LAST week a series of attacks on Myanmar's border posts attracted little international attention. But they should have. These assaults in which nine Myanmar policemen died, marked the start of a violent reaction by the Rohingya people to their continuing official repression, even in a country that is now run by a much-admired Nobel Peace Laureate. The Rohingya who came from Bangladeshi territory to attack to Myanmar's border posts were reportedly armed mostly with knives and slingshots. But they left with more than 50 weapons and cases of ammunition. This has been the classic start to so many bloody rebellions down the ages. It should be a wake-up call for the government of Aung San Suu Kyi. It never had to be this way and it still doesn't now. The government that is effectively run by Suu Kyi should move rapidly to deal with the tragedy of Myanmar's one million Rohingya Muslims. The most profound and effective step would be to recognize the right of these people to Myanmar citizenship. This elementary entitlement has long been denied the Rohingya on the grounds that their community had been brought to the country from the Indian subcontinent by British colonialists. Citing the imperialist Raj for the "illegal" presence of many generations of Rohingya in Myanmar was never acceptable. Myanmar is a country made up of seven main ethnic groups the majority of whom are Buddhists. The country has been in an almost constant state of conflict as one remote ethnic community or another rebelled against rule from Rangoon, the capital until 2005. Ironically the Rohingya were almost entirely peaceful in their claims for recognition as a legitimate part of Myanmar's society. The exception was in the 1980 when the militant Rohingya Solidarity Organization was set up. Small and largely ineffective, it had disappeared by 1994. The Myanmar government is blaming these new border assaults of the RSO, which if true would mean the organization has reformed. There is a further irony, which is that the international community is finally pushing for a settlement for the Rohingya in Rakhine province where most of them live. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is leading a commission that is looking into the conflict between the Rohingya and the Buddhists in the province, which has seen more than several hundred thousand Muslims displaced by Buddhist violence since 2012. These unfortunates have been herded into military-run camps allegedly for their own protection. Meanwhile local thugs have plundered and destroyed Rohingyan property. It is almost certainly the presence of Annan's commission that has prompted this new militancy. The harsh calculation has been that if no political progress could be made through peaceful means, now, while the world is watching, is the time to raise the stakes by using violence against the Myanmar authorities. Other ethnic groups have won concessions this way, so why should not the Rohingyans? Unfortunately this path is not without its serious risks. Armed confrontation could trigger further depravities by Buddhist bigots on the Muslim community in Rakhine. The government could even use the violence as an excuse to roll up its cooperation with the Annan commission. The sad truth is that Suu Kyi may have won the Peace Laureate but she has yet to demonstrate that she has the courage and vision to protect her country's Muslims from hateful machinations of a minority of Buddhist extremists.
