The Children of the Rohingya
News reports about the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar have appalled the world. Images of families stumbling across the border with Bangladesh, with tales of the military and Buddhist militias murdering men, raping women, and torching villages underlie allegations of ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
Once the darling of the world media for resisting the tyranny of Myanmar's military government, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Ky is now being shunned by world leaders. As her country's foreign minister and State Counsellor (or prime minister), she apparently has done little to halt atrocities and has failed to defend the rights of the Rohingya.
Myanmar's Population Control Measures
Like all ethnic and religious conflicts, the tensions between the Rohingya and the dominant Buddhist establishment are decades, if not centuries, old and are incredibly complex. Rohingya Muslim militants have reportedly committed atrocities against Hindus and Buddhists and attacked and killed Myanmar police.
But the Buddhists also fear encroachment by Muslims and have tried to repress them socially and politically. The motto of the country's Ministry of Immigration and Population is "The Earth will not swallow a race to extinction but another will." So it comes as no surprise that one strand in government repression of the Rohingyas has been population control.
Because of poverty and lack of opportunities for women outside the home, a typical Rohingya family has four or five surviving children, while Buddhist households tend to have only two or three children.
"The population growth of Rohingya Muslims is 10 times higher than that of the Rakhine (Buddhists)," said a government spokesman in 2013.1 "Overpopulation is one of the causes of tension."
"Kalar (Muslims) are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children," another government official told the New York Times recently.2
As a result of these attitudes, the Myanmar government, starting in 2005, tried to enforce a two-child policy.3 Rohingya couples seeking to marry had to give a written undertaking that they would stop at two children. Flouting the restrictions was punishable with fines or imprisonment. Children born out of wedlock or in a family that already had two children were not registered to receive government services and were not eligible for public education.
Ten years later, in 2015, laws were passed banning polygamy and mandating that women space out births by three years. Physicians for Human Rights complained that Millennium Development Goals were being distorted by the government to force the Rohingya to have fewer children.4
Bangladesh's Population Control Measures
And now, in the squalid camps across the border in Bangladesh, which are home to more than 600,000 Rohingya, the Bangladeshi government is trying to sell the same message.
Contraception and small families are a familiar message in Bangladesh. At independence in 1971, the birthrate was about 7. Now, after years of proactive campaigning for birth control, the birthrate is about 2.2.
As refugees stream over the border, the government is thinking about rolling out a voluntary sterilization campaign. The families in the camps are large, and some men have several wives. Most couples have six or seven children, and family planning workers have met families with as many as 19 children. Many believe that a large family will help them survive in the camps. Many also believe that contraception is against Islam. Women believe that they will not be raped if they are pregnant.
The fecundity of the Rohingya alarms the Bangladeshi authorities.
Public health official Dr. Pintu Bhattacharya told Australia's ABC media that Bangladesh's own incentive scheme, which includes paying a couple a small amount for undergoing voluntary sterilization, should be extended to the refugees.5 "If we do not have this program among refugees then we will have more pregnancies, more newborns and more population," he says. Since the distribution of free condoms has been an abject failure, he favors encouraging the men to have vasectomies. "If a man is sterilized, he cannot have children even if he gets married four or five times," he commented.
Bangladeshi family planners seem to have adopted their own version of the Myanmar ministry's motto: "The Earth will not swallow a race to extinction but our poor and uneducated brothers will."
Violations on Both Sides
In the light of the fact that the Myanmar government weaponized birth control to repress the Rohingya, it is understandable that these desperate refugees believe that large families represent freedom. Instead of gazing with horror at the number of pregnant women in the camps, Western media should highlight the absurdity of population control. On one side of the Myanmar border, it is called ethnic cleansing; on the other side, it is called family planning. On both sides, in truth, it is a violation of the basic human right to form a family.
Michael Cook Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #44, Spring 2018 Copyright © 2026 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo44/population-controllers
