"Ethnic Cleansing" by Shayla

Months ago the Rohingya would have never thought that they would be driven out of their homes and be an object of forced migration into neighboring countries during a time of ethnic cleansing. Known as the “world’s most persecuted minority,” the Rohingya are a Muslim majority ethnic group who have been housed in Myanmar, a Buddhist nation. They are currently the product of ethnic cleansing: a “legal” way to form homogeneity between cultures and groups of people through ways such as deportation and destruction of sacred sites.

During British rule, a large number of labourers migrated into the Myanmar area, which was later called “illegal: and they should refuse citizenship to the majority of Rohingya.” After Myanmar gained independence, the Rohingya were originally granted identification and citizenship, some even holding governmental positions. In 1962, however, Myanmar military changed identification laws and labeled Rohingya as “terrorists” by the State Chancellor, resulting in many of the Rohingya being left out of job availability and housing. Tension and disrespect continued into 1982 when the Rohingya were officially declared stateless. Paperwork and governmental releases were hard to come by for the Rohingya to be able to legally continue in their everyday life, and many (up to 500,000 people) decided to flee to neighboring places, such as Bangladesh, in order to put the most recent part of their life behind them. Sadly, surrounding countries are denying entrance to the Rohingya, causing many to be caught in a “no man’s land” between two countries. Many have also put their lives in danger by trying to cross the Bay of Bengal to get into Malaysia.

Rohingya flee to Myanmar’s neighboring areas due to hate and disrespect by Myanmar people.

We learn more about Rohingya each day that the crisis continues on. Rape and protests are  normal, and many children and youth are even being sold as sex slaves. A story of a girl named Khartoun describes men saying, “I will choke you. I will hurt you. I will stab you. I will kill you. Do you want to be killed the way the military kills people in Myanmar?”, and this is just one account. Government troops have torched houses and living spaces, which they later denied doing. Aung San Suu Kyi condemned a “huge iceberg of misinformation” on the Rohingya, without mentioning anything about families fleeing to Bangladesh. Many outsiders have been tuning in to what all is occurring and voicing their opinions. The United Nations’ top human rights’ official calls this crisis “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” and an anonymous Rohingya declares that “this is state-run ethnic cleansing. Nothing else.”

Rohingya houses are destroyed and set to burn by Myanmar government troops.

Ethnic cleansing is defined as the attempt to get rid of members of an unwanted ethnic group in order to establish an ethnically homogenous area through events such as displacement, mass killing, or deportation. The biggest and most popular example of ethnic cleansing is clearly the reign of Adolf Hitler in the Holocaust. Millions of stories have been written and hundreds of movies have been directed about this tragic event: one that will be marked down in history for thousands of centuries to come. Movements by Nazis started as deportation and displacement of Jews into different countries, but then turned to what was almost the mass extinction of the Jewish people. Another example of ethnic cleansing occurred in the ninth and seventh centuries B.C. when the Assyrian Empire forced millions of people into conquered lands to resettle.

The Holocaust was one of the largest and most easily identified versions of ethnic cleansing.

There have been disputes on what to define the Rohingya crisis as… some calling it genocide, others calling it ethnic cleansing. Genocide is an illegal act, and it is said that the outcome is to physically destroy entire racial and religious groups. The aim of ethnic cleansing is to legally establish homogeneity which can be achieved by different methods than mass killing. Mr. Kyaw Min who lives in Myanmar’s capital says, “The Rohingya are finished in our country. Soon we will all be dead or gone.” Which do you think is occurring in Rohingya as we speak? Is this a good thing?

To personally understand the seriousness of these events and the tragic consequences that could occur when this happens, imagine that you are an eight-year-old child living in a low-income area with your single mother and four siblings. You are the minority of all ethnic groups that you are surrounded by, and recently you have heard stories about your kind being forced out of their homes and left to die on the streets. You just got enrolled into a school that cost almost all your mother had, and you are living off one meal a day because the government had denied your access to food stamps or a way of receiving money to buy groceries. Three days later the stories of forced migration become widely known, and you have been kicked out of your home and country. You try to cross multiple borders, but with no man around to protect you and your family, you have been a victim of rape during your journey. You are starving. Your sisters are always asking questions, and your feet are killing you from constant activity. Both your mental and physical health are declining, and you are giving up hope. What are you going to do?

Ranging from a large loss of population, to hundreds of acres of land becoming uninhabitable, traditions, culture, and language can become endangered when ethnic cleansing occurs. With the world constantly increasing at a higher and higher rate each year, you wouldn’t think that an area could be in a situation where the population is at a negative population growth rate percentage. However, ethnic cleansing can wipe out a population in no time, and the negative growth rate could easily come into play. In the eyes of the perpetrators, the job is successfully getting done to form more homogeneity. Yet, the small details that result from this occurrence can negatively affect the people causing the problem.

As we know, both ethnic cleansing and genocide can be accomplished in many ways. Whether it’s achieved by destroying homes and social places or burning religious sites, ethnic cleansing has a long-lasting side effect in almost every situation. When forming homogeneity, personal space and belongings are not cared for; nor is the land that these people have harvested and prospered from for centuries. When the major event has passed and rebuilding begins, victims of ethnic cleansing find out that their previous homeland is almost always uninhabitable. If ethnic cleansing occurred in an area like Japan where arithmetic and physiological population densities are already at a staggering low, the country could be in more trouble than they thought. Demographic changes also occur, and we can see this when we study the Rohingya crisis. So many people have moved from Myanmar and into neighboring areas that the “leftover land” is empty and decrepit. When you look at it from a bird’s eye perspective, (like shown in the picture) you can easily see the changes that ethnic cleansing has on our landscape.

                Top: Demographic changes due to ethnic cleansing.

          Bottom: As a result of ethnic cleansing, Rohingya land and living spaces are forever ruined.

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