Thursday 3 November 2022

BURMA’S ARAKAN ARMY REPLICATES RUSSIA’S PROPAGANDA PLAYBOOK, ARGUES ZARNI

Source DVB, 11 Oct

While the world's attention is fixated on the escalating NATO-Russia proxy war taking place on Ukraine's soil, with its nuclear saber-rattling and domino effect on the world's economy, on Burma's western front, the decades-old triangular conflict deserves some serious attention as the deeply troubled country's civil war has widened to engulf external powers, including the neighbouring country of Bangladesh.

This appears to be a case wherein one of Burma's key actors, namely the Arakan Army (AA) – with its Buddhist Rakhine nationalist base – is replicating Vladimir Putin's tactical moves in Ukraine.  

The AA is a separatist ethnic militia estimated to be 30,000-strong, and has been equipped with Chinese-made weapons. Its ethno-political base of Rakhine known for their genocidal racism and collaborative deeds against the Rohingya – reportedly base themselves among Rohingya villages – as opposed to their own Buddhist communities from which the AA draws its rank-and-file fighters. 

Rohingya activists in the diaspora have kept quiet about this deeply troubling development – that the AA have encamped themselves among Rohingya communities. Some tried to give the impression of impartiality that Rohingyas were being caught in the "crossfire" between the AA and the genocidal Burma Army. Understandably, Rohingyas are between a rock and a hard place – insofar as the collaborators in genocide against their communities are now fighting ferociously against each other. 

But that silence, and that "crossfire" narrative, came to a loud end when a Rakhine sniper killed Shekul Islam, a 45-year-old Rohingya community leader and educator who happened to be a close relative (uncle) of Wai Wai Nu, a celebrated human rights activist. 

Khaing Thukha, the AA spokesperson, denied responsibility for the killing and shifted the blame onto the Burma Army while speaking to RFA Burmese on Oct. 9. Tun Khin, president of the UK-based Burmese Rohingya Organization – UK (BROUK), took to Twitter: "Having spoken to the sources on the ground, it is clear that AA is responsible for (the) killing …."

The problem is incomparably bigger than the murder of a Rohingya leader and which party – the AA or the Burma Army – was behind the killing. Rather, it is the evidently sinister use of Rohingya villages and neighbourhoods along the Burma-Bangladesh border, as the chosen battlefield.  

Throughout my recent travels in the former Yugoslavia, I have had numerous in-depth discussions with my scholar friends who survived the "Balkanization" where ethno-religious triangular politics – among the Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians (or Bosniaks) – had produced nasty genocidal violence and concentration camps in the early 1990s. Some of them are now experts on the ethnic conflicts in their ancestral homelands.  

According to one scholar who specializes in paramilitaries and mercenaries across the Slavic regions – North and South (including Ukraine) – Putin has deployed the tactics of placing pro-Russian separatist militias in the civilian neighbourhoods of the Donbas region, where administrative buildings – including police and security stations – are mixed in with civilian homes and business. The move, explained my scholar friend, was designed to lure Ukraine's infamous neo-Nazi Azov regiment on to the battlefield.    

It worked as Moscow had anticipated. The Ukrainian Azov-commanded  units launched a counter-offensive against the separatist militias, having killed an unknown number of Russian-speaking civilians. The Azov units handed Putin the much-desired evidence, which Moscow then used to make the case at the UN that the Russian Federation was acting as the benevolent protector of the Russian population in Ukraine bordering Russia. To be sure, no two parallels are identical in international politics or history of conflicts. Actors and contexts differ. 

The Rakhine separatist militia AA's reported use of Rohingya villages in Maungdaw Township as their temporary bases immediately adjacent to Bangladesh has become home to an estimated one million Rohingya genocide survivors. This strikes me as remarkably similar to Putin's cold-blooded, calculated, use of Russian civilians in the separatist Donbas region of Ukraine. 

In Burma, I have spent the last decade arguing that the genocide perpetrated against the Rohingyas can only be fully understood as the culmination of the triangular ethnic power struggle among the three primary parties in the conflict. The Burmese central government, both civilian and military, the Buddhist Rakhine, who make up roughly two-thirds of the population in the strategic coastal region (with their decades-old independence aspirations), and the predominantly Muslim Rohingyas whose mass exodus in 2016 and 2017 have been a topic of international judicial and policy concern among UN bodies (such as the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, and the International Criminal Court, or ICC, the UN Human Rights Council, along with technical agencies like the UNHCR), along with the UN Security Council, namely China and the U.S.

In the last and largest wave of genocidal violence against the Rohingya in 2017, both local Rakhine extremists and the Burma Army joined forces to ethnically cleanse the Rohingya Muslim villages, towns and cities. The Rohingya are forced to live in segregated neighbourhoods similar to those in Northern Ireland during the Troubles (between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans).  

Because the global judicial processes have focussed on Burma's central role in perpetrating genocide, more specifically in 2016 and 2017, anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim Rakhine nationalist leaders have busied themselves, reinventing their local communities as "justice-minded."  

The AA leadership has reportedly handed over one or two Burma Army defectors, whom they had captured alive, to UN investigators while dimming the light on their active complicity and collaboration five years ago. But now they are fighting for their (Rakhine) independence.   

But irrespective of which Rakhine nationalist leader or organization is in the driver's seat of the separatist movement, what universally undergirds its ethno-religious nationalism is the view that the majority Rakhine Buddhist population are the only indigenous or "sons of the fatherland" and hence the rightful owners of the region.  

Through this mono-ethnic nationalist lens, the rest of the region's inhabitants such as the Muslims, including the Rohingya whom Rakhine Buddhists outnumber by three-to-one, are "guests" or "migrants" from Bangladesh. As a matter of fact, while promoting itself as a modern, liberal pro-human rights group, the Rakhine nationalists in the media as well as the senior leadership of the AA have refused to allow them to self-identify as Rohingya. Strikingly, the Rakhine nationalist sentiments and views are no different from the Bama nationalist discourses, popularized across Burma's dominant Buddhist society and institutionalized within the Burma Army.

The AA Commander-in-Chief Twan Mrat Naing, formerly a Thailand-based English-tour-guide-turned-separatist-leader, has cleverly outfoxed the Bama leadership in terms of its propaganda aimed at human rights-sensitive audiences (that is, the international media, the UN, and foreign governments). 

You have to give it to Rakhine separatist media strategists for their brilliant manipulation of international concerns of Rohingya genocide survivors. They have been able to cultivate the image of themselves as an acceptable alternative to Burma's junta not only among international circles, including Bangladesh and U.S. government entities such as the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and the Rohingya diaspora in both countries.  

It is utterly impossible for any armed group to be more ruthless and murderous than the Burma Army. After the killing of a Rohingya community leader, the community has exploded with all kinds of reports indicating that the AA has also been perpetrating numerous human rights violations, including gang-rape, extortions, kidnapping, torture, forced labour, murder and so on. It is time for the international policy circles and media to sober up and stop drinking the liberally-coated propaganda "Kool-Aid" by the genocidal Rakhine nationalists.  

Maung Zarni is the co-author of Essays on Myanmar's Genocide of Rohingyas (2012-18). He is a UK-based Burmese exile with over 30-years of first-hand involvement and scholarship in Burma affairs. 

U.N. investigator says Facebook provided vast amount of Myanmar war crimes information

Source Reuters, 13 Sept

Rohingya refugees gather to mark the fifth anniversary of their fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar to escape a military crackdown in 2017, in Cox's Bazar
Rohingya refugees hold placards as they gather at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp to mark the fifth anniversary of their fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar to escape a military crackdown in 2017, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, August 25, 2022. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman/File Photo

GENEVA, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The head of a U.N. team of investigators on Myanmar said on Monday that Facebook has handed over millions of items that could support allegations of war crimes and genocide.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) aims to build case files for proceedings in national, regional or international courts. It was established in 2018 by the U.N. Human Rights Council and began work the following year.

"Facebook has shared with the mechanism millions of items from networks of accounts that were taken down by the company because they misrepresented their identity," Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM, said in a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya that forced more than 730,000 people to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

Facebook, whose parent company changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) last year, said that they support international efforts for accountability for the crimes committed against the Rohingya.

"(We) have made voluntary, lawful disclosures to the U.N.'s investigative mechanism as well as disclosures of public information to The Gambia" which has filed the ICJ genocide case, Miranda Sissons, director of human rights policy at Meta, said in an e-mail.

U.N. investigator says Facebook provided vast amount of Myanmar war crimes information

Rohingya refugees gather to mark the fifth anniversary of their fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar to escape a military crackdown in 2017, in Cox's Bazar
Rohingya refugees hold placards as they gather at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp to mark the fifth anniversary of their fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar to escape a military crackdown in 2017, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, August 25, 2022. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman/File Photo

GENEVA, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The head of a U.N. team of investigators on Myanmar said on Monday that Facebook has handed over millions of items that could support allegations of war crimes and genocide.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) aims to build case files for proceedings in national, regional or international courts. It was established in 2018 by the U.N. Human Rights Council and began work the following year.

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"Facebook has shared with the mechanism millions of items from networks of accounts that were taken down by the company because they misrepresented their identity," Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM, said in a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

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Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya that forced more than 730,000 people to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

Facebook, whose parent company changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) last year, said that they support international efforts for accountability for the crimes committed against the Rohingya.

"(We) have made voluntary, lawful disclosures to the U.N.'s investigative mechanism as well as disclosures of public information to The Gambia" which has filed the ICJ genocide case, Miranda Sissons, director of human rights policy at Meta, said in an e-mail.

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In 2018, U.N. human rights investigators said the social media site had spread hate speech that fueled the violence in Myanmar. Facebook has said it is working to block hate speech.

With the Facebook items and other pieces of information from over 200 sources, the mechanism has prepared 67 "evidential and analytical packages." These packages are intended to be shared with judicial authorities, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ICJ, Koumjian added.

The ICC has also opened a case looking at deportation and other crimes against humanity in relation to Rohingya refugees who were forced into ICC member state Bangladesh.

Myanmar denies genocide and says its armed forces were conducting legitimate operations against militants.


Unprecedented Case Brought Against Myanmar Junta in Indonesia

Source Tempo, 7 Sept


Myanmar junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who toppled the elected government in a coup on February 1, leads a military parade on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, 27 March 2021. [REUTERS/Stringer]

TEMPO.COJakarta - A group of public figures in Jakarta has formally submitted a petition to the Constitutional Court effectively asking it to permit a case against the Myanmar junta, accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide against the country's Muslim population.
The move is unprecedented and could lead to the first universal jurisdiction case against the Myanmar military in an ASEAN member state.

One of the petitioners, former Attorney General, Marzuki Darusman, said "the Indonesian constitution is very clear that everyone, Indonesian and non-Indonesian, has the right to equal treatment before the law. That means the universal protection of human rights. One small change to the law governing the Human Rights Court would recognize this and pave the way to a trial in Indonesia for the crimes being committed by the Myanmar junta."

The case for action is clear and urgent. At the end of July, the Myanmar military executed four prisoners of conscience, which drew widespread international condemnation. Dozens of other activists are awaiting execution.

Meanwhile, the number of people killed by the junta since the coup in February last year has passed two thousand; fifteen thousand have been arrested or have disappeared; 1.2 million people have been displaced and, according to the UN, over 14 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The sheer scale of this human tragedy in the East Asian region is an affront to Indonesia's 1945 Constitution.

There are well documented cases including the torture of journalists, health workers, teachers, lawyers and humanitarian workers. The Rohingya Muslims have been subjected to the same atrocities and despite investigations in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, they have not been granted justice.

Unless there is accountability against the junta, there will be further crimes and abuses and the continuation of the anti-Muslim genocide.

The people of Myanmar will never find justice through their own court system which has become a politicized tool in the hands of a vindictive junta. Meanwhile, cases against the Myanmar military at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are severely delayed.

This is why ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, must act now.

The Indonesian constitution guarantees the protection of human rights universally. This can be demonstrated by the use of the phrase "everyone" in the articles on human rights protection. The 1945 Constitution also protects human rights regardless of citizenship.

However, Article 5 of Law 26 dating from 2000, concerning the Human Rights Court, places restrictions on the protection of human rights that are contrary to the 1945 Constitution. The article stipulates that a trial of perpetrators of human rights violations can only be carried out if the crimes are committed "by Indonesian citizens."

But the law does permit a degree of "extra-territoriality". If the human rights crimes occurred outside the territory of Indonesia, a court can be established as long as the perpetrator is an Indonesian citizen.

Not only does Article 5 violate the 1945 Constitution. It also limits Indonesia's role in realizing world peace and upholding the rule of law, as stipulated by the Constitution.

Indonesia has a particular imperative to act, as Jakarta is widely viewed as the "capital" of ASEAN in that it hosts the ASEAN Secretariat and is often visited by perpetrators of gross and widespread human rights violations from Myanmar.

Indonesia can live up to the commitments and ideals of the 1945 Constitution, in protecting human rights universally, if the phrase "by Indonesian citizens" is removed by the Constitutional Court.

That is why the Petitioners are asking the Constitutional Court to remove this phrase and thus allow the human rights of some 55 million Myanmar people to be protected in accordance with Indonesia's 1945 Constitution.