Organisation for Migration.

When all is said and done legally, though, there still remains the issue of what has caused such hatred in the hearts of so many Burmese, and how to heal that.

Perhaps what is more important than understanding the causes and nuances of these various situations and options to action is being committed to a higher principle. As the UK’s former Ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, wrote:

The real dividing line is not between Christianity and Islam, Sunni and Shia, East and West. It is between people who believe in coexistence, and those who don’t.

Maybe this is a situation where everyone, including Burmese of all religions, Bangladeshis, and Rohingya, a number of whom have chosen a violent response to the pervasive violence being visited upon them, needs to commit to the nobler – or at least pragmatic - purpose of coexistence, and allow the Rohingya to have the nationality that is their due, or at least a safe and worthy home, free from persecution, as all people are allowed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If not, Burma is going to find itself (again - see also here) a pariah state, as South Africa did during the apartheid regime - for similar reasons, and by similar mechanisms. 

And in the interest of human rights, I have already started writing to my Members of Parliament (I am about to reply to the reply I have received), and respectfully urge you, Dear Reader, to consider doing likewise.  It is at least as important as voting "Yes" ...

(Note: the current ban on Equal Marriage in Australia is an example of failure to co-exist: removal of that ban would constitute acceding to co-existence.)