Myanmar Government Can’t Hide its Crimes
In an
article in the state-run New Light of Myanmar on Wednesday,
August 22, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Myanmar, stated, “It
is obvious that the violence in the Rakhine
State are neither the
conflict between two religious groups of different faith nor humanitarian
issue.” “The incidents in the Rakhine State are sectarian conflicts which are
purely internal affairs of a sovereign state. They are not relating to any kind
of religious persecution or religious discrimination. Therefore, we will not
accept, any attempt to politically regionalize or internationalize this
conflict as a religious issue.” “The government of Myanmar has never practiced policy
of violence against Muslims or any other faiths,” said the statement. “The
government totally rejects accusations made by some organizations that the
government is practicing such a policy of abuse.”
Well, I beg to differ with the Myanmar
government. It is once again trying to whitewash its horrible record of racism
and bigotry against the non-Buddhists (esp. the Rohingya) inside the
country. When millions of inhabitants of
the country are denied citizenship because of their race, ethnicity and faith, and
such exclusion includes every Rohingya Muslim in spite of maintaining their
existence in that country for hundreds of years, such claims are simply laughable.
When a violent mob attacks a group of Burmese Tablighi Muslims (who were not
even from the Rohingya community suspected in the death of a Rakhine woman) and
lynches them to death in front of the members of the police forces, who do
nothing to stop such horrendous crimes, it is difficult to sell such
deep-seated hatred as anything but bigotry. How does the crime of a single individual
(although no proof has yet been provided by the Myanmar government) become the
justification for committing hate crimes against an entire ethnic group?
When the members of the state-run riot police (Lon Htin)
selectively shoots to kill members of the Rohingya community when they had
gathered for a funeral service and being provoked by a hostile rock-throwing,
stick and knife-wielding Rakhine crowd, no one is fooled by such government
explanation. When the members of the border security force NASAKA and Lon Htin are
seen (and there are plenty of video tapes available in the Internet) to participate
in burning Rohingya homes, businesses and villages, and killing them simply
because they are different racially and religiously, if it is not a government
sponsored persecution of a Muslim religious community, what is?
When Rakhine Buddhist mobs led by Buddhist monks attack and
set fire to several Muslim shops, restaurants and mosques, and kill unarmed
Rohingya men and children, while the local authorities
(police and the Army) did nothing to intervene nor did the fire-fighters come
to their aid, how can one deny or evade responsibility for such collusion?
When the political and military leadership within Myanmar
and the Rakhine state promote hatred and xenophobia, and practice open
discrimination while encouraging and providing material support to the Buddhist
extremists to commit acts of violence including rape of Rohingya Muslim girls
and women, it is ludicrous to hide such obvious signs of religious persecution
or discrimination.
When the Rakhine Buddhist monks allow their monasteries to
be used for hording lethal arms, and disallow the life-saving food items to be
sold to and block humanitarian assistance from
reaching the starving Rohingya people, it is criminal to ignore the ugly fact
that racism and bigotry against the Rohingyas have become an acceptable national
project towards their total elimination that is enthusiastically supported and
participated by an overwhelming majority within the Buddhist population.
Even a
Muslim Rohingya is denied his/her right to reproduction. They cannot get
married without government approval, which usually does not happen unless the
government official is bribed heftily. US
photographer Greg Constantine has recently released a book of black and white
photography titled “Exiled to Nowhere: Burma ’s Rohingya.” He relates
the story of 20-year-old Kashida who had to “flee to Bangladesh with
her husband. The Burmese authorities had denied her permission to get married,
but when they discovered she had married in secret and was pregnant they took
away all her family’s money and cows and goats. They forced Kashida to have an
abortion, telling her: “This is not your country; you don’t have the right
to reproduce here.” In Mr.
Constantine’s book there are plenty of such human stories for anyone to verify
the truth of the suffering of the Rohingya people.
What
excuse does the Myanmar
government have to offer on such monumental crimes against a religious minority?
When
the government forces not only allow the slaughter of the unarmed Rohingya but
also participate in the gang rape of Rohingya women as a weapon of war so that
they are pushed out of the country, and then the fleeing people are shot at -- there
is a name for such a crime – it is called ethnic
cleansing, which has been going on for decades. For the information of the
Myanmar government, the United Nations define ‘ethnic cleansing’ as “Purposeful
policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and
terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious
group from certain geographic areas.”
The Buddhist Myanmar has been practicing
this crime for decades against many of the marginalized races and ethnic groups
since the state got its independence from Britain in 1948. And of course, the
Rohingyas have been the worst victims of this state policy. Per my count, there
have been at least two dozen major campaigns to wipe out Muslim identity in Myanmar . As a
result of such an on-again and off-again, slow but steady elimination strategy,
nearly half the Rohingya population has been pushed out of the country and tens
of thousands slaughtered, while the world almost forgot their sad plight. The ‘stubborn’
Rohingyas who continue to live inside this living hell are subjected to the
worst forms of persecution and discrimination mankind has ever witnessed in the
post-colonial era.
Towards transformational change of the
multi-faith and multi-ethnic country to a unitary Burman dominated Buddhist
country, there have been a systemic strategy since the days Ne Win (actually,
one can go back to the time of Buddhist fanatic king Boddawpaya in 1784) to
destroy religious monuments and insignia of other faiths. It is, therefore, not
by chance that hardly a single historic mosque stands erect in Myanmar today. The
state of Arakan whose shoreline once used to be dotted with Muslim shrines and
mosques are now bereft of those Islamic symbolisms. The old Sandi Khan mosque
(named after the very Muslim General who came to restore the throne of the fleeing
Arakanese king Narameikhla in 1430 CE is long destroyed. Even the ancient Han
Tha mosque did not survive Myanmarism. Along with the Taungoo Railway station
mosque, this historical mosque was razed to the ground on May 18, 2001 by
bulldozers owned by the previous SPDC military junta. How about Akyab’s historic
Badr Makam mosque? [It is no accident either that Muslim sounding names of
towns and places like Akyab (including that of Arakan state) have systematically
been Burmanized to erase that Islamic connectivity.]
No religion can effectively survive or
function without its places of worship. Every time a riot is initiated (often
with full cooperation of the regime), the first targets are usually the mosques
and madrasas because these are the only remaining institutions in Myanmar
that are connected with the Islamic faith. [The Rohingya children are barred
from government education beyond primary level, nor do they have freedom of
movement.] And what is worse: mosques and Muslim graveyards are routinely closed
down, destroyed or desecrated to make room for Buddhist model towns or expensive
pagodas, where the Muslims must pay for such construction projects. [As
I write, hundreds of Muslim mosques have been demolished or burned in the
latest episode. All the mosques have been closed down without allowing Muslims
to pray inside. So, no one could pray even on the Eid day, the
happiest of Islamic festivals.]
As Dr. Shwe Lu Maung alias Shahnawaz Khan has noted in his book – The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar – A Social Darwinist’s Analysis – the policy of the successive rulers in Myanmar for centuries has been to make “golden temple shiny shiny, stomach though empty empty.” Every Myanmar ruler that has come to power has always tried to outdo his predecessor by trying to build a bigger and more expensive pagoda so as to prove his unwavering ties with the Buddhist faith and people, most often however at the expense of other faiths and faithful followers.
As Dr. Shwe Lu Maung alias Shahnawaz Khan has noted in his book – The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar – A Social Darwinist’s Analysis – the policy of the successive rulers in Myanmar for centuries has been to make “golden temple shiny shiny, stomach though empty empty.” Every Myanmar ruler that has come to power has always tried to outdo his predecessor by trying to build a bigger and more expensive pagoda so as to prove his unwavering ties with the Buddhist faith and people, most often however at the expense of other faiths and faithful followers.
Interested reader may like to read the reports from a
multitude of human rights groups, plus the U.S. State Department’s annual
report on Myanmar , or my
books (esp., The Forgotten Rohingya:
Their Struggle for Human Rights in Burma) to comprehend the colossal record
of crime of the Myanmar
government against the Rohingya Muslims.
The reports emerging
from the Rakhine state, verified by several human rights groups, clearly show the
regime’s dirty hands in targeted elimination of the Rohingya people. This was
also obvious from the assessment made by Navi Pillay of the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights who said, “We have been receiving a stream of reports from independent
sources alleging discriminatory
and arbitrary responses
by security forces, and
even their instigation of and involvement
in clashes.” “Reports indicate that the initial
swift response of the authorities
to the communal violence may have turned into a crackdown targeting Muslims, in particular members of the Rohingya community,” she said (July 27, 2012).
Benjamin Zawacki of the Amnesty International
told BBC, “Most cases have meant targeted
attacks on the minority Rohingya population and they were bearing the brunt of
most of that communal violence in June and they continue to bear the lion's
share of the violations perpetrated by the state security forces.” “While the
restoration of order, security, and the protection of human rights is
necessary, most arrests appear to have been arbitrary and discriminatory,
violating the rights to liberty and to freedom from discrimination on grounds
of religion,” Amnesty said in a
statement.
Similarly,
Phil Robertson, Deputy Director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch, said “state
security forces and local Arakan communities worked together to target Rohingya communities, committing killings,
rapes, and mass arrests.” On June 23, in a village near the town of Maungdaw , security forces
pursued and opened fire on two dozen Rohingya villagers who had been hiding
from the violence in fields and forest areas. Witnesses in Maungdaw township
described several instances in which Rakhine men wielding sticks and swords accompanied the security forces in
raids on Rohingya villages.
Not too long
ago, a coalition of human rights group, led by Refugees International, the
Arakan Project, and the Equal Rights Trust, issued a joint statement
saying: “In Myanmar ,
what began as inter-communal violence has evolved into large
scale state-sponsored violence
against the Rohingya.” “Many Rohingya continue to be victims of violence and
cannot leave their
homes for fear of persecution, and are thus deprived of their livelihood
and most basic needs,” said the
advocacy groups.
To, thus, say that the
government of Myanmar has ‘never practiced policy of violence against Muslims
or any other faiths’ or that there is ‘no religious persecution or
discrimination’ is like saying that ‘violence is peace’ and ‘persecution is
love’! With more than 100,000 internally displaced Rohingyas, it is also a serious humanitarian issue. With such hypocritical words, the Myanmar
government can neither hope to hoodwink anyone nor evade its responsibility for
being the author and executioner for its crimes against humanity.
Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director, Human Rights
Watch, noted weeks ago, “Deadly violence in Arakan State
is spiraling out of control under the
government’s watch. Opening the
area to independent international observers would put all sides on
notice that they were being
closely watched.” The UN and other human rights monitoring groups have
also requested Myanmar
government to allow international observers to be posted, but to no avail. Its
reluctance points to the fact that the regime wants to hide its on-going crime
against the Rohingya people.
Lately, President Thein Sein has announced the formation of
a 27-member inquiry commission to submit a report on this latest pogrom. One
may recall that soon after the pogrom had started in June, he promised a
similar inquiry report by June 30, which, however, never saw the light. The inclusion
of racists like Dr. Aye Maung, Khin Maung Swe, Aye Tha Aung, Zarganar,
and Ko Ko Gyi, who had played an active role in the latest pogrom against the
Rohingya people, once again shows that Thein Sein is not serious about fact-finding
but only about international image. It is a
face-saving measure to withstand international pressure. He is trying to buy
time and hope that commotion would calm down so that he could rekindle the fire
of extinction some time later.
As I have noted many times, at the heart of the on-going
eliminationist project against Rohingyas and other persecuted minorities lies Burma ’s notorious
1982 Citizenship Law, written during hateful dictator Ne Win era. It is sad to
see that how such a blueprint for racial and religious discrimination and
eventual elimination has now become an acceptable law even by the so-called
democracy leaders. No one inside Myanmar is crying out foul for its
violations of each of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, not even Suu Kyi Aris, once touted as a voice of conscience for
humanity. The recent tragedy has shown her real color and those of her NLD
colleagues. They are basically neo-Fascists who are no better than the very
regime that they want to unseat. That is what a national project for
elimination would do to a nation!
If the Myanmar
government is serious about bringing about a positive change towards inclusion,
its 1982 Law needs to be amended or dumped altogether so that Rohingyas are not
rendered stateless. Amnesty International says, “Under international human
rights law and standards, no one may be left or rendered stateless.”
And this is also the recommendation from the UN Special
Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar ,
Tomás Ojea Quintana. He has stressed the need for the authorities to take steps
to address the “long-standing issues of deprivation of citizenship, freedom of
movement, and other fundamental rights” that plague the welfare of the Rohingya
people. There is no better time to amend the 1982 Law than now.
Is Thein Sein government ready to truly reform its 1982 Law
that violates international human rights law and standards? If not now, when?
Without such steps, he can’t escape being labeled as an executioner of an
apartheid policy that leads to exclusion, discrimination, persecution and
elimination. That is war crime in my book!
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