The Morning Star online.co.uk reported as on June 12: Residents
fled burning homes as security forces in western Myanmar struggled to
contain ethnic and religious violence. The conflict pitting ethnic
Rakhine Buddhists against Rohingya Muslims had left many civilians dead
and hundreds of homes burned since it began in Rakhine state on June 8.
Reuters reported more details: On the evening of May 28, a group of
three Muslims including two Rohingyas, allegedly robbed, raped and
murdered an ethnic Rakhine woman near the Kyaut Ne Maw village. The
police arrested three suspects and sent them to Yanbyal township jail.
On June 4, a mob attacked a bus in Taungup and ten Muslims were killed
in the reprisal attack, prompting protests by Burmese Muslims in the
commercial capital, Yangon. The government responded by appointing a
minister and a senior police chief to head an investigation committee to
find out “cause and instigation of the incident.”

On June 8, a large mob of Rohingya came out from Mosques after
Jumah and burned down several houses in Bohmu Village, Maungdaw
Township. 

In the evening, President Office reported that the security forces
were protecting 14 burnt villages in Maungdaw township. The situation
continued to deteriorate. The security forces were authorised to use
deadly force. Foreign media stated that the securities “opened fire” on
the rioters. Authorities declared that the situation in Maungdaw
Township had been stabilized. But three villages of southern Maungdaw
were torched in early midnight. The government imposed curfew in
Maungdaw. Armed forces took positions in Maungdaw. Five people were
confirmed killed as of June 8.

June 9, five army battalions arrived to reinforce the existing
security forces. Government set up refugee camps for the homeless.

But rioters marched to Sittwe and burned down three houses in Mingan quarter. 

At least 7 people were killed, one hostel, 17 shops and over 494 houses had been destroyed as of June 9.

On June 10 Myanmar President Thein Sein has declared a state of
emergency and deployed troops to restore stability, warning that the
unrest could threaten the fragile nation’s recent democratic reforms.

But spurts of violence continued. The same day on June 10,
according to the Rohingya, “a 12-year-old girl who went for routine
shopping was shot to death by police.” Rohingya houses in Bohmu village
were also set on fire by a Rakhine mob. Over five thousand people were
residing at refugee camps by June 10.

On June 11, The United Nations began to relocate all non-essential staff and their families from conflict zone. 

On June 12, mobs wielding sticks and stones continued to appear and
confront one another in the regional capital. More buildings were set
ablaze as many residents throughout Rakhine were said to be torching
houses in Sittwe.

An unnamed government official put the death toll at 25 to date, others put the figure around 30.

While homeless Rakhines are being put in relief camps, distraught
Rohingyas are fleeing the country. UNHCR spokesperson in a press
briefing in Geneva said, “UNHCR is advocating with the Bangladeshi
authorities to allow safe haven on its territory for those who need
immediate safety and medical assistance.

“Previously people have been allowed in to Bangladesh for medical
treatment. We hope that such good practices will be maintained.

“UNHCR is very concerned about media reports quoting a statement of
the Bangladeshi Border Guard force that it had turned away a number of
boats carrying people from Myanmar following the rapid escalation of
violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State.”

In Dhaka, UNHCR country representative has urged the Bangladesh
government to allow Rohingyas to enter Bangladesh. But Bangladesh has
put its foot down on allowing more refugees. The state minister for Home
Affairs of Bangladesh has said, Rohingyas who entered the country
following sectarian violence are receiving treatment at hospitals of
Chittagong and Cox’ Bazar.  But foreign minister Dipu Moni said: “The
recent Rohingya influx does not help our interests. We’re in
consultation with Myanmar, to send back the Rohingya refugees to their
homeland. More than 28,000 such refugees are currently staying at two
camps in Bangladesh.” She also said, three to five lakh Rohingya illegal
entrants have been socially absorbed in Bangladeshi communities. They
are disturbing social balance, some creating law and order problems. “We
don’t want people to illegally cross over to Bangladesh.”

Warning that the violence is running “out of control”, New
York-based Human Rights Watch called for international observers to be
deployed in Rakhine to “put all sides on notice that they were being
closely watched.”

“The government needs to be protecting threatened communities, but
without any international presence there, there’s a real fear that won’t
happen.”

The sectarian unrest in the Rakhine State of Myanmar, on the other
hand, appears to be potentially disturbing to the new camaraderie
between the United States and the Thein Sein government of Myanmar. US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged immediate measures to end
deadly sectarian violence. She said “the United States continues to be
deeply concerned” about the situation, and called for “all parties to
exercise restraint.”

Indeed tackling the Rakhine State riots is a litmus test for
President Thein Sein, who made national reconciliation between the Bamar
majority and the country’s vast patchwork of ethnic groups a priority
of his presidency.

But technically for the Bamar people, the tensions near the border
with Bangladesh fall outside the scope of reconciliation efforts because
they involve Muslim Rohingya, whose members the government does not
recognize as citizens.

Myanmar’s government so far has not proposed a solution for the
800,000 Rohingya, who make up one of the largest groups of stateless
people in Asia.

The government’s refusal to recognize that the Rohingya are Burmese
citizens is among reasons why Myanmar was blacklisted by the U.S. State
Department as a “country of particular concern” in its annual surveys
on international religious freedom.

According to U.S. experts, Rakhine has always been a tinderbox of
hatred between the two communities with the potential to explode. The
Buddhist-majority government still regard the Rohingya as illegal
immigrants and treat them as stateless.

Asia policy experts say: “What has happened recently is just more
of a symptom of a long history of really horrible discriminatory
treatment of the Rohingya.” 

Myanmar authorities, particularly the military junta which ruled
the country repressively for half a century until it was replaced by the
elected civilian (ex-military) government in March last year, “have
handled this situation badly for decades, encouraging people to treat
Rohingya individuals as stateless. 

The religious dimension of the Rohingya problem is particularly
troubling: “The military junta over the past 20 years has really
emphasized Buddhism as the religion of the ‘true’ Burmese people, and
they have been cited repeatedly for religious persecution by the United
States.” 

Aside from being stateless, the Rohingya are subject to a rule,
embedded in marriage licenses, that they are only permitted to have two
children, rights groups say. They lack access to health care, food, and
education and are subject to forced labour and travel restrictions.

They are widely regarded as “Bengalis”—a term for people of Bangladeshi nationality.

The current government of President Thein Sein, which has been
lauded for implementing political and economic reforms over the last
year, is continuing the junta’s discriminatory policies towards the
Rohingya.

Nurul Islam, president of the London-based Arakan Rohingya National
Organization, complained after the new government was installed in
March: “There is no change of attitude of the new civilian government of
U Thein Sein towards Rohingya people; there is no sign of change in the
human rights situation of Rohingya people. Persecution against them is
actually greater than before.” 

Ethnically, Rohingyas are only partly akin to Bangladeshis, but
indeed they are a distinct ethnic group by themselves like the Rakhines,
who are akin to Bamar, but averse to Bamar conduct as conquerors who
stole the Mahmuni Buddha statue of the Rakhines. Based on Rakhine oral
histories and inscriptions in some Buddhist temples, the history of the
Rakhine region dates back nearly five thousand years.

Their territory of included in varying points of time, the regions
of Ava, the Irrawaddy Delta, the port town of Thanlyin (Syriam) and
parts of Bangladesh.

The golden age of Rakhines was during the kingdom of Mrauk U,
founded in 1430. Mrauk U served as a commercially important port and
base of power in the Bay of Bengal region and involved in extensive
maritime trade with Arabia and Europe. The Bangladesh port of Chittagong
and the coastal belt upto Sandwip was also ruled by Rakhines in those
days. Rakhine power declined from the seventeenth century onwards after
the loss of Chittagong to the Mughal Empire in 1666. 

Mrauk U. Mrauk U was conquered by the Konbaung dynasty of the
Bamar, the dominant ethnic group of Myanmar. In 1784-85, after which
Rakhine became part of the Bamar kingdom of Burma. In 1824, the first
Anglo-Burmese war erupted and in 1826, Rakhine (alongside Tanintharyi)
was ceded to the British as repatriation by the Bamar to the British.
Rakhine thus became part of the province of Burma of British India. In
1948, Burma was given independence and Rakhine became part of the new
republic.

The famed Mahamuni Buddha image was cast in Dhanyawady in around 554 B.C.E., when the Buddha visited the kingdom. 

The Rohingyas are, on the other hand, a mixed lot of Muslims communities of Arab, Afghan and Bangladesh descent. 

Some Rohingya historians like Khalilur Rahman contended that the
term Rohingya is derived from Arabic word ‘Raham’ meaning sympathy. They
trace the term back to the ship wreck in 8th century AD, near Ramree
Island, Arab traders ordered to be executed by Arakanese king shouted
‘Raham’. 

But although Muslim settlements have existed in Arakan since the
arrival of Arabs there in the 8th century AD, there is no clear
connection between these early Arabs and the Rohingya, especially since
the Rohingya are in many ways more Bengali. 

Rohingyas also have their own language, linguistically similar to
the Chittagonian language spoken in the southernmost part of Bangladesh
bordering Burma. Rohingya scholars have successfully written the
Rohingya language in different scripts such as Arabic, Hanafi, Urdu,
Roman and Burmese, where Hanifi is a newly developed alphabet derived
from Arabic with the addition of four characters from Latin and Burmese.

The week-long sectarian violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state
has thrown the spotlight on the Rohingya, one of the most oppressed
groups in the country, and compels the government to address a burning
issue that has been swept under the carpet for decades.

As violence rages in Rakhine state, will the Burmese government
confront head-on the long-running issue of a stateless Muslim group?