Myanmar Government Research Articles

Exploring the Root Causes of the Persecution Policy Against Rohingya People: A Study based on Three Constitutions of Burma/Myanmar

This article presents and analyzes the complex case of the Rohingya, a large group that allegedly migrated from the Bengal area and has been deprived of citizenship through the sociopolitical measures of the Myanmar government, thereby making them de facto stateless people in Myanmar. Through archival research investigating extensive historical records in Myanmar with a particular focus on the three constitutions of the country, this study attempted to identify and analyse the sociopolitical reasons and underlying sociocultural rationale for why Rohingya migrants are deprived of citizenship in Myanmar, treated as illegal immigrants, and subjected to criminal prosecution and oppression under Myanmar’s military rule. While violence against the Rohingya people should be condemned, the Buddhist nationalism of the majority of Myanmar citizens and the concern about territorial sovereignty of the Myanmar government must be well understood before effective tutelary measures can be contemplated for the Rohingya people.

INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT'S STRATEGY IN HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY TO MYANMAR IN THE ROHINGYA CONFLICT IN 2017

The Rohingya Muslim ethnicity has long experienced structural violence and direct violence. Structural violence in the form of restrictions on access to needs is felt by the Rohingya Muslims in the economic, political, social, and cultural sectors. Meanwhile, direct violence took the form of ethnic cleansing, which claimed thousands of lives, and hundreds of thousands of people evacuated themselves to other countries. However, the Myanmar government has closed all access to humanitarian aid by closing itself off from the international community. The Indonesian people took several actions that condemned what had happened to the Rohingya Muslim ethnic. Indonesia uses the path of Humanitarian Diplomacy in this conflict. Indonesia is the first and only country that Myanmar has accepted to have a dialogue with its official officials. The researcher discusses the Indonesian government's strategy in humanitarian diplomacy with Myanmar. The researcher found that the foreign policy of Humanitarian Diplomacy carried out by Indonesia was influenced by 4 Bureaucratic Influencers, namely the President of the Republic of Indonesia, the House of Representatives, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia. In this study, the author uses descriptive qualitative research methods based on literature research using secondary data related to the issues raised in this paper.

The Dangers of The Crime of Genocide: International Law Review

The crime of genocide in criminal law international law is an extraordinary crime and has become an prohibited which was later enshrined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, the statute International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), statute International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the 1998 Rome Statute. This study aims to determine the crime of genocide that experienced when viewed in international law and dispute resolution methods genocide under international law. This research using normative doctrinal or juridical legal research. Research result states that the main cause of the crime of genocide is motivated by the struggle for the rights of ethnic minorities and the existence of fanatical and racial religions that are shown in discrimination cultural. Crimes committed by the Myanmar government by Ethnics Rohingya Muslims constitute an international crime of genocide, because has fulfilled several main elements, namely mass murder, discrimination against minority religions, is carried out systematically, and aims to eliminating certain ethnic groups and groups.

Geographies of Transnational Domesticity: Migration Risks, Intersectional Disadvantage, and Mitigation Strategies by Foreign Domestic Workers from Myanmar

Low-paid domestic work abroad is particularly devalued in Myanmar’s traditional culture but an increasing number of women from Myanmar are taking up such work. Negative perceptions of domestic worker migration in Myanmar—rationalizing as well as reinforced by a government ban on women’s migration as domestic labor (from 2014–2019)—entrenches gender inequalities in the country and individualizes the risks that women encounter during migration. The stigma attached to paid domestic work is extended to a transnational context during migration to Singapore. This article contributes geographical perspectives to the literature on migration risk by highlighting the scalar and transnational dimensions of risk, as well as the entanglement of the public and private spheres. The article also proposes the concept of “multiple intersectional domains” to capture how intersectional identities crosscut with particular social locations to produce cumulative disadvantage during migration. The Myanmar government’s lack of recognition and protection for migrant domestic workers, alongside the “hidden” geographies of domestic work in Singapore, result in structural conditions that entrench risks across multiple intersectional domains thereby enacting slow violence on such migrants. The article draws on qualitative multisited field work conducted in Myanmar and Singapore between 2018 and 2019.

Competing Stories

Abstract The recent discussions on the 2021 Myanmar’s coup have overshadowed the ‘old’ issues, and the Rohingya crisis in particular. In this article, we draw the interest back to one of the most challenging crises of all. We discuss how the main actors shape the image of the Rohingya crisis narratively. How is the conflict narrated? Do competing narratives share anything in common? We argue that all actors produce different and to some extent mutually exclusive images of the conflict. We also find that there are no divergences within the actors’ narratives of the conflict, which suggests that they are more engaged in advocating their political aims than finding a bridging point for further negotiations on the conflict. Our argument is substantiated by an analysis of the narratives articulated by five actors: the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Myanmar government, Bangladesh, and the Rohingya themselves.

Consistency of reports of violence from northern Rakhine state in August 2017

BackgroundIn August 2017, Myanmar’s Armed Forces, the Tatmadaw, launched an orchestrated attack on hundreds of Rohingya-majority villages in northern Rakhine state. This study seeks to validate the consistency of previous reports of violence against the Rohingya people in the region carried out by the Tatmadaw, Border Guard Police, and Rakhine villagers in the late summer and early fall of 2017.MethodsInternal validation data is from a three-armed study. Data analyzed in the external triangulation was sourced through a literature review of known, publicly available surveys and interviews. Both sets of data documented instances of violence against the Rohingya people in northern Rakhine state during the late summer and early fall of 2017. Consistency was evaluated across five indicators of violence: arson, presence of mass graves, reports of sexual violence and human injuries, as well as human fatalities, across 611 locales in northern Rakhine state. Further analysis was conducted to measure consistency of reports by locale and across locales by indicator.ResultsOverall, an internal validation of 94 hamlets found that 98% of these locales were consistent across at least four of the five indicators (80% + consistency). Arson and reports of human injuries were the most consistent indicators across locales (100% and 99% consistency, respectively) and sexual violence was the least consistent indicator, with 84% of participating locales exhibiting consistent reports of sexual violence between the qualitative and quantitative data. Similarly, an external validation of 57 locations found that 50 of the 57 locations (88%) were consistent across indicators. Arson was the most consistent across sources (96%), whereas source agreement across locations was the least consistent for reports of sexual violence (58%).ConclusionThe government of Myanmar has denied involvement in the 2017 attacks on Rohingya communities in northern Rakhine state and purports that reports of the violence and destruction are overstated. However, consistent reporting from multiple sources on the same locales clearly underscores the veracity of the evidence documented, both by investigative groups and as recounted by Rohingya survivors of violence. It is our hope that this cataloging and comparison of available data, along with this study’s assessment of its consistency, will aid ongoing accountability efforts.

Territorializing spatial data: Controlling land through One Map projects in Indonesia and Myanmar

Once confined to paper, national cartographic projects increasingly play out through spatial data infrastructures such as software programs and smartphones. Across the Global South, foreign donor-funded digital platforms emphasize transparency, accountability and data sharing while echoing colonial projects that consolidated state-based territorial knowledge. This article brings political geography scholarship on state and counter-mapping together with new work on the political ecology of data to highlight a contemporary dimension of territorialization, one in which state actors seek to consolidate and authorize national geospatial information onto digital platforms. We call attention to the role of data infrastructures in contemporary resource control, arguing that territorializing data both extends state territorialization onto digital platforms and, paradoxically, provides new avenues for non-state actors to claim land. Drawing on interviews, document review, and long-term fieldwork, we compare the origins, institutionalization and realization of Indonesia and Myanmar's ‘One Map’ projects. Both projects aimed to create a government-managed online spatial data platform, building on national mapping and management traditions while responding to new international incentives, such as climate change mitigation in Indonesia and good democratic governance in Myanmar. While both projects encountered technical difficulties and evolved during implementation, different national histories and political trajectories resulted in the embrace and expansion of the program in Indonesia but reluctant participation and eventual crisis in Myanmar. Together, these cases show how spatial data infrastructures can both extend state control over space and offer opportunities for contesting or reimagining land and nation, even as such infrastructures remain embedded in local power relations.

Geopolitics of Rohingya Refugee Crisis and Regional Security

Millions of Rohingya were forced to flee their home and became effectively stateless due to countless violations and vulnerabilities in Myanmar. Their future has become jeopardized with a profusion of uncertainties; however, like other displaced people, Rohingya also got media attention when disaster and conflicts forced them to flee. This study aims to explore and classify the determinant factors that push the Myanmar government to force the Rohingya to flee. It also explores the indicators that moulded the South and Southeast Asian geopolitics. The research intends to categorize the conditions that triggered the Rohingya crisis, while the regional geopolitics capture Rohingya as a proxy to intensify the regional proximity. The study found that Rohingya seek opportunities for rights while financial and institutional inability bewildering to respond to their needs and increase the proximity of evasive commitments for the next move by the national and regional government. It is also evident that the plight of these people is precarious and vulnerable, where the provision of legal protection is rare. The great powers of this area intentionally avoid the issue and indirectly influence the countries to increase the regional security tension by supporting armament. This issue dramatically influences the domestic and regional politics of South and Southeast Asian countries and redefines their mutual relationships with the great powers. The study provides a glimpse of the polarization and politicization of the Rohingya minority in the regional security and geopolitical context.

‘Medicine in Name Only’: Mistrust and COVID-19 Among the Crowded Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

This article is an anthropological examination of the health-seeking behaviours of Rohingya refugees living in crowded camps in Bangladesh, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. One international organisation providing medical care in the Kutupalong camp has found non-cooperation among the residents regarding the health facilities on offer to them. This ethnography highlights the Rohingya refugees’ active ‘mistrust’ (Carey 2017) of these medical services. We argue that these prevalent forms of mistrust provide a lens through which their individual life trajectories and politics can be understood in the context of the history of their systemic oppression by the Myanmar government. We reflect on the precarity and vulnerability of the Rohingya refugees, within which they identify mistrust as a source of resistance and protection. The mistrust of the Rohingya communities also highlights their attempts to communicate with a global public (Canetti 1960) and exhibits the ‘crowd politics’ (Chowdhury 2019) within a continued statelessness which is engendered by the Bangladeshi and Myanmar governments. This article makes an original contribution to the discussion of trust, mistrust, and rumour in society, identifying ‘the crowd’ as a site of resistance, and providing an account of the distinctive experience of the Rohingyas as refugees, and their health-seeking behaviour in the camp.

The Role of Indonesian Diplomacy in Managing the Conflict between The Myanmar Government and The Rohingya Muslim Ethnic

The Rohingya population after Myanmar's independence has experienced a continuous decline this is due to several actions ranging from deportation to killings, until now only a few Rohingya Muslims remain in Rakhine. Basically, the conflict between the Rohingya and Rakhine is more about race than religion. The United Nations (UN) said that the Rohingya are the most oppressed ethnic group in the world. The purposes of this research are beside to analyze the role of Indonesian diplomacy in overcoming the conflict between the Rohingya Muslim Ethnic and the Myanmar Government, it also analyze the Indonesian government effort on Rohingnya case in the perspective International Law. The diplomatic strategy carried out by Indonesia in the issue of the Rohingya ethnic conflict with the Myanmar government, namely the submission of a humanitarian proposition and the proposed equation 4 + 1 for the Rohingya community in the future. Then, Indonesia also used the OIC as the largest international Islamic organization to pressure and urge Myanmar to immediately resolve the violence against the Rohingya. Lastly, diplomacy in the form of providing strategic assistance to the Rohingya ethnicity and participation of the Indonesian people in voicing the resolution of the conflict in Myanmar with the mass media.

The Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar

Abstract The Rohingyas, one of the most vulnerable refugee groups in the world, have suffered from continuous state sponsored terrorism by the Burmese government since Myanmar’s independence in 1948. Religion and ethnic differences are often contemplated as the major reason for the Rohingya crisis. However, this paper argues instead of only focusing upon ethno-religious dimension of the Rohingya conflict, the geo-strategic and resource centric explanation also need to be addressed. For the above-mentioned purpose, this research analyses how the Rohingya crisis is robustly linked with geo-strategic factors and politics of natural resources. In this context, the role and activities of the Government of Myanmar and military force in the Rakhine province are explained. In addition, this paper also examines the geo-economic interests of some foreign forces in Rakhine state. Based on qualitative analysis, data are collected from both primary and secondary sources such as books, journal articles, reports of government, etc. The research shows that the Rohingya’s persecution, displacement have a possible connection with the resources and geo-strategic factors that are present in the Rakhine state. This study further implies, the resources and geo-strategic factors also influence the Myanmar’s policies and actions and the engagement of military forces in the Rohingya crisis. Therefore, this new geo-strategic and resource centric explanation which are often overlooked can provide a better understanding of the Rohingya crisis.

Normative coherence through social entrepreneurship: Fostering women’s empowerment in Myanmar

SummaryMotivationWomen’s empowerment has been an integral part of the discussion on normative coherence for development, but its implementation is not very effective in Myanmar. Gender must be kept at the forefront of policy analysis in order to avoid unintended consequences for women.PurposeThe article argues that the Government of Myanmar lacks initiatives on women’s economic empowerment, but that social enterprises could prove to be a more appropriate way to implement international norms in gender equality.Methods and approachThis case study uses descriptive research to verify how social entrepreneurship can contribute to women's empowerment by increasing women’s participation in the labour market. The empirical part of this study is based on field research undertaken in February 2019.FindingsIn Myanmar, there is still a gap between normative policies and social practices. Women’s legal and actual equality cannot be realized by law and philosophy alone, but also depends on a shift in political, economic, and social actions to ensure that women can participate in the public sphere on an equal basis as men, and enjoy equal economic opportunities. The article explores the role that social enterprises are already playing as an example of how international development norms are implemented at the local level.Policy implicationsThe article highlights the appropriateness of social enterprises as catalysts of gender equality and as agents of normative gender coherence for development. Social enterprises take an inclusive and sustainable approach to addressing issues, making women’s livelihoods central.

Forced Migration of Rohingya Refugees from Myanmar to Neighboring Countries

In this current world, the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar are deemed to be one of the most inhumanly tortured minorities. The culture of racial persecution is indulged by the decades of a clash between the Myanmar Government and the Rohingyas regarding religious and ethnic variance. However, it is also argued that the Rohingya crisis is not confined to religion but comprises economic and political issues equally. Rohingyas have been deprived of their basic human rights and faced a security crisis. Mass killing, rape, and inhuman torture are notable in this regard. Methodical abuse of human rights of the Rohingya by the military junta of Myanmar has forced thousands of Rohingya to flee the country. Consequently, thousands of Rohingyas now reside as refugees, mostly in Bangladesh, while others escaped to Malaysia, Singapore, and the Middle East. The Government of Myanmar has denied the citizenship of Rohingyas and labeled them as foreigners. This paper highlights the measures adopted by the global community for preventing the mass killing of Rohingyas. This research also portrays the means and methods of the Myanmar Government to suppress the Rohingyas. Furthermore, this paper looks into all sorts of violations of human rights and humanitarian disasters suffered by the Rohingyas and the subsequent humanitarian aid received from the regional and international community.

Feminist peace or state co-optation? The Women, Peace and Security agenda in Myanmar

This article engages with emerging debates about feminist peace and uses this concept to assess the ability of the Women, Peace and Security agenda to achieve gender-just change. We advance a conception of feminist peace as political conditions that allow women affected by conflict to articulate their visions of change and influence the construction of post-war order. Applying this to a case study of Women, Peace and Security practice in Myanmar, we demonstrate that features of how international aid is organised, combined with the Myanmar government’s interest in excluding critical voices, limit the ability of Women, Peace and Security practices to contribute to feminist peace. This highlights the potential for illiberal post-war states to obstruct and co-opt the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and shows how the women most directly affected by armed conflict are often the least able to participate in, benefit from and inform Women, Peace and Security practices.

Treading the border of (il)legality: statelessness, “amphibian life,” and the Rohingya “boat people” of Asia

ABSTRACT In Myanmar, the state and the Buddhist-majority civil society have long been hostile to the people known as the Rohingya. The Muslim Rohingya have lived in Rakhine state for centuries, but the Myanmar government, labelling them “illegal Bengali migrants,” has rendered them stateless under the 1982 Citizenship Law. The recent “democratisation” of Myanmar facilitated neoliberal expansion in the resource-rich Rakhine and intensified discrimination and violence, and the Rohingyas have been forced to flee in large numbers. They leave Myanmar on fishing boats and trawlers and attempt to enter countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia, “illegally” aided by smugglers. The boat people travel from marginality to ever-prevailing precarity and liminality; en route through the seas and lands of their host countries, they experience further monstrosities perpetrated by state and non-state actors. The judiciary, state, and capital together produce categories of “legality and illegality” that constitute the “amphibian life” of the “boat people” and create for them an ambivalent identity of “refugee-hood” and/or “statelessness.” Here we present our ethnographic study of this violence-laced field of forced migration, situated at the cusp of South Asia and Southeast Asia. We critically extend Agamben’s theory of “state of exception” and “bare life” to elaborate upon the “spaces of exception” experienced by the “boat people” and conceptualise the notion of “amphibian life” by analysing their agentic capability, after and beyond “bare life.”

China's policy towards Myanmar: Yunnan’s commitment to Sino-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines and Border Economic Cooperation Zone

ABSTRACT This paper examines how China has conducted its diplomacy with Myanmar through the efforts of the Chinese central government and the local government of Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar. China has defined Myanmar as a country of strategic importance in the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and is deepening its economic cooperation with Myanmar. China’s most important project in Myanmar is the oil and gas pipelines from ports in Myanmar to Yunnan Province. The construction of the energy pipelines was drafted and proposed by Yunnan Province and was submitted to the State Council. Due to the strong support of the state-owned enterprise, the proposal was adopted as a national project within two years since its proposal. In addition, Yunnan continued to propose to the central government for the construction of a Border Economic Cooperation Zone. The government of Dehong State in Yunnan proposed the plan to the Yunnan local government. Then, Yunnan continuously proposed it to the State Council. Yunnan could not get the strong support of Chinese major state-owned enterprises and the Myanmar government. It took nearly two decades for the proposal to be approved as one of the national projects by Beijing. In China, local governments can be involved in foreign economic relations within their capacity and responsibility for local socio-economic development. In the context of Beijing’s emphasis on strengthening relations with Southeast Asian countries, there are fair chances that Chinese local government proposals will be directly incorporated into the central government’s strategy.

The Politics of Rohingya Ethnicity: Understanding the Debates on Rohingya in Myanmar

The Myanmar (Burmese) government has imposed denationalising policies on the Rohingya Muslim population. This paper argues that the Rohingya are an ethnic group of Burma who have been living in Burma since the eighth century AD. The article confirms an understanding of Rohingya ethnicity. This study is based on primary data from expert in-depth interview and available literature. The paper examines the government’s stand about ethnic cleansing and analyses the contested arguments of Rohingya existence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. The evidence points to the Rohingya being an ethnic group with an established culture, distinct language, traditions and history, settled in Arakan.

The Silencing and Ostracization of Rohingyas: A Study of Habiburahman’s Memoir First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks

A minority group refers to a racially, culturally, or ethnically distinct group that is secondary or subordinate to a dominant group. Nearly every state consists of various communities whose traditions, religion, language, and historical experiences differ from one another and through socio-political powerplay. People treat others based on what they perceive as essential characteristics of those individuals or groups, which are often based purely, on their position in the stratification hierarchy. Though in several states the ethnoculturally diverse communities co-exist in harmony, resulting in ‘Pluralism’, however, in others the minority groups are subjected to discrimination and violence. Establishing the cultural hegemony of the dominant group has been an effective tool in subjugating the minority communities. However, Repressive State Apparatuses are also employed by the state, in extreme conditions, which result in expulsion and genocide. One such instance of ethnic cleansing is the ostracisation of the Rohingya community. Rohingyas are a Muslim minority group in Myanmar, erstwhile Burma, which is predominantly, a Buddhist country. They have been the target of institutionalised discrimination. They were denied citizenship by the government and were rendered stateless. The discriminatory policies of the government of Myanmar have compelled a huge number of Rohingya Muslims to flee their homeland. Many took refuge in the neighbouring countries. The paper aims to examine the racial and ethnic discrimination of the Rohingya community and their systematic oppression and ostracisation which lead to the exodus of the Rohingyas, as documented in Habiburahman’s memoir First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks.

Parameters and prospects for the involvement of the European Union in resolving the Myanmar crisis

The Rohingya people's issue in Myanmar is one of the most pressing topics in the world today. Myanmar has historically had a problem with religion and interethnic strife. The Rohingya dispute, a Muslim ethnic minority living in Rakhine State's north, is the country's largest and longest-running conflict. The violence erupted primarily because of religious and socioeconomic divisions between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who make up most of the Rakhine State's population. This conflict goes back to World War II, and violent battles have occurred in Rakhine State on a regular basis since then, with the goal of driving the Rohingya out of Myanmar. At the end of August 2017, when the conflict reached a new level of escalation, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forced to flee neighboring states, fleeing violence directed against them. The international community, in particular the EU, criticized the Government of Myanmar for failing to take adequate actions and effective measures to resolve the conflict. However, the EU's actions in relation to the genocide in Myanmar have also come under criticism. In this regard, the author of this article will seek to uncover the involvement of the EU in the Rohingya people's situation in Myanmar, as well as the effectiveness of the EU's measures.

The International Criminal Court Jurisdiction Towards The Deportation Issues In Myanmar

<p><em>This research aims to comprehensively analyze the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction in adjudicating gross violations of human rights involving a non-party state of the 1998 Rome Statute and its application to the perpetrators of deportation against the Rohingya with Myanmar as the non-party state. The results showed that this jurisdiction can be implemented under three conditions, first, the crime is committed by nationals of a non-party state on the territory of a state party to the Statute. Second, the UN Security Council refers a situation to the International Criminal Court in its resolution. Third, through an ad hoc declaration that a non-party state of the Rome Statute accepts the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. Since the territorial jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court covers crimes that occur wholly or partly on the territory of a state party, it can be applied to the deportation against the Rohingya in Myanmar. This involved the fleeing of this ethnic group from attacks by the Government of Myanmar to Bangladesh, a state party to the 1998 Rome Statute</em></p>