Myanmar accused of bias in population control policy

NEW DELHI — A watchdog group Tuesday called on Myanmar’s government to immediately revoke a population-control policy that blocks members of the minority Rohingya Muslim community from having more than two children, saying the newly revived measure is discriminatory, violates human rights and endangers women’s health.

The Rohingya, who account for about 1 million of Myanmar’s 60 million people, are deeply unpopular among the Buddhist majority, who do not consider them citizens even though many Rohingya families have lived in the country for generations.

Last weekend, spokesman Win Myaing of the western state of Rakhine said that the 2005 two-child rule for Rohingya, along with a mid-1990s rule requiring Rohingya couples to obtain permission before marrying, would be enforced in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships along the Bangladeshi border.

“This is a case of one ethnic group making plans to control the population of another,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, which issued the report. “This is the worst case of systemic abuse of human rights.”

Sectarian violence between majority ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingya killed at least 190 people, mostly Muslims, last year and left tens of thousands in settlement camps after their wooden houses were burned or otherwise destroyed. Neither Myanmar, also known as Burma, nor neighboring Bangladesh consider the officially stateless Rohingya to be citizens.

Some Rakhine Buddhists fear that their national identity will be eroded by the Rohingya population’s rapid growth.

Muslims and Buddhists clashed Tuesday in the northeastern city of Lashio, local news reports said, with witnesses saying that a mosque and Buddhist monastery had been set ablaze. The area is relatively remote and the full extent of the violence was not immediately clear.

Although population controls were among the measures recommended by a national inquiry commission appointed after last year’s violence, the panel said these should not be mandatory, which the Rakhine rules are.

Nobel laureate and human rights champion Aung San Suu Kyi, detained for nearly two decades by the military junta before winning a parliamentary seat in April 2012, has been criticized for failing to condemn discrimination against the Rohingya.

On Monday, she spoke out, albeit rather tepidly, against the Rakhine population-control policy. “If true, this is against the law,” Suu Kyi told reporters. If such a measure exists, she added, “it is discriminatory and also violates human rights.”

Tint Swe, chairman of Burma Center Delhi, a civic group, said Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein are both playing politics with an eye to the 2015 election. Opposition leader Suu Kyi’s statement probably cost her party votes, Tint Swe said, but this was probably a calculated risk given the parallel need to maintain her international reputation as a human rights advocate.

Thein Sein’s ruling party is less concerned about its international reputation and may well decide to fan distrust of the Rohingya in coming months to garner votes, Tint Swe added. “That’s politics,” he said.

Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya blogger based in Germany, said the two-child limit isn’t new but local governments now seem intent on enforcing it more seriously. “It’s against human rights,” he said. “It’s up to you how many children you have.”

There have been ways around the marriage and two-children restrictions, said Robertson of Human Rights Watch, but these mostly involve bribing the Na Sa Ka, a border force of military, police, immigration and customs personnel charged with enforcement. And the Rohingya are among the poorest communities in Myanmar, he said.

“The Na Sa Ka is a particularly nasty security organization,” he said. “They have a long record of abusive human rights and of extorting the Rohingya for all they can get.”

Rohingya women who become pregnant without the necessary approvals to marry or have a third child frequently resort to unsafe illegal abortions, Human Rights Watch said, made worse by travel restrictions that make it difficult to obtain emergency medical treatment.

The report says Rohingya children born outside the rules are ineligible for education or travel permits, not allowed to marry or own property and subject to arbitrary detention. It also says that the Na Sa Ka detained about 2,000 Rohingya in 2012 for offenses as trivial as repairing homes without permission and owning “unregistered” livestock.

The inquiry panel set up after last year’s sectarian violence estimates that there are 60,000 unregistered Rohingya children.

Recent conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims have overshadowed other long-simmering ethnic differences. On Tuesday, the government launched a new round of talks with ethnic Kachin rebels aimed at ending armed conflict. About 100,000 people have been displaced since a 17-year cease-fire ended in June 2011.

Long-standing discrimination against the Rohingya is not necessarily getting worse, said blogger Nay San Lwin, but Myanmar’s more-open borders and the advance of mobile technology has focused a brighter spotlight on it.

“The world knows more than before,” he said. “Now the world should pressure the Burmese government more.”

mark.magnier@latimes.com