Conheça o povo Rohingya, pessoas que não são cidadãos de país nenhum (Pode 2024)
Apesar da formação em 2016 de um novo governo democraticamente eleito em Mianmar (Birmânia), liderado pela Liga Nacional pela Democracia do Prêmio Nobel da Paz, Aung San Suu Kyi, a situação permaneceu terrível para a minoria muçulmana perseguida do país conhecida como Rohingya. Como indicação de seu compromisso em encontrar uma solução para as questões, em agosto de 2016, o governo nomeou o ex-secretário-geral da ONU Kofi Annan para chefiar uma Comissão Consultiva para realizar avaliações e fornecer recomendações.
Quem são os rohingya?
O termo Rohingya era comumente usado, especialmente na mídia internacional, para se referir a uma comunidade de muçulmanos que geralmente estavam concentrados em dois municípios do norte do estado de Rakhine (Arakan), em Mianmar, embora também possam ser encontrados residentes em outras partes do estado e país, bem como em campos de refugiados em Bangladesh. Estima-se que os rohingya representassem cerca de um terço da população no estado de Rakhine, com os budistas de Rakhine constituindo uma proporção significativa dos dois terços restantes.
O uso do termo Rohingya foi altamente contestado em Mianmar. Os líderes políticos de Rohingya sustentaram que a comunidade deles é uma comunidade étnica, cultural e linguística distinta, que remonta a seus ancestrais desde o final do século VII. No entanto, a população budista em geral rejeitou a terminologia Rohingya, referindo-se a eles como bengali, e considerou a comunidade composta em grande parte por imigrantes ilegais do atual Bangladesh. Durante o censo de 2014 - o primeiro a ser realizado em 30 anos - o governo de Mianmar tomou a decisão de 11 horas de não enumerar aqueles que desejavam se identificar como rohingya e contaria apenas aqueles que aceitassem a classificação bengali. A medida foi em resposta a um boicote ameaçado ao censo pelos budistas de Rakhine.Nesse processo, o governo renunciou ao seu compromisso anterior de cumprir os padrões internacionais de censo.
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.
