Rohingya And Hannah Arendt's The Origins Of Totalitarianism

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and de-facto leader of Myanmar’s civilian government, has long been hailed as a protector of human rights in her native country. It has thus, been incredibly surprising to witness her reaction to the recent forced exodus of nearly half a million minority Rohingya from within her regional borders. Despite being championed as the great savior of her country, she failed to condemn the atrocities for nearly a month; and, when she did finally speak up against the human rights abuses, she refused to address the United Nations accusations of ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya have been stateless since Myanmar’s 1974 Constitution and 1982 Citizenship Act excluded the minority Muslim group as a ‘national race’ . In The Origins of Totalitarianism , Hannah Arendt explores the idea that the interests of the nation state infringe upon the Universal Rights of Man. The

These attacks are cited to have their roots in religious, ethnic and economic disparities between the majority Buddhist population, and the minority Rohingya . Arendt argues that the constitutional inability of the nation state to guarantee human rights to minorities, makes it possible for the persecuting governments to impose their standard of values even upon their opponents . By denying the Rohingya official citizenship and refusing to recognize them as one of the country’s 135 official ethnic groups, the government of Myanmar has come to view them as illegal immigrants. Denying the ethnic group, the right to vote or travel without government permission, is framed as a national security decision – why would the government allow illegal immigrants to access the same privileges as their legal citizens? The protection of national sovereignty is favored over the protection of human rights; and unfortunately, human life in certain extreme