Saudi Gazette
May 22, 2017
More than a dozen
Nobel Laureates have written an open letter to the UN Security Council warning
that Rohingya Muslims are victims of genocide. But one Nobel Laureate, an
international human rights idol, refuses to be moved by the plight of these
people, despite dire warnings of a tragedy “amounting to ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity.” That Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, happens to be
state counselor and de facto civilian leader of Myanmar (formerly Burma).
Suu Kyi will not
even use the term Rohingya. Instead, she calls them either Muslims or Bengalis,
thereby attempting to legitimize the false narrative that the Rohingya are
illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
“Show me a country
that does not have human rights issues,” Suu Kyi said at a press conference in
October 2016, referring to reports of the miserable conditions under which
Rohingya Muslims live.
This gives the
impression that what the Rohingya face is some minor human rights issue that
can be solved by the intervention of courts or government agencies, while what
they facing is systematic persecution. The Rohingya, who form nearly two
percent of Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist population, are excluded from the
official list of ethnic minorities and remain without citizenship and are
denied freedom of movement, access to education, health care and the ownership
of property. There are restrictions on their movement. Many of the more than
one million Rohingya who were gradually denied citizenship and disenfranchised
ahead of the 2015 election still do not have adequate identity papers.
On top of all this
is the violence to which Rohingya Muslims are subjected from time to time.
Violent campaigns in 1978 and in the early 1990s drove hundreds of thousands of
people into Bangladesh. UN and human rights organizations have pointed out that
such violence has all the hallmarks of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, as well as of
the ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s western Darfur region and in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The religious violence
that in 2012 hit Rakhine state, where a majority of Rohingya Muslims lives, was
particularly brutal. More than 120,000 people had to leave their homes. They
are still languishing in grim displacement camps. They are not allowed to leave
the squalid encampments, where they live in piecemeal shelters with little
access to food, education and healthcare.
Things took a turn
for the worse after a group of Rohingya militants attacked police outposts in
the north of Rakhine state in October 2016. Militants killed nine people
setting off a military crackdown.
Of course, the
Myanmar government has denied allegations that its soldiers committed rape and
arson, but Amnesty International says atrocities committed by troops could
amount to crimes against humanity. It is as though the security forces in
Myanmar are using the killings of nine border guards as an excuse for a brutal
crackdown, according to John McKissick, an official of the Office of the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees. Meanwhile, some 70,000 Rohingyas have fled to
makeshift camps. But this does not appear to be end of the story if you go by
what officials in Myanmar say about the October attack. For example, a top
leading official has compared the incident to Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on
America. The Rohingya have already suffered enough. The last thing they wish is
to be treated as an enemy in Myanmar’s version of the “war on terror”. We have
seen how in the post-9/11 era, some states at odds with their Muslim minority
populations are using or misusing the threat of terrorism to mask their own
oppressive treatment of minority groups. Human rights groups should be
particularly alert to this danger.