Burma Must End Systematic Abuses against Rohingya
By Rep. Ed Royce
Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Washington, DC
The future for Burma’s Rohingya Muslims is bleak and getting worse.
Leaked documents obtained by Fortify Rights, a nongovernmental organization, confirmed what many people had already suspected – that the central and local governments in Burma are sanctioning – in some cases even carrying out – systematic religion-based human rights abuses by targeting the Royingya Muslim people.
Tensions between Rohingya and Burmese run deep. The New York Times recently reported that at least 40 men, women, and children were targeted and killed in the village of Du Chee Yar Tan on January 13 of this year. In 2012, an even larger tragedy occurred when an estimated 300 people were killed when violence broke out between the Burmese and the Rohingya. While these incidents represent the most heinous of acts, the majority of Rohingya face daily abuse and discrimination, including restrictive marriage policies.
The new report on the state-sanctioned human rights abuses against the Rohingya illustrates the limited benefits of America’s recent engagement in Burma. While the Government of Burma has paid lip service to democratic reform, it has done little to improve the treatment of 1.3 million Rohingyas. Often times, the plight of Burma’s many ethnic and religious minorities are ignored by the United States in the name of broader strategic goals. Even as the Obama Administration pushes ahead with military engagement with Burma, it is not at all clear whether this will make a difference for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya forced to live in prison-like camps.
Long regarded as outsiders, the Rohingya are a stateless people surviving in a country that has long turned its back on them. Since 1982, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship in a country that many have called “home” for generations. The lack of legal status for the Rohingya has made the group vulnerable, not only to militants but to human traffickers as well. It is telling that in Burma, the Rohingya are even prohibited from obtaining basic health care. Without humanitarian groups such as Doctors Without Borders, there is next to no support mechanism for the Rohingya. Two weeks ago, even this source of assistance was denied when the Burmese government expelled the organization from the Rakhine State, where the majority of Rohingya live. What transgression did Doctors Without Borders commit to deserve expulsion? It has hired too many Rohingya Muslims.
US policy in Burma is gravely lacking leadership. No country can truly embrace reform if bigotry, discrimination and violence are national policies. That is why I cosponsored legislation to raise awareness of the plight of the Rohingyas and other ethnic and religious minorities. It states, “the l evel of persecution, including widespread arbitrary arrest, detention, and extortion of Rohingya and other Muslim communities, has dramatically increased over the past year and a half.”
As Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I will move this legislation out of Committee in the near future so that the House of Representatives can speak with one voice against these grave human rights abuses.
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