Professor Thierry Di Costanzo immerses us in the history of the Rohingya, because only by doing so can we understand why the treatment they are suffering in Burma is unjust.
History shows that the Rohingya are "children of Burmese soil" and have every right to citizenship. This is the view of Thierry Di Costanzo, professor at the University of Strasbourg, an expert and scholar of numerous Asian countries, particularly the Indian subcontinent. Costanzo lived in Chittagong, the Bengali city with the highest concentration of Rohingya, between 1989 and 1991. In this interview he explains why the 1982 law that denies this ethnic group Burmese citizenship is unjust, drawing on the history of colonialism in South Asia.
Read the interview with Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch
Why do the Rohingya have a right to Burmese citizenship?
The Rohingya were historically deported by Portuguese colonisers and slave traders from the Bengal delta into northern Rakhine (present-day Myanmar, ed.) and into the province of Chittagong (today part of Bangladesh, ed.) for as long as the Mughals reigned. In the Chittagong district the slaves enjoyed a degree of freedom, whereas in northern Rakhine they were strictly subject to local rulers.
Even today they live in a kind of no man's land: between Bangladesh and the Rakhine state of Burma (Myanmar), is that right?
I am firmly convinced that Myanmar belongs more to South Asia than to East Asia. Rakhine is a contact zone between the former Burma and Bengal — that is, India and Bangladesh. Chittagong itself was part of Rakhine until the Mughal army invaded it. And the people there speak more or less the same dialect as the Rohingya.
So what does that mean?
The Rohingya are not Bengalis or recent illegal immigrants. They have always lived in Rakhine, at least since the Portuguese colonisers first arrived in the Bay of Bengal. That is the history that Buddhist nationalists want to forget.
Is nationalism the key to understanding what is happening in Burma?
It is an important perspective, one that has its roots in the British Empire. Under the British, until 1938, Burma was transformed into an entirely Buddhist colony — a kind of "Buddhist Pakistan". One aspect that is often overlooked is that Burma represents the first true partition of India, from which all of today's problems with minorities stem.
Did British colonial rule encourage communal divisions?
Yes — Buddhist communalism in Burma, and sectarian divisions between Hindus and Muslims in India. And then came the Second World War. The Rohingya sided with the British, while the Arakan (Rakhine) sided with the Japanese and the Burmese. In 1947 they would have wanted to belong to East Pakistan, present-day Bangladesh, but the British prevented them from doing so.
Do you describe them today as "children of Burmese soil"?
Yes, they are one of the many ethnic groups long rooted in Burma, like the Karen, for example. What the Burmese regime has done so far is nothing other than ethnic cleansing. And it has probably feared some form of rebellion or terrorist claim backed by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State — something akin to the Kashmiri Islamic insurgency. Many Rohingya work in the Gulf states, and in the 1980s there was a mujahideen movement.