Gendering “Rohingya Genocide”: Through Survivors’ Micronarratives

The Rohingyas—an ethnic-religious-linguistic minority group from Rakhine State in Myanmar—represent one of the largest refugee populations in the current world, with nearly 1.3 million individuals inhabiting neighboring Bangladesh. By drawing on 85 intensive evidence-based micronarratives from three different refugee camps in Bangladesh, this chapter has explored how the genocidal experiences of the Rohingyas were shaped by the social construction of gender. By applying the theoretical insights of Galtung’s violence triangle, this analysis has unveiled that before and during the genocidal attacks of 2017, both Rohingya men and women were subjected to direct, structural, and cultural forms of violence. The micronarratives provide rich material to comprehend how men and women were targeted in gender-differentiated ways. As part of direct violence, men were physically assaulted, tortured, or executed to cease their socially ascribed roles of community protectors, whereas women were subjected to abduction, sexual assault, and rape to repress their capacity to procreate and sustain daily life. Unlike physical attacks, structural violence was institutionalized in their daily lives long before the actual genocidal attacks took place—through structural exclusions like marriage, childbirth, mobility, and livelihood-related restrictions. These exclusions escalated economic and social emasculation against men and exposed women to heightened reproductive harms and patriarchal control. Such direct and structural violence was justified through popularizing a gendered allegory of nationhood rooted in the cultural notions of masculinity and femininity. Such as killing Rohingya men and raping Rohingya women were glorified as a sacred duty of the ultra-Buddhist monks and Tatmadaw soldiers to protect their national and religious purity from Rohingya Muslims. This chapter calls for a more survivor-centered approach for the recognition of genocide by foregrounding the micronarratives of the Rohingyas in the terrains of genocide research, policy-making, and human rights activism.