ISPSW Strategy Series: Focus on Defense and International Security Issue Myanmar’s Rohingya Problem in Context No. 485 Anchalee Rüland May 2017 Analysis The question of Citizenship At the heart of the debate as currently framed by the mainstream international media lies the question of citizenship. Since the Burmese government and large parts of society do not accept the Rohingya as one of the countries “national races,” a majority of the Muslims living in Rakhine are today de facto stateless. They are considered to be migrants from Bengal that only settled in Myanmar after the first Anglo-Burmese War and subsequent British colonialization in 1824. As such they are not eligible to full citizenship according to the 1982 Citizenship Act. Those who advocate for a distinct Rohingya identity, in return, insist that their ancestors have th been natives to Rakhine as early as the 8 century, wherefore they merit recognition as an ethnic group of Myanmar and thus deserve full citizenship rights. However, in view of the historical evidence such a representation of the Rohingya turns out more problematic than willingly suggested by contemporary Rohingya advocates and mainstream international media. The Historical Context What appears historically verified based on the current state of research is the claim that Muslims had indeed settled in Arakan (now Rakhine) prior to the Burmese conquest in 1784. But there is no historical evidence th available, which proves that Muslim settlements have existed in Rakhine since the 8 century. In fact, the th earliest historical sources mentioning Muslim settlers date back to the late 16 century and suggest that they 2 had travelled on trading fleets from Bengal to Rakhine. To contest the Bengali origin and provide prove for a Rohingya ethnic identity, Rohingya advocates refer to an article published by the British ethnographer Francis Hamilton-Buchanan in 1799. He mentioned “Mohamme3 dans, who have long settled in Arakan and who call themselves Rooinga (…).” However, in the Chittagonian dialect, which the Muslim settlers spoke, the name “Rohingya” means nothing but “Rakhine.” Given that the name is not mentioned in a single other historical source, it seems unlikely that the Muslims HamiltonBuchanan met referred to a shared Rohingya identity. Instead, it appears more convincing that they simply stated their place of settlement. In line with this British testimonies suggest that the early Muslim settlers had largely assimilated to local 4 Rakhine society and did not articulate a separate ethnic or communal status. In the 1872 population census 5 the British therefore simply recorded them as Arakan Muslims. In other documents they further distinguished between Burmese Muslims, which referred to those who had inhabited the land prior to the arrival of the British, and Indian Muslims, sent to support the colonial administration after colonization. A majority of 6 Muslims living in Rakhine today are descendants of these later migrants from Chittagong. The large influx of new Muslim settlers drastically altered the dynamics between the two religious communities in Rakhine. Large 2 Leider, Jacques. Rohingya: the name, the movement and the quest for identity. In: Nation building in Myanmar. In: Nation Building in Myanmar. Yangon: Myanmar EGRESS/Myanmar peace Centre, 2013: 223. 3 Ibid: 221. 4 See J.C. Fink cited in ibid: 225. 5 Suaedy, Ahmad and Muhammad Hafiz. “Citizenship challenges in Myanmar’s democratic transition: case study of the Rohingya-Muslim.” In: Studia Islamika 22, 1 (2015): 44. 6 Pugh, Cresa. “Is citizenship the answer? Constructions of belonging and exclusion for the stateless Rohingya in Burma.” In: Working Papers International Migration Institute 76 (2013): 13. © Institut für Strategie- Politik- Sicherheits- und Wirtschaftsberatung ISPSW Giesebrechtstr. 9 10629 Berlin Germany Tel +49 (0)30 88 91 89 05 Fax +49 (0)30 88 91 89 06 2 E-Mail: info@ispsw.de Website: http://www.ispsw.de