Country Context
ROHINGYA COMMUNITIES FORCIBLY DISPLACED TO BANGLADESH AND OTHER LOCATIONS
The Rohingya people are a stateless Muslim minority from Rakhine State, Myanmar. The Rohingya population was estimated to be 1.4 million before the “clearance operations” conducted by the Burmese military in 2017. These “clearance operations” were condemned by the international community as ethnic cleansing and genocide.[i] This chapter will evaluate the state of truth as it manifests in memory, justice and education about the experiences of the Rohingya; however, the forcible displacement of most Rohingya people from Myanmar requires focusing on more than one country. This country report, therefore, covers action or inaction by the military-controlled government of Myanmar, the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG) in exile,[1] and other governments that host large numbers of Rohingya refugees or are directly supporting Rohingya demands for truth.
The 2017 violence against the Rohingya people received significant international attention, but it was far from the first violation the Rohingya community had suffered at the hands of the government of Myanmar. They have endured multiple waves of targeted violence since the 1970s and consistently been subject to systematic discrimination by the Myanmar state. They were denied citizenship under the Burmese Citizenship Law of 1982, which recognized 135 other ethnic groups, under the claim that they were actually migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.[ii]
Because they are not permitted to become citizens, the Rohingya have also faced restrictions to their freedom of movement and limited access to state education and civil service jobs.[iii] The 2017 clearance operations by the Myanmar military are estimated to have killed 24,000 and left many more injured, tortured or raped.[iv] The Myanmar military burned villages to force the Rohingya to flee, then seized the land to build new military bases.[v] The clearance operations were recognized as a genocide by the U.S. government in 2022, and the UNOHCHR-commissioned Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFM) found that the Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya was an ethnic cleansing.[vi] At least 670,000 Rohingya people had fled to Bangladesh by early 2018, with other large populations forcibly displaced to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Nepal.[vii] In all these countries, Rohingya refugees continue to endure discrimination, privation and ongoing violations to their human rights.
Approximately 919,000 forcibly displaced Rohingya[2] currently live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.[viii] Refugees live in overcrowded conditions and have significantly enlarged the population of the town of Cox’s Bazar and the surrounding region, straining its resources and infrastructure.[ix] In the past five years, Bangladeshi authorities and humanitarian organizations have provided basic emergency assistance such as food, shelter and medical and health services. Despite this, conditions in the camps remain challenging, with limited access to services, education, food, clean water and proper sanitation. The camps are also dangerous: residents are at risk from deadly fires, high levels of violence from other residents and armed groups operating within the camps and abuses by Bangladeshi police.[x]
Memory
There have been no specific state-led or state-funded memorialization initiatives undertaken by the military junta of Myanmar, the NUG or the governments of Bangladesh or other host countries for Rohingya refugees. All civil society or community-led memory initiatives for Rohingya communities in Bangladesh must be authorized and regulated by Bangladeshi authorities.
Community and Civil Society Initiatives
Because of the mass displacement caused by the Myanmar military’s clearance operations, community- and civil society-led memory initiatives largely take place in the diaspora and in virtual spaces. These efforts have been supported by Bangladeshi non-state institutions and by international NGOs focused on memory preservation. They are focused on documenting the experiences of victims and survivors, and also on preserving Rohingya cultural heritage now that the Rohingya people are separated from their traditional homelands and culturally significant sites.
Initiatives in Collaboration with the Liberation War Museum
Since 2017, the Liberation War Museum (LWM) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has led a number of Rohingya memory initiatives. Through its Center for the Study of Genocide and Justice, originally founded to raise awareness of the Bengali genocide of 1971, the LWM has documented the experiences of survivors, facilitated memorial art projects and published books centering Rohingya perspectives.
In March 2019, the LWM and the AJAR began a project, with support and collaboration from GIJTR, to facilitate healing and memorialization through collective storytelling. The project engaged more than 80 Rohingya women living in the camps of Cox’s Bazar[i] to reflect on their life experiences by embroidering panels for quilts. Each panel was intended to express the memories, feelings, hopes and dreams of its creator.[ii] The participants have since woven three quilts, sewing their individual narratives into one collective voice. The quilts were exhibited online in May 2020 to bring the stories of the Rohingya to national and international audiences. Following this, two graphic novels, The Quilt for Memory and Hope and Quilting for Justice, were released in 2019 and 2021, respectively. In addition to telling the story of the quilts, the graphic novels highlighted community solidarity and international justice mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice and the ICC.[iii]
In August 2020, the LWM produced a documentary, A Mandolin in Exile, for the third Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day.[iv] The film follows folk musician Mohammad Hossain as he travels across the camps in Cox’s Bazar. The LWM also partnered with Harvard University’s Asia Center in 2020 to produce the “Thread Exhibit,” an online exhibition showcasing Rohingya history through artwork and images created by Rohingya people living in Cox’s Bazar.[v]
In June 2022, the LWM, the Cox’s Bazar Art Club, Rohingyatographer, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) commemorated World Refugee Day with “Amra Rohingya,” an exhibit of 50 photographs taken by 10 Rohingya artists living in the Cox’s Bazar camps.[vi] The photographs were paired with similar photos of Bangladeshi refugees from the 1971 Liberation War. The exhibit, displayed in Cox’s Bazar, explored themes such as “memory, hope, dreams, faith, beauty, craftsmanship, grief, loss and love.”
Rohingya Cultural Memory Center
Inaugurated in December 2021, the International Organization for Migration’s Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) is the first-ever attempt to comprehensively document and preserve Rohingya cultural heritage with the participation of survivors.[i] It brings together Rohingya knowledge, oral traditions, collective and individual memory, indigenous practices, knowledge practitioners and artists into one collaborative space.
The RCMC is an intergenerational memory center located in one of the Cox’s Bazar’s camps, free and accessible to all Rohingya community members residing there. The center’s design is inspired by Rohingya dwelling structures and is crafted from materials such as bamboo and Nipa palm leaves, which are used to construct houses in Myanmar. The RCMC displays items representing Rohingya cultural heritage, such as paintings, boats, palanquin and other objects.[ii] Rohingya artisans involved in the site’s creation have expressed appreciation for the unique initiative that allows their grandchildren to learn the Rohingya culture.[iii] A Rohingya refugee said, “This center provides us a platform to maintain our vital Rohingya arts and culture. It gives us an opportunity to express our creativity, aspirations, memories and feelings through our arts. It also helps us relieve the stress of living as refugees, forcibly displaced from [our] homeland. Our artwork—especially our music—can play a key role in reducing [our] stress and bringing smiles to our faces.”[iv]
Several international organizations and governments support the RCMC, although Myanmar’s military junta has formally expressed its disapproval of the site.[v] The International Organization for Migration has also made the memory center and its contents available online to reach a global audience. Although the RCMC has helped refugees feel more connected to their culture and helped to ensure that Rohingya culture will be preserved, it is worth noting that it does not claim to serve as a place of memory for the atrocities the Rohingya people have endured.
Rohingyatographer Magazine
Rohingyatographer is a refugee-led initiative that seeks to memorialize Rohingya experiences. Produced by a team of Rohingya youth living in the Cox’s Bazar camps, this unique photography magazine showcases life in the camps and humanizes Rohingya communities. Its purpose is to ensure Rohingya are known not simply for their marginalization, but also for their creativity, talent and aspirations for the future.[i] The publication’s first issue was released in summer 2022.
Justice
The Rohingya have been demanding justice and accountability for many years. The NUG has promised to create accountability mechanisms or reparative or restorative justice programs in addition to repatriating Rohingya and granting them citizenship. However, the NUG is engaged in an ongoing political and military struggle for territorial control of Myanmar and has not yet had the opportunity to test its commitment to these promises. The military-controlled government of Myanmar has rejected all calls for justice for the Rohingya—an unsurprising position, since many members of the military government would likely find themselves subject to any accountability process.
State-Led Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
Neither the military-controlled government of Myanmar, the NUG, nor the government of Bangladesh have initiated accountability or truth-telling initiatives to address the experiences of the Rohingya. Bangladesh is cooperating with ICC inquiries, albeit by facilitating visits from the prosecutor of the ICC to meet with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.[i]
International Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
International entities have undertaken a number of investigations into violations against the Rohingya people since 2017. All have been opposed by the military-controlled government.[ii] In March 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council launched the fact finding mission to establish the facts and circumstances of human rights violations by military and security forces in Myanmar.[iii] The FFM completed its final report in 2019 and transferred the evidence it gathered to the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), also a UN Human Rights Council body empowered to collect evidence of international crimes for possible future prosecution.[iv] The IIMM visited Bangladesh in May 2022, after which it confirmed that “the Rohingya remain the target of a Government attack aimed at erasing the identity and removing them from Myanmar…amounting to crimes against humanity,”[v] and advised that returning Rohingya to Myanmar was impossible at that time.
Current Procedures Before the ICC and ICJ
The FFM recommended that the UN Security Council refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.[vi] If the Security Council declines to do so, the IIMM recommends that the UN General Assembly create an ad hoc international criminal tribunal and bring a case against Myanmar before the ICJ for violating the Genocide Convention. The ICJ is currently considering a case against Myanmar filed by The Gambia in 2019[vii] and opposed by the government of Myanmar.[viii] The ICJ held that it had jurisdiction to hear the case in July 2022, after which both the United Kingdom and Germany indicated that they would intervene in support of The Gambia.[ix]
The Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC authorized the prosecutor in 2019 to investigate crimes of deportation and persecution on the basis of ethnicity or religion against the Rohingya.[x] Myanmar is not currently a party to the Rome Statute, but Bangladesh is and has accepted jurisdiction of the ICC for the Rohingya living within its territory.[xi] The prosecutor’s office conducted its first investigative visit to Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar in February 2022, meeting with refugees, women and youth activists and religious leaders.[xii]
Universal Jurisdiction Claim in Argentina
In November 2019, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK) filed a lawsuit in Argentinian courts alleging genocide and crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya community under the principle of universal jurisdiction. As a result, in May 2020, Argentina’s Federal Criminal Chamber No. 1 opened an investigation against Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi and senior military officials.[xiii] The case was initially dismissed in July 2021, but after BROUK appealed, Rohingya women testified remotely in the case before the Federal Criminal Appeals Court.[xiv] This was the first time Rohingya were able to speak about their experiences before a court of any kind.[xv] The Federal Appeals Court ordered the case to proceed in November 2021, noting that the IIMM would facilitate the complex task of evidence collection.[xvi] In response, Myanmar’s military government ordered all military personnel in January 2022 not to respond to summons or arrest warrants from either the ICC or the Argentinian judiciary.
Legal, Political or Social Constraints to Accountability
The various justice processes before national and international courts require significant funding and coordination because of the complexity of cross-border investigations, logistic requirements and the need to work in multiple languages to ensure access to justice for the victims, witnesses and defendants. The physical distance between victims and the geographic locations of the courts further complicates efforts to achieve accountability and communicate the procedures back to the affected communities. Additional time and resources are therefore required to create Regional Mission Offices, recruit staff and ensure efficient and accurate translation of evidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the historic denial of education to much of the Rohingya community.
Education
Access to education represents not just a right but also agency, identity and self-determination. Rohingya children have been deprived of education since at least 2012, when violence between Muslim Rohingya and Burmese Buddhists closed schools and displaced more than 140,000 Rohingya.[i] As a result, fewer than 45 percent of Rohingya children have completed a year or more of schooling in Myanmar, and fewer than 10 percent attend school beyond the primary level.[ii]
Education Initiatives in Bangladesh
Aid agencies have worked to assess and meet the educational needs of Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar camps since 2019 but have often been operating on an emergency footing. According to UNICEF, approximately 220,000 Rohingya children have received pre-primary through second grade education since 2019 through temporary learning centers[1] it constructed under the Learning Competency Framework and Approach (LCFA).[iii] Rohingya religious leaders also provide religious instruction in Arabic and Islamic studies through mosques and informal madrasas or maqtabs within the camps.
The government of Bangladesh granted approval for humanitarian organizations to operate schools in the camps, using Rohingya teachers and the Myanmar national curriculum, but altered course and banned Rohingya-led schools in 2021.[iv] This decision closed 30 schools and excluded almost 32,000 students from classrooms.[v] Some teachers attempted to continue with informal instruction, but they were reportedly threatened with forcible relocation to Bhashan Char by Bangladeshi authorities.[vi] People participating in informal education during this period also reported having their identity cards, which are necessary to access camp services, taken from them by camp officials.[vii]
Rohingya and international groups advocated strongly for use of the Myanmar national curriculum. After a substantial delay due to the school closures and the COVID-19 pandemic,[viii] Bangladeshi authorities reauthorized a pilot use of the curriculum in December 2021. Since then, the curriculum has been piloted with 10,000[ix] Rohingya children from 16 camps across Cox’s Bazar and three schools in Bhashan Char.[x] The curriculum will be used in all camp learning centers in 2023.[xi] Its use has not been approved by the Myanmar government, but it makes a number of significant contributions to the situation of Rohingya refugees. First, it expands standardized education to include children at grade levels six through nine, an age group that had previously not had an opportunity to attend school.[xii] Additionally, the substance of the curriculum and the language in which it is taught strengthens Rohingya children’s connection to their native country.[xiii] Finally, it pairs trained and certified Bangladeshi and international instructors with Rohingya teachers, both contributing to livelihoods within the camps and helping to close the gap in trained Rohingya instructors.[xiv] For these reasons, the curriculum represents a significant milestone in the effort to ensure access to education for all Rohingya children. However, it does not at this time include explicit truth components.
GIJTR in Depth
Documenting the truth of what people have endured is an essential element of accountability and peaceful futures. GIJTR’s work with Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar has focused on empowering individuals and communities to take the lead in telling their stories, particularly women and other marginalized groups. Since 2019, GIJTR has 22 Bangladeshi facilitators and 352 Rohingya participants in different communities of Cox’s Bazar working on principles and methodologies for documentation, including memorialization, advocacy, accountability and future atrocity prevention. Many of the newly trained documenters are women who would likely have been excluded from traditional documentation efforts; one-third of them are illiterate and most were unemployed. GIJTR has also worked with local partners to support culturally legitimate forms of memorialization and truth-telling. Art and cultural expression, such as quilting and textile projects, have offered Rohingya refugees a way to share the impact of the violence they have endured and in some cases are still enduring. Art has also been a way for Rohingya creators to show their resilience.
Recommendations
The UN and international organizations should facilitate a Rohingya-led truth-telling process within the camps at Cox’s Bazar and in other areas with sizeable Rohingya populations, culminating in a comprehensive report and memorial practices to acknowledge and validate Rohingya experiences, before the elderly population passes away or the population moves elsewhere.
The NUG government should affirm its commitment to the Rohingya by repealing the 1982 Citizenship Law denying Rohingya citizenship and cooperating with international justice mechanisms, including the ICC, ICJ and IIMM.
Rohingya community and diaspora groups should create written, visual and oral presentations of Rohingya history and culture that can be shared among refugee communities to educate Rohingya youth about the past and connect them with their heritage.
The NUG government should support truth-telling, memory and documentation efforts in areas of Myanmar it controls.
Notes
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