The Causes and Consequences of Forced Migration and Internal Displacement of the Rohingya in Myanmar

Discuss the causes and consequences of forced migration and internal displacement of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

                              People migrate to as an intention to improve the quality of life. There are currently 244 million migrants worldwide, people will either migrate through voluntary migration in which they have the ability to choose, typically deciding to migrate through push factors that contain a higher economical benefit than the area in which they are in, or forced migration in which they have to migrate away from the area that they are in as the conditions of life are very dangerous and severe, factors that cause forced migration may include: conflict within their country of origin, natural disasters, famine, ethnic cleansing and such, these factors causes the people living in that area to be in danger thus giving them no choice but to migrate away. As a result, migrants will either migrate internationally or internally; migrating internationally means that the migrants will move over national boundaries into a different country making international migrants classified as refugees, illegal immigrants and legal immigrants. Refugees are migrants which cross an international border to escape persecution, this is caused by forced migration. Illegal immigrants are immigrants who are migrating without any legal permission such as visas, thus typically making them more prone to exploitation. Legal immigrants are immigrants who migrate with legal permission of the receiver nation which can be obtained in many circumstances such as getting offered a job in the receiver nation or having a partner whose nationality is of the receiver nation. On the other hand, internally displaced migrants mean that the migrant moves to a different administrative territory such as between states, provinces, cities or municipalities. Migrants may choose to migrant internally to receive better access to education, economic improvement, natural disasters or civil disturbance.

 The Rohingya people are people from Rakhine state, Myanmar whose population is estimated to be around 1 million in 2015. This group of people believes in Muslim practices whilst 90% of the nation believes in Buddhist practices, this makes them a small Muslim population in a large Buddhist nation. Conflicts in religious practices has caused this small Muslim population to be severely mistreated by the government forcing them to migrate externally and internally from Rakhine state. Over 1.5 million Rohingyas have migrated externally to nearby countries: Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh as illegal immigrants. As a result, this act of migration from the Rohingya people which was forced by the Burmese government will have major consequences politically, socially and economically not just in Myanmar but worldwide.

                 This religious conflict can be traced back to the 2nd world war, when Myanmar was still ruled by the British. During that time the conflict started from the 2 religions supporting different sides during the war, the Rohingyas sided with the British colonialists whilst the majority of the population which is Buddhist sided with the Japanese Invaders. Rohingya engaged in armed combat with Burmese Buddhists who supported the Japanese against the British, which degenerated into cycles of retributive violence on the village level. Ever since Myanmar gained their independence from Britain in 1948, the country has faced several political issues mainly from the military. When the military took over in 1962 the military targeted the Rohingyas because the Rohingyas were supporting the British which were ruling Myanmar before their independence in 1948 thus creating conflict between the military and the Rohingyas due to the fact that the military did not want to be under British control yet the Rohingyas still supported them during that time. As the military took over soldiers created fierce nationalism based on the country’s buddhist identity, and since the military coup caused major chaos they needed a common enemy to reunite the population of Myanmar that were 90% Buddhist; which were the Rohingyas as they are Muslims, a different ethnic group than the majority of the population which are Buddhists, this created tension between the 2 religions, another reason why the Rohingyas were targeted was because they have a different appearance than the majority of the population, making them an ethnic minority group that is easy to distinguish.

In 1977 the military launched an operation called Dragon King, the operation was focused on the disarmament and expulsion of Rohingya insurgents in the area causing an abuse towards the Rohingya, this resulted in over 200,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. In 1982 the government passed the citizenship act recognizing 135 ethnic groups however the Rohingya with a population of 1 million were not on the list which made them become stateless people by the law.

The Myanmar government has effectively institutionalized discrimination against the Rohingya which can be seen through restrictions on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement; acting as very strong push factors for migration. For example, Rohingya couples are only allowed to have two children. Rohingya also needs to ask for permission in order to marry, which may require them to bribe authorities and provide photographs of the bride without a headscarf and the groom with a clean-shaven face, practices that conflict with Muslim rules. To move to a new home or travel outside their townships, Rohingya must gain government approval which is very hard to attain for them. Additionally, Rakhine State where most Rohingyas are is Myanmar’s least developed state, with a poverty rate of 78 percent, compared to the 37.5 percent national average. Diagram 1 on the right highlights the pressing abuses of the Burmese government towards the Rohingya. Hence, the severely inhumane acts towards the Rohingya gives them no choice but to migrate internally to refugee camps near to border and externally mostly to neighboring countries such as Thailand and Bangladesh, all as an attempt to seek a better life. [pic 1]

             Migrating internally to refugee camps near the border can have major consequences for the migrants due to the lack of resources allocated to the camps by the government whilst having increasing numbers of migrants moving to the camp. This results in the camp being over crowded thus causing a scarcity of food, a lack of sanitation which makes the migrants more prone to diseases such as cholera and malnutrition. Additionally the doctors within the camps are not hospital grade doctors who have to work with limited resources of healthcare such as medicine, this results in many of the refugees in the camp losing their lives. The fact that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants migrating to other countries makes them more prone to exploitation in countries that they move to.