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| Women and children in a makeshift house they share with six others in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, after fleeing from Myanmar's Rakhine state. Photo: Getty Images |
When newly minted US president Donald Trump wasted no
time in implementing a version of his election promise to ban Muslim
immigration, the global response was immediate and outraged.
From local protests at US airports, to international
rebuke from world leaders, to damning articles in western media, it seems
Muslims (and non-Muslims swept up in the ban by virtue of being citizens of one
of the seven countries on the no-entry list), had everyone in their corner.
Which is rather odd given western media has been less
than supportive of Muslims in recent years. Indeed, research by Media Tenor
found US coverage in the first decade and a half of the century to be almost
entirely negative, with "negative coverage reaching an all-time high in
2014".
That is to say, the media had less nice (or even neutral)
things to say about Muslims in 2014 than it did immediately after 9/11. And so
in response to Trump, a diverse religious group who, as Fairfax columnist
Waleed Aly reminded us, existed in the popular consciousness only as terrorists
and fanatics, were suddenly being praised as doctors, engineers, pet-owners,
translators, "almost as if they were people".
Yet even as images and articles likening Trump's
"Muslim ban" to the US rejection of boatloads of Jewish refugees
fleeing the Holocaust were circulated, the parallels between the Holocaust and
another atrocity, happening now and on our doorstep, were somehow missed.
As was our own complicity.
In 2015, some 87,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees attempted
to flee from Myanmar to Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia by boat. With no one
initially willing to take them, thousands were trapped at sea for months.
Unable to turn back, they drifted aimlessly, left, quite literally, to float
into oblivion. Many did not survive.
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| Rohingya children at a refugee camp in Rakhine state in 2014. Photo: AP |
When asked if he would intervene, then Prime Minister
Tony Abbott infamously quipped, "Nope, nope, nope," before
demonstrating a complete lack of both empathy and knowledge by continuing,
"If you want to start a new life, you come through the front door, not
through the back door."
What a thing to say to people literally fleeing for their
lives.
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| Nearly a dozen fellow Nobel peace laureates criticised Myanmar leader Aunt Sun Suu Kyi in December, saying she failed to ensure equal rights for the minority Rohingya people. Photo: AP |
The Rohingya are an ethno-religious group who have lived
in Myanmar (Burma) for centuries but are still denied citizenship and other
rights. Making up just 5 per cent of the predominantly Buddhist population,
they are persecuted relentlessly by government security forces, firebrand
Buddhist monks (yes, they exist), and the general public. This has seen them
bestowed such titles as the "world's most persecuted people" and the
"world's most unwanted people".
Human Rights Watch has described what the Rohingya now
face as a campaign of ethnic cleansing; this includes the destruction of entire
Rohingya villages, widespread and systematic rape of women and girls by
security forces, and summary executions.
This is what such violence looks like:
"They killed the baby by stomping on it with heavy
boots. Then they burned the house."
"They gathered all the women and started beating us
with bamboo sticks and kicking us with their boots. In total they beat about
100 to 150 women, young boys, and girls."
"When they entered [our house], our brothers were
sleeping on the veranda, and we [five sisters] were in the bed. They shot and
killed my [brothers] and held the girls so they couldn't move."
Now consider that this has been going on for years. And
how, even as the UN warns these killings number in the thousands, the response
from the Burmese government has been to deny almost everything.
The irony is, this violence, which is far more
devastating than an immigration ban, is now being administered under the
leadership of someone the west has long fetishised for her peace-loving,
democratic credentials. In late December, State Counsellor and darling of the
West, Aung San Suu Kyi issued a press release denouncing what she called
"rumours," and "Fake Rape".
Given the high hopes placed in the Nobel Peace Prize
winner when she assumed power last year, the ongoing persecution and government
denial is disappointing to say the least. But then again, such hopes were
likely misplaced to begin with. Suu Kyi had already refused to denounce the
persecution when pressed in an interview with a Muslim BBC reporter last year,
reportedly angrily exclaiming afterwards, "No one told me I was going to
be interviewed by a Muslim!"
Assuming she is even trying to stem the violence, it
looks very much like a losing battle. The hatred of Rohingya is so deep,
Buddhist monks who call for their death have hundreds of thousands of social
media followers, fake news stories are circulated to fan the flames of
violence, and terrorism that takes place in distant lands by unrelated groups
is used as justification.
That our collective response is to shrug at this
slow-burn genocide betrays two uncomfortable realities.
First, the dehumanisation of Muslims the world over has
been so successful, they have been effectively assigned responsibility for all
the violence in the world. Muslims as victims of persecution by non-Muslims
does not fit the narrative and is therefore easily ignored.
Unless, of course, and this brings us to the second
truth, this persecution is coming from someone we despise even more than we
seem to despise Muslims.
Cue the Trump outrage.
Is this really what it all comes down to – that we only
care about oppression when we can use it to rail against those we already hate?
Was the fate of the Rohingya sealed, not only because they are Muslim, but because
their torturers and killers are Buddhists, a religion we only associate with
peace?
It certainly seems so, and they are not the first to feel
the brunt of our selective compassion and outrage. This is why the shooting
down of Flight M17 in Ukrainian air space is taken as proof of intrinsic
Russian evil, even though the US military itself once downed an Iranian
passenger jet, killing almost 300 civilians.
It's why Iran, long-time foe of the west, is referred to
by US presidents in terms like the "biggest state sponsor of
terrorism", and subject to decades of sanctions, but the late
western-allied king of Saudi Arabia, a nation known for rampant execution of
political dissenters, ties to terrorism, and draconian laws on human rights, is
eulogised by former US president Barack Obama as "advancing the Arab Peace
Initiative", and praised by the Clintons as a "humanitarian".
And it is why the Rohingya find themselves so
catastrophically alone.
"We are cursed people," lamented one of
thousands who fled to Kashmir, India, only to find they weren't wanted there
either.
No, they are not cursed. They are simply the wrong
victims, their abusers the wrong perpetrators.
Flip their positions and then ask yourself, would you
still remain silent in the face of this catastrophe?