Sun, 2012-07-15 14:02 — editor
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
June 30 came and went. It was the
dateline set by the Thein Sein government of Myanmar for an inquiry report on
current violence in the Arakan state, triggered by the lynching of ten tablighi
Muslims (visiting from Rangoon) on June 3. That violence soon turned into a
well-orchestrated pogrom against the Rohingya Muslims of Arakan (the Rakhine
state) in Myanmar (Burma).
According to several human rights groups
thousands of unarmed Muslims may already have been killed in the apartheid
state of Myanmar.
Many Rohingya young men, picked up by the government forces, have simply
disappeared, and are now feared death. Many victims – old and young, afraid of
being ambushed and tortured to death by the racist Rakhine extremists and their
partners-in-crime -- the government forces, have ventured out to seek asylum as
refugees in Bangladesh.
Instead, what the world community heard lately is
simply bizarre! Myanmar
presidential office released a statement last week citing that it would not
recognize the Rohingya and would hand over responsibility for the Rohingya
minority to the UN’s refugee agency in Arakan State,
adding that it was also “willing to send the Rohingyas to any third country
that will accept them.” How wonderful! So, just like that a minority Muslim
community that has known no other home outside the Buddhist-majority country is
now treated as if they are outsiders; thus, ducking responsibility of the
Myanmar government. What a travesty! This behavior is typical of a lawless
‘Mogher Mulluk’ with no accountability, no justice and no fair play. It is
simply disgusting!
The Rohingyas are being targeted for this
horrendous crime simply because of their race and religion. Looking darker and
closer to the South Asian race (found in Bangladesh and India) as opposed to
the more oriental (Mongoloid) looking majority – the Rakhines in the Arakan
state and the majority Bamar inside Myanmar, and being Muslims as opposed to
Buddhist, the Rohingya have been targets of state sponsored ethnic cleansing.
Of course, the denial of citizenship rights of
the indigenous Rohingyas of Arakan is nothing new, and did not start with Thein
Sein’s statement last week; it started full-blown from the Ne Win era. A series
of ethnic cleansing drives has since been launched by the military regime, in
full cooperation of the racist elements within the Arakan state and Burma. Thus,
before the 1982 Citizenship Law was enacted, there were Shwe Kyi Operation
(1959), Kyi Gan Operation (1966), Ngazinka Operation (1967-69), Myat Mon
Operation (1969-71), Major Aung Than Operation (1973), Sabe Operation
(1974-78), Naga Min (King Dragon) Operation (1978-79) – which alone saw the
forced exodus of some 300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh, Shwe Hintha Operation
(1978-80), and Galone Operation (1979). Lest we forget, after 1982, there was
the infamous Pyi Thaya Operation of 1991-92, which again saw the forced exodus
of some 268,000 Rohingyas out of Burma. The aim of all these
genocidal campaigns has been crystal clear: deny all the rights to the
Rohingyas; falsely claim that they are outsiders from Bangladesh, or more
specifically from Chittagong; continue periodic extermination campaigns with
support from the local Rakhine Buddhist community; drive them out of the
apartheid state of Burma by making their lives simply unbearable and miserable.
While this slow but steady genocidal campaign has
been going on inside apartheid Burma for more than half a century, with little
notice from the outside world (after all, the country still remains closed to
most foreign journalists and international monitoring agencies), draconian
measures violating each one of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights were taken to ensure that the remaining Rohingyas opt out. And
surely the evil strategy has been working: majority of the Rohingyas are now
refugees outside Burma.
Those daring to stay within remain the most persecuted people on earth. They
have no freedom of any kind, in much contrast to most of us living outside who
take such privileges for granted.
With the so-called reforms initiated by the new
regime of Thein Sien (a former military general) since last year, our hopes
have been rather high imagining that his is a departure from the feudal past,
and that he understands what it would take for his most impoverished country of
Southeast Asia to survive and prosper in the
21st century. No, we are wrong. Nothing truly has changed inside Myanmar. It
remains locked in its savage, feudal/imperial past. Racism and bigotry remain
the apartheid character of this Buddhist majority country to drive out others,
making the country exclusively for the majority race and religion.
It is not difficult to understand why Suu Kyi,
the so-called democracy icon, remained noticeably silent on the subject of
anti-Rohingya prejudice. Through her silence to condemn gross violations of
human rights of a persecuted community, she has proven to be another immoral
politician that cannot be trusted as a leader. Many of her supporters within
the Rakhine and Burmese Buddhist communities are part of the country’s
‘pro-democracy’ movement. They are outright hostile to non-Buddhists and
Rohingyas of Burma.
Thus, there is no camouflaging any more. The
so-called democracy movement has been a farce; its leaders have proven that
they are nothing more than neo-fascists of our time. Their brand of democracy
is for their particular race and religion only. It is not of inclusion but only
of exclusion. There is no place for a Shan, a Kachin, a Karen, and of course, a
Rohingya, and countless nameless ethnic and minority groups in that equation.
There is no place for a non-Buddhist in Myanmar. Period! Thus, the state
remains at war everywhere inside.
More than 70,000 people have been displaced in
the north by the on-going conflict between the Kachin Independence Army and the
Burmese Army. On 6 July, nearly 1,500 residents in Panghsai township, near the
border with China, attempted
to cross into China
after being ordered to evacuate their villages by the Burmese army. The refugees
were then driven back into Burma
by Chinese border guards. The displaced communities are now living in makeshift
tents on the Burmese side, near the Chinese border and in Myitkyina, while
others continue to hide in the jungle. In spite of a recent peace agreement
with the Karens, some 60,000 officially recognized refugees still live in camps
along the Thailand-Burma border. According to the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) the total number of refugees (including the
Rohingyas) living in nine camps along the Thai-Burma border is 150,000. There
are some 50,000 refugees (of various ethnic groups) that live in Northeast
India and another 12,000 living in temporary settlements inside Malaysia. And
as to the Rohingyas, more than a million are now living as refugees in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
States, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia,
Japan
and elsewhere. The UNHCR estimates that some 91,000 people (mostly Rohingyas)
have been affected by the latest extermination campaign against the Rohingyas
of Arakan.
Just a few days ago, UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon sent a message on the World Refugee Day, “We must not turn away from
those in need. Refugees leave because they have no choice. We must choose to
help.”
The reality inside Burma makes a mockery of Ban
Ki-moon’s statement. His office has failed to stop emerging refugee crises in
our world. Despite the theme for this year (2012) being: 'Refugees have no
choice. You do,' the international response to the Rohingya crisis has been
rather too slow and too safely guarded.
The Government in Bangladesh has pushed back fleeing
Rohingya refugees seeking asylum. “Bangladesh never signed any kind of
international act, convention or law for allowing and giving shelter to
refugees,” said the foreign minister Dipu Moni recently. “That’s why we are not
bound to provide shelter to the Rohingyas.” But how can Bangladesh
ignore its obligations – not just Islamically, but also under international
obligations? Has she forgotten that Bangladesh itself was born in 1971
amid a massive refugee crisis? And now to deny such humanitarian help to
suffering Rohingyas is simply inexcusable!
As noted by investigative journalist, Dan
Morrison, Bangladeshi officials might have served their case better by
condemning the violence while pointing out that Bangladesh is among the world’s
poorest and most densely populated countries, that in 1978 and 1991 it
sheltered Rohingyas fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and that as it
struggles to meet the aspirations of its 160 million citizens, it cannot
consider another “temporary” influx of refugees. Instead Dipu Moni’s statements
came across as callous at a time when images of suffering Rohingyas are being
flashed across the world.
No action has been taken by the world community
to either prevent a repeat of genocidal campaigns against the persecuted
Rohingya people or punish repeat offenders - those responsible within the Union
(of Myanmar), state and local government, and the civilian provocateurs of
hatred. Interestingly, while the ultra-racist provocateurs within the Burmese
and Rakhine Buddhist community continue to justify the denial of citizenship
rights to the Rohingyas of Burma, and preach and provide material aid for
extermination campaigns against them, many of these hypocritical monsters have
no moral bites to living as naturalized citizens in countries like the UK and the USA. Nothing has been done to stop
these neo-Nazi spiritual children of Julius Streicher amongst the Buddhist
community of Burma.
But if the world community is serious to stop the
refugee crisis, it is not too late. It can still stop the bleeding process by
ensuring that violence against targeted minorities is a crime. It can stop such
war crimes by bringing the advocates and perpetrators of crime to justice
either through the local government agencies or the World Court in the Hague. And above all, it can pressure its
governments to not reward the criminal state.
Sadly, however, morality is long gone in our
world, and is replaced by hypocrisy. And this fact is well known amongst the
perpetrators of such war crimes, and thus, there is no end of such crimes in a
foreseeable future. Consider, e.g., the governments in the USA and the UK (and there are plenty of such
examples). The Obama administration has lately announced that it would waive
longstanding sanctions on investment and financial services in Burma. The new
policy does not restrict U.S.
companies from partnering with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), Burma’s
state-owned oil company and the main source of revenue for the previous
military government. The decision was timed to coincide with a trip by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to attend the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) summit in Cambodia.
Similar is the case with the UK. Recently, Britain’s trade and investment department has
opened an office in Rangoon as the latest move
by the UK government to
increase its presence in Burma.
According to a report by The Telegraph, the opening of the new trade office
came during a three-day visit last week by a trade delegation that included
executives of some of the UK’s most influential companies, e.g., Anglo
American, BP, British Gas, Ernst & Young, Rolls Royce and Shell.
The European Union, Australia
and other countries have also eased sanctions against Myanmar.
On July 11, Antonio Guterres, the UNHCR chief,
met Thein Sein in Naypyidaw. He told reporters at a press conference in Rangoon the following day
that the Rohingyas are an internally displaced people. He said, “The
resettlement programs organized by UNHCR are for refugees who are fleeing a
country to another, in very specific circumstances. Obviously, it’s not related
to this situation.”
The latest salvo from Thein Sein once again shows
that the Rohingya community is in a perilous situation. In recent weeks,
villages belonging to the Rohingya have been burnt to the ground, whilst
refugees fleeing to other countries have been refused entry and left to fend
for themselves onboard rickety boats on rough seas. The Myanmar Government
refuses to accept the Rohingya people as citizens and as such have no rights in
a country they call their motherland. This treatment of its inhabitants is in
contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 3, 6, 13,
15, and 16. Reports covered by the Guardian of UK have suggested mass burning,
looting and murder of Rohingya men, women and children. Anti-Muslim prejudice
is endemic in Burmese society.
It’s a shame to think that many Burmese, who
suffered for so long under military dictatorship, harbor such racism and
bigotry.
As noted by human rights group, this issue is
much larger than a Myanmar-only problem; it is fast becoming one of the worst
cases of ethnic cleansing alongside the likes of Rwanda
and Bosnia.
Can the world community stop this war crime?
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