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By Dr Habib Siddiqui
April 18, 2017

How long our world must witness the ethnic cleansing of vulnerable minorities? In Myanmar, it is a routine thing, against the minority Rohingyas who mostly live in the northern Arakan state, close to Bangladesh. They are the most persecuted people in our planet. They were persecuted for nearly half a century by the military governments that preceded the current civilian government.

There was much hope in the air that conditions inside the country would improve dramatically once a democratic government comes to power. Well, there is a democratic government now after a general election in which all but Muslims participated [the latter were barred from participating in the election on the grounds of their race/ethnicity and religion]. The Myanmar government is run by Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party. 

Remember her? Suu Kyi was the poster lady of democracy, a figure who was prematurely awarded a Nobel Prize for peace to pressure the repressive military government to pave the path of democracy. She was presumed to make things better for everyone. Even the persecuted Muslims had high aspirations about her despite her criminal silence when the Rohingya and other minority Muslims were slaughtered all over Myanmar by Buddhists in 2012 genocidal campaigns. It did not matter that in the general election that followed her party did not field a single Muslim candidate even in the Rohingya majority territories of the northern Arakan state. 

Her hypocrisy shocked everyone. Many pundits tried to find excuses for her saying that her decision not to field a single Muslim candidate was part of a calculated election strategy to position herself as a die-hard, serious Buddhist nationalist who is not sympathetic to the ‘despised’ Rohingya and other Muslim minorities living inside the den of intolerance called Myanmar. As expected, she won big, formed the civilian government and self-appointed herself to be its chief counsellor, a CEO-like figure overlooking the government. 

Rather than integrating the minority Muslims and easing their pains and sufferings, in recent months Suu Kyi’s government unleashed one of the worst ethnic cleansing drives in the northern Rakhine state to further marginalize the already marginalized Rohingya community. Scores of Rohingya villages were torched by her security forces leading to forced exodus of tens of thousands to Bangladesh, let alone the internal displacement of even a larger number. Thousands disappeared, many were killed. Hundreds of Muslim females – even teenage girls – were raped as part of an ethnic cleansing drive that many imagined would never see in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar.
Knowing the enormity of the war crimes committed by her security forces, Suu Kyi would not let any fact-finding mission to investigate. In a BBC interview, she lied and denied such gruesome abuses of human rights. 

But can truth be hidden? She ought to know better. 

Suu Kyi says that Rohingyas returning to Myanmar are welcome. Reliable sources in Maungdaw say that the government has planned to return only one third of their original lands to the returnees and internally displaced Rohingyas, and that they are kept in a small slum-like quarter as per one ‘Household Registration List’, regardless of the numbers of the families within that ‘household registration list.’

“The Myanmar military burnt down our homes last year and we became displaced. They are returning us only one-third of our original village and building a small IDP Camps-like quarter. None of us wants to accept this. Worse, they are demolishing mosques, cemeteries, roads and other historical evidences in order to destroying evidences of the human habitats/societies in the village”, said an internally displaced person at ‘Wapeik’ village in Maungdaw.

Rohingya youths are targets of intimidation, harassment and persecution by the Myanmar authorities. The Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) from the Camp 12 based at the village of ‘YweNyoTaung’ has recently issued the warrants considered as arbitrary by the human rights observers for the following number of youths from the following villages:

1) 105 from the village of ‘Ye Khae Chaung KhwaSone’ locally known as ‘Bor Gozi Bil.’

2) 69 from the village of ‘Ye Dwin Chaung’ locally known as ‘Raimma Bil’, and

3) 59 from the village of ‘Kyar Gaung Taung’ locally known as ‘Rabailla’. 

U Aye Myint, a human rights observer based in Maungdaw while speaking to Rohingya Vision, said “this is a list of targeted arbitrary warrants issued aiming to reduce the numbers of the Rohingya youths including underage teenagers in the Arakan state. As a result, many youths in the region have been living in their hideouts for past few days in fear of arbitrary arrests.”

According to the local Rohingyas, since 2012 the Myanmar authorities systematically forced hundreds of Rohingya youths in Maungdaw and Buthidaung to flee from the country by issuing arbitrary arrest warrants against them after accusing them of involving in the June-2012 violence. [Rohingya Vision TV] 

Suu Kyi has proven herself to be a devil with a smiling face; an utterly sly lady to whom veracity and morality have lost their worth. It’s a sad commentary on a personality – once much revered and now deservingly maligned – that could have made things better for all those who call Myanmar their home – Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. 

Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar religious minorities won’t have any rights. Thus, the destruction of Muslim shrines, mosques and cemeteries has become part of a sinister strategy to ethnically cleanse them. And yet like a pathological liar she chose to deny practicing such crimes. 

What a joke Buddhism has become in the hands of its extremist zealots inside Myanmar! 

In nearby Bangladesh, if any Buddhist temple is attacked by an angry mob that is reacting to unfathomed crimes of the Myanmar government and its extremist Buddhists, the government of Bangladesh takes extra effort to refurbish it better showing its unmolested reverence and respect for other religions and their symbols. Expecting any reciprocity of gesture from Buddhist Myanmar is simply foolish; it’s not even a beautiful dream, only an illusion!

Unalienable rights are those which God gave to man at the Creation, once and for all. By definition, since God granted such rights, governments could not take them away. In the USA, this fundamental truth is recognized and enshrined in its nation's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence: "[A]ll men are created equal...[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) recognizes the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, stating such to be the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The Government of Myanmar is in serious breach of the UDHR and its Article 3, which states: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. As I have noted many times, Myanmar government is guilty of refusing to grant any of the 30 Articles enshrined in the UDHR to the Rohingya people. They don’t have any right in Myanmar – neither before nor now in Suu Kyi’s apartheid regime. 

Unwanted and brutally persecuted in Buddhist Myanmar, Rohingyas have been fleeing their ancestral homes in Arakan state after Burma (now Myanmar) won its independence from the Great Britain. More Rohingyas now live outside Myanmar than inside. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf statelets, Malaysia and India have sizeable community of Rohingya refugees. 

The life of a refugee is terrible. It is unsafe, insecure and dehumanizing. 

Nearly 5000 Rohingyas have been putting up in the Jammu city, mainly on its outskirts, in the Indian Occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir, well until recently. Now with a fascist Hindutvadi party (BJP) ruling the country in the center and many other states, Hindu fascists are making it difficult for anyone to live peacefully in this country unless the person is a Hindu, preferably from the upper caste. Of course, when it comes to outsiders like the Rohingya, who are refugees who don't share Hindu religion, they are easy targets of harassment and persecution these days. 

Last week, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Jammu, Rakesh Gupta had issued a statement calling for identification and killing of Rohingyas. As the latest report shows, seven Jhuggis (shacks) of Rohingya Muslims were torched by Hindu miscreants in Bhagwati Nagar area of Jammu early Friday, just days after a Rohingya family was thrashed and threatened to leave the state.

The Rohingyas putting up in Bhagwati Nagar said some families living in the adjacent plot were forced to move out after some people threatened them. “I don’t know why it happened. I had come here because of the problem in our country (Burma). We will return once things limp back to normal there. It would be good if the Modi government gives us space and time to stay here for some time, till we return,” said Fatima Khatoon.

High Court Bar Association Srinagar has condemned the torching of seven shacks of Rohingya Muslims by certain communal elements in Bhagwati Area of Jammu, on Friday. It described the statement of certain police officials that it was a case of short circuit as false and an attempt on their part to protect those criminals, who had committed the distressing and horrifying crime.

The Bar Association once again requests the international community including Amnesty International, Asia Watch and other human rights organizations of the World to take notice of the gruesome events, which are taking place in Kashmir and intervene effectively, to bring an end to such gross human rights violations in Kashmir.

My heart bleeds to see so much suffering in our world! Who knows if the persecuted Rohingya will one day see the end of their long sufferings, much like many other lucky ones in this unfortunate planet of ours.

By Dr Habib Siddiqui
November 6, 2016

Last week the Myanmar Police Force announced a plan to recruit and arm ethnic Rakhine and other non-Muslim civilians in restive Maungdaw Township, a predominantly Muslim township in Buddhist-majority Rakhine State. The township has recently witnessed widespread abuse of human rights against the minority Rohingya and other Muslims by the police and military forces. Weeks earlier, military moved into the territory to flush out the attackers – reportedly Rohingyas - who had raided 3 police posts.

Rakhine State Police Chief Colonel Sein Lwin told Reuters that the new “regional police” would include non-Muslim residents who would not otherwise meet educational or physical requirements to join the Myanmar Police Force, adding that recruits would serve in their own villages. More than 100 recruits between the ages of 18 and 35 are to receive a 16-week “accelerated” training program, beginning in the state capital of Sittwe on November 7. The police intend to provide the recruits with weapons and “other equipment” as well as compensation.

It is worth noting here that the creation of such a force violates international law, as articulated by the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. According to the Principles, “internal political instability or any other public emergency may not be invoked to justify any departure from these basic principles.”

“Arming civilians based on their ethnic and religious identity in this racially-charged context is profoundly irresponsible and could turn deadly,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights. “We fully expect the government to put a stop to this plan and to immediately provide aid groups with free and unfettered access to all in need. The best way to prevent violent extremism is to promote and protect human rights, not equip people to potentially commit abuses.”

Fortify Rights has called on the Government of Myanmar to immediately scrap the plan. 

Nor should we fail to see a sinister link. Truly, Rakhine police chief’s fascist plan is like a page taken out of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Our readers may recall that Schutzstaffel (SS, literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) in Nazi Germany. Under Heinrich Himmler (1929–45), SS grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of surveillance and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. [Note: 

Sturmabteilung (or SA, literally Storm Detachment), which functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), was a precursor to the SS. The SA played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews – for instance, during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. The SA have been known in contemporary times as "Brown Shirts" (Braunhemden) from the color of their uniform shirts, similar to Benito Mussolini's Black Shirts.]

The Rakhine Buddhists have long been fighting, unsuccessfully, for liberating Arakan (Rakhine) state from the clutches of the Myanmar government. They have their own militias fighting government forces. So, one cannot but question the real intent behind the creation of another SS-type para-military fascist force under the pretext of protecting the Rakhine lives. 

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is equally concerned about the development. According to the ICJ, if a new security authority is contemplated, it must be a professional police force, whose members are recruited and trained in accordance with principles of non-discrimination and respect for human rights. “In a country where the regular police and military are notorious for grave human rights violations,” said Sam Zarifi, ICJ’s Asia Director, “establishing an armed, untrained, unaccountable force drawn from only one community in the midst of serious ethnic tensions and violence is a recipe for disaster.” 

Since 2012, we have already witnessed a series of genocidal pogroms directed against the Rohingya and other Muslims, who are ethnically, racially and religiously different, by the Rakhine and other Buddhist fascists that came from all walks of life, including the government security forces and the Buddhist monks. Some 150,000 Rohingyas continue to live in IDP concentration camps as a result of such ethnic cleansing drives against them. 

Years before the border security force NaSaKa in Arakan terrorized the Rohingya population by following the footsteps of the SA. So, when in 2013 Myanmar President Thein Sein unilaterally disbanded NaSaKa everyone welcomed the move hoping that Myanmar would not revisit its troubled fascist past. Obviously, in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar such lessons from the past have lost their meanings. 

As a result of the latest ethnic cleansing drives by the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) some 15,000 Rohingya men, women, and children and a number of aid workers remain displaced and isolated in Maungdaw Township. 

It is important to highlight the fact that outside the propaganda fed from the government and a new Rohingya group (Faith Movement) that claimed to strive for the rights of all the minorities in Myanmar, including the Rohingya, we don’t know how serious was the threat posed by this group. What we know for fact is that the apartheid government in Myanmar has long been trying to bring about a ‘final solution’ to the Rohingya problem one way or another. However, unlike the other minorities, insurrecting against the central government, the worst persecuted Rohingyas have long been a very peaceful, unarmed civilian population. Thus, a highly sinister ploy had to be devised by the government. 

Unless the Rohingya group could be presented as a real threat – a ‘thorn’ - with hundreds of militant recruits, with affiliations of – as you guessed it – ‘known terrorist’ outfits like the ISIS (Daesh), such an evil ploy to carry out the ‘final solution’ (i.e., elimination) against their entire community was deemed highly risky or damaging to Myanmar’s international image, esp. with a new civilian government whose de facto leader is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Thus, from the very beginning without any evidence the small local band of alleged attackers who were armed with knives were presented as a large group of 400 Jihadists who had planned launching attacks on six locations simultaneously. It was all part of a very sinister plan to use the alleged raid by the Rohingya militants as an excuse to finish the unfinished eliminationist task. The war crimes perpetrated by the Tatmadaw since October 9 once again underscore that criminal blueprint. 

It was no accident that the government rhetoric surrounding the situation in Rakhine State was increasingly alarming. On October 31, Rakhine State Member of Parliament Aung Win declared, “All Bengali villages are like military strongholds.” On November 1, state-run media appeared to refer to Rohingya as a “thorn” that “has to be removed as it pierces,” and on November 3, state-run media alleged that international media “intentionally fabricated” allegations of human rights violations “in collusion with terrorist groups.”

Fortify Rights received eyewitness reports of extrajudicial killings of unarmed Rohingya men in Maungdaw Township by Myanmar Army soldiers on October 10. Numerous reports subsequently alleged that Myanmar Army soldiers and security forces raped women and girls, killed unarmed civilians, and carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions. Several Rohingya Muslim villages were razed.

On October 24, five U.N. Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement urging the Government of Myanmar to “address the growing reports of human rights violations in northern Rakhine State.”

The Office of the President of Myanmar repeatedly denied all allegations of abuses or wrongdoing, dismissing allegations as false propaganda. It has retained an old guard - Zaw Htay – who acts as Goebbels serving the President. As he has always done in the past, e.g., with Thein Sein government, he rejected the allegations of rape, saying, “There’s no logical way of committing rape in the middle of a big village of 800 homes, where insurgents are hiding.”

One wonders if there is no truth to such allegations, why would Myanmar authorities block journalists and human rights monitors from accessing areas of northern Rakhine State! 

What’s really happening inside Suu Kyi’s Myanmar cannot be hidden under Zaw Htay’s filthy rug. The images of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims are written all over it. Anyone doubting or contesting the Goebbels-type narratives fed by the government is not welcome in this den of hatred and intolerance called Myanmar. As such, on November 3, the Myanmar Times fired journalist Fiona MacGregor for writing a widely read article published by the newspaper on October 27, which included allegations that Myanmar Army soldiers raped dozens of Rohingya women in a single village in Maungdaw Township on October 19. Fiona, by the way, was not alone in stating that in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar today her military was committing heinous crimes against the unarmed Rohingyas. For instance, Reuters also reported on the rape allegations, interviewing eight women who said they were raped by troops. 

"It's extremely concerning and unacceptable that representatives of the democratically elected government would use social media and bullying tactics to suppress stories about important issues like gender-based violence in conflict," said MacGregor.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said the case marked "a new low" for the government. "Rather than trying to shut down reports that it doesn't like, the government should respect press freedom and permit journalists to do their jobs by investigating what is really happening on the ground," said Robertson.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said reporters trying to cover the unrest in Rakhine faced obstruction and harassment. Suu Kyi's government should "assert civilian control over its security forces", Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement. "The best way to prove or disprove allegations of rights abuses is to allow independent media to probe the accusations."

Authorities have not allowed foreign journalists to visit the area and the international media was not invited to travel with senior diplomats who visited this week, even as the state media obtained full access. 

Still, the Myanmar government could not hide its crimes against the Rohingyas. Renata Lok-Dessallien, the U.N.’s resident and humanitarian coordinator and the United Nations Development Programme’s resident representative in Myanmar, said during a press conference in Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, “We have urged that the government pull together an independent, credible investigation team quickly and send the team into the area to address these allegations.” She and several foreign ambassadors to Myanmar conducted a two-day visit to Maungdaw to survey the situation on the ground and talk to residents and security forces. Many of those Rohingyas interviewed have later been questioned by the authorities and detained for speaking to the foreign delegates. 

“We all know that underneath this incident are many items of concern and it’s now more important than ever for the government to promote lasting solutions to the interlocking challenges that face Rakhine state at this moment,” Lok-Dessallien said. “So, we’ve urged that these root causes and underlying issues be addressed as soon as possible.”

Obviously, Myanmar government is trying to stonewall the press, as it has also tried to avoid launching an independent probe, hoping that its latest pogrom will be forgotten. It should know that as much as the crimes of the SS – that was most responsible for the genocidal killing of millions of Jews in the Holocaust – were neither nor forgiven, as they were tried for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45) the world community will neither forget nor forgive the perpetrators of the genocidal crimes against the Rohingyas of Myanmar.



By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
October 16, 2016

The situation inside the Rohingya villages in north-western Arakan state of Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh, is dire. Another genocidal campaign has been launched by the government. As we have seen before with the previous military regimes, the new government of Aung San Suu Kyi has its version of justification for its heavy handed treatment of the minority Muslims.

According to government reports in the state media, armed men believed to be from the long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority launched a coordinated assault on predawn hours of October 9, killing nine police, injuring five and making off with 48 weapons of various types and 6624 rounds of assorted ammunition, 47 bayonets, and 164 magazines. 

A statement from the office of Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw blamed the little-known "Aqamul Mujahidin" for the attacks around Maungdaw Township, a mainly Muslim area near the frontier with Bangladesh. "They persuade the young people using religious extremism, and they have financial support from outside," said the Burmese language statement.

Shortly after the attack, military moved in and cordoned off the towns and started its cleansing of one village after another. Activists claim the military is using the search for the attackers as a pretext for a crackdown on the Rohingya, whom rights groups describe as one of the world’s most persecuted peoples.

Reports of the latest attacks against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar may signal a new phase in the "genocidal situation", researchers at London's Queen Mary University have said.

Credible reports are emerging of extra-judicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and raids on Rohingya homes by Myanmar security forces, researchers at the college's International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) said.

As of last Thursday, October 13, an estimated 52 Rohingyas were shot dead and at least 100 Rohingyas were wounded very badly and more than 150 Rohingya peoples were arbitrary arrested including men and women by the Military and police forces; 84 Rohingyas were missing. As we have seen many times, the military also raped three Rohingya women inside their homes. At least three villages have been completely burnt down by the Myanmar military, making their residents homeless. Afraid of being shot dead by the feared army, many Rohingyas are also fleeing their homes. Many shops have been looted and gutted, and at least one mosque burnt down on 11 October, 2016 in Maungdaw by the military, police forces and the 969 Buddhist fascist group. 

The sudden escalation of violence in Rakhine state poses a serious challenge to the six-month-old government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was swept to power in an election last year but has faced harsh criticism abroad for failing to tackle rights abuses against the Rohingya and other Muslims.

On October 14, after 12:00 a.m., some military personnel along with some Rakhine Buddhist civilians raided the market in the Ngakura village tract. They looted all the goods that they found. In the early morning, the military personnel called all the shopkeepers and asked them to shift their goods from their shops to other places wherever they wanted. As the shopkeepers came to their shops to shift their goods, they found no goods inside their shops and all the doors were broken.

At about 10 am, military personnel entered the village tract of Kyet Yoe Pyin and set fire to the whole hamlet, Lu Pann Pyin. Then they set fire to another hamlet called Ywar Ma. Some of the women from there who couldn't find a way to escape were shot dead while they were hiding inside their houses. They were left in homes and the military later set fire to them. It is estimated that nearly 500 houses are said to have been burnt down in both of these above mentioned hamlets.

At 11 am, some military personnel entered Zedi Pyin hamlet of Laung Don Village tract where they broke walls and other properties of the home of Sayid Amin. They ordered the nearby villagers to pack their belongings, their homes and move someplace else. Whilst on their way back they arrested Anam Ullah, a mentally disabled nephew of Sayid Amin. They took him to the Rakhine village of Laung Don Village tract where he was severely tortured and then was released as he was recognized as having mental problems at the end. As the military personnel ordered they moved to nearby villages but they think that their village will be burnt down as well in their absence.

In Laung Don Village tract, the military personnel were still said to have been roaming as of at 1 a.m., October the 15th. 

On October 14, at 10 a.m., some military personnel raided Aung Sit Pyin village tract and arrested 6 Rohingyas. Days earlier on October 11, 5 Rohingyas from the Say Tha Ma Gyi village were asked to report to Pan Lin Pyin military outpost. Upon arrival, they were then beaten by forces from Battalion 263, led by Lt. Col. Hlaing Min Htet. 

The military arrested 15 innocent Rohingya civilians including five children from Pha Wet Chaung village and they were later killed. “The military raids our village [Pha Wet Chaung]. They arrested 15 villagers including 5 children. Military took them with a truck to NaTaLa village. Later they all were slaughtered.” a Rohingya told RB News over the phone. 

Kyet Yoe Pyin village has been under attack by the military since Wednesday. As of Thursday, 162 houses have been burnt down into ashes and a market where more than 150 Rohingya shops run businesses have also been burnt to the ground. 

Pyaung Pyaik hamlet located in Nga Sa Kyu village was raided by the military. Before torching the houses, the military and NaTaLa villagers looted valuable things and cattle. They then torched 40 houses. Later in the evening more than 100 houses were burnt down. The military shot dead an elderly woman while torching the houses and they threw her into the fire. 

Some children and elderly were blocked inside their houses before they were set ablaze. They couldn’t escape from fire and many have reportedly died inside the houses. 

According to the RB News, on Thursday at 2 p.m. the military entered Tha Wun Chaung village and checked the household registration and count the heads house by house. They found a man who isn’t from that village. The man was taken by the military and later at 6 p.m. released. After 6 p.m. the military entered into Sabai Gone and Laung Dun Rohingya villages and set the houses on fire. An elder said “Many elderly, pregnant women, children are where the military are torching the houses. I am worried for them. I don’t know whether they are dead or alive. Now what I am seeing is this government is implementing the plan of the then president Thein Sein which Rohingyas will be kept in the camps and sent to third countries.”

According to the villagers, five helicopters were flying over villages for long hours. They said the military used launchers to kill innocent civilians.

Reports of killings and mass arrests have spread like wildfire on social media, stoking fear amongst the Rohingya, who remain the most persecuted people in our planet.

One local teacher, who did not give her name, said she had been hiding in a house along with some 20 other school staff and students in a village near one of Sunday’s attacks, too scared to come out because of the sound of gunfire. “We haven’t eaten for two days. The situation is not so good,” she told AFP from Ngakhura, around 42 kilometers (26 miles) from Maungdaw. “We heard fighting here and there. We do not dare to go out.”

Authorities have extended a regional curfew to between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., while local education chief Khin Aung said about 400 schools have been closed for the next two weeks.

“Villagers tell us they are scared. Some witnessed killings by the army yesterday,” said Matthew Smith, chief executive of Fortify Rights, a non-profit human rights organization.

Fortify Rights has received reports of possible extrajudicial killings of Rohingya men in Maungdaw Township by Myanmar Army soldiers following the attacks on the police and called on the government, state security forces, and all parties in Rakhine State to respect human rights and uphold the responsibility to protect civilians.

According to information received by Fortify Rights, scores of Myanmar Army soldiers arrived in Myothugyi village, Maungdaw Township at approximately 6:30 a.m. on October 10. Fortify Rights received information of at least three killings of unarmed Rohingya men [Nagu (50), Noor Allam (55) and Noor Bashar (25)] in Myothugyi village on October 10 by military men. 

“They took three men...and killed them,” a Rohingya man in Myothugyi said. “They did not arrest the people, they just killed them.”

The New York Timesand Reuters reported allegations of seven deaths in Myothugyi village on October 10. Both outlets reported witnesses alleging that army soldiers shot at Rohingya as they ran away. 

It is worth noting here that the use of lethal force by state security forces against a civilian is only lawful when necessary to prevent loss of life and serious injury and when proportionate to the threat at hand. The U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials stipulates that the “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” The U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials requires officials to “use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty.”

In situations of armed conflict, Article 42 of the Third Geneva Convention stipulates that the use of force “against those who are escaping or attempting to escape, shall constitute an extreme measure, which shall always be preceded by warnings appropriate to the circumstances.”

In all situations, under international humanitarian and human rights law, the authorities have a responsibility to protect civilians.

There are more than a million Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, nearly all of whom are denied citizenship and are stateless. For decades, the Government of Myanmar has strictly restricted Rohingya freedom of movement, preventing movement between villages, village tracts, and beyond.

In June, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights reported to the Human Rights Council that there was a “pattern of gross human rights violations” against Rohingya in Rakhine State that “would suggest a widespread or systematic attack against the Rohingya, in turn suggesting the possible commission of crimes against humanity.”

"Since the attack, we have documented several videos showing armed men – some had guns, some had sticks and swords – speaking the Rohingya language and encouraging volunteers to come and engage in armed conflict in Rakhine State," Matthew Smith from Fortify Rights told Radio France International (RFI).

"This is a very serious situation unfolding there. The government of Myanmar has commenced with what appears to be a very brutal crackdown, we're documenting allegations of extrajudicial killings.” "Essentially the Myanmar Army is moving into villages, suspecting all of the men and boys of being involved with this rather small group of armed men and committing a variety of human rights violations," Smith added.

Northern Rakhine state is "in effect an information black hole, and in situations where allegations of human rights violations are difficult or impossible to independently verify - because of state restrictive practices - the onus must be on the state to investigate or disprove those allegations", Penny Green, Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London and Director of ISCI, said.

"We sounded the alarm in 2015 that what we saw amounted to the early stages of a genocidal process," Green said.

"Local sources now report a ramped up security and military presence, additional restrictions on freedom of movement, and a further limiting of access to food and healthcare. We are concerned that these latest developments may represent a new chapter in the persecution of the Rohingya, and a potentially more deadly phase of genocide. The fact that it's practically impossible to verify or confirm any of these reports underlines the intensity of Rakhine state's isolation from international view."

Myanmar government consistently denies international journalists and human rights organizations access to Northern Rakhine, ISCI said.

Green added that the merging evidence of indiscriminate violence by security forces mark a "disturbing yet entirely predictable escalation in the genocidal process".

Lately the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, concluded his three-day mission to Myanmar. His trip took place shortly after the outbreak of violence in the northern part of Rakhine State and at a time of escalating armed clashes in Kachin. “The recent violence in Rakhine State is deeply troubling and the immediate priority must be to prevent further violence and to ensure the protection of all civilians. The situation is affecting all communities in Rakhine and has further disrupted the provision of health, education, and other essential services for some of the most vulnerable, particularly the Muslim communities who are not allowed to move freely.” 

“When I was in Rakhine State, I talked to people about their suffering and their inadequate access to essential services including health and education. All people in Rakhine State, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or citizenship status, must have safe access to their nearest hospital or medical center, to regular schools and to livelihoods.” 

Around 140,000 Rohingyas are still living in displacement camps, four years after the outbreak.

Interestingly, while Suu Kyi’s government finger points young Rohingyas to be the perpetrators, a senior police officer in Rakhine State's capital Sittwe has claimed that the attacks had been planned by drug traffickers. “They want the areas to be unstable so that they can do their business easily,” the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he has no authority to speak to media, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.

Did the Tadmadaw had a hand in those attacks and then put the blame on the Rohingya as part of a sinister ploy for a ‘final solution’ of the Rohingya problem? I won’t be surprised if the answer is - ‘yes’. 

What is also so atypical is that the attacks came at a time when former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is leading a commission that is looking into the conflict between the Rohingya and the Buddhists in the Rakhine state, which has seen more than several hundred thousand Muslims displaced by Buddhist violence since 2012. As we have seen, Annan’s commission was unwelcome by the racist Rakhines and many Buddhists that are affiliated with the fascist Ma Ba Tha. If we are looking for a beneficiary, it is these latter elements within the Buddhist society that benefit from the latest unrests inside the restive area, and not the Rohingyas. 

Knowing the past tactics and strategy employed by the previous regimes, the new government’s charges of terrorism against the Rohingya youths has to be taken with a grain of salt. As Myanmar dissident activist Dr. Maung Zarni has rightly pointed out in his blog: "Revving up the 'terrorism' allegations is killing three birds with a single stone: 1) it enables the military to scale up the slow genocide of the Rohingya in Northern Rakhine; 2) it diverts racist Burmese public's attention away from the military attacks on the Kachin and halted the anti-war protest momentum; 3) it forces Aung San Suu Kyi to relinquish her Kofi Annan Commission initiative as the military is in due course going to take over the Rakhine administration, partial or wholly, from the NLD puppets.” 

“In that light, the Statement issued by Htin Kyaw Office is not really credible or verifiable - beyond what it says,” says Dr. Zarni. “First, all governments lie, and Myanmar Government lies typically and most frequently. Second, routinely Myanmar Military Intelligence fabricates stories and evidence. Ask ex-Major Aung Lin Htut in Marilyn, who was chief of counterintelligence at Myanmar Embassy in Washington. He KNOWS. Dating back to 1950's in the midst of growing armed Communist movement, Myanmar Military Intelligence has a long history of fabricating "facts", manufacturing and planting "evidence", and extracting false confessions through torture. In the 1950's the Army's Psychological Warfare Publication called Myawaddy routinely published anti-Communist propaganda. It would publish pictures of beheaded Buddha images and damaged temples saying the Communists were responsible for these anti-Buddhist activities - whereas in fact the military would destroy them for photo-ops. 

It is like USA's Pentagon spending $480 million, to create anti-Muslim propaganda video-clips of terrorist groups that operate in the name of Islam such as Al Qaeda."

What’s needed is a real investigation that focuses on facts and not propaganda. “The biggest problem is that Myanmar fails time and time again to do real investigations,” Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said in an email sent to Anadolu Agency on Friday. Thein Sein government had failed to do a credible investigation after violence in the area in 2012. “And it looks like they are going down the same failed path again,” Robertson said.

If the Rohingya youths have attacked the police barracks, a reasonable question is: why? Is it because they see no hope? Is it because of the daily dehumanization that they face in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar? Days before the attacks, several Rohingya women were reportedly raped by the police and border security forces from the northern townships. Could such appalling events trigger these attacks from the Rohingya youths who until this event had avoided any armed conflict with the government forces? Being abandoned by the rest of the world, do they feel that they are being pushed into the corner to embrace armed struggle? 

If the answer is – yes, it should be a wake-up call for the government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After all, when other ethnic minorities chose armed struggle, the Rohingya - who were the worst persecuted – had resorted to entirely peaceful means in their claims for recognition as a legitimate part of Myanmar’s society. [The exception was in the 1980s when the militant Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) was set up to fight for self-determination of its people. Small and largely ineffective, it had disappeared by 1994. So the Myanmar government’s current accusation against the RSO is bizarre, to say the least.]

Suu Kyi can stop this bleeding process by immediately stopping all military offensives against the Rohingya and recognizing the legitimate rights of the Rohingya people as Myanmar citizens. This basic right cannot be denied on the false premise that their community had been brought to the country from the Indian subcontinent by the British Raj. 

Her government must restore all basic freedoms, including freedom of movement, marriage, education, healthcare and peaceful-living, and to lift all aid restrictions in the Rakhine/Arakan State. Her government must end all forms of persecution and ghettoization of the Rohingya people and immediately rehabilitate and reintegrate all IDPs in their original places and properties. It must compensate the victims who had lost their homes and business. They must be empowered with a sense of belonging and not bewildered with a sense of utter hopelessness.

Following the footsteps of the previous regimes would be suicidal for Suu Kyi’s government.

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
October 3, 2016

Myanmar, formerly Burma, is a resource rich country in south-east Asia, bordering Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. The country of nearly 52 million people is going through a mammoth change these days. The old men of the military that ran the country for more than half a century have been displaced by a popular, elected, civilian government of National League for Democracy (NLD). Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the founding father Aung San, is the de facto leader of the government with the title of the State Counsellor.

The transition to democracy did not come that easy. Its path was stained with blood and sacrifice since 1962 when General Ne Win came to power through a military coup. Fifteen student protesters of the capital’s Rangoon University were killed. The country was ruled by a revolutionary council headed by the general. Almost all aspects of society (business, media, production) were nationalized or brought under government control under the Burmese Way to Socialism. As a result, the Rohingya people of Arakan state and the prosperous Indian Hindu-Muslim-Sikh business community of Rangoon became the worst sufferers in this experiment; many non-Buddhists were forced out of Burma. A new constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma was adopted in 1974. Under the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) Burma became one of the world's most impoverished countries.

There were sporadic protests against the military rule during the Ne Win years (1962-1988) and these were almost always brutally suppressed. In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and political oppression by the government led to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country known as the 8888 Uprising. 

Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, and General Saw Maung staged a coup d'état and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In 1989, SLORC declared martial law after widespread protests and changed the country's official English name from the "Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma" to the "Union of Myanmar". 

In May 1990, the SLORC government held free elections for the first time in almost 30 years and the NLD, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, won nearly 80% of the seats. However, the military junta refused to cede power and continued to rule the nation as SLORC until 1997, and then as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) until its dissolution in March 2011. It was an attempt to rebrand the old order; the power remained with the junta. Then came the 2007 Saffron Revolution, a non-violence: national movement, led by Buddhist monks, which violently suppressed. An international condemnation of this peaceful revolution led to further isolation of the government.

A fraudulent election was held in 2010 in which the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, declared victory winning nearly 80% seats. The military junta was replaced on 30 March 2011 by a quasi-military government, led by former General Thein Sein, with the goal of putting the country back to the path of democracy. 

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and her party allowed to participate in the by-elections in 2012 in which it won 43 of the contested 45 seats.

Then came the general election of 8 November 2015 in which the NLD won an absolute majority of the seats in both the houses. And the rest is history! Recently, Suu Kyi visited the USA and gave speech at the UN General Assembly session. She was also awarded the Humanitarian of the Year award from Harvard. 

The question that begs an answer is: how was it possible for the military to rule this multi-ethnic, - racial, and –religious country for so many decades? What ideology boosted its credibility to rule almost unopposed for all those years? 

The answer is provided by Dr. Shwe Lu Maung (Shahnawaz Khan) in his latest book - The prima materia of Myanmar Buddhist Culture: Laukathara of Rakhine Thu Mrat, published in the USA by Shahnawaz Khan (2016). 

The author, a diaspora Burmese from Arakan (Rakhine), has been living in the USA for decades. He is an acclaimed author of six books on his native country that have helped us immensely in our understanding of the complex political landscape of modern Myanmar. This book – a translated work - is an excellent source to understand the very treasure trove from which the ex-generals reportedly drew their inspiration to ruling the country. After all, in 1990, Sr. Gen. Saw Maung, the military ruler of the country at the time (who reportedly believed himself to be the reincarnation of an 11th-century warrior-king), famously said that he would rule the country according to Laukathara. 

As Dr. Maung shows, Laukathara – a popular literary work - provides the cultural fabrics of Myanmarism – an ideology in which religion and race mingle to define how Buddhists in Myanmar should behave and conduct their affairs from a layman to the ruler. Literally, the phrase Laukathara means the essence of the world. Written originally on palm leaves with the Rakhine phonetics, it was taught by a Rakhine monk by the name of Thu Mrat of Theravada Buddhism in the early 14th century. He was the teacher of King Mun Hti (Laung Krut dynasty) who had entrusted him with the education of three princes of the Thet (or Chakma) king Lyin Saw. The latter had lost his kingdom (Thayet or Thet Yet) – located near central/lower Burma – in 1333 CE to the Rakhine King Mun Hti. 

Later Laukathara reached Myanmar from Arakan and became a royal handbook of administrative philosophy – very much like what The Prince of Niccolo Machiavelli (16th century Italian writer) had become in Europe to guide its rulers. It has been a guiding source of law and order, rules and regulations, ethics and philosophy, and traditions and culture in Myanmar society. It essentially constitutes the prima materia of Myanmar’s Buddhist culture, or perhaps, more correctly, the Buddhist political theology - based on the Buddha, the Dhamma (religion) and the Sangha (community). It is a very popular literary work with many Buddhists in the country growing up with it. 

The SLORC chairman Sr. General Saw Maung, a devout Buddhist, promoted Laukathara in Myanmar administration, a trend that was to continue by his successors. Essentially it defined Myanmarism. 

The traditional Myanmarism has been Buddhism and militarism since the days of King Anawrahta (ca. 1044-1077 C.E.). In the hands of military rulers of our time, the new Myanmarism became a toxic cocktail of ultra-nationalism and religious fanaticism (or religio-racial ultra-nationalism, as coined by Dr. Shahnawaz Khan).

If the old one regressed from the teachings of Buddha - being often violent and ugly, the new Myanmarism revealed itself to be brutal, dirtier and uglier. In this, the ends justified the means; lies and deceptions became all too natural and acceptable strategies to rule and govern a Buddhist majority country like Burma. It turned out to be a feudal recipe for disaster, which shunned pluralism, diversity and multi-culture – the very trend-setters for progress in our time. 

Mixing of religion in politics in our time has often seen the devastating consequences of how such otherwise good religious teachings can become weapons in the hands of ‘cherry-picking zealots’ to ethnically cleanse the ‘others’ who are different. The 1982 Citizenship Law thus provided the very justification for the Myanmar regime towards elimination of the minority races like the Rohingya. It was no accident that Myanmar had witnessed, since 2012, a series of genocidal pogroms, mostly directed against the minority Rohingya and other Muslims.

The terrorist monk Wirathu, who heads the fascist organization Ma Ba Tha, became the Buddhist face of terrorism, xenophobia, intolerance and hatred. In the name of protecting Buddhism nearly a quarter million of Muslims were violently displaced from their homes all across Myanmar; many were killed, and others forced out of the country. The eliminationist policy – endorsed from the top and preached and justified by Buddhist monks – became THE national project inside Myanmar, enjoying moral and material support at every level of the Buddhist society. So powerful was the influence of Wirathu and Ma Ba Tha that four controversial race and religion bills were signed into laws by President Thein Sein to further heighten the racial and religious tensions. 

Succinctly put, the teachings of Laukathara became the eliminationist policy – adopted by the military governments. However, as one reads the translated work of Dr. Maung, it was not meant to be such. 

For any westerner interested to understand the very driving force behind the moral imperative (if any) of the rule by the ex-generals of Myanmar, who saw themselves as the reincarnations of King Anawrahta, this translated work of Dr. Maung is a must. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

By Dr Habib Siddiqui
April 10, 2016

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, wrote, "When fear becomes collective, when anger becomes collective, it’s extremely dangerous.

It is overwhelming... The mass media and the military-industrial complex create a prison for us, so we continue to think, see, and act in the same way... We need the courage to express ourselves even when the majority is going in the opposite direction... because a change of direction can happen only when there is a collective awakening... Therefore, it is very important to say, ‘I am here!’ to those who share the same kind of insight." [The Art of Power]

These are powerful words. I wish Hanh's own co-religionists inside Myanmar had heeded to his advice when it comes to collective hatred that the Buddhists, esp. the Rakhines, continue to espouse against the Rohingyas whose ties to the soil of Arakan, where they mostly live, is older than any other race or ethnicity. These unfortunate people have been victims of the worst kinds of genocide we saw unfolding in this century, not just by a hostile military government but also by ordinary Buddhists and monks who wanted to cleanse the Buddhist majority country of any Muslim living there. The national media inside Myanmar, the Buddhist politicians that lived inside the country and even those who lived a life of exile, plus morally corrupt and bankrupt intelligentsia simply danced with the drum-beats of ethnic cleansing against this most persecuted Rohingyas.

What a shame! There was hardly any voice of protest from the soul of Buddhism, outside those of Dalai Lama and a social activist like Dr. Maung Zarni. Shockingly, many Buddhist leaders cheered for and promoted the genocidal program against the minorities. Even the fascist Buddhist organization, Ma Ba Tha - led by the terrorist monk Wirathu who provoked his countrymen for carrying out ethnic cleansing drives against the Muslim minorities - received an award in February in Thailand for being an "outstanding Buddhist peace" organization. The award ceremony was attended by Wirathu and presided over by an elder from the Supreme Sangha. It was organized by a group called World Buddhist Leaders Organization, chaired by Dr Pornchai Pinyapong who is also president of the World Fellowship of Buddhist Youth (WFBY).

Last year, it reportedly donated over a million baht for the Ma Ba Tha to build two radio stations with the aim of spreading its message of intolerance to a wider audience. Wirathu was reportedly present to thank the Thai delegation personally for the donation.

One can only wonder where the religion preached by Siddhartha Gautam Buddha is heading to! It seems to be hijacked by fascist Buddhist monks of the sangha -- not just inside Myanmar, but also in places like Sri Lanka and Thailand -- that reward and endorse violence and hatred over peace and harmony!

So pervasive had been the influence of Ma Ba Tha and the terrorist Buddhist monks that Suu Kyi and her NLD in the last year’s general election did not field a single Muslim candidate anywhere – neither in the Rohingya majority region of northern Arakan (Rakhine) nor in Yangon (Rangoon) where a sizable Muslim population lives.

We are told that the NLD did not want to spoil its chance of winning the election by giving further ammo to the racist and bigoted elements within the population. More inexcusable, however, was the pin-drop silence practiced by Suu Kyi and the so-called democracy leaders in Myanmar when the Rohingya and other minority Muslims were victims of genocide. They chose to keep mum when it was a deadly crime.

Far from Hanh’s call, there was no collective awakening amongst the Buddhists inside Myanmar. They chose to ignore the obvious crime committed in their name and let themselves be imprisoned by self-imposed shackles of intolerance and indifference. Even the Pulitzer-winning journalists like Nicholas Kristof, writing from the killing fields, failed to raise the Buddhist conscience to say enough is enough and condemn those crimes against humanity. There was none to heed!

I have continued to call this genocidal plan against the persecuted Rohingya a national project of elimination that was endorsed, scripted and put to practice from the top and carried out by Buddhist lynch men while the majority chose to either support or condone it nonchalantly. And again, to the utter shame of Hanh’s ‘engaged’ teaching, there were many such willing Buddhist neo-Nazi fascists to carry out the heinous national project of Myanmarism!

In Buddhist Myanmar, as her religio-fascist toxic ideology of Myanmarism continued to win humanity continued to lose. Her powerful leader Suu Kyi now inherits an apartheid state that has scores of concentration camps. The aid groups continue to be barred from many areas, and the systematic destruction of the Rohingya remains one of the 21st century’s most neglected human rights catastrophes. That staining specter is simply unforgivable in our time. To put succinctly, it is a crime against humanity. And Suu Kyi can make a difference, if she chooses to erase that bloody stain.

I hope that Suu Kyi and her NLD party will take the country into a different direction than those of the predecessors thereby creating a culture that is inclusive, integrating and awakening that says boldly that 'We are here to change for the better for all our people - Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.' Myanmar needs a rude awakening to change its course.

Is Suu Kyi ready for awakening her countrymen?



March 20, 2016

In a joint statement with Jubilee Campaign at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) today, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) urged the government of Burma to repeal or amend the 1982 Citizenship Law which discriminates against the Muslim Rohingya and to promote the right to freedom of religion or belief for all.

These and other human rights concerns were echoed by a multi-religious panel at an HRC side-event on 15 March on the future for ethnic and religious groups in Burma, organized by a coalition of NGOs including CSW.

The speakers included Buddhist and Muslim activists, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Professor Yanghee Lee.

Cardinal Bo said: “Whatever the perspectives – and there are, within my country, a variety of perspectives – about the origin of the Rohingya people, there cannot be doubt that those who have lived in Myanmar for generations have a right to be regarded as citizens, and that all of them deserve to be treated humanely and in accordance with international human rights.”

“We desperately need to work to defend rights without discrimination, to establish equal rights for all people in Myanmar, of every ethnicity and religion,” said Cardinal Bo, adding, “We have a chance – for the first time in my lifetime – of making progress towards reconciliation and freedom as a nation.”

CSW’s joint statement today at the HRC was delivered as part of Burma’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) outcome review. Under the UPR process, every UN Member State has its human rights record reviewed by the wider international community. The government of Burma only fully accepted 135 human rights recommendations raised during the UPR process. Of the unaccepted recommendations, many are important to religious minorities and the realisation of the right to freedom of religion or belief, including approximately 35 recommendations addressing the rights of Muslim Rohingya.

On Monday 14 March, CSW also delivered a statement as part of the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Professor Yanghee Lee, urging the government to repeal the race and religion laws discriminating against religious minorities and women.

Benedict Rogers, CSW’s East Asia Team Leader said: “This is an exciting and yet a critical time in Burma. The country faces at long last the arrival of a democratically elected government, and yet the military retain a very key role in the governance of the nation. There is at long last a realistic hope of change, and yet many challenges still remain.

"Religious intolerance and ethnic conflict are two of the major challenges for the country, and we hope that the new government will find ways to promote unity in diversity, equal rights for all, a federal solution for the ethnic conflict, action to address hate speech and prevent discrimination, and policies to promote inter-religious harmony, freedom of religion or belief, and peace. The vision for the new Burma is exemplified by the presence of a Catholic Cardinal, a Buddhist monk and a Muslim activist standing together in unity at the United Nations, saying with one voice: let’s build a Burma in which equal rights for all are protected, without discrimination”.

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
February 9, 2016

Wirathu and his band of criminal Buddhist monks have hijacked Buddhism and poisoned the political discourse inside Myanmar. Ma Ba Tha uses the news of the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman allegedly by Rohingya Muslims in Arakan in 2012 to paint a very damning picture of the divide between "us" and "them". And such a nasty propaganda, a false one, which I must remind our readers, has worked because people are always willing to believe the worst about one's enemies if they are programmed as such.

For too long, in the context of Burma, her various ethnic and racial groups were poisoned to hate each other, which only helped the divisive forces inside, let alone the military that ruled the fractured country with strong arms tactics and brutal strategy. Wirathu and the hateful, xenophobic monks like him were used as the willing partners to prolong this environment of hatred and intolerance against the minority Muslims, esp. the Rohingya people, and strengthen the grip of the military that ruled and other divisive forces within the country to arrest a change for the better in the political scene.

Fortunately, even though most Muslims were barred from voting and participating in the latest election process, people inside Myanmar have spoken loud and clear. They have rejected the criminal messengers and propagators of hatred and dehumanization.

It is high time to stop Ma Ba Tha once and for all time. This would require not only serious efforts within the movers and shakers within the poisoned society, esp. those with some authority, e.g., the NLD and various political parties that represent the very mosaic of this diverse country but also a brave intelligentsia that knows its historical role to correct the wrongs and create an environment of inclusion, tolerance and hope.

Surely, such an endeavor is never going to be an easy one, but we can all try our best with our limited resources to make that happen, and multiply our voices as change agents for the better.

This process can start by educating the broader public about the falsity of the very narrative that Ma Ba Tha has been exploiting to poison Myanmar. If I recall correctly, Dr. Maung Zarni was able to expose that there is no truth to the claim that the Rakhine Buddhist woman was raped and killed by Rohingya Muslim(s). He wrote that “the rape narrative of the Rakhine woman - the late Ma Thida Htwe - raped by 'Bengali men' was patently false, but spread by President Thein Sein's men the likes of Major Zaw Htay (Hmu Zaw), Colonel Ye Htut (now deputy information minister) as a trigger event to set the fire of genocidal hatred towards the Muslims. Ma Thida Htwe was NOT raped but was simply murdered - the doctor who examined her body told Ko Zaganar [a popular comedian], in no uncertain terms, that there was absolutely no evidence of rape on Ma Thida Htwe's dead body. The doctor was forced to sign the medical report which claims falsely she was raped. The rape story was spread by government agents on the social media and was used as a launching pad to start waves of mass killings against the Rohingya and the Muslims across Burma or Myanmar.” “Within a month of his death - when [Maung Thura[ Zaganar attempted to meet Htet Htet's wife,” writes Dr. Zarni in his blog, “she was found dead in a village well. How convenient!” It is believed amongst the independent analysts that NASAKA security forces killed Ma Thida Htwe and possibly Htet Htet’s wife.

As subsequent inquiries have proven most of the anti-Muslim pogroms and genocidal activities inside Burma (or Myanmar) owed their origin to the government – central and local. These crimes were sometimes scripted and often times sanctioned by the government.

I can only pray and hope that the upcoming NLD government will take a different course than its predecessors thereby making the country a safe and secure one for all its people – Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.



August 23, 2015

The Myanmar Parliament’s passage of two bills targeting religious minorities constitutes an attack on religious freedom and threatens to stoke inter-communal tensions and violence less than three months ahead of critical general elections, said ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) today.

The bills, which place restrictions on religious conversion and polygamy, are the final two pieces of legislation in the so-called ‘Race and Religion Protection’ package, which has been pushed by Buddhist hardliners.

“They should really be called the ‘Race and Religion Discrimination’ bills, as they are fundamentally discriminatory and represent a grave threat to religious freedom and minority rights in Myanmar,” said APHR Chairperson Charles Santiago, a member of parliament in Malaysia. “They run counter to international norms and appear purposely designed to fuel rising Buddhist extremism in the country.”

The Religious Conversion Bill, passed this week, requires all individuals wishing to change their religion to seek permission from regulatory bodies, made up of local officials authorized to question converts to determine if their decisions are voluntary or coerced.

“Requiring government permission to convert violates international standards of religious freedom and the right to personal choice,” Santiago said. “This bill was flawed from the start, yet the government and ruling party moved forward anyways, making no attempt to address human rights concerns or bring the legislation into line with international standards.”

The second draft law passed this week, the Monogamy Bill, criminalizes polygamy and extramarital affairs. Parliamentarians noted that criminalization of extramarital relations constitutes a violation of individual privacy rights, while the bill’s prohibition of polygamy is redundant, as existing statutes already deem the practice illegal.

“The military government is playing a dangerous game. It appears to be purposefully pandering to sentiments of xenophobia, racism, and nationalism for its own political gain and at the expense of the rights of millions of Myanmar’s minority citizens,” Santiago added.

In May, APHR criticized the passage of another bill in the package, the Population and Control Healthcare Bill, which parliamentarians argued represents a step toward ethnic cleansing by allowing the government to institute restrictions on reproductive rights in specific areas of the country.

Another of the draft laws, the Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Bill, was passed by parliament in July. It places restrictions on interfaith marriage, requiring interfaith couples to obtain permission from local authorities in order to wed. Such regulations violate the rights of women and minority residents in Myanmar, parliamentarians cautioned.

APHR said that the passage of all four bills institutionalizes discrimination against religious minorities, including Christians and Muslims, and threatens to enflame increasing anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide. Violent attacks on Muslims have taken place throughout the country in recent years, and the government’s new moves could lead to more violence, particularly as elections approach, APHR warned.

“Myanmar is at a precarious moment in its political development. The passage of these bills threatens the country’s democratic future by undermining the fundamental rights of its people and fueling already rampant religious hatred, which could lead to violence,” Santiago said.



By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
July 19, 2015

Racism sponsored or promoted by a state, like terrorism of all sorts, remains an ugly embodiment of modern corrupt civilization. Today, in the post Sept-11 hoax setting, Islamophobia and media targeting of Muslims serve the racial cause for brutality in many anti-Muslim nations.

All racist states use Islamophobia as the most useful tool to advance their anti-Islam and anti-people agenda by splitting the populations on religious lines.

Asian racism

A global phenomenon, racism in Asia exists for similar reasons like elsewhere in the world. In general, racism exists in these countries due to historical events that occurred either recently or even thousands of years ago. Overall, racism exists in Asia because of ethnic conflicts that existed in the region for thousands of years. Racism leads and is very similar to apartheid.

A few examples would illustrate the point. Myanmar, Thailand, Australia and Israel practice this evil as state policy. In 1991-92, South Asian Bhutan is said to have deported between about 100,000 ethnic Nepalis (Lhotshampa). In March 2008, this population began a multiyear resettlement to third countries including the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia.

In Israel, racism exists between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian. Racism in Israel stems from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict created with the founding of Israel. In Cambodia, one of the biggest genocides in history occurred, with the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot persecuting ethnic Chinese and other foreigners living in Cambodia. This conflict stems from Chinese involvement in Cambodia before the Vietnam War.

Organizations such as Amnesty International, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and the United States Department of State have published reports documenting racial discrimination in Israel. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) published reports documenting racism in Israel, and the 2007 report suggested that racism in the country was increasing. Most of Israeli teen consider Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fears or hates Arabs all together. 50% of Israelis taking part in March 2007 ACRI's racism poll said they would not live in the same building as Arabs, will not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not let Arabs into their homes. The report says the trend of increasing racism in Israel is continuing.

Anti—Muslim policy of Chinese government, like other Western powers, is well known. Anti-Japanese sentiment in China is an issue with old roots but anti-African mindset is a new phenomenon. Japan started off by annexing land from China towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. 

Dissatisfaction with the settlement and the Twenty-One Demands by the Japanese government led to a severe boycott of Japanese products in China. Bitterness in China persists over the atrocities of the Second Sino-Japanese War, such as the Nanjing Massacre and Japan's post-war actions. Several clashes between African and Chinese students have occurred since the arrival of Africans to Chinese universities in the 1960s. Many African students come to China on a scholarship through the government to study at a university. A well-documented incident in 1988 featured Chinese students rioting against African students studying in Nanjing. In 2007, police anti-drug crackdowns in Beijing's Sanlitun district were reported to target people from Africa as suspected criminals.

The Varna system in Hindu India became hereditary and a Shudra's son would remain a Shudra, and became to known as caste system. During the British Raj, Racist views against Indians based on the systemic scientific racism practiced in Europe were popularized. India has known racialism in all its forms ever since the commencement of British rule. The idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism. India as a nation and Indians as individuals were subjected to insult, humiliation and contemptuous treatment. In the post Independent era, Indian rulers and allies ill-treat and discriminate Muslims in a manner worse than even racist. Hindutva forces now target Muslims for Hindu votes and power. Hindutva mindset was discernible in their ghastly destruction of historic Babri mosque in India a cultural heritage of Mogul era that created whole range of architectural marvels, including world famous Taj Mahal. 

Interestingly, some RSS historians claim Taj Mahal to be a Hindu treasure while most Muslims working as vote bank agents for political parties for survival money are busy minting easy money. 

Burmese racism

Burmese military hates Islam and Muslims. During the second wave of violence, however, it was not only the Rohingya, but also Kaman Muslims from coastal fishing villages in southern Arakan were forced to flee as their communities were attacked. Although the Kaman are a recognised ethnic group with full citizenship rights, those rights did not protect them from racist state-sponsored violence that destroyed homes and livelihoods.

Nor has citizenship protected those thousands of Muslims currently subjected to a vicious wave of anti- Muslim violence across Myanmar - in Meiktila, Yamethin and in the Pegu townships of Zigon and Nattalin. These attacks, which left many dead and thousands displaced, demonstrate that citizenship is no protection against the communal violence and Islamophobia.

The targets of these attacks were not the Arakan Rohingya as much as Muslim citizens, their mosques, businesses and homes. State-sponsored violence against Muslim communities has been orchestrated by Myanmar's security forces - specifically the NaSaKa border force and assisted by Arakan nationalists, paramilitaries and extremist Buddhist monks. They have been able to act with impunity. 

Ne Win's rise to power in 1962 and his persecution of "resident aliens" (immigrant groups not recognised as citizens of the Union of Burma led to an exodus of some 300,000 Burmese Indians from discriminatory policies, particularly after wholesale nationalization of private enterprise a few years later in 1964. Some Muslim refugees entered Bangladesh, but continued to suffer there as the Bangladeshi government provided no support as of 2007
Myanmar's Rohingya suffer brutal state crime because of deeply entrenched and unchecked Islamophobia. It is the story of the Rohingya: rendered stateless at the hands of the military junta, brutalized by armed Buddhist nationalists, abused, dehumanized and displaced by the current Myanmar state and now fleeing the country which refuses to recognize them. It is the story of the Rohingya: rendered stateless at the hands of the communalized military.

The Rohingya are surely entitled to Myanmar citizenship and ethnic minority recognition. 

Instead, theirs is a "bare life" in which every aspect of social and political life is restricted and diminished. The racist violence experienced by the whole Myanmar Muslim community is drawn into arcane legal debates around the rights and wrongs of immigration and citizenship policy which pertain most specifically to the Rohingya.

There are an estimated 800,000 Rohingyas living in Arakan state, but the number is dwindling fast. Thousands have fled and continue to flee on boats into the Bay of Bengal to escape the anti-Muslim state-sponsored violence which took the lives of nearly 200 in late 2012. Tens of thousands of Rohingya people were displaced in the terror that ensued, and 130,000 were forced into detention camps near Sittwe after their homes were destroyed in June and October. 

According to UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, the camps in Sittwe, Myaybon and Pauk Taw evidence a "dire humanitarian situation" and are characterised by overcrowding, a lack of access to clean water and sanitation, a high risk of disease, food insecurity, child malnutrition, and "harsh and disproportionate restrictions on the freedom of movement".

Expelled refugees

There are also between 200,000 and 300,000 unregistered Rohingya refugees living outside camps in Bangladesh, in addition to 29,000 registered in camps assisted by UNHCR. In Thailand, the coordinator of the Arakan Project and Rohingya expert, reports that conditions for the 1,600 or so Rohingya men in immigration detention centres are appalling. "They are jails," she says, "where people cannot even lie down."

Recently, Malaysia has detained more than a thousand Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees, including dozens of children, a day after authorities rescued hundreds stranded off Indonesia's western tip. There has been a huge increase in refugees from impoverished Bangladesh and Myanmar drifting on boats to Malaysia and Indonesia in recent days since Thailand, usually the first destination in the region's people smuggling network, announced a crackdown on the trafficking.

Over 100 refugees from Burma were found wandering around in southern Thailand last week, apparently having been abandoned by smugglers. An estimated 25,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar boarded rickety smugglers' boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the UN refugee agency UNHCR has said. Most land in Thailand, where they are held by the smugglers in squalid jungle camps until relatives pay a ransom.

Police on the northwest Malaysian island of Langkawi, close to the Thai border, said three boats had arrived in the middle of the night to unload refugees, who were taken into custody as they came ashore. The boats contained 555 Bangladeshis and 463 Rohingya, who were being handed over to the immigration department.

Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia's wealthier economies, has long been a magnet for illegal immigrants. On July 05 this year, nearly 600 migrants thought to be Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshis were rescued from at least two overcrowded wooden boats stranded off Indonesia's Aceh province. 33 bodies, believed to be of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh were found in shallow graves in the south, near the Malaysian border. Of those rescued off Indonesia, around 50 were taken to hospital. "In general, they were suffering from starvation and many were very thin," said North Aceh police chief Achmadi. They came onshore and found out it wasn't Malaysia."

In Bangladesh, where the authorities are trying to stamp out the crisis at its source, police say they have arrested more than 100 people traffickers in recent months. Mohammad Ataur Rahman Khandaker, a senior police officer in Teknaf, close to the Myanmar border, said that four "notorious" traffickers had been killed in gun fights with police. Mohammad Kasim, a 44-year-old Bangladeshi migrant on one of the boats, said that each passenger paid 4,400 ringgit ($1,200) for the journey. Three people died on the way and were dumped in the sea. Kasim said he had left the Bangladesh town of Bogra a month ago on a small boat with 30-40 others in the hope of finding a job in Malaysia.

Neo-Nazi Buddhist racism

Myanmar has been plagued by neo-Nazi Buddhist racism and organized mob violence targeting the country's minority Muslims of diverse ethnic and historical backgrounds. The military-controlled state which has long institutionalized racism as its guiding philosophy causes the sudden and deeply troubling eruptions of mass violence against Myanmar's Muslims. At the very heart of Myanmar's Islamophobic campaign lies the state and its successive leaderships, which continue to operate within a concrete set of political economic relations wherein they pursue their typically sinister Machiavellian politics in defense of corporate, clique and personal agendas. 

Time magazine's cover story discussed on Buddhist terror as elaborately as possible. The various cliques of generals and ex-generals, and their instruments of power - the state and its security and propaganda apparatuses - have been directly and indirectly involved in the brutal attacks on Muslim communities and then in the actual mob attacks against them, including the slaughter, destruction, looting and burning of Muslim communities and their sacred mosques. 

The 1982 Citizenship Act of Ne Win spelled out his official justifications for enshrining racism in law and pursuing it as a matter of "national security''. His speech sheds light on the deeply racist nature of the Act, which in the wake of the pogroms against Rohingya Muslims last year has become a focus of international concern and controversy. 

Ne Win unequivocally put it that all immigrants with foreign roots, referred to by him as "mixed bloods", were in Myanmar due to the legacy of British colonial rule. From that fateful day in 1982, successive military government leaderships have as a matter of policy purged their power base - the 400,000-strong armed forces - of officers of Chinese and Indian ancestry, notwithstanding a few exceptions. 

Yet one contradiction in Ne Win's policies favoring "pure bloods" and "true children of the land" is that Ne Win himself could be characterized as "non-pure" ethnic Bama, as were many of his racist deputies and ideological heirs

Over the past 50 years, successive military leaders - from General Ne Win to the recently retired despot Senior General Than Shwe - have not only played the race and faith cards as a matter of political and military strategy, but they have also enshrined Buddhist racism as a key foundational pillar of what is known to many as the Golden Land of Buddhists, reference to the country's many gilded temples and gold-colored, harvest-time paddy fields. 

The unfolding process of Myanmar's nightmarish slide towards "ethnic and religious purity" stands in sharp contrast with the multiculturalist perspective of martyred independence hero Aung San, the father of current opposition leader supporting military racism Aung San Suu Kyi, and his multiethnic and inter-faith comrades. 

State prejudices

Islamophobia vitiates societal environment in non-Muslim nations. State prejudices are responsible for the poor fate of Muslims in Myanmar and elsewhere and core media feed the populations with hatred against Muslims and Islam. 

The Burmese military state security forces have terrorized the entire Myanmar population for five brutal decades. The more pervasive violence is corrupting Myanmar's transition from dictatorship. 

The ethno-economic nationalism has long been a pillar of Burmese nationalism throughout both historical and post-independence eras. Unfortunately, Buddhism and violence have always been an empirical paradox and historical oxymoron. Empirically, the state and its military leaderships are at the very least guilty of negligence of the unfolding racist "Buddhist" campaign against Myanmar's Muslims.

The sectarian dimensions of the racial conflict and rule of military and monks does not let the issue to get solved. It is really the state and its leaderships that have modulated, mobilized and facilitated multiethnic and multi-faith communities' prejudices against Myanmar's peoples of Chinese, Indian and mixed ethnic origins, as well as religious minorities.

Institutionalised Islamophobia, deeply embedded and historically informed is the cause of the ethnic cleansing of Myanmar's Rohingya community in Arakan. The state racial policy has created deep-seated prejudices among Myanmar's different communities.

The "reforming" government of Thein Sein has shown no sign of affording the Rohingya anything but continued persecution, dehumanization, discrimination and violence. Unconscionable, therefore, that the International Crisis Group chose to honour Thein Sein with its peace award this year, in fact made a complete mockery of international peace awards. 

It is Myanmar's icon of freedom and democracy and Nobel peace winner Aung San Suu Kyi's refusal to speak out against the crimes endured by the Rohingya that has provided cover for the international community's failure to intervene. At the outset of the recent waves of anti-Muslim violence, rather than stand up against Buddhist-led racism, she has pegged her colors firmly, not to the oppressed Rohingya, nor to the increasing victims of Islamophobia, but to her former military jailors, for whom she shares a "great fondness" and whom she now charges with the task of implementing the rule of law. 

State racist prejudices are harmful to peaceful environment of any modern state. However, neither the so-called civilized Western nations nor the UN, committed to solve the racist issues, have taken up the issue of racism seriously. Islamic world is not powerful enough to help minority Muslims living particularly in non-Islamic world to regain their human status, let alone Islamic way of life.

Rohingya Exodus