By Habib Siddiqui
One of the sinister methods employed to justify genocide
has been to deny the history of the targeted victims. And that is what the
criminal Buddhists within the apartheid state of Myanmar has been doing for
nearly 70 years since earning independence from Britain on January 4, 1948.
Instead of carrying out their hideous elimination process in one shot within a
short period of time, however, the Buddhist Myanmar has been doing it slowly
stepwise as part of a very sinister national project with full cooperation from
top to bottom within the Buddhist community.
They termed Rohingyas as outsiders and officially robbed
their citizenship thereby effectively making them stateless in the land of
their ancestors, a crucial policy that would create the official justification
for ongoing violence and expulsion of the targeted minority out of the country.
The rape of women and wanton killing of innocent Rohingyas, let alone
relentless persecution were employed as tactics to create an environment for
forced exodus. The Rohingyas were denied each of the 30 rights enshrined in the
Universal of Declaration of Human Rights.
To erase the Rohingya history, the names of historical
landmarks were changed: Arakan was named the Rakhine state, and its capital
city Akyab changed to Sittwe. Muslim monuments - mosques, shrines and madrassas
that once dotted the Arakan coastal line was systematically gutted and
destroyed.
Sadly, even such destructive measures were not considered
enough by the Buddhist genocidal perpetrators; they raped, killed and
terrorized people; they pillaged, burned and demolished Rohingya villages and
towns.
History books were changed to de-link the Rohingya from
the soil of Arakan. And worse still, to mobilize general Buddhist public
against Rohingyas - who are mostly Muslims (and some Hindus) - the latter were
dehumanized through carefully crafted propaganda. The victims were depicted as
'vermin', 'cockroaches', 'snakes', etc. to create the moral justification for
their total extinction or annihilation. Pseudo scholars and academics with
fascist leanings - like Aye Kyaw (now dead who taught in a NY university) and
Aye Chan (who teaches at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan) -
stirred up the Rakhine Buddhists and others within Myanmar to distort history
and delegitimize the Rohingya people, thanks to Government incentives and
supports that they received. The xenophobic Buddhist monks played their hate
cards in ways that the world has not seen in decades. With active support from
the government, its military and police, plus Buddhist politicians - all hardcore
racists and bigots - the genocidal pogroms unleashed against the targeted
Rohingya came easy and were perceived as justifiable by the Buddhist public.
In genocidal pogroms of 1978 and 1991-92, more than half
a million of Rohingyas were pushed out to Bangladesh when not everyone was
later welcome back. In the latest 2017 pogrom alone, some 647,000 (and growing)
Rohingyas have been pushed out. Thus, the Rohingya minority that once comprised
roughly 45-47% of the population (per estimates made by area experts) before
the current episodes (dating back to June 2012) has been reduced drastically to
perhaps less than half a million living inside the Apartheid Myanmar. According
to credible international agencies and medical sources, at least 6,700 Rohingyas
were killed and tens of thousands of girls and women were raped by Buddhists of
Myanmar - military and fascist Rakhines. Hundreds of Rohingya villages have
also been destroyed by them to make return of the refugees impossible.
Sittwe, which used to be a mixed-ethnic city has no
resemblance of its rich past heritage of co-existence. Rohingyas are interned
in concentration camps with no access to the outside world. The Jama mosque now
stands disused and moldering, behind barbed wire. Its 89-year-old imam is
interned. All the Muslim owned shops have been grabbed by Rakhines, who now
falsely claim that Rohingyas never owned any shop in the bazaar. Sittwe
University, which used to enroll hundreds of Muslim students, now only teaches
around 30 Rohingya, all of whom are in a distance-learning program.
Buthidaung, close to the border with Bangladesh, the
traditional home of many Rohingyas no longer has anyone of their kind
representing them in anything in the township where they comprised 90%
population. It is now represented by a minority Rakhine, a hostile MP, who
wants to push out the remainder Rohingyas to Bangladesh.
Rangoon (now called Yangon) whose majority population
during the British era, esp. the 1930s, were Muslims and Hindus – racially
Indian, has now a very small community that feels threatened, unsafe and
insecure of their very existence. In the early decades of Burma’s independence,
a Rohingya elite thrived in Rangoon. Rangoon University, the country’s top
institution, had enough Rohingya students to form their own union. One of the
cabinets of U Nu, the country’s first post-independence leader, included a
health minister who identified himself as an Arakanese Muslim.
Even under Ne Win, the general, Burmese national radio
aired broadcasts in the Rohingya language. Rohingya, women among them, were
represented in Parliament.
Now, under Suu Kyi, everything is lost, and the days of
hated dictator Ne Win, who robbed them of their citizenship, are viewed as
better days!
That is the sad reality of the Rohingyas and other
Muslims and Hindus still living inside Suu Kyi’s den of intolerance and hatred
called Myanmar.
In a report released in October, the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that Myanmar’s security forces
had worked to “effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the
geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to
their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognizable terrain.”
The United Nations report also said that the crackdown in
Rakhine had “targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and
other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish
Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.”
What is so grotesque is that Myanmar is one of the
signatories of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which vowed to prevent genocide.
And yet, it is the worst violator of our time!
The Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or
religious group.” This includes not only killing members of the group, but also
causing serious bodily or mental harm and imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group.
As rightly noted in the 70th convention on the
International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of
Genocide by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “Genocide does not
happen by accident; it is deliberate, with warning signs and precursors.”
“Often it is the culmination of years of exclusion, denial of human rights and
other wrongs. Since genocide can take place in times of war and in times of
peace, we must be ever-vigilant,” he continued.
The Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on the Prevention
of Genocide Adama Dieng echoed similar sentiments, stating: “It is our
inaction, our ineffectiveness in addressing the warning signs, that allows it
to become a reality. A reality where people are dehumanized and persecuted for
who they are, or who they represent. A reality of great suffering, cruelty and
of inhumane acts those have at the basis unacceptable motivations.”
Despite the comprehensive definition of genocide in the
Convention, genocide has recurred multiple times, Guterres said. “We are still
reacting rather than preventing, and acting only when it is often too late. We
must do more to respond early and keep violence from escalating,” he said.
After a year of investigation, the organization Fortify
Rights and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said that there is
“mounting” evidence that points to a genocide against Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar with Burmese Army soldiers, police, and civilians as the major perpetrators.
“The Rohingya have suffered attacks and systematic
violations for decades, and the international community must not fail them now
when their very existence in Myanmar is threatened,” said Cameron Hudson from
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Without urgent action, there’s a high risk
of more mass atrocities,” he continued.
More than half of Myanmar’s one million Rohingya have
fled the country since genocidal violence reignited in August. It has been the
largest and fastest flow of destitute people across a border since the 1994
Rwandan Genocide, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
“There was nothing left. People were shot in the chest, stomach, legs, face,
head, everywhere.” Eyewitness testimony revealed that Rohingya civilians were
burned alive, women and girls raped, and men and boys arrested en masse.
“These crimes thrive on impunity and
inaction…condemnations aren’t enough,” said Chief Executive Officer of Fortify
Rights Matthew Smith.
Myanmar government’s strict restrictions on Rohingya’s
daily lives also point to signs of genocide. In 2013, authorities placed a
two-child limit on Rohingya couples in two predominantly Muslim townships in
Rakhine State.
Other equally credible international agencies have also
come forward to claim that the crisis in Myanmar may constitute genocide such
as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein and the British
parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “Considering Rohingyas’ self-identify
as a distinct ethnic group with their own language and culture – and [that
they] are also deemed by the perpetrators themselves as belonging to a
different ethnic, national, racial or religious group – given all of this, can
anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present?” al-Hussein asked.
Though the UN Human Rights Council recently condemned the
systematic and gross violations of human rights in Myanmar, the Security
Council has failed to act on the crisis. China, shamelessly, with its own
history of on-going horrendous crimes perpetrated against the indigenous
Uighurs in Xinjiang (East Turkestan), has been responsible for the UNSC
inaction on the Rohingya crisis.
In spite of serious cases of genocide in various parts of
our globe, the first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on 2
September 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found
Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine
counts of genocide. Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of
government to be convicted of genocide.
The first state to be found in breach of the Genocide
convention was Serbia. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro
case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on 26 February
2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian
war, but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent
the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons
accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under
Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of
General Ratko Mladic. On 22 November 2017, Ratko was sentenced to life in
prison by the ICTY for 10 charges, one of genocide, five of crimes against
humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war.
As the UN appeals for the remaining 45 member states to
ratify the Genocide Convention, my question is what about states like Myanmar
who are already party to the document? Will the UNSC take action against war
criminals in Myanmar only after the last Rohingya is eliminated from their
ancestral home?
Concerned UN and world leaders ought to know that simply
increasing the number of signatories for the 1948 Convention beyond 149 members
is not going to prevent genocide. The Convention requires all states to take
action to prevent and punish genocide. Not only Myanmar, but the entire
international community has failed to protect Rohingya civilians from genocidal
atrocities.
Just complaining about the genocidal horrors and
increasing membership to ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of Genocide will not help. The civilized world simply cannot let savages to run
the show and get away with their monumental crimes against humanity. If we are
to avert a humanitarian disaster like the Rohingya crisis, this horror will
have to be matched by stern action on the part of the international community.
That means, trial and punishing the monsters.