Where is justice and fairness? Where is the United Nations and the super-powers? And why can’t the Muslim world speak with one voice and exert pressure to stop the inhumane treatment of the Rohingya. These questions and many more will plague the minds of the Rohingya Muslims.
The Rohingya are a people who have been through more than their fair share of adversities. To them, hell couldn’t be much harsher. Over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have till now fled to Bangladesh seeking to escape the crackdown instituted against them by the mainly Buddhist Myanmar government.
Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh
Since August 25 this year, the Myanmar army has unleashed a wave of attacks on the Rohingya population, which ominously enough, has now assumed the proportions of a pogrom, an open ethnic cleansing. This unpardonable violence against Rohingya has attracted the attention of the world but nothing concrete is being done except rhetorics and lip service. Except Bangladesh, who has emerged as a safe haven for the fleeing Rohingya.
However, this support has been short of unstinting. Quite understandably, earlier this month, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called on Myanmar to allow the fleeing Rohingya to return to their homeland. The Myanmar government, especially its de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have sorely disappointed the Rohingya as well as the world by turning a cold shoulder. Naturally, the reverence with which Suu Kyi was almost invariably greeted has taken a drubbing.
The Rohingya Muslims are an unacceptable bunch in Myanmar. “We thank the Lord Buddha for this,” said U Thu Min Gala, the 57-year-old abbot of the Damarama Monastery in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. “They stole our land, our food and our water. We will never accept them back.”
The Myanmar government have been offering fable denial of it’s dastard atrocities against the stateless Rohingya Muslims, accusing the international community of distorting the fact of the situation.
“There is no case of the military killing Muslim civilians,” said Dr. Win Myat Aye, the country’s social welfare minister and the governing National League for Democracy party’s point person on Rakhine. “Muslim people killed their own Muslim people.”
When asked in an interview about the evidence against the military, the minister noted that the Myanmar government had not sent any investigators to Bangladesh to vet the testimony of fleeing Rohingya, but that he would raise the possibility of doing so in a future meeting.
“Thank you for advising us on this idea,” he said.
Rohingya were considered citizens of Myanmar, also known as Burma, when it became independent in 1948, the military junta that wrested power in 1962 began stripping them of their rights. After a restrictive citizenship law was introduced in 1982, most Rohingya became stateless.
Even the name Rohingya, which the ethnic group has identified with more vocally in recent years, has been taken from them. The Myanmar government usually refers to the Rohingya as Bengalis, implying they belong in Bangladesh. The public tends to call them an epithet used for all Muslims in Myanmar: kalar.
Buddhist monks, moral arbiters in a pious land, have been at the forefront of a campaign to dehumanize the Rohingya. In popular videos, extremist monks refer to the Rohingya as “snakes” or “worse than dogs.”
Public sentiment against Muslims are rife — who are about 4 percent of Myanmar’s population, encompassing several ethnic groups, including the Rohingya — has spread beyond Rakhine. In 2015 elections, no major political party fielded a Muslim candidate. Today no Muslims serve in Parliament, the first time since the country’s independence.
From all indications, the Rohingya and other Muslims minority are not wanted and hated by the Buddhist dominated Myanmar population. Myanmar de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi who enjoyed global support when she was being maltreated by the military junta in Myanmar some years ago, today openly defend pogrom of the Rohingya and other Muslims. The United Nations speared headed by the Security Country must put into motion efforts of creating a state for the Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar.
With the creation of a state for the Rohingya, the pogrom and other forms I’ll treatment meted on them by Myanmar will stop and peace will return. Forcing Myanmar to accept the Rohingya back will only postpone the evil days for a while. Let’s give the Rohingya a state and stop the pogrom.
1 Comment
They’ve got one it’s called bangladesh