Rohingyas fear for existence in Myanmar

Myanmar's next Census may 'wipe out all references to Rohingyas', fears Nurul Islam, president of Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO).

The 12-day census, due end of March 2014 is expected to cost $ 58.5 million, immigration and population minister Khin Yi confirmed during a mid-September media briefing in Naypidaw, Myanmar's administrative capital.

The Myanmar government has agreed to commit $15 million, while UN assistance and Western governments are expected to fill in the rest.

The UK will put in $16 million, Australia another $2.8 million.

But we want to put pressure on the Myanmar government to count the Rohingyas in the census and reveal their actual numbers. They should be counted as Rohingyas," Nurul Islam has told Inter-Press Service in a recent interview.

He said the West should be alert to Rohingya fears of 'being obliterated' by the Census exercise.

Similar concerns about this stateless ethnic group living along Myanmar’s western border have been expressed by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The concerns over the 2014 census surface over discriminatory policies against the Rohingyas for decades. Besides forced labour, the Rohingyas face denial of proper healthcare and schooling, are prevented from moving out of their villages, and are even stopped from marrying until they get approval from local authorities.

Local leaders say tens of thousands of Rohingya babies have not been registered.

The Rohingyas are not officially identified as one of the country’s 135 recognised ethnic groups.

The last Census in 1983 put the national population at 35.4 million, while the registered population during the previous census in 1973 was 28.9 million.

These two censuses, held when the country was under the grip of an oppressive military regime, did not recognise the Rohingyas as part of the population.

Official statements and the local media often refer to the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas as “Bengalis”. By implication the community is considered as 'outsiders', project as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

“The term ‘Bengali’ has the connotation of being a foreigner,” says Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, an independent research organisation chronicling the plight of the Rohingyas.

“Institutionalising the term ‘Bengali’ as against Rohingya is therefore much more far-reaching than what may appear.

“The census will not affect the Rohingyas’ citizenship status,” Janet Jackson, head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Myanmar office, told IPS in an interview.

“The controversy around this issue must not be allowed to hamper a complete count of the population, and the conduct of the census should not aggravate ethnic tensions.

"UNFPA has received assurances from the government to conduct the census in line with international census standards, [where] every person will be counted, regardless of citizenship or ethnicity.”

Jackson expects the population profile for a country that has an estimated 60 million people to embrace “inclusiveness”.

Such words jar with the reality on the ground since sectarian violence erupted last year between the ethnic Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingyas in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.

Attacks on the Rohingyas in June and October last year, which killed nearly 200 people and left 140,000 displaced, earned the Rohingyas some sympathy.

HRW described them as victims of “ethnic cleansing” in a report released in April this year.

That grim assessment has worsened. The Toronto-based Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention describes Myanmar as “a textbook case” for a country on the brink of genocide.

“The machinery of genocide – the complex systematic process designed to eliminate the Rohingyas – is already operating in Burma [as Myanmar was formerly known] and has carried ethnic cleansing and isolation to its current point.

“Mounting evidence supports allegations that genocide in Burma is currently going on, and may merely be a matter of scale,” revealed the report ‘High Risk of Genocide in Burma’ released by the group in early September.

Among the “key indicators of genocidal intent” is the “forced registration" of Rohingyas under a ‘foreign’ ethnic identity.