Rohingya blood on our hands

By announcing a token aid of $32 million to the Rohingya Muslims, the US has at last acknowledged the deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar. Given the overwhelming nature of the crisis, this is like a drop in the ocean. Yet something is better than nothing.

The US is not alone. Some other countries, including Muslim nations, have come forward to share some of the economic burden – especially of hosting nearly half a million Rohingya refugees who have flooded into Bangladesh from Myanmar. Welcome as these gestures are, they are hardly sufficient. Besides, the Rohingya don’t just need our pity and a handful of dollars. Facing genocide and the wrath of the Burmese state, they need the all-out support of the international community.

As the UN has repeatedly warned in recent weeks and international rights groups have documented with irrefutable photographic evidence, the Rohingya Muslims have been the victims of war crimes, genocide and “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” at the hands of the Burmese military, the Buddhist extremists and the elected government of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Thousands have perished in the military offensive unleashed against an impoverished and utterly defenceless civilian population. Satellite images released by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International establish beyond doubt that nearly half of the Rohingya villages have already been wiped off Myanmar’s map. Literally!

And this blood is on the hands of the world community. We have the blood of innocent people on our hands. We are all guilty. Over the past few years, much of the civilised world has just stood around and watched, allowing Myanmar’s security forces and Buddhist fanatics to brazenly carry out this silent genocide of the world’s most persecuted religious minority in full view of the world.

Myanmar’s predominantly Muslim Rakhine province has been simmering for the past many years, especially since 2012. The recurring Buddhist violence forced thousands of them into temporary shelters where they have been cooped up for years.

Rights groups and activists working in the region have repeatedly warned of the coming catastrophe. Yet the world community, with its fine institutions, paid no attention and did little to prevent the deliberate extermination of a whole community. It is our indifference and apathy that has killed thousands of defenceless men, women and children in Myanmar. This mass murder of innocent Muslims has taken place on our watch.

The world has not drawn any lessons from the years of carnage and ethnic cleansing of the Balkan Muslims in Europe in the 1990s or the catastrophe of the Rwandan genocide in Africa that killed more than a million people.

All our solemn ‘never again’ promises to not let the past repeat itself have turned out to be empty rhetoric, again and again.

In the case of Myanmar, the world powers have started issuing perfunctory, toothless denunciations after horrific, searing images of human suffering and utter helplessness began increasingly crowding their television screens and the front pages of newspapers. But nothing more.

There is no talk of international sanctions against Myanmar. There is also no threat of use of force by the ever-watchful world powers, salivating over the massive economic and investment potential offered by the country. Not even a two-line UN resolution condemning the junta and its cold-blooded, icy queen of democracy has come to the fore.

And why should there be? When was the last time the world powers or the world community acted on its own to save a people facing extinction? Global powers act only when their geopolitical interests or those of their lackeys are at threatened.

Besides, why should the world care when the issue does not seem to figure high on the agenda of the Islamic world either? How many countries have demanded action against Myanmar in the UN or even registered a diplomatic protest against the country? Except for some notable exceptions, much of the ummah seems blissfully unaware of the existence of the Rohingya.

Fewer still know that the Rohingya Muslims are not only the indigenous people with centuries of history in the region but the predominantly Muslim Rakhine region had indeed been part of the erstwhile Muslim kingdom of Arakan.

As distinguished scholar and author Prof Akbar S Ahmed writes this week, at the heart of every genocide lies a great theft. The Burmese Kingdom attacked and acceded the kingdom of Arakan by force in 1785, forcing the Rohingya Muslims, its original inhabitants, into slave labour and worst kind of tyranny:

“Following the rise and fall of British colonialism in the region and the establishment of military rule following a 1962 coup, the politics of ‘Burmanisation’ was put into practice. The Rohingya were officially excluded from Burma upon the ratification of the 1974 constitution, which named 135 indigenous ethnic groups, but not the Rohingya.

“After the 1970s, the military launched campaigns against them based on what they called the ‘four cuts’ strategy, which denied them land, food, shelter, and security. Their mosques were destroyed, lands seized, women raped and torture was common. The aim was to terrorise the Rohingya into fleeing the land. As many as 250,000 fled into Bangladesh as a result of that early campaign, a stark example of planned and coordinated ethnic cleansing.

“The Rohingya were officially banned from ever becoming citizens in 1982. In the early 1990s, the Nasaka border security force formed and subjugated the Rohingya of Rakhine State to slave labour to build villages and infrastructure for Buddhist settlers on Rohingya land. The Rohingya were barred from military and civil service, business ownership, the obtaining of loans, or building or repairing mosques or [madressahs]. They are even required to obtain travel permits to visit neighbouring villages, let alone leave Rakhine State.”

Today, the Rohingya have not only been declared ‘stateless’ and ‘illegal’ in their own land. Just like the Palestinians, they are being driven out of their country and out of existence. Given this history and the approach of the Burmese junta and the state, it is highly unlikely that they would allow the Rohingya to peacefully exist in the land of their ancestors.

Under the circumstances, the world community has no option but to intervene in Myanmar and push for an East Timor-like solution under the watch of the UN and international observers so that the Rohingya can live in their own land and country with dignity and full rights as citizens. Of course, it is easier said than done and calls for a long and arduous struggle. But that may be the only way to return the Rohingya refugees to their land.

Though what is urgently needed right now is for the Muslim countries to speak in one voice and use all their clout and resources to stop the carnage in the Rakhine province. They must demand the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces on the lines of the Balkans to prevent the total elimination of the Rohingya population.

It is past time the world started piling up pressure on Myanmar’s generals and its politicians with democratic pretentions. Each one of us needs to speak out more forcefully and do everything possible to stop the carnage in the Buddhist paradise. Mass slaughter of innocent people in this day and age is not only shameful and unacceptable, it must also be made unthinkable for its perpetrators. They must be made to pay for their crimes against humanity.

The writer is an award-winning journalist.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com