Behind Myanmar's Veil: An Ambassador's Eye-Opening Rohingya Encounter
Scot Marciel, a seasoned diplomat with 37 years of experience, served as the US Ambassador to Myanmar from 2016 to 2020, a period marked by both optimism for democratic transition and the devastating Rohingya crisis, and talked about this in detail in a recent podcast discussion. He worked extensively in Southeast Asia, advocating for engagement rather than solely relying on sanctions in dealing with problematic regimes. Marciel emphasized the need to support Myanmar's nascent civil society, recognizing the complexities of the country's diverse population. His tenure faced unprecedented challenges, particularly the Rohingya crisis, which he considers the most difficult period of his career, and which is discussed below. Marciel currently serves as the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center and as a Senior Advisor at BowerGroupAsia.
“The military was wildly disproportionate in response. And what was, at the time, just this horrific, unimaginable crisis, was later dwarfed the following year by an even bigger one.”
“We all were acutely aware of the of the mistreatment and institutionalized discrimination against the Rohingya going back a long time, and that had not improved. Myanmar had made a lot of progress in a lot of areas, but not in terms of its treatment of the Rohingya. In early October of 2016, you had that initial ARSA raid slash attack. The military was wildly disproportionate in response. And what was, at the time, just this horrific, unimaginable crisis, was later dwarfed the following year by an even bigger one.
We were clamoring for access, because you've got all these second-hand reports about what's happening. You might have an opinion, but you'd like to be able to see it yourself. So, we were clamoring for access, we the diplomatic community. So finally, the government slash military took us up to Rakhine. It's far from, it's not really an ideal way to see things, because you've got the military with you. But we had literally no other way of getting out there.
We were taken to some villages. First village we went to was completely burned down. Second village, or maybe it was the same village, now I'm forgetting. And we were there and suddenly, out of a nearby forest area, a group of people started walking toward us. They turned out to be the Rohingya community from that village. And one of the guys, don’t know if it was the village chief of who it was, some self-appointed spokesman, began to tell us about what had happened. And we're there with the Minister of Border Affairs in uniform and a bunch of soldiers and police, with guns, of course.
In the middle of the conversation, they, the police slash soldiers grabbed the guy. And I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And the ministers said, ‘Well, we’ve got to arrest him; he was involved in the attacks.’ And I was just shocked. I said, ‘Minister, if you arrest this guy, that's the end of the trip. We're not, I'm not, going to continue on with this trip if you're going to arrest the people who talked to us.’ And he said, ‘But he was involved in the attacks. I said, ‘If you arrest the people we talk to, then the only conclusion we can draw is that you don't want anyone to talk to us. And that's how it's going to look.’ So, they let him go. And then later, they'd look for him. But I think he got away.
I have no idea who this guy was, whether he was involved in the attacks, but the government was quite angry with me, not just the military, but the civilian government was quite angry. [They both] basically later said that I had forced them to release a terrorist. And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I mean, you send, you bring up a bunch of diplomats to assess what's happened. And then the first person they talk to is arrested while you're talking to them? You can't, you just can't do that.’ So, it kind of highlighted to me, the vast chasm in the thinking about these things, between us and them.”