In the Countrywide Protests against the Military Coup in Myanmar, Nobody Is Talking About the Future of Rohingya
By
Mayyu Ali
Feb. 18,
2021
I have been
living in a refugee camp here since 2017, after the campaign of murder, rape
and arson by the military in Myanmar forced more than 750,000 people from the
Rohingya community to flee our homes in Rakhine State. Since the military coup
in Myanmar on Feb. 1, our camp has been abuzz with conversation and even more
uncertainty about the future. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who ordered the genocidal
violence against us, has taken charge of the country.
Photo courtesy New York Times
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Protests against
the coup have spread across Myanmar, and I have been scanning news reports and
social media posts about the gatherings — which have continued for days, some
bringing together thousands of people — to find out whether the coup was making
my countrymen rethink their indifference. I have been hoping to hear a few
words about our predicament, about our future, as they speak about democracy
and democratic rights.
I looked at
dozens of posts and images, and eventually I found one photograph, a young man
on a street in Myanmar holding a banner that read: “I Really regret abt
Rohingya crisis.” I found a few reports of a very small number of people in
Myanmar expressing their regrets over supporting or defending the violence
against the Rohingya. But I couldn’t find any leaders from Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi’s National League for Democracy saying a word about the place of the
Rohingya in the democratic system they are demanding.
I was born
in a Rohingya family in Maungdaw, a town in Rakhine State, in 1991. Decades before
I was born, the military curtailed our rights and dismissed us as culturally
and racially different Bengali illegal immigrants. In 1982, it passed a law to
effectively deny us citizenship. Being a Rohingya in Myanmar meant living
carefully and being resigned to limited access to education, health care and
other social services.
Yet I
always found a glimmer of hope when I heard my grandfather speak admiringly of
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, which he had formally joined. He would tell
me how he welcomed N.L.D. campaigners into our home by slaughtering the biggest
cow in our herd when the military allowed national elections to be held in
1990.
He would
speak of leaving home for days, campaigning in other villages, persuading our
people to vote for the N.L.D. (The military ignored her victory and placed her
under house arrest until 2010, when a quasi-democratic transition began.)
In the 2015
election, my family and other Rohingya still put our faith in Ms. Aung San Suu
Kyi and the N.L.D., hoping she would help end the discrimination and violence
we faced. But when the Rohingya arrived at the polling booths, we were turned
away and denied the right to vote. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi refused to speak about
our disenfranchisement.
The N.L.D.
won in a landslide, but things only got worse for us. The deep-seated prejudice
the Buddhist majority had for us only intensified after the quasi-democratic
opening, as if a lid had been removed. By that time, internet service was
widely available and cheap, and every third person in the country started using
Facebook. The rhetoric, the hate and the violence against us was amplified
after ultranationalist Buddhist monks and the military started hate campaigns
against us on the social network. Every day I logged in I came across hateful
posts calling us “Kalar,” “Bengalis” and “Terrorists.” The exhortations to kill
us followed.
Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi and her government looked the other way.
And then,
in 2017, the military crackdown came. Thousands of Rohingya civilians were killed,
and hundreds of women and young girls were raped. On Aug. 28, 2017, my parents
and I were at home in Maungdaw when dozens of military trucks arrived and the
soldiers formed a cordon around our village.
My parents
and I hid by a creek. We watched our friends and neighbours being shot by the
soldiers and our village set on fire. I couldn’t muster the courage to look
back at my burning home, but I watched the flames rising high in the sky. We
crossed the Bay of Bengal in boats to seek refuge and safety.
In our
refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, I live with my family of seven in a 16-foot
tarpaulin structure. More than 100,000 people are crammed in a square mile.
There have
been protests in the refugee camp against the military coup, but no tears are
being shed for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has defended the military and its
genocidal violence.
After the
coup, General Min Aung Hlaing spoke about his intention to bring back Rohingya
refugees from Bangladesh. We have no faith in him. He talked about our
repatriation for the benefit of the United States and the European Union, to
avoid sanctions.
The general
has already deployed troops from the military’s light infantry divisions — the
forces that carried out the genocidal violence against us — in Yangon.
I fear for
the terrible violence to come and worry about the fate of the 600,000 Rohingya
who are still living in Myanmar. Thousands of them are confined to camps in
Rakhine State. I managed to reach one of my friends, who still lives in my
hometown, by phone.
“The
military has banned Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media,” he told me.
“Markets and shops are closed. Mosques have been shut down in Maungdaw after
the military coup.
“No one
goes outside. We are extremely fearful. We do not know what can happen next.”
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Mayyu
Ali, a Rohingya poet and activist, is the author of “Exodus,” a collection of
poems.
Original
Headline:
Source: The New York Times