By Reazul Bashar,

bdnews24.com

September 20, 2017

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has presented a six-point proposal regarding the Rohingya crisis, including demands to return the refugees to Myanmar and an end to ‘state propaganda’ that labelled the ethnic group as ‘Bengalis’.

Hasina made the proposal at a meeting of the OIC Contact Group at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday and urged the OIC countries to unite to tackle the crisis.

“Today our Muslim brothers and sisters in Myanmar are faced with ‘ethnic cleansing’,” she said. 

“The ongoing military operations by the Myanmar authorities have created havoc in the Rakhine State”

The Bangladesh prime minister’s other proposals included an immediate end to atrocities against Rohingya Muslims, the creation of ‘safe zones’ in Myanmar for the protection of civilians, the immediate and unconditional implementation of the recommendations put forward by the Kofi Annan Commission, and urgent humanitarian assistance for the refugees from OIC countries until they can return to Myanmar.

Hasina is currently attending the 72nd General Assembly of the United Nations, which began on Sept 19 and will continue until Sept 25.

The meeting of world leaders began soon after militant attacks in the border state of Rakhine on Aug 25 triggered a crackdown by the Myanmar military which has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas to cross the border into Bangladesh.

Over 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since the crackdown began, which Hasina called ‘the largest exodus of Rohingyas of all time’. UNICEF estimates nearly 60 percent of the refugees are children.

If the situation in Rakhine state persists, UN agencies estimate the total number of refugees entering Bangladesh may hit one million.

The UN has called the incident a ‘textbook case of ethnic cleansing’.

Hasina spoke of her own visit to the refugee camps at the OIC meeting and attempted to highlight the ‘grave suffering, particularly of women and children’. She urged OIC nations to visit Bangladesh and see the situation for themselves.

She criticised Myanmar for claiming Rohingyas to be ‘illegal migrants’ from Bangladesh.

“The historical records suggest that the Rohingyas have been living in Rakhine State for centuries.”

The Rohingya Muslims are being forced out in a planned and organised manner, Hasina said. She referred to the minority’s exclusion from the list of Myanmar’s recognised ethnic groups, the denial of their right to citizenship in 1982 and their confinement to camps for internally displaced peoples.

“We have continued our diplomatic efforts to return all the Rohingyas to their homeland,” the prime minister said.

“But Myanmar is not responding to our calls. You may have also seen in the media that Myanmar is laying landmines along their stretch of border to stop return of Rohingyas to their homeland.”

She urged the OIC countries to unite and resolve the crisis before it is too late. Bangladesh is ready to join any joint initiative on the issue, she said.

Hasina will speak on the Rohingya issue in her General Assembly address on Sept 21. She will meet with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres for bilateral talks afterwards.

By James Griffiths

CNN

September 19, 2017

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi gave a much-anticipated address Tuesday on the ongoing crisis following the exodus of than 400,000 minority Rohingya Muslims from the country. 

Speaking for over 30 minutes in English, it's the first time Suu Kyi has addressed the situation in northern Rakhine State or the growing international criticism of her and her government. 

However, many of the claims made in her speech are somewhat dubious, with some even appearing to contradict the findings of an official report commissioned by the government and compiled by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

'We want to find out why this exodus is happening' 

Suu Kyi's protestations that the government does not know the root causes of the crisis are peculiar, especially as she repeatedly referenced the Annan report, the Final Report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

The report, released in August, identified several key issues, including the lack of citizenship for stateless Rohingya Muslims as well as socio-economic challenges facing Rakhine, and police and military action in the state. 

Following attacks on border police posts in October 2016, the report said, "subsequent military and police operations led to tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing across the border to Bangladesh." 

"While Myanmar has every right to defend its own territory, a highly militarized response is unlikely to bring peace to the area," the report said. 

"Unless concerted action -- led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society -- is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalisation, which will further deepen the chronic poverty that afflicts Rakhine State," Annan said in a statement. 

UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, has said the situation in Myanmar seems like a "textbook case of ethnic cleansing," a claim which has been repeated by multiple human rights groups.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published damning reports on the causes of the exodus, including accusations the Myanmar military has deliberately burned Rohingya villages in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against the minority. 

They backed up this conclusion with satellite imagery of fires, photos and videos from the ground, and witness testimony of human rights abuses by the Myanmar authorities. 

'Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny'

Suu Kyi said she is aware of the "world's attention" focused on Myanmar presently, but said her government "does not fear international scrutiny."

"If you are interested in joining us in our endeavors, please let us know," she added. "We can arrange for you to visit these areas and to ask (those who have stayed) why they have not fled, why they have chosen to remain in their villages."

While the situation may change following Suu Kyi's speech, access to Rakhine State has been heavily restricted to media, human rights groups, and diplomats. 

A tightly government-controlled media trip to Rakhine state was organized earlier this month, but permits for journalists to visit the area independently and interview people without official interference have been next to impossible to come by. 

Amnesty International has accused the government of denying aid workers access to the state, while in January UN special rapporteur on human rights Yanghee Lee was prevented from visiting some parts of the state for "security reasons." 

Doctors Without Borders said it had been providing services to displaced people within Rakhine, "but international staff have not been granted travel authorizations to visit the health facilities since August, whilst national staff have been too afraid to go to work following remarks by Myanmar officials accusing NGOs of colluding with (militant groups)." 

In December, Kofi Annan also appeared to criticize the government's denial of access to Rakhine to aid groups and other NGOs. 

'The great majority of Rakhines in the state have not joined the exodus'

Rakhine State has a population of around 3.1 million, some one million of which are Rohingya Muslims. 

The UN estimates that over 400,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25. They joined around one million Rohingya already in the country who traveled there during previous periods of unrest. 

Earlier this month, the government said 176 out of 471, or 37.4% of all Rohingya villages were empty of people, and an additional 34 villages were "partially abandoned." During her speech, Suu Kyi said, "50% of the villages of Muslims are intact."

Suu Kyi did not use the word "Rohingya" in her speech to describe Muslims living in Rakhine, so it is difficult to ascertain whether she is referring to the state's entire population, or specifically the Rohingya population the UN and others say have been disproportionally affected by recent violence. 

"Rohingya" is a politically charged term in Myanmar and one the government has repeatedly refused to endorse.

The only time Suu Kyi said the word during her speech was when she referred to the ARSA militant group -- the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. 

"She chooses to use the word in relation to a terrorist group, that means that is the only identity that Rohingya will be attached to, from her perspective and she hopes from the international perspective," said Penny Green, a professor of law at Queen Mary University of London.

'All people (in Rakhine) have access to education and health care services'

Suu Kyi's claims Rohingya have access to the same services as their non-Muslim neighbors is contradicted by the Annan commission's report which found Muslims, in particular internally displaced persons, are "deprived of freedom of movement." 

"Movement restrictions have a wide range of detrimental effects, including reduced access to education, health and services, strengthened communal segregation, and reduced economic interaction," the report said. 

Moreover, it found that "access to health is particularly low within the Muslim community in the northern and central parts of the state. In some areas, Muslims face discriminative obstacles that prevent available lifesaving services from being accessed." 

Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy who has visited internally displaced person camps within Myanmar, told CNN the population there "don't have the same level of access at all to anything."

'No clearance operations' since September 5

In late August, Rohingya militants attacked and killed 12 security officers, according to Myanmar's state media, which kicked off the latest round of violence.

Human rights groups and other observers say those attacks were responded to with a major military and security operation that included helicopter attacks and the burning of Rohingya villages. Refugees have also told CNN non-Muslim groups were armed and encouraged to attack their Muslim neighbors. 

Government efforts to "restore the situation to normalcy" are succeeding, Suu Kyi said. "Since the fifth of September, there have been no armed clashes and there have been no clearance operations." 

However, satellite imagery examined by Amnesty International appears to show more than a dozen burned villages and fires since that date. 

Human Rights Watch said 62 villages were torched between August 25 and September 14. 

CNN's Bex Wright and Josh Berlinger contributed reporting.

By Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart

The Guardian

September 19, 2017

Blame for the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar is very easily traceable to British Colonial times.

By Salma Yaqoob 

Al Jazeera

September 19, 2017

Condemnation of the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing being carried out against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is growing around the world, with the Dalai Lama, the Pope, Nobel Laureates and world leaders from many countries calling for an end to hostilities.

There is no easy way to end the suffering there, but it is imperative that the world speaks out as one against such atrocities, yet the UK government's voice has barely been heard at all. Of all the countries that should be playing a role in protecting the vulnerable Muslim minority people in Myanmar, the UK should be leading efforts, as blame for the conflict in those lands is very easily traceable back to British Colonial times.

Even without knowing the dark secrets of British involvement, people are horrified about what is happening in Myanmar, with hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes by violent vigilantes, either led by or with help from the army and stories of rapes and murder commonplace, alongside the dramatic footage of burning villages. The hatred which has been stirred up by nationalists is all too obvious in the TV reports and the Islamophobia that has been created by (among others) Ashin Wirathu, a monk who calls himself the "Buddhist Bin Laden", is truly frightening.

If the UK and other western countries do not tackle this and condemn the attacks on a Muslim minority people, this inaction will again be seized upon as evidence of the West's hatred of Islam by extremists with another agenda. They will do nothing to help the Rohingya but will use their name for propaganda and recruiting more fighters for their cause, just as they have with previous examples of Muslims being persecuted.

The Rohingya have been living in those lands for over two hundred years, but resentment over the internal displacement of Buddhists stems back to 1826 when Britain annexed the part of Myanmar where most Rohingya Muslims live today. Bengali Muslims arrived in large numbers to become labourers and administrators for the British, but it is not the colonists who are blamed for this in today's nationalist narrative, but the descendants of these migrant workers.

Myanmar gained independence from Britain in 1948, but the position of the Rohingya Muslims has become ever more perilous. The United Nations has described the Rohingya Muslims as the most persecuted minority in the world. Attempts at creating an independent state for themselves have failed, and they have been denied citizenship in their own country since 1982 and with it the right to education, healthcare or even property ownership.

Far from speaking out against the violence, Aung San Suu Kyi has hidden behind the same language of having to fight terrorists as was used by Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s, Western leaders in the "War on terror" in Iraq and Libya, Israel's persecution of Palestine and Saudi Arabia destroying the lives of the poor people in Yemen. Although she is not alone in her hypocrisy, as a Nobel Laureate, expectations of her are much higher. Yet her response so far has been mealy-mouthed, and the British government have not held her to account when they most certainly have the opportunity to do so. Last year the UK sold weapons worth half a million pounds to the government in Myanmar, which could very well be used against the Rohingya now. £250k was taken from the UK's aid budget to train the army there, which in this climate of violence is completely inexcusable. 

Aung San Suu Kyi has personal as well as political ties with the UK, having a British husband and two sons born and raised in the UK. She not only graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, but returned to live in the UK after working briefly at the UN. She married British scholar Michael Aris in 1972, and lived in the UK until 1988, giving birth to and raising their two sons Alexander and Kim Aris there. Her sons continued to be raised in the UK by their father when she returned to Burma to first look after her ailing mother and then to lead the political opposition, and hence are British citizens.

When the Taliban blew up ancient monuments to Buddha in Afghanistan, there was an immediate angry reaction to the desecration of such important artefacts of cultural significance - rightly so. The problem is that rape, murder, and the destruction of people's homes in Myanmar has not inspired the same level of reaction.

The UK needs to step up and provide leadership in alleviating the suffering in Myanmar:

1. The Myanmar government is stopping UN aid from getting in: we must demand that blocks are removed immediately so that humanitarian aid can reach people. Charities are raising money already, so we must ensure it gets to where people need it most. There is also a huge humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh where the UK must play a leading role in aid efforts.

2. Our government must acknowledge the UN findings of ethnic cleansing and "slow genocide" and the hate speech being used by the military, Buddhist extremists and nationalists against Rohingya Muslims. We must stop using the language of "ethnic tensions", as this is misleading and disingenuous; instead, we must join the coalition of genocide charities, Nobel Peace Prize winners, and faith leaders in condemning what is happening in the strongest possible terms.

3. We must demand unequivocal condemnation from Aung Sang Suu Kyi: A UN report has already gathered damning evidence. Its recommendations need to be implemented, and the UK should use its place on the Security Council to more effect.

4. We must demand that citizenship rights be immediately given to Rohingya Muslims, the denial of which over many decades has made this latest persecution easier.

5. UK aid to Burma must be stopped (especially military training) until the situation is acknowledged and a way of measuring the results of any such training is established.

6. We should propose the re-implementation of sanctions which were lifted when "democracy" was supposed to have been introduced. The current human rights violations are not just on a par with, but even worse than those that had been taking place under the military regime.

Salma Yaqoob is an activist, commentator and broadcaster who was named by the Guardian as: "The most prominent Muslim woman in British public life". Harper's Bazaar magazine also named her among the thirty most influential women in the country. She appears regularly on Question Time, where she is best known for having given the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith a dressing down over expenses and inequality. Salma has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, Channel Four & ITV news and written columns for the Guardian and others. She has received numerous awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University for services to public life, having served as an elected councillor in the city. Salma is a qualified psychotherapist with a degree in Human and Applied Psychology, as well as Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling and Integrative Psychotherapy. She works as a Senior Manager in an NHS Mental Health Trust.

The Daily Beast
September 18, 2017

By Julhas Alam 

Associated Press 

September 18, 2017

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — More than 10,000 Muslims in Bangladesh have marched toward Myanmar’s embassy to protest the country’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.

At least 412,000 ethnic Rohingya have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar in the past month and are living in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh. Many say their homes were burned by Myanmar’s military or by Buddhist mobs.

The protesters chanted slogans and waved Bangladesh’s flag as they marched through the streets of Dhaka, the capital. One banner said, “Stop killing Rohingya.”

The march, organized by the hard-line Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam, began at Bangladesh’s main mosque but was stopped by police well before the protesters reached the embassy.

The marchers were most vocal in chanting slogans against Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, calling her a “terrorist” and blaming her for not stopping the military-led attacks on the Rohingya Muslims.

The U.N. Security Council and many countries have condemned the violence.

Rohingya villagers arriving in Bangladesh, exhausted from their dayslong escape from mobs of attackers and armed soldiers, recounted stories of neighbors killed and homes set ablaze.

“They set fire to people’s homes and many elderly people got trapped inside. Young men fled home for the hills,” said Mohammed Zakaria, 70.

He said he saw many bodies lying on the ground, often with their throats slit, as he and 14 other members of his family made their way from their home in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Sitting outside a ramshackle tent in Balukhali, a hilly area recently designated by the Bangladesh government as the site of a new refugee camp, he said it took them 12 days to reach the safety of Bangladesh.

His son, Omar, 18, said their ordeal began about a month ago when Buddhist mobs attacked their homes.

“They didn’t say anything. They just slaughtered Rohingya people wherever they found them,” Omar said. “They have killed everybody, young and old.”

Traveling on foot, mostly at night to avoid detection by Myanmar soldiers, Zakaria said they crossed the Naf river that divides the two countries after paying a large sum to a boatman.

The U.N. and other aid agencies have begun building shelters for new arrivals at the Balukhali site to provide protection as monsoon downpours lash the area.

“We are working with the authorities and partners to build emergency shelters and coordinate the provision of relief supplies and basic services including registration, water, sanitation, and health care,” said Yante Ismail of the U.N. refugee agency.

But unexpected dangers lurked, even in the camps in Bangladesh’s border town of Cox’s Bazar.

On Monday, wild elephants attacked two makeshift tents near a camp, killing a man and his son who were sleeping inside, an official said.

Shamsul Alam, 55, and his 2-year-old son died instantly, said Mohammed Ali Kabir, a forest officer.

Alam’s wife and their two other children were injured and were taken to a medical camp, he said.

Wild elephants often cross the border between the forested hills of Myanmar and Bangladesh. The movement of thousands of Rohingya refugees may have upset the elephants, forest officials said.

By Wa Lone and Andrew R.C. Marshall

Reuters

September 17, 2017

SITTWE, Myanmar - Thousands of Rohingya Muslims in violence-racked northwest Myanmar are pleading with the authorities for safe passage from two remote villages that are cut off by hostile Buddhists and running short of food.

"We're terrified," Maung Maung, a Rohingya official at Ah Nauk Pyin village, told Reuters by telephone. "We'll starve soon and they're threatening to burn down our houses."

Another Rohingya contacted by Reuters, who asked not to be named, said ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the same village and shouted, "Leave, or we will kill you all."

Fragile relations between Ah Nauk Pyin and its Rakhine neighbors were shattered on Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine State prompted a ferocious response from Myanmar's security forces.

At least 430,000 Rohingya have since fled into neighboring Bangladesh to evade what the United Nations has called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

About a million Rohingya lived in Rakhine State until the recent violence. Most face draconian travel restrictions and are denied citizenship in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the Rakhine State government, told Reuters he was working closely with the Rathedaung authorities, and had received no information about the Rohingya villagers' plea for safe passage.

"There is nothing to be concerned about," he said when asked about local tensions. "Southern Rathedaung is completely safe."

National police spokesman Myo Thu Soe said he also had no information about the Rohingya villages, but said he would look into the matter.

Ah Nauk Pyin sits on a mangrove-fringed peninsula in Rathedaung, one of three townships in northern Rakhine State. The villagers say they have no boats.

Until three weeks ago, there were 21 Muslim villages in Rathedaung, along with three camps for Muslims displaced by previous bouts of religious violence. Sixteen of those villages and all three camps have since been emptied and in many cases burnt, forcing an estimated 28,000 Rohingya to flee.

Rathedaung's five surviving Rohingya villages and their 8,000 or so inhabitants are encircled by Rakhine Buddhists and acutely vulnerable, say human rights monitors.

The situation is particularly dire in Ah Nauk Pyin and nearby Naung Pin Gyi, where any escape route to Bangladesh is long, arduous, and sometimes blocked by hostile Rakhine neighbors.

Maung Maung, the Rohingya official, said the villagers are resigned to leaving, but the authorities have not responded to their requests for security. At night, he said, villagers had heard distant gunfire.

"It's better they go somewhere else," said Thein Aung, a Rathedaung official, who dismissed Rohingya claims that Rakhines were threatening them.

Only two of the Aug. 25 attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) took place in Rathedaung. But the township was already a tinderbox of religious tension, with ARSA citing the mistreatment of Rohingya there as one justification for its offensive.

In late July, Rakhine residents of a large, mixed village in northern Rathedaung corralled hundreds of Rohingya inside their neighborhood, blocking access to food and water.

A similar pattern is repeating itself in southern Rathedaung, with local Rakhine citing possible ARSA infiltration as a reason for ejecting the last remaining Rohingya.

"ANOTHER PLACE"

Maung Maung said he had called the police at least 30 times to report threats against his village.

On Sept. 13, he said, he got a call from a Rakhine villager he knew. "Leave tomorrow or we'll come and burn down all your houses," said the man, according to a recording Maung Maung gave to Reuters.

When Maung Maung protested that they had no means to escape, the man replied: "That's not our problem."

On Aug. 31, the police convened a roadside meeting between two villages, attended by seven Rohingya from Ah Nauk Pyin and 14 Rakhine officials from the surrounding villages.

Instead of addressing the Rohingya complaints, said Maung Maung and two other Rohingya who attended the meeting, the Rakhine officials delivered an ultimatum.

"They said they didn't want any Muslims in the region and we should leave immediately," said the Rohingya resident of Ah Nauk Pyin who requested anonymity.

The Rohingya agreed, said Maung Maung, but only if the authorities provided security.

He showed Reuters a letter that the village elders had sent to the Rathedaung authorities on Sept. 7, asking to be moved to "another place". They had yet to receive a response, he said.

VIOLENT HISTORY

Relations between the two communities deteriorated in 2012, when religious unrest in Rakhine State killed nearly 200 people and made 140,000 homeless, most of them Rohingya. Scores of houses in Ah Nauk Pyin were torched.

Since then, said villagers, Rohingya have been too scared to leave the village or till their land, surviving mainly on monthly deliveries from the World Food Programme (WFP). The recent violence halted those deliveries.

The WFP pulled out most staff and suspended operations in the region after Aug. 25.

Residents in the area's two Rohingya villages said they could no longer venture out to fish or buy food from Rakhine traders, and were running low on food and medicines.

Maung Maung said the local police told the Rohingya to stay in their villages and not to worry because "nothing would happen," he said.

But the nearest police station had only half a dozen or so officers, he said, and couldn't do much if Ah Nauk Pyin was attacked.

A few minutes' walk away, at the Rakhine village of Shwe Long Tin, residents were also on edge, said its leader, Khin Tun Aye.

They had also heard gunfire at night, he said, and were guarding the village around the clock with machetes and slingshots in case the Rohingya attacked with ARSA's help.

"We're also terrified," he said.

He said he told his fellow Rakhine to stay calm, but the situation remained so tense that he feared for the safety of his Rohingya neighbors.

"If there is violence, all of them will be killed," he said.

(Reporting by Wa Lone and Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

By Rebecca Wright, Alexandra Field and Sugam Pokharel

CNN
September 17, 2017

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar grab onto a bag of food from a man on a truck delivering aid in Ukhia on September 14.

By BBC News

September 17, 2017

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has "a last chance" to halt an army offensive that has forced hundreds of thousands of the mainly Muslim Rohingya to flee abroad, the UN head has said.

Antonio Guterres told the BBC unless she acted now, "the tragedy will be absolutely horrible".

The UN has warned the offensive could amount to ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar says it is responding to deadly militant attacks in northern Rakhine state and denies targeting civilians.

The country's army chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, on Sunday accused the Rohingya of trying to build a stronghold in the state.

In an interview with the BBC's HARDtalk programme ahead of this week's UN General Assembly, Mr Guterres said Aung San Suu Kyi had a last chance to stop the offensive during her address to the nation on Tuesday.

"If she does not reverse the situation now, then I think the tragedy will be absolutely horrible, and unfortunately then I don't see how this can be reversed in the future."

The secretary general reiterated that the Rohingya should be allowed to return home.

He also said it was clear that Myanmar's military "still have the upper hand" in the country, putting pressure "to do what is being done on the ground" in Rakhine.

Aung San Suu Kyi - a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent many years under house arrest in the junta-run Myanmar (Burma) - is now facing growing criticism over the Rohingya issue.

She will not be attending the UN General Assembly in New York, and has claimed that the crisis is being distorted by a "huge iceberg of misinformation".

She said tensions were being fanned by fake news promoting the interests of terrorists.

Mr Guterres' warning comes after Bangladesh said it was now limiting the movement of more than 400,000 Rohingya who have fled from Myanmar.

Bangladeshi police said Rohingya would not be allowed to travel anywhere outside of their allocated homes, not even to live with family or friends. 

Transport operators and drivers have also been urged not to carry refugees, with landlords told not to rent out any property to them.

Bangladesh also announced plans to build shelters for up to 400,000 people near the city of Cox's Bazar.

Analysts say the government wants to stop the Rohingya from disappearing into the general population and to keep them visible, in the hope of returning them to Myanmar - or even a third country.

On 25 August, Rohingya militants attacked police posts in northern Rakhine, killing 12 security personnel.

Rohingya who have fled Myanmar since then say the military responded with a brutal campaign, burning villages and attacking civilians in a bid to drive them out.

The Rohingya, a stateless mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

But army chief Gen Min Aung Hlaing said on Sunday that the Rohingya formed a Muslim group that has no roots in the country.

"They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar," he wrote in a Facebook post.

Officials earlier suggested that not all who have fled to Bangladesh would be allowed to return.

Some who fled from Rakhine state told the BBC earlier this month about killings, rape and even massacres, while inside Rakhine, a BBC crew witnessed charred homes inside Rakhine.

A new Human Rights Watch report released on Friday accused the Myanmar military of an "ethnic cleansing campaign" and detailed scores of villages targeted with arson attacks.

Habib Siddiqui

RB Article

September 17, 2017

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

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

There were sporadic protest marches against the military rule during the Ne Win years (1962-1988) and these were almost always brutally suppressed. In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and political oppression by the government led to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country known as the 8888 Uprising. Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, and General Saw Maung staged a coup d'état and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In 1989, SLORC declared martial law after widespread protests and changed the country's official English name from the "Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma" to the "Union of Myanmar". 

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

A fraudulent election was held in 2010 in which the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, declared victory winning nearly 80% seats. The military junta was replaced on 30 March 2011 by a quasi-military government, led by former General Thein Sein, with the goal of putting the country back to the path of democracy. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and her party allowed to participate in the by-elections in 2012 in which it won 43 of the contested 45 seats.

Then came the general election of 8 November 2015 in which the NLD won an absolute majority of the seats in both the houses. Suu Kyi became the de facto leader of her country in April 2016 and soon thereafter visited the USA and some European countries seeking lifting of sanctions on her pariah state, and re-entry into the good graces of those countries. She also gave speech at the UN General Assembly session and was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year award from Harvard University last year. She was rewarded heftily and sanctions were lifted, rather prematurely. 

On September 14, 2016, after meeting with Suu Kyi in the Oval Office, President Obama announced, "In part because of the progress we've seen over the last several months, I indicated after consulting with Daw Suu that the United States is now prepared to lift sanctions we've imposed upon Burma for quite some time. It is the right thing to do in order to ensure the people of Burma see the rewards from a new way of doing business and a new government." 

Fast forward to 2017, Suu Kyi’s Myanmar is not a “good news” any more. Nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims and Hindus have been uprooted from their ancestral homes and forced to take shelter in Bangladesh due to the latest genocidal pogroms that started in October 2016, soon after easing of the trade sanctions. Is this a coincidence? The victims – racially and religiously different – have lost everything in this Buddhist majority country that remains the last apartheid state of the 21st century. At least 3,000 Rohingyas have also been extra-judicially killed by government forces and their partners in crime, the Rakhine fascists; hundreds of villages and townships have also been ethnically cleansed. 

On Tuesday, September 12, 2017 numerous reports of widespread extrajudicial killings and other atrocities, including rape, carried out by Myanmar security forces (long known as the Rapist military) led the U.N. human rights chief to describe what's happening as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” In my numerous articles, I have been calling such crimes as a genocide, which has become a national project in this Buddhist country to wipe out the Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi is still in denial, as she always has been as an immoral and sly politician and representative of the majority Bamar ethnic group that governs the multi-ethnic country and dominates the military. Her defenders, though, insist that she is in an awfully tight spot, having to manage her relationship with the bruising Burmese military at a time when public opinion amongst the Buddhist majority largely supports its crackdown on the Rohingyas who are Muslims. Lately, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd wrote in the BuzzFeed, “While there is plenty of blame to place on the military for the current situation in Rakhine state, Suu Kyi is the only one seeking to walk a tightrope, between providing a positive way forward for the Rohingya on the one hand, while not providing the military the pretext for ending Myanmar’s fledgling democracy on the other.” 

But facts are crystal clear and concerned global citizens, including the UN Chief, are calling the situation for the Rohingya refugees "catastrophic" and "completely unacceptable." Following a closed-door meeting, the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC) including China, a supporter of Myanmar's former ruling junta, expressed concern about excessive force during security operations in Rakhine state and called for "immediate steps" to end the violence. "I call on the Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence, uphold the rule of law and recognize the right of return of all those who have had to leave the country," Antonio Guterres said on September 13 at a press conference in the UN Headquarters. Asked if he agreed the Rohingya population was being ethnically cleansed, he replied: "When one-third of the Rohingya population has got to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?"

Guterres said the Myanmar government should either grant the Rohingya nationality or legal status that would allow them to live a normal life. Condemning the violence, the UNSC also called for humanitarian aid workers to be able to reach those in need in Rakhine state.

Some half a million people have already signed a petition demanding that the Nobel Committee rescind the peace prize wrongly awarded to Suu Kyi. 

Suu Kyi has been accused, and justifiably so, of being a racist and an anti-Muslim bigot, and so are her predecessors - the military generals - that ruled Burma for more than 50 years. In their neo-religio-fascist vision, i.e., (new) Myanmarism, sadly, the Bamar supremacy dominates, and there is no place for the minority Muslims, esp. the Rohingyas, in Myanmar. The status of a non-Bamar (ethnic) Buddhist minority is that of a second-class citizen. Thus, although the generals may have been replaced by civilians in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar, nothing truly has improved for millions of minorities, especially its Rohingya people. 

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

The answer is provided by Dr. Shwe Lu Maung (Shahnawaz Khan) in his latest book - The prima materia of Myanmar Buddhist Culture: Laukathara of Rakhine Thu Mrat, published in the USA by Shahnawaz Khan (2016). The author, a diaspora Burmese from Arakan (Rakhine), has been living in the USA for decades. He is an acclaimed author of six books (including, Is Suu Kyi a Racist?) on his native country that have helped us immensely in our understanding of the complex political landscape of modern Myanmar. This book – a translated work - is an excellent source to understand the very treasure trove from which the ex-generals reportedly drew their inspiration to ruling the country. After all, in 1990, Sr. General Saw Maung, the military ruler of the country at the time (who reportedly believed himself to be the reincarnation of an 11th-century warrior-king), famously said that he would rule the country according to Laukathara. 

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

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

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

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

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

Mixing of religion in politics in our time has often seen the devastating consequences of how even good religious teachings can become weapons in the hands of ‘cherry-picking zealots’ to ethnically cleanse the ‘others’ who are different. The 1982 Citizenship Law, thus, provided the very justification for the Myanmar regime towards elimination of the minority races like the Rohingya. As I have noted elsewhere, the actual eliminationist process really started much earlier. The Naga Min Operation of 1978-79 saw the exodus of nearly 300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh. The Pyi Thaya Operation of 1991-92 saw the forced exodus of some 268,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh. Due to the decades-long ‘slow-burning’ genocide, more Rohingyas now live as refugees outside their ancestral home of Arakan. They have been marginalized and deprived of every right in Apartheid Myanmar and continue to remain the most persecuted people in our time. 

True to its fascist character, the new Myanmarism sees no place for non-Buddhists. It was in that vein that when President Thein Sein proposed to expel all the Rohingyas from Myanmar in 2012 the xenophobic declaration was welcomed by the monks and the Buddhist people, in spite of the fact that the ancestors of today’s Rohingyas lived in Arakan for centuries, if not millennia. 

It was no accident that Myanmar had witnessed, since 2012, a series of genocidal pogroms, mostly directed against the minority Rohingya and other Muslims. The terrorist monk Wirathu, who heads the fascist organization Ma Ba Tha, became the Buddhist face of terrorism, xenophobia, intolerance and hatred. In the name of protecting Buddhism nearly a quarter million of Muslims were violently displaced in 2012 from their homes across Myanmar; many were killed, and others forced out of the country. Some 140,000 Muslims became permanent IDPs, caged in concentration-like camps. The eliminationist policy – endorsed from the top and preached and justified by Buddhist monks – became THE national project inside Myanmar, enjoying moral and material support at every level of the Buddhist society. So powerful was the influence of Wirathu and Ma Ba Tha that four controversial race and religion bills were signed into law by the then President Thein Sein to further heighten the racial and religious tensions! 

The peculiar, non-inclusive influence of Laukathara has been so strong that Suu Kyi’s NLD did not field a single Muslim to contest the general election, even in Muslim majority territories of northern Arakan state. Forget that the citizen Suu Kyi denied the very existence of the Rohingya people and was silent on the genocidal crimes against the Muslim minorities in the past, her denial of the gross crimes of the Tatmadaw and Rakhine fascists since she has become the de facto leader is simply inexcusable. Equally problematic has been her dogged persistence to stonewalling international inquiry into the serious charges of rape, arson and killings against the security forces.

Succinctly put, under Bamar supremacist leaders, the teachings of Laukathara has become the eliminationist policy – once adopted by the military governments and now cherished by Suu Kyi’s civilian government. Thanks to Suu Kyi, what a joke Nobel Peace Prize has become! 

For a multi-racial and -religious Myanmar to avoid being a failed state, Myanmarism must go making way for inclusion, diversity and respect for life and aspirations of ‘others’. And there is no other prudent way. The sooner the ethno-religio-fascists within Myanmar, esp. its government, military, monks, politicians and intellectuals, understand it and implement measures to change the current paradigm the better it is for all and the entire region.