The Rohingya Genocide: How Geopolitics Have Brought the Crisis to a Standstill
"After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it
is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic
cleansing against the Rohingya,” said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on November 22, 2017. His statement came months after the August
outbreak of violence from the Myanmar military against the ethnic Rohingya
group from a state in the north of the country. Human rights groups had been
calling for action for some time and criticizing US indecision, and at last, the words had been said. Not merely a crisis, or
unrest, but ethnic cleansing. Crimes against humanity.
Over 700,000
refugees fled the country initially, desperately making their escape
from a “systematic slaughter of Rohingya Muslim civilians by the military,”
according to reporting from CBS news. The current UN report estimates that
number at around one million.
And yet, despite the crisis having come to the official attention of the UN
over two years ago, the international community is now remarkably silent. The
Rohingya people are still at serious risk
of genocide, and it is both unsafe and impossible for them to return
from refuge in Bangladesh to their homes. And while there have been sanctions
from the United States against some Burmese generals and troops, no major
changes have occurred.
Reports about the Rohingya are few and
far between, far from the flood of righteous outcry during the first few
months, despite statements from the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of
Genocide describing the actions of Myanmar’s military as a “scorched-earth
campaign” against the Muslim ethnic group.
The Rohingya are not among the ethnic
groups officially recognized by the state, and are therefore denied citizenship
under Myanmar’s 1982
Citizenship Law. However, persecution occurred long before this law
was signed–discrimination against the Rohingya has been getting worse for at
least the past 55 years, as summarized by the UN’s Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Independent International
Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar found in their September 2019 report
that “this formal exclusion of the Rohingya has resulted in severe inhumane
suffering and persecution, thereby rising to the level of crimes against
humanity.” The atrocities were so significant that the United Nations Human
Rights Council opened a special
session in 2017 on the crisis of the Rohingya in Myanmar, in which
countries wholeheartedly condemned the large-scale violence taking place,
especially against women and children.
The Myanmar military, known as the
Tatmadaw, executed what they referred to as ‘clearance operations’–a
chillingly indifferent term for the mass slaughter of at least 6,700 Rohingya
in the first month of the conflict alone, as estimated by Doctors
Without Borders, many from being burned alive, and the brutal rape
of many thousands of others. Based off of the atrocities, the conclusions of
the Mission’s 2019 report
directly placed responsibility for the genocide on the state of Myanmar, and
said that not only does Myanmar continue to commit these crimes, but it still
has “genocidal intent” towards the Rohingya. But the regional politics have
brought the situation to a standstill, because China and Japan have become some
of the strongest protectors of Myanmar, defending the government from both
economic and diplomatic retaliation. Japan maintained economic support for the
country throughout the Western sanctions of 2003, fostering a good relationship
with the government. China, on the other hand, is Myanmar’s biggest trading
partner, and the rivalry between these two titans of the Asian markets has
spurred a competition for influence in Myanmar’s frontier market.
These rival
interests means that both major countries are actively avoiding any
dispute with the government. Also, much of the relationship between Myanmar and
North Korea in the past based on arms trade, and a recent UN report said that
China, India, Russia, and North Korea were involved in supplying weapons to the
Tamatdaw that were used in the Rohingya genocide. Add the economic competition
to Russia, China, and North Korea’s military
support of the Tamatdaw, and the situation is frozen. The extermination
of an entire ethnic group continues silently, and debates and negotiations
progress while villages burn.
Economic interests should not shield horrific crimes, and the Rohingya are suffering
for the world’s inaction.
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