The Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority who have been
targeted by pogroms in Myanmar, are suffering through another lethal strategy:
the denial of healthcare, food and humanitarian aid. After visiting Myanmar for
a fourth time, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote for The New York Times that the
killings have shifted from “ethnic cleansing” to “slow-motion genocide.”
Kristof talks to Hari Sreenivasan.
Read the Full Transcript
HARI SREENIVASAN:
Since last summer, nearly 700,000 minority Rohingya
Muslims have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh escaping attacks executions
and rape by government forces. The conditions for those who remain in the
Buddhist-majority country are hard to know because the Rohingya are isolated in
areas where foreigners are mostly banned from traveling. New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof slipped around police checkpoints and into remote
Rohingya villages in Myanmar to document their plight. In a recent column he
describes the situation as a slow motion genocide a massive humanitarian crisis
that the rest of the world is all but ignoring. I spoke with Kristof at the New
York Times offices yesterday to learn more. You called this is slow motion
genocide. How come?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
Originally I call this an ethnic cleansing. But when you
go and talk to the survivors and you hear about babies being thrown into
bonfires about young men and boys being systematically having their throats cut
or being shot and then when that violence has subsided then to see people being
systematically denied medical care and in some areas systematically denied food
systematically denied humanitarian assistance then I don’t know what else to
call that but genocide. This is a deliberate policy aim to make the life of one
ethnic group unlivable.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
This is your fourth trip in four years. Have you seen a
change?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
Originally there was a lot of fear that this might blow
up. Well, then it it did blow up. There was this rebel group that began to
attack Burmese government installations and the result was this scorched earth
response. And I think that in Myanmar the decision was we just can’t
accommodate the Rohingya anymore, we need to drive them out and get rid of them
and solve this once and for all. The Rohingya are confined to their villages or
to a big huge concentration camp and they’re not allowed to leave the villages
for education, for jobs, for medical care. In some extreme circumstances they
can get permission and an escort to a medical centre but it’s difficult to get.
And so, women who are pregnant end up dying in childbirth or they lose their
babies and the kids can’t go to school. And this is just because they are
Rohingya.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
One of the people that you profiled in your column was a
woman who had just given birth. Tell us about.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
This is a woman called Sono Wara, she’s 18-years-old.
This is her first pregnancy. She’s carrying twins; it’s a high risk pregnancy.
But because the Rohingya in this village are not allowed to leave to get
medical care there’s a traditional birth attendant who tries to help her
deliver. She delivers and and both babies die unnecessarily.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
What’s the role been of Aung Sang Suii Kyi?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
Aung Sang Suu Kyi was one of my heroes. And to see her
now become complicit in this genocide against the Rohingya is heartbreaking. I
think in retrospect that we gave her too much credit for being in favor of
human rights broadly of the Burmese people. In fact, I think she was something
of a Burma nationalist all along. And I think also that she fundamentally
became a politician. And one of the problems is that the old political split in
Burma was between the military and democracy – that has changed. So now it’s
essentially about how much you hate Muslims. And so for any politician there’s
a fear that if they are soft on the Rohingya they will be hurt politically. I
think that Suu Kyi sees that, she’s an opportunist and she is afraid of being perceived
as friendly to the Rohingya,speaking up for them. And so she’s now a part of
this.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
You also mentioned when it comes to hating specific
groups that there are active disinformation campaigns there and social media is
being used to rile people up.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
I think I and a lot of people thought that you know
Internet comes to a country, social media, this frees people from the tyranny
of government control of information and it does. But Facebook brought with it
these vicious anti-Muslim propaganda campaigns that were photos are shown
purportedly of the Rohingya slaughtering Buddhists and they are spread around
and they’re used to create hatred and to foster a broad desire among many many
Burmese that they need to get rid of the Rohingya.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
I know there have been attempts in the U.S. Congress to
do something about it but why the inaction right now?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF:
I think part of the problem is that right now the Trump
administration is not terribly interested in human rights around the world. It
has its own focuses and that we in the media who normally would be highlighting
these kinds of issues were now enormously distracted by President Trump
himself. And there isn’t really much of a business model in journalism for
covering these kinds of stories and without coverage these kinds of crises
persist.
HARI SREENIVASAN:
Nicholas Kristof, thanks so much joining us.