Loughborough university London

Among the most widely seen images of Myanmar during the last five decades have been those featuring Aung San Suu Kyi. To many foreigners, Suu Kyi's role as a champion of democracy and her long periods of detention may be all they know of Myanmar's politics and history. Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar's opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD) is lauded by many outside of Myanmar as a democratic icon. However, in recent times there has been growing concern internationally and domestically about some of the political positions taken by Suu Kyi. The Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority living mainly in northern Rakhine State. On the matter of the Rohingya's persecution Suu Kyi has been notably silent. This paper explores the possible reasons for Suu Kyi's silence and argues Buddhist-Muslim political relations are central to Suu Kyi's position on the Rohingya. The paper also suggests that other factors including the Rohingya's history in Myanmar, attitudes within the NLD, Suu Kyi's sense of obligation to her father's political legacy and her views on ethnicity, are contributing to a political environment where it is pragmatic for Suu Kyi to remain silent on these issues. Given Suu Kyi is the world's best known citizen of Myanmar and has the potential to become a future national leader, understanding her behavior towards this persecuted Muslim minority is important. This is particularly the case when consideration is given to the contemporary pressures on Muslims to embrace radical politics and the implications this could have for Myanmar and the region.

This article describes how divisive groups have taken advantage of Myanmar's new political and media freedoms to pursue an agenda that will limit the civil and political rights of the country's Muslim population. The article argues that enforcement of the four Protection of Race and Religion Laws will disadvantage Myanmar's already politically marginalized Muslim residents by creating a de facto religious test for full Myanmar citizenship rights. The article examines both the positive and negative aspects of Myanmar's liberalizations, the nature of the ‘Protection of Race and Religion' legislative package and how this will interact with Myanmar's citizenship laws.

In this article we map heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. We outline the historic and contemporary political context in Myanmar explaining the background of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic group and addressing the contribution of religion and political change to anti-Rohingya discrimination and violence in Myanmar. We trace patterns of heritage destruction as legal and/ or illegal iconoclasm and specify the key elements of heritage destruction in Rakhine state. Our analysis focusses on the use of heritage destruction in Rakhine state as a tool of genocide, and we suggest that heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state ought to be understood as part the authorities’ policies of genocide against the Rohingya. We conclude the article with a call for UNESCO to act to extend its ‘Unite4Heritage’ campaign to include the destruction of heritage by state actors.

This article argues that Myanmar’s authorities subject the Rohingya to human rights violations that can be accurately described as the crime of apartheid. Myanmar’s discriminatory application of its citizenship laws and processes is central to this crime, yet while Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Court’s jurisdiction remains limited. However, Myanmar’s government has brought this crime to the territory of International Criminal Court (ICC) member state Bangladesh. Because Myanmar’s government insists upon Rohingya participation in discriminatory citizenship processes as a precondition of refugee repatriation to Myanmar, this presents the ICC with an opportunity to assert its jurisdiction. While current ICC investigation focusses mostly on alleged crimes committed by the Myanmar military, crimes associated with Myanmar’s citizenship processes would likely be the responsibility of Myanmar’s civilian government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, making Myanmar’s civilian political leaders liable for the first time to ICC prosecution.

Genocide has brought the Rohingya people to global attention as decades of appalling human rights abuses and a shockingly brutal military crackdown have forced Rohingya into the world’s largest refugee camp adjacent to the Bangladesh-Myanmar frontier. Myanmar’s civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be presiding over atrocity crimes and human rights violations on an enormous scale yet defends her country and its military against genocide accusations. This unique study combines Rohingya testimony with extensive historical research to outline and assess the full scale of the disaster faced by this community. Casting new light on Rohingya identity, history and culture, this will be an essential contribution to the study of the Rohingya people and to the study of the early stages of genocide.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has been central to two major Myanmar military operations against Rohingya communities that have led to large-scale cross-border forced migrations to Bangladesh. This article describes the context for ARSA's emergence, examining the Rohingya's history in Myanmar, the nature of political violence in the country, and the history of Muslim militancy in Myanmar's Rakhine state. ARSA's emergence as a militant Muslim group is outlined and elements of ARSA's strategic communications, including its Twitter presence, are analysed, allowing the author to draw some conclusions about the nature of ARSA and its priorities.

Myint Swe, the acting president of Mynamar's military government, has warned that the country "will be split into various parts" after his armed forces suffered huge territorial losses to resistance fighters recently. His response was to call on Mynamar's people to support his military forces, a call that is likely, based on previous experience, to fall mainly on deaf ears. Far from sharing the military government's fears of shrinking territorial control, it's likely that most among Myanmar's 55 million people will celebrate the army's territorial losses. Junta misreads like this are not new-after they seized power in February 2021, the coup leaders indicated surprise when the coup met with widespread outrage and sustained public protest and resistance. To quell opposition, military bosses have adopted a strategy of arbitrary arrest and extreme violence. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners estimates 19,675 people are currently jailed-a figure which increases almost daily. Peaceful protests are met with army snipers and shoot-to-kill orders. Myanmar military cracks down on peaceful protesters in Taunggy, Shan state. R. Bociaga/Shutterstock

Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar's death penalty moratorium has been a myth. The junta has routinely targeted civilians for extrajudicial killing, including using army snipers to callously pick off peaceful protesters. There have been killings of prisoners too, with many of the dead reportedly exhibiting signs of torture on their bodies.

Exposure to traumatic material during research may traumatize scholars, contributing to negative health outcomes and curtailing research work. This article argues the social sciences have been slow to address the challenges engagement with potentially traumatizing material pose to researchers. The article reviews key literature on vicarious or secondary trauma and outlines how it might affect scholars. It considers examples from the professions, and scholarly fields including the technology industry, international development, countering violent extremism studies, and genocide studies which have already begun to grapple with these challenges. A case study focused on Myanmar-focused social sciences research outlines how recent improvements in mobile phone camera technology, Internet availability, and international linkages enabled by social media increase researchers’ exposure to potentially traumatizing material. A description of Researcher Vicarious Trauma is proposed and suggestions for how scholars, institutions, and professional associations might positively tackle the contemporary challenges of Researcher Vicarious Trauma are made.

The desperate situation of refugees adrift and unwanted in the Bay of Bengal has drawn global attention to Myanmar’s decades-long humanitarian tragedy.

But unless Myanmar reverses its discriminatory domestic policies targeted at the Rohingya, more will be forced onto boats to avoid persecution.

If there’s anything positive about the sprawling Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, it’s that the residents – despite their appalling recent experiences and obvious deprivation – are at least safe here from Myanmar’s military.

Interviews in the camps paint a desperately sad picture. The details of these interviews are invariably confronting and often distressing, and explain why so many Rohingya fled Myanmar so quickly.

A year after a military coup, Myanmar remains mired in conflict. The country’s military, the Tatmadaw, has failed to convince most of Myanmar’s 55 million people of the legitimacy of its rule. Anti-coup resistance continues to be widespread nationwide.

The anniversary will be marked within Myanmar by a “silent strike”, with participants acknowledging those jailed or killed by the junta during the last year by avoiding public space, leaving Myanmar’s streets empty. The junta has threatened participants with decades-long jail sentences and property confiscations. But if previous calls for anti-coup resistance are an indication, tens of millions of people will stay home and Myanmar’s streets will be spookily empty.

Big data has the potential to revolutionize the art of supply chain management (Mehmood et al., 2016). Reporting on the economic impact of big data (Manyika et al., 2011), the McKinsey Global Institute has identified value levers along the whole manufacturing value chain with the ability to lead to high productivity levels. Application of big data and advanced analytics to R&D and product development has been estimated to reduce costs by 20-50 per cent, and a big data-enabled supply chain optimization was estimated as yielding a 2-3 percentage point profit margin improvement (Baily et al., 2013). However, in spite of its widely reported strategic impacts, there is a paucity of empirical research exploring the influence of big data in operations and supply chain management (SCM).