COMMENT As I pen this, well over one thousand Rohingya and Bangladeshis have disembarked this month, mostly in north Sumatra in Indonesia, though many more remain at sea, in what both Amnesty International and the United Nations are calling ‘floating coffins’ in the Sea of Andaman.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently issued a strong statement urging South-East Asian nations to help solve a growing humanitarian crisis. In one instance, half of everybody who disembarked in Sumatra seemed to be children.

I have only ever talked at some length with one Rohingya. He is a middle-aged gentleman who came into a Myanmar shop in Kuala Lumpur one evening while I was there. He was extremely polite, and even through the thick veil of my most rudimentary Burmese I could see he was highly apologetic when talking to the shop staff and customers. Namely, he literally made a point of practically apologising for being a Rohingya visiting the shop (sic).

He came with Burmese friends. He has been in Malaysia for many years, and had previously spent many years in Myanmar. He is perfectly fluent in Burmese, from what I gleaned. My impression was that I was faced with a well-seasoned, skilled visiting diplomat rather than a mere customer. He has since been to the same shop several times and is clearly welcome, though as far as I could ascertain no other Rohingya usually comes there.

His apologies may seem at first sight exaggerated. However, I do not think he was being overly polite or unnecessarily diplomatic. All my Myanmar acquaintances and friends, regardless of ethnic, religious, or social background, bar none, are scathing or nearly so when it comes to the Rohingya.

Besides, only over a year ago I heard disquieting reports of violence between various Myanmar migrant workers and refugees, on the one hand, and Rohingyas, on the other. The violent acts allegedly took place in Kota Raya, and in one incident reported to me a Kachin was supposedly killed by a group of Rohingya.

That a Kachin refugee was allegedly killed speaks bookloads about the tensions involved here. The Kachin have been at loggerheads with the Burmese-controlled government in Myanmar for years now. A continuing war of attrition is still taking place in Kachin state and northern Shan state, between Kachin military groups and government troops. This war has caused a continuous flow of refugees into Thailand and Malaysia, most of whom eventually end up in the West.

No feelings of mutual solidarity

I mention this because killing a Kachin virtually means killing a member of yet another oppressed ethnic minority inside Myanmar. In spite of this, there are literally no feelings of mutual solidarity here. Apparently, the Kachin are just as much enemies to many Rohingya as are the Burmese, Rakhine, and other ethnic groups in Myanmar.

In a country divided by many differences in religion and ethnicity, the Rohingya in fact stand out as a rather unique group. Even the Burmese military persecuting the Kachin, Karen, and other minorities, openly acknowledge all of them as somehow part of Myanmar.

Not so with the Rohingya, who are universally thought to be aliens by all and sundry (sic), and since at least 1982 have been officially disenfranchised by the government. Namely, they are officially non-citizens, and in practice stateless persons.

Intriguingly, if there is something that glues together the various and diverse groups of people inside Myanmar (in fact, as far as Malaysia), in spite of all their many differences and deep disagreements, is that the Rohingya are, alas, not really from Myanmar. People from left and right seem to be of the same mind on this issue.

Incidentally, Aung San Suu Kyi ( photo ), the Nobel Prize winner dissident, arguably the most famous Myanmar citizen of all time, has been repeatedly chided for not speaking out on behalf of the Rohingya (this month she has at last issued a guarded, cautious statement, stressing the human rights side of the issue).

I personally doubt very much she is indifferent to the fate of the Rohingya. This would go against all her background and beliefs. Only, as a beleaguered politician in an emerging, groping democratic dispensation, still largely dominated by the military (who kept her under house arrest for many years), she clearly cannot afford to alienate an electorate that is evidently dead set against the Rohingya.

Of course, if they are not from Myanmar, though they currently seem to find themselves there, the question arises as to where the Rohingya ultimately come from. After all, if they are not supposed to be from Myanmar, nor can they possibly have simply sprouted out of the Sea of Andaman, where many thousands of them currently find themselves at great risk in case they are not allowed on land.

The answer to this question is as beguilingly simple as it is fiendishly complicated.

James (not his real name) is a member of an ethnic minority who works for the UNHCR in Pudu as a kind of liaison officer between refugees and the UN. He is Christian. The UN is not currently giving out refugee cards to his own people, who are no longer deemed to be the subject of persecution inside Myanmar, unlike the Kachin and the Rohingya.

He is completely outraged by what he relates as the recent handout of refugee status to hundreds of Rohingya. He rants on and on about this issue. He is so angry that he will not let me or anybody else put in a single word. As he rages on, his listeners at the Myanmar shop where he is talking are reduced to the role of silent, polite interlocutors.

Nonetheless, I find it interesting and significant that, politeness apart (contrary to common stereotype, in fact many Myanmar people can be very polite), nobody seems to be in the mood to contradict him. In James’s opinion, the UN is simply being the victim of a shameless scam.

Assumed land of origin

That is because the people who are being granted refugee status are not, according to him, Rohingya, but simply Bangladeshis, people who supposedly have no reason to become refugees. Namely, they are just cunning opportunists. The question here is how come Bangladeshis and Rohingya seem to be associated at all, let alone confused with each other.

The simple answer to this question, though deceitful, is also significant: there is no such thing as a Rohingya at the end of the day (sic). In fact, they are all Bangladeshis. At any rate, for Myanmar people (the Myanmar government included), Bangladesh is their assumed land of origin. James for one has absolutely no doubts about it and refuses to hear any questions or different opinions. The Rohingya are all Bangladeshis. That is the end of the matter for him.

I am always intrigued about how little Myanmar people who I meet (and who are of course neither Muslims nor Rohingya) really know about the Rohingya. Some Rakhine - who share the same territory with the Rohingya, namely, parts of Rakhine state, though they are Buddhist, whereas the Rohingya are Muslim - can however be more knowledgeable.

Most people I talk to are not even aware that the Rohingya speak a language - some times called Chittagonian - that is not Bengali, the national language of Bangladesh (many Bengalis however regard it as merely a ‘rough’ dialect of their language). Though mutually unintelligible with Bengali, it is nonetheless part of the Bengali-Assamese language group, and historically has been spoken on both sides of the Myanmar and Bangladesh border.

Moreover, besides linguistic incomprehensibility, my Myanmar acquaintances point out to me that the Rohingya are dark-skinned, and look South Asian or Bangladeshi. To them, this is a sure sign that they are not of Myanmar origin.

An older Myanmar Chin community leader, however, confirmed what I already knew: since time immemorial there have been people in Myanmar called Kala, a term now considered derogatory. The term denotes both skin colour and a (mostly) vague South Asian origin or connection. Many Kala are Muslim.

From what I have been able to ascertain through my older friends, the Kala were and are part and parcel of the traditional social landscape of Myanmar. Though clearly a minority marked out as different, they are not because of those considered outsiders.

Moreover, it was pointed out to me that the Rohingya have an ambiguous status compared to the old, established Kala, with whom they obviously share many traits: contrary to the Kala, they supposedly keep themselves apart and do not mingle much with Myanmar society (sic).

Not only are they Muslim, but they are also supposedly staunchly fundamentalist. Furthermore, many cannot even speak Burmese, the national language. Another issue is that they are seen as recent migrants, and, furthermore, there are supposedly too many of them (sic).

It should be stressed that none of these traits - Islam, a dark skin or South Asian look, an inability to speak Burmese - taken as a whole or separately are at all conclusive in terms of establishing the outsider character of the Rohingya.

Roots in the distant past

In what concerns Islam, non-Rohingya Burmese Muslims are an established social group in Myanmar with roots in the very distant past. As mentioned above, Kala have lived in the country since time immemorial. And many members of several ethnic minorities I have met in Malaysia - Chins, for instance - have confessed to me again and again that they in fact either learned Burmese from scratch or else vastly improved their ability to speak the language here (sic).

In their homelands in Myanmar many only used their own ethnic languages.

There are two other factors that come out in conversations with various Myanmar residents in Kuala Lumpur, when the Rohingya are at stake: the Rohingya are often supposedly involved with criminality (both of the petty and not so petty kind) and violence. This is also a trait considered to make them fundamentally different from other Myanmar people.

One youth leader of the Mizo community in Kuala Lumpur (the Mizo are a Chin group), for instance, complained bitterly to me about Malaysians looking down on Chins and all other Myanmar people because of what he sees as the despicable actions of many Rohingya. According to him, the Rohingya are giving a bad name to the whole community of Myanmar residents, especially as Malaysians are not able to distinguish between different groups of Myanmar people.

Some Chins have told me that the Rohingya are employed by the Thais in Thailand as prostitutes, what they find very intriguing. To them, the Rohingya are not minimally attractive, especially as they supposedly smell bad too (their assumed strong bodily odour is in fact often mentioned by Chins as a distinctive trait of the Rohingya. It also makes them closer to Bangladeshis, in the opinion of many Chins).  

Summing up, in the eyes of many Myanmar people, including, it is important to stress, members of other historically persecuted ethnic minorities, the Rohingya set themselves apart and are set apart by a variety of traits that they supposedly carry, even though virtually all of these traits may also be shared with other Myanmar people, apart from the Rohingya language which is the unique possession of the group.

Though the Bangladesh government denies that the Rohingya are from Bangladesh, there is nonetheless a clear association in the minds of Myanmar people between the Rohingya and Myanmar’s neighbouring country.

Myanmar is a highly multi-ethnic society, a society that is in fact so varied that even Myanmar people may not know which groups live among them. For instance, non-Chins I have talked to usually do not know about the enormous internal variety of Chin groups. This is hardly surprising, as Chins themselves keep telling me they do not know the full number and names of all Chin sub-ethnic groups, many of which have their own distinctive languages and customs.

There seem to be fifty-odd different groups, and in my experience the list may clearly change according to who one is talking to, especially as there is apparently quite a good deal of overlap between some groups as well as vague identity boundaries. Every other month I meet a Chin from a group I have never before heard of. I often discuss group boundaries and identity with Chins, who often disagree among each other on the subject.

Identity not entirely clear yet

In fact, unwittingly, the Chins may be a clue to the complexity of the Rohingya issue. Instead of a clear-cut group with distinct roots in the distant past, it seems very likely that the Rohingya may in reality be a group with historically porous boundaries and variegated origins that only in recent times has acquired a more definite identity.

This identity, however, is not entirely clear yet, obviously not even to Myanmar people who consider them as outsiders. When other Myanmar people say that the Rohingya are from Bangladesh, they are in reality stating not a fact, but instead pointing to a porous border and identity.

In a way, the Rohingya have fallen in-between the variegated historical cracks of international boundaries and national identities. In this manner, the current terrible predicament of thousands of them, as would-be refugees floating in the middle of the sea, without a home to fall back on nor a clear destination, seems to be a particularly poignant reminder of their intermediate status.

Simply labelling them as undesirable outsiders, and towing their boats back to international waters, as they try and approach the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, or Thailand, in an action that Human Rights Watch has recently called ‘playing human ping-pong’, is in this way not going to do away with the complexity of their predicament. Instead, we should face it as a common, shared human plight.

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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