Maung Zarni 

Asia Times

May 1, 2013

An official report into last year's violence in Rakhine State, launched on April 29 at the government's foreign donor financed Myanmar Peace Center, is intellectually, ideologically, empirically and analytically flawed, underscoring President Thein Sein's bid to whitewash the recent ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya in the western state, which borders Bangladesh. 

Established on presidential order, the Inquiry Commission has been conflicted from the day of its inception on August 17 last year. The five individuals who were hand-picked to launch the report on Monday were a curious mix themselves: the country's most famous political comedian, the former daughter-in-law of the late despot General Ne Win, a well-known former student leader, a well-known former exile, and the president's personal adviser and interpreter. 

Thein Sein and his allies are increasingly using various crisis inquiry commissions, including the Aung San Suu Kyi-led Letpadaung Mountain Copper Mine Inquiry Commission and now the Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing Inquiry Commission, as public relations instruments to deflect public attention from its spectacular failures in handling popular discontent, state-sponsored violence against civilian populations, and mass ethno-religious violence. 

In instances where the role of government institutions was instrumental, for instance in last year's pogroms in Rakhine State, inquiry commissions have become useful tools of deflection for Naypyidaw. The latest official report, originally classified as "secret", of the Rakhine Sectarian Violence Inquiry Commission was strategically released to counter the damning and credible April 22 report "All You Can Do is Pray: Ethnic Cleansing and the Crimes Against Humanity in Myanmar", released by US-based rights lobby Human Rights Watch. 

The Inquiry Commission was stacked with cooperative technocrats, ethnic minority leaders, socialites, religious leaders and so-called human rights activists who were prepared or compelled to sign off on the report despite knowing it contained verifiably false and distorted facts about important issues under investigation. 

As a product of such an unholy alliance, the commission's report is patently un-professional, non-independent and unprincipled. Devoid of crucial truths, it is a document utterly uninformed by any well-established analytical concepts such as "ethnic formation", "identity formation", "state's mobilization" in genocide studies, "discourse", "nationalism", "history" - through which all scholars and researchers of the social world attempt to make sense of even ordinary human affairs, including genocides. 

Ethnic labels in Myanmar, including for the Chin and the Kachin, were externally imposed by British colonial administrators and American Baptist missionaries on the "natives". These were disparate groups who originally identified themselves tribally, as clans and along geographic lines. The new ethnic labels were less than 50 years old upon independence in 1948. Mal-informed by the prevailing pseudo-scientific knowledge about race and ethnicity in Europe, the British colonials and American missionaries grouped these "tribal peoples" in borderlands together for administrative expediency. 

As Indian economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen correctly pointed out during a public seminar on Myanmar at Columbia University last September, the geographical areas now known as Arakan or Rakhine State frequently changed hands among neighboring feudal rulers, and boundaries were always elastic in the pre-colonial era. 

The Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing Inquiry report officially stresses how the Rakhine feudal lords expanded their reach over territories in what was then Bengal, while making light of the fact that there were Bengali kings who ruled what was then the Kingdom of Arakan. Academics, especially establishment ethno-nationalist historians, have long proven capable of recounting the past only from a victor's perspective. The two leading scholars on the Inquiry Commission are no exception. 

For a commission that was led by two historically trained Burmese and a retired Rangoon [now Yangon] University history professor, the report's treatment of the history of a people whom the commission insisted on referring to as "Bengali" is anything if not "ethnocidal" - that is, an attempt to erase concrete historical evidence that the Rohingya, a self-referential identity, existed as an ethnic community and was officially recognized by the state under the democratic government of prime minister U Nu. 

This recognition of the Rohingya as an official constitutive ethnic group of the country, as well as their full citizenship status, was not confined to civilian politicians from the ruling political parties. During its two-year caretaker government (1958-60), the army's senior most leadership of General Ne Win and his deputies including Brigadier Aung Gyi officially recognized the Rohingya by their own self-chosen ethnic name: the Rohingya. 

While Thein Sein's commission's historians claimed to have poured over the archival records at the country's National Archives relevant to these "Bengalis", to borrow the standard Rakhine reference to the Rohingya of western Myanmar, they violated professional ethics as researchers by blatantly omitting any concrete evidence that the Rohingya were both an official ethnic group and citizens of Myanmar. 

In fact, one doesn't need to bother going to the archives to verify the Rohingya's ethnic identity and their citizenship status. Photographic copies of the verifiably authentic official records (for instance, Burma's Encyclopedia published by the Government Printing Press in 1964, official transcripts of speeches by the Burmese generals bearing the Rohingya's name, Burmese state newspaper clippings announcing a national radio program for various ethnic languages including the Rohingya language, parliamentary records, etc) are easily accessible in numerous social media sites and on-line archives. 

But the commissioners, either as anti-Rohingya Islamophobes or under duress from the government that appointed them to the Inquiry Commission, especially the professional historians among them, evidently chose to weed out any historical evidence that contradicts Myanmar's racist Citizenship Act of 1982, which was designed with input from Rakhine nationalists and earlier anti-Muslim elements in the Ministries of Defense and Immigration to strip Muslim Rohingyas both of their ethnic identity and citizenship standing. 

Forgotten history

In the hands of the commission's Cornell- and Harvard-trained historians, including the likes of chairman Myo Myint, secretary Kyaw Yin Hlaing and Professor Tun Aung Chain, the Rohingya's migratory history began only in 1824 and going on to the Japanese advent in 1942, when large scale communal violence between the Rakhine and the Rohingya took place. The entire two decades of the 1950s and 1960s, during which the Rohingya were both official ethnic peoples and had citizenship rights, were completely skipped in the report's historical section. This omission highlighted the anti-Rohingya Rakhine nationalist version of history which denies that the Rohingya ever existed. 

State-sponsored ethnocide, which began with the brutal immigration campaign of 1978 which drove out nearly 200,000 Rohingya from the Rakhine state across to neighboring Bangladesh, was "unproblematized" by the commissioners, all of whom insisted that they were "politically independent". The ethnocide is all the more shocking considering the commission's ethnic diversity, including representatives from the ethnic Kachin, Chin, Karen, Shan and other communities that have experienced oppression from state authorities. 

Ethno-religiously, the commission was a good mix - that is, except that there was no Rohingya - nay, "Bengali" - representation. Dr Myo Myint (Bama or Bama-identified), Khun Tun Oo (Shan), Jana Lahtaw (Kachin), Dr Salai Andrew (Chin), U Soe Thein (Bama), Dr Yin Yin Nwe (Shan-Bama), Dr Kyaw Yin Hlaing (Shan-Bama), Zarganar (Bama), Aung Naing Oo (Bama), Ko Ko Gyi (a national security race?), Tin Aung Moe (Bama), Daw Than Than Nu (Bama), (Vet) Dr Aye Maung (Rakhine with neo-Nazi views), Aye Thar Aung (ultra-nationalist Rakhine), Reverend Margay Gyi (Karen), U Tun Aung Chain (Karen). There are also Myanmar Muslims (ethnically Indians) and Myanmar Hindu.

With the exception of the Muslim commissioners, none of these ethno-religious diverse commissioners fought against the state-sponsored ethnocide of the Rohingya in the form of the commission's vehement opposition to the word "Rohingya". The two Muslim leaders who challenged this ethnocide and stood up for the Rohingya's own "imagined identity" were kicked out. Their crime? - frivolous charges of speaking to the press about the inquiry while others who also spoke to the media were left untouched. 

As to be expected, the report made no mention of how politics got in the way of establishing truths about the mass violence in Rakhine State. In fact, the commission sought to confirm the popular anti-Muslim racism without problematizing the recent growth of this increasingly virulent strain of Islamophobia and anti-Bengali sentiment across all indigenous national races of Myanmar. 

The commission did raise passing concern about the 969, a neo-Nazi movement ostensibly led by Buddhist monks from Myanmar's leading teaching monasteries, and its divisive impact on ethnic and social relations in society. But it fell far short of pointing out the need to take seriously the new neo-fascist turn in the country's well-known anti-Muslim, pro-Buddhist racism. The report's authors chose to describe the now world infamous 969 rather mildly as "a campaign among the Buddhist to defend their own faith and to encourage intra-Buddhist commerce and trade". 

All this is troubling but not unexpected. It was under the Religious Affairs Director-Generalship of Commission chair Dr Myo Myint that there was a proliferation of anti-Muslim quasi-religious publications, long before the previous crop of ruling generals allowed for greater freedom of press, assembly and speech. The leading voice of 969, Buddhist monk Wirathu, recently told the Associated Press that his views were formed as early as 2001. 

Sadly, nearly half of the commissioners are my old, and now former, friends. Their collective document is unmistakably Bama racist/Orientalist in orientation, treating both communities in the conflict with a typical popular Bama contempt and dislike. This is adding insult to injury for both parties in the conflict, namely the Rakhines and the Rohingya. 

The Rakhines are portrayed essentially as lazy natives who can not compete with the thrifty, business-savvy, hard-working "Bengalis" without the intervention of the state and its blood-based neo-fascist 1982 Citizenship Act. 

The Rohingya are described as elementary school children-like people who, having obtained commission members' hand-phone numbers from their Muslim contacts in Yangon, kept on calling the commission members to blabber on about their sufferings and whine about their grievances. 

These portrayals repeat a crucial racially charged popular narrative that turns out to be factually incorrect, namely that three Bengalis raped and brutally murdered a 28-year-old Rakhine Buddhist woman, the supposed first spark of the following pogroms. This was pointed out to me personally by a more honest commission member, Myanmar's most famous political comedian and former political prisoner, Zarganar. 

This rape case is vitally important because the commission identified it as a key trigger for anti-"Bengali" mobilization by Rakhine nationalists, politicians and parties, including some of the Rakhine members of the Inquiry Commission, including Aye Maung, a vet-cum-MP in Naypyidaw from the Rakhine National Development Party, an ultra-nationalist group that has claimed to be working for the "purification of Rakhine state". 

But the arrested and alleged rapists were officially registered as two Kaman Muslims and a Rakhine adopted by a Rohingya Muslim family in Pauk-taw Township. Zarganar, one of the five members who was one of the leading spokespersons for the commission at the press conference where the report was launched, told this writer in no uncertain terms that he interviewed the doctor in Rakhine state who performed the post mortem of the raped woman's corpse. 

According to this videotaped interview, the alleged Rakhine rape victim bore no sign of having been raped. Yes, she was brutally murdered and her jewelry was gone. But she was certainly not raped, recounted Zarganar, based on his one-on-one recorded interview with the doctor. The doctor was eventually forced by the authorities to sign the official post-mortem report that established the rape that did not take place. 

Then there was no mention of the "suicide in police custody" of one of the alleged rapists - Htet Htet, a non-Bengali adopted son of a Bengali family. Nor was there any mention of the fact that his freshly widowed wife was also found dead, allegedly having "drowned" in a local well. 

Was there foul play? It appears that Zarganar, the well-respected political comedian and dissident who went to jail four times since the 1988 pro-democracy uprisings crushed by the military, was compelled to put his name to the official commission report which contained statements and misinformation which he himself knows are patently and verifiably false. 

The entire report is riddled with inter-contradictions and inconsistencies that are not explained. For instance, the report raises the issue of the lack of or weak inter-agency coordination among the army, intelligence, civil administration, immigration, attorney general's office and Rakhine chief/prime minister's office. It discusses how and why the security forces and constitutive agencies only listened to direct orders from Naypyidaw. 

But the commission chose not to ask why Naypyidaw failed to issue orders to provide adequate measures to protect the targeted Rohingya communities. Instead, the National Defense and Intelligence Council (or Kar-lon in Burmese) did nothing to mobilize security forces to protect the Rohingya, troops which Thein Sein and his deputies knew would obey only direct orders from ministerial headquarters. 

Perhaps one silver living in the dark episode is that the report accurately states that local authorities in Rakhine State have absolutely no power to order security forces, including army, police, and border-control interagency troops, to do anything to quell mass violence. This was and still is something only Thein Sein's central government can do. 

Command questions

That begs the question: why did the union level leadership of Thein Sein and his deputies on the Council in Naypyidaw choose not to mobilize the troops to restore order while the same security troops were called in to firebomb sleeping Buddhist monks protesting a China-invested mining project at 2 am using canisters containing white phosphorous? Alas, this is a question that fell outside of the purview of the presidential commission. 

Furthermore, vague if not imaginary statistics are cited throughout the 186-page document without accompanying narratives or explanations. The commission did not even bother to account for its own official statistics from the government. The fact is that the greatest number of deaths and destruction were borne by the Rohingya. And yet a highly disproportionate number of the Rohingya vis-a-vis the Rakhine have been tried. 

In the first wave of Rohingya-Rakhine violence in June last year, 4,188 Rohingya homes were destroyed while the Rakhine suffered the loss of 1,150 homes. In the second wave of violence in October, 2,371 Rohingya homes were destroyed as opposed to only 42 homes that belonged to the Rakhine. And again, out of a total of 1,835 arrested in connection with the mass violence, 1,589 are Rohingya and only 246 are Rakhine. 

Perhaps the scholarly presidential investigators on the commission could advance and test a hypothesis that the economic productivity of Rakhine Buddhists (all Buddhists in Myanmar?) must be inversely correlated with the destructive capacity of the group. For the report orientalized the Rakhine as a low-productivity group, or more crudely, lazy natives. 

The commission's official statistic implies the awesome power of a small group of Rakhine - 246 to be exact - to destroy thousands of homes and dozens of mosques in about a dozen different towns and cities and make over 120,000 Rohingya refugees homeless, shelter-less, internally displaced persons in a span of just five months. 

If this number of Rakhine terrorizers, arsonists and slaughters does not seem quite convincing given the magnitude of death and devastation they had wrought throughout northern and southern Rakhine State, then who else aided and abetted the principal terrorizers among the Rakhine who wanted a Rakhine State only for the Rakhine? 

There is no mention in the report of a single case wherein any official, security or civil, was held accountable for his or her leadership failure, or worse, participation in the pogroms. According to Zarganar, his official request that the investigators be allowed unfettered access to all the important officials alive, past and present who have served in western Myanmar over the past 25 years was never granted. He told me that many of the officials were transferred to remote places after the commission was formed on August 17. 

So what is Naypyidaw trying to hide? That question, of course, also lied outside the mandated scope of the Presidential Inquiry Commission. 

The spread of rumors and hate-speech against Rohingya on social media was touched on as an important issue, and yet no attempt was made to point out that Thein Sein's spokespersons, Major Zaw Htay and Deputy Minister of Information Ye Htut, are internationally known figures who use social media to disseminate deliberately false news and engage in hate and fear-mongering. 

At the time of the crisis, Zaw Htay was spreading grossly inaccurate news, including that "a group of armed radical Muslims have entered Rakhine from [the] Bangladesh side". Meanwhile, Ye Htut spread official lies, including the notion that there was "no need for further provision of shelter for the Bengali IDPs because the government has provided them with everything for the coming rainy season". 

The report rightly recommends urgent provision of adequate shelter and other humanitarian assistance because of the dire, overcrowded IDP camps for 100,000-plus "Bengali". Echoing the International Crisis Group's monocausal explanation that communal violence often accompanies democratic openings, the report sees greater freedom of speech as a causal explanation for the spread of hate speech. 

The commission decided it was not worth noting that it purged U Nyunt Maung Shein and U Tin Maung Than, the two prominent and non-pliant Muslim members of the commission who were actually pushing for truths about the communal violence. That push obviously did not go down well with chairman Dr Myo Myint and Border Control Minister Lt-General Thein Htay. 

According to U Tin Maung Than, two days after a 15-minute heated phone conversation last autumn over what should be reported to commission patron Thein Sein and how frequently reporting should be done, he was expelled from the commission in the same manner he was appointed - that is, with no prior knowledge nor explanation. 

Chairman Myo Myint was on record saying to U Tin Maung Than that "the welfare and security of these people are not the commission's responsibility, nor do you need to send President Thein Sein important updates." Although Zarganar pushed to get access to crucial heads of security forces stationed in Rakhine State to conduct a proper inquiry, he later complained that both the commission's chairman and secretary did their best "to derail the inquiry". 

Inquiry commissions are generally not about seeking or finding incriminating evidence that will lead their commissioning presidents to the gallows. Thein Sein may be a liar with a straight face but he ain't dumb. Preemptively, the eight mandates outlined by Thein Sein in fact did not include any study of the role of the state, its institutions, or the responsibilities of the national leadership. 

Above all, the report simply reinforced the state-sponsored Rohingya ethnocide and chose to overlook the elephant in the room: the military-led state and its crucial role in the Rohingya ethnic cleansing. Instead of shedding light on the utter inaction of the characteristically trigger-happy Myanmar security forces, the commission focused instead on highlighting the need to modernize these already heavily and happily armed troops. 

Rigged recommendations

The first dozen recommendations in the four-page English-language Executive Summary of the report are all about security sector modernization, not security reform, while lip service is paid to the need to act in line with international human rights standards and Myanmar's international treaty obligations. 

The report recommends that the international community, spelled Washington, help to equip security forces with new toys, including CCTV capacities, assault speedboats, and various new weapons to deal with the cross-border problem of Bangladesh's "population explosion". Certainly, the US Pentagon would love to help bring the Tatmadaw (Myanmar's army) and other auxiliary units up to the human rights standards exercised at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay detention facilities in Cuba. 

For a report that bore the signatures of 24 technocrats, establishment historians and academics, wealthy local merchants and traders, socialites and religious leaders, the recommendations about security sector modernization are rather impressive, so much so that one wonders if the report was the commission's gift to the Ministry of Defense and its next generation of generals. 

For a report littered with references to "human rights" and "international legal norms", its contents shows no sign that commissioners even bothered to glance at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or the UN Conventions on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Nor did the commission deem it worthwhile to consult with either the research findings and reports from the Arakan Project or the National University of Galway's authoritative "Crimes Against Humanity in Western Burma". 

In fact, the commission considered the use of the term "ethnic cleansing" as part of an attempt to unduly internationalize local issues and an act of international nongovernmental organization (INGO) exaggeration. Or, perhaps, the commissioners felt human rights documentation was out of their professional depth without such training or an official political mandate. The commission must have known, however, that other non-native organizations such as Human Rights Watch were going to do an independent and more professional job of investigating the violence. 

Meanwhile, the commissioners seemed very much at ease when advocating "voluntary" population control of the Rohingya. The commissioners were of the view that this rapid procreation or "population explosion" among the people they insisted on calling "Bengalis" made worse the already acute sense of collective existential insecurity among the Rakhine. 

There is detectable patriotic sentiment in the reports finding that 80% of the fertile agricultural acreage in certain locations of Rakhine State are now in the hands of hard-working and thrifty "Bengali" agricultural workers and land-owners while landless and lazy Rakhine have fallen deeper into destitution. 

Even Myanmar's civil society, manufactured by the European Union and international donor funding, must be pleased with the commission's emphatic framing of the genocide as simply "communal violence". Alas, this is the civil society that refuses to call ethnic cleansing in their midst by its proper name. 

In the words of Aung Myo Min, a Myanmar human rights educator from the Human Rights Education Institute: "In such a sensitive situation, the use of the phrase 'ethnic cleansing' is unacceptable. Ethnic cleansing means eliminating other ethnic groups. This is not the case [in Rakhine State]." 

George Orwell, the inventor of the phrase "double-speak", worked in Myanmar during the colonial period in the 1920s. Orwell's ghost continues to roam in "democratic" Myanmar, possessing the dissidents, technocratic and intellectual mountebanks, ethnic nationality leaders, religious figures, human rights educators, and civil society leaders. In sum: Allah bad, Buddha good. 

Buzzword phrases such as "clean government", "good governance" and "transparency" perversely litter the commission's report. No doubt the new policy of this soon-to-be clean government will be to approach the issue of "communal violence" holistically, including through the preventative use of the "weapons of conflict resolution" the report recommends the international community provide to Myanmar's ethnocide-complicit security forces. 

A truly independent inquiry would have recommended the establishment of an early warning system of future genocidal waves. It also would have recommended more empirical research that probed the deeper causes of last year's "communal violence" in Rakhine State. The commission's varnished findings suggests the need for a new resolution research center, located perhaps near the Rohingya mass graves which Human Rights Watch uncovered. 

Scholars in the field of genocide studies have established that extraordinary mass violence, including ethnic cleansings, are seldom simply domestic or internal events in nation states. Rather, they frequently have an international dimension. These dark events generally take place in an international environment where external players are more concerned with their own strategic and commercial interests than large scale human sufferings, be they in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, and now Myanmar. 

Donor governments of the pro-human rights West have reacted with hostility to Human Rights Watch's characterization of their newfound business and strategic partners in Myanmar as "ethnic cleansers" and "criminals against humanity". Thein Sein's inquiry, on the other hand, is sprinkled with the liberal discourses of conflict resolution, humanitarian management, and national reconciliation. It is thus no doubt more palatable to the international community of diplomats, investors and military strategists determined to cozy up to his self-proclaimed "democratic" regime. 

If anything, the Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing Inquiry Commission report offers a hint of things to come out of Thein Sein's Myanmar Peace Center, into which foreign donors have already poured millions of dollars to pursue state-sponsored "peace" with the Kachin, Karen, Shan, Chin and other ethnic victims of over 50 years of state-sponsored terror. One can only hope that these ethnic communities are not given similar racist treatment as that suffered by the Rohingya. 

Maung Zarni is a Burmese activist blogger (www.maungzarni.com) and visiting fellow of Civil Society and Human Security Research at the London School of Economics. 

Sunday News

May 1, 2013

NASHUA -- They are stateless: persecuted in their own country, shunned in others. Most Americans have never heard of them.

But a small circle of refugee women has been quietly weaving a new life here for their families and, perhaps, their people.

The members of A Woven Thread meet in a converted mill building on Franklin Street, braiding ribbons of silk into fabric necklaces they can sell to support themselves.

They've sold some necklaces already - and they've had the thrill of seeing women wearing their creations on the streets of Nashua. "We can see by that the future," said Najirah Arif, a member of the group.

The women are Rohingya refugees, a Muslim minority not recognized as citizens in their native Myanmar, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees.

Just last week, the group Human Rights Watch issued a report that found recent attacks against the Rohingya community in Myanmar, including massacres and rapes, "amount to crimes against humanity carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing."

This is what these new residents of Nashua have fled.

Najirah Arif and her twin sister Najihah came here with their parents and siblings a year ago from Malaysia. The twins, who are 23, were born there after their parents fled Myanmar, formerly Burma, decades earlier.

"We are not accepted in any country," explained Najirah.

That includes Malaysia, her sister added: "Even though we are born there, we are not accepted as citizens."

That meant they couldn't legally attend school.

But the twins learned their nearly flawless English by watching television and working with a tutor, a schoolteacher who used to sneak them into her school so they could study with her students.

Their mother, Zarina Arif, who is also part of A Woven Thread, wanted more for her children. She doesn't speak English, but with her daughters translating, she explained why she wanted to bring the family to America.

"I wanted you to be educated," she said. "To be somebody."

The family applied to the United Nations for refugee status; it took seven years for approval.

For many Rohingya, the situation is desperate and some turn to crime, Najirah said. Their father, who died recently, was too ill to work. "But we're lucky because my mom could go to people's houses to wash their clothes."

"There's a belief in our culture: When you feed your children with bad money, your children will turn out the same," she said.

The women chat happily in Malay as they work, fingers flying through the multi-colored silk. They jokingly refer to Katie Berube as "our chairman."

Berube works for Lutheran Social Services, which resettles new refugees through its Services for New Americans program. She just graduated from Springfield College, majoring in social work.

Berube and a colleague from LSS, Beth Seremet, wanted to help the Rohingya women start their own cooperative as part of the resettlement process. 

They found a wholesaler in Maine who buys yarn from women's cooperatives in India and Nepal, and they worked with the Rohingya women to design the necklaces.

Just last week they registered their new business with the state as A Woven Thread LLC.

After the discrimination and persecution the Rohingya have experienced in so many places, Najirah said, she was surprised at how friendly people are here. "It's very different from Malaysia," she said.

They had learned to hide their ethnicity, Najihah said. "They look down on you."

"We've never been accepted, even in our own country. We really hope they accept us here," said her sister. "So far, they really do."

But after the news that the accused Boston Marathon bombers were Muslim, the women said they hid inside, afraid it would again mean retribution and violence against them. "I was quite scared," Najihah said.

When she talked to Katie Berube, she was surprised that Berube had no anger towards her and the rest of the Rohingya families, she said. It was more evidence that things are different here in America than other places they've lived.

Berube looked stricken when she heard the story. "That makes me so sad," she said softly. 

The women of A Woven Thread have big dreams. They hope to open a shop soon to sell their wares, including their latest product: purses made from recycled newspapers.

Najirah Arif wants to go to college and become a social worker; Najihah wants to be a nurse. "We've been helped, so I want other people to be helped too," Najirah said.

That's also what they're doing with the fabric they get from women in Nepal and India, they said. "They're making yarn out of saris," Najirah said. "We're making necklaces out of yarn. It's kind of like a circle."

They plan to give a certain percentage of their profits to charity. "We're going to keep the circle going," said Najihah.

So what do the men in their families think of their enterprise? Najirah said when her brother-in-law first saw the necklaces, he was dubious. But when the money started coming in, he changed his tune: "Make more."

The women of A Woven Thread and their work will be featured at a reception at A&E Roastery and Cafe on Route 101A in Amherst this Friday at 6 p.m. 

"It's the first time you can share your stories and tell the community what you're about," Berube tells the group.

Najirah smiles; that reminds her of a saying in Malaysia:

"If you don't open the box, you don't know what's inside."

Press TV

May 1, 2013

Press TV has conducted an interview with James Jennings, the president of the Conscience International from Atlanta to shed more light on the issue of Muslims in Myanmar.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview. 

Press TV: Mr. Jennings, why is the international community silent on the issue of Muslims in Myanmar? What makes this most persecuted Muslim minority left defend for themselves? 

Even we see the police force there standing idly and watching in cold blood how bad these people are being treated by others? 

Jennings: This is a major problem, it is a long-term problem, it is one that Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations has said is one of the greatest humanitarian problems if not the greatest one in the world and the reason is this, that the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine province of Myanmar are people who are stateless, not only are they stateless but they are really unwanted in the country and as far as Bangladesh is concerned they also do not want them to return back to Bangladesh. 

Many of them have been there for hundreds of years. 

Now the situation is hardening, the people who are the majority group in the country are very determined to suppress the Rohingya Muslims and this, I think, is a very ominous turn of affairs.

Press TV: Of course, I mean the ultimate question that comes to mind is that what can be done to address this issue? I mean is there any practical solution to this? 

Jennings: There is a very practical solution and that is that the international community can act in concert. 

Of course the United Nations has a role but just today I saw, in the most recent Foreign Affairs Magazine, a long advertising section touting the benefits of doing business with Myanmar. 

Myanmar is emerging as one of the most important countries in Asia, it will be as important politically as Vietnam was in the 60s and 70s. 

There are great business opportunities there but there are also great conflicts in the country and the North for example, their war with the Kachins is ongoing and there have been other conflicts with the Chins and the Karens and other tribal groups but this particular problem, I think, even though the number of people killed and the increasing pressure on the Rohingya community is terrible. 

This is very close to a genocidal attempt and must not be countenanced. Fortunately the government has not taken that stance yet but they have recommended stronger military means.

So I think that this conflict deserves the attention of the world and it can be alleviated, I think in part, if there is a determined and concerted effort on the part of the international community.

Associated Press

May 1, 2013

OKKAN, Myanmar — Buddhist mobs hurling bricks overran a pair of mosques and torched more than 100 homes in central Myanmar, killing one person and injuring at least nine more in the latest anti-Muslim violence to shake the Southeast Asian nation. 

Terrified Muslim families who fled the assaults around Okkan, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Yangon, could be seen late Tuesday hiding in forests along roads and crouching in paddy fields afterward. Some, in a state of shock, wept as their houses burned in the night and young men with buckets futilely tried to douse the flames.

The unrest was the first reported since late March, when similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila, further north, killing at least 43 people. It underscored the failure of reformist President Thein Sein’s government to curb increasing attacks on minority Muslims in a nation struggling to emerge from half a century of oppressive military rule.

Residents said as many as 400 Buddhists armed with bricks and sticks rampaged through Okkan on Tuesday afternoon. They targeted Muslim shops and ransacked two mosques; about 20 riot police were later deployed to guard one of them, a single-story structure, which had its doors broken and windows smashed.

The worst-hit areas were three outlying villages that form part of the town. Each village contained at least 60 mostly Muslim homes; all were torched. Columns of smoke and leaping flames could be seen rising from burning homes in the villages as a team of police approached, pausing to take pictures with their cellphones.

Thet Lwin, a deputy commissioner of police for the region, said one of the 10 people wounded Tuesday died overnight.

He said police have so far detained 18 attackers who destroyed 157 homes and shops in the town of Okkan and three outlying villages, which were quiet Wednesday with around 300 police on guard.

Police gave no details on who was behind the assault. Khin Maung Than, a Muslim in Okkan, said he recognized some of the attackers but many faces were unfamiliar.

The mobs smashed his shop, stealing watches, breaking glass, and leaving overturned lamps and furniture scattered across the floor.

He said he climbed to the roof to escape and then took refuge with Buddhist neighbors who hid him. Returning to the shop that doubles as his home, he said: “I am speechless. I have never experienced such riots in my life.”

The 60-year-old, who is married to a Buddhist woman, said he had heard of last month’s violence in Meikhtila, but: “I didn’t realize we’d face this because our town was very peaceful.”

His wife, San Htay, said police in the town were quickly overwhelmed. They tried to disperse the crowds, she said, and several were injured in the mayhem.

“I can’t explain how desperately sad I am now. My heart beats so fast because of fear,” she told The Associated Press.

Stopping the spread of sectarian violence has proven a major challenge for Thein Sein’s government since it erupted in western Rakhine state last year. Human rights groups have recently accused his administration of failing to crack down on Buddhist extremists as violence has spread closer to the economic capital, Yangon, at times overwhelming riot police who have stood by as machete-wielding crowds attacked Muslims and their property.

Muslims account for about 4 percent of the nation’s roughly 60 million people, and during the long era of authoritarian rule, military governments twice drove out hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, while smaller clashes occurred elsewhere. About one third of the nation’s population consists of ethnic minority groups, and most have waged wars against the government for autonomy.

Last week, Human Rights Watch issued the most comprehensive and detailed account yet of the violence in Rakhine state. The report accused authorities — including Buddhist monks, local politicians and government officials, and state security forces — of fomenting an organized campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against a Muslim minority known as the Rohingya. Hundreds of people were killed there, and some 125,000 people, mostly Muslims, remain displaced with large swathes of the state effectively segregated along sectarian lines.

On Monday, a government-appointed commission investigating the Rakhine violence issued proposals to ease tensions there— including doubling the number of security forces in the volatile region and introducing family planning programs to stem population growth among minority Muslims.

___

Associated Press video journalist Raul Gallego Abellan contributed to this report.

Amnesty International

May 1, 2013

Recommendations in a government-backed report investigating last year's devastating violence in Myanmar fail to effectively tackle discrimination against Rohingya Muslims and could trigger more human rights abuses, Amnesty International said. 

The government-appointed Rakhine Commission this week issued a briefing on its investigation into violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state, western Myanmar, which first erupted in June 2012. The clashes have resulted in a considerable loss of life and left thousands displaced. 

The Commission, which did not include any Rohingya on its panel, called on the government to “double” the presence of security forces in Rakhine state, including the Border Security Force (NaSaKa) 

“There are some positive steps in this report but also several flaws. Deploying more security forces without first suspending -- pending further investigation -- those who may have been involved in human rights violations during last year's violence could fuel further abuses," said Isabelle Arradon, Amnesty International's Asia Deputy Director.

"Comprehensive reform of the security forces, including the establishment of robust accountability mechanisms, adequate vetting systems and training on relevant international standards, is also essential."

Since June 2012, the NaSaKa, police and army have arbitrarily detained hundreds of men and boys, mostly from Muslim-dominated areas, and subjected many of them to torture and other ill-treatment. 

There are also consistent reports that security forces have failed to protect members of the Muslim community, particularly the Rohingya minority, from attacks. In some cases, security forces have used unnecessary and excessive force that has led to deaths and injuries.

The Commission did recommend the establishment of a Truth-Finding Committee, and stressed the need to ensure that those who break the law are “prosecuted”. 

“A Truth-Finding Committee is a positive step, as long as it is part of an independent investigation to determine responsibility for the violence and its findings are released to the public," said Isabelle Arradon.

"But such a commission should not bar or replace criminal justice, or reparation for crimes under international law.” 

The Commission said citizenship claims by Rohingya, who are referred to in the report as "Bengali", should be addressed in a “transparent and accountable manner.” 

However, it failed to call for a review of the 1982 Citizenship Law, which has rendered Rohingya Muslims effectively stateless.

"Under international human rights standards no one must be left stateless. Anything short of granting the Rohingya equal access to citizenship is in itself a form of discrimination which should be urgently addressed,” said Isabelle Arradon

The Commission also called for several measures to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Rakhine state, recognizing that the humanitarian response “still has several gaps”. 

According to UN estimates, some 140,000 people remain displaced across Rakhine state with limited access to bare necessities like food and medical care. 

Conditions are expected to worsen during the monsoon season, which starts in May, as heavy rains threaten to flood certain internally displaced person (IDP) camps.

“It is deeply concerning that humanitarian organizations still do not have unfettered access to all populations in need of aid, including those living in remote areas or unregistered camps," said Arradon.

“Immediate arrangements must be made for the displaced living in flood-prone areas to avoid a humanitarian crisis with the approaching rainy season.”

The Commission recommended that the de facto segregation of the Rakhine and Rohingya populations – enforced following the violence – should continue until tensions between the communities subside.

“While there is obviously a need to restore calm, the authorities must also consult internally displaced persons and develop a plan to facilitate their voluntary return home. Segregation and IDP camps cannot be a long-term solution,” said Isabelle Arradon. 

The Commission, which was established in August 2012, comprises 27 stakeholders including Muslims, but does not feature a representative from the Rohingya community.

The Peninsula Qatar

May 1, 2013

DOHA: Qatar Charity (QC) will donate $2m (QR7.3m) in relief funds for the displaced Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. 

The aid comes following an agreement signed between Qatar Charity (QC) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday, which will directly benefit some 10,000 people in the region. 

The QC donation is part of the humanitarian assistance worth $17m that has been provided by the UNHCR to provide shelter to the displaced. 

The agreement was signed by Imran Rida, UNHCR regional representative to the GGC, and Yusuf bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of QC in Doha. 

The UNHCR project will build 1,360 housing units, two multi-purpose facilities, 11 polyclinics, 115 kitchens and 18 stores. 

“Qatar has donated at a time when the people of Myanmar desperately need aid to build roofs over their heads to protect themselves in coming rainy season,” Rida said. He refused to comment on a question about the reluctance of the Myanmar government to allow foreign humanitarian aid into the country. 

“I am not authorised to speak on politics. My job is to deliver humanitarian aid to the displaced persons,” Rida added. 

The financial donations will also see construction of temporary shelters and distribution of food. 

“We are sending our aid in collaboration with UNHCR and as per the contract a representative from QC will be there, so there is no need to worry about the delivery of funds,” Al Kuwari said. 

“QC is keen to promote partnerships with international humanitarian organisations and to provide aid to refugees and displaced persons around the world, especially in countries like Myanmar,” Al Kuwari added. 

Qatar Charity had also signed an agreement with UNHCR in June last year, as per which the organisation provided QR1.1m to support Rohingya Muslims.

May 1, 2013

Press TV

May 1, 2013

Mobs of Buddhist extremists in Myanmar have attacked at least two mosques and set hundreds of Muslims’ houses on fire injuring at least 10 people. 

The assaults took place in Okkan, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Yangon, the country’s former capital, on Tuesday afternoon. 

Muslim families escaped and hid in forests as their homes burned. 

According to some of the residents, as many as 400 Buddhists extremists armed with bricks and sticks attacked Okkan, targeting Muslim shops and ransacking two mosques. 

Twenty riot police were later dispatched to guard one of the mosques. 

Three outlying villages were hit the worst in the attacks, with at least 60 houses torched in each village. 

There were no immediate reports of any deaths, but regional police chief Win Naing said at least 10 people, mostly rescued from fires, were injured. 

The violence that originally targeted Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar is beginning to spread to other parts of the country, where Muslims who have been granted citizenship are now being attacked, according to the website burmamuslims.org. 

About 800,000 Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine are deprived of citizenship rights due to the policy of discrimination that has denied them the right of citizenship and made them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion, and displacement. 

The Myanmar government has so far refused to extricate the stateless Rohingyas from their citizenship limbo, despite international pressure to give them a legal status. 

Rohingya Muslims have faced torture, neglect, and repression in Myanmar for many years. 

Hundreds of Rohingyas are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in recent attacks by extremists who call themselves Buddhists. 

The extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and have set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine. Myanmar army forces allegedly provided the fanatics containers of petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who are then forced to flee. 

Myanmar’s government has been accused of failing to protect the Muslim minority. 

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also come under fire for her stance on the violence. The Nobel Peace laureate has refused to censure the Myanmar military for its persecution of the Rohingyas. 

Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century. 

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued separate statements, calling on Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremists.

Yadana Htun

Associated Press

April 30, 2013

OKKAN, Myanmar - Anti-Muslim violence flared anew in central Myanmar on Tuesday as angry mobs destroyed two mosques and set fire to hundreds of homes and shops in unrest that injured at least 10 people in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Associated Press journalists who travelled to the area, about 70 miles (110 kilometres) north of the commercial capital of Yangon, saw terrified Muslim families who fled their homes, hiding in dense vegetation. Many, in a state of shock, cried as fires burned in the night.

Two mosques in the town of Okkan were damaged and looted. Columns of smoke rose outside Okkan, where regional police chief Win Naing said mobs launched arson attacks in three villages.

He said there were no immediate reports of deaths in the unrest, but at least 10 people had been injured.

Stopping the spread of anti-Muslim violence that rocked central Myanmar last month and western Rakhine state last year has proven a serious challenge for President Thein Sein's government. Human rights groups accuse his administration of failing to crack down on extremists, with overwhelmed police standing by as machete-wielding mobs attacked Muslims and their property.

Muslims make up about 4 per cent of the nation's roughly 60 million people.

Myanmar's Rohingya suffer brutal state crime because of deeply entrenched and unchecked Islamophobia, writes author.

Abu Tahay is a small passionate man who has something important to say. He has said it to David Cameron, to William Hague, to Hugo Swire and now here in the single air-conditioned room of a small local grass roots organisation (optimistically named "Smile") in Mingalar Taung Nyunt township in Yangon, he is saying it to me. It is a desperate story and he is well-versed in it. 

It is the story of the Rohingya: rendered stateless at the hands of the military junta, brutalised by armed Buddhist nationalists, abused, dehumanised and displaced by the current Myanmar state and now fleeing the country which refuses to recognise them. 

Bare life in Arakan 

The Rohingya are an ethnic group with ancient traditions in Myanmar and a continuous physical presence there for at least past two centuries. But they are defined by the Myanmar state as Bangladeshi nationals with no right to the privileges of Myanmar citizenship. 

Abu Tahay, chair of the Union National Development Party, shows me the historical evidence which positions the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar before the military's pre-colonial citizenship cut-off date of 1823. He shows me research from the Australian National University which identifies 8th century Rohingya stone monuments, in the Myanmar state of Arakan (also known as Rakhine). It is compelling evidence and he leaves nothing out. 

On its basis, the Rohingya are surely entitled to Myanmar citizenship and ethnic minority recognition. Instead, theirs is a "bare life" in which every aspect of social and political life is restricted and diminished. 

The "reforming" government of Thein Sein has shown no sign of affording the Rohingya anything but continued persecution, dehumanisation, discrimination and violence. Unconscionable then, that the International Crisis Group chose to honour Thein Sein with its peace award this year. 

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

According to Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project and Rohingya expert who visited the camps, "They are jails where people cannot even lie down." There are also an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Rohingya refugees in detention camps across the border in Bangladesh and another 180,000 in Thai detention centres. 

State crime and Islamophobia 

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

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

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

The cruelty and ferocity of the recent violence has been wrenchingly captured in photographs and footage of charred bodies, blazing villages, displaced people, IDP detention camps, armed monks and Buddhist nationalists. Across the country, the violence is being reinforced by the "969" anti-Muslim campaign. Led by the militant racist monk, Wirathu, the campaign is gaining traction with local groups across the country that are holding meetings and producing CDs, pamphlets and stickers in an effort to persuade the Buddhist majority to boycott Muslim businesses. 

According to Andrew Selth, these anti-Muslim riots are not simply a manifestation of the new freedom Myanmar is experiencing (as some would argue). Rather Selth contends that religious tension has always been a feature of the Myanmar political landscape: 

"Full rights for Muslims were enshrined in the 1947 constitution, but in 1960 Buddhism was made Burma's state religion and after the 1962 coup the military regime tended to equate Muslims with colonial rule and the exploitation of Burma by foreigners. Muslims were not permitted to run for public office, join the security forces or work as civil servants. The number of mosques was restricted, some Muslim cemeteries were destroyed and a number of madrassas were closed." 

Chris Lewa concurs. "Buddhist nationalism," she says, "means that there is strong anti-Muslim feeling here - they are frightened by the change and fearful of losing traditional superiority." Thein Nyunt, chair of the New National Democracy Party, made no concessions in his defence of the current 1982 law when he declared: 

"The citizenship law is intended to protect our race; by not allowing those with mixed blood from making political decisions [for the country], so the law is very important for the preservation of our country." 

Back at the "Smile" office, as our interview draws to a close, Abu Tahay shows me the statistical data he has painstakingly gathered and meticulously compiled on the current abuses suffered by his people. The arrest figures, deaths in custody, deaths in detention camps and rape statistics - all derived from Arakan court records and information drawn from victims' families - are further evidence of his people's anguish. 

He believes it is this kind of proof that will persuade the international community to challenge the Myanmar government on the question of its citizenship laws. This evidence is every bit as - indeed probably more credible than anything produced by the Myanmar authorities and clearly demonstrates that the Rohingya are victims of systematic and enduring state crimes. 

But Abu Tahay's struggle for recognition is dictated by and predicated upon the terms of the former racist Junta. If the Rohingya can prove and in turn convince the authorities of their ancient right to citizenship and win their place at the Myanmar minority table they will win something - but they will not win a victory against Myanmar racism or protection from the violence preached by hate-filled Buddhist monks like Wirathu. Unless racism is defeated, the violence we have witnessed against the Rohingya, the wider Muslim community and other minorities will be sure to continue. 

Inside Myanmar, the lack of discussion surrounding the Rohingya Muslims reveals how deeply ingrained and institutionalised Myanmar Buddhist nationalism is. Why are many of the most courageous Myanmar human rights activists, many of them former political prisoners, so unwilling to engage in support of the Rohingya? 

One such activist from 88 Generation told me, "The Rohingya is not our ethnic group. Bengalis use the label 'Burmese Rohingya' as a passport for asylum… we need to examine who should be a citizen… but it will be difficult to support citizenship. If, however, the Rohingya ask for their human rights, we are ready to support." 

Aware of the paradox, but unwilling to elaborate further, he pushed our conversation on to other topics. In my time in Myanmar, this was a common and unsettling experience. 

Challenging an icon 

But it is Aung San Suu Kyi's refusal to speak out against the crimes endured by the Rohingya that has provided cover for the international community's failure to intervene. At the outset of the recent waves of anti-Muslim violence, Myanmar's icon of freedom and democracy was at one with the military-backed government in her singular calls for the restoration of law and order by - it must be noted - the very same state security forces which so terrorised the entire Myanmar population for five brutal decades. 

Rather than stand up against Buddhist-led racism, she has pegged her colours firmly, not to the oppressed Rohingya, nor to the increasing victims of Islamophobia, but to her former military jailors, for whom she shares a "great fondness" and whom she now charges with the task of implementing the rule of law. 

To this, Abu Tahay asks, "But how will the rule of law be reinforced? Why does the government never take action against racist police, the NaSaKa border security forces, the Rakhine [Arakan] nationalist para-military forces who are committing the violence?" 

His question is perhaps the most pertinent challenge to Myanmar's ruling elite. Suu Kyi insists that questions of justice cannot be addressed until Myanmar's constitution is amended and the rule of law is adopted. Why this is so, is puzzling: surely, building a just society requires, at the very least, the immediate demand for justice when injustice abounds. 

Suu Kyi's willful silence on racism in Myanmar suggests only a form of cynical politicking. Until the holy grail of constitutional reform - which would free her to run for President - is within grasp, she is apparently happy to side with a regime which uses brutal force to suppress dissent (see the Letpandaung Copper Mine protests) and engages in the ethnic cleansing of an abject group of Myanmar people whose demands are simply to be recognised as such and treated with dignity. 

Racist fault-lines 

Racism is Myanmar's political fault-line and while the epicentre might reasonably be understood as the ethnic cleansing of Myanmar's Rohingya community in Arakan, the central fracture itself must be understood as institutionalised Islamophobia, deeply embedded and historically informed. 

There is little dispute that the Rohingya Muslims have suffered the most pervasive and brutal of recent state-sponsored crimes, but to focus only on the Rohingya is to fragment the racist violence experienced by the whole Myanmar Muslim community and to be drawn into arcane legal debates around the rights and wrongs of immigration and citizenship policy which pertain most specifically to the Rohingya. 

History forces us to move beyond the immediacy of the Rohingya in order to challenge the more pervasive violence corrupting Myanmar's transition from dictatorship. 

Abu Tahay's faith in the British political elite is touching. "They were very supportive," he tells me about the meeting with David Cameron and other UK government representatives in April 2012. I am sure they were. In the comfortable surrounds of the British Ambassador's Residence in Yangon, it would have been impolite to be anything less. 

But Cameron, Hague and Swire have done nothing at all to help the Rohingya, nor are they likely to. Their signatures were glaringly absent from the December 11, 2012, and April 4, 2013, House of Commons Early Day Motions, condemning the Myanmar government for its treatment of the Rohingya and other Muslim minorities. 

For the moment, the Rohingya must rely on the moral force of their cause. But while there is more economic and political mileage in doing business with their oppressors, the British government will continue to pay only lip service to Abu Tahay and the Islamophobia that underpins the relentless persecution of his community. 

Tahay's stateless people continue to live in cruel isolation with few friends. And Tahay is growing tired, "I don't have the inner strength that's why we need the international community," he says quietly. 

Penny Green is Professor of Law at King's College London and Director of the International State Crime Initiative.