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A Critical Assessment of the Burma Exhibition TOAEP Policy Brief No. 130 (2022) - 1 July 2022 Derek Tonkin PDF Version In this analysis critical of the special exhibition on Burma in the US Holocaust Museum, Derek Tonkin concludes that the organisers might well wish to review the narrative of the exhibition in order to eliminate historical revisionism, distortions and anachronisms. The need for a common narrative of Rohingya history is vital if there is to be reconciliation between the Muslim and Buddhist communities in Rakhine State. A true narrative will enhance, not hinder, the safe return home of Rohingya refugees abroad and the prosecution of those responsible for their victimisation and persecution in recent years.

The Labyrinth of the Rohinga Conundrum

Derek Tonkin PDF Version

There is indeed more than enough good reason for the Museum to organise a special exhibition on the matter. Yet as I have already shown, I am concerned that the special exhibition is being used as a propaganda platform to disseminate a particular historical narrative of the kaleidoscope of Muslim communities, Indian and Indo-Burman, who have in recent years coalesced into the “Rohingya” community, an ethnicity in the making. Most Myanmar citizens, I believe, would find the exhibition controversial. It will not help to promote reconciliation between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine State. Its implicit portrayal of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as somehow complicit in genocide is unfortunate and widely disputed, however naïve and ill-informed she may well have been.

Burma’s Path to Genocide

Derek Tonkin - 29 March 2022 PDF Version

In his determination of genocide by the Myanmar Armed Forces delivered in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on 21 March 2022, US Secretary of State Anthony J Blinken drew significantly on materials in the special exhibition “Burma’s Path to Genocide” set up in 2021. In a series of tweets between 20 and 26 March 2022 I drew attention to what seemed to me to be inaccuracies and distortions in the Exhibition’s presentation. Indeed, of the five Chapters in the online presentation, many of the captions do not in my view reflect historical fact, and this is particularly true of Chapters 1 and 2.

The main problem is that the Exhibition reflects not an independent analysis of who the Rohingya are, their origins and identity, but an idealised, ideology-based narrative which ignores the reality that they are mainly descendants of British-era (1824-1948) agricultural migrants from the Chittagong Region of Bengal. Jacques Leider has presented a seminal paper on “Chittagonians in Colonial Arakan”.

Genocide Determination by US Secretary of State Blinken

Derek Tonkin - 24 March 2022 PDF Version

On 21 March 2022 US Secretary of State Anthony J Blinken issued a formal determination that the Myanmar Armed Forces, known as the Tatmadaw, were responsible for genocide against the Rohingya minority population in Rakhine State. The determination is a political statement and has no international legal authority. The evidence adduced in the determination (unless a fuller formal statement is intended) is open to discussion. Its timing may well have been influenced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and allegations of genocide made in this context.