Group Relations and Tolerance

Respect for ethnic and religious minorities is widely considered essential for creation of a stable democracy. In the context of Myanmar’s transition, this chapter assesses group relations, investigates majority and minority perceptions of other groups, evaluates constitutional provisions on equality and government policy on citizenship and interfaith marriage, assesses tolerance of four political, religious, ethnic, and national groups, and looks at the roots of intolerance towards the Rohingya. It triangulates the authors’ interviews with members of ethnic minorities and politicians, surveys, and survey experiments, with secondary survey data and historical resources. It reveals generally positive group relations, which are however clouded by xenophobic and Islamophobic tendencies and outright rejection of the Rohingya.