YOU Can Stop the Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya and Muslims!
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 7 Apr 2014
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service
“We don’t have the term Rohingya.”
President Thein Sein, Chatham House, London, 15 July 2013
“How can it be ethnic cleansing? They (Rohingya) are not an ethnic group”.
Win Myaing, Rakhine State Government Spokesperson, Reuters, 15 May 2013
“The world needs to know that there is no ethnic cleansing in Burma.”
Aung San Suu Kyi, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, 23 Oct 2013
“You are screwing up your politics by standing with the Kalar (or Muslim niggers)!”
Ko Ko Gyi, leader of 8888 Open Society Peace and Development Group, London, 2013
A call for solidarity and action: Citizens’ Responsibility to Protect
Myanmar’s genocided Rohingya and Muslims need you!
When you visit #Myanmar
Say the word #Rohingya.
Offset HATE.
Spread the word.
Stop the Slow Burning Genocide.
Don’t just say the words ‘Never Again!’
Act in Solidarity NOW!
There is a rising tide of genocidal hatred towards Muslims in general and the Rohingya in particular among the public, both Buddhist and other faith-based groups.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsyJmx3BlUU#t=36
One of the legacies of the 50 years of military rule and societal isolation (from the world) is multifold: ultra-conservative versions of various faiths, particularly Buddhism, thrive there; the high level of public ignorance is matched only by the extremely low level of critical popular thoughts; un-employment is pervasive leading to pent up frustration, anger and discontent which in turn can be mobilized and redirected by unscrupulous elements.
According to ex-general Khin Nyunt (interviews with ex-Genera Khin Nyunt, Myat Khine, Yangon, 2013) who was a powerful chief of the country’s intelligence services for more than 20 years, the military’s senior leaders, particularly the now officially retired Senior General Than Shwe, have formed several shadowy groups made up of non-uniform agents and hired thugs.
Thanks to “Saya” Myat Khaing, Burmese language Interviews with ex-General Khin Nyunt contain a wealth of information. For instance, the military’s strategic plan includes raising the country’s population up to 100 million as the country is sandwiched between China and India while the government has singled out Rohingya Muslims and subjected them to various birth control and population control measures on the basis of their ethnicity. No other ethnic or religious group has been subject to a policy of population, marriage and birth control, hence a genocide.
Further, Khin Nyunt talked about the fleeing of Muslims from Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh, not the other way around.
To date, these these groups remain active and carry out dirty operations which manufacture ‘communal conflicts’ or lead violent charge against Muslim communities across the country and Rohingya in Rakhine State of Western Burma.
Reformist government of President Thein Sein is either powerless to stop these black operations or a willing accomplice. For in virtually all cases of ‘communal violence’ – usually one-sided, directed against Muslims and Rohingya by “Buddhist” mobs – there seems to be a blanket impunity for any perpetrators of violence despite the fact that every scene of violence is dutifully video-record by intelligence agents from the Military Affairs Security and the Police Special Branch (Information Brigade, so-called).
The Burmese language media – most of which are owned by army-bred cronies or ex-military officers – is categorically anti-Muslim, and is reportedly found to spread unverified news and rumors with a provable intent to stoke popular dislike and hatred of Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds in Burma.
Presidential spokespersons such as ex-Major Zaw Htay and ex-Colonel Ye Htut (deputy minister of information) are also involved in spreading anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya hatred using social media, as well as various state and crony-owned public media outlets – in Burmese language.
The opposition’s iconic leaders who no longer promote human rights. As a matter of fact, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, has categorically denied on CNN in 2013 that she was ever a ‘human rights defender’ and justified popular Buddhist fear towards Islam and Muslim – as nothing different from the West’s fear of the rise of Muslim power on the BBC’s flagship Radio Four interview.
In her own words: “Global Muslim power is very great and certainly, that is a perception in many parts of the world and in our country as well”.
During his visit to England last year, Ko Ko Gyi, the nearly 50-year old former jailed student activist who is considered “the brain” of a small band of former student activists from 1988 generation called “Open Society Peace and Development Group”, told a close friend of mine, a well-known London-based fellow exile and former political prisoner Ko Aung. Aung recalled that Ko Ko Gyi him angrily, “you (Ko Aung) are screwing up your politics by standing with the Kalar!”
The word Kalar is a Burmese equivalent of the un-mentionable ‘nigger’, in reference to the Muslims in Burma. (In fact, the famed former student leader just got married in Rangoon today in the presence of other icon Burmese racists and non-racists.)
Very few religious leaders – from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, etc. – inside Myanmar or Burma have stood up firmly against the rising tide of genocidal racism and hatred towards the Muslims and Rohingya.
For they all know – and fear – to confront the 969 anti-Muslim campaign led ostensibly by Buddhist monks and fully backed by the entire might of the reformist government of President Thein Sein and his behind-the-scene puppet-masters.
Western governments with their diplomatic outposts, as well as the United Nations have so far ignored the elephant in the room, insisting on documentary or direct evidence of the government’s involvement, as if these entities did NOT understood, or in the case of governments, have never done anything covert and dirty themselves.
It is against this background that the rising genocidal developments – organized destruction of Muslim neighborhoods, the deliberate strategies of the denial of humanitarian access to Rohingya in ghettos and semi-concentration camps, and other acts of genocide – need to be understood and appreciated.
I posted this note yesterday on my FB which I only use for activism these days:
If I were a Muslim in Myanmar I would be looking for an exit or a place to emigrate with my family. My birthplace is making a frighteningly Nazi turn. If you think this is an hyperbole you don’t understand fucking shit about my country, its cultures, and its peoples.
And an informed expatriate friend in residence in Rangoon responded thus. It gives me chills in my spine.
I don’t want to “like” this but I agree this is one time when the nazi comparison is not over-exaggerated . The enthusiasm expressed for the murderous hatred of the rohingya by “Buddhists ” is downright frightening . I’m afraid for humanity here…
Here is a small message which I would like you to spread.
When you visit #Myanmar
Say the word #Rohingya.
Offset HATE.
Spread the word.
Stop the Slow Burning Genocide.
Don’t just say the words ‘Never Again!’
Act in Solidarity NOW!
My country Burma or Myanmar is attracting an increasing number of tourists and travelers. Mass tourism can become a force for good, a deterrence towards further waves of genocidal attacks against Muslims and Rohingya.
Absent any international intervention in Myanmar today – virtually all genocides have ended only with military interventions from abroad, for instance, Nazi Germany in 1945, Pakistani genocide of East Bangali in 1971 or Pol Pot’s genocide of Cambodia in 1979 – and given the paralyzed Security Council and nearly non-existent, international justice system, the Responsibility to Protect fellow humans fall on the shoulders of concerned citizens.
I hope you take your own humanity seriously.
______________________________
Maung Zarni, Associate Fellow, the University of Malaya. Dr. Maung Zarni is a 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. He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years. Visit his website www.maungzarni.com.
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