Page 381 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

History CONTEXTS 379
Back in Rakhine
Meanwhile, the plight of the long-suffering Rohingya remained as bad as ever.
Simmering tensions in Rakhine, which had been bubbling up throughout 2012–14,
erupted once again in October 2016 after the killing of nine border police officers by
Rohingya militants. The military response was swift and brutal, with widespread
reports of grotesque human-rights violations at the hands of security forces – although
given that all reporters were excluded from the region, precise details are difficult to
obtain. Hundreds of eyewitnesses have testified to innumerable atrocities, including the
murder of civilians (many children among them) and the widespread rape of Rohingya
women, while satellite imagery published by Human Rights Watch showed around
1250 Rohingya houses burned to the ground. The military are also said to have used
helicopter gunships against unarmed villagers, while refugees fleeing on boats were also
shot at. Nearly 70,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh with a further 23,000 internally
displaced. The exact number of those killed remains unclear, although many fleeing
Rohingya stated that they had lost at least one family member. Following a prolonged
international outcry, in March 2017 the UN Human Rights Council voted to
investigate alleged human rights abuses by Myanmar’s army – although whether this
will help improve the lot of the Rohingya themselves seems unlikely, and Aung San
Suu Kyi herself has already spoken out against the investigation.
The sense of national unease was further intensified by the assassination of leading
lawyer and NLD advisor Ko Ni by a hired gunman in broad daylight at Yangon Airport
in January 2017 – one of the few prominent Muslim public figures in the country, and
widely credited with masterminding the creation of the post State Counsellor for Aung
San Suu Kyi the previous year. His funeral attracted thousands of mourners from across
the religious spectrum – although not the person he had helped to ease into power,
Aung San Suu Kyi herself. Exactly who ordered the murder remains unclear, although
widespread rumours have hinted at complicit military involvement, with the killing
intended, it’s been suggested, to warn those who might attempt to curtail the armed
forces’ still immense powers.

Towards 2020
Not surprisingly, the NLD government has been able to call on deep reserves of
national and international goodwill, while there is also considerable sympathy for the
unrealistic expectations it must attempt to manage in the face of huge political and
economic challenges. In addition, the government is also hamstrung by its lack of any
control over the armed forces and by the still shadowy sense (exacerbated by the killing
of Ko Ni) that the military may yet seize back control should their power be seriously
challenged or the integrity of the nation threatened by ethnic unrest, as it was in 1962.
Positives are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Ethnic conflict, Rohingya
repression and anti-Muslim discrimination continue, while freedom of the press (see
p.40) – expected to flourish under the NLD – has in fact been curtailed, with restraints
now allegedly worse than they were under Thein Sein, and critics of the NLD regularly
thrown into jail on the flimsiest pretexts. Meanwhile, state-run newspapers continue to
publish laboriously pro-government propaganda, with distorted coverage of events in
Rakhine particularly. Aung San Suu Kyi herself, who once spoke weekly from the gates

2008 2010
Cyclone Nargis devastates the Delta, killing First general elections in twenty years are won
around 130,000 people; the government leaves by military-backed USDP; Thein Sein becomes
many survivors to die, while blocking all offers of Myanmar’s new leader; Aung San Suu Kyi is released
international assistance from house arrest

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