ASEAN
has responsibility
to
protect the Rohingya from genocide
Casey Carr and Naomi Kikoler ;
Casey Karr is research analyst; Naomi Kikoler is director
of policy and advocacy at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to
Protect, New York
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JAKARTA
POST, 22 Agustus 2014
Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
have a serious problem in their backyard. Every day in Myanmar approximately
1 million Rohingya Muslims are denied their most basic human rights and face
a risk of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar is not just a member of the regional body, but heads
ASEAN as its 2014 chair. The treatment of the Rohingya is a test of the
degree to which ASEAN member states take seriously their commitment to
regional cooperation on protecting human rights and their global pledge to
the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a pact to protect populations from mass
atrocity crimes.
So far, ASEAN states and the broader international community are
failing in this commitment. For decades they have turned a blind eye to the
persecution of the Rohingya, one of the world’s most vulnerable minorities.
Rohingyas are denied by the government the right to citizenship, restricted
from having more than two children, and many are forced to live in
segregated, squalid ghettos that they can only leave with permission from
authorities. Rohingyas have repeatedly been attacked and killed on the basis
of their identity, receiving little to no physical protection from security
forces.
Formerly the perennial international pariah, the Myanmar
government has received praise for new political and economic reforms. Yet it
has utterly failed to protect the Rohingya, for whom conditions have only
worsened since the government began its transition to democracy in 2012.
Increasing hate speech by political, cultural and religious
figures has served to dehumanize the Rohingya in the eyes of Myanmar’s public
by demonizing them as unwanted “Bengali” foreigners.
Despite government assurances that it would allow ethnic
self-identification in the first national census conducted since 1983, just
days before data collection began the government announced that “Rohingya”
would not be recognized.
The widespread culture of impunity for state and non-state
actors who perpetrate or incite attacks against Rohingyas fuels a growing
cycle of anti-Muslim violence within the country.
Meanwhile, neighboring states have made it abundantly clear that
they will not open their borders nor offer protection to Rohingyas attempting
desperately to flee persecution. Anti-Rohingya sentiment is not confined to
Myanmar’s borders. On July 10 Bangladesh announced that it would cease
recognizing marriages involving Rohingyas.
The world has seen this before. The Holocaust and Rwandan
genocide have shown us what happens when a minority population is
systematically dehumanized, deprived of their rights, forced to live in
segregation, and denied asylum elsewhere.
In the wake of the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews and
Tutsis, the world vowed to prevent these crimes from being repeated. Yet
today in Myanmar, the Rohingya face institutionalized persecution.
With little international attention and a failure to hold the
Myanmar government accountable for the safety and protection of the Rohingya,
their plight is all the more dire.
Faced with unfolding crimes against humanity on their doorstep,
will ASEAN states continue to shirk their responsibility? Myanmar seems to
expect this. At this year’s first ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting on Jan. 16,
only days after another round of anti-Rohingya violence in Rakhine state left
over 40 men, women and children dead, Myanmar rejected the inclusion of talks
on “the Bengali issue”, arguing that it was an “internal affair”.
A global commitment to the Responsibility to Protect, born out
of the resolve of “never again”, means that atrocities are not internal
affairs. Every government, including all ASEAN member states, affirmed this
in 2005 when they endorsed the Responsibility to Protect at the UN World
Summit.
They committed to safeguard all populations, irrespective of
their religion, ethnicity or citizenship, from crimes against humanity,
genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. ASEAN’s own Charter obliges its
members “to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms”.
To continue to stand by as the Rohingya suffer is to fail these
obligations and condemn the Rohingya to a future of persecution.
Myanmar has demonstrated its unwillingness to protect them.ASEAN
members must uphold their responsibility to protect and urge Myanmar’s
government to take immediate action to halt the tide of hate speech, provide
physical protection to vulnerable Rohingya communities, hold accountable all
who incite or perpetrate crimes, and take concrete steps to foster a more
inclusive society, foremost by granting Rohingya equal access to citizenship.
With atrocities unfolding, ASEAN members should provide a safe
haven within their borders to Rohingyas seeking refuge.
Myanmar is currently the face of ASEAN. What happens within its
borders is a reflection on the body as a whole and the international human
rights standards to which it holds itself accountable.
With Rohingyas facing the risk of crimes against humanity and
ethnic cleansing, it is simply unacceptable for ASEAN states to appeal to
regional preferences for “non-interference” as a justification for silence
and indifference. ●
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