By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
The Rohingyas are victims of a ‘slow-burning genocide’
that is perpetrated as a national project in Buddhist Myanmar (formerly Burma).
Some 700,000 Rohingyas have been forced out of their ancestral homes in western
Rakhine (formerly Arakan) state since September 2017 to seek refuge inside
Cox’s Bazar of Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have also been
living as internally displaced persons (IDPs) inside the Apartheid Myanmar
since 2012.
The International
Rescue Committee (Nov. 15, 2017) estimated that there were 75,000
victims of gender-based violence (meaning rape), and that 45% of the Rohingya
women attending safe spaces in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh had reported such
attacks. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in
the first month of the crackdown alone. Credible estimates suggest that tens of
thousands of Rohingyas may have been killed by Tatmadaw (Myanmar security
forces that are more commonly known as the ‘rapist army’) and their civilian
partners-in-crime within the mostly Rakhine Buddhist population. https://lnkd.in/gvqCPBP
According to satellite imagery (March 2018), more than 360 Rohingya villages
had been partially or completely destroyed by Buddhist forces since August,
with at least 55 villages completely bulldozed, removing all traces of
buildings, wells and vegetation. https://lnkd.in/gytG4PM
An international conference on “Rohingya Crisis and
Solution” was convened on May 2, 2018 in Cologne, Germany. It was hosted by the
Hasene IGMG (a not-for-profit organization of Turkish people working in
Germany) and attended by some 500 participants from all over the globe and
comprised representatives from the diplomatic corps, international
organisations, human rights groups, academia, civil society, non-governmental
organisations and media, as well as leaders of the Rohingya organisations.
Muhammad Turhan, Mesud Gulbahar and Kemal Ergun from
Hasene IGMG welcomed the attendees to Cologne, which is the fourth most
populated city in Germany. The keynote speech for the morning session was
delivered by Philip Ruddock, ex-MP (1973-2016) who had served as a cabinet
minister during the Howard Government and then as the Attorney General. He
highlighted the importance of holding the murderous Myanmar regime accountable
for its genocidal crimes. The speakers and panelists included Professor Abid
Bahar (from Montreal, Canada), Prof. Michael Charney (University of London, School
of Oriental and African Studies), Jacob Sterken (from Canada) who is the
co-founder of the Euro-Burma Office, and Nurul Islam, Chairman of ARNO (Arakan
Rohingya National Organization). They discussed various aspects of history of
Arakan showing the indigenous root of the Rohingya people there.
Mr. Islam thanked Bangladesh government of Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina for letting the fleeing Rohingya refugees to take shelter inside
Bangladesh and for bringing their plight to the international community, including
the UN. He and other speakers urged the Government of Bangladesh not to
forcibly resettle the refugees inside Myanmar until and unless they are truly
secured with equal rights as citizens of Myanmar.
The keynote speaker for the second session was Tansri Dr.
Syed Hamid Albar who had held multiple ministerial positions in Malaysia,
including the foreign ministry. He discussed how the government of Myanmar had
abused the openness shown by the ASEAN that did not want to interfere in
internal affairs of a fellow block member. The speakers and panelists included
(besides myself) Dr. Maung Zarni (from the UK) – a fellow human rights activist
and Burmese dissident, Imam Dr. Abdul Malik Mujahid (Chairman, Burma Task
Force, USA) and Mehmet Ozturk of Anadolu Agency.
The theme of the second panel discussion was around
genocidal crimes against the Rohingyas of Myanmar. We stated categorically that
genocide is a process that goes through several stages; it does not happen by
accident but is a deliberate act with warning signs. We also reiterated that
Myanmar had committed four out of the five acts of genocide as spelled out by
the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide,
while just one of those acts is sufficient to incriminate a group or state for
such crimes.
We urged the international community to punish the
criminals – state and non-state actors – including those (e.g., fascist
academics like Dr. Aye Chan and bigoted monks like Wirathu) who provoked (and
continue to provoke) genocidal crimes against the Rohingya people. Dr. Mujahid
shared the opposition routinely faced by Burma Task Force – an advocacy group
for human rights in Burma – from the lobby groups representing India, Indonesia
and the Jewelry merchant group in the U.S. State Department. He also shared
information that the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – two of the
major human rights groups – are opposed to any comprehensive sanction imposed
on Myanmar, thus, making the task of changing the policy in Washington D.C. an
arduous one, if not a zero-sum activity.
We, the speakers, highlighted the fact that genocide
against Rohingya has continued this long because of ignoring early warning
signs since at least the early 1990s when some 270,000 Rohingyas were forced to
take shelter inside Bangladesh when Pyi Thaya operation was launched by the
Myanmar security forces. It was the second such massive operation in 14 years
when Naga Min (King Dragon) operation in 1978-79 forced the exodus of nearly
300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh. Even the 2012 genocidal pogroms that led to
internal displacement of nearly 150,000 Rohingyas were not taken seriously by
the international community, including the next-door Bangladesh government,
despite serious urging from human rights activists and genocide
experts/scholars.
The keynote speaker for the third session was Professor
David Scheffer who is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law, and
Director, Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern University,
Chicago, USA. He joined via Skype and discussed issues surrounding genocidal
and war crimes. The speakers and panelists included Dhaka University
(Bangladesh) professors of International Relations: Drs. Chowdhury R. Abrar and
Imtiaz Ahmed. The other speakers included Harn Yawnghwe who is the Executive
Director of Euro-Burma Office (and son of Burma’s fist president – Sao Shwe
Thaike) and Amir Ahmic, Liaison Officer at International Criminal Tribunal
(Bosnia).
The speakers shared their experiences in dealing with
genocidal crimes perpetrated against the Rohingyas and Bosnians (in former
Yugoslavia). They called for ‘Protected Return to Protected Homeland’ for the
Rohingya people. They highlighted the importance of providing formal education
to the Rohingya children in refugee camps. They also raised the issues
surrounding raped victims, their pregnancy and children, and that more
international funding is necessary to address such issues immediately. The
speakers also discussed the ‘Suu Kyi’ factor and how democracy went backward
rather than moving forward under her de-factor leadership in Myanmar. She is a
complicit to the genocidal crimes perpetrated by her security forces. They also
urged concerned global citizens, esp. lawyers and legal experts, to file cases
implicating members of the Myanmar government and military for their genocidal
crimes against the Rohingya people.
They also urged all to boycott Made-in-Myanmar products
to create pressure on the criminal government of Myanmar to change its course
so that the Rohingyas are integrated as equal citizens with all their rights
preserved inside their ancestral homeland of Arakan.
The last session of the day was chaired by Dr. Graham
Thom who has worked as Amnesty International Australia’s Refugee Coordinator
since May 2000. Regina Paulose, J.D., an attorney specializing on International
Criminal Law and Razia Sultana, a Rohingya lawyer who grew up as a refugee
inside Bangladesh, and is the founder of Rohingya Women Welfare, joined via
Skype, sharing their views on international law as these pertain to Myanmar’s
genocidal crimes against the Rohingya people, esp. females.
Munira Subasic who had lost 22 family members in
Srebrenica in July 1995 to Serbian genocidal criminals and was a primary
eye-witness at The Hague International Court shared her insights about dealing
with the pains of being a survivor to genocide, esp. the fact that while the
Bosnian genocide stopped some two decades ago the Serbian criminals that killed
his family members and raped so many women (and little girls) are still alive
and continue to work and roam around unscathed within the Serbian territory of
the new republic. She urged resoluteness in dealing with the Rohingya genocide
and never to give up in demanding and to seeing justice carried out against the
perpetrators of a genocide.