Hannah Beech's select writings on Wirathu & Rohingyas have done lasting damage to Myanmar's inter-communal relations and credibility of Rohingyas' tales of horror while reinforcing Myanmar military's popular misinformation against Rohingyas

By Dr Maung Zarni
February 4, 2018

Re: "Rohingyas suffer real horrors. So why are some of their stories untrue.", Hannah Beech, New York Times, 1 Feb 2018

I am not exactly sure what the NYT reporter Hannah Beech's intention is in weaving the story the way she did, with the ostensible goal of reminding the news industry of the need for journalistic skepticism.

Some of us know that her employer, the New York Times, or for that matter most US media outlets, has toed the Pentagon's line on war and issues of certain American interests, throwing its "journalistic skepticism" to the wind. In the case of Bernie Sanders, the paper even twisted the message of certain important articles in order to damage Sanders' campaign and advance Hilary Clinton's election cheating within the Democratic Party rivalry.

While at TIME, Beech sensationalied the story of Wirathu by describing him as "THE FACE OF BUDDHIST TERROR" - without any quotation marks around "buddhist". It comes as a surprise as she is self-admittedly a meditating Buddhist originally from Southern California who had a fine liberal art education at Colby College in Maine.

It had two types of major impact on the Burmese scenes and one major impact on the cross-national solidarity across anti-Muslim genocidal forces in South Asia and South East Asia.

First. Beech's story turned the Buddhist majority against the foreign media because it sensationalized a then a minority phenomenon while letting the Incubator/Mobilizer of religious bigotry - the Myanmar Ministry of Defence and its proxy propaganda organs, in the "private media" - off the hook.

Second. her story boosted the political and personal significance of Wirathu, who was involved in burning alive the entire Muslim family, 90-miles south of my old town Mandalay.

Third. it was BEECH who, wittingly or not, built the global platform for Wirathu - who later became a subject another sensationalist French film screened at the Cannes.

I too toured the refugee camps in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh myself and interviewed over 2 dozen women, men and children - in Burmese language, as well as through a Rohingya interpreter.

Surely, as interviewers one stays alert to any inconsistencies or possible embellishment.

They too maintain necessary professional habit of journalistic skepticism.

In her attempts to reproduce this false view that the Great New York Times is the GOLD STANDARD in truth-production, she reproduces and reinforces the very genocidal military's singular false narrative - a Rohingya man with 6 wives and 42 children.

This is an extremely lethal and popular narrative promoted in Burma officially by President's men down to the local journalists.

Many a Bangladeshi apply for asylum in US, UK, etc. as "Rohingya", a 'commodified" identity in the asylum domain in Europe and N. America.

Was it possible that the kid picked up the tales of 'cool' cricket which he heard from other grown-ups in his family who have travelled back and forth between Arakan or Rakhine and Chittagong and Cox'sBazaar across the borders, while growing up?

I shudder to thiink what other profound and lasting impact that will have from Hannah Beech's stories on my country's already deeply troubled inter-communal relations - and cross-national rise of Islamophobia - perhaps well-intentioning but wholly misguided and intellectually incompetent.

I have a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, studied research methodologies at the universities of California, Washington and Wisconsin and conducted literally hundreds of interviews, with Burmese from all walks of life -ranking military officers, intelligence defectors, army deserters, refugees, dissidents, exiles, former political prisoners, politicians, armed resistance fighters, etc. Doctoral or academic research isn't about shallow journalistic interviews typically under the pressure of fast-approaching deadlines. I have been a researcher for 30 years, though I identify myself as a human rights activist because that's what is called for by the genocide, civil war and other heinous crimes my fellow Burmese peoples of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have been experiencing almost since the country's independence in 1948.

This New York Times piece does NOT promote or signify "journalistic skepticism". It damages the credibility of the tales which genocide survivors tell.

It is more than outrageous: it is a piece of yet another "I-am-a-better-journo-than-the-run-of-the-mill' sort of grand standing waxed with a tinge of sensationalist warning to the industry.

If her additional message is that it is the humanitarian aid industry and to whom it responds fast and adequately - ala "the baby who cries louder gets the milk" - then that message gets buried under the pile of her subtext "Rohingyas are lying".

I personally find it morally repugnant and professionally incompetent as a researcher who specialises in qualitative research, interviews and discourse analysis.

BUDDHIST ACTIVIST CALLS FOR JEWS TO HELP MYANMAR’S ROHINGYA PEOPLE

The Canadian Jewish News, September 13, 2017

Echoes of Kristallnacht in Today’s Rohingya Crisis
Robert Bank, Medium, November 9, 2017 

Read here: https://medium.com/@robertbank/echoes-of-kristallnacht-in-todays-rohingya-crisis-7c61dbc6d18a

George Soros: Myanmar's Rohingya Persecution parallels Nazi genocide

Programme

Sunday 21st January 2018

Failures of International Institutions in preventing genocide: Myanmar’s Rohingya and Bosnian Genocides

12:00 Registration and lunch

13:00 – 13:10 Mr Sayed Jalal Masoomi - Quran recitation

13:10 – 13:15 Translation 

Session One Panel 1

13:15 – 13:20 Nazim Ali - Introduction to the panel 

13:20 – 13:40 Dr Maung Zarni – Genocide scholar and Human Rights activist

13:40 – 13:45 Narjis Khan- Poetry recitation: “Palestine”

13:45 – 14:05 Demir Mahmutcehajic - Bosnian activist and one of the founders of IHRC

14:05 – 14:20 Q&A discussion

14:20 – 14:35 Break/ Prayers 

Session Two Panel 2

14:35 – 14:40 Nazim Ali - Introduction to the panel

14:40 – 15:00 Daniel Feierstein – Director of the Centre of Genocide Studies at the National University of Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina

15:00 – 15:20 Ramon Grosfoguel - Professor at the Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

15:20 – 15:35 Q&A discussion

15:35 – 15:45 Latifa Abouchakra - Announcement of winner

15:45 – 15:50 Nadia Rasheed - Reading of genocides and one minute of silence 

15:50 – 16:00 Raza Kazim - Closing remarks

Genocide Panel

Event Start: 29th January 2018, 5:00pm

Genocide: Why We Let It Happen

Genocide leaves the darkest stain on the conscience of humanity, yet today we are again witnessing international passivity in the face of the genocide in Myanmar. Why have we failed to learn our lesson from these atrocities and why do we allow this stain on our conscience to continue to grow? With Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday 27 January, we seek to reflect on how to apply the promise of 'never again'

• David Sheffer: American lawyer and diplomat who, as US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, helped create the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
• Alice Musabende: A survivor of the Rwandan genocide, now an expert on the dynamics of peacebuilding in the context of post-conflict countries
• Mukesh Kapila: As the whistleblower on the Darfur atrocities, he is an expert on genocide prevention and international diplomacy
• Maung Zarni: A Burmese human rights activist and academic, he has been denounced as an "enemy of the State" for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide
• Ellen Kennedy: Director at the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and founder and Executive Director of World Without Genocide

Myanmar's Slow Burning Genocide of Rohingyas 

19 Jan 2018 

5-7 pm

School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London

Talk & Discussion with Dr Maung Zarni. The discussion will be moderated by Sabina Alkire, Director of Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford.

28 January 2018

5:30 pm

Richard Benson Hall

276 Cowley Rd

East Oxford 

Myanmar Systematically Destroyed the Physical Foundation of Rohingya Community, in substantial part.

1) 354 villages, 110 kilometer or 68 miles (that's an area stretching from the British Parliament to Oxford or even longer);

2) nearly 700,000 survived in Bangladesh, after having fled the genocidal terror by Myanmar in a span of 90 days (from 26 Aug till 31 Dec 2017);

3) besides, the estimated 80,000 already fled in the period between Oct 2015-Aug 2016);

4) this exodus follows the pattern of genocide-&-terror-flight -5 altogether - since 12 Feb 1978;

5) 6,700 Rohingya massacred in 31 days of the first month of 2017 killings by Myanmar, according to a very limited survey carried out by MSF or Doctors Without Borders;

6) out of the estimated 700,000 Rohingya survivors, about 300,000 are children of whom 20,000 lost their parents (that is, they are orphans);

7) in the first months, again the MSF's limited survey shows, about 750 killed were children under the age of 5;

8) unknown number of Rohingya women - surely by the thousands- raped and slaughtered by Myanmar Government troops;

9) but, even prior to the physical destruction of their villages and direct killings by Myanmar troops of their community members, the Rohingyas were living in conditioned designed as a matter of policy and strategy by Myanmar to destroy their biological foundations of life - their bodies as 150,000 Rohingyas had access to only 1 - ONE - doctor in the two combined urban areas of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, according to a Lancet review article on public health conditions of the Rohingyas, while 80,500 children under the age of 5 are made to suffer by Myanmar sub-Saharan like semi-famine (or "severe acute malnutrition" and "acute malnutrition", according to the World Food Program's limited survey);

10) none of this includes 120,000 Rohingyas that have been placed in camps since the two bouts of mass and organized violence against them in June and Oct 2012, the camps that could only be described as semi-concentration camps;

11) there may be about 500,000 Rohingyas left inside Myanmar in areas that are heavily monitored as "security grids" by Myanmar inter-agency securit units - mainly around Buthidaung and they will face future waves of genocidal terror, when - not if - Myanmar gov and Rakhine local decide to finish off their Joint Genocidal Project;

12) last but not last, there may be an upward of about 500,000 Rohingyas in total who have fled the previous waves of Myanmar genocidal attacks since 1978, who are scattered in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and to a far lesser extent in Australia, Scandinavia, Western Europe, USA and Canada.

If you fight to end this genocide - like I do, albeit to no avail - you would understand why I didn't have an appetite for joining those who popped champagne last night.

ZARNI

"A Reuters graphic makes use of data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) to show hundreds of villages in Rakhine state that were once inhabited by the Rohingya, but have now been burned down.

A total of 354 villages have either been completely or partially destroyed, Human Rights Watch said on Dec. 18.

The data, which was gathered from Aug. 25, the day of the Rohingya militant attack, to Nov. 25, shows burned settlements in an area stretching 110 km (68 miles) from the green hills of Rakhine’s northern tip to beaches near the state’s capital Sittwe in the south."

Here is the full text of the Reuters story:

A visual that shows just how many Rohingya villages have been burned

By Reuters

January 1, 2018

In the four months since the Myanmar military began a crackdown after Rohingya militants attacked an army base and police posts on Aug. 25, around 655,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority have fled the western state of Rakhine and crossed into neighboring Bangladesh.

A Reuters graphic makes use of data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) to show hundreds of villages in Rakhine state that were once inhabited by the Rohingya, but have now been burned down. 

A total of 354 villages have either been completely or partially destroyed, Human Rights Watch said on Dec. 18. 

The data, which was gathered from Aug. 25, the day of the Rohingya militant attack, to Nov. 25, shows burned settlements in an area stretching 110 km (68 miles) from the green hills of Rakhine’s northern tip to beaches near the state’s capital Sittwe in the south. 

See the interactive graphic here: tmsnrt.rs/2zGVUmt

Top officials in the United Nations and United States have described the Myanmar military’s crackdown as ethnic cleansing. 

Myanmar has denied human rights abuses, saying its military is engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. The military exonerated itself of all accusations of atrocities in an internal investigation, which published its findings on Nov. 13. Myanmar’s civilian government has said that the burnings were carried out by Rohingya militants and the Rohingya themselves. 

Myanmar’s military did not respond to Reuters’ questions about its role in the alleged atrocities against the Rohingya described in this graphic. 

Reporting by Weiyi Cai, Simon Scarr and Simon Lewis; Writing by Karishma Singh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Martin Howell

To our ​deep dismay, the ​Oxford University Press's Asian History unit ​has ​commissioned​ an infamous anti-Rohingya, genocide-denier, ex-diplomat-cum-"expert on Rakhine" from Luxembourg named Jaques Leider to write a reference article on the Rohingyas. ​

http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com/page/forthcoming/

​​

Rohingya: Emergence and Vicissitudes of a Communal Muslim Identity in Myanmar (Jacques Leider), forthcoming Jan–Mar 2018

​​ 

This is an equivalent of​ US Holocaust Memorial Museum commissioning​ David Irving to write a definitive history of the Nazi Holocaust. 

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Irving/biographical/ADL_smearsheet.html - being commissioned to write an authoritative history of the Nazi Holocaust. 

(see BBC on the Holocaust denialists and their works http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml) ​

​

We Rohingya activists urge you all to communicate to the media, (social and conventional), the editors of Asian history references series and the OUP administration that this is an insult to the injury of the Rohingya community who are still living Myanmar's genocide.

Here is the Unit's​ illustrious Editorial Board that has commissioned this Western genocide denier and the denier of Rohingya identity.

http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com/page/editorial/editorial-board

Leider media interviews fall on the same category as The Holocaust Deniers. 

T​he world knows what the military is doing to the Rohingyas.

​This "expert historian of Rakhine"​ even lacks the most elemental conceptual understanding of ethnic/racial identities: that group identities are "imagined", invented and in flux, and often ethnic, religious and political identities are intertwined. 

And yet, he dismisses Rohingya identity as simply the creation of the "educated Bengali diaspora" and falsely claims that "unlike Rakhine ethnic identity, Rohingyas is not an ethnic identity, invented only in the 1950s."

Leider's denial of ethnic identity - and dismissal of the group's right to self-identify echoes Myanmar genocidal policy, which begins with "there is no group named Rohingyas".

Even after the most recent large scale campaign of terror against the Rohingyas, which drove 100,000 Rohingyas per week to Bangladesh Leider joined two ex-Lt-Colonels who advised ex-General and former President Thein Sein (2010-15) and the Ministry of Defence respectively in a 2-day invitation only strategy forum held in the midst of mass rape, arson and slaughter in N. Rakhine. 

Only 3, Leider, ex-Lt-Colonel Ko Ko Hlaing and another ex-colonel whose name slipped my mind. (the discussions were published in Burma as a book recently. I have loaned it to a journalist friend, and the history of Rakhine and the Islamophobia-soaked strategy discussions were just absolutely horrendous.)

H​ere is a glimpse of this man's public engagement - mainly on the existence of Rohingyas as an ethnic community, the denial and dismissal that Myanmar Buddhists are violently racist towards this "non-existent" group, and that the violence is organized, premeditated by Myanmar military, which in turn is of genocidal proportions.

July, 2012, Irrawaddy News Group (Irrawaddy has since emerged, beyond any doubt, as one of the main local Burmese media outlets in Burmese and English languages which spreads Islamophobia, genocide cheer-leading and anti-Rohingya hatred among its 10 million Facebook-users).

https://www.irrawaddy.com/from-the-archive/history-behind-rakhine-state-conflict.html

"​Now when somebody comes to use the word “genocide” against Muslims, that is also way beyond anything that matches with reality. I think “hate” is okay as the term you can use as kind of a common word. But to use “racism” always supposes a kind of ideology. I don’t see among Buddhists this kind of ideology. It’s kind of dislike. You have xenophobia, you have ranges of other words you can use to describe more correctly and more justly what we see."​

---

INTERVIEW with Rakhine History Expert on the recent communal conflict in RakhineState

28 August 2012 

Mawkun magazine interviewed Dr. Jacques P. Leider, a Rakhine history expert, on the recent communal conflict in Rakhine State. He has conducted academic research on Rakhine State for more than two decades.

By Nyan Lynn and Zayar Hlaing

“Rohingya is a name, not an ethnic category, that has been revived in modern days to identify Muslims in Rakhine as a separate social group. One may eventually compare it with the name of the Chinese Muslims in Myanmar who are called ‘Panthay’. ”

https://www.facebook.com/notes/yangon-press-international/interview-with-rakhine-history-expert-on-the-recent-communal-conflict-in-rakhine/418657374847557

MAWKUN: Some international media and groups use such words as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” when referring the recent conflict. In a recent opinion published by The New York Times, a Bangladesh professor uses“ethnic cleansing”. Do all these word reflect the real situation in Rakhine State?

LEIDER: I do not agree with such extreme formulations. This is not a war of people who feel superior to others and it’s not a fight about who has the better religion. The war of propaganda, notably on the internet where all kinds of expressions are used to attack the other, does not say necessarily much about the nature of the conflict itself. The fact is that immigrant Muslims and Buddhist Rakhine were brought together to live side by side in historical circumstances they did not create themselves.

.....

Describing the events with all their brutality from that moment onwards as ethnic cleansing and genocide blurs the sight on all the factors that underlie the conflict, basically everything that has gone wrong in Arakan during the last century. Like in many other places, here we see people looking basically for justice, progress and the affirmation of their identity.

---

This is from Germany's English language media outlet, 1/2/2016

http://www.dw.com/en/no-easy-solution-to-the-rohingya-problem-in-myanmar/a-36597899

"​The US government has rejected accusations that a genocide is happening in Rakhine state. I agree with this assessment. I don't think that there is a plan in place to systemically annihilate the Rohingya people. The term "slow genocide" or "slow-burning genocide" was introduced in 2013. But it was based on a notion that diverges from the mainstream understanding of a genocide by historians.

Such terminology just leads us in the wrong direction and makes it difficult to resolve the conflict between the different ethnic groups, the government and the military. Allegations of a genocide do exactly the opposite: They stoke up the conflict on and on."​

---

This is Leider's Employment History as indicated in:

https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Jacques-Leider/377823854

General Information

Employment History

Supporter - Nationali Museum of Military History

Senior Consultant - Office of the UN Resident Coordinator

Counsellor - Embassy of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg

Head - EFEO (French Institute of Asian Studies), Yangon

National Museum of Military History is run by the genocidal Myanmar Military. 

He was "senior consultant" to the UN Resident Coordinator who was removed publicly and officially from her duties in Myanmar because she was internally suppressing any human rights reports about Rohingya genocide, in favour of "development" and working closely with the Burmese generals. 

Here is the Guardian new story about the top UN official Leider was advising:

Myanmar Rohingya: UN recalls top official Lok-Dessallien, 11 Oct 2017, BBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41580599

​

---

Rohingya crisis: UN 'suppressed' report predicting its shortcomings in Myanmar

Insiders claim strategy review warning of imminent crisis in Rakhine state and urging immediate action was smothered by the official who commissioned it

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/05/rohingya-crisis-un-suppressed-report-predicting-its-shortcomings-in-myanmar

By Maung Zarni

Prothom Alo

December 13, 2017

Can you imagine BBC, Chatham House, Rand Corporation portraying as potential “Jewish terrorists” the survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbruick, Dachau and other world infamous death and labour camps? Can you imagine young Jewish children and orphans who were rescued through the programme “kindertransport”, being framed by Allied Policy Makers and advisers as “embryonic Jewish terrorists”, who naturally might be seething with the desire for revenge against the Old Europe post-Third Reich, that, with no shame nor conscience, appeased Hitler in exchange for lucrative business deals or anti-USSR intelligence cooperation while millions of Jewish parents were gassed to death?

Of course not. 

But that is precisely what is now happening to the survivors of my Buddhist country’s genocide, whose name even the entire Catholic Church in Myanmar, and by extension, Pope Francis, have dared not pronounce, lest saying the victims’ ethnic identity might irritate Myanmar’s genocidal leaders, the likes of General Min Aung Hlaing and Aung San Suu Kyi

One million Rohingyas are suffering from this double-whammy of oppression: a perceived threat at home in North Arakan or Rakhine State of Myanmar, and a projected threat across the borders in Chittagong of Bangladesh.

The country of their birth – whatever their citizenship status or ethnic identity – falsely, and officially, frames Rohingyas as ‘illegal Bengali migrants’, or worse, ‘communities of Jihadists’. This view has been cultivated and popularized in the Burmese civil society at large, which now behaves more like the Germans in the 1930s’ than the public that is pushing for human rights or democratization. 

In the eyes of the Burmese public, Rohingyas are seen as a demographic threat to the ‘Buddhist Way of Life’ and a national security. Accordingly, they are mistreated genocidally on their own soil. The host country of Bangladesh of 166 million Muslims, which opened its eastern borders when the human tsunami of fleeing Rohingyas cried out for refuge, has long-standing concern about the Rohingyas in need, becoming ‘a non-traditional security threat’ (epidemic, prostitution, narcotic trade, etc.), as well as a potential pool of Islamic terrorists.

Joining these sovereign states and their governments in this pathological orgy of mis-framing the world’s largest stateless people, that is, the most vulnerable and persecuted community who have just survived the most unimaginably sadistic, coordinated and widespread terror, are consultants and journalists who make a living pumping out ‘security analyses’ for national governments and government-funded think-tanks.

To my dismay, even the country’s great humanitarian and Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus – not to mention the usual national security types - has shown no qualms about expressing his national security concerns for Bangladesh, emanating from the prolonged Rohingya presence. He has recently done this in his interview with Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera English and elsewhere.

It is now widely reported that Rohingya orphans, women and young girls – including the survivors of genocidal gangrape by Myanmar troops – have been preyed on by local Bangladesh and Rohingya criminal networks – to be exploited as prostitutes, drug mules, bonded labourers, and so on.

Deeply troubling is the existence of white-collar crimes, which I will call the symbolic exploitation of Rohingyas, whereby researchers, journalists and other professionals make their living selling analyses and reports framed within the discourses of ‘Muslim insurgency’, ‘Islamic radicalization’ and ‘fundamentalist terror’. Their human objects of professional gaze, that is, Rohingya survivors of Myanmar genocide – are potential drug mules, petty criminals and ultimately Jihadists.

Considering that out of the recent arrivals of 640,000 Rohingyas, 60 per cent are deeply emotionally scarred women, traumatized children, frail elderly men and women the broad stroke portrayal of this population as a ‘threat to regional instability’ and potential for ISIS recruits is as despicable as the genocidal acts that drove these people in deep and visible misery.

These white-collar criminals – again think-tank consultants, seasoned journalists, amateur Myanmar experts - are equally, if not more, deadly and immoral as the local pimps and petty criminals in Chittagong. Both groups prey on the most vulnerable of all human to line their pockets, enhance their expert reputations and climb their professional ladders as ‘experts on terrorism’, ‘security’, etc.

Swallowing my deep outrage, I have forced myself to read think-tank reports, newspaper editorials, political discussions and media interviews where politicians, consultants, NGOs and journalists express what they consider the prospects for radicalisation of what Bangladesh refers to, gingerly, as ‘forcibly displaced persons from Myanmar’. These ‘security experts’ blatantly ignore the fact that no Rohingya has blown him- or herself up in either Myanmar or Bangladesh – or for that matter, any world’s capital, in the last 39 years since Myanmar launched its first wave of genocidal terror in North Arakan under the guise of ‘anti-illegal immigration’ campaign.

Alas, calling the one million Rohingya genocide survivors, which is what they in fact are, would, I would hope, compel the world of national governments, mass media and national security agencies to accord Rohingyas the kind of belated political support and moral stature which the Holocaust survivors were deservedly accorded.

Why then do the integrated world of power, intelligence and money go along with the pathetic mis-framing of these human victims of the crime of barbarity in Myanmar?

I offer two brief but interlinked explanations: Islamophobia and the mental culture of paranoia on which intelligence agencies rest.

First, these agencies and men and women who staff them, are, institutionally and temperamentally, conditioned to view any human individuals as potential criminals while normal, healthy minds view other humans as decent, potential friends, lovers, and partners. A dear friend and university classmate of my late father who held a coordinator position in Burma’s National Intelligence Bureau reinforced my view that national security paradigms are anchored in institutionalized paranoia.

Second and finally, since 9/11 the western media and the powerful culture industry such as the Hollywood have helped spread the Orientalist (read racist) portrayal of Muslims and Islam as terroristic, senseless, ruthless, parochial, and reactionary. Never mind that it is “the Christian West” – if we must put the mega-pathos of humans in religious terms - have been the primary factor behind the greatest number of death and destruction on a global scale over the last 100 years. The Two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War of Gulags and Death Squads, the Korean War, the Vietnam, and the presently expanding wars in the Middle East come to mind. That doesn’t even include the 500-years of Church-blessed and/or financed European colonialisms and the resultant colonial genocides across the globe.

It is high time that Rohingya refugees are popularly and officially recognized as survivors of Myanmar genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, or whatever one may choose to call their horrendous experiences.

The last thing these Rohingyas – including over 200,000 children – deserve is to be painted as would be Jihadists and Muslim insurgents. We did not call or treat the Holocaust survivors as potential “Jewish terrorists”. Why should we mis-frame, either out of Islamophobia or Pavlovian-paranoia, the Rohingya survivors as potential “Jihadists” or “Muslim insurgents”? Don’t add insult to the genocidal injury of the world’s most persecuted people whose only crime is that they are Rohingya Muslims. 

Maung Zarni is a Burmese human rights activist, an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism based in Cambridge, UK and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia. He blogs at maungzarni.net

For the last 40 years, Rohingyas of Northern Arakan/Rakhine State of Myanmar (formerly Burma), have been subjected to what Amartya Sen called a "slow genocide." Since August 26, over 607,000 Rohingyas have sought refuge in Bangladesh after having fled Myanmar’s campaign of murder, arson and sexual violence, the latest of 5 waves of state-sponsored terror in the region. Today there are more Rohingyas outside of their birthplace than inside it. Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine is honored to host a panel discussion on the topic of the Rohingya crisis and its global context with Maung Zarni, a Buddhist native of Burma and genocide scholar and human rights activist, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities (Columbia) and luminary in the field of postcolonial and feminist studies.

By Fars News Agency

October 18, 2017

TEHRAN -- Activist and scholar Maung Zarni says that the plight of Muslim Rohingyas has gotten worse under the administration of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and now there are about 100,000 Rohingyas fleeing their homeland every week.

The Burmese scholar in an exclusive interview with FNA said that Aung San SuuKyi’s leadership has been the direct product of the icon manufacturing by Western media and activists which was intended to give acceptability to what, he believes, is a “military-controlled ethnocracy, wrapped in Buddhism”.

According to the rights activist, Rohingyas in Myanmar live under restrictive measures of movement, marriage and child control in either open prisons or internally displaced persons camps (IDP camps). He also added that the Muslim minority’s access to food supplies and medical care is awfully limited.

Maung Zarni is a democracy advocate, Rohingya campaigner, and an adviser to European Centre for the Study of Extremism. He is also a research fellow at Genocide Documentation Centre and has been frequently interviewed by international media outlets such as BBC, Al Jazeera, Press TV and TRT World.

FNA has conducted an interview with Maung Zarni about the terrible living conditions of the Rohingya Muslims and the reasons behind the inaction by the so-called international community to stop what the United Nations calls "textbook ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya.

Below you will find the full text of the interview.

Q: Rohingya Muslims are not included in Myanmar’s list of 135 official minorities meaning they are deprived of the right to citizenship. Why do you think the Rohingyas have been left stateless by their own government in the first place?

Firstly, 135 official minorities are nothing but a fiction used by the Burmese military to justify their institutional narrative that Myanmar faces constant threat of Balkanization, if the military return to the barracks. So, I don’t and won’t repeat the regime’s self-serving propaganda. The military has since early 1960’s shifted its policy of the official embrace of Rohingyas as an ethnic community of the Union of Burma to a radical strategic perspective according to which a sizeable pocket of Muslims in a single geographic pocket next to a populous Muslim region of the then Pakistan was a threat to Burma’s national security. Every wave of expulsion, violence, death and destruction of Rohingyas over the last 40 years has been triggered by this dangerous strategic paradigm. 

Q: Aung San SuuKyi’s coming to power as the Nobel Peace laureate and first democratic government brought about major hopes to the Burmese including the Rohingya. In your opinion, has anything changed for the Muslim minority since she took office?

Suu Kyi’s leadership, and Suu Kyi the person, have been the direct product of the icon manufacturing by Western media and activists. Her ascendency to de facto leadership has only lent the veneer of acceptability to what really is a military-controlled ethnocracy, wrapped in Buddhism. The plight of Muslim Rohingyas has gotten worse, with 100,000 fleeing every week. Mirroring the military’s Muslim-free armed forces, she presides over her party, National League for Democracy (NLD), and the NLD-controlled Parliament, with not a single Muslim representation. 

Q: There are reports about mosques across Burma being damaged or completely destroyed and authorities have been refusing to allow Muslims to repair their mosques. Why is the government refusing to allow the Muslim minority to access their place of worship which is considered to be a fundamental right to freedom of expression and religion?

Mosques – like any places of worship in any religion – serve as the anchor of Muslim communities throughout Burma. The severe restrictions on the repair, renovation, or expansion of mosques are motivated by the intent to prevent the growth of the community in spirit and strength. It is a part of the Buddhist ethnocratic state’s attempt to monitor, control and subjugate Muslim communities – although Islam in Burma has long been a peaceful religion for centuries since it arrived centuries ago.

Q: Could you please let us know about the conditions of displaced Rohingyas living both in and outside Myanmar’s borders?

Even seasoned humanitarian workers would tell you how shocked they are at the first sight of the conditions under which Rohingyas living in India and Bangladesh. Inside Myanmar, Rohingyas live in two different types of situation: open vast prisons and the internally displaced persons camps. They have no freedom of movement; all aspects of their lives are totally controlled by the Burmese military authorities at the top of the administrative structures and local Buddhist Rakhine who occupy the majority of the admin posts. Rohingyas’ access to food and food systems (such as streams and rivers, paddy fields, etc.) as well as opportunities to earn a living has been controlled and restricted. Doctor-patience ratio for the two major towns – Buthidaung and Maungdaw – are estimated to be 1: 150,000 – while the national average is 1: 1,000 – 2,000. Extreme malnutrition is prevalent with sub-Sahara-like conditions. Only Rohingyas are singled out for strict marriage control and child control. Rape and gang-rape of Rohingya women and even girls are rampant. Mass arrests of Rohingya males are routine. Summary execution, forced labour, extortions, etc. are routinely practised by the security troops that split Rohingya region into two dozen security grids. It is this kind of inhuman conditions under which Rohingyas are forced to exist – not live as humans – that has been a major push factor behind regular, if less dramatic and less reported than the most recent one, waves of fleeing Rohingyas. Emphatically, I must state that these conditions are maintained as a matter of policy by the central governments since the late 1970’s: to destroy life as we know it, for the entire Rohingya community as a distinct ethnic group, whether recognized by the State officially, as such or not. Precisely because of the policy of destroying Rohingya community as a group I have been calling this a genocide – a textbook genocidal act as defined by the Genocide Convention. 

Q: The state counsellor faces mounting criticism over what the United Nations calls "textbook ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya. This systematic persecution has been ongoing for years. Why do you think we do not see any strong reaction by international human rights organizations, namely the United Nations to stop all the injustice and atrocities?

To the UN and all the world powers, typically all genocides are inconveniences. The refusal to recognize the nature of the heinous crimes by its proper legal name, that is, genocide speaks volumes about the absence of collective will to end this international crime. I find it utterly disgusting that UN and even human rights agencies opting to call it by Milosevic’s original euphemism. The genocidal Serb was a clever bastard who knew ‘ethnic cleansing’ was not a crime under international law. If a crime is recognized as genocide that the UN system would be obliged to intervene to end it. Truth is international law is nothing without the political will to enforce it. Ending genocide has never been deemed strategically or commercially profitable. Hence, empty talks and outcome less meetings.

Q: On several occasions we have seen the western countries, namely the US and the UK, acting without a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. We have seen them imposing sanctions and even taking military action against countries solely based on their own political and geopolitical interests. But when it comes to Myanmar, they do not seem to be much concerned about the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing as we do not see any strong reaction. What do you think is the reason behind the double standard?

UK and USA are known to bypass the Security Council, in pursuing their strategic interests, however defined. They have launched invasions in countries throughout the world, from Korea and Vietnam to Africa and the Middle East. But ending genocides is viewed as part of their strategic interest. Additionally, they delude themselves into thinking that some semblance of democracy and human rights regime can still be salvaged with its Burmese proxy Aung San Suu Kyi, although she has lost the support and admiration of the world. The truth is UN and international law, as well as the institutions of global governance do not work for the oppressed majority of peoples around the world. Rohingyas are not an exception. 

Q: Aung SanSuu Kyi did not attend this year’s UN General Assembly session. She did so without providing any reason for the withdrawal. As we discussed, the United Nations so far has failed to act properly to stop the violence. Why do you think then she decided to cancel her trip to the UN?

It’s a clear sign that she now views the world as a hostile place for her to go. The world no longer sees her as “the hopes of Burma”, let alone “the voice of the voiceless”. She has become world-infamous for hiding her head in the sand when it comes to issues of crucial import to the country. Forget going to the UN where she expected strong criticism of her leadership failures. She has no moral or intellectual integrity to confront inconvenient realities of her country, particularly the issue of Rohingya genocide that concerns the world.

By Dr Maung Zarni

October 16, 2017

Visiting Fellow at Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies & Ex-Cabinet Member from Thein Sein Gov, spread fakes news about Rohingyas, possibly coordinating with Irrawaddy Burmese Editors. 

Ye Htut, ex-Colonel and a son of the late Myanmar Police Chief, is caught spreading Fake News, which typically frames Rohingyas as "terrorist" issue. 

Ye Htut's Burmese language caption reads: 

"In Bangladesh the (Muslim) fundamentalists and extremists held demonstrations demanding that Rohingyas be armed. 

Now the (Bangladesh) border guards unit at a refugee camp lost their weapons to the looters."

This is based on Irrawaddy Burmese Language News (see the two additional JPEG along with the first item by Ye Htut). 

Irrawaddy has emerged as a major platform for spreading genocidal racism and hatred against the Rohingyas. 

Its editors - Aung Zaw, Kyaw Zwa Moe, and Ye Ni - have been mis-charaterising, Rohingyas as an Islamic threat to Burma's "national security" based on dubious intelligence sources.

Irrawaddy's stance is influenced by both their anti-Rohingya racism and Bertil Linter's anti-Rohingya racist writings in Asia Times, blowing the security concerns out of proportions.

Just yesterday a Thai-American academic named Thitanan Pongsudhirak from Chula University in Bangkok peddles the same racist lie in Singapore's mouthpiece The Straits Times. 

See my scathing rebuttal to this academic whore's despicable racism, falsely accusing the wretched of my country as "terror" threat. 

http://www.maungzarni.net/2017/10/zarnis-open-letter-to-thitinan.html

Framing of Rohingyas as "Islamic terrorism" has been proven non-credible by Bangladeshi senior officials including the Foreign Secretary, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and Pacific Affairs Eric Schwartz and most recently in Facetime Live by Human Rights Watch Myanmar researcher. 

Here is Eric Schwartz in his own words:

"... the idea that insurgency is the route of the problem in Rakhine State is nonsense.

This is not insurgency. There are parts of Burma where there are insurgent issues. This is not an insurgency-driven conflict. This is a pretext that the military has given us, by all evidence."

the idea that insurgency is the route of the problem in Rakhine State is nonsense.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/can-stop-extreme-violence-rohingya-muslims/

--

Myanmar: The Invention of Rohingya Extremists

Joseph Allchin, The New York Review of Books, 2 October 2017

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/10/02/myanmar-the-invention-of-rohingya-extremists/

--

Bangladesh foreign secretary: No sign of radicalisation among the Rohingya, 8 October 2017 

http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/foreign-affairs/2017/10/08/no-sign-radicalisation-rohingya/

By Dr Maung Zarni 

RB Opinion

October 15, 2017

Ethnicity and Race are INVENTIONS, MADE-UP, CONSTRUCTED with an identifiable political purpose.

But the country is moving in the different direction on this, that is, Hitler's blood-based, "real", notions of RACE.

In the most recent Irrawaddy "Debate" hosted by Ye Ni who advocates openly "surgical operations" against "Bengali", one Burmese anthropology professor from Mandalay raised the issue that there are no people called Rohingyas in Chittagong.

(In fact, it was Hitler who used the term "surgical operations" in his Mein Kampf or My Story.

There are no Chins in India North East (across from the Chin Hills of Burma. They are called Zo. That's identities shifting across geographic space.

Time/context wise, here is another example of fluidity of identity.

In the colonial period, the flag raised against the ruling British colonizers is: Burmese.

Coastal region Rakhine commercial, Lower Burma cultural elite Buddhists, Mon commercial, and Dry Zone-rooted cultural elite Buddhists forged a political identity called "Burmese", using the common oppression as a common bridge and Buddhism as an additional pillar of their newly forged umbrella identity.

General Council of Buddhist Association (GCBA) U Soe Thein was a Mon, but adopted the Burmese identity, as head of the majoritarian cultural - and later political movement from which the Peasant Uprisings sprang up under the local medicine man - Saya San. PM U Nu was a lower-Bama Mon. The late UN Sec. General U Thant, was a Lower Burma Kular-Bama mix, who adopted Bama Buddhist identity.

After independence, Rakhine and Mon shed that umbrella identity, and hoisted their primary identities as Rakhine and Mons and sought autonomy and equality in the post-independence period.

The most famous Rakhine leader, the Cambridge-trained ICS U Kyaw Min, my friend Prof. Ko Kyaw Tha Paw Oo's grandfather, was initially Burmese nationalist in the service of the British Colonial rule. He led the above-ground parliamentary push for autonomous Rakhine Statehood.

As a widespread phenomenon, Burmese of Chinese and Indian or Pakistani Muslim ancestry frontload their primary identities as "Muslim" or "Chinese" when the new social context is more accepting, liberal and tolerant, for instance, the United States or UK.

So my friends, Khin Khin of Chinese background in Burma would become Phillipa Tan, Win Ko would become Akbar Hamid, or Kyaw Zwa, Mohammad.

Even within a single political unit as Frontier Areas of Burma, Jing Hpaw (Kachin) would morph into Shan, a more powerful ethnic group.

After the waning of their dominance in the pre-colonial Burmese feudal entities, the Shan feudal elites, geographically closer to the Burmese Dry Zone centers of power, they would emulate Burmese power symbols, rituals, feudal customs and manners while those Shan feudal elites closer to Northern Siam or Thai kingdoms would be more culturally and politically tied to the Thai or Dai or Siamese.

Given the way the NLD and the military are leading the country, ideologically, it is conceivable that the Ministry of Education will use Mein Kampf as a prescribed text for Ethnicity and Race - 101. Go Myanmar Nazi, Go!

My dear friend Thitinan,

​Re: ​Myanmar's moves against Rohingya a get-out campaign, not genocide

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