Who and What Gains from Myanmar’s Genocide of the Rohingya and Other Muslims?
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 5 Nov 2012
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service
The site of massive violence and arson of Rohingya and other Muslim neighborhood in Kyauk Hpyu happened to be the site where China is planning a Special Econ and Technological Zone.
Why bother with mass eviction and typical Myanmar land grab when you have locally produced Genocide against the Rohingya and other Muslim inhabitants as a tool of ‘developmental policy’?
It serves many purposes:
1) it makes the local Rakhine Kular-haters happy;
2) it rallies the majority “Buddhist” behind “Buddhism” and Naypyidaw’s sociopaths in reformist guise;
3) it further chips away the Lady’s popularity abroad (beyond her new role as “business cover”);
4) it serves as a mass psycho-therapy for the oppressed of Burma who have 50-years’ worth of pent-up hate, bitterness, anger and powerlessness;
5) it afforded the military strategists to play “political and historical anesthesiologist” with the “Buddhist” masses, most importantly the monks themselves who now rally behind the very army that slaughtered their Saffron monks only 5 years ago;
6) it gave again the regime in Naypyidaw a chance to frame the issue as “preemptive strike against ‘radical Islam’, which is the language of Washington; and
7) it allows space for political manipulations by disgruntled elements who have an ax to grind against Than Shwe who left them marginalized in the new power-wealth set-up.
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Dr. Maung Zarni is member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.
Go to Original – maungzarni.com
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