Ethnic Nationalism and Predispositions to Genocide: The Case of Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingya Minority

Abstract

This study looks at the development of Rakhine state’s ethnic conflict along with the state-led genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar. It examines the ethnonationalist foundation of Myanmar and the underlying symbolic elements in this context. The objective is to investigate the roots, patterns, and dynamics of the conflict and genocide which are found in state policy and laws, ethnonationalist ideology, and the forceful measures of the military regime. This process is a long and historic one, developing and escalating over multiple stages. I adopt a symbolist approach to extreme ethnic conflict and genocide (the symbolic politics framework) that provides an account for the causes, nature, and motives of this political-psychological phenomenon. The argument posits that preconditions for extreme ethnic conflict and dynamical conditions for violence outbreak are found in two stages that form the process leading to ethnic violence and genocide. According to this framework by Stewart J. Kaufman, the first stage consists of group myths justifying hostilities, ethnic fears of domination and/or extinction, and the opportunity to mobilize and fight. The second stage includes mass hostility, chauvinist mobilization, and a security dilemma. This model finds that the presence and interaction of these conditions and factors are necessary to lead to and promote extreme ethnic violence and genocide. This argument applies for and explains the case of ethnic violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the genocide against the Rohingya. The findings also suggest that the successive governments of Myanmar since the 1962 military coup have perused a systemic approach to expel the Rohingya by premeditated destruction of the group physically, psychologically, and culturally.