Myanmar's Enemy Within

Book summary

Francis Wade is a British journalist best known for his reporting on Myanmar and Southeast Asia. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Asia Times Online, Foreign Policy, and the LA Review of Books. He was previously an editor and reporter for the Democratic Voice of Burma, a news organization founded by exiled dissidents from Myanmar.

Rakhine State, Myanmar's westernmost region, became the epicenter of escalating violence in 2012, marking a dramatic shift from its history of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Buddhists. The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, faced targeted attacks fueled by nationalist fears of "Islamization" and territorial loss, exacerbated by Myanmar's transition from dictatorship to democracy. Decades of discriminatory policies, rooted in British colonial practices and perpetuated by the military regime, stripped the Rohingya of citizenship and legal rights, framing them as outsiders. This narrative, amplified by unchecked media and extremist rhetoric, justified violence and displacement, while the pro-democracy movement, despite its ideals, largely mirrored the regime's exclusionary stance. The government's demographic engineering, including resettling Buddhists in Rakhine, further deepened divisions, leaving the Rohingya stateless and vulnerable amidst a growing wave of anti-Muslim sentiment.

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