{"Because of the ongoing systematic genocide against humanity in Burma, the de-facto stateless Rohingya Arakanese people need the same protection, assistance, education and a safe environment like others”}
Jon Snow PresenterDr Azeem Ibrahim, senior fellow at the Centre for Global Policy in the United States speaks about what is 'turning out to be the worst humanitarian crisis of this generation.'
COX'S BAZAAR, Bangladesh — The scale of the displacement of Rohingya civilians, the systematic way Rohingya villages have been destroyed, and survivors' common claims of being instructed by the Myanmar military to go to Bangladesh, can leave little doubt Myanmar's ongoing military operation in Rakhine state aims to not only quell militants, but to illegally force all Rohingya out of Myanmar.
The Rohingya have been subjected to decades of sustained discrimination by Myanmar's authorities but the scale of the violence currently being inflicted by Myanmar's military is unprecedented. The military is in control of large portions of Rakhine state and they continue to bar U.N. investigation teams, independent media, and most humanitarian actors.
The consequence of this military action is a population displacement of a scale and speed not seen in the region since the Second World War. The methods being used by Myanmar's military are brutal, and were frequently explained to me by the refugees I met in the sprawling camps that have grown quickly along the Bangladesh/Myanmar border.
At the refugee camps, the scale of the displacement becomes quickly evident and it is astonishing and horrific. Makeshift camps literally stretch all the way to the horizon. These camps are now home to hundreds of thousands of people who are left mostly reliant on international and local food and medical aid.
Pointedly illustrating how much this is a human-made disaster was seeing some young Rohingya children playing marbles beside their new makeshift homes during a break in the monsoonal downpours. This was in Bangladesh where they are safe from Myanmar's military but within 50 meters of the international frontier. On the other side of the border fence, charred trees in their burnt village were visible. Where Myanmar's authorities hold sway, Rohingya children like these are not safe.
Human Rights Watch has documented the systematic razing of almost 300 Rohingya villages, and Amnesty International has reported horrific survivor stories and rightly accuses Myanmar's military of committing "crimes against humanity."
U.N. researchers too have interviewed dozens of those arriving in Bangladesh. Their stories make for harrowing reading, describe unimaginable cruelty by Myanmar's military. The military is accused of "brutal" and "well-organized, coordinated and systematic" attacks with the objective of driving Rohingya out of Myanmar and preventing their return. While I've been in the camps, I have heard far too many similarly appalling accounts.
These events will stain Myanmar's international reputation. Its military leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing should be treated as the war criminal he is. There can be no justification for the atrocities being committed by his troops.
Myanmar's military should be sanctioned internationally – military cooperation with Myanmar must surely now be unacceptable, arms sales banned and there ought to be travel and economic restrictions placed on military figures.
There have been some laudable moves in this direction already — the UK suspended military cooperation and the U.S. is talking tough about prosecuting rights abusers, but there is little yet in the way of concrete action. This needs to quickly change. The international community needs to back its strong words with immediate actions or Myanmar's military will continue their genocidal actions towards the Rohingya indefinitely.
The standing of Myanmar's civilian administration and reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi is similarly in tatters. True, she is not in control of the military but she has not disagreed with their actions, and she refuses to grant visas for U.N. investigators to enter Myanmar. This makes her complicit with the military's actions in Rakhine.
As the country's civilian leader she is acting as a political and international shield for Myanmar's military. Justifying her decision to support the military's behavior, Suu Kyi said in a recent national address, "no one can fully understand the situation of our country the way we do".
This is an attempt by Suu Kyi to tell Myanmar's residents that international criticism of atrocities committed by their country's military is based on a failure to understand the real situation within Myanmar. But Suu Kyi's efforts to prevent independent scrutiny of Myanmar's military show that she knows they have much to hide from the international community and have a good deal to be ashamed of.
This crisis has been created by Myanmar's authorities and ending the crisis is within their power. The current Myanmar military campaign is the culmination of decades of official discrimination against the Rohingya. In 2015, the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) described Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya as "genocide".
Based on what I've witnessed in the refugee camps and the testimonies I have heard, this is undoubtedly the case. It is important now for the international community to ensure the Rohingya continue to be safe, and that any future return to Myanmar includes a guarantee their human rights, including their right to have a nationality, will be respected. Ongoing foreign aid to Myanmar and the continued absence of economic sanctions must now be contingent on safeguarding the Rohingya's human rights.
Aung San Suu Kyi believes only people from Myanmar can understand the situation in their country — the Rohingya I spoke with in the refugee camps certainly understand the situation in Myanmar. They say they were hunted from their homes by a brutally violent Myanmar military who instructed them to leave and then systematically destroyed their villages. Sadly, there are around 600,000 other Rohingya refugees with similar experiences to share, but at least on this side of the border, they are safe to do so.
Harn is the youngest son of Sao Shwe Thaike, the first president of the Republic of the Union of Burma. Sao was the president of the union from 1948 to 1952. He was arrested in a military coup led by General Ne Win and died in prison in November, 1962. Sao Shwe Thaike and General Aung San were the architects of the 1947 Panglong Agreement, which formed the basis for the modern nation of Burma (the colonial name for Myanmar).
Harn has been in exile in Canada since he was 15 years old. He was forced to leave Myanmar along with his family following the coup on March 2, 1962.
Harn also served as Advisor to Dr Sein Win, prime minister of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), which claims to be Burma's government in exile.
What is happening in Rakhine State is genocide. Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951) defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. All these conditions apply to the Rohingya people in Myanmar.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres admitted as much when he said on September 13, 2017 that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Myanmar. Genocide includes ethnic cleansing. He did not use the word genocide because if he did, the UN would be legally obliged under the Genocide Convention to take action. For the UN to take action, the Security Council would have to authorise it. But Guterres knows that if he took it to the Security Council, Russia and China would veto it. That is the dilemma.
First, the Myanmar military still believes that might is right. They entered into negotiations as a delaying tactic when the then President Thein Sein, a former military general himself, called for peace talks. He defined the peace talks as a political matter which under the 2008 Constitution falls under the mandate of the civilian government. Under the Suu Kyi government, the military has managed to define the peace talks as a security matter which under the constitution falls under the mandate of the military. This means the military will exert force on those who will not agree to peace on the government's terms. If they continue to resist, they will be labeled 'terrorists' and the military can use full force against them – as they are doing now with the Rohingya. The Suu Kyi government does not have a plan or strategy on how to bring the peace talks back to the political arena. It also does not have experienced advisors and negotiators.
In the short-term, the future of the peace talks is bleak. The best that can be done is to keep the talks going in the hope that the government will change its position. Nobody wants to go back to war.
Myanmar Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing said on September 1, 2017, that the ongoing clearing operations in northern Rakhine is 'unfinished business' from World War 2. After the war, during the division of India, some Rohingya wanted to become part of East Pakistan. There was a Mujahid insurgency which the Myanmar military put down. His 'unfinished business', though, means that the Myanmar military does not accept the outcome of the political settlement in the early 1960's that recognised the Rohingya as citizens of Myanmar.
The military also does not recognise the 1947 Constitution, which states that all people who live within the boundaries of Myanmar at independence (1948) are citizens. That is why after seizing power, General Ne Win launched an operation to drive out the Rohingya in 1978. Not satisfied with that, he also changed the Citizenship Law in 1982, making the Rohingya stateless. Another attempt was made in 1998 to drive out the Rohingya.
This third and current exodus is part of the same plan to make Myanmar a homogeneous and 'pure' nation. It is racist. The Rohingya being Muslim makes it easier for the military to garner support from the Buddhist majority who believe that it is their duty to protect Buddhism from all external influences.
FILE PHOTO: Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali on October 16, 2017 | Reuters
The future of democracy in Myanmar is precarious. Everybody wrongly believed that Aung San Suu Kyi would strengthen the democratic transition and make it impossible to return to a military dictatorship.
It is somewhat similar to the situation in Iran when the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeni came to power. He consolidated his power and imposed his own brand of authoritarian rule. The same is true in Myanmar. Democracy is not practiced within the ruling National League for Democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi makes all the decisions. Younger generation leaders are not being groomed. Internal dissent is not tolerated and opposition parties are not encouraged. The active civil society networks are shunned by the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi. Other than the military-backed Union Solidarity Development Party, there are no viable nationwide political parties to choose from as an alternative to the NLD. Media freedom is also at risk.
As mentioned before, geopolitics do play a part. Myanmar is considered to be in China's backyard. Neither Russia nor China want Myanmar to move into the orbit of western powers. They have long seen human rights as a western tool to infiltrate into the region. But the main trigger is domestic. The Myanmar military does not want a democratically-elected government to succeed. It wants to prove that a civilian government does not have the capacity to govern Myanmar.
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The Rohingya crisis was re-ignited in 2012 when the Thein Sein government started making headway with its peace talks with the other ethnic minorities. The crisis became full-fledged in 2016 after the Suu Kyi government took power. When it became clear that the Suu Kyi government did not have the capacity to deal with the peace talks, the military took advantage of that weakness to carry out its plan to finally expel the Rohingya as terrorists under the cover of a democratic government. The government's denial of any human rights abuse by the military and the refusal of Suu Kyi to allow a UN Fact-Finding Mission have all played into the hands of the military.
Myanmar is and has always been a multi-ethnic and a multi-religious society. Different communities used to exist harmoniously in the past. Things changed after Ne Win took over. He expelled all foreigners, especially Chinese and Indians, confiscating their businesses. His agenda, like the Shah's, was to create a modern homogeneous nation and this created problems. Each ethnic group began to look after its own interests for survival. Today people look on each other with mistrust. Fake news and rumours can trigger inter-communal violence as it did in 2012. Many people today are preaching hatred and religious bigotry. People who disagree do not dare to speak out. Fear is beginning to take hold again.
Most would not react unless it affected them personally. This is especially true of the ethnic minorities. They do not want to draw attention to themselves by speaking out about the Rohingya. But for the majority, they believe what the government is saying – that the Rohingya are foreigners who bought their way into Myanmar; they have four wives and their population is growing rapidly; their plan is to Islamise Myanmar.
The state-run media has been managed by the military for over 5 decades. They are putting out the same propaganda as when the country was still under military rule. The sad part is that the private media that used to fight for human rights have also started to toe the government line – that the Rohingya are terrorists and have to be defeated to protect Myanmar's sovereignty.
You wrote an open letter criticising Suu Kyi. Could you please elaborate on that?
I am concerned that she is not nurturing democracy for the time after she steps down. If we want democracy to flourish, we have to start practising it. Authoritarianism, no matter how well-intentioned, will not bring democracy. Democracy is messy and people make mistakes but without starting to practice it, we cannot expect democracy in Myanmar in the future.
The crisis is two-fold. One is the crisis of democracy – how do we ensure that the military does not come back in the future? How can we entrench democracy in the nation? The solution lies with the people of Myanmar. They need to wake up to the crisis and start practicing democracy. It is not too late. We have until 2020, 3 years, to promote democracy.
The other crisis is the Rohingya people. We do not have time. People are dying and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. The clearing operations are continuing in spite of government denials. The UN, Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries need to exercise their Responsibility to Protect. If they do nothing now, the Rohingya will be driven out of Myanmar. But in the longer-term, the solution lies in treating the Rohingya as human beings created in the image of God, equal with all Myanmar citizens.
This will take moral courage on the part of the Myanmar government and determined and well-thought out long-term programmes to eliminate racism, and religious bigotry from Myanmar – something like the civil rights movement in the US.
Here in the United States we have a lot of important stuff to think about. Justin Timberlake has been picked to perform at the next Super Bowl. One of those celebrities whose name I can never remember is suing the Kardashians. The president of the United States is trading insults with a congresswoman. And best of all, the stock market has hit new highs.
Far away, off on the other side of the world, 600,000 people are crouching in the mud, shivering with terror, telling the same stories of how a husband was shot, a sister was raped, a baby was thrown on a fire – stories multiplied tens of thousands of times. They've been forced out of their homes by soldiers who mocked them, beat them, torched their houses. The whole point of this state-sponsored campaign of terror – for that's exactly what it is – was to drive them across a nearby border into a neighboring country, which can't really afford to harbor hundreds of thousands of refugees, since it is already one of the poorest in the world. (Close to a million Rohingya now live as refugees in Bangladesh; 600,000 of them arrived since August.)
The terror is still going on. Right now – even though there aren't a lot of people left in their homes to terrorize. And that has left some of us who follow this situation to ask a simple question:
The people I'm talking about are the Rohingya, who are sometimes referred to as "the most persecuted people on the face of the earth." The government of the country they used to live in, known as Burma (aka Myanmar), hates them so much that it even stripped them of their citizenship 35 years ago. I remember many Burmese telling me, during my last visit a few years ago, that the Rohingya were just vermin, not truly human at all. After all, didn't I know that they had really, really dark skins? And that they were Muslim – not at all like the majority Buddhists, who were, in general, so much nicer, more cultured, more pure?
And it's true, the Rohingya don't have a lot of friends right now – but that has more to do with geopolitics than imagined personal traits. The Chinese (who support Burma's military) and the Russians (who would like to tap into the country's natural resources) couldn't care less about the Rohingya's human rights. The Europeans, who don't want to offend anyone, might send a strongly worded letter or two.
As usual, that leaves the United States. Ah yes, I can hear my compatriots groan – another distant land that's trying to draw us into its problems. But this isn't about sending the military or getting mired in conflict. It's about finally raising our voice, a powerful voice that everyone in the world listens to – or used to listen to, at least. The United States can demand and orchestrate sanctions against the Burmese military and government. It can organize pressure in international bodies. And it can demonstrate its visible oppositionto those responsible and its support for the refugees.
Now here's a thought: We Americans have always prided ourselves on straight talk. What if our United States government were to come straight out and officially designate what's happening to the Rohingya as a "genocide"? That could potentially transform how the rest of the world discusses the issue. Genocide is defined as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
That is a pretty good description of current Burmese state policy toward the Rohingya. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, have already been killed; we don't know precisely how many, since the government of Burma isn't allowing independent witnesses into the area.
What's eminently clear is that Burma's military is doing its best to drive these poor, stateless people out of the country and never let them back in again. And once that's done, the foundations of Rohingya life in Burma will be over. Their refugees will be scattered among the nations that host them, but their life in Burma will be beyond reconstruction. Burma will have "finally solved the Rohingya question," to paraphrase a certain German statesman.
Isn't this something that our country, at least, should go on the record as opposing?
But I get it, of course. We Americans have so many other important things to focus on: the next game, the next phone, the next episode of our favorite show. Why should we have to worry about things that are happening in faraway countries, to people we don't even know? Don't we have a right to be – unbothered?
