Homeless and helpless: The Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state

Disowned by Burma, consigned to refugee camps and caught up in ethnic violence, they tell Andrew Buncombe why they will not give up the fight to win back their communities

What difference does a simple name make? For Mohammad Ali, a resident of this town’s last Muslim neighbourhood, a ghetto cut-off by barbed wire and military check-points, it matters to his very core. “Look here. It asks 'race' and then says 'Rohingya',” says the 68-year-old, touching his chest with one hand while with the other pointing to a photocopied identity card dating from 1974. “We have been here for a long time. My father, my grandfather, they were born here. We were Rohingya at the time.”

For Shwe Maung, a member of a local political party with links to the Buddhist clergy and which wants to force most Muslims from the state, the matter of a name is equally important. These people are not Rohingya, he angrily insists, but Bengalis. “They are trying to deceive the world,” he adds. “They want the world to think they are natives of Rakhine.”

Burma’s western Rakhine state has for months been gripped by ethnic violence that has left scores dead and driven up to 100,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them Rohingya Muslims, into squalid refugee camps. The Buddhist community claims they are at risk of being “swallowed up by outsiders” who they say migrated from neighbouring Bangladesh, while the Rohingya, who say they have lived here for centuries, claim they are the victims of nothing less than ethnic cleansing.

To glimpse the scale of what has happened while the world largely looked away, take the airport road towards the village of Bumay. From there, a rutted track leads to a series of tented camps in which thousands of Muslims are living, having been driven from their communities.

The largest is Borouda, home to 15,000 people. Many here fled here after their properties in Sittwe were attacked in June. Moniyan Khata, a 38-year-old woman wearing a floral print dress, said their neighbourhood had been surrounded by Buddhists and police. “We had to hide in the lake,” she said, sitting outside her tent.

And why were they attacked? “We don’t know,” she replied. “They want our land, they want our properties. They want us to leave, to leave the country.”

At another camp, Te Chaung, were those who fled more recent violence, both Rohingya and Kaman Muslims who had escaped by sea from Kyauktaw, 50 miles away. Human Rights Watch released satellite images that revealed Muslim neighbourhoods there had been destroyed on the night of October 22. Some who escaped spent six days at sea in fishing boats containing 100 people.

“I came in one boat, my husband in another and our children were in a different one. We did not know where everybody was,” said Chu Kiri, 35, hugging her four children. “At the time I did not know if my husband and children were dead or alive. It was only when we reached here we met up.”

The trigger for the clashes this summer was the rape of a Buddhist woman by Muslim men. But tension has existed between the communities for decades and there have been regular outbreaks of violence. While some people say they had friends from the other community, there was never intermarriage.

The Buddhists of Rakhine, Burma’s second poorest state, have always felt neglected by the central authorities. They say their history as a proud independent kingdom, known as Arakan and which spread northwards into what is now India, has been overlooked. With no small irony, given their refusal to to use the word Rohingya, many insist their state should still be referred to as Arakan.

Such bitterness has been seized on by the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), a hardline group established to contest elections in 2010 and which holds 18 seats in the state assembly and 15 in the national parliament. While it says it supports democracy, the RNDP also backs a 1982 law passed by the junta which says the Rohingya are not citizens, and says they should leave.

In their office on Sittwe’s main street, members of the party’s central committee claimed the Rohingya were trying to increase their population. Asked where the Rohingya should go, one member, Shwe Maung, swept his palms backwards, as if he were swishing away a fly. Asked if the party was racist, one member insisted: “No, it’s not. We are not anti-Muslim.”

While the RNDP says it is secular, it has links to local the Buddhist clergy which has been vocal in its condemnation of the Rohingya. Abbot Ariyawantha of the Sittwe’s Shwe Zadi monastery said he had advised the RNDP leadership on various issues.

He repeated allegations that the Muslims were deliberately increasing their numbers and that there was a “conspiracy to invade Arakan cities”. The monk denied claims from Rohingya victims that monks had taken part in attacks or that the clergy had been involved in organising attacks.

Asked about the cause of the violence, he said: “People are angry because of the rape and because they are trying to take our land. It’s our reaction to that behaviour.” Asked what should happen to the Rohingya, he said: “We have to identify the illegal immigrants and keep them in refugee camps. If at some time, a third country wants to accept them we would be happy.”

But the Rohingya insist they have lived in the region for centuries and say  they want to stay. In Sittwe’s Aung Mingalar quarter, Aye Maung, an English teacher, explained how the 7,000 residents were unable to leave and had lived under a cloud of anxiety since the summer. A curfew is in place.

Walking through its dirty, broken streets, he pointed to where Muslim homes and schools had been set alight or bulldozed during the summer violence. On one side were the homes of a handful of Hindu families and Bollywood music could be heard playing. To ensure they were not mistaken for Muslims, the Hindus were flying Buddhist flags.

In a dark shack that served Chinese tea, Mr Maung organised a showing of hands for those who wanted independence, as opposed to Burmese citizenship. Without exception, the customers voted for the latter. “We want to be citizens of Myanmar. We don’t want to leave Rakhine,” said Mr Maung.

The conflict in Rakhine is complex and historic. Several thousand Buddhists are also in refugee camps after their homes were set on fire by Muslims. A number have been killed. At Set Yone Su camp, the conditions appeared better than in the Muslim camps. The refugees generally referred to the Rohingya as Bengalis, or used a derogatory term for blacks. “We have been here for two months. Before we were in a monastery,” said Bakyaw, a rickshaw driver.

Aid organisations expect to be in for the long haul. Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the World Food Programme, said they were now providing emergency food supplies to 110,000 people. “We have asked for funding to see us through to the middle of next year,” he said.

Christophe Reltien, Burma head of the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, said the presence of Muslims in the region was a “long story”. But he said the Muslim population was growing faster than the non-Muslim population. He said the attacks against Muslims were not spontaneous. “We know in some areas it was well organised and not simply people going after a few houses,” he said. “Messages were sent to the [Muslim] community that they should move.”

The government of Thein Sein has established a committee to investigate the violence and suggest solutions. The committee includes members of different religions, but no Rohingya. Among its members are democracy activists who have spoken out against the Rohingya.

Indeed, for many observers the most disappointing role has been that played by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who – unlike Barack Obama who spoke out in defence of the Rohingya - has refused to denounce the attacks and simply said violence was committed by both sides. At her National League for Democracy’s Rangoon office, her spokesman, Nyan Win, said the Rohingya’s future should be decided by the 1982 citizenship law. When it was suggested the Rohingya had lived in Burma for centuries, he said: “That is not true. They were not here before 1824.”

In Aung Mingalar, the Rohingya believe Ms Suu Kyi has forgotten them. “She is keeping silent,” said Mr Maung, the teacher. “Perhaps she wants more votes from Buddhists.”