Les musulmans Rohingya au Myanmar

Malgré la formation en 2016 d'un nouveau gouvernement démocratiquement élu au Myanmar (Birmanie) dirigé par la Ligue nationale pour la démocratie du lauréat du prix Nobel de la paix, Aung San Suu Kyi, la situation est restée dramatique pour la minorité musulmane persécutée du pays connue sous le nom de Rohingya. Pour témoigner de son engagement à trouver une solution aux problèmes, le gouvernement a nommé en août 2016 l'ancien secrétaire général de l'ONU, Kofi Annan, à la tête d'une commission consultative pour entreprendre des évaluations et formuler des recommandations.

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Qui sont les Rohingyas?

Le terme Rohingya était couramment utilisé, en particulier dans les médias internationaux, pour désigner une communauté de musulmans qui étaient généralement concentrés dans deux cantons du nord de l'État de Rakhine (Arakan) au Myanmar, bien qu'ils puissent également être trouvés résidant dans d'autres parties de l'État et dans le pays ainsi que dans les camps de réfugiés au Bangladesh. On a estimé que les Rohingyas représentaient environ un tiers de la population de l'État de Rakhine, les bouddhistes de Rakhine constituant une proportion importante des deux tiers restants.

L'utilisation du terme Rohingya était très contestée au Myanmar. Les dirigeants politiques rohingyas ont soutenu que la leur est une communauté ethnique, culturelle et linguistique distincte qui remonte à ses origines dès la fin du 7e siècle. Cependant, la population bouddhiste plus large en général a rejeté la terminologie rohingya, se référant à eux plutôt comme bengali, et a considéré que la communauté était en grande partie composée d'immigrants illégaux du Bangladesh actuel. Lors du recensement de 2014 - le premier à être réalisé en 30 ans - le gouvernement du Myanmar a pris la décision de ne pas énumérer ceux qui voulaient s'identifier comme Rohingya et ne compterait que ceux qui acceptaient la classification bengali. Cette décision fait suite à une menace de boycott du recensement par les bouddhistes Rakhine.Ce faisant, le gouvernement est revenu sur son engagement antérieur de respecter les normes internationales de recensement.

As with the rest of Myanmar’s postindependence borderlands that were historically multiethnic and politically fluid, Rakhine state had also suffered from decades of centre-periphery imbalances. On the one hand, Buddhist Rakhines had long felt oppressed by the Burmans, the country’s largest ethnic group, and on the other hand, they perceived the Muslim population to be a palpable threat to their cultural identity. Within the Myanmar context, race and ethnicity were rigid constructs that determined legal, political, and social relations. The debate surrounding the Rohingya terminology had, as such, paralyzed meaningful government recognition of the predicament of the Rohingya community.

Statelessness.

Almost all Rohingya in Myanmar were stateless. They were unable to obtain “citizenship by birth” in Myanmar because the 1982 Citizenship Law did not include the Rohingya on the list of 135 recognized national ethnic groups. The law had historically been arbitrarily applied in relation to those, such as the Rohingya, who did not fall strictly within the list of recognized ethnic nationalities. The legal status of a large majority of Rohingya was rendered even more precarious when Pres. Thein Sein unexpectedly announced in February 2015 the expiry of “white cards,” a form of temporary identity documentation held by many within the Rohingya community.

Intercommunal Violence and Displacement.

Two waves of intercommunal violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state in June and October 2012 led to the displacement of approximately 140,000 people—the large majority of whom were Rohingya—to camps around the state capital (Sittwe) and surrounding townships. According to government figures, the conflicts resulted in 192 deaths, 265 injuries, and the destruction of 8,614 homes, with the impact disproportionately borne by Muslim communities. Human Rights Watch, as well as other nongovernmental organizations, claimed that the October 2012 violence was a coordinated campaign targeting the Rohingya.

Legislative Restrictions.

Following the 2012 violence, other developments, including a series of proposed legislative measures (some of which were passed by Myanmar’s parliament), resulted in further restrictions on the limited rights of the Rohingya. Although those developments had a nationwide application, they were understood to affect mostly the Rohingya community.

In September 2014 an amendment to the 2010 Political Parties Registration Law came into force; the legislation effectively disallowed the Rohingya to form and be members of political parties. Less than six months later, the Constitutional Tribunal delivered an opinion that prevented noncitizens from voting in any national referendum. The legal implication of the decision, formalized in June 2015 with amendments to the election laws, was that Rohingya, who were considered noncitizens, would not be allowed to vote in the 2015 general elections, even if they had cast their ballots during the 1960, 1990, and 2010 elections. The development also represented a final and absolute curtailment of the political rights of the Rohingya.

In November 2014 a package of draft laws popularly termed “laws on safeguarding race and religion” was submitted in the parliament for debate. The bills, which were initially proposed in 2013, were to an extent premised on anxieties over Myanmar’s being surrounded by highly populated countries, a factor that was believed to potentially affect the country’s demographics; on fears that Buddhist women were being coerced or tricked into marriages by and with non-Buddhist men; and on stereotypical views that Muslim families were polygamous and that consequently many children were being born. The bills were conceived as a necessary measure to protect Buddhist women and to address the perceived high population growth rate in Rakhine state.

Between May and July 2015, two of the four bills that permitted the state to regulate birth spacing and family planning, as well as to police the practice of religion within multireligious families, were passed by the parliament. The Population Control Healthcare Bill, which was aimed at Muslim women, could potentially be used to force women to space their births at least three years apart.