Kesaksian Tentara Myanmar Atas Aksi Pembantaian Muslim Rohingya (Mungkin 2024)
Terlepas dari pembentukan pada tahun 2016 pemerintahan baru yang terpilih secara demokratis di Myanmar (Burma) yang dipimpin oleh pemenang Hadiah Nobel Perdamaian Liga Nasional untuk Demokrasi Aung San Suu Kyi, situasinya tetap mengerikan bagi minoritas Muslim negara yang dianiaya yang dikenal sebagai Rohingya. Sebagai indikasi komitmennya untuk menemukan solusi untuk masalah ini, pemerintah pada Agustus 2016 menunjuk mantan sekretaris jenderal PBB Kofi Annan untuk memimpin Komisi Penasihat untuk melakukan penilaian dan untuk memberikan rekomendasi.
Siapakah Rohingya?
Istilah Rohingya umumnya digunakan, terutama di media internasional, untuk merujuk pada komunitas Muslim yang umumnya terkonsentrasi di dua kota utara negara bagian Rakhine (Arakan) Myanmar, meskipun mereka juga dapat ditemukan tinggal di bagian lain negara dan negara serta di kamp-kamp pengungsi di Bangladesh. Diperkirakan bahwa Rohingya merupakan sekitar sepertiga dari populasi di negara bagian Rakhine, dengan umat Budha Rakhine merupakan proporsi yang signifikan dari dua pertiga sisanya.
Penggunaan istilah Rohingya sangat diperebutkan di Myanmar. Para pemimpin politik Rohingya menyatakan bahwa komunitas mereka adalah komunitas etnis, budaya, dan bahasa yang berbeda yang melacak leluhurnya hingga akhir abad ke-7. Namun, populasi Buddhis yang lebih luas pada umumnya menolak terminologi Rohingya, merujuk mereka sebagai Bengali, dan menganggap komunitas itu sebagian besar terdiri dari imigran ilegal dari Bangladesh saat ini. Selama sensus 2014 - yang pertama dilakukan dalam 30 tahun - pemerintah Myanmar membuat keputusan 11 jam untuk tidak menyebutkan mereka yang ingin mengidentifikasi diri sebagai Rohingya dan hanya akan menghitung mereka yang menerima klasifikasi Bengali. Langkah itu sebagai tanggapan atas ancaman boikot terhadap sensus oleh umat Buddha Rakhine.Dalam prosesnya pemerintah mengingkari komitmen sebelumnya untuk mematuhi standar sensus internasional.
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.
