(De)securitising Rohingya people in the Asian context: state, humanitarian and contestatory framings since 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyse different framings around the ‘Rohingya crisis’ that can be dated to August 2017, when an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group, ARSA, on Myanmar security forces in northern Rakhine triggered a military ‘clearance operation’ in Rohingya’s settlements that resembled a genocide. After some 800,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh for safety in late 2017, this became one of the biggest refugee crises in the region. The study finds out and compares how military and civilian state actors in Myanmar frame Rohingya, using securitisation theory. It contrasts ‘securitised’ state framings of Rohingya with ‘desecuritised’ framings of two UN agencies, UNHCR and IOM, and of a Rohingya organisation, selecting the case of Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) for framing analysis. This organisation’s framing differs from both state and UN agencies’ fram-ings, since Rohingya explicitly frame themselves as victims of injustices, indigenous to My-anmar and excluded over time by being denied citizenship. Combined with long-standing structural violence and discrimination, state framings have rendered Rohingya stateless. On the one hand, the study found the military securitised the Rohingya as ‘Bengali’, seeking to justify their violent exclusion from Myanmar’s citizenry and nation. On the other hand, the civilian government tended to accept the military’s framing. By contrast, the two UN agen-cies seek to desecuritise Rohingya refugees, countering Myanmar state framings, and appeal-ing for international awareness and assistance to end Rohingya suffering. Guided by some-what different humanitarian and human rights perspectives, IOM and UNHCR each have distinct interpretations and solutions to the Rohingya crisis. This research also finds that different actors’ framings closely relate to their respective positions on the term ‘Rohingya’ as an identity marker. Finally, the study briefly considers the turnaround in the civilian op-position’s framing of Rohingya people as Rohingya since the coup of February 2021.