600,000 Rohingya have poured out of Myanmar, many bearing bullet wounds and marks of sexual violence. They are fleeing Myanmar’s brutal military response to insurgent attacks in late August. Myanmar's population has seemingly united behind the military with brazen displays of ethno-nationalism.
Francis Wade helps to explain the attacks in her book ' Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of the Muslim “Other” ' which describes an earlier episode in the long-simmering conflict – communal riots in 2012 pitting Buddhist Rakhine against their Muslim Rohingya neighbours.
Wade argues that a toxic combination of ethnic antagonisms rooted in colonial rule, the military’s xenophobic nation-building agenda and a powerful, radical Buddhist lobby have produced a deeply fissured society, one that allowed for the dehumanization of the Rohingya. She said "When you deny citizenship to a community, deny them political rights, limit their access to healthcare, limit their access to education, restrict their freedom of movement, etc. you clearly don’t want those people there."
In an interview she points out that "The worrying thing about this current crisis is that it’s state-backed and it’s utterly indiscriminate, utterly brutal."
In regard to Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in this crisis Wade says, "She definitely doesn’t want to antagonize the military by criticizing it. She’s also sort of beholden to this Buddhist nationalist lobby that would see any defense of the Rohingya as tantamount to support for them which, in a way, could be political suicide for her. There’s no one in a position of power in the country who’s willing to speak up even meekly in defense of the Rohingya...Popular prejudices have infected the pro-democracy movement just as much as conservatives within the country. And we’re now waking up to the fact that Suu Kyi isn’t the cure-all..."
Wade continues, "To pursue the perfect nation or the ideal national community, you have to rid it of any obstacles or contaminants. That’s where the cleansing word seems to have particular merit. You get rid of the unwanted and, in doing so, you clean up society...The project that the state has pursued since independence is to build a sense of unity under one flag and those who don’t subscribe are either pushed to the edges, weakened, or faced forced assimilation. The military and other nationalist forces still peddle this myth of a contiguous community of people, the myth that underpins nationalism, but obviously this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world...Once you start separating groups that are divided along lines of religion or ethnicity, then it makes it so much harder to bring people back together."
Francis Wade helps to explain the attacks in her book ' Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of the Muslim “Other” ' which describes an earlier episode in the long-simmering conflict – communal riots in 2012 pitting Buddhist Rakhine against their Muslim Rohingya neighbours.
Wade argues that a toxic combination of ethnic antagonisms rooted in colonial rule, the military’s xenophobic nation-building agenda and a powerful, radical Buddhist lobby have produced a deeply fissured society, one that allowed for the dehumanization of the Rohingya. She said "When you deny citizenship to a community, deny them political rights, limit their access to healthcare, limit their access to education, restrict their freedom of movement, etc. you clearly don’t want those people there."
In an interview she points out that "The worrying thing about this current crisis is that it’s state-backed and it’s utterly indiscriminate, utterly brutal."
In regard to Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in this crisis Wade says, "She definitely doesn’t want to antagonize the military by criticizing it. She’s also sort of beholden to this Buddhist nationalist lobby that would see any defense of the Rohingya as tantamount to support for them which, in a way, could be political suicide for her. There’s no one in a position of power in the country who’s willing to speak up even meekly in defense of the Rohingya...Popular prejudices have infected the pro-democracy movement just as much as conservatives within the country. And we’re now waking up to the fact that Suu Kyi isn’t the cure-all..."
Wade continues, "To pursue the perfect nation or the ideal national community, you have to rid it of any obstacles or contaminants. That’s where the cleansing word seems to have particular merit. You get rid of the unwanted and, in doing so, you clean up society...The project that the state has pursued since independence is to build a sense of unity under one flag and those who don’t subscribe are either pushed to the edges, weakened, or faced forced assimilation. The military and other nationalist forces still peddle this myth of a contiguous community of people, the myth that underpins nationalism, but obviously this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world...Once you start separating groups that are divided along lines of religion or ethnicity, then it makes it so much harder to bring people back together."
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