In an article in the state-run New Light of Myanmar on Wednesday, August 22, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Myanmar, stated, “It is obvious that the violence in the Rakhine State are neither the conflict between two religious groups of different faith nor humanitarian issue.” “The incidents in the Rakhine State are sectarian conflicts which are purely internal affairs of a sovereign state. They are not relating to any kind of religious persecution or religious discrimination. Therefore, we will not accept, any attempt to politically regionalize or internationalize this conflict as a religious issue.” “The government of Myanmar has never practiced policy of violence against Muslims or any other faiths,” said the statement. “The government totally rejects accusations made by some organizations that the government is practicing such a policy of abuse.”
Well, I beg to differ with the Myanmar government. It is once again trying to whitewash its horrible record of racism and bigotry against the non-Buddhists (esp. the Rohingya) inside the country. When millions of inhabitants of the country are denied citizenship because of their race, ethnicity and faith, and such exclusion includes every Rohingya Muslim in spite of maintaining their existence in that country for hundreds of years, such claims are simply laughable. When a violent mob attacks a group of Burmese Tablighi Muslims (who were not even from the Rohingya community suspected in the death of a Rakhine woman) and lynches them to death in front of the members of the police forces, who do nothing to stop such horrendous crimes, it is difficult to sell such deep-seated hatred as anything but bigotry. How does the crime of a single individual (although no proof has yet been provided by the Myanmar government) become the justification for committing hate crimes against an entire ethnic group?
When the members of the state-run riot police (Lon Htin) selectively shoots to kill members of the Rohingya community when they had gathered for a funeral service and being provoked by a hostile rock-throwing, stick and knife-wielding Rakhine crowd, no one is fooled by such government explanation. When the members of the border security force NASAKA and Lon Htin are seen (and there are plenty of video tapes available in the Internet) to participate in burning Rohingya homes, businesses and villages, and killing them simply because they are different racially and religiously, if it is not a government sponsored persecution of a Muslim religious community, what is?
When Rakhine Buddhist mobs led by Buddhist monks attack and set fire to several Muslim shops, restaurants and mosques, and kill unarmed Rohingya men and children, while the local authorities (police and the Army) did nothing to intervene nor did the fire-fighters come to their aid, how can one deny or evade responsibility for such collusion?
When the political and military leadership within Myanmar and the Rakhine state promote hatred and xenophobia, and practice open discrimination while encouraging and providing material support to the Buddhist extremists to commit acts of violence including rape of Rohingya Muslim girls and women, it is ludicrous to hide such obvious signs of religious persecution or discrimination.
When the Rakhine Buddhist monks allow their monasteries to be used for hording lethal arms, and disallow the life-saving food items to be sold to and block humanitarian assistance from reaching the starving Rohingya people, it is criminal to ignore the ugly fact that racism and bigotry against the Rohingyas have become an acceptable national project towards their total elimination that is enthusiastically supported and participated by an overwhelming majority within the Buddhist population.
Even a Muslim Rohingya is denied his/her right to reproduction. They cannot get married without government approval, which usually does not happen unless the government official is bribed heftily. US photographer Greg Constantine has recently released a book of black and white photography titled “Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.” He relates the story of 20-year-old Kashida who had to “flee to Bangladesh with her husband. The Burmese authorities had denied her permission to get married, but when they discovered she had married in secret and was pregnant they took away all her family’s money and cows and goats. They forced Kashida to have an abortion, telling her: “This is not your country; you don’t have the right to reproduce here.” In Mr. Constantine’s book there are plenty of such human stories for anyone to verify the truth of the suffering of the Rohingya people.
What excuse does the Myanmar government have to offer on such monumental crimes against a religious minority?
When the government forces not only allow the slaughter of the unarmed Rohingya but also participate in the gang rape of Rohingya women as a weapon of war so that they are pushed out of the country, and then the fleeing people are shot at — there is a name for such a crime – it is called ethnic cleansing, which has been going on for decades. For the information of the Myanmar government, the United Nations define ‘ethnic cleansing’ as “Purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
The Buddhist Myanmar has been practicing this crime for decades against many of the marginalized races and ethnic groups since the state got its independence from Britain in 1948. And of course, the Rohingyas have been the worst victims of this state policy. Per my count, there have been at least two dozen major campaigns to wipe out Muslim identity in Myanmar. As a result of such an on-again and off-again, slow but steady elimination strategy, nearly half the Rohingya population has been pushed out of the country and tens of thousands slaughtered, while the world almost forgot their sad plight. The ‘stubborn’ Rohingyas who continue to live inside this living hell are subjected to the worst forms of persecution and discrimination mankind has ever witnessed in the post-colonial era.
Towards transformational change of the multi-faith and multi-ethnic country to a unitary Burman dominated Buddhist country, there have been a systemic strategy since the days Ne Win (actually, one can go back to the time of Buddhist fanatic king Boddawpaya in 1784) to destroy religious monuments and insignia of other faiths. It is, therefore, not by chance that hardly a single historic mosque stands erect in Myanmar today. The state of Arakan whose shoreline once used to be dotted with Muslim shrines and mosques are now bereft of those Islamic symbolisms. The old Sandi Khan mosque (named after the very Muslim General who came to restore the throne of the fleeing Arakanese king Narameikhla in 1430 CE is long destroyed. Even the ancient Han Tha mosque did not survive Myanmarism. Along with the Taungoo Railway station mosque, this historical mosque was razed to the ground on May 18, 2001 by bulldozers owned by the previous SPDC military junta. How about Akyab’s historic Badr Makam mosque? [It is no accident either that Muslim sounding names of towns and places like Akyab (including that of Arakan state) have systematically been Burmanized to erase that Islamic connectivity.]
No religion can effectively survive or function without its places of worship. Every time a riot is initiated (often with full cooperation of the regime), the first targets are usually the mosques and madrasas because these are the only remaining institutions in Myanmar that are connected with the Islamic faith. [The Rohingya children are barred from government education beyond primary level, nor do they have freedom of movement.] And what is worse: mosques and Muslim graveyards are routinely closed down, destroyed or desecrated to make room for Buddhist model towns or expensive pagodas, where the Muslims must pay for such construction projects. [As I write, hundreds of Muslim mosques have been demolished or burned in the latest episode. All the mosques have been closed down without allowing Muslims to pray inside. So, no one could pray even on the Eid day, the happiest of Islamic festivals.]
As Dr. Shwe Lu Maung alias Shahnawaz Khan has noted in his book – The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar – A Social Darwinist’s Analysis – the policy of the successive rulers in Myanmar for centuries has been to make “golden temple shiny shiny, stomach though empty empty.” Every Myanmar ruler that has come to power has always tried to outdo his predecessor by trying to build a bigger and more expensive pagoda so as to prove his unwavering ties with the Buddhist faith and people, most often however at the expense of other faiths and faithful followers.
Interested reader may like to read the reports from a multitude of human rights groups, plus the U.S. State Department’s annual report on Myanmar, or my books (esp., The Forgotten Rohingya: Their Struggle for Human Rights in Burma) to comprehend the colossal record of crime of the Myanmar government against the Rohingya Muslims.
The reports emerging from the Rakhine state, verified by several human rights groups, clearly show the regime’s dirty hands in targeted elimination of the Rohingya people. This was also obvious from the assessment made by Navi Pillay of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who said, “We have been receiving a stream of reports from independent sources alleging discriminatory and arbitrary responses by security forces, and even their instigation of and involvement in clashes.” “Reports indicate that the initial swift response of the authorities to the communal violence may have turned into a crackdown targeting Muslims, in particular members of the Rohingya community,” she said (July 27, 2012).
Benjamin Zawacki of the Amnesty International told BBC, “Most cases have meant targeted attacks on the minority Rohingya population and they were bearing the brunt of most of that communal violence in June and they continue to bear the lion’s share of the violations perpetrated by the state security forces.” “While the restoration of order, security, and the protection of human rights is necessary, most arrests appear to have been arbitrary and discriminatory, violating the rights to liberty and to freedom from discrimination on grounds of religion,” Amnesty said in a statement.
Similarly, Phil Robertson, Deputy Director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch, said “state security forces and local Arakan communities worked together to target Rohingya communities, committing killings, rapes, and mass arrests.” On June 23, in a village near the town of Maungdaw, security forces pursued and opened fire on two dozen Rohingya villagers who had been hiding from the violence in fields and forest areas. Witnesses in Maungdaw township described several instances in which Rakhine men wielding sticks and swords accompanied the security forces in raids on Rohingya villages.
Not too long ago, a coalition of human rights group, led by Refugees International, the Arakan Project, and the Equal Rights Trust, issued a joint statement saying: “In Myanmar, what began as inter-communal violence has evolved into large scale state-sponsored violence against the Rohingya.” “Many Rohingya continue to be victims of violence and cannot leave their homes for fear of persecution, and are thus deprived of their livelihood and most basic needs,” said the advocacy groups.
To, thus, say that the government of Myanmar has ‘never practiced policy of violence against Muslims or any other faiths’ or that there is ‘no religious persecution or discrimination’ is like saying that ‘violence is peace’ and ‘persecution is love’! With more than 100,000 internally displaced Rohingyas, it is also a grave humanitarian issue. With such hypocritical words, the Myanmar government can neither hope to hoodwink anyone nor evade its responsibility for being the author and executioner for its crimes against humanity.
Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director, Human Rights Watch, noted weeks ago, “Deadly violence in Arakan State is spiraling out of control under the government’s watch. Opening the area to independent international observers would put all sides on notice that they were being closely watched.” The UN and other human rights monitoring groups have also requested Myanmar government to allow international observers to be posted, but to no avail. Its reluctance points to the fact that the regime wants to hide its on-going crime against the Rohingya people.
Lately, President Thein Sein has announced the formation of a 27-member inquiry commission to submit a report on this latest pogrom. One may recall that soon after the pogrom had started in June, he promised a similar inquiry report by June 30, which, however, never saw the light. The inclusion of racists like Dr. Aye Maung, Khin Maung Swe, Aye Tha Aung, Zarganar, and Ko Ko Gyi, who had played an active role in the latest pogrom against the Rohingya people, once again shows that Thein Sein is not serious about fact-finding but only about international image. It is a face-saving measure to withstand international pressure. He is trying to buy time and hope that commotion would calm down so that he could rekindle the fire of extinction some time later.
As I have noted many times, at the heart of the on-going eliminationist project against Rohingyas and other persecuted minorities lies Burma’s notorious 1982 Citizenship Law, written during hateful dictator Ne Win era. It is sad to see that how such a blueprint for racial and religious discrimination and eventual elimination has now become an acceptable law even by the so-called democracy leaders. No one inside Myanmar is crying out foul for its violations of each of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not even Suu Kyi Aris, once touted as a voice of conscience for humanity. The recent tragedy has shown her real color and those of her NLD colleagues. They are basically neo-Fascists who are no better than the very regime that they want to unseat. That is what a national project for elimination would do to a nation!
If the Myanmar government is serious about bringing about a positive change towards inclusion, its 1982 Law needs to be amended or dumped altogether so that Rohingyas are not rendered stateless. Amnesty International says, “Under international human rights law and standards, no one may be left or rendered stateless.”
And this is also the recommendation from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana. He has stressed the need for the authorities to take steps to address the “long-standing issues of deprivation of citizenship, freedom of movement, and other fundamental rights” that plague the welfare of the Rohingya people. There is no better time to amend the 1982 Law than now.
Is Thein Sein government ready to truly reform its 1982 Law that violates international human rights law and standards? If not now, when? Without such steps, he can’t escape being labeled as an executioner of an apartheid policy that leads to exclusion, discrimination, persecution and elimination. That is war crime in my book!
Source : Eurasia Review
By: Eurasia Review July 28, 2012
Last week, I came across Mr. Kanbawza Win’s article – “Killing two birds with a stone or a Win, Win Situation” – discussing his thesis for solving the Rohingya crisis in western Burma. As a global citizen who has worked for decades to make our world a more inclusive one away from the brunt of racism and bigotry, I could not resist the temptation to read Mr. Win’s piece. After all, Mr. Win is part of the so-called pro-democracy movement for Burma. He has been critical of the military regime that has been ruling Burma. He is also considered by many to be the voice of reason within the Burmese exiles.
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Unfortunately, Mr. Win has not been able to shed his deplorable prejudice and racism when it comes to the ‘other’ people. And he is not alone in this serious moral failing. As I have noted many times, when push comes to shove, most of these pro-democracy leaders have either proven to be or acted like closet fascists. It is they who have often led the campaign for expulsion of the Rohingya population or to engage in genocide or to institute an apartheid system against the Rohingya. Ironical as it may seem many of these charlatans are seeking asylum in the USA, UK, Germany and Canada while they feel comfortable engaging in ethno-nationalism that might have made genocidal mass murderer Slobodan Milosevic proud.
Their narrative about the Rohingyas of Arakan starts with the British colonization of the territory in 1826 after the first Anglo-Burma War of 1824-26, as if they had no past connection to the soil of Arakan. To them, the East India Company, which had already been administering next-door Bangladesh (Bengal in British India) since 1757, lured those “Bengali inhabitants” (mostly from the district of Chittagong) to come and work as seasonable laborers. Mr. Win writes, “The arable land expanded to four and a half times between 1830 and 1852 and Akyab, became one of the major rice exporting cities in the world. Indeed, during a century of colonial rule, the Chittagonian immigrants became the numerically dominant ethnic group in the Mayu Frontier. That is the origin of the Mujahid or the Bengali Immigrants.”
I doubt if Mr. Win understands the meaning of the Arabic word Mujahid (literal meaning: a person who strives). Surely, not; otherwise, he should have avoided using such an adjective to describe the Rohingyas. They are not Bengali immigrants either that settled since the British era. Yes, some of them may look like people of Bangladesh, separated from Arakan by the Naaf River. Living in a frontier territory sandwiched between the Hindu and Muslim dominated India/Bangladesh to the west and the Buddhist dominated Burma to the east, it would be silly to say that the Rohingyas, as the original inhabitants of the land of Arakan, should have looked different. As any student of Buddhism knows, Buddha himself was an Indian (a Kala) from the state of Bihar (Magadha), neighboring Indian state to Bengal. He was not of the Mongoloid race that resembles the Rakhine and Buddhist races today. (One has to just make a trip to Bihar in India to find if the Biharis look closer to the Bangalis or the Rakhines of Arakan.)
Like many of his group of chauvinists in the so-called pro-democracy movement in Burma, suffering from selective amnesia, Mr. Win forgets to tell his readers that before the British came to Arakan there were already one Arakanese Muslims for every two Arakanese Buddhists. And this, in spite of the marauding campaign to colonize Arakan by the Buddhist zealot – Burman (Burmese) king Bodawpaya – in 1784 which witnessed slaughter of tens of thousands of Arakanese people – Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists alike. Some 20,000 inhabitants (including Muslim Arakanese) were taken as prisoners to the Burmese capital city of Ava. Afraid of their lives, many Arakanese (of all faiths) – numbering probably in excess of 200,000 — fled to Chittagong and other southern coastal territories of Bangladesh, where their descendants continue to live as citizens of Bangladesh today.
As noted by Professor Abid Bahar, who has done much field studies on the Rohingyas of Burma, when the British took control of Arakan, some of the descendants of those refugees in Bangladesh returned to their ancestral homes. But contrary to Rakhine myth or popular belief, the proportion of the returning refugees or their descendants was comparatively larger from the Rakhine (Buddhist) community than that of the Rohingya (Muslim) community in the British era.
Sadly though, simply because of their Buddhist faith, the Rakhine descendants of those returning refugees are not subjected to the same litmus test for proving their ties to the region anterior to 1823. Additionally, any Bangladeshi Rakhine can today move into Arakan and become a citizen of Burma simply because of his looks and faith while the Rohingyas are denied citizenship simply because of their race and religion. If this is not pure racism and bigotry, what is?
Mr. Win forgets to tell that since at least 1430 C.E., when the Muslim Sultan of Bengal helped to restore the fleeing Arakanese king – Narameikhla (Maung Saw Mwan) to the throne a very sizable Muslim population had thrived in Arakan, who later held important government positions. He does not tell his readers that the golden age of Bengali literature thrived in the courts of Arakan during that Mrauk-U dynasty when its kings even used Muslim names. He also does not tell that for nearly a hundred years during the Mrauk-U dynasty, taking advantage of the unrest in Mughal India, Chittagong was annexed and administered by the Arakanese kings (until 1666). He also does not tell that for hundreds of years the Arakanese Buddhists, in collaboration with Portuguese pirates, were involved in piracy, abducting tens of thousands of Muslims and Hindus from the territories of Bengal who were either sold or forced to work as slaves in Arakan. Their number accounted for 15% of the population of Arakan before Bodawpaya’s campaign.
As a Buddhist fanatic, while Bodawpaya destroyed most mosques and Islamic shrines, he could not exterminate all Muslims of Arakan (the ancestors of today’s Rohingyas of Burma). Many survived, as did the (Buddhist) Rakhines. Thus, some 30,000 Muslims survived when the British first took control of the territory. They were not planted by the British in 1826. It is not difficult to understand why over the last two centuries their number has grown to more than a million. To claim that the Rohingyas of Burma are outsiders or intruders or mujahids is not an analysis, but a paralysis of one’s wits that cannot decipher the truth from falsehood. And hatred will keep one close minded, unwilling to objectively analyze matters. That is the sad reality with most Rakhine politicians and charlatan scholars like Mr. Win who have no problem borrowing pages from the fascist Nazi era to ethnically cleanse the Rohingyas of Burma.
Mr. Win may like to read my work on “Muslim Identity and the Demography in the Arakan State of Burma (Myanmar),” available from the Amazon.com to see the utter falsity of his accusations against the Rohingyas of Burma. As children of the early settlers of Arakan, their claim to the land of Arakan precedes those of the Tibeto-Burman stock of people whom we now call the Rakhines of Arakan. To call these indigenous people of Arakan — who identify themselves as the Rohingyas in Burma — “unwanted guests” is like calling the Native Americans unwanted refugees who had settled in America after the influx of the Europeans. As much as no massacre of yesteryears and ghettoization of the Native Americans today in designated American Indian Reservation camps has been able to obliterate their genuine right, place, history and identity to America, no Myanmar government and local Rakhine sponsored pogroms can erase the rightful identity of the Rohingya people of Burma. History and justice is one their side.
As hinted above, reading Mr. Win’s win-win formula is like reading a borrowed page from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. One simply has to change the words ‘Jewish’ to ‘Muslim’ (or as Mr. Win puts it ‘Mujahid’) and ‘Communists’ to ‘Chinese’ to see the similarity with his fascistic ideas. Mr. Win feels threatened by these ‘4 million Chinese immigrants’ who are more numerous than the Rohingyas and who apparently have made Mandalay their ‘second capital after Beijing’. His solution: he wants them deported to Muslim-populated Arakan state. As to the Rohingyas – the other ‘peril’ – he wants them forcibly deported to the eastern part of Burma. He wants a special ID card issued to these two ‘alien’ groups and ‘compel them to respect the local Burmese laws and customs’. He says, “If anyone refused to go along with this order then he must be persecuted according to law and finally deported to the country of its origin. In this way it will stop the illegal immigrants entering the country by fair or foul means. Just by looking at the features of the person one can pin point that he is an illegal immigrant from China if found in the Mujahid area or Bangali in Chinese dominated area. We will have to take drastic action once caught. This will solve the problem at least for half a century until their children got married to each other or the local population.” Towards assimilation, of course, “all these aliens must become Burmese.”
As to the funding for this cross-country forced ‘mass exodus’ (relocation) project, he opines, the Burmese government won’t have to ‘spend a single Burmese pyar’ (cent or penny) since the 31 INGOs (international NGOs) will ‘gladly fund.’
Mr. Win seems genuinely concerned about Burma’s image abroad as a racist country. He says that his solution would “paint the picture that Burma accepted all these aliens both Bengalis and Chinese, mercifully and magnanimously in as much the Burmese refugees are accepted in the West in all these 50 years. It will earn credit in taking her rightful place in the family of nations.”
I don’t know whether to take him seriously; after all, his win-win solution relies on forced eviction and encampment similar to the fate that awaited the Jews and gypsies in the Nazi-era. I smell fascism there. He refuses to open his mind to the fact that the Rohingyas are not aliens to the soil of Arakan, but they are the locals who had settled before his own Rakhine/Burmese race. Simply because of their darker color (more like Buddha’s) and different religion, they cannot be called aliens. Nor can they be denied citizenship simply because the English colonial government did not record them under the name Rohingya but as Muslims (or Mohamedans). [Note; The English rulers used the terms like Mugh and Magh for the Arakanese Buddhists, who now are known by the name Rakhines.] The Rohingyas don’t need to be forcibly relocated and encamped away from their ancestral homes (and surely not murdered) but need to be integrated within the broader society by restoring their full citizenship right, as is currently enjoyed by Mr. Win’s own Rakhine Buddhist community who has no greater claim to the soil of Arakan.
He is also concerned about the image of his faith as a result of on-going pogroms directed against the Rohingyas of Burma. He says: “But most importantly of all, is that it has a very bad and negative impression on Buddhism especially the Theravada Buddhism, when Buddhism is considered to be the most compassionate religions of the world. How are the followers of Lord Buddha, Burmese Buddhist in general, and Rakhine Buddhist in particular, practice their compassion to the other human being not similar to them, when in face. Lord Buddha has showed several ways to curb their own passion and desires.”
I wish, on this note, his community – the Rakhine and Burmese Buddhists – had agreed and taken positive measures to change their bad image. With such persecution of the Rohingyas, the Rakhine Theravada Buddhists and their partners-in-crime the Burman Buddhists, have repeatedly shown that they are no better than the criminal co-religionist perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in human history in places like Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
It is, however, never too late to reform. I hope Mr. Win and his people have the inner wisdom to evaluate their past actions and reform, making our world more inclusive and tolerant of other people and their faiths and customs. And they can start that process by campaigning for renouncing the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law – which for decades has epitomized racism and bigotry in our time. Truly, if Burma is to succeed and meet its true potential, it must learn to get along with others. There is no shortcut about it. The sooner they learn this and amend their ways the sooner will be the dawning of a better future.
About the author: Dr. Siddiqui has authored 11 books, co-edited one and written a chapter for another book.
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui (USA)
Sun, 2012-07-15 editorJune 30 came and went. It was the dateline set by the Thein Sein government of Myanmar for an inquiry report on current violence in the Arakan state, triggered by the lynching of ten tablighi Muslims (visiting from Rangoon) on June 3. That violence soon turned into a well-orchestrated pogrom against the Rohingya Muslims of Arakan (the Rakhine state) in Myanmar (Burma).
According to several human rights groups thousands of unarmed Muslims may already have been killed in the apartheid state of Myanmar. Many Rohingya young men, picked up by the government forces, have simply disappeared, and are now feared death. Many victims – old and young, afraid of being ambushed and tortured to death by the racist Rakhine extremists and their partners-in-crime -- the government forces, have ventured out to seek asylum as refugees in Bangladesh.
Instead, what the world community heard lately is simply bizarre! Myanmar presidential office released a statement last week citing that it would not recognize the Rohingya and would hand over responsibility for the Rohingya minority to the UN’s refugee agency in Arakan State, adding that it was also “willing to send the Rohingyas to any third country that will accept them.” How wonderful! So, just like that a minority Muslim community that has known no other home outside the Buddhist-majority country is now treated as if they are outsiders; thus, ducking responsibility of the Myanmar government. What a travesty! This behavior is typical of a lawless ‘Mogher Mulluk’ with no accountability, no justice and no fair play. It is simply disgusting!
The Rohingyas are being targeted for this horrendous crime simply because of their race and religion. Looking darker and closer to the South Asian race (found in Bangladesh and India) as opposed to the more oriental (Mongoloid) looking majority – the Rakhines in the Arakan state and the majority Bamar inside Myanmar, and being Muslims as opposed to Buddhist, the Rohingya have been targets of state sponsored ethnic cleansing.
Of course, the denial of citizenship rights of the indigenous Rohingyas of Arakan is nothing new, and did not start with Thein Sein’s statement last week; it started full-blown from the Ne Win era. A series of ethnic cleansing drives has since been launched by the military regime, in full cooperation of the racist elements within the Arakan state and Burma. Thus, before the 1982 Citizenship Law was enacted, there were Shwe Kyi Operation (1959), Kyi Gan Operation (1966), Ngazinka Operation (1967-69), Myat Mon Operation (1969-71), Major Aung Than Operation (1973), Sabe Operation (1974-78), Naga Min (King Dragon) Operation (1978-79) – which alone saw the forced exodus of some 300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh, Shwe Hintha Operation (1978-80), and Galone Operation (1979). Lest we forget, after 1982, there was the infamous Pyi Thaya Operation of 1991-92, which again saw the forced exodus of some 268,000 Rohingyas out of Burma. The aim of all these genocidal campaigns has been crystal clear: deny all the rights to the Rohingyas; falsely claim that they are outsiders from Bangladesh, or more specifically from Chittagong; continue periodic extermination campaigns with support from the local Rakhine Buddhist community; drive them out of the apartheid state of Burma by making their lives simply unbearable and miserable.
While this slow but steady genocidal campaign has been going on inside apartheid Burma for more than half a century, with little notice from the outside world (after all, the country still remains closed to most foreign journalists and international monitoring agencies), draconian measures violating each one of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were taken to ensure that the remaining Rohingyas opt out. And surely the evil strategy has been working: majority of the Rohingyas are now refugees outside Burma. Those daring to stay within remain the most persecuted people on earth. They have no freedom of any kind, in much contrast to most of us living outside who take such privileges for granted.
With the so-called reforms initiated by the new regime of Thein Sien (a former military general) since last year, our hopes have been rather high imagining that his is a departure from the feudal past, and that he understands what it would take for his most impoverished country of Southeast Asia to survive and prosper in the 21st century. No, we are wrong. Nothing truly has changed inside Myanmar. It remains locked in its savage, feudal/imperial past. Racism and bigotry remain the apartheid character of this Buddhist majority country to drive out others, making the country exclusively for the majority race and religion.
It is not difficult to understand why Suu Kyi, the so-called democracy icon, remained noticeably silent on the subject of anti-Rohingya prejudice. Through her silence to condemn gross violations of human rights of a persecuted community, she has proven to be another immoral politician that cannot be trusted as a leader. Many of her supporters within the Rakhine and Burmese Buddhist communities are part of the country’s ‘pro-democracy’ movement. They are outright hostile to non-Buddhists and Rohingyas of Burma.
Thus, there is no camouflaging any more. The so-called democracy movement has been a farce; its leaders have proven that they are nothing more than neo-fascists of our time. Their brand of democracy is for their particular race and religion only. It is not of inclusion but only of exclusion. There is no place for a Shan, a Kachin, a Karen, and of course, a Rohingya, and countless nameless ethnic and minority groups in that equation. There is no place for a non-Buddhist in Myanmar. Period! Thus, the state remains at war everywhere inside.
More than 70,000 people have been displaced in the north by the on-going conflict between the Kachin Independence Army and the Burmese Army. On 6 July, nearly 1,500 residents in Panghsai township, near the border with China, attempted to cross into China after being ordered to evacuate their villages by the Burmese army. The refugees were then driven back into Burma by Chinese border guards. The displaced communities are now living in makeshift tents on the Burmese side, near the Chinese border and in Myitkyina, while others continue to hide in the jungle. In spite of a recent peace agreement with the Karens, some 60,000 officially recognized refugees still live in camps along the Thailand-Burma border. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) the total number of refugees (including the Rohingyas) living in nine camps along the Thai-Burma border is 150,000. There are some 50,000 refugees (of various ethnic groups) that live in Northeast India and another 12,000 living in temporary settlements inside Malaysia. And as to the Rohingyas, more than a million are now living as refugees in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and elsewhere. The UNHCR estimates that some 91,000 people (mostly Rohingyas) have been affected by the latest extermination campaign against the Rohingyas of Arakan.
Just a few days ago, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent a message on the World Refugee Day, “We must not turn away from those in need. Refugees leave because they have no choice. We must choose to help.”
The reality inside Burma makes a mockery of Ban Ki-moon’s statement. His office has failed to stop emerging refugee crises in our world. Despite the theme for this year (2012) being: 'Refugees have no choice. You do,' the international response to the Rohingya crisis has been rather too slow and too safely guarded.
The Government in Bangladesh has pushed back fleeing Rohingya refugees seeking asylum. “Bangladesh never signed any kind of international act, convention or law for allowing and giving shelter to refugees,” said the foreign minister Dipu Moni recently. “That’s why we are not bound to provide shelter to the Rohingyas.” But how can Bangladesh ignore its obligations – not just Islamically, but also under international obligations? Has she forgotten that Bangladesh itself was born in 1971 amid a massive refugee crisis? And now to deny such humanitarian help to suffering Rohingyas is simply inexcusable!
As noted by investigative journalist, Dan Morrison, Bangladeshi officials might have served their case better by condemning the violence while pointing out that Bangladesh is among the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, that in 1978 and 1991 it sheltered Rohingyas fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and that as it struggles to meet the aspirations of its 160 million citizens, it cannot consider another “temporary” influx of refugees. Instead Dipu Moni’s statements came across as callous at a time when images of suffering Rohingyas are being flashed across the world.
No action has been taken by the world community to either prevent a repeat of genocidal campaigns against the persecuted Rohingya people or punish repeat offenders - those responsible within the Union (of Myanmar), state and local government, and the civilian provocateurs of hatred. Interestingly, while the ultra-racist provocateurs within the Burmese and Rakhine Buddhist community continue to justify the denial of citizenship rights to the Rohingyas of Burma, and preach and provide material aid for extermination campaigns against them, many of these hypocritical monsters have no moral bites to living as naturalized citizens in countries like the UK and the USA. Nothing has been done to stop these neo-Nazi spiritual children of Julius Streicher amongst the Buddhist community of Burma.
But if the world community is serious to stop the refugee crisis, it is not too late. It can still stop the bleeding process by ensuring that violence against targeted minorities is a crime. It can stop such war crimes by bringing the advocates and perpetrators of crime to justice either through the local government agencies or the World Court in the Hague. And above all, it can pressure its governments to not reward the criminal state.
Sadly, however, morality is long gone in our world, and is replaced by hypocrisy. And this fact is well known amongst the perpetrators of such war crimes, and thus, there is no end of such crimes in a foreseeable future. Consider, e.g., the governments in the USA and the UK (and there are plenty of such examples). The Obama administration has lately announced that it would waive longstanding sanctions on investment and financial services in Burma. The new policy does not restrict U.S. companies from partnering with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), Burma’s state-owned oil company and the main source of revenue for the previous military government. The decision was timed to coincide with a trip by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Cambodia.
Similar is the case with the UK. Recently, Britain’s trade and investment department has opened an office in Rangoon as the latest move by the UK government to increase its presence in Burma. According to a report by The Telegraph, the opening of the new trade office came during a three-day visit last week by a trade delegation that included executives of some of the UK’s most influential companies, e.g., Anglo American, BP, British Gas, Ernst & Young, Rolls Royce and Shell.
The European Union, Australia and other countries have also eased sanctions against Myanmar.
On July 11, Antonio Guterres, the UNHCR chief, met Thein Sein in Naypyidaw. He told reporters at a press conference in Rangoon the following day that the Rohingyas are an internally displaced people. He said, “The resettlement programs organized by UNHCR are for refugees who are fleeing a country to another, in very specific circumstances. Obviously, it’s not related to this situation.”
The latest salvo from Thein Sein once again shows that the Rohingya community is in a perilous situation. In recent weeks, villages belonging to the Rohingya have been burnt to the ground, whilst refugees fleeing to other countries have been refused entry and left to fend for themselves onboard rickety boats on rough seas. The Myanmar Government refuses to accept the Rohingya people as citizens and as such have no rights in a country they call their motherland. This treatment of its inhabitants is in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 3, 6, 13, 15, and 16. Reports covered by the Guardian of UK have suggested mass burning, looting and murder of Rohingya men, women and children. Anti-Muslim prejudice is endemic in Burmese society.
It’s a shame to think that many Burmese, who suffered for so long under military dictatorship, harbor such racism and bigotry.
As noted by human rights group, this issue is much larger than a Myanmar-only problem; it is fast becoming one of the worst cases of ethnic cleansing alongside the likes of Rwanda and Bosnia. Can the world community stop this war crime?
Source here
ေဒါက္တာ ဟာဘိ စီဒီကီ
မူရင္းေဆာင္းပါး –Asiantribune.com
ခ်စ္ခင္ေလးစားရပါေသာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ခင္ဗ်ား
ဆယ္စုႏွစ္တစ္ခုမက လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအရာ လံႈ႕ေဆာ္ၾကိဳးပမ္းသူတစ္ဦးအေနျဖင့္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ရန္ႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရးအတြက္ ပူးတြဲလုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အစိုးရသစ္ဟာ တိုင္းျပည္ေကာင္းစားဖို႕နဲ႕ မွန္ကန္တဲ့ သီလအတြက္ ခိုင္မာစြာ ရပ္တည္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္အတူ အျခားမ်ားစြာေသာ အျပစ္မဲ့တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကို အနာဂတ္ ေရရွည္အက်ိဳးအျမင္ျဖင့္ လြတ္လပ္မႈေပး၊ လြတ္ေျမာက္ ခြင့္ေပးခဲ့တာျဖင့္ အလြန္ကိုေကာင္းမြန္ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဧျပီလ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ NLD ပါတီ ဝင္ေရာက္ျပိဳင္ဆိုင္ခြင့္ရခဲ့ျပီး အမတ္ ၄၂-ေနရာ ေအာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တာ အလြန္ဝမ္းသာစရာပါ။ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ အလြန္ၾကီးမားတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈပါ။
ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းမွာ ထိုကဲ့သို႕ေသာ ေျပာင္းလဲတိုးတက္ မႈမ်ားနဲ႕အညီ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ့ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေတြ ဟာလည္း ျမင့္တက္လာပါတယ္။ ေအာက္လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ရဲ့ အသံ၊ ဩဇာတကၠိမနဲ႕ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္မ်ားစြာ သူတို႕ ခံစားေတြ႕ၾကံဳေနရတဲ့ အတိဒုကၡေတြက လြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သစ္မွာ မည္သူမဆို အေရာင္အေသြး၊ ဘာသာလူမ်ိဳး၊ ကိုးကြယ္ယုံၾကည္မႈ ကြဲျပားေနပါေစ ေဒၚစုၾကည္္ဟာ တရားမွ်တမႈ၊ ေက်ာသားရင္သားမခြဲျခားမႈ၊ တရားဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးမႈ ေတြကို ေဆာင္ၾကဥ္းေပးလာႏိုင္မယ္လို႕ ယုံၾကည္ထားၾကပါတယ္။ ...
ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ အစိုးရဟာ လူနည္းစုအေပၚ ျပင္းထန္စြာ ခြဲျခားဖိႏွိပ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေဒၚစုၾကည္သိမယ္ ထင္တဲ့အတိုင္း လူမ်ိဳး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခား ႏွိမ့္ခ်ဆက္ဆံမႈ၊ မုန္းတီး အစြန္းေရာက္မႈ အမ်ားျပား အျပင္းထန္ဆုံး ႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ လုံးဝ မရွိသင့္ေတာ့တဲ့ အျပင္ လုံးဝ ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႕လိုပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အေနာက္ဘက္ေဒသရွိ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ လူနည္းစု အေပၚ မၾကာေသးမီက ျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့တဲ့ တိုက္ခိုက္မႈဟာ လူမ်ိဳးေရးနဲ႕ ဘာသာေရးကို အေျခခံတဲ့ ျပသနာ တစ္ေၾကာ့ျပန္ပါ။ ရခိုင္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးငယ္တစ္ဦးကို မတရားက်င့္၊ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ရာဇဝတ္ေကာင္ ၃-ေယာက္ကို အေၾကာင္းျပျပီး ျမန္မာျပည္ အျခားေဒသမွ တရားစခန္းဝင္ ျပန္လာတဲ့ မြတ္စလင္ ၁၀-ဦးကို ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ကုတ္ျမိဳ႕မွာ ၃၀၀-ခန္႕ေသာ အၾကမ္းဖက္လူအုပ္ၾကီးက ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ ႐ိုက္ႏွက္သတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ့ၾကတာ ၾကားရတဲ့အခါ လြန္စြာတုန္လႈပ္ေျခာက္ျခားမိခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
ရာဇဝတ္သားတစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ရဲ့ အျပစ္က်ဴးလြန္မႈကို ဤကဲ့သို႕လူနည္းစု အေပၚ မေယာင္ရာ ဆီလူး ဥပေဒေဘာင္မဲ့ လက္စားေခ်တံု႕ျပန္ျခင္းသာ သမ႐ိုးက်ျဖစ္ေနခဲ့ပါက ဒီေလာကဝယ္ လူသားဆိုတာ အဘယ္မွာ က်န္ရွိပါေတာ့မလဲ။ သို႕ပါေသာ္လည္း ရခိုင္အၾကီးအကဲေခါင္းေဆာင္တို႕ဟာ ဤပုံဤနည္း မွန္ကန္စြာ စဥ္းစားၾကပုံမေပၚပဲ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ လူနည္:စုအေပၚ အျပစ္ပုံအမုန္းပြါး အဓိကရုန္းျဖစ္ေစခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။
ေဒၚစုၾကည္ဟာ ပါလီမန္အတြင္း အတိုက္အခံေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႕ အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ားစြာအတြက္ ကတိကဝတ္ျပဳထားတဲ့ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရသစ္နဲ႕လက္တြဲျပီး အတိတ္ရဲ့အမိုက္ေမွာင္ေတြထဲက ရုန္းထြက္ခြဲခြါကာ အရွိန္အဟုန္ျဖင့္ တိုင္းျပည္သစ္တည္ေဆာက္မယ္လို႕ ထင္ထားခဲ့မိတာ သိပ္မ်ားေစာသြား ေလသလား။ မွားမ်ား သြားခဲ့ျပီလား။
ရခိုင္အၾကီးအကဲေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ လုံထိန္း၊ နစက အစရွိသူတို႕ဟာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူနည္းစုကို အျမစ္ျပတ္ရွင္းလင္းျပစ္ဖို႕ အကြက္က်က် စီမံခဲ့က်ပါတယ္။ ဇြန္လ ၃-ရက္ကျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေၾကာက္မက္ဖြယ္ လူသတ္ပြဲၾကီးကို တားဆီးႏိုင္ပါလ်က္ မသိက်ိဳးကြၽံျပဳခဲ့က်တဲ့အျပင္ ဇြန္လ ၈-ရက္ ေသာၾကာေန႕ ဝတ္ျပဳျပီးျပန္လာၾကတဲ့ လက္နက္မဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအား တိုက္ခိုက္ ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ၾကတာဟာျဖင့္ အလြန္ေကာက္က်စ္တဲ့ စီမံကိန္းရဲ့အစိတ္အပိုင္းတစ္ခုဆိုတာ အေသအခ်ာပါပဲ။
ဘုန္းၾကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ားအတြင္းမွ ရခိုင္အစြန္းေရာက္ အၾကမ္းဖက္သမားမ်ား လွ်ိဳ႕ဝွက္သိမ္းဆီးထားတဲ့ ဒုတ္၊ဓား၊လွံ၊လက္နက္မ်ား ဖမ္းမိခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာလည္း အေထာက္အထားမ်ားအရ သိရွိရပါတယ္။ ဤစာေရးသားေနစဥ္ ကာလအတြင္းမွာဘဲ မြတ္စလင္အိုးအိမ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ မီး႐ိႈ႕ခံေနရပါတယ္။ လူမ်ိဳးတုန္းသတ္ျဖတ္မႈေၾကာင့္ လူရာေပါင္းမ်ားစြာရဲ့ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ေသေက်ပ်က္စီးေနပါတယ္။ ဒီလို ရက္စက္ၾကမ္းၾကဳပ္မႈမ်ားကို ၾကားသိရတာ အလြန္ပဲတုန္လႈပ္ေျခာက္ျခားရပါတယ္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ မြတ္စလင္ေတြအားလုံးကို ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရး အျပည့္အဝေပးမယ္လို႕ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္းဆန္း ကိုယ္တိုင္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရျပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ပထမဆုံးသမၼတ စဝ္ေရႊသိုက္ကလည္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ မြတ္စလင္မ်ားအားလုံးဟာ ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသားေတြပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ သူတို႕တိုင္ရင္းသား မဟုတ္ရင္ ငါတို႕ရွမ္းလဲ တိုင္းရင္းသားမဟုတ္ဘူးလို႕ေတာင္ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အာဏာရွင္ဦးေနဝင္းအစိုးရ မတက္ခင္က တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစု ၁၄၄-ခု သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့၊ ရွိခဲ့တာပါ။ ၁၉၇၄-ခုႏွစ္ ဦးေနဝင္းရဲ့ ဗမာ့ဆိုရွယ္လစ္လမ္းစဥ္ပါတီ တက္လာျပီးမွ ၁၃၅-ခုဆိုျပီး ျပင္ဆင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ပ႐ႉးမြတ္စလင္၊ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္(ေနာင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ) အပါအဝင္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ၉-မ်ိဳး ပယ္ဖ်က္ပစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ပသီ၊ ေျမဒူး၊ ပန္းေသး၊ ျမန္မာ-အိႏၵိယ အစသျဖင့္ပါ။
၁၉၈၂-ခုႏွစ္ ႏိုင္ငံသားဥပေဒဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဥပေဒ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားရဲ့ အေျခခံမ်ားကိုပင္ ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ထားပါတယ္။ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ ပဋိဥာဥ္နဲ႕လည္း ဆန္႕က်င္ေနပါတယ္။
ဒီဥပေဒေၾကာင့္ ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာေသာသူတို႕ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံသားျဖစ္ခြင့္ဆုံးရွုံးခဲ့ရျပီး အျခားအေျမာက္အမ်ားဟာလည္း အေျခခံ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရးမ်ား ဆုံးရွုံးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဤသို႕ ႏွိမ့္ခ် ခြဲျခားမႈမ်ား၊ ဥပေဒေဘာင္မဲ့ က်ဴးလြန္မႈမ်ားဟာ ကုလသမဂၢရဲ့ ထုံးနဲ႕ လုံးဝမညီညြတ္ပါ။ ျမန္မာအစိုးရဟာ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ ပဠိညာဥ္ရဲ့ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ေပါင္း ၃၀ ကို ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ေနပါတယ္။ အဖြဲ႕ဝင္တိုင္း လိုက္နာရမဲ့ စည္းမ်ဥ္းဥပေဒသမ်ားပါ။
ေဒၚစုၾကည္ ခင္ဗ်ား၊ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ႔ႈဆိုတာ လူအမ်ားမၾကိဳက္သည့္တိုင္ ခက္ခဲတဲ့ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္မ်ား ခ်ရေလ့ရွိပါတယ္။ တိုင္းျပည္အနာဂတ္ေကာင္း ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရးမွာ မိမိပါတီအတြင္းသာမက တစ္တိုင္းျပည္လုံးအတြင္းမွာပါ ဤအစြန္းေရာက္မႈ၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ၊ ခြဲျခားႏွိပ့္ခ်မႈမ်ားကို ႐ံႈ႕ခ်ရပါမယ္၊ တားဆီးရပါမယ္။
ျမန္မာ့လူ႕ေဘာင္အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအတြင္း ယခင္အစမွ တည္ရွိခဲ့ေသာ လူမ်ိဳးေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခားႏွိပ့္ခ်မႈေလာက္ ဝမ္းနည္းဖြယ္ရာမွာ အျခားမရွိေတာ့ပါ။ လူမ်ားစုဗမာ၏ မဟာဗမာလူမ်ိဳးၾကီး ဝါဒသာလွ်င္မက ကရင္က ဗမာကိုမုန္း၊ ဗမာက ရွမ္းကိုမခ်စ္၊ ရွမ္းက ဝကိုမလိုလား၊ မြန္က ဗမာကိုအလိုမရွိ၊ ရခိုင္က ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာကို ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္မုန္းတီး၊ ဗမာက တရုတ္ဆို ၾကည့္မရ၊ ခရစ္ယာန္က ဗုဒၶဘာသာကိုမၾကိဳက္၊ ျပီးေတာ့ အားလုံးေပါင္းျပီး မြတ္စလင္ကို ဝိုင္းမုန္း စသည္ျဖင့္ ဒီသံသရာက ဘယ္လိုမွမလြတ္ေျမာက္ေတာ့ပါ။ ျမန္မာျပည္သစ္မွာ ဒီလူမ်ိဳးေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခားမႈ၊ မုန္းတီးမႈေရာပြမ္းေနတဲ့ ညစ္ညမ္းႏိုင္ငံေရး လုံးဝအဆုံး နိဂုံးခ်ဳပ္သင့္ပါျပီ။
ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္အစိုးရဟာ ‘မ်ိဳးေပ်ာက္မွာ စိုးေၾကာက္စရာ’၊ ‘ေျမျမိဳ၍ လူမ်ိဳးမေပ်ာက္၊ လူမ်ိဳးျမိဳမွ လူမ်ိဳးေပ်ာက္မည္’ အစရွိသည္မ်ားအပါအဝင္ ‘မ်က္ကန္းမ်ိဳးခ်စ္’ အယူအဆမ်ား ျပင္းထန္စြာဝါဒျဖန္႕ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ‘တပ္မေတာ္အင္အားရွိမွ တိုင္းျပည္အင္အားရွိမည္’၊ ‘တပ္မေတာ္သည္သာအမိ၊ တပ္မေတာ္သည္သာအဖ’ စသည္ျဖင့္လည္း ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကီးအဓြန္႕ရွည္ရန္ စစ္တပ္ရွိမွျဖစ္မည့္ဟန္ ဖန္တီး၍ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား၊ လူနည္းစုမ်ားကို ညွင္းပန္းဖိႏွိပ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အစိုးရသစ္လက္ထက္ဝယ္ အခ်ိဳ႕ေသာအရာမ်ား လြပ္လပ္ပြင့္လင္းလာေသာ္လည္း လူနည္းစုအေပၚ ခြဲျခားမႈမ်ား၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ား အမ်ားအျပားရွိေနဆဲပါ။ ရခိုင္၊ ရွမ္း၊ ကခ်င္၊ ကရင္ စေသာ ျပည္နယ္မ်ား၌ အေျပာင္းအလဲရဲ့ သက္ေရာက္မႈဟာ မရွိသေလာက္ပါ။ တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကိုင္တပ္ဖြဲ႕မ်ားနဲ႕ ဗမာ့တပ္မေတာ္တို႕ဟာလည္း တိုက္ပြဲေတြ ျပင္းထန္ေနဆဲပါ။ ဒီတစ္ႏွစ္အတြင္း ဗမာ့တပ္မေတာ္က တိုင္းရင္းသားလူနည္းစုမ်ားအေပၚ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈ အၾကိမ္ေပါင္း ၇၅၀ ခန္႕ရွိတယ္လို႕လဲ သိရပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာ လႊတ္ေပးဖို႕ရာ က်န္ရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီလမ္းစဥ္ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေနျခင္းႏွင့္အညီ အသိရွိထားဖို႕ရာ ဖယ္ဒရယ္မူမဟုတ္တဲ့ ဗဟိုထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မႈအေျချပဳ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ဟာ ဒီျပသနာေတြကို ကာကြယ္ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး ဆိုတာပါပဲ။ လူမ်ိဳးဘာသာေရးခြဲျခားမႈ ရွိေနျခင္းကို ပထမဆုံးအေနနဲ႕ ဝန္ခံျပီး ဘယ္ေလာက္အတိုင္းအတာထိ နက္႐ိႈင္းတည္ရွိေနတယ္ဆိုတာကိုလည္း အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရပါမယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့တဲ့ ‘ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ိဳးျဖဳတ္ရွင္းလင္းေရး’ အဓိကရုန္းဟာ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားရဲ့ ေသးသိမ္က်ဥ္းေျမာင္းတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးေရးအတၱစြဲကို လွစ္ဟျပေနပါတယ္။
ေခါင္းေဆာင္ၾကီးခင္ဗ်ား၊ ‘အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ား၊ ႏိုင့္ထက္စီးနင္းမႈမ်ား၊ အစြန္းေရာက္မႈမ်ား’ကို ေဒၚစုၾကည္အေနနဲ႕ အႂကြင္းမဲ့ ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္ ႐ံႈ႕ခ်သင့္ပါတယ္။ အကယ္၍သာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္တကြ အျခားေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ဤသို႕ရပ္တည္ျခင္းမရွိပါက ေနာင္ ၂၀၁၅-ခု မည္သည့္အစိုးရသစ္ တက္ေရာက္လာသည္ျဖစ္ေစ ျမန္မာျပည္ဟာ ဒီႏြံထဲက ရုန္းထြက္ႏိုင္မွာ မဟုတ္ေတာ့ပါ။
၁၉၈၂-ႏိုင္ငံသားဥပေဒဟာ (လုံးဝ) တရားမဝင္ပါ။ အားလုံးရဲ့ ရပ္တည္မႈ ခဲေလသမွ် သဲေရက်အျဖစ္မ်ိဳးပါ။ ေက်းဇူးျပဳျပီး ဒီအမုန္းမီးပြါး၊ လူမ်ိဳးဘာသာခြဲျခားမႈ တံတိုင္းၾကီးကို ျဖိဳခ်ေပးပါ။ တိုင္းရင္းသား အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ မြတ္စလင္လူနည္းစုတို႕ရဲ့ သာတူညီမွ် ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးေတာင္းဆိုမႈဟာ တရားမွ်တမႈအျပည့္ရွိ၊ ေလ်ာ္ကန္သင့္ျမတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါမွသာလွ်င္ ဖယ္ဒရယ္မူႏွင့္အညီ တိုင္းရင္းသား၊ လူမ်ိဳးေပါင္းစုံ၊ ဘာသာမေရြး လက္တြဲညီညြတ္စြာ အတူယွဥ္တြဲေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာယာတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္သစ္ၾကီး အျမန္ဆုံး ေပၚထြန္းလာႏိုင္မွာပါ။
ရိုေသေလးစားစြာျဖင့္၊အေမရိကႏိုင္ငံမွ ဆုမြန္ေကာင္းေတာင္းလ်က္
ေဒါက္တာ ဟာဘိ စီဒီကီ
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ျမန္မာမႈျပဳတင္ျပသူ – လင္းယုန္နက္ (ျခေသၤ့ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္)
credit: www.myanmarmuslim.net
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
The United States and European Union hinted that some sanctions - imposed over the past two decades in response to gross human rights abuses (e.g., against the minority Rohingya Muslims and Kachin and Karen Christians) - might be lifted, unleashing a wave of investment, which this impoverished but resource-rich country, bordering Bangladesh, Thailand, India and China, badly needs.
Last year the U.S. Secretary of State Clinton met with Burma’s leaders and opposition leader Suu Kyi. Soon after the election in April Japan has already promised to forgive $3.7 billion of Burma’s debt and resume aid as a way to support the country’s democratic and economic reforms. Last month during his visit to Myanmar, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 25 years, Manmohan Singh held extensive talks with Myanmar President Thein Sein and extended a $ 500 million line of credit to Myanmar as it signed 15 agreements on fields like trade, energy and connectivity. On June 9, the Australian Foreign Minister pledged $100m aid to boost its education sector, where less than half of Burma's 18 million children complete five years of primary school and only about half of all teachers are qualified.
In spite of such positive developments in the international sector, the religious minorities remain disillusioned. "We have been forsaken by the world," a Rohingya human rights activist complained. Similar are the messages I receive about human rights abuses in Kachin, Shan and Karen states. My comrades at the U.S. Campaign for Burma remind me that this year alone there have been at least 750 incidents of human rights abuses committed by the Burmese troops against ethnic minority civilians, and that there are still hundreds of political prisoners behind the bar, and that more and more of the ethnic non-Buddhist minorities are forced out of their ancestral land to either replant such territories with Buddhist majority or make way for foreign investment.
The ongoing diplomacy and the so-called "cease-fires" in ethnic areas are seen for what they are—an alibi for the abdication of morality in the altar of profit-making and greed, and a lifeline for the regime.
Optimistic as I have always been, I try to comfort them that they are neither forgotten nor forsaken, and better days are ahead of them when they would be accepted as equal citizens in Myanmar.
As an outsider, living comfortably on the other side of the planet, little did I know that these unfortunate minorities of Burma would again be made a target of ugly face of religious and racial hatred. As I write, Maung Daw – located in northern Arakan (Rakhine state of Burma) is burning, as if mimicking the pogroms against the Rohingya and Muslim minorities of Burma that started in the 1930s [see, e.g., an excellent review – Rohingya Tangled in Burmese Citizenship Politics by Nurul Islam, UK].
Reliable sources within the territory tell me that on June 3, a mob of nearly hundred Rakhine Buddhist extremists attacked a bus that was carrying some ten Tablighi Muslims who were returning to Rangoon after their religious gathering. They were dragged from their bus by these brutes in Taungup, situated as the main gateway for travel to central Burma from the Arakan State. They were lynched to death and their bus was set on fire. Only the driver was able to flee the scene. It should be noted here that all this gruesome murder happened based on a false rumor that those Muslims had something to do with a recent murder of a Rakhine female teacher whose body was found in Sittwe (Akyab), the state capital with a mixed Rakhine-Rohingya population. While the subsequent inquiries had cleared Muslims of any complicity in the murder of the teacher, to many Rakhines who are prone to imagine the worst of the ‘other’ people that have as much contesting claim to the land, if not more, the culprit had to be a Muslim. So they savagely murdered those innocent Muslims that had visited the region. These innocent victims were at wrong time at a wrong place!
U Khin Hla, Secretary of the National League for Democracy in Taungup, told the VOA Burmese program, “I think such an incident happened due to the lack of law and order because it happened in broad daylight just around 4:30 pm, and it was also not just an incident in which a man hacked and killed another and ran away. On the contrary, I think the officials who are working for the rule of law and order in the country are responsible for such an incident.”
After the news of the inhuman act of gruesome murder reached the Muslim community, Muslims in Rangoon held a peaceful demonstration and asked the government officials to find and try the guilty ones of this heinous crime. The government promptly formed a 16-member committee to investigate the matter by June 30 and take legal actions against the perpetrators. Interestingly, the announcement for investigation came a day after the government was forced to print a retraction for referring to the victims as “kalar” – a racial slur for Muslims or persons of Indian appearance – in their official appeal for calm after the violence.
When approached at her NLD office, the Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi expressed concern at the handling of the situation by local Rakhine authorities, esp. their failure to dampen anti-Muslim sentiment after the woman was attacked. “If the very first problem was handled effectively and quickly, this flicker wouldn't have become a flame,” she said. Urging understanding between Rakhine's religious communities she advised, “don't base your actions on anger.”
Apprehensive of potential troubles to brew in Maung Daw, a Muslim majority district, close to Bangladesh border, the district administrator and police chief met with Muslim community leaders and sought cooperation against any retaliation. Muslim leaders assured them of their cooperation. A decision was taken by Muslim religious leaders to apprise the community on Friday, June 8, during the Jumu’aa prayer service, of the assurance that they had received from government and the absolute importance of peace and avoidance of trouble.
After Friday congregation prayer, when a group of Muslims were trying to join a payer at Kayandan Tabligh Centre in Maung Daw for those 10 Muslims who were murdered by the Rakhine extremists at Taunggup, the security forces, however, tried to stop them and then started firing at the crowd killing at least two people and injuring many others. Some extremist Rakhines, hiding behind the police, threw wine bottles against the Muslims, further fueling the already tense situation.
While curfew has been imposed in Maung Daw from dusk to dawn, several Muslim villages have already been gutted down. Almost all the Muslim shops and business centers have also been attacked and ransacked by the Rakhine mob. On Saturday armed security forces with Rakhine extremist equipped with lethal arms were seen roaming Maung Daw town and surrounding villages. That morning four Rohingyas were carried away from Fayazi village of Maung Daw. Their whereabouts still remain unknown.
Eye witness accounts have shown that the Rakhine extremists and the security forces Hlun Htein and NASAKA had jointly collaborated in causing such crimes. On Friday, Rakhines were seen piling up weapons in the Maung Daw main Buddhist temple (Phongyi Chaung) and planning attacks at nightfall. Since Friday, Buddhist monks and Rakhine extremists have been seen being escorted by security forces while they were announcing ‘War on Kalas’, (war on blacks, foreigners – meaning the Rohingyas) along the streets of Maung Daw. This dangerous message spread like a wild fire all over Maung Daw and Buthidaung townships. Many of the security forces, dressed in civilian clothes, were seen firing on the Rohingya Muslims. As a result, at least a hundred Rohingya Muslims have reportedly died. Several mosques have also been set on fire.
The Myanmar government has dispatched military troops and naval vessels to calm the violence. In a statement in official newspapers on Saturday, the All Myanmar Islam Association condemned "the terrorizing and destruction of lives and properties of innocent people" and called on Muslims across the country to live in peace.
How could this be happening when we thought that we had said sayonara to the old days of Burmese and Rakhine pogroms directed against the persecuted Muslims of Burma? In the Rakhine state where tensions between Muslims and Buddhists run high, and has been witnesses to such riots many times since at least the 1930s, a mere mention of the term ‘Rohingya’ is enough to ignite passion amongst the Rakhines who view them at best as unwanted immigrants from Bangladesh and at worst “invaders.”
The truth of the matter is Burma, in spite all the newer developments – mostly cosmetic or superficial – still remains our planet’s worst den of hatred by any name - bigotry, racism, xenophobia, etc. For many people in Burma, a Burmese is a Buddhist by definition; Buddhism forms an essential part of their identity; there is no place for people of other religious persuasions.
The decades-old military government in Burma has been replaced by a hybrid group of civil and ex-military personnel that promises change. However, the life of an ethnic minority, esp. if it is a non-Buddhist, has not improved an iota there. They are persecuted and are easy targets for ethnic cleansing. They are treated as if they don’t exist. As noted by Mr. Nurul Islam of ARNO, “U Thein Sein’s government has not changed their attitude towards our people. It is still holding onto to past policies which excluded, discriminated and persecuted the Rohingya population. We need to remind the government Rohingyas are an integral part of the Burma’s society regardless of the fact that their appearance, ethnicity and religion is different than the majority of the population.” He added, “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi so far has been surprisingly silent regarding the persecution of our people. As a democratic icon, advocating for human rights for all, we urge her to use her influence to speak out on behalf the Rohingya, who have no voice in Burma.”
There are clear evidences that the authorities in Arakan state have been guilty of collaborating with Rakhine leadership to sow anti-Muslim sentiment among the Buddhist people so that they can be terrorized, to help prevent Muslim migration and settlement into central Burma from the region.
As eye witness accounts and social media outlets show when the Rakhine mob attacked the Tablighi Muslims on June 3, the army and police personnel did not do anything to stop the carnage. One eye witness said, “The police and the army were there when the mob was beating the victims, but they did not do anything to control the mob or protect the victims.
The attack happened right in front of their eyes.” He added, ““If the army or police had controlled the mob, they would have been able to save the victims. They knew the situation well, but they did not do anything to control the mob or protect the victims.”
The level of deep-rooted Rakhine racism against the Rohingya can be understood from the hateful statement of Khaing Kaung San, a local Rakhine activist in Sittwe, who said, "They [Rohingyas] are fighting to own the land, occupy the entire state." "They don't need weapons; just by their numbers they can cover the entire land."
Obviously, such false assertions epitomizing intolerance, racism and hatred are not new and cannot disappear overnight when it is so deeply entrenched touching every walk of life in Burma, esp. in places like the Rakhine state. The politically dominant Rakhine community doesn’t want to share the state with others. This, in spite of the fact that serious works of research have proven convincingly that the Rohingyas are the descendants of the indigenous people (bhumi-putras) of this coastal region whose ties to the land precede those of the Rakhines by few centuries. [See, e.g., this author’s work - Muslim Identity and Demography in the Arakan State of Burma, Amazon.com; and Dr. Abid Bahar’s – Burma’s Missing Dots – the emerging face of genocide.]
The recent riots in the Rakhine state once again highlight the vulnerable status of the Rohingyas of Burma. Declared stateless, they are unwanted inside Myanmar and unwelcome as fleeing refugees in neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Thailand. This is the greatest tragedy of our time. They are caught between crocodiles in the sea and tigers on the ground.
Where would they go? Should they become an extinct community much like what had happened to so many others before in the annals of history? Or, must they wander in the wilderness for two millennia and suffer repeated persecution, humiliation and genocide to qualify as equals in our world?
For my part, I have petitioned my Congressman to cosponsor the Resolution H. J. Res. 109 to renew the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, which is the only leverage the U.S. has left to push the Burmese regime to move forward with positive changes and hold them accountable for widespread human rights abuses and mass atrocities they commit against the people of Burma.
It is not enough, but better than doing nothing and being a silent spectator to violence!
Lines in the margin:
General Aung San assured full rights and privileges to Muslim Rohingya Arakanese saying “I give (offer) you a blank cheque. We will live together and die together. Demand what you want. I will do my best to fulfill them. If native people are divided, it will be difficult to achieve independence for Burma."
"The former first President of Burma Sao Shwe Theik stated, “Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to one of the indigenous races of Burma. If they do not belong to the indigenous races, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races.”
"The previous parliamentary government listed 144 ethnic groups in Burma. But Ne Win put only 135 groups on a short list, and then was approved by his BSPP regime’s constitution of 1974. The three Muslim groups of Rohingya (Muslim Arakanese), Panthay (Chinese Muslims), Bashu (Malay Muslims) and six other ethnic groups were deleted. "
Color-coding of individuals - Hitler's Nazi regime was into color-coding and other forms of classification of peoples and individuals. "In 1989, colour-coded Citizens Scrutiny Cards (CRCs) were introduced: pink cards for the full citizens, blue for associate citizens and green for naturalized citizens. Rohingya were not issued with any identity cards which are very essentials in all their activities."
http://danyawadi.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/rohingya-tangled-in-burma-citi...
http://cbnbd.com/?p=6738
http://rafiquearakani.blogspot.com/2012/06/security-personnel-and-rakhin...
http://rafiquearakani.blogspot.com/2012/06/briefing-on-situation-in-nort...
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/international/distrust-fuels-anti-muslim-...
- Asian Tribune –
In its latest gesture of amnesties, the military-backed regime of Thein Sein in Myanmar has released many political prisoners. Those freed included veterans of the 1988 student protest movement, monks involved in the 2007 demonstrations and ethnic-minority activists like U Kyaw Min (a member of the Committee Representing the People’s Parliament led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi). Truly, the names of those released read like a who's who of Burma's most prominent political detainees. In a statement broadcast on the TV, President Thein Sein said those released were people who could "play a constructive role in the political process".
The releases came a day after the government had signed a landmark ceasefire with the rebel Karen National Union in Hpa-an, capital of eastern Karen state. The release of all political prisoners has been a long-standing demand of the international community. As a human rights activist who for years has demanded reform inside Burma, I warmly welcome these releases.
My hope is that the new regime is serious about a transformational change that would allow the released politicians and former prisoners of conscience to play a positive role to unite the otherwise fragmented country of many nations, races, ethnicities and religions under a federal formula. For too long, the former military regimes and their ultra-racist supporters have used one community against another, and created an atmosphere where bigotry, racism, xenophobia and hatred ruled supreme. Of special mention is the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law which ensured such state policies of exclusions that would rob millions of Rohingya and other religious and ethnic minorities of their citizenship rights. Forgotten there was the time honored realization that narrow ethno-centric nationalism in a country of diverse races and ethnicities is suicidal.
With the release of ethnic minority leaders like U Kyaw Min of Arakan (alias) Shamsul Anwarul Haque, my hope is that President Thein Sein and his new regime is serious about a genuine reform. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has welcomed the move as a "positive sign" and so did many international leaders.
When Thein Sein’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a military-backed civilian government, came to power in November 2010, after the country's first elections in 20 years [in which Daw Suu Kyi’s The National League for Democracy (NLD) did not participate], no one was sure which direction the new regime would follow. Many considered the regime change as a sham -- the same old stuff: serving new wine in an old bottle. But soon after coming to power, Thein Sein took reform steps that were meant to show the world that he was serious about a transformational change. He opened dialogue with Suu Kyi and her NLD. He released her from house arrest within a week of coming to power. Last May, the government released some 1500 prisoners, which did not, however, include any prominent politician. Last September, Thein Sein suspended construction of controversial Chinese-funded Myitsone hydroelectric dam, a move which was seen as showing greater openness to public opinion. Then in October, he freed more than 200 political prisoners as part of a general amnesty, and passed new labor laws allowing unions to function.
All such reforms were not lost in the minds of ASEAN leaders who met last November agreeing that Myanmar would chair the grouping in 2014. The award was meant to show that Burma was moving in the right direction with the steps taken thus far and also as a sign of encouragement to keep it up. The pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi soon announced that she would stand for election to parliament, as her party rejoined the political process.
There has been such an unmistakable aura of change in Myanmar that the U.S. President Barack Obama called such the "flickers of progress." Before sending his top diplomat to Myanmar, Obama said, "We want to seize what could be a historic opportunity for progress, and to make it clear that if Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America."
The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country in December and also met with Suu Kyi. This year the British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited the country in which he expressed his strong concern saying, “Minorities like the Rohingya in many cases lack basic civil and political rights.” These and other western leaders hinted that they would help to ease sanctions against the regime if it releases its political prisoners and is serious about reform that would resolve ethnic conflicts around the border regions.
Last month President Thein Sein signed a law allowing peaceful demonstrations for the first time. The NLD re-registered as a political party in advance of by-elections for parliament due to be held early in 2012. In recent weeks, the government has agreed a truce deal with rebels of Shan ethnic group and ordered the military to stop operations against ethnic Kachin rebels.
Now with the release of high ranking political prisoners there is little doubt that Thein Sein is serious about genuine reform in his country. Suu Kyi described the past 12 months as "eventful, energizing and to a certain extent encouraging". And she is right. Myanmar is seemingly taking irreversible baby steps for a viable democracy.
Never before in the last 50 years did we ever see such a ray of hope gleaming in the country that was once Burma. We can pray and hope that Thein Sein is no charlatan change agent but is as genuine as it comes. Sure, there are several steps that need to be taken before Myanmar becomes a country with a functioning democracy where its people would enjoy political and economic freedom like many other citizens of our planet -- the release of all remaining political prisoners; repealing the racist and xenophobic Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 which has resulted in unfathomed discrimination, violations of human rights and forced exodus of millions of its inhabitants to settle for a life of unwanted refugees in neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Thailand; addressing the rights of Burma’s ethnic and religious minorities (especially, the Rohingya, Karen and Shan peoples) and ensuring the fair and independent application of the rule of law for all its inhabitants.
Objective and unbiased researches have amply shown that the Rohingya people are an indigenous group whose ancestry and root to the soil of Arakan state of today’s Myanmar predates the British colonial era. [See, e.g., this author’s book -Muslim Identity and Demography in the Arakan State of Burma, available in the Amazon.com] Accordingly, they had exercised the right of franchise in all elections in the pre- and post-colonial periods, including the SPDC’s 2010 election. And yet, this unfortunate people have been denied citizenship and rendered stateless for a xenophobic law that violates every principle enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The sad plight of the Rohingya people was duly observed by Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. Special Rapporteur, who said, “Despite being in this region for generations, this population is stateless. This population is not recognized by the Government as one of the ethnic groups of the Union of Myanmar and is subject to discrimination…. However the Government allowed them to participate in the referendum on the adoption of the new Constitution…. What is more significant than the possibility to vote for the Constitution of a nation to show that one belongs to the nation? If this population was considered apt to give its views on the adoption of the Constitution, then it should be granted all other privileges, including the citizenship, which recognized ethnic groups, citizens of Myanmar do enjoy in the Union.”
As Thien Sein reforms and changes the old orders yielding place to the new, I wish he is mindful of the views and concerns expressed by dignitaries like Tomas Quintana, and stops discriminatory practices against the Rohingya and other vulnerable minorities, plus restores dialogue with each of the ethnic and religious groups on the principle of unity in diversity.
Only the coming months will show how serious is the new government in Myanmar about its commitment to reform. Let’s hope that Thein Sein will not be like any of his hateful predecessors and will do all that is required to ensure human rights for all and bring glory to Myanmar.
An Urgent Letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina regarding her upcoming visit to Myanmar
To:
Her Excellency Sheikh Hasina Wazed,
Prime Minister
Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dear Prime Minister,
Assalamu Alaykum. It gives me great pleasure to learn that you are going to visit Myanmar (Burma) soon. I pray and hope that your trip is a productive and safe one.
Burma, as you well know, has potential to become a good neighbor of Bangladesh and can learn a thing or two from your vast experience as a respectable democratic leader that has shown prudent leadership in dealing with minority issues. At the heart of Bangladesh-Myanmar problem is the Rohingya issue, which needs a viable solution that would allow the Diaspora Rohingya community, living a life of uncertainty in Bangladesh and elsewhere, to return to their ancestral homes in the Arakan (Rakhine) state of Myanmar. That can only happen with the revocation of the 1982 Citizenship Law, an universally condemned and illegal racist/xenophobic law that unduly de-legitimized more than a million Muslims of Arakan whose ancestors had lived there from time immemorial, much like their coreligionists living in Chittagong and other coastal parts of Bangladesh. (The attachment below has the necessary information on the Rohingya problem.)
As a well-wisher of Bangladesh, I would like to beseech your kind indulgence on the Rohingya issue during your visit to Burma so that an amicable solution can be found guaranteeing the safe return of the Rohingya people to Arakan.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Habib Siddiqui
(author of 3 books on Rohingyas of Burma, and international peace activist and scholar)
Philadelphia, USA
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The Rohingya Refugee Problem
1. Background
Recently, bilateral talk has been taken placed in between the government of Burma and Bangladesh regarding refugee repatriation. However, the situation in Arakan, after the election, becomes worst than ever. The persecution and the human rights violation accelerated than before. It is too early to repatriate refugees to Arakan without changing any situations in Arakan. Premature repatriation will repeat mass refugee exodus again as we have witnessed the second mass refugee exodus in 1992, after 14 years time from the first mass refugee exodus in 1978. In order to gain long lasting solution, hosting countries and international bodies need to find out the root causes of the problems.
2. Root Causes of the Rohingya Refugees
The Rohingya, who have been living with distinct socio-cultural entity, are not tolerated in Burma, and they have long been oppressed and persecuted in a planned way in order to transform the Arakan into a purely Burmanized Buddhist Arakan. Apparently, the successive military government of Burma with the aid of ultra racist Rakhine (Magh) have been pursuing the policies of de-Muslimization and Burmanization in Arakan applying various kind of inhuman polices to drive them out from the soil of Arakan. Indeed it is a problem of religious intolerance and political persecution and is a systematic eradication of an ethnic Muslim minority from their ancestral land; periodically, armed operations were conducted against unarmed Rohingya civilians since her independence on Jan 4, 1948.
2.1 The armed operations against Rohingyas
01. Military Operation (5th Burma Regiment) November 1948
02. Burma Territorial Force (BTF) Operation 1949-50
03. Military Operation (2nd Emergency Chin regiment) March 1951-52
04. Mayu Operation October 1952-53
05. Mone-thone Operation October 1954
06. Combined Immigration and Army Operation January 1955
07. Union Military Police (UMP) Operation 1955-58
08. Captain Htin Kyaw Operation 1959
09. Shwe Kyi Operation October 1966
10. Kyi Gan Operation October-December 1966
11. Ngazinka Operation 1967-69
12. Myat Mon Operation February 1969-71
13. Major Aung Than Operation 1973
14. Sabe Operation February 1974-78
15. Nagamin Operation February 1978-79
16. Shwe Hintha Operation August 1978-80
17. Galone Operation 1979
18. Pyi Thaya Operation 1991-92
19. Na-Sa-Ka Operation (presently going on) 1992
Out of 19 operations, 18 were carried out within 43 (1948-1991) years time, it means every 2 ½ years there was one operation for Rohingya. Obviously, Rohingyas are constantly and gradually migrated to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arabs Emirate, Thailand and Malaysia to escape from the persecution. However, the junta and the racist Rakhine (Magh) are still not satisfied and the Na-Sa-Ka operation was started in 1992.
2.2 The Na-Sa-Ka Operation (1992-presently going on)
It was the longest and the worst ever operation in the history of Rohingya. It was a new extermination design, with long-term plans and programmes under the command of ex- Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, the Chief of the Directorate of the Defence Service Intelligence (DDSI) and the Secretary No. 1 of the SPDC then. Through this operation, the Rohingyas are made educationally backward, economically crippled, socially and culturally de-generated. Many mosques have been destroyed and closed down. Arbitrary killing, confiscation of land, forced labours, forced relocation, forced ration collection for army, extortion of money and raping of women are the tactics used in this operation.
2.3 The Citizenship Law of 1982
1982 Burma citizenship law (Pyithu Hluttaw law No.1982-87) supersedes the 1948 Constitution Nationality Laws. According to the 982 law, there are citizens, associate citizens, and naturalized citizens. Under this law, citizens by birth are Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine and Shan ethnic groups.
The new citizenship law was purposely formulated to target the Rohingya Muslims and denying their rights to nationality and thus rendered them to the status of stateless people.
This particular law will continue to create outflow of refugees which overburden other countries and create threats to peace and tranquillity within the region.
The Rohingya problem is a man-made tragedy recurring in cycle. The neighbouring countries, particularly Bangladesh, are over burdened with the Rohingya influxes. It creates regional instability posing serious threat to the world peace.
2.4 Racial and religious intolerance
The present situation of the Rohingyas are the result of join oppressions by the ultra-racist Rakhine and Burmese military government through forcible expulsion from their homeland by means of persecution, genocidalmassacres, torture and harassment in the most inhuman manner.
Therefore, prior to any refugee repatriation process, the government of Burma (Myanmar) should accept the following pre-requisites and fully implement them in Arakan.
3. Pre-requisites for repatriation
1. Recognition of Rohingyas as an indigenous ethnic minority of Burma (Myanmar).
2. Issuance of national securitization cards to all Rohingyas.
3. To lift all form of restrictions and harassments such as travel ban, marriage restriction, land and property confiscation, extortion, arbitrary arrest, forced ration collection for army etc.
4. To stop building model villages and sent back all model villagers to their origin.
5. To return all confiscated lands and properties to the original owner.
6. To give assurance for religious freedom.
7. To give access for higher education and to provide enough hospitals and medical facilities in northern Arakan
As all above-mentioned factors are the main elements that directly contribute to uproot and displaced hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas from Arakan, unless and until developing the situation in Arakan, the repatriation of refugee will not fulfill its primary objective that is the durable solution.
4. Creating conducive environment for returnees
Instead of passively waiting for conditions to be changed Burma, refugee agencies, must work actively to create conditions conducive to their safe return. It should emphasize on:
The right of all persons to return to their country
The prime responsibility of countries of origin to establish conditions for safe and dignified return
The obligation of Burma to accept the return of their nationals
Calls on Burma to promote conditions conducive to the return of refugees and to support their sustainable reintegration
5. Welfare of voluntary returnees
It is essential to maintain an image of truly voluntary repatriation. Voluntary repatriation requires asylum, it respects the refugees, and allows them to make unpressured decisions. The returnees should have the following:
1. Overall peace and security
2. Provision of agricultural settlement land or creating job opportunities
3. Improving infrastructures
4. Strong funding support from donors
6. The repatriation dialogues
Apart from UNHCR, the hosting country (Bangladesh) and the country of origin (Burma) there should have representatives of the refugees or community leaders in the repatriation dialogues.
7. Conclusion
Rohingyas had become refugees to two times, portions of them had been repatriated to Arakan, through bilateral repatriation agreement between Rangoon and Dhak in 1978 and 1992, but it does not provide adequate safeguards to the refugees upon their return and yet their problem still remains unsolved.
Sad to mentioned, in both agreements (1978 and 1992), the refugees were not accepted as citizens of Burma, instead, the technical word Myanmar residents was used. Apparently, the Rohingyas were fallen prey again and again to the atrocities of the junta.
After the election, there are no changes at all in Arakan, and rather the situation is further deteriorating.
Therefore, we would like to the government of Bangladesh, UNHCR, US, EU, OIC, and ASEAN to give pressure to the government of Burma to accept Rohingya as an ethnic minority and to grant full citizenship rights before any refugee repatriation process.
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