Speakers at an international conference styled "Ending the Slow Burning Genocide of Rohingyas by Myanmar” at Dhaka University on Tuesday. November 29, 2017 (Photo: Focus Bangla) |
By Fazlur Rahman Raju
Dhaka Tribune
November 30, 2017
'The Burmese government is committing atrocities not only
against the Rohingya, but also against 17 other ethnic communities.
The international community and the Bangladeshi people
must stand by the Rohingya during the most rapid forced mass exodus the world
has seen in a generation, rights activists and religious leaders said at a
conference in Dhaka on Wednesday.
They were speaking at the “Ending the Slow Burning
Genocide of Rohingyas by Myanmar” conference organised by the Refugee and
Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) in the Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury
Senate Building of Dhaka University.
“We are witnessing the death of a nation,” Dr Maung
Zarni, a Myanmarese human rights activist and scholar of genocide and racism,
said.
“The Buddhist people in Burma are purposefully wiping out
a community, and they have been doing this for the past 45 years.”
In addition to 400,000 Rohingya who were already living
in Bangladesh, a total of 620,000 refugees have entered the country from Myanmar
since August 24, when ethnic conflicts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state sparked the
most rapid human exodus seen worldwide since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
“Another 600,000 people would have been killed had
Bangladesh not opened its door to the helpless people,” Ma Khin Mai Aung, a
Myanmarese-Rakhine lawyer, writer and activist based in New York, said.
“Each of the Myanmar people was brainwashed by [the then]
military junta that the Rohingya people should not live in Burma. This is why
they are targeting the Rohingya.”
Sanghanayak Suddhanda Mahathero, president of Bangladesh
Buddha Kristi Prochar Sangha, called on the international community to pressure
Myanmar to repatriate its nationals from Bangladesh.
“As a Buddhist, I am ashamed that Buddhist people are
committing genocide against Rohingya people in Myanmar,” he said.
Slamming Myanmar’s State Counsellor for her apparent
silence over the crisis, Prof Emeritus Serajul Islam Chowdhury said: “Aung San
Suu Kyi’s role has taken us by surprise. She was once a victim, but now she is
an ally of the perpetrators.” Dr Zarni urged the global community to extend a
helping hand to the persecuted minority.
“The Burmese government is committing atrocities not only
against the Rohingya, but also against 17 other ethnic communities in the
country. This is a slow process of genocide [by the Myanmar authorities],” he
said.
“It’s our duty to stand beside the Rohingya people and
against the Burmese military; otherwise our next generation will ask questions
about what we did when the Rohingya were persecuted.”
Other attendees at the conference on Wednesday included
Prof CR Abrar of Dhaka University; Chair Emeritus of Parliament of the World
Religious Dr Malik Majahid; rights activist Hameeda Hossain; Supreme Court
Judge Syed Refaat Ahmed; Prof Gayatri Spivak of Columbia University in New
York; and Rohingya activist Ro Nay San Lwin.t.”