目录:
尽管2016年组建了由诺贝尔和平奖获得者昂山素季（Aung San Suu Kyi）领导的全国民主联盟领导的缅甸新的民主选举政府，但该国受迫害的穆斯林少数群体罗兴亚人的处境依然严峻。为了表明其致力于寻求解决方案的决心，政府于2016年8月任命了联合国前秘书长科菲·安南（Kofi Annan）为首的咨询委员会负责评估和提出建议。
谁是罗兴亚人？
罗兴亚语一词是普遍使用的，尤其是在国际媒体中，是指通常集中在缅甸若开邦（Arakan）州的两个北部城镇的穆斯林社区，尽管也可以发现该州其他地区的居民。该国以及孟加拉国的难民营。据估计，若开邦占罗兴亚人的三分之一，而若开邦佛教徒则占剩余三分之二的很大比例。
罗兴亚（Rohingya）一词的使用在缅甸备受争议。罗兴亚人的政治领导人坚持认为，他们的种族是独特的种族，文化和语言社区，其起源可追溯到7世纪后期。但是，广大佛教徒普遍拒绝使用罗兴亚语，而是将其称为孟加拉语，并认为该社区主要由当今孟加拉国的非法移民组成。在2014年的人口普查（这是30年来的第一次人口普查）中，缅甸政府做出了第11个小时的决定，即不枚举那些希望自我识别为罗兴亚人的人，而只计算接受孟加拉国分类的人。此举是对若开邦佛教徒威胁抵制普查的回应。在此过程中，政府没有履行其先前遵守国际人口普查标准的承诺。
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.
