Main Analysis and specific topic

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following the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2015, some Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, they began to take a stronger stance on the protection of the Rohingya.

ASEAN members must develop a refugee and asylum policy that includes guidelines on the measures to be taken adopt when the internal issues of a member State force people to flee to neighboring States. This policy - which all ASEAN Member States have accepted - would also contribute to alleviating the increasing opposition and any future ethnic or religious tension between the States.

Any future conflict can be addressed through the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, but this body must be strengthened, since it lacks the mandate to protect and investigate.

ASEAN still lacks a Human Rights Court to interpret and enforce the Declaration of Human Rights from ASEAN, an additional factor that must be remedied if refugees in the region, such as Rohingyas, are expected to receive protection.

3.4. Main Analysis and specific topic 3.4.1. Level of responsibility

3.4.1.1. Myanmar Military

Myanmar Military is seeing as an ethnicity issue to continue play an outsized role, determining which ethnic armed organizations could participate and refusing to budge on key issues and have kind of control over the Rohingya, considering as a small group of usurpers. The ethnic armed organizations want a decentralized federal system and a restructuring of the armed forces to institutionalize ethnic-minority representation at the highest levels. The commander-in-chief has not clarified how much autonomy he would tolerate in the ethnic states. He has adamantly opposed broad security-sector reforms.

Ongoing military operations in northern Myanmar have also undermined ethnic minorities’

confidence in the peace process. Almost 100,000 Kachin civilians were in internally displaced people’s camps, but the military and civilian government mostly blocked international humanitarian organizations’ access to these camps, resulting in shortages of food and other necessities.

Fighting between the military and ethnic armed organizations as well as conflicts between different ethnic armed organizations resulted in the displacement of thousands of Shan civilians as well.

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Rakhine anti-government and anti-military sentiment increased in 2018, despite most ethnic Rakhines’ approval of the military’s 2017 operations against the Rohingya. Ethnic Rakhine have long resented central-government control over Rakhine State, the woeful lack of investment in infrastructure and services, and military abuses against Rakhine villagers in remote areas. The same year, Rakhine Buddhists were enraged when the police suddenly canceled a memorial event marking the fall of the Rakhine kingdom to Burman forces in 1785.

When they protested, the police opened fire, killing at least seven people. They were further angered when the police charged two highly regarded Rakhine individuals with high treason for making negative comments about the government and intimating support for armed resistance. Both the military leadership and the civilian government have been sensitive to criticism and have routinely used criminal charges against journalists, activists, and others who have revealed unpleasant truths or made derogatory remarks about them.

3.4.1.2. Myanmar Government

Aung San Suu Kyi and her civilian government are limited by the enduring influence of the military in Myanmar, but she has a prominent voice and support within the country. She has not only chosen to remain silent, but also rejected a UN fact-finding mission. And her office has endangered international humanitarians by baselessly accusing them of supporting terrorism. In her first address to the world on the crisis on September 19 of 2018, Suu Kyi expressed ignorance as to why vast numbers of Rohingya were fleeing and made no mention of the credible reports of massive human rights violations against the Rohingya community.

At a minimum, she should take measures – or exercise forbearance – to ensure she is not an apologist for abuses.

For Aung San Suu kyi, this is just an ethnicity issue because if she points it out as a religious issue, could be affect the domestic policy, changing the base of their culture that is focus on the Buddhism and also could not have a good response from all the Burmese people. However, accepting the ethnicity issue, it means to give them (Rohingya) the citizenship but she is struggling the fact of this because it could affect also her position and image in Myanmar.

Also establishing domestic legitimacy requires a solid and smooth democratic transition without interruptions and disturbances. In order to maintain its democratization process, Myanmar needs engagement strategies that can encourage every great power to support Myanmar’s transformation.

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Furthermore, she is more focused on the Asian countries instead of international views, special attention is paid to China and Japan as the new actors in this issue; but without any judgment or statement.

Overall, Myanmar’s foreign policy actions are prioritized according to the internal situation.

From this perspective, Myanmar’s behavior can be explained as managing and responding to the domestic political instabilities which also represent Myanmar as a weak and vulnerable state. A weak state like Myanmar has no capability to expand its national interests beyond the state, such as promoting its political and social values abroad. In essence, Myanmar’s national interests are limited to its domestic needs; thus its foreign policy objectives, orientation and actions are shaped by these needs and limitations.

Myanmar’s weak state institutions also lead to a lack of domestic legitimacy concerning issues such as human rights issues, inefficient rule of law with an incompetent police force, and political instabilities not in line with democratic discipline. This lack of domestic legitimacy is a core vulnerability, since the tensions in society are massive. The pressure of these tensions – ethno-religious and ethnic conflicts, and political instabilities – on the one hand, and on the other the pressure exerted in particular by the USA in its promotion of democratic value and human rights, bring Myanmar face to face with demands from the domestic and foreign fronts.

For instance, human rights issues in Rakhine State have come into the spotlight among human rights watchers. The discrimination, human rights violation, and indeed ill-treatment towards Rohingya people have become a concern promoting human rights in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi responded by requesting “space” on this matter, and encouraged the USA to cooperate with and support Myanmar in search of a peaceful solution.

This indicates that Myanmar’s behavior towards the USA can be interpreted through the lens of hedging and engagement strategy. First, Myanmar adopts hedging behavior to distance itself from the pressure and to prevent US interference in Myanmar’s domestic politics. The nationalist elements of Myanmar are like ticking time-bombs when it comes to a sensitive issue like extreme nationalist activities in Rakhine State. If the Myanmar government should rush in to handle this issue with urgency just because of pressure from Washington, massive riots by nationalist mobs could ensue. As Myanmar lacks domestic legitimacy due to poor resources, an incompetent police force and weak government institutions, it would not be easy to handle this matter along the lines used by the previous government. A wiser approach is for Myanmar to hedge the US pressure and find its own space for handling its own affairs.

Also, there are three challenging tasks ahead for Myanmar: ensuring a smooth transition to democracy, managing ongoing internal conflicts, and responding to the growing threat of

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communal violence and transnational terrorism. It remains to be seen how a country, transiting from decades of authoritarian rule to democracy fares in dealing with the threats from the complex ethnic and religious challenges that underlie various conflicts in the country leading to political violence, terrorism and extremism.

The current political opening in Myanmar challenges existing perspectives

on democratization since it cannot be adequately understood through structural approaches that emphasize economic development or mass mobilization; nor is it being negotiated and agreed upon by the elite.

Instead, it appears to be an imposed transition whereby the ruling elite is defining the pace and agenda of reform. This strategy is facilitated by the regime’s position of relative strength in domestic politics combined with changing international relations that provide opportunities for a guided and sequenced transition to a hybrid form of rule. It is, however, also a process in which a broad diversity of political parties and popular movements are seeking to engage in order to promote substantive democracy and conflict resolution. It is this which makes the trajectory and outcome of democratization open-ended and unknown. In this situation, the future of democracy in Myanmar is highly dependent on the capacity of different political actors to organize and represent popular interests and to promote institutional reforms and policies that make democracy real and meaningful to ordinary people.

3.4.1.3. International Community

From the perspective of the international stakeholders like International rights groups, they see this as an ethnicity issue and specially for UN using the point of view as a humanitarian help conducting hundreds of interviews with Rohingya victims and witnesses in refugee camps in Bangladesh and used satellite photos and other forms of visual evidence to piece together what had happened. In August 2018, the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission accused the commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, and five other generals of having committed crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. The mission urged the Security Council to refer the generals to the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc international tribunal. The mission’s report detailed horrific forms of torture and killing and contended that the security operations had been preplanned rather than simply a response to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s attack on 30 border posts. The mission also blamed the civilian authorities for contributing to the crimes “through their acts and omissions,” including spreading hate speech and denying that the military had done anything wrong. The government denounced the

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report, but UN Security Council members, though divided, remained strongly engaged on the issue. The Security Council members had taken their own trip to meet with the Myanmar government and Rohingya refugees. They were shaken by the intensity of the refugees’

suffering.

However, it seems easy for the Security Council to take this into the Human Rights council, instead of a threat for the security in Myanmar and also for the Southeast Asia region.

Several Western governments imposed sanctions on senior military generals and backed away from further engagement with the military. They provided humanitarian support to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, but wrestled with how to achieve military accountability without undermining the country’s fragile partial democracy. As relations with Western governments became more complicated, Aung San Suu Kyi focused greater attention on Asian nations, in particular China and Japan. The Chinese government stated its willingness to help resolve the Rohingya crisis without passing judgment. It sought to allay fears about its intentions in Myanmar by hosting study tours designed to build trust and showcase its development expertise.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo urged Aung San Suu Kyi to allow a credible investigation into rights abuses in Rakhine State but also offered to provide maximum financial assistance to the government.

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CHAPTER 4 4. Conclusion

To understand how political Buddhism has excluded Rohingya examining its parts gives some answers. Also, the main research question of this study has been: Rohingya people Are the consequence of ethnicity or a religious issue? how is the current persecution defining Rohingya’s legal status?

The humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya Muslim community is one of the most important of the last years. This event is part of a constant discrimination process and historical against that ethnic minority by the Burmese Government. Only on this occasion, repression and violent events have reached one of its highest limits. How has it developed, repeatedly and through different measures, the Burmese Government has denied access to political and social life to the Rohingya in the country? Also, their basic right to collective identity has been one of the main discriminatory elements, based mainly on their religion, different from the rest of the Buddhist population in the country. As consequently, the appearance of ARSA is not a coincidence, a movement whose main driving element the defense of the Rohingya community.

However, being a movement that uses Islam as a binder could be infiltrated by extremist religious movements. So that in the future it must be a movement that must continue to be observed.

Despite the null powers that the Burmese leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has to control the army of that country, the executing agency of the Rohingya policy, it is likely that from a perspective in general, the absence of their condemnation of these practices contributes to violence between communities religious; besides, a position of rejection of this policy could help to reduce the repression. However, it should be clarified that Suu Kyi is a supporter of the belief, sustained by the Burmese government and the Buddhist population, that the Rohingya are illegal Bangladeshi migrants, despite evidence of their presence in the region for centuries.

Consequently, it is little the Burmese leader is likely to change his position in favor of the vigorous condemnation of the measures violent against the Rohingya. For the Burmese government, ARSA is a terrorist group and has decided to do not negotiate with them. However, the humanitarian crisis continues to increase and refugees in Bangladesh are more and more.

Therefore, international pressure should help to establish table to the parties, but it seems that the army continues to resist negotiation.

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As mentioned, some of the main reasons for the Rohingya persecution has been the fragmenting nationalism in Myanmar and not being part of the Buddhist religion. Not surprisingly, these factors are also the building blocks of political Buddhism. Nationalism is a uniting and divisive force in Myanmar. Together with the Burmese majority culture, these factors have been essential creating a national identity. This identity has only existed for those considered to be Burman, something that of course not included Rohingya. Therefore, anyone who worships any other religion than Buddhism becomes indirectly stigmatized since Buddhism has become such an important factor of the Burmese identity. This Burmese identity has become an incentive to discriminate those in Myanmar who are not included in this identity. The Burmese identity, nationalism and the aggressive use of Buddhism are the reasons Rohingya has been excluded and targets of violence. As mentioned, these factors are important bedrocks of political Buddhism. Of course, it is important to remember that Buddhism does not call for violence. However, when Buddhism is mixed with nationalism and exclusion policies it can become violent and aggressive. Meanwhile, acts of violence between Buddhists and Muslims do not necessarily have to be associated with the religion at all. A person’s identity can never be reduced to consisting only of religion. People have always been afraid of those who are different and nationalism and exclusion enhance these fears.

When Rohingya are denied citizenship, they are automatically denied the most basic human rights. Political Buddhism is not the only reason for Rohingya exclusion, other factors such as poverty and human rights. Myanmar has historically been an ethnically diverse society, where different religions have lived side by side regardless of who has been in power.

The reported atrocities and violations that have occurred and continue to occur in Myanmar may amount to a Genocide. However, since 1948 the United Nations Security Council had approved only one resolution recommending Myanmar for UN membership, and only two presidential statements, with a vague language that only mentioned prisoners. Since the United Nations Security Council does not assume the breadth of the situation, other actors of the UN, like the General Assembly, are more informed but do not take action necessary, but mainly produce reports. Although the Special Rapporteur of the Council of United Nations Human Rights on Myanmar has an extended mandate since 1992, the resolutions are unattended.

The first responsibility to protect the rights of Rohingya falls to the Government of Myanmar.

It is unsustainable to try to avoid the issue or insist that the term "Rohingya" is not used because it is controversial. In the first place, the government needs to solve the prolonged statelessness of the Rohingya population, since their lack of citizenship has left them vulnerable to discrimination and abuse.

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As a democratic state recently recognized, Myanmar must respect the different ethnicities and religions within the country, without systematically discriminating against any group. The years of conflict and violence in the Rakhine state, which have attracted coverage of the press despite strict controls government officials in the region have undermined International goodwill since the Rohingyas have fled to neighboring countries, Myanmar can no longer insist that it is an internal matter and, instead, must work with Bangladesh and members of ASEAN to deal with the situation.

The support and cooperation of both Buddhists and Muslims, and perhaps assistance from a neutral organization like the UN, would help achieve a political solution. It remains to be seen how the Myanmar government will address the Rohingya problem.

Trust between the involved parties is a very important first step, but the commitment from the Burmese authorities to repatriate Rohingya refugees must be sincere and the issue of statelessness remains. Since the conflict in Rakhine is still ongoing further research on the coming events is very important to find solutions to the conflict.

Compared to other religious ideologies, political Buddhism also has characteristics of radical fundamentalism. However, within all religions, there are elements of extremism and Buddhism is not an exception. I have argued that combined with nationalism and the Burmese ethnicity, radical political Buddhism has excluded Rohingya in Myanmar and flung them into a limbo of statelessness. As mentioned above, the precarious situation for Rohingya is still ongoing and future research might find additional causes to the Rohingya exclusion and call them something else than political Buddhism. One possibility is that poverty and underdevelopment have played a larger role in Rohingya’s exclusion. Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live, is Myanmar’s most underdeveloped and poorest region with 78 percent of the population living below the poverty limit. Thus, it could have been poverty and disparity that sparked the violent uprising and Muslim Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists were equal victims of violence in the area. This explanation of the violence in Rakhine state goes more in hand with the official Myanmar statements that not only Rohingya have been targeted by the violence. Of course, multiple reports show that the violence has been one-sided and that it has been the Rohingya population who has suffered the most violence and persecutions.

The faith of Rohingya is the result of much more than the destructive use of political Buddhism.

The faith of Rohingya is the result of much more than the destructive use of political Buddhism.