Roots of ethnic conflict in Rakhine state
Fred RosenPublished: Oct 11, 2014 2:18 AM | Updated: Oct 11, 2014 9:14 AM
I am sitting with Kyaw as he finishes his work at the scullery of the restaurant where he works. He is showing me the pictures he has saved in his mobile. It is an amazing collection. Amongst personal snapshots of himself and friends, there are pictures of naked women downloaded from the Internet, pious Buddhist images (he is Buddhist), pictures of memorabilia from Rakhine state, Myanmar, and, alas, flowers (he says these words in English, whereas the rest of our conversation is in Malay).
A few pictures intrigued me. One was of very old coins from the ancient kingdom of Arakan; one had a cow (he stated that in ancient times, the cow could not be eaten); another had ancient Arakanese script (Arakanese is a language related to Burmese, though they are mutually largely unintelligible); and a third showing the Arakanese coat-of-arms.
Inevitably, in my experience with other workers from Rakhine, there are also images of Mrauk-U, the old Arakanese royal capital whose impressive ruins still stand today. It is not very often visited by tourists, and is far less famous than its considerably better known (and more ancient) counterpart, namely, Pagan or Bagan, the old Burmese royal capital in Central Burma. Yet the ruins of Mrauk-U still look very impressive...
I am sitting with Kyaw as he finishes his work at the scullery of the restaurant where he works. He is showing me the pictures he has saved in his mobile. It is an amazing collection. Amongst personal snapshots of himself and friends, there are pictures of naked women downloaded from the Internet, pious Buddhist images (he is Buddhist), pictures of memorabilia from Rakhine state, Myanmar, and, alas, flowers (he says these words in English, whereas the rest of our conversation is in Malay).
A few pictures intrigued me. One was of very old coins from the ancient kingdom of Arakan. One had a cow; he stated that in ancient times, the cow could not be eaten. Another had ancient Arakanese script (Arakanese is a language related to Burmese, though they are mutually largely unintelligible), and in one more, the Arakanese coat of arms.
Inevitably, in my experience with other workers from Rakhine state, there are also images of Mrauk-U, the old Arakanese royal capital whose impressive ruins still stand today. It is not very often visited by tourists and is far less famous than its considerably better known (and more ancient) counterpart, namely, Pagan or Bagan, the old Burmese royal capital in Central Burma. Yet the ruins of Mrauk-U still look very impressive.
Just as several of his co-workers who are also Arakanese (or Rakhine), he also has a tattoo of the coat of arms of Arakan on his biceps. He shows me the old Arakanese script (vaguely similar to today's Burmese script). He says he knows it and starts reciting the names of the letters aloud, one by one. The names sound similar to those of Burmese letters that I once learned.
Until recently, the Myanmar government forbade the teaching of the Arakanese language. In fact, the Rakhine or Arakanese are one of the historically oppressed minorities of Myanmar. Kyaw is as a consequence a United Nations refugee. He proudly shows me his UN refugee card - the card that one day will guarantee that he will never ever have to return to his beloved homeland if he does not feel like it.
I cannot help but feel the contradiction here - between his constant reference to Arakan, and mentoring me in things Arakanese (we have known each other for some time), and his expressed desire never to return to Myanmar; not even for a visit, he makes a point of telling me. He also makes a point of teaching me how to say his name in the Arakanese way, whereas until then, I had been unwittingly saying it in the Burmese way.
Old kingdom
To put a long, complex history in a nutshell, today's Rakhine state is the old core of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious (i.e. Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim) kingdom of Mrauk-U that once stretched over lands now belonging to Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India. It once traded far and wide, with China, Persia, Arabia, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Conquered and destroyed by the Burmese in the late 18th century, it was later taken over by the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-5. Most of the rest of today's Myanmar only became a colony from 1885. Rakhine state therefore does have a history that is somewhat separate from that of the rest of the country. It also has its own language, that the rest of Myanmar cannot really understand in spite of the fact that it is related to Burmese, the national language.
While I talk to Kyaw, I wonder, however, what the meaning of history here is. His friend Maung Shwe tells me that Rakhine people are 100 percent Buddhist. I find this statement most interesting, especially in the light of the recent conflict between the Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya, many of which are also refugees in Malaysia. Interesting, and slightly also scary for it implies that if you are not Buddhist you do not really belong in Rakhine state.
I sense that Kyaw's delving into his own place's ancient history, and in particular his high regard for Mrauk-U and its legacy (foremost amongst which is obviously Buddhism, even though historians tell us the old kingdom was a multi-religious entity from its start back in the 14th century), are not exactly merely antiquarian interests.
Ethnic conflict
Ethnic conflict all over the world has been endlessly discussed not only in the media, but also in countless scholarly publications. Nowadays we all live under the spectre of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 or the Bosnian War after the break-up of the old Yugoslavia. As I write, conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine has risen to a very dangerous pitch, and talk of war is routinely bandied around by both sides.
We could perhaps venture therefore that ethnic conflict is an almost humdrum, if extremely sad and regrettable, reality of today's world. Nonetheless, I probe Kyaw further, pestering him with endless questions about his background and life in Myanmar. I suspect there is more to it than meets the eye. After all, ethnic conflict, even of a deadly kind, as has been the case in recent times in Rakhine state, is not something that can be taken for granted.
Whatever other roots the conflict there may have - historical ones, for instance - it must be admitted that in Ukraine, for instance, many years of inept governance and a faltering, incompetent state, are certainly a factor. If Ukraine looks bad enough, Myanmar also sounds fairly disturbing from what I glean from Kyaw's accounts.
His family can be described as dirt poor or near destitute. They did not have enough to eat (though they did not go hungry either); also, they could not afford to send their children even to the admittedly bad government schools. Instead, Kyaw, like many Rakhine (and other Myanmar) boys, was simply handed over to the local Buddhist monastery.
I have come across several such cases in my conversations with Myanmar workers. Though a stint at a monastery seems nearly compulsory for Myanmar Buddhist boys and young men, in Kyaw's case that period stretched to several years in a row. In fact, he practically grew up inside the monastery, again not unlike many other poor-to-destitute boys in Rakhine state and elsewhere in Myanmar.
The monks fed him (an important reason for his family to keep him at the monastery) and also taught him his letters. I am afraid they may also have impressed on him not only a few religious precepts, but also the local ethnic nationalism (strongly tinted with Buddhist overtones as various reports in the media remind us again and again). It is therefore very, very hard to avoid the impression that, whatever the actual, no doubt considerable, weight of Arakan's wondrous, distinctive past, on Kyaw's consciousness, his society's identity, oppression and poverty are far from inconsiderable details.
The other not inconsiderable detail is alas religious indoctrination, even though it may not necessarily have originally had a vicious intention to it. After all, there is nothing in Buddhism itself that mandates the kind of aggressive, and even murderous behaviour, shown by the crowds in Rakhine state confronting their often equally aggressive (and, it is important to note, equally pious) adversaries, namely the Rohingya.
Resource-rich state
The tales of struggle to make a living simply pour forth endlessly from Kyaw's accounts of his life. He tells me for instance how buying food is expensive, if you do not grow it yourself, to the point that sometimes you can hardly afford a simple meal; that though Rakhine state exports gas, people in his village went without any. Not to mention that telephone, the Internet, and even electricity are simply luxuries to many even today.
Rakhine state has rich natural resources: agricultural and marine products for instance are abundant. Kyaw tells me the fish in his state is much better and more plentiful than in Malacca, where he lives; and that it is furthermore considerably cheaper too. The state also has gas reserves that are now being piped to China and a seafront coveted as a way out to sea both by India (whose northeast is completely landlocked) and China (whose southern half is equally far from its own coast).
Yet this naturally resource-rich state and prime gateway to the Indian Ocean is inhabited by millions of very poor people. I feel this predicament is not merely a failure of governance: it is in fact so serious, so deeply rooted and widespread, that it amounts to a failure of cosmopolitanism and human solidarity.
Entire generations have been affected by it, and there is virtually no end in sight to the damage as yet. All the Rakhine workers I know are young; some are very young (one I met was in fact only 15). I have also met four brothers, all of which have been working in Malaysia for years now. There is in fact nothing for them to do back home.
Therefore, ethnicity and religion in, say, Scotland, are one thing; in a place like Rakhine state, they have a different meaning, a few similarities aside. Differently to Kachin state, which has had a long-standing Kachin Independence Army (KIA) often locked into armed conflict with the Burmese army, the Rakhine do not have an army (in fact, I am told by a Kachin worker that they sometimes join KIA). Yet the desire for autonomy is very real, from what I have seen.
Real though it is, it is rooted not only or mostly in the sense of an ancient history stretching back to the glorious times of Mrauk-U. That ancient history nowadays is brought up in a context of such destitution and oppression that it is hard to see it as perhaps only nostalgia. In fact, it almost feels like a plank floating in the sea that a shipwrecked person hangs on to in utter desperation lest he or she sink into the depths.
I ponder all this, after several late night conversations with Kyaw, in which he always entreats me to share with him a bottle of what is to me unspeakably horrid-tasting, but, for him, all the same moderately affordable whisky. Though I have read quite a few scholarly works on ethnicity and even ethnic conflict in my life, I have no conclusion to offer here.
Moreover, I cannot believe that all this is about being Rakhine as such. It is about being human, albeit under the distinctive guise of a Rakhine. The Rakhine hate other people and occasionally murder them not because of 'ethnicity' or 'ethnic conflict', or even 'religion', even though all these are certainly weighty factors, but because they cannot be free.
Freedom from want is also an important human freedom, as Amartya Sen among others has indicated. They export gas to China and yet their kitchens have no gas and no electricity either; the sea abounds in fish and the land is fertile and yet they struggle to find food for their tables.
An international gas terminal and seaport are rising on their shores, and yet these will not directly benefit the poorest Rakhine, whatever pundits say, particularly not in a country where resource appropriation by a few to the detriment of many is almost a law of the land.
‘Malaysia no happy’
Kyaw obviously feels deeply connected to his land. And yet he is never going to return there, as he tells me again and again. Instead, he is in Malaysia, and feels furthermore uneasy about going to the United States, without knowing more than a couple of words in English.
Of course he is unwilling to stay on in Malaysia even if he could. Malaysia to him is synonymous with a sexless life of endless toil, very expensive liquor, and a place where if he does not work he cannot even feed himself. “Malaysia no happy,” he emphatically tells me in his limited broken English that nonetheless says book-loads.
It is difficult for me not to empathise. It is also equally difficult not to feel that he is in between countries, deeply attached to Arakan as he is (both old and new), a refugee in Malaysia, and would-be American citizen of the future.
I also muse that many people in Malaysia will never live through what he has experienced, and yet none of them will ever find themselves eventually in the US either. In fact, as I listen to Kyaw, the contradictions teem with such vigour and cogency in my head that I can scarcely collect my thoughts together to write a proper piece on all this.
Next to Kyaw's predicament and that of millions of his countrymen and women, hundreds of learned papers on ethnicity and ethnic conflict sound almost like sheer, irrelevant drudgery.
FRED ROSEN has been gallivanting around South-East Asia for quite some time now. He is interested in foreign communities in Malaysia’s large cities. He has also been writing about Malacca, both in the present and the past, as well as other ancient port cities in the Indian Ocean.
A few pictures intrigued me. One was of very old coins from the ancient kingdom of Arakan. One had a cow; he stated that in ancient times, the cow could not be eaten. Another had ancient Arakanese script (Arakanese is a language related to Burmese, though they are mutually largely unintelligible), and in one more, the Arakanese coat of arms.
Inevitably, in my experience with other workers from Rakhine state, there are also images of Mrauk-U, the old Arakanese royal capital whose impressive ruins still stand today. It is not very often visited by tourists and is far less famous than its considerably better known (and more ancient) counterpart, namely, Pagan or Bagan, the old Burmese royal capital in Central Burma. Yet the ruins of Mrauk-U still look very impressive.Just as several of his co-workers who are also Arakanese (or Rakhine), he also has a tattoo of the coat of arms of Arakan on his biceps. He shows me the old Arakanese script (vaguely similar to today's Burmese script). He says he knows it and starts reciting the names of the letters aloud, one by one. The names sound similar to those of Burmese letters that I once learned.
Until recently, the Myanmar government forbade the teaching of the Arakanese language. In fact, the Rakhine or Arakanese are one of the historically oppressed minorities of Myanmar. Kyaw is as a consequence a United Nations refugee. He proudly shows me his UN refugee card - the card that one day will guarantee that he will never ever have to return to his beloved homeland if he does not feel like it.
I cannot help but feel the contradiction here - between his constant reference to Arakan, and mentoring me in things Arakanese (we have known each other for some time), and his expressed desire never to return to Myanmar; not even for a visit, he makes a point of telling me. He also makes a point of teaching me how to say his name in the Arakanese way, whereas until then, I had been unwittingly saying it in the Burmese way.
Old kingdom
To put a long, complex history in a nutshell, today's Rakhine state is the old core of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious (i.e. Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim) kingdom of Mrauk-U that once stretched over lands now belonging to Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India. It once traded far and wide, with China, Persia, Arabia, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Conquered and destroyed by the Burmese in the late 18th century, it was later taken over by the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-5. Most of the rest of today's Myanmar only became a colony from 1885. Rakhine state therefore does have a history that is somewhat separate from that of the rest of the country. It also has its own language, that the rest of Myanmar cannot really understand in spite of the fact that it is related to Burmese, the national language.
While I talk to Kyaw, I wonder, however, what the meaning of history here is. His friend Maung Shwe tells me that Rakhine people are 100 percent Buddhist. I find this statement most interesting, especially in the light of the recent conflict between the Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya, many of which are also refugees in Malaysia. Interesting, and slightly also scary for it implies that if you are not Buddhist you do not really belong in Rakhine state.I sense that Kyaw's delving into his own place's ancient history, and in particular his high regard for Mrauk-U and its legacy (foremost amongst which is obviously Buddhism, even though historians tell us the old kingdom was a multi-religious entity from its start back in the 14th century), are not exactly merely antiquarian interests.
Ethnic conflict
Ethnic conflict all over the world has been endlessly discussed not only in the media, but also in countless scholarly publications. Nowadays we all live under the spectre of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 or the Bosnian War after the break-up of the old Yugoslavia. As I write, conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine has risen to a very dangerous pitch, and talk of war is routinely bandied around by both sides.
We could perhaps venture therefore that ethnic conflict is an almost humdrum, if extremely sad and regrettable, reality of today's world. Nonetheless, I probe Kyaw further, pestering him with endless questions about his background and life in Myanmar. I suspect there is more to it than meets the eye. After all, ethnic conflict, even of a deadly kind, as has been the case in recent times in Rakhine state, is not something that can be taken for granted.
Whatever other roots the conflict there may have - historical ones, for instance - it must be admitted that in Ukraine, for instance, many years of inept governance and a faltering, incompetent state, are certainly a factor. If Ukraine looks bad enough, Myanmar also sounds fairly disturbing from what I glean from Kyaw's accounts.
His family can be described as dirt poor or near destitute. They did not have enough to eat (though they did not go hungry either); also, they could not afford to send their children even to the admittedly bad government schools. Instead, Kyaw, like many Rakhine (and other Myanmar) boys, was simply handed over to the local Buddhist monastery.I have come across several such cases in my conversations with Myanmar workers. Though a stint at a monastery seems nearly compulsory for Myanmar Buddhist boys and young men, in Kyaw's case that period stretched to several years in a row. In fact, he practically grew up inside the monastery, again not unlike many other poor-to-destitute boys in Rakhine state and elsewhere in Myanmar.
The monks fed him (an important reason for his family to keep him at the monastery) and also taught him his letters. I am afraid they may also have impressed on him not only a few religious precepts, but also the local ethnic nationalism (strongly tinted with Buddhist overtones as various reports in the media remind us again and again). It is therefore very, very hard to avoid the impression that, whatever the actual, no doubt considerable, weight of Arakan's wondrous, distinctive past, on Kyaw's consciousness, his society's identity, oppression and poverty are far from inconsiderable details.
The other not inconsiderable detail is alas religious indoctrination, even though it may not necessarily have originally had a vicious intention to it. After all, there is nothing in Buddhism itself that mandates the kind of aggressive, and even murderous behaviour, shown by the crowds in Rakhine state confronting their often equally aggressive (and, it is important to note, equally pious) adversaries, namely the Rohingya.
Resource-rich state
The tales of struggle to make a living simply pour forth endlessly from Kyaw's accounts of his life. He tells me for instance how buying food is expensive, if you do not grow it yourself, to the point that sometimes you can hardly afford a simple meal; that though Rakhine state exports gas, people in his village went without any. Not to mention that telephone, the Internet, and even electricity are simply luxuries to many even today.
Rakhine state has rich natural resources: agricultural and marine products for instance are abundant. Kyaw tells me the fish in his state is much better and more plentiful than in Malacca, where he lives; and that it is furthermore considerably cheaper too. The state also has gas reserves that are now being piped to China and a seafront coveted as a way out to sea both by India (whose northeast is completely landlocked) and China (whose southern half is equally far from its own coast).
Yet this naturally resource-rich state and prime gateway to the Indian Ocean is inhabited by millions of very poor people. I feel this predicament is not merely a failure of governance: it is in fact so serious, so deeply rooted and widespread, that it amounts to a failure of cosmopolitanism and human solidarity.
Entire generations have been affected by it, and there is virtually no end in sight to the damage as yet. All the Rakhine workers I know are young; some are very young (one I met was in fact only 15). I have also met four brothers, all of which have been working in Malaysia for years now. There is in fact nothing for them to do back home.
Therefore, ethnicity and religion in, say, Scotland, are one thing; in a place like Rakhine state, they have a different meaning, a few similarities aside. Differently to Kachin state, which has had a long-standing Kachin Independence Army (KIA) often locked into armed conflict with the Burmese army, the Rakhine do not have an army (in fact, I am told by a Kachin worker that they sometimes join KIA). Yet the desire for autonomy is very real, from what I have seen.
Real though it is, it is rooted not only or mostly in the sense of an ancient history stretching back to the glorious times of Mrauk-U. That ancient history nowadays is brought up in a context of such destitution and oppression that it is hard to see it as perhaps only nostalgia. In fact, it almost feels like a plank floating in the sea that a shipwrecked person hangs on to in utter desperation lest he or she sink into the depths.
I ponder all this, after several late night conversations with Kyaw, in which he always entreats me to share with him a bottle of what is to me unspeakably horrid-tasting, but, for him, all the same moderately affordable whisky. Though I have read quite a few scholarly works on ethnicity and even ethnic conflict in my life, I have no conclusion to offer here.
Moreover, I cannot believe that all this is about being Rakhine as such. It is about being human, albeit under the distinctive guise of a Rakhine. The Rakhine hate other people and occasionally murder them not because of 'ethnicity' or 'ethnic conflict', or even 'religion', even though all these are certainly weighty factors, but because they cannot be free.
Freedom from want is also an important human freedom, as Amartya Sen among others has indicated. They export gas to China and yet their kitchens have no gas and no electricity either; the sea abounds in fish and the land is fertile and yet they struggle to find food for their tables.
An international gas terminal and seaport are rising on their shores, and yet these will not directly benefit the poorest Rakhine, whatever pundits say, particularly not in a country where resource appropriation by a few to the detriment of many is almost a law of the land.
‘Malaysia no happy’
Kyaw obviously feels deeply connected to his land. And yet he is never going to return there, as he tells me again and again. Instead, he is in Malaysia, and feels furthermore uneasy about going to the United States, without knowing more than a couple of words in English.
Of course he is unwilling to stay on in Malaysia even if he could. Malaysia to him is synonymous with a sexless life of endless toil, very expensive liquor, and a place where if he does not work he cannot even feed himself. “Malaysia no happy,” he emphatically tells me in his limited broken English that nonetheless says book-loads.
It is difficult for me not to empathise. It is also equally difficult not to feel that he is in between countries, deeply attached to Arakan as he is (both old and new), a refugee in Malaysia, and would-be American citizen of the future.I also muse that many people in Malaysia will never live through what he has experienced, and yet none of them will ever find themselves eventually in the US either. In fact, as I listen to Kyaw, the contradictions teem with such vigour and cogency in my head that I can scarcely collect my thoughts together to write a proper piece on all this.
Next to Kyaw's predicament and that of millions of his countrymen and women, hundreds of learned papers on ethnicity and ethnic conflict sound almost like sheer, irrelevant drudgery.
FRED ROSEN has been gallivanting around South-East Asia for quite some time now. He is interested in foreign communities in Malaysia’s large cities. He has also been writing about Malacca, both in the present and the past, as well as other ancient port cities in the Indian Ocean.
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