Page 1 of
4 Myanmar
fixates on Rohingya
calculation By Peter Lee
To outside observers, the carnage
inflicted on the Rohingya minority - a five-month
spasm of violence and de fact ethnic cleansing
ostensibly stemming from the rape of a Buddhist
woman by three Rohingya men - in Rakhine Province
is indefensible and inexplicable.
What is
even less understandable to Westerners is the
virtually universal closing of ranks among local
and national governments, pro and anti-government
Buddhist monks, junta apologists and pro-democracy
activists, President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu
Kyi, all uniting to deny the apparently undeniable
fact that an old fashioned pogrom is taking place
against Rohingya minority and other Muslims.
Friends of Myanmar are puzzled and
dismayed that the
progressives they have
championed have joined forces with the country's
most reactionary forces to deny the overwhelming
evidence that Rohingya - a dark-skinned Muslim
ethnic minority with cultural and linguistic ties
to neighboring Bangladesh - are being driven out
of their homes by a campaign of intimidation,
arson, and violence in 2012 that builds upon years
of marginalization and demonization.
Seventy-five thousand Rohingya IDPs
(Internally Displaced Persons) have been herded
into camps on the outskirts of the state capital,
Sittwe, and other towns.
In a sign of how
bad things are, thousands of Rohingya are trying
to flee to Bangladesh, even though they are not
welcome there and their only possible refuge if
they aren't turned back are two squalid UN-run
camps surrounded by a ring of miserable
unsanctioned huts.
Exasperated by Myanmar
denialism, Human Rights Watch published a
satellite photo showing most of the Muslim quarter
of a sizable town, Kyak Pyu, burned to the ground.
[1]
(As is usual in these matters,
nomenclature follows political inclination. The
official government identifiers are Myanmar and
Rakhine State. People disinclined to legitimize
the regime's terms use Burma/Arakan).
The
local Rakhine government and its dominant
political party, the Rakhine Nationalities
Development Party, or RNDP, have been at the
forefront of the anti-Rohingya campaign, according
to Rohingya advocate Nay San Lwin.
Writing
in Turkey's Today Zaman, he asserted:
The tragic cruelty and the carnage
of Rohingyas that occurred in Sittwe, the
capital of Arakan (now known as Rakhine) state,
is assumed to have been caused by Dr Aye Maung,
member of parliament and chairman of the Rakhine
Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) because
in his interview with Venus News Journal on June
14, 2012, he said, "The Rakhine state should be
established in the way Israel was initially
established." That's the dream of the Rakhine
people. They want to drive out Rohingya Muslims
from the Rakhine (Arakan) state, their current
leader Dr Aye Maung asserted in that interview.
In the last week of last month, a RNDP
statement indicated, "Bengalis must be
segregated and settled in separate, temporary
places so that the Rakhines and Bengalis are not
able to mix together in villages and towns in
Rakhine state." "Repatriating non-citizen
Bengalis to a third country in a short period of
time must be discussed with the United Nations
and the international community," the statement
added. The RNDP also issued a statement early
this year against a job announcement by CARE
International in Myanmar, an NGO working in
Arakan state, for using the term "Rohingya."
[2]
Local Arakanese monks have been
pitching in as well, according to Democratic Voice
of Burma:
A group of Arakanese monks have
called for Rohingya "sympathizers" to be
targeted and exposed as "national traitors"
while tensions again flare between Buddhists and
Muslims in Burma's westernmost state.
In
a document seen by DVB, the All-Arakanese Monks'
Solidarity Conference have urged locals to
distribute images of anyone alleged to be
supporting the stateless minority group to all
townships in the region, potentially opening
them up to violent attacks by nationalist
extremists. … Many Arakanese monks have
repeatedly called on local Buddhists to sever
all relations with the Rohingya community,
including trade and the provision of
humanitarian aid. [3]
Another ugly
message was delivered courtesy of some Rakhine
Buddhist university students:
Hundreds of Buddhist university
students in Sittwe in Rakhine State rallied on
Wednesday against Rohingya Muslims as communal
tension was at a heightened pitch in western
Burma, according to news service reports.
More than 800 students joined a rally to
call for an end to "studying with terrorist
Bengalis" and for the removal of Muslim villages
on the road to the university. [4]
In
addition, the RNDP embarked on an active political
and public relations campaign to reframe the
pogrom as "sectarian clashes" in order to present
its supporters - the rioters - as the injured
party, especially if foreign diplomats show up to
commiserate over the plight of the Rohingya.
In June, the Secretary General of the RNDP
complained:
Q : We have knowledge that UN
Secretary General's Special Advisor on Myanmar
Mr. Vijay Nambiar visited the town of Sittwe
through Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships of
Rakhine state and head back straight to Yangon.
However, during his trip, he did not meet the
representatives of ethnic Rakhine. What's your
say on this?
A: I would so much like to
talk about this issue. … We feel highly upset
about Mr. Nambiar's failure to meet [Rakhine
ethnic representatives] despite coming to
Rakhine state. That makes us wonder about the
stance of UN. There was no press conference
either. And that is purely a totally unpleasant
situation.
Therefore it makes us wonder
the true motives of Mr. Nambia, is he being bias
against those of ethnic Rakhine? So, by looking
at this event, it's obvious that there are
people who are pulling the strings from behind;
otherwise, there is no reason for such a high
ranking diplomat like him to dare not to call
for a press conference. For an organization like
UN, which is the de-facto representative of
world's democratic societies, such a big failure
is a heinous diplomatic mistake.
[5]
When the Organization for Islamic
Cooperation proposed setting up a humanitarian
liaison office in the state capital of Sittwe,
local "offended Buddhist" women marched through
the streets of the state capital, wearing mass
produced T-shirts and brandishing mass-produced
banners. [6]
That's bad enough. But there
was more. The national government of Thein Sein
endorsed the position of the Rakhine State
government and declared that the best deal for the
Rohingya would be to herd them into UN camps for
their own safety and then deport them to whatever
third country would take them.
At the
national level, the anti-Rohingya wave was not
limited to the callous, knuckle-dragging
authoritarians associated with the Myanmar
military junta (now the pro-Western reformist
regime in Nyapyidaw).
Buddhist monks and
democracy activists piled on, excoriating the
international community for daring to care about
the Rohingya.
The leadership of the 8888
student democracy movement, while vigorously and
commendably deploring the violence against the
Rohingya, adamantly declared its disdain for the
persecuted group:
Rohingya is not one of the ethnic
groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riot
happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw
of Arakan State is because of the illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh called "Rohingya" and
mischievous provocation of some international
communities. Therefore, such interfering efforts
by some powerful nations on this issue (Rohingya
issue), without fully understanding the ethnic
groups and other situations of Burma, will be
viewed as offending the sovereignty of our
nation. Genetically, culturally and
linguistically Rohingya is not absolutely
related to any ethnicity in Myanmar … Taking
advantage of our kindness and deference, if the
powerful countries forced us to take
responsibility for this issue, we will never
accept it. Concerning with the sovereignty, if
we are forced to yield by any country, we, the
army and democratic force will deal the issue
together as a national issue. [7]
From
the Western liberal perspective, the worst was the
studied disdain of Aung San Suu Kyi- whose
official title in the Western press appears to be
"democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi- for the plight of the Rohingya.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
