Why is Oxford University Press commissioning Jacques Leider, Myanmar genocide-denier academic reference on Rohingyas?
To our deep dismay, the Oxford University Press's Asian History unit has commissioned an infamous anti-Rohingya, genocide-denier, ex-diplomat-cum-"expert on Rakhine" from Luxembourg named Jaques Leider to write a reference article on the Rohingyas.
Rohingya: Emergence and Vicissitudes of a Communal Muslim Identity in Myanmar (Jacques Leider), forthcoming Jan–Mar 2018
This is an equivalent of US Holocaust Memorial Museum commissioning David Irving to write a definitive history of the Nazi Holocaust.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Irving/biographical/ADL_smearsheet.html - being commissioned to write an authoritative history of the Nazi Holocaust.
(see BBC on the Holocaust denialists and their works http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml)
We Rohingya activists urge you all to communicate to the media, (social and conventional), the editors of Asian history references series and the OUP administration that this is an insult to the injury of the Rohingya community who are still living Myanmar's genocide.
Here is the Unit's illustrious Editorial Board that has commissioned this Western genocide denier and the denier of Rohingya identity.
Leider media interviews fall on the same category as The Holocaust Deniers.
The world knows what the military is doing to the Rohingyas.
This "expert historian of Rakhine" even lacks the most elemental conceptual understanding of ethnic/racial identities: that group identities are "imagined", invented and in flux, and often ethnic, religious and political identities are intertwined.
And yet, he dismisses Rohingya identity as simply the creation of the "educated Bengali diaspora" and falsely claims that "unlike Rakhine ethnic identity, Rohingyas is not an ethnic identity, invented only in the 1950s."
Leider's denial of ethnic identity - and dismissal of the group's right to self-identify echoes Myanmar genocidal policy, which begins with "there is no group named Rohingyas".
Even after the most recent large scale campaign of terror against the Rohingyas, which drove 100,000 Rohingyas per week to Bangladesh Leider joined two ex-Lt-Colonels who advised ex-General and former President Thein Sein (2010-15) and the Ministry of Defence respectively in a 2-day invitation only strategy forum held in the midst of mass rape, arson and slaughter in N. Rakhine.
Only 3, Leider, ex-Lt-Colonel Ko Ko Hlaing and another ex-colonel whose name slipped my mind. (the discussions were published in Burma as a book recently. I have loaned it to a journalist friend, and the history of Rakhine and the Islamophobia-soaked strategy discussions were just absolutely horrendous.)
Here is a glimpse of this man's public engagement - mainly on the existence of Rohingyas as an ethnic community, the denial and dismissal that Myanmar Buddhists are violently racist towards this "non-existent" group, and that the violence is organized, premeditated by Myanmar military, which in turn is of genocidal proportions.
July, 2012, Irrawaddy News Group (Irrawaddy has since emerged, beyond any doubt, as one of the main local Burmese media outlets in Burmese and English languages which spreads Islamophobia, genocide cheer-leading and anti-Rohingya hatred among its 10 million Facebook-users).
"Now when somebody comes to use the word “genocide” against Muslims, that is also way beyond anything that matches with reality. I think “hate” is okay as the term you can use as kind of a common word. But to use “racism” always supposes a kind of ideology. I don’t see among Buddhists this kind of ideology. It’s kind of dislike. You have xenophobia, you have ranges of other words you can use to describe more correctly and more justly what we see."
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INTERVIEW with Rakhine History Expert on the recent communal conflict in RakhineState
28 August 2012
Mawkun magazine interviewed Dr. Jacques P. Leider, a Rakhine history expert, on the recent communal conflict in Rakhine State. He has conducted academic research on Rakhine State for more than two decades.
By Nyan Lynn and Zayar Hlaing
“Rohingya is a name, not an ethnic category, that has been revived in modern days to identify Muslims in Rakhine as a separate social group. One may eventually compare it with the name of the Chinese Muslims in Myanmar who are called ‘Panthay’. ”
MAWKUN: Some international media and groups use such words as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” when referring the recent conflict. In a recent opinion published by The New York Times, a Bangladesh professor uses“ethnic cleansing”. Do all these word reflect the real situation in Rakhine State?
LEIDER: I do not agree with such extreme formulations. This is not a war of people who feel superior to others and it’s not a fight about who has the better religion. The war of propaganda, notably on the internet where all kinds of expressions are used to attack the other, does not say necessarily much about the nature of the conflict itself. The fact is that immigrant Muslims and Buddhist Rakhine were brought together to live side by side in historical circumstances they did not create themselves.
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Describing the events with all their brutality from that moment onwards as ethnic cleansing and genocide blurs the sight on all the factors that underlie the conflict, basically everything that has gone wrong in Arakan during the last century. Like in many other places, here we see people looking basically for justice, progress and the affirmation of their identity.
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This is from Germany's English language media outlet, 1/2/2016
"The US government has rejected accusations that a genocide is happening in Rakhine state. I agree with this assessment. I don't think that there is a plan in place to systemically annihilate the Rohingya people. The term "slow genocide" or "slow-burning genocide" was introduced in 2013. But it was based on a notion that diverges from the mainstream understanding of a genocide by historians.
Such terminology just leads us in the wrong direction and makes it difficult to resolve the conflict between the different ethnic groups, the government and the military. Allegations of a genocide do exactly the opposite: They stoke up the conflict on and on."
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This is Leider's Employment History as indicated in:
General Information
Employment History
Supporter - Nationali Museum of Military History
Senior Consultant - Office of the UN Resident Coordinator
Counsellor - Embassy of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
Head - EFEO (French Institute of Asian Studies), Yangon
National Museum of Military History is run by the genocidal Myanmar Military.
He was "senior consultant" to the UN Resident Coordinator who was removed publicly and officially from her duties in Myanmar because she was internally suppressing any human rights reports about Rohingya genocide, in favour of "development" and working closely with the Burmese generals.
Here is the Guardian new story about the top UN official Leider was advising:
Myanmar Rohingya: UN recalls top official Lok-Dessallien, 11 Oct 2017, BBC
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Rohingya crisis: UN 'suppressed' report predicting its shortcomings in Myanmar
Insiders claim strategy review warning of imminent crisis in Rakhine state and urging immediate action was smothered by the official who commissioned it
