Rohingya Muslims: The Contemporary Genocide and The Hope Marzo 3, 2021 Claudia Morbidini 0 Commenti. 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). Who would have thought that victims would be singled out for their race and religion! However, these efforts did not stop the genocide against Rohingya and the oppression of other ethnic minorities like Kachin and Chin. 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. Rohingya. Dates genocide occurred: 25 August 2017 — present . 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. Historian Michael Charney estimates that between 1617 and 1666 CE, the total number of those Bengali captives could be 147,000. The problem was created by Myanmar, and its solution must be found in Myanmar.”. The genocide against the predominantly Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar has persisted for just over three years. Genocide is written all over those crimes. Trees should have a right against deforestation, and the soil, water bodies and air, the right against pollution. 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. 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.? 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. That is why, it is important for our generation to punish the criminals of Myanmar and the Rakhine state. Don’t they matter? Between the late eighteenth century and mid-twentieth century, the Rohingya were occupied by Burma, the British Empire, Japan, and Britain once again. 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 can wait for the killers to assault your home, or you can give up and flee to Bangladesh. 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! The report said Facebook would have … Soft talks with the criminal Myanmar regime would only prolong the suffering of the Rohingya victims. As such, they are an ethnic group by any definition. The once independent Arakan (pre-1784) lost its sovereignty also, sowing frustration and open rebellion by the armed Rakhines. They are derogatorily called the Kala or Kalar people (synonymous to the English word ‘nigger’). You’re stuck. Finally, although the UN quickly acknowledged and condemned the genocide, provided some humanitarian aid, and called for cooperation, accountability, and even intervention, little of substance has been done. Has it been hijacked by fascists? You have a problem, though. As Rashida lost consciousness, the men set the house alight and left them for dead. 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. Altogether, because all of these entities exert significant global or regional authority, their inaction in the face of a confirmed genocide has diffused norms which diminish the normative force of human rights and thereby discourage further action. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. You can run, but it is easy for the killers to follow. They have raided village after village and then in many cases burned them down, leaving only the smoldering remains. In her eyes was a distant gaze that made her seem far away. 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. The Rohingya are being exterminated, one by one and in small groups, and suffering incredible brutality before they are killed. “We will be pleased if the military who raped us and killed our parents, if they are hanged,” she said. He specializes in international politics with a particular focus on nationalism, ethnic conflict, and human rights in South and Southeast Asia. The Muslim population in Arakan was depopulated in the south and pushed north, close to today’s Bangladesh-Burma border. Welcome to Myanmar – the Buddhist-majority country – that earned its independence from the Great Britain on January 4 of 1948. Human rights lawyers and activists said on Monday that Myanmar is continuing to commit genocide against Rohingya Muslims in breach of orders by the United Nation (UN)'s top court. Change ). Towards the end of the month, on 26 September, Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina called for stronger global action on aiding the long-awaited repatriation to Myanmar of the million Rohingya refugees currently in Bangladesh. It must be stopped, now. Actually, you do more than get by. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Oddly, these refugees are probably the lucky ones who could muster their energy and resources to make their way to nearby Bangladesh. The military in Myanmar’s government seized control through a military coup on February 1 2021. 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. Information about Rohingyas genocide published in International media, Myanmar media and Rohingya media and a collection of evidences – reports, videos and images. After the Jewish Holocaust of the last century our fathers said; Never Again would we allow a repeat of that monstrosity. On Monday, February 8th, 2021, the United Nations called on 57 countries to repatriate their citizens in northeast Syrian camps. Which agency is responsible to guarantee those rights? The alarming lack of action from the international community has not only made a number of states and international organizations complicit in the genocide, but also has progressively diminished the legitimacy of the global human rights regime, and thus has made action increasingly less likely over the last three years. ], […] the context of Burma (now called Myanmar), we see similar state and non-state actors at play to eliminate the indigenous Rohingyas of Arakan (renamed the Rakhine state). The judge presiding the case, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, has given Myanmar four months to implement his rulings: Myanmar must take "all measure within its power" to prevent genocide. These camps are the home, Despite the spiraling urge for women’s rights and empowerment, India’s political system remains committed to its decriminalized status of marital rape, placing itself in a. Akin to the human population who should have a right to a clean environment, nature too should have a corresponding existential right to blossom and flourish. “The grabbed us, dragged us into the house, and shut the door.”. Short context/background on the situation: The Rohingya are a majority-Muslim stateless group living in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The uniformed men showed her no mercy. 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. Altogether, because all of these entities exert significant global or regional authority, their inaction in the face of a confirmed genocide has diffused norms which diminish the normative force of human rights and thereby discourage further action. Visit our online exhibition, "Burma’s Path to Genocide," to learn more about how the Rohingya went from citizens to outsiders—and became targets of a sustained campaign of genocide. On September 8th, two soldiers who had deserted from Myanmar’s army testified on video that they had been ordered to kill and rape Rohingya villagers. You live in a small village in Western Burma. For too long, the people of this state, including ethnic Rakhine, have faced crushing poverty and persecution. 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. They can arrive at any time. This means not only that an order backed by collective action against Myanmar from one of these authorities would carry all the normative force of international law, but also that even if such an order contradicts the norm of state sovereignty which is particularly highly valuable to Myanmar, compliance with that order would very likely not be seen as a sacrifice of sovereignty that diminishes the norm, thereby making compliance more appealing to Myanmar. 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. However, the last month has seen some unprecedented events in Myanmar and at the UN which may mean that real progress towards ending the Rohingya genocide is soon to come. The Rohingya have dwelled in the land now known as the Rakhine state of Myanmar since the eighth century. It has made the Rohingya the most persecuted people in the world. I woke up,” she said. The humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar ’s Rakhine State has been described as the world’s most urgent refugee crisis. Mutual rights and reciprocal recognition will then secure a conducive human-nature interface. 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. In order to move towards a resolution, it must be the international community that carries on the momentum that has been generated over the last month. They don’t even understand our language,” Rashida recalled. Watson wrote the above essay in 2016. ( Log Out /  The U.N. states that the Rohingya genocide is the “world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis.” UNICEF … The famous saying is that you should put yourself in another person’s shoes, to really understand them. December: An International Court of Justice case accuses Myanmar of genocide of the Rohingya people. In August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar's army on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border into Bangladesh. The dream of Rohingya autonomy was rather short-lived as Arakan was incorporated into Burma which gained independence on January 4, 1948. 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. 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 current leader Suu Kyi is no different than other Bamars.). (Just as so many refugees in Eastern Burma have fled to Thailand, Laos and China.) With rare exceptions, they are not fighting back in self-defense. Moreover, soon after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bravely branded the crisis as “ethnic cleansing” in November 2017, he was fired. Procedural history 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. My parents were killed too, lots of people were killed,” Rashida said as tears streamed down her face. 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. More than 680,000 Rohingya … 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. 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. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Though the history of the Rohingya’s oppression under the Burmese majority spans many decades, the ongoing crisis was instigated by a military crackdown in August 2017, driven by Myanmar’s recent resurgence of Buddhist nationalism. This racism is not limited to the racial supremacy complex, but also playing the card of ethnic racism of one against the other. Even 9-year old girls have not been spared by Rakhine savages and the ‘rapist’ Myanmar military. After all, every nation has the right to call itself by whatever name it chooses. 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. Instead of linking northern Arakan where the Rohingyas were a solid majority with East Pakistan the area was made part of Union of Burma. And they portray a concerted, calculated operation to exterminate a single ethnic minority group, the issue at the heart of ongoing genocide cases. 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. 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. 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. I often question what is the basis for a nation’s claim to independence or self-determination? Today, we look at the recent violence in Rakhine State that has caused so much suffering, and we see the danger of continued tensions there. Is there political will to stop this genocide? It’s genocide. 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 … You, and your village, have not been attacked. They are denied all the 30 rights enshrined in the UNDHR, and rightly described as the ‘most persecuted’ people in our planet. “I thought I was already dead, but when my skin started to burn I woke up,” she said. The Rohingya, an ethnic group in Myanmar, ar Through his research and writing, Ian has made novel contributions to ongoing academic discourses and offered peaceful and cooperative solutions to a number of international political issues. Your area is very flat, just miles and miles of fields. 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! Peace is an illusion without justice. The country already has large Rohingya refugee camps from earlier periods of repression in Burma. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! A short history of Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar and some of the key events that have led to their exodus from Myanmar and world's fastest growing refugee crisis. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”. 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. 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.”. Such was their severity, the report said, the army must be investigated for genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine state. 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. Some of the major armed operations against the Rohingya people, orchestrated by the Burmese government since 1948 until early 2012, are mentioned below: 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. She was brutalized and raped alongside the four other women. 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. Must a people wander in the wilderness for two millennia and suffer repeated persecution, humiliation and genocide to qualify? They live as unwanted refugees and illegal immigrants in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia and the U.A.E.”. It was not until December 1944, however, that the British forces finally took Buthidaung. April through November: Living in makeshift shelters, refugees face increased risk of COVID-19 infection during monsoon and cyclone seasons. 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. “The genocide is still ongoing,” Tun Khin, president of Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, said in a statement on Monday, the deadline for the second report. The power of the dominant Bamar race and military is also rooted in racism that has permeated Burmese society for centuries. The UN reacted swiftly to the crackdown by denouncing the cleansing and increasing humanitarian aid, but when this proved insufficient, the organization resorted solely to verbal promotion of peace and to weak plans for cooperation which have remained unrealised. On the … A consistent story heard from them is that their women have been sexually violated – some 75,000, according to the International Rescue Committee. Though the history of the Rohingya’s oppression under the Burmese majority spans many decades, the ongoing crisis was instigated by a military crackdown in August 2017, driven by Myanmar’s recent resurgence of Buddhist nationalism. The ensuing inaction of states and international organizations has now allowed the genocide to continue for three years. We were five women with our babies,” Rashida said, almost in a whisper. In addition, according to Al Jazeera, on May 25th, Myanmar filed a report on its adherence to measures to protect the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), though details of the report have not been released. In the meantime, punitive measures affecting the state apparatus and against the major players must be taken to weaken the apartheid regime. 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? The prioritization of this method is critical, because addressing genocide through international legal authorities such as the ICJ and ICC is widely perceived as legitimate in the international community. History has already bestowed upon the crisis in Myanmar the awful name of a genocide, but there is still time that the Rohingya genocide need not be remembered regretfully as an atrocity that the world carelessly allowed to destroy more than a million human lives. Anyone walking along the makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazar can hear their heart-rendering sobbing and crying. Evil, ultra-racist intellectuals […]. But this is what is taking place. Indeed, such intra-UN constraints help to explain why – though many in the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide have long been aware of the Rohingya crisis – … Two days later, Myanmar’s military announced an investigation into “possible wider patterns of violations” from before and during the 2017 crackdown, marking another step towards a resolution, according to Al Jazeera. Very few of us have ever experienced anything like this. Moreover, soon after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bravely branded the crisis as “ethnic cleansing” in November 2017, he was fired. The United States never took serious measures. An estimated 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Burma to Bangladesh since August 2017, where they live in overcrowded camps. The following week, on September 14th, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated that the ongoing violence in Myanmar constitutes additional war crimes and crimes against humanity, and subsequently demanded action addressing the violations. 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). There’s not enough food, and many people are starving. They can run into forests, which offer much better hiding places. This is a herculean but not impossible task, which may be addressed in two broad steps. This is because when halfhearted efforts fail and are immediately abandoned rather than improved upon in the face of an atrocity so widely acknowledged as ethnic cleansing, the very legitimacy of the norms that demand action be taken by the international community against genocide thoroughly deteriorates.