TheDaak review

First, They Erased our Name: A Rohingya Speaks by Habiburahman with Sophie Ansel, Gurugram, Penguin, 2018, 23 x 15 cm, 241 pages, ISBN 978-0-670-09290-1, Rs. 499.

By Shriya Malhotra

A poignant memoir recounts an escape from Myanmar¹ while revealing the reality of life under state persecution for the Muslim Rohingya² minority. The narrator’s experience of becoming a migrant under duress highlights an ongoing humanitarian and human rights crisis with colonial roots, as well as the lasting trauma of forced migration and the experiences of identity-based persecution.

Statelessness is a form of hidden violence, the “neglected tragedy of our modern times,” disrupting the lives of millions, and impacting the Rohingya immigrant lives as well as that of their families and their communities (Asfaw 2016). Particularly problematic has been the way in which identities are pitted against one another — increasingly evident in non-democratic and military-led authoritarian countries, worldwide. However, the context and other details matter, which is to say that the situation in Myanmar is best understood in its own socio-political and historical developments. 

Citizenship in modern times appears to be a forced alignment with identity, although the contexts of what this means will tend to vary. With the growth of right-wing and populist governments worldwide, political and economic nationalism often tends towards discrimination. The articulation of what a citizen is and how people’s lives can be repressed, raises questions that aren’t immediately answerable— forcing allegiances that may not exist while pressuring people to prove their beliefs or affiliations in accordance with convention, as conformity leads to  ease of control.³

Yet, people and what they believe in or identify with are complex; people are, in fact, made up of multiple allegiances. What we consider our identity is a social construction, informed by the ways in which we look at others, and also by the ways in which we are perceived.⁴ And states, as noted by Navine Murshid (2013), have often manipulated disenfranchised groups to create vote-banks or even justify military action under the guise of fostering national unity.

Reconstructing a nation-state through force, military aggression and isolation in the context of authoritarianism is seemingly an artificial and lastingly violent endeavour. Since 1993, thousands of people belonging to the Rohingya ethnic group have disappeared, and since August 2017, over 688,000 have fled western Myanmar as a result of historical and socio-political persecution. 

These stateless, asylum-seeking, forced migrants are being shunned by many countries in spite of their plight. Even when they find refuge or are granted asylum, they face challenges of integration and assimilation, which can exacerbate their existing vulnerabilities, including the lasting trauma of persecution.  

First, They Erased Our Name is a chilling account of the military and cultural context of systematic injustice and violence experienced by the Rohingya people. The book brings to light the ways in which an authoritarian state, in collusion with its military, can direct violence against those deemed socially undesirable, uncontrollable or non-conforming. It also demonstrates the ways in which a group can legally lose its citizenship based on a slow, but deliberate process of repression and exclusion.

Constructing a national and artificial notion of homogeneity, which is couched in the name of peace and stability, is a fallacy, particularly since tolerance is built through diversity. The author comments that in Myanmar’s existing political system and power-sharing arrangement, “the kind of diversity that encourages tolerance does not exist” (p. 91). 

Exclusionary identity politics risks justificating ethnic cleansing and enabling inter-group violence, whether at the state or individual level. It also sets the stage for communal strife. Given the ever-increasing Islamophobia worldwide, following the so-called global ‘War on Terror’⁵, the Rohingya group finds itself in a severely compromised situation: stateless, unwanted, unprotected and targeted, due to both their religion and ethnicity.

Sadly, the Rohingya’s forced migration is not necessarily new to human history, and it is also a warning for the minorities living in contemporary authoritarian societies. “Our history has become both a lie and a crime in the eyes of the dictatorship. Their hatred and racism has turned us into foreigners who must be crushed” (p. 5), a reminder by the author that in the unaccountable pursuit of power, people enabled by systems are capable of inhumane and unjust acts.

Violence can often take the more benign form of unsolicited state harassment or even neglect. Habiburahman notes, for instance, how the Rohingya are derogatorily referred to as kalars or ‘Bengali invaders,’ deemed parasites of the nation (p. 68). He is personally pushed to escape from Myanmar when the stories he has heard start to become real. After being tortured for days, he embarks on a physical journey to escape the confines of his identity: “this bottomless quagmire of life as a Rohingya”(p. 135).

Habiburahman’s account raises questions about the simultaneous pull and push forces of globalisation, as well as of the compromises people endure to emancipate themselves from dangerous or alienating circumstances. It is also a reminder to question the hegemony of history, which tends to favour those with the power and authority to construct it.  Until recently, very little has been documented about the experiences of this group, and much remains unknown. 

Habiburahman describes growing up detested due to his appearance, his identity deemed “offensive” to the regime (p. 8), often compelling him to hide his Rohingya roots and instead introduce himself as a Muslim (p. 13). Explaining how the Rohingya have been segregated into stateless or non-citizens, which he calls “the Burmese version of apartheid,” (p. 125), he further points out that “One cannot hide one’s skin, resulting in being under constant scrutiny. Escaping without any papers and becoming a refugee, however, means being subject to exploitation, servitude and slavery” (p. 147). And yet, these are often compromises or risks many willingly take in the pursuit of living a dignified life.

The book echoes the lasting trauma of forced migration,  family estrangement and the feeling of constantly being persecuted that is often transmitted across generations. These traumas are rooted in official allowances and the subtle enabling of strategic, indirect and direct violence.⁶

When a group is excluded from the narratives constructed by those holding power in a nation-state, they are not necessarily treated with dignity, particularly those that have a monopoly on enforcing safety and security: “They can justify and falsify arrests” (p. 65), “the law will never protect us” (p. 113). When a group is excluded in the name of nation-building, it plants the seeds of future violence  Being a persecuted minority under an authoritarian regime is a heavy predicament, a weight which people carry across time, borders and geographies. 

Particularly striking are the ways in which the author recounts the role played by the police and army in Myanmar. As a part of the state’s monopoly over legitimate means of violence, the use of force by these bodies serves as a reminder to the international community to hold states accountable towards their responsibility to protect, to the greatest extent possible. Yet, in recent years they have revealed the non-enforceable and limited abilities to intervene in the policies undertaken by nation-states, particularly as they have tended to favour the preservation of the status quo of global power arrangements.

The creation of ‘stateless Rohingyas’ constitutes an attempt to erase a people from national memory, in an effort to rewrite the history of Myanmar (p. 74). Habiburahman narrates the details of this “revision of history,” devoting an entire chapter to ethnic cleansing–  describing the clearance of homes, shops and other dwellings after Rohingya properties are seized (p. 105).⁷

Political persecutions, legal harassment and personal attacks –anything can be weaponised against a group that is purposely ostracised and sanctioned by a state, including its history. Seizing land and confiscating deeds is a pretext for other forms of violence that may be justified and enacted. This is an example of the capacity for indirect, hidden violence by the state–  the ways in which irresponsible politics can enable and deepen forms of bigotry against specific groups, as well as create future inter-ethnic tensions. 

Propaganda serves to reinforce these ideas. For instance, The New Light of Myanmar – a paper owned by the Burmese junta remains the only accessible newspaper: “foreign press is banned, and the country has no independent publications” (p. 55). This makes the book even more important; the stories recounted across generations reflect a constant sense of persecution, of living in fear, of feeling unprotected and wanting to free oneself of the burden of a falsely stereotyped identity. In the words of the author, “our lives are on the line” (p. 65).

The book highlights the role of memory and of recording, as well as remembering history through personal memories: “Grandma’s memory is all you will have to keep our history alive”(pp. 4-5). It is these elders who teach younger generations how to avoid traps and spot violence, from years of experience (p. 127).

To know one’s rights, transform one’s plight and articulate one’s demand for justice, one must be educated: “The low literacy rate in our community, and the regularity of random taxes, have made it impossible for Rohingya – teachers or students – to participate in the education system”(p. 99). 

The author further continues, “My voracious reading helps me to understand the challenges faced by other cultures, by each different generation, and by all peoples” (p. 123). Studying seems to be a form of freedom from reality.⁸ That inner feeling of being free, escaping to the mountains or the cover of night, away from psychologies of fear in order to access places where Muslims are forbidden (p. 37). 

Exclusion, discrimination and persecution have a detrimental psychological effect when enforced by a state, causing the repression of identity, history and beliefs, which becomes a self-directed form of violence, because of the ways in which it limits individual freedoms. 

The book is heavy, filled with details that are almost unbelievable. However, its chronology of events and descriptions offer an invaluable lesson. Habiburahman’s writing is a reminder of the power of a personal memoir.  It is a reminder of the ways in which unaccountable systems get out of hand — and it is also a reminder that people rethink, rebuild and resist the ways in which their freedoms are limited, manipulated or controlled.

States may consider these stories as a way to counter propaganda, but far too often, these are simply people’s demands for justice.  Notably, “the primary injustice the stateless experience is not that they cannot find a state which should grant them citizenship, but that the state which should grant them citizenship will, for various reasons, not do so.”⁹

Endnotes

1. Myanmar gained its independence from the British Empire in 1948 under the Burma Independence Army. Military rule in Myanmar lasted from 1962 to 2011 and later resumed in 2021. Ethnic minorities such as the Chin, Kachin, Karin, and Rohingya—include significant populations of Christians and Muslims. Throughout the 20th century, the British colonial policy regularly pitted these groups against each other, creating a violent legacy that exists to this day. ↩︎
2. The Rohingya people are a stateless ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar. They were denied citizenship in 1982 by the government of Myanmar, which considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Since then, they have become  targets of persecution by the government and nationalist Buddhists. ↩︎
3. Cyril Ghosh and Elizabeth Cohen (2019) have extensively considered the notion of citizenship in the context of Western liberal democracies, that tend to alienate people from the global south by framing them as undesirable. ↩︎
4. In On Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1998), Amin Maalouf has argued that forcing people to choose one part of their identity over another can lead to a dangerous oversimplification of their complex selves. This reduction can result in polarisation, intolerance, and the neglect of nuanced identities. ↩︎
5. Michael E. O’Hanlon and Lily Windholz, ‘Do not take the war on terror’s big success for granted’, Brookings, August 27, 2021 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/do-not-take-the-war-on-terrors-big-success-for-granted , accessed on Feb 11, 2024. ↩︎
6. The narrator recounts many state operations starting in 1959, including a massacre in 1967; a 1982 citizenship law whereby Rohingya became a label warranting ‘capital punishment’ (p. 68). In 1991 Operation ‘Clean and Beautiful Nation’ sought to eliminate Islamic heritage (p. 67). ↩︎
7. The author describes how across the Arakan, the army has been building NaTaLa or model villages on lands that were seized from the Rohingya (p. 69), and how they become a confined minority, for instance, in the Chin state (p. 71). ↩︎
8. Student-led demonstrations against the authoritarian junta in 1996 proved significant even if a failure. ↩︎
9. Asfaw, 2016, p. 5  ↩︎

References