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CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSION
This thesis aimed to scrutinise the hostilities towards Rohingya during Myanmar’s first democratic years of the 21st century. Counterintuitively, democratisation and the election of a human rights activist did not end long-standing discrimination of the Muslim minority. On the contrary, Myanmar experienced an increasingly hostile atmosphere that culminated in a military-induced campaign of ethnic cleansing. While large-n studies of ethnic conflict and an historical analysis help to understand the conditions under which hostilities could arise, an actor-based approach is most suitable to assess the particular mechanics of ethnic mobilisation that eventually facilitated and prolonged ethnic violence, discriminatory policies and military operations. In the case of Myanmar, political elites exploit ethnic tensions and a hostile narrative to create solidarity among one particular ethnic group and gain its favour. This is done through appeals to an emotionally charged narrative – a narrative that is in Myanmar chiefly created by chauvinist Buddhist actors under reference to a Muslim threat. This process is best described by the framework of symbolic politics. Before summing up the findings on symbolic politics, the following paragraphs will integrate the case of Myanmar into previously described findings of ethnic conflict.
In this research, it is presumed that language and social practices are tightly intertwined.
Though it is possible that social practices affect the discourse, it is more likely that language, speech acts and written text initiate new routines, norms and practices. This research therefore focuses on the analysis of the discourse, mostly on the macro and meso level, in a defined period of time. Accordingly it aims to explain political change, in this case the increasingly institutionalised discrimination of Rohingya, through aligning it with an increasingly hostile narrative, which is forwarded through text and speech by certain actors. Naturally, the narrative alone does not constitute discrimination. It is furthermore how the narrative is shaped by the socio-political events and eventually becomes the driving force in increasingly hostile policies and practices. Nevertheless it has to be analysed in reference to social and political developments. Since this research aims to explain the causalities, leading up to a certain event (from a suspected Muslim conspiracy to directed expulsion) it is located in the research approaches of discourse analysis and process tracing. as it treats the discourse as a vital element in the process leading to a given outcome.
From the multitude of research on internal conflict, ethnic conflict and civil war, almost all findings apply to Myanmar. It is thus no surprise that the country has seen ongoing internal
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conflict involving various groups for decades. A variety of ethnic groups is never a sufficient explanation for the outbreak of a conflict. Other structural factors have to be taken into account to find the underlying reasons for conflict. The first assumption here is that opportunities for ethnic insurgency must be present. These can be caused by a country’s topography, resources, capability of state institutions, history or a recent change in the political system. Secondly, mobilisation along ethnic lines occurs prior to conflict. This implies that certain actors, pursuing a rational strategy to maximise power or wealth, expect a benefit from convincing people into collective action against a presumably “hostile other”. This presupposes that a scapegoat or enemy already exists, or that an image of such is deliberately created. The creation of such an enemy “other” is through a reinterpretation of historical narratives and contemporary events, which is used to create a shared identity and coherence among the in-group and identify and derogate the out-group. The former, opportunities for ethnic conflict, can easily assessed through a look at the country’s history, recent political development and topography. The latter has to be assessed through discourse analysis or interviews among a target demography. In the following, opportunities for conflict in Myanmar will be summed up before elaborating on the exploitation of ethnicity and the framework of symbolic politics.
The British colonial rule had a significant influence on character of Myanmar’s internal conflicts. The import of labourers and administrative personnel from British India laid the foundation for conflict along ethnic lines, as it disfavoured the native Burmese people, whose dissatisfaction turned into xenophobia and nationalist movements. Moreover, it also created the background for the contemporary denunciations of Rohingya as Bengali immigrants. After a short-lived federal union, in which ethnic identities solidified through the promise of self-administration for ethnic states, the military founded a one-party state and tried to enforce unity and a centralised administration within Myanmar. Due to its self-imposed isolation, the country remained underdeveloped for decades – a legacy, which still troubles it today. As such, the state has failed as the economic promises of a postcolonial development. Areas of ethnic minorities were widely left to their own fortune, while the military tried to siphon the revenues of local natural resources. Consequently, pre-existing grievances were amplified through dissatisfaction about economic conditions, oppression and exploitation. Previous research shows, that especially economic inequalities in combination with political oppression lead to uprisings.
Thus, it is no surprise that, after hopes for a federal union, the centralised military state was met with resistance by ethnic minorities.
During that time, citizenship in Myanmar became increasingly dependent on membership in one of the “national races”. However, during the military rule and despite
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exclusion from the national races, Rohingya were not as discriminated and forcefully displaced as they are today. The junta indeed made use of narrative of Bengali immigrants, launched attacks and imposed discriminatory citizenship laws, but disenfranchisement and expulsion of Rohingya peaked in the 21st century. This suggests that historic analysis is capable of explaining the context to the conflict, but it cannot explain why and how the conflict escalated at this particular time. In order to approach this question, I suppose to turn the attention to structural conditions in Myanmar under special attention to which factors urge actors to mobilise along ethnic lines.
The initial assumption here is, according to the feasibility hypothesis, that when a conflict is possible, it will emerge. Among the decisive factors that favour an emergence of conflict are inaccessible terrain, possible resource revenue and weak state institutions. In this environment, rational elites will exploit economic grievances, religious hatred or discrimination in order to maximise their wealth and influence. Without doubt, Myanmar fulfils the criteria of such a state, which lacks political institutions to accommodate ethnic grievances, has inaccessible terrain and provides possible revenues from gas, oil, timber, narcotics or mining.
In fact, all these criteria apply to Rakhine state, especially now that new gas pipelines run from Rakhine’s coast towards China. Accordingly, it was predictable that the region would experience insurgency or violence. Like most of Myanmar’s peripheral regions, Rakhine has had armed resistance during the military dictatorship. But none of the groups was able to maintain a significant rebellion. Added to the already precarious situation in the state is dissatisfaction on behalf of the local Rakhine population. They complain vehemently about unequal access to political decision-making and an ongoing exclusion from the profits of local resource exploitation. It is exactly these grievances that give birth to ethnic outbidding where one group tries to secure its dominance.
The exploitation of ethnic grievances presupposed that identities are socially constructed. Identities or characteristics of ethnic groups are not hereditary or tied to blood and land, nor are hostilities between groups anchored in their genes, although manipulative actors like to appeal to these concepts. It is rather a deliberate manipulation of these issues that bring up perceptions of fear or hatred. As this is an elite-driven process, another condition has to be fulfilled. There must be an opportunity and incentive for predatory elites to mobilise. This is provided by the democratisation of the country. In previous studies, democratisation was linked to the emergence of ethnic conflict as it creates the exact opportunities for elite mobilisation.
With newly gained freedoms of press, assembly speech and political association, but chronic lack of state-oversight and regulation, a new democracy creates the playing field for elites to
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compete. In the case of Myanmar, the democratisation was a crucial process that led to instances of communal violence in Rakhine and the final displacement of a majority of Rohingya. In a competitive environment, leading elites exploited and deepened pre-existing ethnic cleavages and discontent. To go full circle, these grievances are historically grown through Myanmar’s colonial history, federal period and military dictatorship, but only during the country’s democratisation, they became a decisive driver in the ethnic conflict in Myanmar.
Finally, it has to be taken into account, that all the aforementioned dynamics were developed to analyse or understand ethnic conflict and civil war. These conflicts are usually characterised by clashes between to almost equally powerful ethnic groups or the uprising of ethnic groups against a discriminatory state. Unlike other ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar, hostilities against Rohingya are better characterised as communal violence, state discrimination and eventually ethnic cleansing. As Mann pointed out, ethnic cleansing is a modern phenomenon that occurs in fractionalised, democratising countries, when ethnicity trumps class as main characteristic of identification. Especially his assumption that the stronger side will act when it believes it has the military and ideological legitimacy to enact a cleansing apply to the recent hostilities towards Rohingya. To answer the question how this ideological superiority is created within a democratising country, how the out-group is alienated to an extend that extreme violence is justified; a framework that merges the findings of analysis of ethnic conflict and the social construction of identity has to be applied.
This bridge is built by symbolic politics. Although its core assumptions were not specifically developed with this kind of asymmetrical ethnic conflict in mind, they still apply to the case of Rohingya-Buddhist tensions and allow to gain a comprehensive overview over the conflict. Symbolic politics combines all of the aforementioned mechanisms. The starting point is the myth-symbol complex, which is inherent in every societal group. These ties of language, religion, culture, values and history, perceived as hereditary, create a national or ethnic identity but also serve to identify outsiders. Through emotional appeals to this complex, predatory elites exploit ethnic differences for their own merit. This takes places in a competitive environment, facilitated by democratisation, in which the actors rationally choose to appeal to emotionally charged myths to maximise their gains. In this case, myths are operationalised as expressions that define another group as inferior or as an enemy. The threat of the projected enemy is exaggerated, which eventually culminates in predatory policies. As described above, these acts will be especially prominent in democratising states. Lastly, symbolic politics assumes that a mythology has to exist before politicians can exploit it. Thus, a “cultural entrepreneur” has to be responsible for reinterpreting cultures, myths and identities.
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Taking symbolic politics as the framework contains the assumption that the conflict is perpetuated by certain actors. This leads us to the core of this thesis. The actors involved in creating and spreading the anti-Muslim narrative in Myanmar. In order to assess if elites in Myanmar behaved as described through symbolic politics, this thesis analysed speech acts of actors of the central government and crucial actors in Rakhine state and set them in relation to political and societal developments in the country. Decisive on the level of the central government are the Tatmadaw, the USDP, the NLD and their respective leaders Min Aung Hlaing, Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi. On the local level are the Rakhine parties and so called “firebrand monks”, headed by Ashin Wirathu.
All of these actors pursued a rational strategy, in which mobilisation along ethnic lines benefitted the consolidation and maximisation of political power. The democratic system dragged the political actors into a competitive situation, where siding with the Bamar-Buddhist majority became a crucial element in gaining the upper hand. Democratisation furthermore introduced civil liberties, which allowed a faster and unmonitored distribution of derogatory narratives. Especially the defamatory monkhood immensely benefitted from freedom of speech and assembly as well as media freedom and the take-off of social media within Myanmar. In this sense, the political liberalisation has a multi-faceted role, as it facilitated the aspirations of previously powerless actors to become relevant leading to increasing elite-competition, while simultaneously creating opportunities for competition in an environment of limited regulation.
In this context, actors from the Tatmadaw, central government and local Rakhine parties, all referred to existing an existing myth-symbol complex. The central elements of this are the adherence to an ethnic nationalism, which takes membership in one of the government-defined
“national races” or “ethnic nationalities” as a precondition for the granting of citizenship. This concept additionally involves the labelling of Rohingya as Bengali immigrants, which is the foundation for statements that argue in favour of their exclusion and relocation. The denouncing of Rohingya became significantly harsher over time. Initially deemed as imported labourers or immigrants, the allegations of a threat to national unity and development through illegal labour increased after the 2012 communal violence. With the raids of ARSA, the interpretation of Muslim identity was unilaterally enriched with an alleged jihadist, terrorist threat. The political actors varied in terms of their emotional appeals and implemented policies.
The USDP and Thein Sein adhered to the narrative of “Bengali immigrants”, which was already prominent during previous military rule. The perception of Rohingya as illegal immigrants culminated in suggestions of ethnic separation and deportation. The USDP
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personnel, de facto, climbed on the bandwagon of arising Islamophobia after incidents of communal violence in 2012. Facing electoral defeat against the NLD, the USDP tried to gain voters among the concerned Burmese Buddhists and entered a concealed alliance with religious agitators. Eventually, the USDP-patronage allowed the influential 969 movement to form Ma Ba Tha, which directly lobbied the government and achieved the implementation of discriminatory policies against the Rohingya. This became especially obvious in the run-up for the 2015 elections, where the USDP, for the first time confronted with electoral loss, implemented discriminatory measures to “contain” the Muslim population – measures that were previously advocated by chauvinist monks and nationalist Rakhine politicians.
The NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi, in the following, stood out through talking down the misery of Rohingya while simultaneously pointing out that Rakhine Buddhist acted out of fear and were equal victims as Rohingya. As it confirmed the concerns of frightened Buddhists, the party later adopted the narrative of Muslim terrorism in Myanmar. It is obvious that the incumbent state counsellor is bound by the forces of the Buddhist majority voters and the prevailing military. With her eyes on the next election and promise to advance peace and stability in the country, she has no benefit from antagonising these forces, except restoring her international reputation. This leaves her little choice for anything else but waiting for the storm to blow over, while taking half-hearted measures to appease the international outrage. In the end, the local population takes its will to the ballot box, and not the international community.
The NLD thus failed to take responsibility of find ways to criticise the military or hold it to accountable for misconduct. As a result, the military, confirmed in its previous course, was able to carry out a campaign of ethnic cleansing that reached its peak in 2017. Two accompanying explanations for this conduct are found within the framework of democratisation.
Firstly, as an organ of a democratic government with granted representation in government institutions, the Tatmadaw has now a need to ensure a positive public image in order to maintain its secured access to policy-making. Thus, through a campaign against a perceived threat to Buddhism, they can expect to win the favour of the Burmese population. Secondly, the military is still deeply involved in Myanmar’s key industries. In the light of market liberalisation, it is reasonable that the armed forces secure the access to Rakhine’s natural resources by dispersing its unwanted inhabitants and asserting dominance over the territory. There is every indication that the military aims to secure dominance over the region. In order to protect the border or to access the resources, it has now begun construction of facilities on land previously inhabited
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by Rohingya and ramped up its efforts to retaliate assaults of the Northern Alliance in northern Rakhine.599
In his statements, the military’s senior general, under reference to historic instances, carved out a narrative of a mythological harmony between Myanmar’s ethnic groups, to which Rohingya “immigrants” are a substantial threat. In various statements, the military has justified its actions in Rakhine State as counter-terrorist measures. If the retaliation campaign is part of a planned campaign or a spontaneous reaction to terrorist attacks remains debatable. Indications of preparation, relocation of manpower, systematic destruction and continuous presence of armed forces, however, suggests that permanent relocation of Rohingya was intended and ARSA attacks were welcomed as a triggering event and justification.
These actors’ behaviour confirm the mechanisms of symbolic politics in Myanmar’s conflict between Rohingya and Buddhists. The precondition that a group mythology, which justifies hostilities, must exist before political actors can exploit it, it confirmed by the perception of “Bengali immigrants” that is attributed to Rohingya. This narrative is evident in Myanmar’s postcolonial history and has led to previous suspicions towards Rohingya and Muslim struggles for autonomy. This narrative eventually lead to predatory policies that were deemed as required to ensure the security of the own group. Chauvinist actors have increasingly enriched this narrative with a Muslim threat to Myanmar’s Buddhist population and allegations of terrorist and jihadist intentions.
Buddhist monks are the driving force of reinterpretation of identity and vilification of Muslims. Their behaviour fits the role of cultural entrepreneurs that create myths before political actors can exploit them. Monks, like Wirathu were the first to frame the initial communal violence as an existential fight between Muslims and Buddhists and later increased the hostile attitude towards Rohingya through allegations of Muslim rapists and conspiracy to take possession of Rakhine state. Their appeals are extremely emotional and evoke an existential struggle by referring to animalistic metaphors and a predatory character of Muslims, which is allegedly ingrained in their blood. This linkage of certain characteristics to an ethnic group as a whole makes their statements primordial in nature. Monks were furthermore the first to add the notion of a terrorist or jihadist threat, which occurred even before ARSA had launched its first attacks in 2016. These fears were sustained by terrorist operations in the Middle East and Myanmar’s neighbouring countries as well as by the expansion of the Islamic
Buddhist monks are the driving force of reinterpretation of identity and vilification of Muslims. Their behaviour fits the role of cultural entrepreneurs that create myths before political actors can exploit them. Monks, like Wirathu were the first to frame the initial communal violence as an existential fight between Muslims and Buddhists and later increased the hostile attitude towards Rohingya through allegations of Muslim rapists and conspiracy to take possession of Rakhine state. Their appeals are extremely emotional and evoke an existential struggle by referring to animalistic metaphors and a predatory character of Muslims, which is allegedly ingrained in their blood. This linkage of certain characteristics to an ethnic group as a whole makes their statements primordial in nature. Monks were furthermore the first to add the notion of a terrorist or jihadist threat, which occurred even before ARSA had launched its first attacks in 2016. These fears were sustained by terrorist operations in the Middle East and Myanmar’s neighbouring countries as well as by the expansion of the Islamic