https://frontiermyanmar.

net/en/yangon-region-minister-hosts-american-anti-rohingya-activist

Yangon Region minister hosts American anti-

Rohingya activist

San Francisco-based ethnomusicologist and anti-Rohingya activist Mr Rick Heizman speaks on the premises
of Yangon University, Myanmar's oldest and best-known university. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)
https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/yangon-region-minister-hosts-american-anti-rohingya-activist

‘Not our people’

In an introductory speech at the event on Wednesday, the minister U Zaw Aye Maung
countered accusations from the United Nations and foreign governments that the Myanmar
army had committed mass atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine, saying the crisis
was rooted in Islamic terrorism and illegal immigration.

He cast the army’s campaign, which sparked an exodus of more than 720,000 Rohingya
into Bangladesh, as a legitimate response to attacks in August 2017 by the Rohingya
militant group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and a general desire by the Rohingya to
“occupy our land”.

“We are not fighting them without reason,” he said, claiming the army’s actions were purely
defensive. “We need to protect our land.”

“We want to tell the world they are not our people. They are illegal migrants,” he said of the
Rohingya, referring to them only as “Bengali” to impute a foreign origin. By way of
explanation, he said, “Their appearance and their language is the same as the Bangladeshi
people. When our officials go to [speak with them], they need interpreters.”

Linguists and members of the Rohingya community say their language is related but distinct
from dialects spoken across the border in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh.

Zaw Aye Maung, a member of the Arakan National Party, was elected to the Yangon
Region government in the 2015 by ethnic Rakhine voters resident in Yangon. He previously
held the post under the government of President U Thein Sein.

The 2008 constitution stipulates that ethnic groups who can claim more than a 0.1 percent
share of the national population in a given state or region can vote for their own ethnic
affairs minister in that state or regional government.

‘I could go anywhere’

The minister introduced Heizman as “a very independent man” who does not have any
government or organisational affiliation.

Heizman, who introduced himself as “a top ethnomusicologist”, said he has visited

Myanmar regularly since 1981 and was involved in the pro-democracy movement aimed at
ending military rule.

He said he had recently returned from a trip to Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung
townships in northern Rakhine, during which he was given “full permission, no restrictions at
all”.
https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/yangon-region-minister-hosts-american-anti-rohingya-activist

This contrasts with restrictions placed on journalists, most of whom can only visit northern
Rakhine State on closely escorted government tours. “I could go anywhere,” Heizman said.

Government newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar ran a picture, with a brief
description, on October 8 of Heizman visiting Maungdaw Township in northern Rakhine,
where “he documented burnt-out villages”. The description said Heizman would visit the
village of Min Gyi, also known as Tula Toli, the site of an alleged massacre of Rohingya,
which journalists have been barred from visiting.

Heizman said journalists facing travel restrictions had no legitimate reason to complain.
“Have any of the journalists done anything positive for Rakhine?” he asked, before
describing some of the charitable work he has conducted in Rakhine, such as helping to
build schools.

He said, “I don’t think at all that the army has done the things it is accused of,” but insisted,
“I’m not aligned with the army”.

Heizman was sharply critical of international media, which he called “feverishly one-sided”
in its coverage of the Rakhine crisis. “Maybe I’m the real journalist, and you’re all wannabe
journalists,” he said.

The event included a screening of a film that Heizman had largely shot during a trip to
northern Rakhine earlier this year. The film claims that Rakhine State is the target of a plot
to create “an extremist Islamic state”, and that Rohingya militants ordered their people to
torch their own houses before fleeing to Bangladesh.

Key material for the film was drawn from interrogations of Rohingya Muslims suspected of
being members of the ARSA militant group, as well as interviews with local Buddhist
Rakhine, Hindus and members of other communities who claimed to have been attacked by
ARSA.

After Heizman, Rakhine historian Dr Aye Chan delivered a lecture on what he said were the
historical roots of the Rakhine crisis – large-scale migration from Bengal to what is now
Rakhine State during British colonial rule. Aye Chan claimed that, in settling the area,
Bengali migrants were animated by Wahhabism, a hardline Islamic doctrine that grew
during the 18th century in what is now Saudi Arabia.