By Shahid Bolsen
When I first became involved with the Rohingya cause, my
immediate analysis was that the mutual economic interests of the Myanmar ruling
class and of the international business community were driving the genocidal
policy of the government.
I believed that multinational corporations were
unbothered by the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and that they, indeed,
approved of what the regime was doing in Rakhine because it represented a tried
and true policy for conflict management and the consolidation of control over
resources.
I did not propose that we could expect MNCs to see the
genocide as being bad for business, in and of itself, because, from the
standpoint of business, it certainly is not.
Business has taken an approving posture on this issue precisely because
it is a good policy for business. What I
proposed was that what activists needed to do was to make it bad for business
by imposing negative consequences in the marketplace upon companies that
supported the regime, or were otherwise silent and indifferent about the
genocide. Without doing this, because
companies are not moral entities, there would be no way to convince them that
genocide was a bad idea.
The genocide of the Rohingya has given the regime
expanded control over land and resources in Rakhine, decreased official
unemployment figures (by expelling hundreds of thousands of people from the
potential work force), reduced competition for jobs, cleared land for
development, and of course, created sprawling refugee camps both inside and
outside the country which can be used as depositories for goods in an
essentially captive market, paid for by governments and private donations as
part of the humanitarian relief industrial complex. From all angles, it is good for business. And this is something the international
business community has perceived all along.
This is why the only conceivable way for us to have had
an impact would have been to offset that dynamic by imposing negative market
consequences, and alternatively, by bestowing market rewards for companies that
took a good stance against the genocide.
As I have written time and time again, this is something
that can only be achieved through grassroots consumer activism. We are the crucial element in determining
whether any policy is profitable or unprofitable. A company like Unilever under the astute
leadership of Paul Polman realized the potential danger the genocide posed to
their regional reputation, and thus to their expected profitability in
Southeast Asia; and this is why Unilever issued a public statement in support
of the Rohingya. No one in the campaign
was under the illusion that Unilever sincerely cares about the Rohingya. What they cared about was negative backlash
in the regional market, and that is exactly how we argued the case with Polman.
But, at the end of the day, we needed to be able to
mobilize that kind of backlash. Even if
we never had to implement it, it had to be something we genuinely had the power
to do. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the
activists and organizations concerned with the Rohingya issue have been
entirely too unfocused, reactionary, and have continued to rely on strategies
that have endlessly proven to be futile; and so here we are today with the
genocide, for all intents and purposes, successful. No doubt, we did not do enough to spread
awareness and understanding of our approach, and did not do enough to try to
mobilize on the grassroots level. But
nothing whatsoever has occurred that invalidates my initial analysis or the
strategy we adopted. On the contrary;
the futile strategies of the past have been proved futile once again, with
devastating consequences.
Our solitary condemnation of ARSA too, was entirely
justified, and the horrific consequences of their recklessness which we
predicted have been fulfilled, and may yet unfold into even worse disasters in
the future.
Myanmar may indeed seek repatriation of Rohingya refugees
because only a couple hundred thousand Rohingya may be insufficient to be
utilized as an instrument for distraction and fear to control the ethnic
Rakhine population, or as a tool for maintaining low wages. If there ever does materialize American or
other international military intervention in Rakhine, it will be for this
reason; not because the regime committed genocide, but because they mismanaged
it. If the US does intervene militarily
(something highly doubtful), they will do so without the slightest interest in
the welfare of the Rohingya, but rather as a means of seizing opportunities
created by the genocide to preempt China from doing so.
And, still, the same reality holds true. Only by democratizing corporate power through
consumer activism are we ever going to be able to influence events, change
policies, and prevent man-made catastrophes like the Rohingya genocide.
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