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Memories of Burmese
Rohingya Refugees
Contested Identity and Belonging
Memories of Burmese
Rohingya Refugees
Contested Identity and Belonging
Kazi Fahmida Farzana
Universiti Utara Malaysia
Kedah, Malaysia
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Introduction 1
7 Conclusion 233
Index253
xi
About the Author
xiii
List of Figures
xv
List of Tables
xvii
List of Diagram
xix
List of Pictures
xxi
List of Maps
xxiii
List of Drawings
xxv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
both sides increase the complexity of the situation, and prolong the crisis
by pushing the Rohingyas back and forth across state boundaries.
This book takes an in-depth look into the root and precipitating causes
and consequences of the Burmese Rohingya2 refugees’ displacement,
and calls for more attention to the social and political processes of forced
migration and identity politics that generate protracted displacement. The
importance of this book lies in its ability to present an alternative and
endogenous interpretation of the problem in contrast to the exogenous
one presented by actors such as state institutions, non-governmental orga-
nizations, and media. The main theoretical contribution of this book lies
4 1 INTRODUCTION
ethnic and cultural factors instead (Ahmed 2008; Smith 1986). This
form of identity was to be based on exclusive common characteristics,
which later degenerated into extreme forms such as totalitarianism, chau-
vinism, racism, and fascism based on hatred and superiority complex
(Arendt 1966[1958]). The experience of such identity-building process
in Germany and Italy proved to be highly disastrous.
However, it is the French model that received universal acceptance,
especially in the post-war period, which gradually took the shape of liber-
alism (Galston 1991). As such, liberal nationalism prescribed multiplicity
of identity under one grand national identity. People in the private sphere
can maintain their peculiar ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diver-
sities in which the state does not interfere. However, within the public
sphere, the individuals are subjected to the government’s standard rules
and regulations and regarded as equal in terms of enjoying public utilities
and rights, such as the right to vote, political association, right to educa-
tion and health services, and protection by the law.
Therefore, the theory of liberal nationalism plays an instrumental
role in offering each individual a common identity with equality, irre-
spective of any perceived differences in public spheres (Rusciano 2003).
However, heterogeneity among the people creates practical problems that
place state and people’s identity at loggerheads (Ahmed 1998, Chap. 2).
Heterogeneity implies differences of taste, preferences, attitude, lifestyle,
and internal system. Due to specific peculiarities, people tend to maintain
centripetal tendency toward their own internal specific heritage and cus-
toms. This obviously brings liberalism into conflict with diversities. Several
fundamental questions arise out of the practical reality, such as: what does
the equality mean for ethnic and racial groups? How should the theory be
put into practice, so as to achieve equality? How can state institutions and
distributive mechanisms be arranged to ensure equal rights?
Over the past few decades, a number of theories under liberalism have
offered various mechanisms to accommodate heterogeneity at the private
level while maintaining a common identity at the public level. The most
prominent of these theories are citizenship and multiculturalism.
(Russell 2010[1946]). The rest of people in society such as the labor class,
merchants, women, and slaves were not entitled to be citizens (Ahmed
2005). Such an understanding of citizenship as a domain of privileged
classes did not change much until the eighteenth century (Marshall 1965)
and before the emergence of modern nationalism. In the post-war multi-
ethnic and multiracial state, a universal citizenship was considered the
most useful mechanism to achieve and maintain social unity (Vesselinov
2010). Gradually, through state practice and international treaties, the idea
became universal as well, within the fold of liberal democracy (Spinner
1994). The theory of citizenship attracted renewed academic interest after
1960, due to the upsurge of ethnonationalism in many parts of the world
(Ong 2005). Secessionist movements based on ethnic identity such as
those in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Balkans, and the Kashmiris in the
subcontinent are some of the examples of enthonationalist movements
that renewed the debate on citizenship and nationality.
Citizenship is understood in two different ways. One, it is related to the
idea of individual entitlement, and second, it refers to attachment to a politi-
cally sovereign state. A theory of citizenship includes the question of indi-
vidual identity and socio-political conducts and responsibilities, roles, and
loyalties (Turner 1992), which is also known as the “theory of nationality”
(Hibbert 2008). The dimensions of citizenship include horizontal relation-
ships among individuals and vertical relationship between individuals and the
state (Staeheli 2010). Kymlicka and Norman (1994) call these overlapping
aspects of citizenship “citizenship-as-legal-status,” in which an individual’s
political membership is a component part of a given political community, and
“citizenship-as-desirable-activity,” which refers to the degree and nature of
an individual’s participation and contribution to that community. From the
perspective of liberalism, citizenship has both Leftist and Rightist spectrums.
thought, speech and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid
contracts, and the right to justice, all of which appeared in the eighteenth
century. Secondly, political rights in the form of universal suffrage that
emerged in the nineteenth century. And finally, social rights such as the
right to public education, health care, and unemployment benefits that
have become established in the twentieth century with the development of
a welfare state (Marshall 1965). Marshall also argues that with the expan-
sion of the rights of citizenship, the class of citizens has also expanded. For
instance, civil and political rights were earlier restricted only to property-
owning white Protestant men. But over time, these have been extended to
other classes of people such as Catholics and Jews, blacks, women, and the
working-class groups (Levy and Miller 1998; Ling and Monteith 2004;
Boyd and Burroughs 2010).
Obviously, Marshall’s concept of citizenship can be practiced within a
state that is liberal, democratic, and pro-welfare in nature. By giving the
three types of rights, the liberal democratic welfare state can ensure that
every individual is made to feel that he/she is a full member, and can par-
ticipate in, and enjoy, all the benefits of society. This means that a violation
or withdrawal of civil, political, and social rights will create social alien-
ation for the people. Social alienation may then develop into “passive” or
“private” citizenship, where people confine their rights in passive entitle-
ments and abstain from participation in public life. This view is known as
the Left view on citizenship, which argues that citizenship involves both
rights and responsibilities where the right to participate must precede the
responsibilities. That means that it is only appropriate to demand fulfill-
ment of the responsibilities after the rights to participate have been secured
(Fitzpatrick 2001; Martin et al. 2006; Steenbergen 1994; Pierson 2004).
Marshall or the Leftists believed that the state creates a participatory
“common culture” by “empowering” citizens to democratize the welfare
state which socializes them with political participation, responsibilities and
duties (Oldfield 1990), and socio-economic and political virtues (Galston
1991).
Yet, the Left is often blamed for the imbalance between rights and
responsibilities, because of its claim that these are to be ensured even in
the absence of the citizens fulfilling their social and political responsibilities
(Andrews 1991; Held 1991; Mead 1986; Oldfield 1990; Pierson 1991).
The critics argue that citizenship responsibilities should be incorporated
more explicitly into left-wing theory (Hoover and Plant 1988; Mouffe
1992; Vogel and Moran 1991), because it seems clear that the Left still
8 1 INTRODUCTION
Western democracies have moved away from older models of unitary, cen-
tralized nation-state, and repudiated older ideologies of “one state, one
nation, one language.” Today virtually all Western states that contain indig-
enous peoples and substate national groups have become “multination”
states, recognizing the existence of “peoples” and “nations” within the
boundaries of the state. This recognition is manifested in a range of minor-
ity rights that include regional autonomy and official language status for
national minorities, and customary law, land claims, and self-government for
indigenous peoples. (p. 28)
Mechanisms of Multiculturalism
Theories, as well as practices, suggest a number of possible responses to
identity diversity, ranging from the extreme left, seen as representing the
least tolerant view, to the extreme right, representing the most tolerant
view, on the spectrum. The extreme leftist view includes policies such as
genocide occurred in Nazi Germany during World War II and in Rwanda
in 1994, and ethnic cleansing occurred to Albanians in the Serbian terri-
tory of Kosovo. On the extreme right is a concept known as recognition
of separation and independence claims, which is more ideal than practi-
cal. Evidently, the existing states would be unlikely to compromise their
boundaries by meeting secessionist claims unless pressured by exceptional
circumstances such as foreign intervention (East Timor in 1999 and South
Sudan in 2011).
Between these two extreme positions are mechanisms that are con-
sidered tolerant and that fall under the boundary of multiculturalism.
Kymlicka (1995) has identified four such mechanisms known as assimi-
lation, integration, accommodation, and ethno-federalism. Assimilation
refers to the government policy to compel the minority groups to aban-
don their cultural peculiarities and adopt those of the majority group.
This policy strikes on the identity of the group, rather than forcing the
group out of the territory. If the group’s cultural characteristics were
eliminated, then their identity would be assimilated into the dominant
12 1 INTRODUCTION
During that visit I went to the cemetery Decoration Day. Mind you,
I have seen about forty Decoration days, North—but this one in my
own Southland, among my own beloved dead, has been the only
Decoration Day I have ever seen in a cemetery. (I wish my feelings
were not quite so strong.) Phine and I stood beside the tomb that
contains the dust of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, a man I had
known well, a contemporary and valued friend of my father’s, a man
whose children and grandchildren were dear to me. We saw the
solemn procession file in, and halt a little beyond us. The band
played “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and hundreds of voices joined in
the musical prayer. I could not sing, I never could, but I could weep,
and my eyes were not the only moist ones in the assembly. Such a
throng of sober, sad people there was, such a lot of veterans, many
in shabby, weather-stained gray, that bore evidence of hard
service....
Phine had kept track of the people from whom I had been so long
separated that age had obliterated means by which I could recognize
them. As a veteran, in the shabby old gray (I felt like taking everyone
such by the hand), approached, Phine caught my arm and
whispered “Douglas West,” and at the same moment his eye met
mine with a flash of recognition. I had not seen Douglas for over
thirty years. And weren’t we glad to meet? on that ground, too, so
sacred to both of us. And didn’t we meet and meet and talk and talk,
many times thereafter, in Phine’s dear little parlor on Carondelet
Street? Indeed, we did.
Later on, Phine whispered, “You knew that man, I’ll tell you who he
is after he passes us.” A quite tottering, wrinkled, old man passed. I
gave him a good stare, shook my head. I did not know, nor think I
ever had known him. It was A. B. Cammack—who would have
believed it? He was a bachelor in 1850, the time when I thought a
man of thirty was an old man. We happened to be fellow passengers
on that fashionable A No. 1 steamboat, Belle Key. I was a frisky
young miss, and Mr. Cammack was, as I say, an old bachelor. He did
not know, nor want to know anybody on the boat, but it happened he
was introduced to our small party, at the moment of sailing, so we
had a reluctant sort of bowing acquaintance for the first day or so.
Broderie Anglaise was all the rage. Any woman who had time for
frivolité, as the Creoles called tatting, was busy working eyelets on
linen. Of course I had Broderie, too. Mr. Cammack gradually thawed,
and brought a book to read to me while my fingers flew over the
fascinating eyelets. The book, I distinctly remember, was “Aunt
Patsy’s Scrap Bag,” a medley of silly nonsensical stuff, written by a
woman so long dead and so stupid while she lived that nobody even
hears of her now, but Mr. Cammack was immensely entertaining and
witty, and we roared over that volume, and his comments thereon. I
have often dwelt on that steamboat episode, but I doubt if it ever
gave him a moment’s thought. I really think if it had been like my
meeting with Douglas West we might have had quite a bit of fun,
living again that week on the Belle Key. A hearty laugh, such as we
had together, so many years before, might have smoothed some of
the wrinkles from his careworn face, and a few crow’s feet out of
mine. But he never knew, possibly would not have cared if he had
known, that we almost touched hands in the crowd on that
Decoration Day.
On and on we strolled, past a grand monument to the memory of
Dr. Choppin, whom I knew so well, and loved too, girl fashion, when
he was twenty, and who sailed away, boy fashion, to complete his
medical education in Paris. Maybe if we had met, in the flesh, on that
Decoration Day, it might have been a la Cammack. We never did
meet, after that memorable sailing away, but he has a tender niche
in my heart even yet, and I was pleased to see some loving hand
had decorated that sacred spot....
Phine and I strolled about after the ceremonies were completed.
She had a toy broom and a toy watering pot in the keeper’s cottage,
and was reluctant to leave before she had straightened and
freshened the bouquets we had placed on the tombs of the dead she
loved, and swept away the dust, and watered the little grass border
again.
A year ago she herself fell asleep and was laid to rest in the lovely
cemetery, and with her death the last close tie was broken that
bound me to New Orleans.
Eliza Moore, tenth of the twelve children of Richard Henry and
Betsey Holmes Chinn, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on the first
day of February, 1832.
Three years later Judge Chinn moved his family to New Orleans,
where he continued the practice of law until his death in ’47.
On August 24, 1852, Eliza Chinn and James Alexander McHatton
were married in Lexington, and for ten years thereafter they lived at
Arlington plantation on the Mississippi, a few miles below Baton
Rouge, leaving hastily in ’62, upon the appearance of Federal
gunboats at their levee.
During the remainder of the war they lived almost continuously in
army ambulances, convoying cotton from Louisiana across Texas to
Mexico.
In February, 1865, they went to Cuba, and lived there until the
death of Mr. McHatton, owning and operating, with mixed negro and
coolie labor, a large sugar plantation—“Desengaño.”
After her return to the United States Mrs. McHatton was married to
Dwight Ripley, July 9, 1873, and the remainder of her life was
passed in the North. In 1887 Mrs. Ripley published “From Flag to
Flag”—a narrative of her war-time and Cuban experiences, now out
of print.
The reminiscences which make up the present volume have been
written at intervals during the last three or four years. The final
arrangements for their publication were sanctioned by her the day
before she passed away—on July 13, 1912, in the eighty-first year of
her age.
E. R. N.
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