Concerns, Causes and Countermeasures to the Rohingya Problem
Concerns, Causes and Countermeasures to the Rohingya Problem
By
Dr. Habib Siddiqui
By
Dr. Habib Siddiqui
In the last four months, since
August 2017, more than 615,000 natives of Arakan – the Rohingya Muslims and
Hindus – have been forced to leave their native land to settle in Bangladesh as
a refugee. They have left behind everything that was important to them and even
family members – as their properties were looted before being burned down with
living family members inside. The perpetrators have committed unfathomable
crimes against humanity that have been described by the UN Secretary General as
the ‘textbook example of ethnic
cleansing.’ Human rights activists (including me) and genocide experts have
been calling them the victims of Genocide.
Oddly, these refugees are
probably the lucky ones who could
muster their energy and resources to make their way to nearby Bangladesh. The
unlucky ones are either murdered by any means imaginable (thousands are feared
dead) or rotting in the largest concentration camp that the world has come to
know in the 21st century. Since June 2012 nearly a quarter million
Rohingyas continue to be either internally displaced or encamped in squalid
camps inside the Rakhine (Arakan) state of Myanmar with no access to the rest
of the world where they are caged like animals. The international aid agencies
are barred from access to these concentration camps.
The lucky ones, i.e., the
refugees who have found shelter inside Bangladesh, are the witnesses to the
worst types of crimes. A consistent story heard from them is that their women
have been sexually violated – some 75,000, according to the International
Rescue Committee. Even 9-year old girls have not been spared by Rakhine savages
and the ‘rapist’ Myanmar military. Rape is used as a weapon to purge Arakan of
non-Buddhists in a very sinister manner that the world has not seen before in
this century.
Let’s hear from one such
victim, Rashida Begum, whose news was recently broadcast by Salma Abdelaziz
of the CNN.
We saw the military digging holes (for mass
graves). We were five women with our babies," Rashida said, almost in a
whisper. "The grabbed us, dragged us into the house, and shut the
door."
The soldiers snatched Rashida's baby son from
her arms and killed him.
"I just screamed, I cried but they
wouldn't listen to us. They don't even understand our language," Rashida
recalled.
The uniformed men showed her no mercy. They
slit Rashida's throat and tore off her clothes. She was brutalized and raped
alongside the four other women. As Rashida lost consciousness, the men set the
house alight and left them for dead.
"I thought I was already dead, but when
my skin started to burn I woke up," she said.
I woke up," she said.
"Rashida Begum says she
was raped by multiple Myanmar soldiers before she fled to the refugee camps in
Bangladesh. "
Naked and disoriented, she ran out of the
flames and hid in a nearby field, but she wishes she had not survived.
"It would be good if I too died because
if I died then I wouldn't have to remember all these things. My parents were
killed too, lots of people were killed," Rashida said as tears streamed
down her face.
The soft-spoken 25-year-old was too
traumatized to speak further about the assault or the loss of her child, but
answered quickly when asked if she wanted revenge.
"We will be pleased if the military who
raped us and killed our parents, if they are hanged," she said.
Then Rashida went quiet, her lips quivering,
her hands shaking uncontrollably. In her eyes was a distant gaze that made her
seem far away.
"I constantly think about what
happened," she said. "I can't get it out of my mind."
Rashida's
story is not an uncommon one in the sprawling camps along the
Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Anyone walking along the makeshift camps in Cox’s
Bazar can hear their heart-rendering sobbing and crying.
Who would have thought
that some seventy years after the Second World War and the proclamation of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights we shall live to see so much of human suffering and
so much of savagery! After the Jewish Holocaust of the last century our fathers
said; Never Again would we allow a repeat of that monstrosity. Little did they
know that their Declarations under the auspices of the United Nations – the world
body – would turn out to be worthless toilet papers under Suu Kyi and her
savage military predecessors.
Who would have thought
that victims would be singled out for their race and religion! Who would have
thought that the perpetrators of the crime against the Rohingya would be a
people that claim to believe in the teachings of Gautama Buddha! Haven’t we
heard that Buddhism preaches non-violence? Has it been hijacked by fascists? Are
these Rakhine and Burmese Buddhists following a different brand of Buddhism
that allows killing human beings, raping women, and burning the properties of
‘others’ that are different racially and religiously?
Welcome to Myanmar – the
Buddhist-majority country - that earned its independence from the Great Britain
on January 4 of 1948. It is an odd country that is made up of some 140 ethnic
groups and spread over a connected landmass of 261,970 square miles – almost five times the size of Bangladesh. Of
these ethnic groups, the Bama (Burman or Burmese) form a huge majority,
comprising roughly 60% of the population of approx. 56 million – who mostly
live in the center. They are the dominant group (the First Class) who have ruled
Burma (or today’s Myanmar) for most of its checkered history. Next comes the 7
deputy national races (the Second Class) - Rakhine, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon,
Chin and Shan – who mostly live in the periphery – border areas – where they
are a majority. They dominate over 127 other ethnic groups (the Third Class)
that are dispersed in this country. And then, there are class-less races that
are not part of the above 135 national races and are considered illegals and
unwanted, and thus, ready to be eliminated one way or another via e.g., a
policy of ‘slow genocide’ and forced exodus.
The Rohingyas of Arakan
whose forefathers were the first settlers to the land, oddly, belong to this last
group of the so-called unwanted races who have been facing genocidal pogroms
since at least the 1940s. The current episodes of state planned, orchestrated,
directed and executed genocide is only the latest in that long series of events
dating back to the time of Japanese occupation of Burma during World War II
when the forefathers of today’s Rohingya who sided with the British in its war
efforts against the Japanese military that had occupied Burma and the Buddhist
majority (including Aung San’s BIA) that collaborated with the Japanese fascist
forces. Two hundred and ninety-four Rohingya villages were destroyed, more than
100,000 of them lynched to death, and a million (Indian Muslim, including
80,000 Rohingyas) pushed out to British India (including southern Chittagong of
the then East Bengal). The Muslim population in Arakan was depopulated in the
south and pushed north, close to today’s Bangladesh-Burma border. The pogrom of
1942, where rape was used as a weapon of war against the Arakanese Muslims
(Rohingya), almost permanently destroyed any possibility of reconciliation with
the Arakanese Buddhists (Rakhine).
As hinted above, while the
Buddhist majority in Burma allied itself with fascist Japan, the Muslims
(including Rohingyas) of Burma remained loyal through the entire period of WW
II, even when the British government had retreated in the face of Japanese
invasion in 1942. Rohingyas were recruited heavily into the V-Force, the
guerilla force, against the fascist military.
In
January 1944, the British took Maungdaw, with V Force playing an important
supporting role. It was not until December 1944, however, that the British
forces finally took Buthidaung. Once this stronghold had been captured the
Japanese position rapidly collapsed, and by early January 1945 most of the
Arakan was in British hands.
According
to Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Solveig Björnson, “During World War II the
Rohingyas remained loyal to the British, even when they retreated to India.
They paid dearly for this choice: advancing Japanese and Burmese armies
tortured, raped, and massacred thousands of Rohingyas … After reconquering the
region in 1945, the British rewarded the Rohingyas for their loyalty by setting
up a civilian administration for the Rohingyas in Arakan.”
The
dream of Rohingya autonomy was rather short-lived as Arakan was incorporated
into Burma which gained independence on January 4, 1948. As we have seen with
colonized Muslims everywhere, sadly, the British colonial government betrayed
the Rohingya cause. Instead of linking northern Arakan where the Rohingyas were
a solid majority with East Pakistan the area was made part of Union of Burma.
The once independent Arakan (pre-1784) lost its sovereignty also, sowing
frustration and open rebellion by the armed Rakhines. The Rohingyas who had
fled to British India were not allowed to return to their homes in the newly
independent Burma.
The
Union of Burma became an artificial state, behaving like a dysfunctional
family, where Buddhist and Bama chauvinism ruled supreme. Soon after independence,
the Rohingyas – racially and religiously different from others - were barred
and removed from the Military, Police and civil services and their leaders were
placed under arrest while the ordinary Muslims faced daily persecution,
discrimination and abuse. The continuous persecution led to Rohingya insurgency
against the Burmese military in the early 1950s.
Some of the major armed operations against the
Rohingya people, orchestrated by the Burmese government since 1948 until early
2012, are mentioned below:
01. Military Operation
(5th Burma Regiment) – November 1948
02. Burma Territorial
Force (BTF) – Operation 1949-50
03. Military Operation
(2nd Emergency Chin regiment) – March 1951-52
04. Mayu Operation –
October 1952-53
05. Mone-thone Operation
– October 1954
06. Combined
Immigration and Army Operation – January 1955
07. Union Military
Police (UMP) Operation – 1955-58
08. Captain Htin Kyaw
Operation –” 1959
09. Shwe Kyi Operation
– October 1966
10. Kyi Gan Operation
– October-December 1966
11. Ngazinka Operation
– 1967-69
12. Myat Mon Operation
– February 1969-71
13. Major Aung Than
Operation –” 1973
14. Sabe Operation
February – 1974-78
15. Naga-Min (King
Dragon) Operation – February 1978-79 (resulting in exodus of some 300,000
Rohingyas to Bangladesh)
16. Shwe Hintha
Operation – August 1978-80
17. Galone Operation –
1979
18. Pyi Thaya
Operation – July 1991-92 (resulting in exodus of some 268,000 Rohingyas to
Bangladesh)
19. Na-Sa-Ka Operation
– 1992 - 2012
In my Keynote speech at the JARO Conference in Tokyo, more than 10 years ago, on
July 16, 2007, I said, “It is not difficult to understand why half the Rohingya
population, numbering some million and a half, opted for a life of exile and
uncertainty. They live as unwanted refugees and illegal immigrants in
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia and the U.A.E.”
That situation has simply worsened since May
of 2012. Now add to that list another 615,000 and growing number of refugees,
let alone the tens of thousands that had left between July 2007-July 2017!
Perhaps less than a quarter of the Rohingya population is inside Apartheid Myanmar
- the den of intolerance.
I have been calling the
crimes against the Muslims of Myanmar, esp. the Rohingyas of Arakan, as part of
a very sinister national project in Myanmar to eliminate them altogether that
draws active support from the military to ministers to monks to the ordinary
Maungs. Genocide is written all over those crimes. If we are to look for root
cause(s) of violence against the Rohingya (and other Muslim minorities) one simply
cannot be oblivious of racism and bigotry – the two major evils that have been
exploited to the hilt.
The Burmese leaders – past
and present – have always been chauvinists, feudal, racists and bigots to whom trend-setting
ideas like diversity or pluralism are simply worthless. (The current leader Suu
Kyi is no different than other Bamars.)
The power of the dominant
Bamar race and military is also rooted in racism
that has permeated Burmese society for centuries. This racism is not limited to
the racial supremacy complex, but also playing the card of ethnic racism of one
against the other. Myanmarism, the state ideology, encourages a blind and toxic
religious-racist nationalism (i.e., Buddhist fascism) that is full of
references to ‘protecting the race and religion’, meaning that if Burmans do
not oppress other nationalities or religious minorities then they will
themselves be oppressed, ‘national reconsolidation’, meaning forced assimilation,
and preventing ‘disintegration of the Union’, meaning that if the Tatmadaw
falls then some kind of chaos would engulf the divided nation. Myanmar military
rulers as the authors and executioners of this toxic ideology have been able to
exploit these myths to the hilt since the early days of Burma’s independence
from Britain.
Suu
Kyi’s criminal regime is in denial of the Rohingya identity, falsely alleging
that the latter are intruders from Bangladesh, or British India, as if there
was no Muslim presence predating English occupation of Arakan. Willfully
forgotten there is the mere fact that the history of the origin of Muslims in the
crescent of Arakan is not much different to that of Muslims who now live in
many parts of Bangladesh, esp. Chittagong. Historian Abdul Karim said, “In
fact the forefathers of Rohingyas had entered into Arakan from time immemorial.” Muslims of Arakan played
a significant role during Mrauk-U dynasty (1430-1784), comprising roughly
one-third of Arakanese population, a proportion which was to maintain when the
English East India Company occupied Arakan in 1824, and this, in spite of
Burmese King Bodawpaya’s marauding campaign in 1784 and the subsequent rule of
the territory that tried to wipe out Muslim identity by killing tens of thousands
of Muslims, and uprooting many who took shelter in East India Company
administered Bengal (today’s Bangladesh).
Forgotten
in Myanmar’s criminal amnesia is also the fact that during the Mughal period,
the Rakhine Buddhist Maghs – the ancestors of today’s Rakhine people –
terrorized lower Bengal for hundreds of years until they were subjugated by Shaista Khan, the Governor of Bengal,
in 1666. They raped women, looted everything that could be hauled away and abducted
Bengalis and enslaved them to work in their pagodas and paddy fields along the
Kaladan River. Historian Michael Charney estimates that between 1617 and
1666 CE, the total number of those Bengali captives could be 147,000. The
ancestors of many of today’s Rohingyas were those kidnapped Bengalis.
As
part of purging Muslims out and making Myanmar for Buddhists only, the Burmese government
did not include Rohingya as one of the national races or ethnicities. During military
rule of Ne Win, the Rohingyas were robbed of citizenship, thanks to Aye Kyaw –
a racist Rakhine academic – who helped to draft the 1982 Citizenship Law. To
Aye Kyaw it was like killing two birds with a single stone: destroy Rohingya both
politically and economically – within Burma and esp. inside Arakan (the Rakhine
state), thus, sealing their fate permanently as a subservient class to the
Rakhine majority, if they could not be pushed out of the state or killed.
As
I have stated in my speech in Bangkok, this highly discriminatory law violates several fundamental
principles of international customary law standards, offends the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and leaves Rohingyas exposed to no legal protection
of their rights. The law has made the Rohingya stateless. They are denied all
the 30 rights enshrined
in the UNDHR, and rightly described as the ‘most persecuted’ people in our
planet. They are derogatorily called the Kala or Kalar people (synonymous to
the English word ‘nigger’).
Kofi
Annan and other world dignitaries have appealed to Suu Kyi to change the discriminatory
Citizenship law thus allowing the Rohingya to be integrated fairly within
Myanmar.
As
I have noted elsewhere, the Rohingyas are
distinct by language, culture and religion from the rest of the peoples of
Myanmar, and have a shared history and group identification. As such, they are
an ethnic group by any definition. This fact has been duly recognized in the
encyclopedia where they are named as an ethnic group. More importantly, the Rohingya
people identify themselves by this name, and no one should have the audacity to
deny them that right of self-identification. After all, every nation has the
right to call itself by whatever name it chooses.
The Rohingyas of Myanmar are facing genocide,
which must be stopped immediately by any means possible. I am genuinely
concerned that if the genocidal pogroms against the Rohingya people are allowed
to continue there won’t be a single Rohingya left inside Arakan within the next
decade. They will be an extinct community, much like what had happened to the
native population of Tasmania.
That is why, it is important for our
generation to punish the criminals of Myanmar and the Rakhine state. These
savage criminals need to be tried at The Hague for their heinous crimes against
humanity and punished, much like the Nuremburg Trial.
Peace is an illusion without justice. Soft
talks with the criminal Myanmar regime would only prolong the suffering of the
Rohingya victims. The UN Security Council must get its acts together and do
what is necessary to save the Rohingya people, and earn the moral authority it
now lacks. In the meantime, punitive measures affecting the state apparatus and
against the major players must be taken to weaken the apartheid regime.
But will the world body do its duty to save
humanity? Is there political will to stop this genocide?
In closing
let me share an essay that Roland Watson, a fellow
activist, wrote last December (on a similar theme that I presented
a decade earlier):
“Imagine you are a Rohingya villager. You live in a small
village in Western Burma. You live a simple life, but basically you get by.
Actually, you do more than get by. You have a happy family, a rich culture, and
a lot of friends.
You know that in the past your people have been targeted many
times, by soldiers, police and other agents of the military dictatorship, and
by local Rakhine groups. But you have been okay. You, and your village, have
not been attacked.
This time, though, it's different. The Burma Army and police
are perpetrating a literal "scorched earth" offensive throughout the
Rohingya homeland. They have raided village after village and then in many
cases burned them down, leaving only the smoldering remains. As they do, they
murder or arrest the men (many of the detainees are killed later); rape the
women; steal everything of value; and often kill the women, elderly and
children as well. You truly are being subjected to an organized, systematic
campaign of terror.
What do you do? You are frantic - at night, you're unable to
sleep from fear. There is a road directly to your village. They can arrive at
any time. You make whatever plans you can, and hope that lookouts and your dogs
will give you a moment's warning - a head-start - before truckloads of killers
and rapists come.
You have a problem, though. Your area is very flat, just miles
and miles of fields. You can run, but it is easy for the killers to follow. All
you can do is move as fast and as far as possible, including with the elderly
and the children, and hope that they don't catch you.
In this way, your situation is different from the ethnic
nationalities who have been terrorized for decades on the other side of Burma:
the Mon, Karen, Karenni, Shan, Kachin, and other groups. Many live in the
hills. They can run into forests, which offer much better hiding places. Some
Karen, for instance, have had to flee so many times that they have learned to
hide food supplies and emergency shelters, in the deepest jungles. Of course,
the Burma Army soldiers often mine their villages, so they can't return safely,
and shoot them on sight if they are caught out in the open. (These areas are
also "Black Zones.") Still, their conditions - sometimes at least -
allow an easier initial escape.
You don't have that option. You're stuck. You can wait for the
killers to assault your home, or you can give up and flee to Bangladesh. (Just
as so many refugees in Eastern Burma have fled to Thailand, Laos and China.)
But for reasons that aren't that clear, Bangladesh isn't very welcoming at the
moment. The country already has large Rohingya refugee camps from earlier
periods of repression in Burma. It seems the government just doesn't want to
give anyone else sanctuary. Indeed, hundreds of the new refugees have already
been forced back.
This is what it means now to be a Rohingya in Burma, although
it's not the entire story. Individuals who are injured or sick can't get
medical care. There's not enough food, and many people are starving. It's truly
monstrous, a living hell.
The famous saying is that you should put yourself in another
person's shoes, to really understand them. I wrote this for everyone,
especially outside of Burma, who doesn't grasp what is being done to the
Rohingya people. They are peaceful. With rare exceptions, they are not fighting
back in self-defense. Very few of us have ever experienced anything like this.
It is so bad, it's difficult to comprehend. But this is what is taking place.
The Rohingya are being exterminated, one by one and in small groups, and
suffering incredible brutality before they are killed.
This is abominable. It's genocide. It must be stopped, now.
Anyone who has any power at all to influence the dictatorship of Burma
(foremost political leaders and diplomats), starting with its cover
propagandist, Aung San Suu Kyi, is obliged to act. If you don't, if you don't
want to risk your career, or if you are simply cold-hearted and don't care,
then you are a terrible person as well. I don't know how you can live with
yourself.”
Watson wrote the above
essay in 2016. The situation today is much worse for the Rohingya. Can we
afford to behave deaf, dumb, blind and silent when it is a gross crime to do so?
I often question what is the basis for a
nation’s claim to independence or self-determination? Must a people wander in
the wilderness for two millennia and suffer repeated persecution, humiliation
and genocide to qualify? Until now, history’s answer to the question has been
pragmatic and brutal – a nation is a people tough enough to grab the land it
wants and hangs onto it. Period!
How about the rights of a minority community
to survive with their culture and traditions intact? Do they need to be
‘children’ of a ‘higher’ God or follow Judeo-Christian morality to qualify?
What makes the children of a ‘lesser’ God to be forgotten and denied the same
treatment and privilege that was granted hitherto to the people of East Timor
and South Sudan? Could not a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite determine the fate of
these forgotten people of our time to decide for themselves what is best for
them? What about all those scores of statutes and articles of Declaration of
Human Rights, Geneva Convention, Treatment of Prisoners (political and
non-combatants), etc., etc.? Don’t they matter? Which agency is responsible to
guarantee those rights? If it is the U.N., why is it failing to bring about
desired change?
How will our generation be judged by our
posterity for letting the genocide of the Rohingya to continue for this long? Shame
on us if we fail to stop Rohingya genocide!
[Keynote speech by
the author at a seminar on Rohingya Crisis, organized by the Human Rights and
Development for Bangladesh (HRDB), in York College, Jamaica, NY, Nov. 19,
2017.]
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