Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing - Updates & Discussions

[idune]

So why are you quoting a American tool [UN] which has zero credibility by a Shia mouthpiece [Press TV]? Seems to me this is all Jewish/Shia conspiracy against our ally China and intended to cause "Syria" like instability near the belly of the PRC.

Good to know you are indoctrinated in wahabi extremism and see things through Shia Sunni prism. This was UN statement and news carried out by many media outlets including an Iranian one. But off course that extreme wahabi mind of yours has different read. Your too much intelligence just oozing out- how do you sleep at night; keeping excess intel under the pillow? Please do tell.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

Please do tell.

I drown in it like you are drowning in the Bay of Bengal

 

[idune]

If these people are found to be Myanmar agent, skin them alive. BD intel should be infiltrating inside Myanmar instead of acting defensive.

I drown in it like you are drowning in the Bay of Bengal

You and me live in different world; no relation. Bangladesh is not drowning as indian claims, Bangladesh gaining land thousands of sq km. I suppose your indian sidekick @Joe Shearer kept that from you. Well benefit of having indian help.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

You and me live in different world

I know. Yours is ever so ............... fisheee !

 

[Joe Shearer]

If these people are found to be Myanmar agent, skin them alive. BD intel should be infiltrating inside Myanmar instead of acting defensive

You and me live in different world; no relation. Bangladesh is not drowning as indian claims, Bangladesh gaining land thousands of sq km. I suppose your indian sidekick @Joe Shearer kept that from you. Well benefit of having indian help.

Whose help do you have? The answer should tell you why they say,"Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Blubber, and you blubber alone."

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya crisis: India identifies 140 vulnerable locations along Bangladesh border, deploys more security personnel
India PTI Oct, 07 2017 09:23:40 IST
New Delhi: India has identified 140 vulnerable locations, deployed more security personnel and surveillance gadgets, and launched a "campaign" against organised criminal gangs that help Rohingyas sneak across the India-Bangladesh border, the BSF chief on Friday said.

The Border Security Force (BSF) concluded its bi-annual four-day talks with their counterparts, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), and chalked out plans to keep a vigil on the "spillover effect of the Rohingyas crossing over to India."

Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers walk across the open border with Bangladesh. Reuters

BSF Director General (DG) KK Sharma and the visiting BGB chief, Major General Abul Hossain, addressed the media at the end of their talks that began after the Bangladeshi delegation arrived here on 2 October.

The BGB DG said they have assured the BSF that the policy of the Bangladeshi government is very clear and "does not allow" their soil to be used for any kind of terrorist activity, neither in their country nor against its neighbour India.

Hossain said his country was also planning to have a fenced border with Myanmar.

Sharma said both the sides discussed the issue of Rohingyas.

"We are both aware that the issue is very very serious as large number of Rohingyas have entered Bangladesh. You are very right in apprehending that the spillover effect of the Rohingyas crossing over to India is also very genuine. Both of us (BSF-BGB) have taken steps.

"The BGB has ensured that their (Rohingyas) movement is being regulated and they have mounted some nakas and check posts on various routes to ensure that they do not cross over to our side," the BSF DG said.

He added that "140 vulnerable border posts" along the 4,096-kilometre long India-Bangladesh border – that can be exploited for illegal crossing over of Rohingyas – have been identified by the BSF. These posts, Sharma said, are being "strengthened by us by deploying more manpower and by technological inputs and gadgets."

The surveillance equipments, the BSF chief said, have been "diverted" from other BSF posts and deployed all along the eastern frontier.

"We are also in touch with our sister agencies, the intelligence agencies, to identify and take action against the touts. Because, these people (Rohingyas) cannot come on their own. There are organised criminals on both the sides who assist in their crossing over to India. So, we are mounting the campaign against the touts," DG Sharma said.

He added that the border guarding force has "sensitised" the local population to inform them about people trespassing across the border.

The BSF DG said the force is constantly in touch with the BGB on a daily basis. "...our commanders on the border can speak to each other quickly and share intelligence on any movement of Rohingyas."

The BGB DG said his country has already begun the mandatory registration of all Rohingyas entering Bangladesh.

"This is a problem in Myanmar and this is not our problem. Five lakh people have already come to Bangladesh. But, this is a problem for our country also...they (Rohingyas) cannot spread all over the country.

"Our government has taken a decision and the Rohingyas have been put in the Cox's Bazar district," he said, adding they have identified the exit and entry points (of Rohingyas) which are being guarded properly.

"We have started the registration of these people...we have declared that anybody without registration will not be given any facilities. We have also informed our people in the country to inform about any such person to law enforcement agencies," Hossain said.

He added that Myanmar has told Bangladesh that they will "soon form a joint working committee to find out Rohingyas and take them back."
Published Date: Oct 07, 2017 09:19 am | Updated Date: Oct 07, 2017 09:23 am
http://www.firstpost.com/india/rohi...-deploys-more-security-personnel-4118085.html

 

[Banglar Bir]

The Rohingya should be treated as our own
Tanim Ahmed
Published at 07:29 PM September 16, 2017
Last updated at 11:12 PM September 16, 2017

Bangladeshi volunteers from the Chhagalnaiya village council distribute food donations to Rohingya Muslim refugees at Naikhongchhari in Chittagong on September 10, 2017AFP
I would dread repatriation if I were a Rohingya
What is another million when we already have 160 million ourselves?

The prime minister’s sentiment is actually true except that the 160 million she mentioned are Bangladeshis and mostly left to their own devices for a livelihood. Now that the prime minister’s comments will have triggered a predictable sycophantic frenzy of about face among the most voluble and violent critics of Rohingya, it is probably time to recognise that we will not be able to wish them away, however much we want to.

The well over million Rohingya who will have been sheltered in Bangladesh before the yearend, will probably be the highest concentration and one of the few unfortunate examples where an entire ethnic community has been uprooted, an instance of successful ethnic cleansing while the world watched. The Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar in search of refuge for almost four decades now. And they are not going back.

To begin with, Myanmar is not going to turn around and say, “My bad. So sorry. Come along folks. Lets start over.” Not with China and India cajoling and coaxing the regime. But even if by a miracle Myanmar did say that, the Rohingyas would hardly return. A father who watched his five year old shot, a girl who saw her parents mutilated, people who saw their homes burnt will simply not accept the assurances of the very people who had turned on them. Indeed, if I were a Rohingya I would run and hide in the densest darkest patch of the Sundarbans. I would dread repatriation if I were a Rohingya.

What it basically comes down to is that Bangladesh will have become the new home of the Rohingya for all intents and purposes. But the government has to pretend that it is a ‘temporary problem’ perhaps because of all kinds of political considerations. Easy acceptance of the Rohingya as permanent residents might encourage India to push in a few hundred thousand unwanted Muslims too, for instance.

Be that as it may, there is simply no getting around the point that the Rohigya are here and they are not going anywhere. Bangladesh needs to realise it is a ‘permanent situation’ and change up how to go about it. There should be calls for other countries to pull their share of housing the Rohingya. The obvious candidates, playing the religion card, would be the oil rich gulf countries besides of course Turkey. Then there is Europe or even the North and South American countries.

The government realises that it will not be able to feed and care for so many people but it seems to be holding out for eventual repatriation, which won’t happen. As soon as this sinks in, however, the authorities will realise that there will never be enough funds to care for the refugees. Hence, they must earn their keep whether through food for work schemes of the government or proper paying jobs.

As such the Rohingya must be allowed civic amenities and privileges — citizenship should only be a protracted inevitability — to make a living and stop being a burden. That the Rohingya engage in criminal activity is but natural given that they cannot get proper employment. It will be in everyone’s interest to make sure that Rohingya children receive proper education and health care so that they can take care of their parents and their children.

Sooner or later they will have adopted this country. Might as well treat them as our own.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2017/09/16/rohingya-repatriation-unlikely/

 

[Banglar Bir]

‘The frictions in the Rakhine state are less about Islamophobia than Rohingya-phobia’
Eminent Arakan historian Jacques P. Leider talks about the historical context of the Rohingya conflict
Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, October 1, 2017

Jacques P. Leider. Credit: YouTube
Photographs of terrified Muslim men, women and children fleeing the Rakhine state of Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh in the last few weeks have made the global community take note of the Rohingya issue like never before.

A brutal crackdown by the Myanmar army on the Rohingya Muslim inhabited areas of Rakhine (formerly Arakan), in response to a reported attack in mid-August on the security posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an armed group fighting for the rights of the Rohingyas, led to the exodus of more than 400,000 Rohingyas to refugee camps in Bangladesh.

While the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, heads of states of countries have accused the Myanmar government of committing “genocide”. The long silence of Mynamar’s State Counsellor and Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has also been questioned widely.

Media reports have failed to focus on the historical context of the conflict that treads back to the British colonial period. Revisiting the conflict may help find a possible solution to the crisis.

Jacques P. Leider is a well-known Arakan historian who has studied and written extensively about the complex Rohingya issue.

Leider, head of the Bangkok-based Ecole Françaised’ Extrême-Orient (EFEO), makes a deeper and nuanced assessment of the conflict which has simmered for decades before snowballing into a worrisome humanitarian crisis of South East Asia. In course of the interview, Leider categorically states, “The Western media fails to make a clear distinction between anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar’s urban centres and the radically different context of the Rakhine State.”
Below are excerpts from the interview:

You have been studying the socio-political history of the Arakan region of Myanmar for years. What led you to take a deep interest in it?
I studied history as well as Burmese language and civilisation in Paris. When I looked for a convenient topic for my MA research, my teacher oriented me towards the Burmese manuscripts collection at the French National Library. Somewhat surprisingly, I found a significant body of manuscripts on palm leaves and paper that dealt with Arakan in the early colonial period. The Buddhist kingdom of Mrauk U (1430-1785) became the focus of my doctoral research. Thereafter, I did research on many other topics, but Arakan’s history remained a constant element in my research.

This is a question you are often asked in media interviews which I will repeat here, simply because many people worldwide still do wonder who, after all, is a Rohingya; what is the origin of the term; is it an ethnic term; how old is this term; is it different from terms ‘Bengali’ and ‘Kalar’, also used to refer the Rohingyas in Myanmar?
‘Rohingya’ means ‘Arakanese’ in the East Bengali dialect spoken by people in North Arakan, ‘Rohang’ being a local phonological variant of ‘Roshang’, the region’s name in Bengali literature. To clarify the conundrum around the contested name ‘Rohingya’, one must step back in time and embed the issue to the regional history of Muslim migrations. Throughout the early modern period, Muslims from all over the Indian Ocean came to live in port cities of continental Buddhist Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, etc.), but the migration of ‘Indians’ (including Muslims, Hindus and people of other religions) during the colonial period increased their number considerably. This is a well-known story that does not need to be elaborated. In Arakan, it was overwhelmingly Chittagonianlabour, both seasonal and residential, that was attracted after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Until the Second World War, the much older pre-colonial Muslim community of Arakan that was socially integrated, on the one hand, and the more recent migrant community of ‘Chittagonians’, on the other hand, remained distinctive groups. It was the group with recent migrant roots that became most politically active.

In the 1950s, both Arakan Muslim parliamentarians and Muslim insurgents (the ‘Mujahids’) shared the idea of an autonomous Muslim zone adopting the Sharia law and Urdu as an official language. Then, under the push of a younger generation, there were discussions to adopt a name of their own. This issue was politically contested as there were already many group divisions that weakened political cohesion. Various spellings such as Roewhengyas, Ruhangyas and others were proposed, all linked to an old, but as it seems, mainly orally used term ‘Rwangya’. The current spelling, Rohingya, is traceable in print since 1963.

In British administrative records, none of these terms had ever been used. For decades, the Muslims in Arakan were classified according to religion (Muslim), language (such as Bengali) and place of origins (predominantly Chittagong). The self-perception of different groups was only considered in the 1921 and 1931 census reports.

Moreover, the British classified people of Indian origins in Burma as ‘foreigners’. The question of how long these people had been living in the country was not put on record. ‘Foreigner’ is also the meaning of the very old word ‘Kalar’ that, in

Burmese literature and usage, refers to people from the West, these being mainly Indians, but also more specifically Indian Muslims. A frequently noted pejorative connotation in the use of this term depends largely on the context. It is much too common to say that it is only depreciative, as the Western media have systematically put it.

The term ‘Bengali’ to designate officially Muslims of North Arakan was used by the Burmese administration relatively late, starting in the late 1970s and 1980s. One should bear in mind that back in the 1950s, Pakistan recognised that a great number of Muslims in Burma had a claim on Pakistani citizenship and the term ‘Pakistanis’ was also used for people whom everybody identifies today as Rohingyas. Why were all these issues of belonging not clarified early on? In fact, a performing bureaucracy did only emerge very slowly. Burma’s Ministry of Immigration became functional ten years after independence. Today, these terms are politicised and contested. Each one has become a weapon in a media contest where a serene look at history would do away with some of the zealous energy that is driving the confrontation.

The Muslim-Buddhist friction in the Rakhine state particularly goes back since the British time. Will you throw some light on the history behind this friction. How much of it can be traced to the Rakhine Muslims’ secessionist or autonomy movement in the 1940s to create a Muslim zone and align it to the then East Pakistan? What relevance does that movement have on the extreme friction that we now see between the Rohingyas and the Rakhine Buddhists and the general perception of the Rohingyas in Yangon?

These are historically legitimate questions and they are politically relevant today. Yet, we lack in-depth studies to push for a necessary discussion. My answers are derived from a broad understanding of the context where I try to fit in the two ethno-religious communities. Unlike the mainstream media that singularise the case of the Rohingya Muslims in their relation to the state, I consider that, primarily, one cannot understand the politics of one group without observing the other. Both communities have always been internally divided about the choice of their political options (federalism or separatism/autonomy). They have only been united in their opposition to the unitary state and to each other.

The political dynamics of the Rohingya Muslim movement were driven by leaders from the north, mainly from the township of Maungdaw. In the 1950s, the Rohingyas were initially the movement of a social and economic elite (including Rakhine Muslim students in Rangoon) that did not include, and did not attempt, to represent all the Muslims of Arakan when it claimed an autonomous zone. North Arakan Muslim leaders had made clear to the British in 1947 and to the first Burmese government in 1948 that a political compromise with the Arakanese (or Rakhine) was not an option for them. Local Muslim leaders had greatly helped the British during the Second World War (by opposing the Japanese forward movement towards Bengal as against the Buddhists supporting the Japanese) and hoped, therefore, for their support to create a frontier zone with a specific status.

Putting afterwards their hope in Prime Minister U Nu’s government in the 1950s earned them a political reward in the early 1960s when the short-lived ‘Mayu Frontier Administration’ in North Arakan was created. In the 1970s, Rohingyas were mainly identified with Muslim rebel groups based on the (Myanmar) border with Bangladesh, desperate to obtain military support from Middle East countries. As Rohingya organisations in the diaspora failed to be accepted among the armed ethnic groups and the democratic anti-junta front during the 1980s and 1990s, their efforts to gain an international hearing became increasingly rooted in a human rights’ discourse. The descriptions of the dismal condition of Muslims in the Rakhine State, the misery of refugees driven into Bangladesh, the tragedy of boat people and what was described internationally as the systematic harassment of their community in Myanmar bore ample testimony to the discourse on the plight of the Rohingyas.

Today, with the backing of liberal democracies, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries, UN organisations and human rights organisations that lobby for them, Rohingyas have many allies abroad and none in the country many of them call home.

In Myanmar, they fail to get recognition because their ethnic claim cannot be negotiated politically. So why the quasi-obsession with ethnic recognition by the state? Unlike in other countries, it is ethnic recognition that provides primordial constitutional legitimacy for political representation and citizenship. It is not the only criterion, but for the first generation Rohingyas, it was adamantly clear that only ethnic recognition would give them the necessary leverage for political claims. It should be clear from these explanations that the motives to support the Rohingya cause today draw on a vast array of different historical and legal arguments that do not form a single, unified body. There has been a general reluctance by international actors to get involved in the historical narratives that have animated impassionate debates between the Rakhine and Rohingya writers.

U Kyaw Min, an Arakanese parliamentarian and nationalist leader, stated in 1956 that the Arakanese had no problem with the Muslims, suggesting that a deal with the divided Muslims was always at hand. Yet over the decades, the communal frictions have increased because other, non-political issues impacted the Rakhine perspectives. For the Rohingyas, Muslim communal autonomy meant a fair deal that would see both communities get along politically and socially, but for the Rakhine, it meant the breaking apart of their motherland. Later on, it was the unequal demographic growth of the Muslim community that produced a latent anxiety among the Buddhists. Despite a general understanding that a part of the Arakan Muslims had deep roots in the country and that Rakhine history cannot be understood without its social and religious complications with Bengal from the past down to the present, a pervasive Rakhine narrative about Muslims in Arakan has viewed them as ‘guests’ who have betrayed the trust of their hosts by claiming territorial ownership. The claim of a distinctive ethnicity made by Rohingyas is, therefore, considered by them as fake. The frictions are less about Islamophobia than Rohingyaphobia.

Against this complex background, it is not possible to establish a straightforward link of causality between the late 1940s and today. Yet, it is the verbatim quotes of relatively simplistic statements made by both sides that have enjoyed national and international resonance in 2012 and fed back into the cycle of frictions.

There are other Muslims living in Myanmar even though much smaller in number than the Rohingyas. How much support do the Rohingyas have from these groups? Or, has the political term ‘Rohingya’ pushed these groups away from them?

There are various Muslim communities in the Rakhine state and there are a number of different Muslim communities across Myanmar – some of them possibly even older than the pre-colonial Muslim community in Rakhine. As an academic, I would use expressions such as “historically multi-layered and ethnically diverse communities”. Many are of various Indian ethno-linguistic origins, others are of Malay or Chinese Yunnan origins (like the Panthay in Mandalay), one group of so-called Burmese Muslims has more recently adopted the name ‘Pathi’ (a term found in the royal chronicles to designate a Muslim community) to underscore its antiquity.

By emphasising a distinctive ethnicity, the Rohingya leadership cut off the complex family of Rakhine Muslims from a long continuity of historical roots in Bengal and specifically south-east Bengal identities. For that reason, I have been talking about an effort on their behalf to de-Indianise themselves. The ethnic claim also deprived the Rohingyas of political solidarity with the other Muslim communities of Burma (Myanmar) that did neither raise ‘ethnic’ claims nor made expressly claims for political autonomy. One may recall that in an unfavorable political context that emerged since the 1960s, Indians in Burma became victims of nationalist politics. On top of local economic prejudice against Indians, the explicit political nature of the Rohingya project was perceived by many urban Muslims as toxic. There are still no public enquiries about this topic in Myanmar today, but anecdotal evidence would suggest that there is no substantial level of Muslim solidarity with the Rohingyas. It does not mean and I will not argue that it does not exist, but it’s at least not articulated. More soberly, urban Muslims in contemporary Myanmar urban centres, whatever their private feelings are, would have nothing to win to stand up for the Rohingya cause. Is the Rohingya project, therefore, to be called an ambition that has backfired on itself? To be true from a social and anthropological perspective, one has torecognise that during the last 50 years there has indeed been an ongoing melting process that has brought Muslims in Rakhine state closely together, forging a shared identity under the impact of state oppression and civic exclusion. There were never as many Muslims who identified themselves as Rohingyas than after 2012.

As you have always pointed out in your writings, the conflict in the Rakhine state has been traditionally triangular: the state vs the Rohingyas vs the Rakhine Buddhist. The narrative now, at least internationally, has become the state and Rakhine Buddhists vs the Rohingyas. Is it correct to include the voice of the Buddhist Rakhines in the extreme right wing 969 movement led by U. Wirathu or there is a separate voice that hasn’t found space in the international arena yet?

It is important to recall that the Rakhine themselves have struggled to be recognised as an ethnic group after independence and their ethnically denominated Rakhine state was only created in 1974. They are keen to stress their separate historical and cultural identity despite the religion, language and cultural traits they share with the majority Burmese (or Bamar). The 969 movement has picked up the Rakhine crisis issues to feed its own anti-Muslim discourse, but it was not bred in the Rakhine state. The Western media still fails to make a clear distinction between anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar’s urban centres and the radically different context of the Rakhine state. Even well-meaning academics tend to exemplify Islamophobia in Myanmar by pointing to the high number of Muslim IDPs (internally displaced people) in Rakhine state. At the same time, the political sentiments of Rakhine people are not integrated into international political analysis. On the other hand, the traditionally reclusive Rakhines have entirely failed to communicate a positive image of themselves to the rest of the world, to commit themselves publicly to tolerance and to invest in politically constructive ideas for the future. In a globalised world, it’s not enough to lay back and complain in confidential circles about the world that does not respect “us”.

Even though there was a huge exodus of Rohingyas to Bangladesh in 1978 following the violence – many of whom were repatriated in 1979 – the internationalisation of the Rohingya issue happened only after the 2012 violence. What changed then?

In terms of international media attention and support by the West and the Middle East, the aftermath of 2012 was an immense success for the Rohingya diaspora. One spin-off was the genocide narrative that severely impedes efforts of the current Myanmar administration to rebalance the discussion in their favour. For the Rohingyas in the country, it was a disaster. Rohingyas, despite their lack of full citizenship rights since 1982, had been granted voting rights and had participated in regional and national elections until 2010. But the suppression of their ‘white cards’ in 2015 by the national parliament cut them off from any form of political representation. This is ultimately not in the interest of the state. Put in Machiavellian terms, the army controlled the Rakhine state by playing the prejudice and interests of one community against those of the other one. This form of containing and at the same time, abusing the potential for communal frictions, also guaranteed state access to intelligence about the inner workings of these groups. The fast rise and the surprise of attacks of ARSA since October 2016 reflect an extraordinary intelligence failure on the side of the security forces.

There is a strong Rohingya diaspora voice which has been able to establish the issue as a humanitarian and Muslim victimhood issue. But you have said in your writings that “internationalisation has not opened new ground in the domestic political arena where both Muslims and Buddhists have been longing for peace.” Instead, you said, “It confirms some of the fears already had by the Buddhists, namely, the alleged threat of an international Muslim alliance.” If you can elaborate it a bit…

Your question relates to the arena of media fitness. When Myanmar opened up by the decision of the military elite in 2011, many people in the country regained hope about their political and economic future. But the hopes bear many contradictions, because the interests of the various ethnic and religious groups and the state are competing. The language, the terminologies, the mature thinking to address and negotiate publicly these contradictions and inherent conflicts had not yet been learnt. Public intellectuals and news editors were not present to orient the discussion and guide the public. Countrywide, educational infrastructure has been in a mess. What was “there” was the state of mind of the early 1960s and some of the memory of the 1950s as the country left a time-warp of several decades of isolation and party-line thinking. The international media that descended on Yangon after 2011 spoke a language that people were unable to assess rationally. Facebook became the foremost instrument of public discussion for the happy few with access to computers and 24-hour electricity, soon drunken with the newly-found freedom to criticise and wildly indulging in racist rampage when the conflict exploded in the Rakhine state. Trigger-happy rhetoric sustained a constant reiteration of “us the Buddhists” and the “rest of the world that does not understand Myanmar”. The Rohingya diaspora invested in sophisticated strategies of communication that neither the Myanmar state nor any of its ethnic constituencies have been able to cope with. Buddhist resentment was bound to increase.

Some countries have termed the Rohingya issue as genocide. Though, it is not for the first time the term has been used to define the extreme odds faced by the Rohingya Muslims. Yours writings point out that the term was first used in the 1951 charter of the Arakan Muslim Conference. In 1978, it was used by some Rakhine Muslim groups when violence led Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh. However, post 2015, we are getting to hear it more often, and internationally. How do you see the use of this term, particularly by the international rights organisations and heads of states? In one of your articles on the issue, you said, “The accusation of the term hits hard on the credibility of the state.”

Genocide accusations resound very strongly and have an immediate impact on global audiences; they are perceived as an urgent call for action and possible intervention. Indictments of genocide should, therefore, be made on grounds that leave no doubt for interpretation. The accusation of a Rohingya genocide is still very much open for further discussion. This is not the only accusation of genocide that has been made within the region. Rakhine nationalists have alleged that the Burmese conquest of 1785 marked the beginning of a long-term effort to exterminate the Rakhine ethnic group and in the British census of 1901, the compiler hinted at the perspective of a disappearance of the Rakhine “race” due to Chittagonian immigration. Accusations have also been made about the genocide of the Chittagong Hill Tracts people in Bangladesh, especially during the Chittagong Hill Tracts war (1977-97). The charges of a “slow genocide” of the Rohingyas has been mostly made by people who discovered the Rohingya issue only in 2012. Questioning the use of the term ‘genocide’ does not mean that one intends to belittle mass atrocities and serious violations of human rights. It’s a fact that the Muslim population in the Rakhine state has been steadily growing despite massive emigration. In Maungdaw township, it has grown from 34% after the war to 92% (according to UNHCR sources), despite the fact that there has been a steady flow of people out of the region. The picture gets blurred when ‘genocide’ is used both as a rhetoric tool to express indignation about indiscriminate state oppression and as a description for an alleged state-led plan to exterminate a whole population.

You have spoken about the Myanmar government playing into the hands of the Rakhine nationalists by increasingly denying rights to the Muslims. Will you elaborate it a bit?

I am not sure I have put my argument clearly and if I didn’t, I should elaborate indeed. I do not mean to say that more the Muslims are harassed and flee, more the Rakhine community will have a reason to rejoice. Such an impression would be entirely wrong. Since the colonial period, the Muslims have established a reputation as hard-working people despite the general poverty of the population as a whole. There are many problematic issues to be addressed, such as population growth and women’s rights, but there’s a right for people to live where their families have lived now for decades. Only an ethno-political consensus of the two groups will make sure that there is a future for the people of the Rakhine state. I am talking about the progress and welfare of rural people at a basic level and initiatives that will lift people out of poverty. I am not talking about showcase government-led projects such as the port of Sittwaymodernised by India and the gas pipeline built by China and serving China’s thirst for natural resources. The bad news about the events in the Rakhine state have been ruining the reputation of the region and clearly lessen chances for diversified foreign investment.

Besides the economic aspect, there’s the political aspect. After the elections of 2015, the situation in the regional parliament of the Rakhine state became soon blocked by the appointment of a chief minister who belongs to the government party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy. But it is the Arakan National Party that holds a majority in the regional parliament. The conclusion is this: pleasing or antagonising the Rakhine ethnics is not necessarily related to government policies towards the Muslims and vice-versa.

What is the way out? Aung San Syu Ki said that the state would soon begin verification process for the return of the Rohingyas. Do you think a fruitful political dialogue will possibly follow this?

There is not a single way out; there are rather many patient steps to be taken by the stakeholders and actors in the conflict sphere to improve the situation. While the immediate prospect looks bleak, not least because no one really knows what role the new group, ARSA, is going to play, one should not be blind to the fact that there have been no revenge killings and no riots in the rest of the Rakhine state during the last weeks. Most people in the country seem painfully aware that the current crisis may produce a dangerous international backlash. On the other hand, since 2013, many other ethnic groups that are hoping for peace and development and for international support as well, have grown desperate as the Rohingya lobby groups have appropriated a lot of the attention of international donors.

The near prospects will be dictated by the international involvement in the crisis. A repatriation effort will likely be engaged on the basis of the earlier agreement with Bangladesh and under international auspices. The government should try to apply, as it had promised, the recommendations of the Kofi Annan Advisory Commission report that make a lot of sense in terms of improving general livelihood in the region. True, none of those recommendations expressly address the issue of a political dialogue that you refer to. The international community does not seem to imagine anything like that either. It seems enthralled by the apparently unprecedented drama of another exodus that is still poorly understood. Sticking with their fascination for Aung San Suu Kyi, once a saint and de facto prisoner, a leader and a fallen angel today, the United States, the European Union and other interested parties fail to address and engage with some of the fundamental issues that we need to know more about, namely social and political drivers in the arch-conservative Muslim Rohingya society, transnational Rohingya dynamics, the relationship between the diaspora and Rohingyas in Myanmar as well as similarly structured issues relating to the social and political lives of the Rakhine community. What we know already is that the management of the Rakhine State and its people display a state failure that has extended over several decades. We also know that the state has failed to stand up for the protection and welfare of the people and has shown itself as a weak rather than as a potent force. Only a collective effort will pay off, the state alone will not be able to shoulder the entire burden. Dialogue is, no doubt, one among the important steps to be taken.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/01/frictions-rakhine-state-less-islamophobia-rohingya-phobia/

 

[Banglar Bir]

Living the genocide: in the grip of trauma
With no psychosocial assistance, Rohingya refugees are vulnerable to life-long PTSD
Md Shahnawaz Khan Chandan October 06, 2017

Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo
It was around 10 pm and raining heavily. As we were returning from Teknaf, we saw hundreds of Rohingyas huddled together in their polythene shanties and under trees to get some shelter from the downpour. Under a large tree, we saw a mother feeding her baby, and not far from her lay two toddlers getting helplessly drenched in the rain. They were so weak and sick that they did not have the strength to move to seek shelter. We asked the mother, “Peace be upon you ma'am. Are they your children?” She replied, “No. We don't know where their parents are. They probably were killed by the [Myanmar] military. My relatives and I brought them with us as they had nowhere to go. If we had left them at their village, they would have been killed too.” Like those toddlers, there are thousands of Rohingya children who saw their loved ones getting killed in front of their eyes; there are many who lost their parents amidst the chaos and don't know whether they are alive or not. Without any food, water or shelter, these children traversed hundreds of miles with the refugees for the sake of their lives.

In Kutupalong refugee camp at Ukhia, Cox's Bazar, we found an eight-year-old Rohingya boy sobbing relentlessly. We asked him why he was crying. He could not answer. When we asked again he only made a throat-slitting gesture with his fingers. Shocked by that gesture, we asked some Rohingyas what had happened to him. They told us a story that horrified us. When the boy's home was attacked by a Rakhine mob, he along with his mother and maternal uncle hid in a bamboo thicket, but his father was caught. Seeing her husband tortured brutally, his mother went to beg for mercy from the rioters. However, the cold-blooded killers slaughtered the boy's mother and father after torturing them for hours. Right in front of his eyes. Unable to bear the atrocities, the boy passed out, and later, he and his uncle were rescued by a column of passing refugees.

“During the four-day journey through jungles and hills, he did not cry or utter a single word. He hardly ate any food or drank any water. After reaching the camp yesterday (September 6), he started weeping incessantly. He doesn't say anything and only makes the gesture of how his parents were killed,” says a Rohingya elderly, who along with his family members were looking after the boy at that time, as his only surviving relative, his maternal uncle, was hit by a bullet while crossing the border and taking treatment at a Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital.

Rohingya refugees have recurrent nightmares about their entire villages being destroyed by the Myanmar army in Maungdaw district. Photo: AFP
After visiting several Rohingya refugee camps at Teknaf and Cox's Bazar, we found hundreds of children who were severely traumatised and showed clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Starvation, unhealthy environment in the makeshift camps and diseases like diarrhoea and fever are further deteriorating their already vulnerable mental state.

Most of these children hardly get any support from their family members who are also equally traumatised—especially Rohingya women, who were worst victims of the violence and the easy prey for the rioters and Myanmar army. Accounts of rape and sadistic sexual assaults were shared by many Rohingya refugees. An elderly Rohingya woman at Kutupalong refugee camp told the reporters, “Myanmar military used to pick Rohingya women up whenever they wished. Only the pregnant and elderly women were spared. After several days of continuous rape and torture, they sometimes left the half-dead victims in the village. Sometimes we found their dead bodies nearby.”


Many young Rohingya girls hid their faces when they saw journalists and cameras and did not want to talk to us at all. An elderly Rohingya woman at a makeshift refugee camp in Thaengkhali says, “You will not find a single young Rohingya girl here who was not tortured by the Rakhines or the military.” Although we could not talk to them, anybody could read the expression of trauma and fear on their faces.

Many Rohingya women saw their children die of starvation, disease and from accidents. At least 10 children died on September 29, 2017 when a boat carrying 30 Rohingya women and children capsized just yards off the coast of the Bay of Bengal due to rough seas worsened by torrential downpour and high winds. After the accident, a mother was seen holding the lifeless body of her child but nobody could make her believe that the child had already passed away.

Many young Rohingya mothers lost their children and husbands amidst the chaos and were desperately searching for their loved ones in the densely populated refugee camps. In the camp at Thaengkhali, a Rohingya girl, hardly 18 years of age, asked us in a helpless manner, “Did you see Rafique, my son? He is of fair complexion and has a birthmark on his cheek. Could you please help me find him?” Many Rohingya mothers with newborn babies are also in a desperate state. After days of starvation, many of these mothers cannot breastfeed their children and thousands of Rohingya children are at high risk of dying due to disease and malnutrition. “I cannot sleep at night anymore. I haven't eaten anything for days and could not breastfeed my son today. Whenever I feel sleepy, I hear my one-year-old son crying for food in my dreams. In my nightmares, I often see the Rakhines coming to seize my son to slaughter him,” says Morijna Begum—a mother of a six-month-old baby boy—who was severely weakened by starvation and constant sleep deprivation.

For now, relief initiatives are focusing mostly on providing life-saving support, such as food and medicine. The government and donor organisations are still struggling to manage these relief items for around 500,000 refugees. Under these trying circumstances, there is little to no initiative to address the mental health conditions of the traumatised survivors. In fact, with an overzealous crowd of journalists, local aid workers, government and non-government officials interacting with and questioning these refugees without any heed, they are becoming more and more anxious and often breaking down into tears.

UN doctors in Bangladesh found evidence of horrific sexual assaults on Rohingya women. Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo
It is now obvious that these refugees, especially the women and children, who have been suffering unbearable psychological turmoil for months, must be given psychosocial help, so that they can gradually cope with this tragic, disastrous situation.

According to Professor Dr Muhammad Kamal Uddin, Department of Psychology, University of Dhaka, “With every relief initiative, we should also provide psychological first aid to every refugee. This psychological first aid is actually a counselling service which would include several components such as ensuring them of their safety and protection from further harm and support from the community and the country; giving them the opportunity to talk freely; listening to them with compassion; expressing sympathy and concern for their losses; and teaching them coping strategies. If this support is not given, there is a high chance that many of these women and children will suffer from life-long PTSD.”

Dr Kamal adds that women suffering from PTSD will not be able to take care of their children properly, which might cause malnutrition and even disability. He also argues that in the case of young children, PTSD severely affects brain development and its proper functioning. “Several studies highlight that child victims of PTSD show deviant behaviour when they grow up, including self-harm and aggressive tendencies; they are also more likely to get involved with criminal activities as adults if they are not treated early,” comments Dr Kamal.

This Rohingya woman lost her only child when a boat full of Rohingya refugees sank off the coast of Teknaf but nobody could make her believe that her child had already passed away. Photo: Anisur Rahman
And yet, this huge number of Rohingya refugees, most of whom have had ghastly, traumatic experiences of violence and torture, are still beyond the purview of any psychological counselling services. Nishat Fatima Rahman, Assistant Professor at BRAC Institute for Educational Development (BIED) has been providing counselling training to BRAC workers who are working in Rohingya refugee camps. She says, “We train all our aid workers so that they can provide primary counselling services to the traumatised refugees. They learn the dos and don'ts of interaction with refugees. If all workers can be trained in basic counselling, they will be able to apply psychological first aid to help the refugees cope under stressful events.”

She also stated that in every refugee camp, a specified place can be preserved for children to play with their friends. “Play therapy is a very efficient method to treat traumatised children. During playtime, they interact freely and receive counselling suggestions willingly. BRAC has already established a few play centres in and around the refugee camps. But the situation is still very chaotic and in this situation there is no doubt that the number of PTSD patients will increase every day,” states Nishat.

The boat carrying refugees broke into two pieces off the coast of Teknaf and around 60 Rohingyas lost their lives. Photo: Anisur Rahman
Beyond first aid, the refugees require therapy; however, given the severity of the disorders and the huge number of patients, this is far from realistic. Dr Kali Prasanna Das, a counsellor who provided psychological first aid to Rana Plaza survivors, thinks that group therapy can be an effective way to treat such a huge number of victims. “We have a shortage of psychiatrists and there are socio-cultural and linguistic barriers between the victims and the professionals. However, another characteristic of this crisis is that most of the victims share similar traumatic experiences and all of these victims want to survive and live. So, if we can divide the victims into several groups according to their age and gender and arrange sessions for them where they will be able to share their stories of sufferings freely, they will feel much more relieved,” says Dr Das. He also thinks that it will not be possible for a single organisation to conduct such an enormous task. He appeals to all the aid organisations to come forward to arrange group therapy sessions for the refugees.

Studies over the years have documented how survivors of the Holocaust, for instance, still show serious symptoms of PTSD even in their old age, having been deprived of any psychosocial assistance. Many of them recounted that their experiences during the Holocaust even led them to suffer serious physical and mental illnesses.

If we now fail to provide the Rohingya refugees with mental health services, there will be severe repercussions for them as individuals and as a community. As a result, national and international aid workers should also focus on giving these helpless refugees adequate mental health services so that they can cope with their current struggles and live with the hope of a better, peaceful future.
The writer can be contacted at shahnawaz.khan@thedailystar.net
http://www.thedailystar.net/star-weekend/spotlight/living-the-genocide-the-grip-trauma-1472017

 

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MYANMAR’S ROHINGYA PERSECUTION
Existentially naked
Published: 00:05, Oct 11,2017 | Updated: 22:44, Oct 10,2017

The campaign of ethnic cleansing now being carried out against Myanmar’s Rohingya confronts the world with one of those moments that seem to arrive unannounced. Surely, by now, we should be able to recognise in such episodes the accelerating pulse of genocide? Bernard Henri-Lévy writes

AS IS so often the case, it was an artist who sounded the warning. His name is Barbet Schroeder and the alert that he issued came in the form of his fine, sober film ‘The Venerable W’, a portrait of Myanmar’s Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu. Known as ‘W’, Wirathu is the other face of a religion that is widely perceived as the archetype of peace, love and harmony. And behind his racist visage lies a broader embrace of violence that takes one’s breath away.

Shown at the 2017 Cannes Festival, Schroeder’s film attracted an impressive amount of media attention. And, in a subsequent television appearance, Schroeder warned that the Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, lay in the sights of Wirathu’s bloodthirsty ‘969 Movement’.

That should come as no surprise. The Rohingyas are a million men and women rendered stateless in their own country. Deprived of the right to vote, of political representation and of access to hospitals and schools, they have faced pogroms whenever the military that has tyrannised Myanmar for a half-century has tired of starving them.

The Rohingya’s unique status is stunning in its calculated cruelty. They are simultaneously rootless (officially unrecognised in a country so obsessed with race that it counts 135 other ‘national ethnicities’, making them literally one race too many) and root-bound (legally barred from moving, working, or marrying outside their village of origin and subject to restrictions on family size).
From sub-human to hunted animal
SO HERE we are, confronted with one of those moments that seem to arrive unannounced but that, by now, we should be able to recognise as the accelerating pulse of genocide.

Nearly 4,00,000 people have now been transferred from the realm of subhumans to that of hunted animals, smoked out of the villages to which they had previously been confined, driven out on the roads, shot at, tortured for fun and subjected to mass rape. Those who survive are arriving at makeshift camps just across the border in neighbouring Bangladesh, which, as one of the world’s poorest countries, lacks the resources, though not the will, to offer proper shelter to the swelling ranks of refugees.

The United Nations, overcoming its customary pusillanimity, has drawn on what remains of its moral capital to condemn these crimes, declaring the Rohingyas the world’s most persecuted minority. For those inclined to see and remember, the situation in Rakhine State recalls the ethnic cleansing that occurred in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the even worse massacres in Rwanda in the same decade.

But many are not inclined to see. Because the Rohingyas’ persecutors, by restricting access to journalists and photographers, have denied their victims a face and because the Rohingya are Muslims at a bad time to be Muslim, nearly the entire world is turning a blind eye.
‘Unused knowledge and a passion for ignorance’
CONFRONTED with this tragedy foretold, the world should meditate on what my late friend, the philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, called unused knowledge and the passion for ignorance.
We should curse the naivete that led many, including me, to sanctify the ‘Lady of Rangoon’, Aung San Suu Kyi, herself the subject of a film, this one intended to be hagiographic but, in hindsight, appalling. Since becoming Myanmar’s de facto leader last year, Suu Kyi has abandoned the Rohingyas to their fate.

Suu Kyi seemed to deserve the Nobel peace prize that she won in 1991, when she appeared to be the reincarnation in one body of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. But from the moment when she solemnly assured the world that she had seen nothing in Sittwe, that nothing had happened in the rest of Rakhine State and that the string of alarming reports to the contrary was just the ‘tip of an iceberg of disinformation’, her Nobel prize became an alibi.

The Rohingyas are the latest cohort of the existentially naked: people dispossessed of everything (including their own death), shut out of the human community and thus stripped of rights. They are the people Hannah Arendt predicted would become fixtures of humanity’s future, living (or living dead) reproaches to hollow declarations of human rights.
Qantara.de, October 6. Bernard-Henri Lévy is one of the founders of the movement of ‘Nouveaux Philosophes’ (New Philosophers). His books include Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, American Vertigo: In Search of the Soul of America. His latest work is entitled The Genius of Judaism.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/25881/existentially-naked

 

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12:00 AM, October 12, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 03:30 AM, October 12, 2017
UN's Bosnia promise forgotten in Myanmar

A Rohingya child uses a bowl to shelter himself from the scorching sun at the Palangkhali refugee camp in Ukhia of Cox's Bazar yesterday. Photo: AFP
Inam Ahmed and Shakhawat Liton
After the shame of Bosnia, there should not have been a Myanmar.
Yet, Myanmar happened because the big nations on both sides of the East-West divide have rendered the UN an ineffective organisation, a platform to talk and not to take actions.

When in July 1995, the Christian Serbs raided the Bosnian Muslim “safe zone” in Srebrenica and killed thousands of men and boys, the world remained a spectator with voices to speak but no will to act.

They were vocal even before when the Bosnian tragedy unfolded. The UN Security Council, between April 1992 and October 1993, adopted a record 47 resolutions and issued 42 statements. Yet two years later, the Srebrenica massacre was unleashed as the nations in the UN could not decide what actions to take to stop the atrocities thrust upon the Muslims.

Those nations who had their troops in Bosnia with Blue Helmets did not want any military offensive against the Serbs. Nations which did not commit any troops wanted military intervention. In the end, no action was taken and Srebrenica happened.

The events in the heart of Europe shook many a conscience. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in a report concluded “the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever”.

And at the opening session of 1999 General Assembly, he showed his resolve when he said that national borders would no longer protect leaders who abuse people under their control.

Eight years down the line and six years after the butcher of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic was arrested by the Yugoslav authorities for genocide, the International Court of Justice issued an important judgement in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro.

The court echoed what Kofi Annan had said and announced that the obligation to prevent genocide cannot be limited by territories.

It said every state with a “capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing genocide”, even if outside its own borders, was under an obligation “to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible”.

The world thought there would not be another Bosnia. The world thought there would not be another Srebrenica. Myanmar was a rude awakening for the world.

And the world forgot their obligation as Kofi Annan and the International Court of Justice had lain out. None of the nations that had any power to stop the Myanmar genocide raised a finger.

The UN under Antonio Guterres, a socialist, a committed reformer, the former prime minister of Portugal, was expected to change the UN from its bureaucratic straps that made it a talking platform. He was after all the prime minister who resigned and went to the city slums to teach children math before being appointed the UN chief for the first time in the history through an open debate. He was a man to operate with “heart and reason”.

But even he proved too helpless this time in Myanmar as all that the UN have done so far was to issue a Security Council statement and to hold an open discussion to be snubbed by vetoes by China and Russia after the greatest modern time exodus after the persecution began. Meantime, the streams of Rohingyas fleeing killings and rape continue.

This has exposed the inherent weakness of the UN system and the greater need for reforms to prevent and intervene in future genocides.

The call for restraining the veto power in cases of genocide has been growing louder in recent years. In 2013, France, one of the five permanent members in the Security Council, presented a proposal to the General Assembly to limit the use of the veto power in cases of genocides.

Two years after France's initiative, 107 countries jointly placed a proposal in the General Assembly for enacting a code of conduct to limit the exercise of the veto power. France and UK supported this move.

This reform should immediately be carried out to have a strong UN to deliver on its core goal-- prevention of genocide.

The genocide in Myanmar must be stopped forthwith and after Myanmar there must not be another one.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...m_medium=newsurl&utm_term=all&utm_content=all

 

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South Asian Monitor
The “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, explained

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BSF Pushing Rohingyas into Bangladesh from India.
সাতক্ষীরায় ভারত থেকে আসা ১৯ রোহিঙ্গা আটক, কঠোর অবস্থানে দিল্লি........২০১৭-১০-১১
বাংলাদেশের সাতক্ষীরা সীমান্ত দিয়ে ভারত থেকে অবৈধভাবে আসা ১৯ রোহিঙ্গাকে আটক করেছে বিজিবি। আটকদের মধ্যে ১০ শিশু, ছয় নারী ও তিন পুরুষ রয়েছে।

আজ (বুধবার) ভোরে সাতক্ষীরা সদর উপজেলার পদ্মশাকরা সীমান্তে পৌঁছামাত্র ওই তাদেরকে আটক করা হয়।বিজিবির পদ্মশাকরা তল্লাশিচৌকির (বিওপি) কমান্ডার সুবেদার মোশাররফ হোসেন জানান, ওই রোহিঙ্গারা ভারত থেকে দেশটির সীমান্তরক্ষাকারী বাহিনী বিএসএফের সহায়তায় বাংলাদেশে আসে।

এর আগে ২০১২ ও ২০১৪ সালে দুই দফায় তারা মিয়ানমার থেকে ভারতের দিল্লিতে গিয়েছিল। এর পর থেকে সেখানেই বসবাস করে আসছিল। কিন্তু সম্প্রতি বাংলাদেশ সরকার রোহিঙ্গাদের আশ্রয় এবং খাদ্য, বস্ত্র ও চিকিৎসা দিচ্ছে বলে খবর পেয়ে তারা দিল্লি থেকে বাংলাদেশে চলে এসেছেন। তাদেরকে সাতক্ষীরা সদর থানায় সোপার্দ করাহয় বলে জানান বিজিবির ওই কর্মকর্তা। সাতক্ষীরা সদর থানার উপপরিদর্শক (এসআই) শরিফ এনামুল হক জানান, আটকরা বেশ ক্লান্ত। তাঁদের খাদ্য ও চিকিৎসা সহায়তা দেওয়া হচ্ছে।এর আগে গত ২২ সেপ্টেম্বর সাতক্ষীরার কলারোয়া বাসস্ট্যান্ড থেকে ১৩ জন এবং ৩ অক্টোবর কলারোয়ার হিজলদী সীমান্ত থেকে আরো সাত রোহিঙ্গাকে আটক করেন আইনশৃঙ্খলা বাহিনীর সদস্যরা।