International Judicial Intervention and Excessive Self-immunity of the Political Community: Another Reflection on the Rohingya Issue

Abstract

While keeping in mind the Rohingya issue, this article aims to answer two research questions: Why do nation-states perpetuate serious human rights abuses in the name of national security? And why do international judicial interventions trigger backlashes from the countries concerned? The interpretive and tentative diagnosis is as follows. As a nation-state tends to exclude the other (them) excessively in order to protect its own collective identity (us), the Rohingya could be situated as the constitutive outside that plays a crucial role in constructing and maintaining a political community such as Myanmar. As is clear from the country’s continuing armed separatism, Myanmar seriously lacks national integration. And so it needs the constitutive outside much more in order to construct its fictive national identity alongside Buddhism. The increasing political instability brought about by Myanmar’s transition to democracy forced the military (Tatmadaw) to target “illegal” Muslim migrants from Bengal—the Rohingya—in order to protect its vested interests as well as its organizational identity. Following military-led human rights abuses against the Rohingya, the international community tried to implement a judicial intervention. However, this intervention triggered a strong reaction—with exclusive identity politics in the form of excessive self-immunity against the other, such as the denial of human rights abuses—rather than an amelioration of the human rights abuses.