Sore Spot

One of Myanmar's 14 provinces, an ethnic state let’s call R State, is a sore spot.

Roughly three million people live there. About one-third belong to Group M, the other two-thirds to Group R. These two groups have lived alongside each other for a long time. They’ve rarely gotten along very well. They follow different religions, and they're often easy to tell apart through skin color and dress.

(I use initials because the problems of R State, while severe, aren’t unique. They have implications and echoes throughout the whole country. For a short backgrounder on the specifics of R State’s dilemmas, click here.

Group M and Group R have moved in recent years toward a permanent segregation in R State. In 2012, extremists organized mob attacks and home burnings. As local police looked on, about 140,000 people became homeless. Three years later, the resulting internally displaced person camps still house more than 10% of Group M's entire population.

This suffering sometimes gets the attention of the international press. The conflict has a long history. Racial intolerance, colonial mistakes, migration pressures, and heavy-handed governance all intersect to create what the New York Times has called an “appalling apartheid.”

R State’s issues surfaced often during a panel discussion I attended last week in Yangon. A few faith leaders came together to comment on local media portrayals of religion. They noted that even though journalists could do a better job of understanding religious principles, pure doctrine is rarely the problem in R State. When people there talk about faith, they’re often talking about nationalism.

Nationalism is a big deal in Myanmar. People here often define themselves and others by ethnicity first. The government keeps a long official list of recognized ethnic groups. All of the seven states ringing the country’s borders are named for their leading group. Many of those groups follow a different religion from the Bamar, who make up about 70% of Myanmar’s population. Bamar dominate the seven interior provinces, which are known as “regions” and are named for geographic features.

Ever since a military coup in 1962, Burmese military leaders—nearly all Buddhist Bamar—have partly justified their nationwide grip on power by saying that Myanmar’s many ethnic and religious minorities lack the skills to self-govern. In fact those groups have never truly been granted the chance to try. Federalism, or power sharing between national and provincial governments, is a controversial concept here. Tensions in R State may have ripple effects on the chances for federalism, and eventual civilian rule, to succeed in the other states.

The generals may warn that without them at the helm, people will be freer to act on their racial prejudices. Regardless of the truth of that claim (some people say that the armed forces actually inflame those prejudices), hatred in Myanmar toward Group M is pervasive and extreme. Feelings go beyond the negative views in other parts of the world towards Islam, the religion of Group M. The presence of Group M here stirs a snake pit of issues, from caste to carpet-bagging to commerce. Many people who looked like them dominated Burmese business during colonial times. The country’s largest share of Group M lives in R State.

The panel audience’s questions strayed from religious differences to other causes of trouble there: economic opportunities, demographic trends, and citizenship rights. About a quarter of R state’s population doesn’t have citizenship at all, ever since passage of a 1982 law that omits the majority of Group M from the list of recognized ethnic groups. Group R does make the list.

At the panel, questions also arose about interfaith marriages—specifically, about the belief widely held among Myanmar Buddhists that Buddhist women married to Muslim men will lose everything if their husband dies or divorces them.

Especially in a province like R State where everyone is poor, the notion of taking away marital property doesn't sit well, and has led to calls for outlawing such marriages. Parliament has also drafted legislation that would limit religious conversions and birth rates. Population growth is a hot-button issue. Group R fears that some day it will be outnumbered in the state that bears its name.

Way back before Myanmar was a country, R State was its own kingdom, tucked between the Bay of Bengal and a long mountain range. Group R speaks a language that is closely related to Burmese. The English translation of its name is “people who protect their race.” Ever since the British in 1824 decreed that R State would be absorbed into Burma, Group R has actively struggled to run its own affairs, arguing as do many other ethnic groups here that because its land is ancestral, it should be in charge.

Group R’s political leaders find that their prospects improve when tensions and the risks of violence are highest. They intensify the situation in R State by putting restrictions on citizenship, movement, health care, education, marriage, birth registration, and even food and water for the majority of Group M. Human rights researchers write of Group M that its members have also suffered arbitrary arrests, forced labor, torture and death in detention, rape, and the denial of due process and fair trial rights.

All of these provocations happen with the blessing of the central Myanmar government. Journalists have labeled the largest subset of Group M, a people estimated to number nearly a million, as the most friendless people on the planet.

You might think that such obvious human rights violations would prompt an outcry from the UN and other humanitarian organizations, and you would be right. Some go as far as to label the situation a state-sponsored genocide. However, Group R has successfully portrayed itself as a victim too, arguing that the generals are the real villains, and that international aid favors Group M. Indeed, nobody has it easy in R State. The region’s low level of economic activity and poor infrastructure mean that many people leave—nearly three quarters of Group R under age 30, according to some estimates. (Most Group M members aren’t allowed to migrate—even out of their townships—without permission.)

With desperation similar to migrants leaving Libya for Europe, many from Group M pay traffickers to take them by boat from R State to Malaysia or Thailand, only to be turned back or sunk en route. The state’s long coastline along the Bay of Bengal makes it prone to weather-related disasters.

What might improve things in R State? For starters, as in all the ethnic states, it’s important to promote harmony and pacts through increasing opportunities for dialogue and teamwork. At the moment, Group R and Group M hardly ever see each other, let alone talk. There’s seldom such thing as an information sharing event attended by both communities. Schools are rarely integrated. Likewise in the rest of Myamar: Islamaphobic bias appears in local newspapers every day, despite most writers and readers never having had a real conversation with a Muslim.

A speaker at this week’s panel discussion cautioned against framing Myanmar religious issues as Faith A compared to Faith B. Instead, he said, write about good people compared to bad people, because all faiths have their share of both. Another panelist urged journalists to track down available translations of religious texts, to create knowledge that goes beyond stereotype. Simply using correct terminology goes a long way toward creating dialogue, he said.

Obviously, reconciling R State requires more than nice words in the press. To plant seeds of tolerance and fairness there, group leaders might consider making economic plans together. That way, they could begin to get infrastructure that works. However, to produce good electricity, roads, ports, and so forth, R State will have to keep lots more of its laborers, from both Group R and Group M, than are currently sticking around. Outmigration, as in the whole of Myanmar, frustrates development.

Indeed, over the long term, if R State and Myanmar want to survive, they will both need to figure out how to be multi-ethnic. Identifying with a cultural community and a country at the same time isn't easy, as we see everywhere from Catalonia to Kurdistan to Scotland. At the state and national levels here, leaders must truly take into account grievances from members of all groups, not just the ones who look, speak, or worship the same.

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