The Burmese Labyrinth by Carlos Sardina Galache

Author:Carlos Sardina Galache
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

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Engulfed by political instability and nationwide armed conflicts, the embattled central government was initially largely neglectful of what was happening in Arakan. The brutal sectarian violence that had pitted Buddhists against Muslims in World War II had left a legacy of deep distrust between the two communities. In the first months after independence, the government replaced Muslim civil servants and policemen with Rakhine, who often vented their resentment against the Muslims, carrying out arbitrary arrests and humiliating their leaders. Immigration authorities imposed restrictions of movement on Muslims from Northern Arakan to Sittwe. Meanwhile, some 13,000 Rohingya refugees from the war living in India and Pakistan were not allowed to return.30

In April 1948, a mujahid revolt exploded in northern Arakan in reaction against such discrimination. Led by the popular singer Jafar Hussein, the mujahideen pledged to fight for an Islamic state in the Mayu region.31 The rebellion spread quickly because the government was overstretched by having to fight other guerrillas in central Burma; but its appeal among the Muslim community was far from universal. Muslim leaders condemned their activities as un-Islamic, and tried to persuade them to desist. They addressed the government, explaining that the mujahideen were few in number, and that their uprising was due to injustices committed against the community. Moreover, these leaders accused the rebels of threatening Muslims as much as Buddhists, and on several occasions even requested weapons to fight against them. But their demands were rejected.32

The authorities claimed that the mujahideen were encouraging illegal immigrants from overpopulated East Pakistan to Arakan; but the Muslim leaders who opposed the rebellion denied such accusations, arguing that the government was making up the story in order to prevent Rohingya refugees from returning.33 The charge of illegal migration from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) continues to this day. The border has always been porous, and during some periods hardly controlled at all. Nonetheless, there is little evidence that massive waves of migrants from East Pakistan crossed during the parliamentary period into Burma. And such immigration was possibly offset by emigration in the other direction: in 1951, the Pakistani government sent a note of protest to the Burmese government complaining that 250,000 Muslims had crossed into their country fleeing the violence in Arakan.34 The figure is likely a gross exaggeration, but there is no reason to believe that thousands did not cross the border.

Charges of illegal immigration were sometimes denied by a judiciary that was still capable of preserving its independence. Thus, in 1960 the Supreme Court overturned a decision by the immigration authorities in Maungdaw to arrest several dozen alleged ‘illegal immigrants’ it wanted to expel. The authorities had claimed that the detainees did not speak Burmese – an allegation that continues to be made in the present to assert that the Rohingya are foreigners. The Supreme Court ruling argued that in Burma ‘there were races who could not speak the Burmese language and whose customs were different from the Burmese but who nevertheless were citizens of the Union under the provisions of the Constitution’.

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