An extraordinary event took place on Thursday
(December 12, 2019) in The Hague, the Netherlands. An International Court of
Justice (ICJ) panel wound up the first phase of a legal process aimed at
determining whether Myanmar committed an act of genocide against the Rohingya
ethnic minority. It is the first step toward justice for the Rohingya people:
our world’s longest-suffering and most persecuted people.
Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar,
appeared at the world court to defend the indefensible. She responded to the
accusation by dismissing it as an “incomplete and misleading factual picture of
the situation”. The violence had been triggered by terrorist attacks from the
Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), she claimed. She argued that the UN
court should not have jurisdiction: “Myanmar requests the court to remove the
case from its list.”
Suu Kyi’s defense was simply farcical: When
Suu Kyi rose to denounce genocide charges against her country at the “world
court” three victims of Myanmar’s genocidal campaign were sitting close behind
her – disbelieving and seething with anger. The three - Hamida Khatun, Yousuf
Ali and Hasina Begum - had travelled from the sprawling Kutupalong refugee camp
outside Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh to sit on the legal delegation attending the
ICJ’s emergency hearing.
The Rohingya survivor - Ali arrived in The
Hague with a treasured archive of personal Myanmar documents and photographs,
which he displayed with pride. “They say we are Bengali immigrants, but these
papers show we have a right to residency,” he said. “I brought these papers so
that [Suu Kyi] could not lie about us as not belonging. There should be equal
rights for all the groups in the country. She has persecuted us and we need to
let the world know. It was very difficult to remain silent in court.”
Suu Kyi remains unrepentant and is in the
denial of the truth to this very day. One may recall her interviews with the
press during the European tour in June of 2012 when she said that she did not
know whether the Rohingya people were Myanmar nationals or illegal Bengali
immigrants. Her answer raised eyebrows in many quarters. Just as she
demonstrated once again in her ICJ response, she would not even utter the ‘R
(Rohingya)’ word, which has been a taboo in Buddhist Myanmar to deny the very
existence of this very people. The Rohingya are wrongly depicted as outsiders
simply because of their religious and ethnic identities that are dissimilar to
the Buddhist majority living inside today’s Myanmar (formerly Burma).
Deliberately ignored are the facts that their forefathers (the so-called
Bengalis) were the first settlers to the coastal territories of Arakan
(Rakhine) before the Mongoloids (the Tibeto-Burmans) moved in there in the
second half of the 10th century C.E.
The experts have long shown that the denial
of one’s identity is an egregious crime and is one of the key features of the
tell-tale signs of genocide. The use of the Rohingya term is forbidden inside
Myanmar, as if these people don’t exist or have no roots to the soil that they
and their forefathers once lived. The international NGOs and even the UN
officials (including Special Rapporteur Dr. Yanghee Lee) working inside were
warned repeatedly by the officials of the Myanmar government not to use the
R-word.
But the genocidal crimes committed by Suu
Kyi’s government and its murderous and rapist security forces against the
Rohingya could not be hidden. Thanks to the satellite images, the entire world
saw the savagery of the Buddhist mob, monks and military as part of a highly
sinister national elimination project while Suu Kyi ‘fiddled’ a la Nero-style.
She neither visited nor allowed anyone from the UN and international NGOs to
visit the killing fields to ascertain the gravity of the situation, let alone
investigate the accusations. Rohingya dwellings were burned and bull-dozed to
obliterate their very existence.
Whom is Suu Kyi trying to fool now with her
denial of the Rohingya genocide? Perhaps, only her mesmerized Buddhist
countrymen! Bred and raised in an environment of unfathomed hatred and
intolerance towards the non-Buddhists since the Ne Win era, these chauvinists
are needed for her political ascendancy to the citadel of power, not as a de
facto but as de jure leader of Myanmar. It is not difficult to understand that
with the 2020 national elections in mind, Suu Kyi is keen to be seen to defend
Myanmar against external criticism. She knows that the genocidal operations in
the Rakhine State in 2016 and 2017 were popular with many of her Bama Buddhist
constituents, who have long viewed the Rohingyas as illegal Bengali immigrants
who follow an alien and potentially dangerous religion.
Not surprisingly, we are told that thousands
of supporters of Suu Kyi thronged the streets of Myanmar's capital on Saturday
(December 14, 2019) to celebrate her arrival back from The Hague. While her
reputation reached a new low outside Myanmar, at home however, the daughter of
Burma’s founding father Aung San is still revered by many. Such is the sad
reality in the ‘den of intolerance’! The proceedings in The Hague have spurred
the supporters to stage rallies across the country chanting “Stand with Suu
Kyi” and waving flags. They are proud of the horrendous crimes of their fellow
Buddhists and are looking forward to the ‘final solution’ to the unfinished
Rohingya problem; they want them terminated or evicted from Myanmar. Blind
racism has robbed them of their humanity and made them brain-dead!
As rightly noted by Dr. Shwe Lu Maung in his
must-read book ‘Is Suu Kyi a racist?’, the answer to the question in the title
of the book is an obvious one. She is not only a racist but a Bama supremacist
who believes in the supremacy of her Bama race that is at the apex of the
ethnic national race triangle comprising of some 135 groups inside Myanmar.
It should be noted here that the Myanmar
national order was born in the concept of a master race – the ruling Bama
(Burman) people to whom Suu Kyi belongs.
To quote Dr. Maung from his book: The Rakhine
Violence (vol. 1: The Rakhine Revolution and 2: The Rohingya), “Myanmar
national order is a Burmese variety of racial ethnocentric colonialism, in
which the larger ethnic group rules the smaller ones with the sovereign power
emanating from the Bama National Race.”
The Myanmar independence struggle was brought
into force by the ‘We Burman Association’ or ‘Dobama Asiayone’ in the second
decade of the 20th century. Their slogan was ‘We Bama The Master Race’. At that
time Bama was Myanmar and Myanmar was Bama. The Bama National Race, not
surprisingly, constituting roughly 40% of the total Myanmar population, represents
the First-Class Citizens and is the ruling class and colonial masters. Their
powerhouse is known as the Burma Proper that consists of 7 administrative
Divisions.
The Second Class Citizens or the Deputy
Ruling Races, comprising of about 40% of the total Myanmar population, are made
up of seven major national races, namely, (1) Kachin National Races (with 12
sub races), (2) Kaya National Races (with 9 sub races), (3) Kayin National
Races (with 12 sub races), (4) Chin National Races (with 51 sub races), (5) Mon
National Races (with no sub race), (6) Rakhine National Races (with 7 sub
races), and (7) Shan National Races (with 34 sub races).
The Third-Class Citizens, constituting the
127 small sub races, make up about 15% of the total Myanmar population. Each of
these sub races is less than 0.5% of the total population. They virtually have
no political clout. [Note: The above three classes belong to three major racial
groups (all part of Mongoloid races): the Mon-Khmers, the Tibeto-Bamars and the
Thai-Shans. They are recognized as citizens; everyone else (see below for the
4th class) are depicted as the aliens with no rights.]
And then there are the Nameless Races, the
Fourth-Class Citizens, who are classified as the immigrants from the Indian
sub-continent and China. They make up about 5% of the total Burmese population
and are derogatorily known as the Kala and the Tayut, respectively. They are
classified as the guest-citizens or outsiders. The Muslims of the Rakhine State
strongly dispute this classification and they identify themselves as the
Rohingya, natives of Arakan. Other Indian descendants like the Sikh, the
Gurkha, the Bengali, the Tamil, etc. keep a very low profile in this artificial
country of many races and religions, once controlled through the barrel of the
British cannon, and now maintained by the Bama master race where rape is used
as a weapon to shame and subdue the non-Bama races.
As noted by Dr. Maung, the toxic
ethno-religio-fascist ideology of Myanmarism derives its legitimacy from its
past imperialism. In this cherished concept the imperialism is an accepted
means of unification of the tribal, feudal and small national kingdoms into an
empire or a greater nation. As of today, it is equated with modern nationhood
of the Union of Myanmar. The Burman (Bama) ruling race selects three most
significant kings out of more than one hundred as the source of the ‘imperial
order’ and devolution of state and national legitimacy. Their statues grace and
bless Nay Pyi Taw, the nation’s capital.
King Anawrahta (1044-1077 CE) was the first
person who, with pragmatism and militarism, institutionalized the Myanmar Way
and Myanmar Style. He is the central figure in this triune, flanked by Kings
Kyansittha (1084-1113 CE) and Bayinnaung (1550-1581 CE). It is said that
Anawrahta started, Kyansittha consolidated and Bayinnaung glorified Myanmar.
Every king after King Anawrahta tried to
follow his footsteps. Bayinnaung and Alaungphaya (1714-1760 CE) came in par
with him and were recorded as the founder of the Second (1540-1599 CE) and
Third (1753-1885 CE) Myanmar Empires, respectively.
Since the days of General Ne Win’s rule
(1962-1988) the official historians has called the independent Union of Myanmar
the Fourth Myanmar Union. The First, the Second, the Third Myanmar Empires are
now labeled as the First, the Second, the Third Myanmar Union. After Ne Win’s
successors Saw Maung and then Than Shwe asserted that the Fourth Myanmar Union
was founded by Aung San, the father of Suu Kyi.
A perusal of Burmese history makes it quite
evident that all those empires were built on murder, subjugation, exploitation
and rape of ‘others’. Back in 2011, Suu Kyi herself made the point. She said,
“Rape is used in my country as a weapon against those who only want to live in
peace, who only want to assert their basic human rights, especially in areas of
ethnic nationalities. Rape is rife. It is used as a weapon by the armed forces
to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and divide our country.” [Ref:
>b>Is Suu Kyi a Racist?] Interestingly, she made those remarks not inside
but outside Myanmar. She deliberately downplayed the racial and religious aspects
of the Bama and non-Bama conflicts. For example, the rebel Kachins and Chins
are all Christians. Nearly a quarter of the Karens are Christians. The
Rohingyas are Muslims.
As a true Bama supremacist, Suu Kyi tried to
hide the identity of her own Bama race that is responsible for perpetrating
much of the ethno-religious wars towards establishing its supremacy over the
non-Bama and non-Buddhist people. Shamelessly, she had no qualms now about
defending the same Tatmadaw that killed and raped so many Rohingyas!
Not to be forgotten is the fact that Aung
San, Suu Kyi’s father, was the founder of the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military)
that has been guilty of genocidal crimes against the Rohingya. Her father is
well-known for the Bama proverb, “If you meet a viper and a Rakhine, kill the
Rakhine first.” <.i>Is this be the attitude towards a non-Bama, and yet a
fellow Buddhist, what chances do Rohingyas have in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar where race
and religion are increasingly used as the litmus tests for one’s very survival
or non-existence?
