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Myanmar Condemns UN Official for Using Term 'Rohingya'

by VOA News February 04, 2015

Myanmar has slammed a visiting United Nations official for using the term 'Rohingya' to refer to a beleaguered ethnic minority group that the government does not officially recognize.

In a statement Wednesday, the office of President Thein Sein 'unequivocally' rejected the use of the term Rohingya by Yang Hee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar.

'Insistence on using this controversial terminology will only pose a barrier on the road to resolving this important issue,' said the statement. 'Use of such term by the United Nations would certainly draw strong resentments of the people of Myanmar making the government's efforts more difficult in addressing the issue.'

The majority Buddhist country, also known as Burma, does not recognize the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity. Government officials, and many locals, instead view Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and refer to them as 'Bengalis.'

The mostly Muslim Rohingya are denied citizenship and other basic rights in Myanmar and have been the victims of a wave of violence by extremist Buddhist mobs in recent years.

Sectarian unrest killed up to 280 people and displaced 140,000 others in June, 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of Rohingya have been forced to stay in filthy, overcrowded, prison-like camps in western Rakhine state.

Yang Hee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur, last month visited Rakhine, where she was met by protesters who were angry over what they perceive as the U.N.'s bias in favor of the Rohingya.

The U.N. General Assembly late last year passed a resolution urging the group to be granted full citizenship, equal rights, freedom of movement, and allowed to self-identify as Rohingya.

The Myanmar government has rejected the demands for citizenship, but has expressed a willingness to consider citizenship for those who will identify as Bengali.

Burma's 1982 citizenship law says members of any officially-recognized minority must be able to prove their ancestors lived in Burma before the British invaded Rakhine in 1823.

The British occupation of Rakhine prompted a large migration of Muslims into the area from neighboring Chittagong, then part of British-ruled India and now located in modern-day Bangladesh.

Many of Burma's hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims say their ancestors have lived in Burma for generations. But the impoverished minority group lacks the documentation to prove it.