I am Diaspora; The Challenges and Consequences of Displacement

In recent weeks, the New York Times and Amnesty International have been reporting on the plight of Rohingyan refugees seeking asylum in neighboring countries. The Rohingya people live in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar and have been effectively denied citizenship and civil rights; often subjected to forced labor and forced evictions. Myanmar itself suffers from severe underdevelopment while its people live under the constant shadow of conflict and dictatorial repression. The military junta (the State Law and Order Restoration Council) that has held power since 1978 is no stranger to human rights violations of the most egregious kind. This minority at risk has become a stateless diaspora, forced to flee their native land in panic, pleading with Bangladeshi, Thai and Malaysian officials to grant them refugee status and protection, joining so many others in the painful pages of history. The team at The Human Trafficking Project has dutifully followed this story, exploring the intermediary and often fatal role human traffickers play in the clandestine transportation of these Rohingya refugees. Upon reading this story and conducting some research on the matter, I was reminded of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, whose oppression lead to the creation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), a terrorist organization that has been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland and found a Sri Lankan blogger from the Forgotten Diaries project who examines the heavy consequences of conflict on a fractured society. Both communities exist as less than human beings in their nation state, and are often forced to leave everything behind in the hopes of merely surviving and leading a dignified life. Happily, I found two blogs that deal with this issue from different angles, bringing unexpected nuances and questions to the very complicated issue of displaced persons. One author looks at a humanitarian crisis making headlines today, while the other examines the social repercussions of one that has been raging for decades on end. Both examine and humanize the experience of displacement.

Comment: “MPs blame human Traffickers for Rohingya”

Your post explores the overlooked role that human traffickers play in the midst of this chaotic displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar into neighboring states. Present day repression of the Rohingya minority is only the latest development in the government’s attempt to homogenize in the hopes of strengthening their threatened power. I find that it has been helpful to contextualize this current targeting and abuse of an ethnic minority by taking a look at the government’s consistent history of such behavior in order to gain some insight as to the possible outcomes of this scenario. In the 1990s, faced with several secessionist movements in outlying areas of the country the government engaged in brutal tactics to repress and eventually co-opt various groups' attempts to secede. The SLORC went so far as to legalize opium productions fueling rebel movements so that their income be cut, thereby flooding the global market with heroin, which became the "it" drug of the decade throughout Europe. The Christian Karen group near the country’s border with Thailand has been under siege for decades. The public repression of Buddhist monks last year decidedly reveals that this government will not respond to pressure be it internal or international. Amnesty International has published a letter encouraging increased demands on Myanmar to cease its violent policy towards the Rohingya, but I would argue that this is clearly not the avenue through which consequential action will be engendered. The government views its projects of eradicating “non Burmese” elements as a road to peace and development when in reality they are little more than ethnic cleansing campaigns. The problem becomes more complicated when already impoverished countries like Bangladesh are faced with a massive influx of refugees, placing incredible strains on an economy still recovering from a cyclone that killed 140,000 last spring.

Given the complete economic degradation of these states, I would venture to say that the human trafficking element of this story will not be dealt with. However, perhaps the Rohingya will not feel the need to seek the services of such East Asian coyotes if international organizations step in to
provide the necessary space and provisions for their survival. Dhaka fears that inviting such help from the UN would threaten diplomatic relations with neighboring Myanmar. Although I believe that Amnesty’s call to respect human rights will fall on the dictatorship’s deaf ears, the call for neighbors who are party to the Land of the Sea Treaty to rescue people fleeing on flimsy rafts is an interesting way to make a potent case for regional involvement. The two hundred plus deaths of refugees forcibly deported from Thailand could not showcase this more clearly. Perhaps if Bangladesh is fearful of alienating its neighbor and trading partner, then more stable nations like India, Malaysia, and even Thailand, can ask the UNHCR for support in order to protect these people not only from their government, but from the risks of fleeing from its oppression as well. Those depraved enough to seek profit from such misery may not be thwarted by moral arguments. It is therefore crucial to ensure that those fleeing from violence are not desperate enough to fall into their hands.

Comment: “On Distrust, Suspicion and Personal Friendships: Understanding the Effects of a Socially Protracted Conflict”

Aacharya, I was both intrigued and moved by your post. What you write resonates in conflict-ridden nations around our planet, where war and alienation become the defining characteristics of life. I am reminded, for example, of Colombia where guerrilla and government have fought inconclusively for over forty years, with the ideological call to battle that urged the FARC and others forward a distant and irrelevant theme. And yet the conflict rages on unabated, claiming lives and making living unbearable. The Democratic Republic of Congo as well is under constant siege, its citizens beleaguered by almost twenty years of ethnic conflict fueled by the lucrative economic opportunities that can exist amid such chaos. People fight because it becomes more profitable than peace. People kill because of positions that have been senselessly ingrained in them, without ever really knowing why they fight at all. Children are born, grow up, and know nothing but the savagery of war.


In countries like your own when the engine behind conflict is an ethnic and/or religious divide, the consequences are, as you so aptly note, absorbed into the very social fabric of the culture. A divide is always there, as people define themselves in terms of their differences instead of their commonalities. As positions become increasingly extreme, they also become more entrenched, making negotiation and sustainable peace that much more difficult to secure. I would argue, however, that much hope is to be found in the young and future generations. Such optimism is of course contingent on the development of serious negotiations that yield satisfactory results, providing the Tamil and other minorities equal rights under the law and repealing the problematic Sinhala Only legislation. If and when such progress is made, then perhaps the secessionist cause can be slowly abandoned. An implication of the point you make in terms of social distrust, however, would become increasingly relevant in such a scenario, for peace is not something that is brokered by authorities, but can only truly flourish when it is in the hearts of the people invested in it. This is something that, indeed, takes a paradigm shift, a reconstruction of the most basic perceptions of the “self” and the “other”. The fruits of multi-track diplomacy however, teach us, that bringing children together in something as obvious as a soccer team has very positive repercussions in the long-term peace process because you have a chance to build from the ground up and create, if not unity, at least friendship and understanding in the place of suspicion and fickle bonds. I would point you to a fantastic book entitled Peacemakers in Action that shares the stories of committed and ordinary people in conflict zones that approach this difficult subject in innovative and truly moving ways, bringing beauty and hope to lands so wrecked and hearts so ravaged and renewing that driver of human spirits: hope.