I put a new piece up at Medium, just to be different, on Aung San Suu Kyi and the Rohingya in the aftermath of Myanmar’s recent elections. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won an overwhelming victory, giving it control of parliament despite the fact that a quarter of the seats in the legislature have been reserved for appointment by the country’s military. Myanmar’s chances to transition from military rule to real democracy finally look pretty good, but Myanmar will never really complete that transition if the government doesn’t act now to save the desperately at-risk Rohingya:
Meanwhile, however, the Rohingya suffer, and their suffering has reached critical levels. An investigation by the Yale University School of Law recently concluded that there is “strong evidence” of an orchestrated genocide being carried out against the Rohingya by Myanmar’s government and its Buddhist majority. Another recent report, by the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Queen Mary University of London, “found compelling evidence that the Rohingya face mass annihilation and are in the final stages of a genocidal process.” If nobody either inside or outside of Myanmar takes some action to protect them soon, regardless of how such action might affect the country’s progress toward democratic governance, the Rohingya may cease to exist altogether.
Suu Kyi has been unwilling to tackle the Rohingya crisis head-on, but now that she’s apparently going to be running the country — she’s constitutionally barred from serving as president, but that may change or NLD may put forth a candidate to be president who will agree to take direction from her — she simply doesn’t have the luxury of dodging it anymore.
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The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
This is a wonderful blog I must say! I’ve learnt a lot by reading it. Keep up the good work!
Do you know if there is some sort of relation between the genocide on Rohingyas, and the similar atrocities that has been committed against other ethnic minorities inside Burma over the years, like the Karen people for example?
Thank you! I know a lot less about the Karen than about the Rohingya, but I’ll take a crack at your question anyway. I don’t think you can say they’re totally unrelated, but I’m not sure that the relationship goes far beyond the fact that Burma is a multi-ethnic state and sometimes those ethnicities don’t relate well to one another.
What distinguishes the two cases, I think, is the role of religion. The Rohingya are entirely (or virtually entirely; I’m not sure anybody’s ever done a headcount) Muslim, and a considerable portion of the animosity they get from the Arakanese (Buddhists in Rakhine State) and from the government derives from Buddhist fears that the Rohingya are the vanguard of a Muslim wave that will one day turn Myanmar Muslim. The 969 Movement cites the history of Central and South Asia, which has in part been a story of Islam overtaking Buddhism, to play on these fears. The military junta that’s ruled Myanmar for the most part since the 1960s has played to Buddhist populism/nationalism to buoy its popular support, so they treat the Rohingya as unpersons and then look the other way when Buddhist mobs attack them.
Religion plays a role in the Karen atrocities as well, but less so. Most of the Karen practice Theravada Buddhism, some with a traditionalist tinge, like most Burmese citizens. But a sizable minority of Karen are Christian, which distinguishes them from most Burmese ethnic groups and particularly the majority Bamar. The issue with the Karen seems to me to be more political, in that the Karen have agitated for a while now for autonomy or even independence, which has drawn violent reprisals from the government.
The Rohingya did agitate for annexation by Bangladesh (then-East Pakistan) in the 1940s and have been vocal about wanting at least communal recognition and autonomy since then, so there’s certainly a political element there as well, don’t get me wrong.
The other big difference, it seems to me, is basically in terms of numbers. There are ~9 times more Karen in the world than Rohingya, so the brutality of the Arakanese and their partners in Myanmar’s government threatens the Rohingya more urgently than what the Bamar and the government have done/are doing to the Karen. More attention should be paid to what the Karen are experiencing, in my opinion, but the immediacy of the threat to the Rohingya is greater simply because they are in danger of being eradicated in the relatively near future. It would take a while for the government to weaken the Karen enough to put them in that precarious a situation.
Hey thanks a lot for authoring this blog! I’ve learned a lot reading it. Keep up the good work!
Do you know if there is some sort of relation between the Rohingyan genocide, and the similar atrocities that has been committed against other ethnic minorities inside Burma over the years, like the Karen people for example?