What's Next to Stop Myanmar’s Genocide?
According to aid workers inside Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, as of
last Friday, more than half a million Rohingyas have poured into the country
from Myanmar. More than 60% of these refugees are women and children under the
age of twelve. It is feared that young Rohingya men are either butchered by the
Myanmar security forces or are being detained and tortured or lynched by
security forces and Buddhist neo-fascists, and some may also be hiding in
jungles to escape the killing fields. They are victims of a very sinister
genocidal campaign inside Myanmar that has become a national project to
eliminate Rohingya presence in this Buddhist majority country.
The United Nations have condemned vehemently the criminal
activities of Suu Kyi’s government and her ‘rapist and arsonist’
military/security forces. The UN Secretary General has called it a ‘text book
case of ethnic cleansing.’ The U.S. Ambassador to
the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday, September 28, called on countries
to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over violence against Rohingya Muslims
until the military puts sufficient accountability measures in place. It was the
first time the United States called for punishment of military leaders behind
the repression, but stopped short of threatening to re-impose U.S. sanctions
which were suspended, rather foolishly or thoughtlessly, under the Obama
administration.
“We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the
Burmese authorities what they appear to be - a brutal, sustained campaign to
cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley told the U.N. Security
Council, the first time Washington has echoed the U.N.’s accusation that the
displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine State was ethnic
cleansing.
“The Burmese military must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing,” Haley said. “And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place,” Haley said.
“The Burmese military must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing,” Haley said. “And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place,” Haley said.
Meanwhile, international aid groups in Myanmar
have urged the government to allow free access to Rakhine State, where an army
offensive has sent more than 500,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh, but hundreds
of thousands remain cut off from food, shelter and medical care. Many refugees
have died while trying to get into Bangladesh. The United Nations said lately
that at least 15 refugees, including nine children, drowned when their boat
capsized off the coast in bad weather.
The Myanmar government has stopped international
aid groups and U.N. agencies from carrying out most of their work in the north
of Rakhine state, citing insecurity since the Aug. 25 insurgent attacks. Aid
groups said in a joint statement they were: “increasingly concerned about
severe restrictions on humanitarian access and impediments to the delivery of
critically needed humanitarian assistance throughout Rakhine State.” “We
urge the government and authorities of Myanmar to ensure that all people in
need in Rakhine Sate have full, free and unimpeded access to life-saving
humanitarian assistance.”
The sad reality is that despite all condemnations from the
world leaders and worries and concerns of international aid agencies and human
rights activists, Myanmar is not going to change her criminal course. Its rouge
government, since the time of Ne Win, has learned how to ignore world opinion
and reinvent its savagery.
The other grim fact is that our world media have had a
very small attention span and that soon the ongoing genocidal crimes of the
murderous Myanmar government and its neo-fascists within the general public
will all be forgotten only to be rudely awakened with another surge of violence
inside and refugee exodus from Myanmar. At this rate, I am afraid that not
a single Rohingya would be left behind in that of den of extreme intolerance.
Last week, I got a call from my cousin (Sheikh Fariduddin
Ahmed Chowdhury who was one of the Dhaka University student leaders of the 1969
Students’ Movement in the then East Pakistan) in Chittagong who had gone to the
refugee camps in Cox's Bazar to personally find out the condition of the
Rohingya refugees and provide humanitarian aid. He was simply horrified to
learn of their plight first hand. He said he had never seen a people in such a
hopeless and despair condition in his life. To the refugees, the world has
failed to stop their suffering and life has lost all its charms and
meaning to live long; they are totally hopeless.
It is there that - what's next - is crucial for us to ponder
about and find an answer to that may help us all to avoid a repeat of the
current events.
'Boycott Myanmar' seems to be a good slogan and tactic to try
given that all other earlier activities of human rights activists and
conscientious global citizens have failed to put the moral compass right
for our powerful world leaders. The latter have not done
anything to stop the bleeding process other than airing empty words that don't
bite. Talks will surely not sober a rogue and pariah state that has known and
learned that it has its backers in China, India, Israel and Russia (each
with their own criminal records of persecuting and oppressing minority Muslims)
- to name just few countries.
We have also seen the failure of the BDS (boycott, divest and
sanction) movement in making a difference for the Palestinian people for the
same reason - Israel has its powerful patrons within the UNSC. No matter what
this 'other apartheid' state does, with patrons like the USA it need not fear
the world opinion. Thus, we had dismal failures to repeat elsewhere the success
of the South African experiment.
This experience sums up our dilemma vis -a-vis Myanmar!
As Dr. Shwe Lu Maung, a living authority on his native Rakhine state, told me
the other day when a person chooses not to wake up and pretends to sleep
he would ignore the cries and screams of others; even a bucket full
of hot water thrown at him may not do the trick. That is what is happening
with Suu Kyi and her criminal government, the rapist and arsonist military and
the neo-fascist lynch mobs and monks! As part of a national project to
eliminate Rohingyas from the soil of its ancestors, these criminals will
continue to do what have proven to expedite their criminal plan. They are all
living in a state of self-delusion and -denial of their evil!
Perhaps the only way we could stop these savages is to hang
them high - of course, via Nuremburg type trials. Will that ever happen in our
time? I am not sure. The Rohingyas, sadly, don't have celebrity lawyers like Amal
Clooney to start the process of incriminating Myanmar government and its
murderers.
All said and done, we can surely try a BDS campaign for
Myanmar. Who knows what did not work for Israel may work for Myanmar, after
all, Myanmar is not Israel! If European countries and the USA plus Japan can be
influenced by the moral justification to boycott Myanmar, others may find it
difficult to trade with it.
In a world and time when sub-human demons and she-devils are increasingly
directing the world affairs affecting all our lives, it’s becoming an uphill
battle – a very steep one indeed – to make a difference and alter the course
scripted by them. And yet, the struggle must go on for the humans to earn their
true humanity! After all, the great Persian poet Shaykh
Sa’di (1231-1291 C.E.) wrote more than seven centuries ago:
“Adam’s sons are body
limbs, to say;
For they’re created of
the same clay.
Should one organ be
troubled by pain,
Others would suffer
severe strain.
Thou, careless of
people’s suffering,
Deserve not the name ‘human
being’.”
[Tr. H. Vahid Dastjerdi (Mashriq-e-Ma'rifat)]
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