CJ Werleman
CJ Werleman on why the international community should hang its head in shame over its failure to help stop the genocide still ongoing in Myanmar.
CJ Werleman on why the international community should hang its head in shame over its failure to help stop the genocide still ongoing in Myanmar.
It’s been almost two years since Myanmar security forces
launched their most recent campaign to annihilate the country’s Rohingya Muslim
minority – an effort described by the United Nations as “textbook ethnic
cleansing”.
It is still ongoing today, but the international
community is doing little or nothing to resolve the humanitarian crisis.
Today, roughly one million Rohingya Muslims remain
homeless and stateless in squalid refugee camps along the Myanmar-Bangladesh
border. At the same time, 200,000 remain trapped in small villages and
townships throughout Rakhine state or – what Mohammed Salam, chairman of a
local Rohingya welfare committee, described to me recently as – a “genocide zone”.
The international community must first stop pretending that the genocide isn’t ongoing.
The Rohingya’s current plight began on 25 August 2017,
when Myanmar’s soldiers, accompanied by local Buddhist militias, launched a
wave of attacks on Rohingya villages in the north-west corner of the country,
including mass killings, gang rapes, looting, and the destruction of homes and
property.
The violence carried out against the Rohingya was so
vicious that the international aid group Doctors Without Borders estimated that
at least 10,000 Rohingya had been killed and thousands more raped and injured.
It has stated that 700,000 were forced to flee to the Bangladesh border in the
three-month period spanning the end of August to the start of December 2017,
while other aid agencies have documented 18,000 incidences of rape.
These atrocities continue today, with Amnesty
International recently finding “fresh evidence” that the Myanmar security forces are
carrying out attacks on Rohingya villages, while at the same time blocking all
humanitarian aid, as they carry out military operations in the area against the
separatist Arakan Army.
China, Israel, and Australia maintained military ties with Myanmar long after the UN identified the human rights violations against the Rohingya to constitute ethnic cleansing.
When I spoke with Mohammed Salam in April, he told me how
a Myanmar military “gunship” attacked a Rohingya village in the township of
Buthidaung.
“A half dozen were killed, and the injured were taken to
the hospital in Buthidaung, which is running out of medicines and anesthesia,”
he said.
But, despite these ongoing atrocities, and the desperate
pleas of more than one million Rohingya, the international community has
stubbornly resisted any serious attempt to provide security, comfort, and a
long-term solution to those trapped at the border of Bangladesh and within
Rakhine state.
In fact, there has been almost no collective action to
hold Myanmar accountable for its crimes against humanity within the United
Nations, aside from a draft resolution that was put forward by the UK at the UN
Security Council, one that was ultimately boycotted by permanent members Russia
and China.
Earlier this year, the UN launched an inquiry into its “dysfunctional” conduct
towards the Rohingya genocide after international human rights groups accused
the UN of ignoring the warning signs of escalating violence prior to the
commencement of widespread atrocities committed by Myanmar security forces in
August 2017.
Alarmingly, the ignoring of “warning signs” and the
boycotting of draft resolutions by UN Security Council members to resolve the
Rohingya crisis ranks among the least of the international community’s failures
– given the fact that a number of countries have continued to sell weapons and
provide military assistance to the junta-controlled “democracy” in Yangon, even
as it carries out verifiable crimes against humanity.
The international community has stubbornly resisted any serious attempt to provide security, comfort, and a long-term solution to those trapped at the border of Bangladesh and within Rakhine state.China, Israel, and Australia are notable examples of countries who maintained their military ties with Myanmar long after the UN had identified the human rights violations against the Rohingya to constitute ethnic cleansing.
For instance, one investigation by a human rights group found
that Israel sold more than 100 tanks, light weapons, and a number of patrol
boats, which have been used to attack Rohingya fishermen. Read more: https://medium.com/@cjwerleman/why-israel-arms-myanmars-death-squads-9407a2dc3edf
Moreover, Myanmar military officials were spotted at an
arms expo held in Tel Aviv last week, despite the fact that Israel has claimed
that it has stopped selling weapons to Myanmar.
The manner in which the US has dealt with Myanmar could
be described as even more duplicitous, given the fact that an investigation
found that the Trump administration isn’t fully enforcing the very limited
sanctions it had imposed on a mere four of the country’s generals in 2018 for
their respective roles in the ongoing genocide.
Politico
observed that the US has been “permitting the children of some past and present
Myanmar military leaders to travel to the US – despite a years-old law prohibiting
such immediate relatives from obtaining US visas.” Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/10/myanmar-sanctions-rohingya-united-states-congress-773358
While the European Union has enacted a ban on arms sales
to Myanmar, its assistance to the Rohingya has been limited to refugee and
humanitarian aid, with the UK alone contributing more than £129 million,
according to UKAID.
Myanmar’s soldiers… launched a wave of attacks on Rohingya villages in the north-west, including mass killings, gang rapes, looting, and the destruction of homes and property.
Refugee aid and assistance only constitutes band aid measures,
however, and do nothing to provide long-term security or guarantee human rights
to the Rohingya Muslim minority.
“The international community should push for
accountability for atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar,” John Quinley, a
human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, told me.
“We believe this will have a preventative effect and stop
future attacks in Rakhine state.”
As for Rohingya refugees who have been displaced to
Bangladesh, Malaysia and further afield, the international community must
increase its pressure on the Myanmar Government through sanctions and
diplomatic means, in order to inch it closer towards providing the Rohingya,
not only a safe return to their homes, but also full citizenship rights. This
would allow them to attend schools and seek employment and basic rights they
have long been denied.
To cross that bridge, however, the international
community must first stop pretending that the genocide isn’t ongoing.
It is.
And the fact that it did nothing to prevent the slaughter
in 2017, and has done little to stop it today, should embarrass us all.