On 12 April 2024, Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, the former Defence Minister who leads the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar, commended the Myanmarese National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) for repealing the 1982 Citizenship Law. As the current chair of the advisory group, his endorsement of the Myanmares sounds positive, giving rise to hope and emphasising the importance of the NUCC's action towards inclusivity and equality.
The repeal of the law is significant as the Myanmarese government used the law to discriminate against the Rohingyans, barring them from Myanmarese citizenship. Overnight, the Rohingyans lost access to citizenship, enabling the junta government to persecute the Rohingyans, forcibly evicting them from the Rakhine region. When the Rohingyans refused to leave, the military beat them or, worse, killed them.
Thus, from the 80s onward, Rohingyans left Myanmar in droves, ending up in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. While they sought refuge in Malaysia, the presence of legal Myanmarese foreign workers in Malaysia turned into a deadly mix. The hatred and anger festered and exploded in 2014 a group that Malaysian police described as Myanmarese Muslims from Rakhine murdered around 20 Myanmarese workers in a series of gruesome murders.
Many Rohingyans fell prey not only to the repressive Myanmarese government but also to human traffickers, who sent them to the seas in rickety boats and, once nearing their intended destination, damaged the engine to force these countries to accept them as boat people.
The Myanmarese military junta crackdown is not limited to the Rohingyans. Ethnic Karens, who are mostly Christians too, suffered under the military junta, and many sought refuge in Malaysia. However, their numbers have trickled after Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won the landmark election 2021.
However, the NUCC's decision comes with a catch. They are not the ruling government.
Today, Myanmar is under military junta rule. They launched yet another coup in February 2021 and placed the elected government, including Aung San Su Kyi, in house arrest. She is currently serving a 33-year jail sentence handed to her by the military junta-run court.
The people protested, but the military cracked down on the protest with deadly consequences. By March 2021, at least 500 had lost their lives.
This time, the people did not stay quiet. The pro-democracy supporters launched a revolution. They are further encouraged when soldiers and police, disgusted at the junta government's crackdown, defected to the pro-democracy side. Al Jazeera cited that at least ten thousand defectors are now part of the revolutionary forces, comprising three thousand former soldiers and seven thousand former police officers. Meanwhile, the UK's Guardian cited that at least fourteen thousand soldiers and police officers had defected to the pro-democracy forces. The defection also involved pro-government militia who had even switched sides after decrying the harsh and lethal crackdown the military junta had made against the pro-democracy forces.
To be continued…
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