Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing - Updates & Discussions

[EastBengalPro]

http://www.prothom-alo.com/opinion/article/1333816/রাশিয়াও-কেন-মিয়ানমারের-পক্ষে

রাশিয়াও কেন মিয়ানমারের পক্ষে

আগের নিবন্ধে রাশিয়ার প্রসঙ্গ টানা হয়নি। কারণ, বঙ্গোপসাগরে চীন ও ভারতের টানাপোড়েনে রাশিয়া এখন পর্যন্ত যুক্ত নয়। মিয়ানমারকে রাশিয়ার সমর্থন দেওয়ার বিষয়টি ওই দুই দেশের মতো সরাসরি ভূরাজনীতির প্রেক্ষাপটে হয়তো তেমন গুরুত্বপূর্ণ নয়, কিন্তু পরোক্ষ যুক্ততা রয়েছে। ভৌগোলিক অবস্থানের কারণে ভারত মহাসাগর তথা প্রশান্ত মহাসাগরীয় অঞ্চলে রাশিয়ার শক্তি প্রদর্শনের বিষয়টি নেই বললেই চলে। মিয়ানমারে রাশিয়ার স্বার্থ হচ্ছে সেখানে অর্থনৈতিক প্রভাব বিস্তার করা, বিশেষ করে আণবিক শক্তি রপ্তানি ও সামরিক সরঞ্জামাদি রপ্তানির মাধ্যমে। রাশিয়া ও ভারত—দুটি দেশই মিয়ানমারে চীনের প্রভাব কমিয়ে নিজেদের অবস্থান জোরদারে ব্যস্ত।

এটা সবারই জানা যে মিয়ানমারের দীর্ঘদিনের একঘরে থাকার বিষয়টির অবসান ঘটে ২০১৫ সালে নির্বাচন ও সেই নির্বাচনে অং সান সু চির বিজয়ের পর। তবে সু চির দল রাষ্ট্রীয় ক্ষমতায় থাকলেও তাঁর কাছে পূর্ণ ক্ষমতা নেই। বলা যায়, এখনো মিয়ানমারের সামরিক বাহিনীর ক্ষমতা কিছু কিছু জায়গায় প্রায় একচ্ছত্র। ১৯৯০-এর পর সামরিক বাহিনীর শক্তি বেড়েছে বহুগুণ। উত্তর-পূর্ব মিয়ানমারের অঞ্চলে ‘বিদ্রোহ’ মোকাবিলায় এই শক্তি কাজে লাগানো হচ্ছে। অং সান সু চির চেষ্টায় ১৪টি বিদ্রোহী বাহিনী যুদ্ধবিরতি ঘোষণা করলেও আটটি শক্তিশালী বাহিনী এখনো যুদ্ধ করে যাচ্ছে। স্বাধীনতা বা অধিকতর স্বায়ত্তশাসনের দাবিতে এই যুদ্ধ চলছে। জানা যায়, চীনের প্রভাবে বর্তমান যুদ্ধবিরতিগুলো সম্ভব হয়েছে। কারণ, এসব বিদ্রোহী মূলত চীনের সমর্থন নিয়েই মিয়ানমার বাহিনীর সঙ্গে লড়াই করে আসছিল।

চীন গত প্রায় পাঁচ দশক এককভাবে মিয়ানমারকে সব ধরনের সহযোগিতা করলেও প্রয়োজনে মিয়ানমারের ওপর চাপ প্রয়োগের কৌশল হিসেবে বিদ্রোহীদের সহায়তা দিয়ে আসছিল। বর্তমানেও সেই একই অবস্থা বজায় রয়েছে। মিয়ানমারের ওপর নিষেধাজ্ঞার কারণে সামরিক বাহিনীসহ দেশটির অর্থনীতি কার্যত চীনের ওপর নির্ভরশীল ছিল। তবে একুশ শতকের শুরু থেকে চীনের প্রভাব কমতে শুরু করে। মিয়ানমারের ব্যাপারে চীনের যে দ্বিমুখী নীতি, তা মেনে নেওয়া ছাড়া একসময় মিয়ানমারের আর কোনো পথ ছিল না। সেই অবস্থার অবসান ঘটে মিয়ানমার উন্মুক্ত হওয়ার পর। ২০১৫ সালের পর থেকে মিয়ানমার চীনের প্রভাব কমাতে বেশ সতর্কভাবে এগোচ্ছে। চীনের প্রভাব কমার কারণেই পূর্ব বঙ্গোপসাগরে ভারত তার অবস্থান শক্ত করতে উদ্যোগী হয়েছে। পূর্ব-পশ্চিম থেকে চীন ভারতকে ঘিরে ফেলতে পারে, এই ভয়ে ভারত ভীত। পূর্বে রাখাইনে চীন গভীর সমুদ্রবন্দর এবং গ্যাস ও জ্বালানি তেলের টার্মিনাল তৈরি করেছে, আবার ঠিক একইভাবে পশ্চিমে পাকিস্তানের বন্দর কাসেম থেকে গ্যাস ও জ্বালানি করিডর চীনে নিয়ে যাওয়া হয়েছে। তৈরি হচ্ছে রেলওয়ে লাইন। তবে রাখাইন থেকে চীন পর্যন্ত রেলওয়ে লাইন বিছানো প্রাথমিক পরিকল্পনায় থাকলেও আপাতত স্থগিত রয়েছে পরিবেশবাদী ও স্থানীয় অঞ্চলের বাসিন্দাদের আন্দোলনের কারণে।

চীন-মিয়ানমার আগের সম্পর্কে কিছুটা ফাটল ধরলেও মিয়ানমারের অভ্যন্তরীণ নিরাপত্তার ওপর চীনের যেমন প্রভাব রয়েছে, তেমনি চীনের অস্ত্র ব্যবহার করে বিদ্রোহী গোষ্ঠীগুলো লড়াই চালিয়ে যাচ্ছে। বলা হয়, এখনো কাচিন বিদ্রোহী, টাং ন্যাশনাল লিবারেশন আর্মি, সান স্টেট আর্মি ও ওয়াহ টেস্ট আর্মিকে চীন সহায়তা জুগিয়ে যাচ্ছে। এই সংগঠনগুলো তাদের জায়গায় নিরাপদ অঞ্চল তৈরি করেছে। অতি সম্প্রতি এশিয়া টাইমস পত্রিকায় বার্টিন লিন্টার তাঁর এক নিবন্ধে চীন-মিয়ানমারের সম্পর্কের ফাটলের বিষয়টি বিস্তারিতভাবে আলোচনা করেছেন। তিনি উদাহরণ টেনে এ বছরের এপ্রিল মাসে সান প্রদেশের কোকাং অঞ্চলে বিদ্রোহীদের বিরুদ্ধে অভিযানে মিয়ানমারের বাহিনীর ক্ষয়ক্ষতির চিত্র তুলে ধরেছেন। ওই যুদ্ধে ৩২ জন সামরিক কর্মকর্তা ও ৪১২ জন সৈনিক মৃত্যুবরণ করেন। এ ছাড়া চীনের সীমান্তসংলগ্ন ওই অঞ্চলে ২০১৫ সালের শুরুর দিকে কয়েক মাসের সংঘর্ষে মিয়ানমার বাহিনীর ৬৬ লাইট ইনফেন্ট্রি ডিভিশন প্রায় নিশ্চিহ্ন হয়ে গিয়েছিল। কাচিন রাজ্য বিদ্রোহীদের বিরুদ্ধে অভিযানে সেনাবাহিনীকে বিমান হামলা করতে হয়েছে। হামলায় প্রথমবারের মতো রাশিয়ার অত্যাধুনিক জঙ্গি বিমান মিগ ২৯ ও এমআই ৩৫ গানশিপ ব্যবহার করা হয়।

বর্তমানে বিভিন্ন অঞ্চলে বিদ্রোহীদের সঙ্গে চলমান যুদ্ধে সেনাশক্তির বদলে বিমানশক্তি ব্যবহৃত হচ্ছে। যে কারণে মিয়ানমারের বিমানবাহিনীকে রাশিয়ার দ্বারস্থ হতে হচ্ছে। বর্তমানে চীনের ওপর মিয়ানমার খুব একটা ভরসা রাখতে পারছে না, বিশেষ করে কারেন, কাচিন ও সান অঞ্চলের বিদ্রোহীদের প্রতি চীনের পরোক্ষ প্রভাবের কারণে। চীনের সঙ্গে মিয়ানমারের অভিন্ন সীমান্তদৈর্ঘ্য ২ হাজার ১৯২ কিলোমিটার। বর্তমানে যে দুটি অঞ্চলে বিদ্রোহীদের সঙ্গে সবচেয়ে বেশি সংঘর্ষ হচ্ছে, সেই কাচিন ও সান রাজ্যের অভিন্ন সীমান্ত রয়েছে চীনের সঙ্গে। এই রাজ্য দুটিতে একাধিক বিদ্রোহী গ্রুপ সক্রিয় রয়েছে এবং তাদের মুক্তাঞ্চল রয়েছে। সান রাজ্যে রয়েছে ইউনাইটেড ওয়াহ স্টেট আর্মি এবং তাদের দখলে রয়েছে প্রায় ১৫ হাজার বর্গকিলোমিটার এলাকা। ‘পাঙ্গসাং’ নামক চীন-মিয়ানমার (সান রাজ্য) সীমান্ত শহরটি ওই অঞ্চলের অঘোষিত রাজধানী হিসেবে পরিচিত (সূত্র: বার্টিন লিন্টার: গ্রেট গেম ইস্ট ইন্ডিয়া, চায়না অ্যান্ড দ্য স্ট্রাগল ফর এশিয়াস মোস্ট ভোলাটাইল ফ্রন্টিয়ার)। এই ইউনাইটেড ওয়াহ স্টেট আর্মি শুধু ক্ষুদ্র অস্ত্রে সজ্জিত নয়, তাদের রয়েছে আর্মার্ড পারসোনেল ক্যারিয়ারসহ অন্যান্য ভারী অস্ত্র এবং একাধিক গোলন্দাজ বাহিনী।

এমন পরিস্থিতিতেও মিয়ানমার চীনের বলয়ের বাইরে যেতে পারছে না। খুব শিগগির পারবে বলেও মনে হয় না। তবে সামরিক বাহিনীতে চীনের প্রভাব কমাতে মিয়ানমার সামরিক সরঞ্জামের জন্য বিভিন্ন দেশের দ্বারস্থ হতে শুরু করেছে, যার মধ্যে সবার ওপরে রয়েছে রাশিয়া। হেলিকপ্টার, গানশিপ ও মিগ-২৯ কেনার কথা আগেই বলেছি। আরও বেশ কিছু মিগ-২৯ জঙ্গি বিমান কেনার বিষয়টি প্রক্রিয়াধীন রয়েছে। বিমানবাহিনীর সঙ্গে বাণিজ্য সম্প্রসারণের লক্ষ্যে রাশিয়া মিয়ানমারের বাণিজ্যিক শহর ইয়াঙ্গুনে ‘মিগ’ কোম্পানির অফিস খুলেছে। মিয়ানমারের ছাত্রদের উচ্চশিক্ষার ক্ষেত্রে রাশিয়া ভূমিকা পালন করছে। ১৯৯৩ থেকে ২০১৩ সাল পর্যন্ত রাশিয়ায় ৪ হাজার ৭০৫ জন ছাত্র উচ্চশিক্ষা শেষ করেছেন। এই ছাত্রদের মধ্যে ৭০০ ছাত্র পারমাণবিক বিদ্যায় পড়াশোনা করেছেন।

বর্তমানে রাশিয়া শুধু অস্ত্রের সরবরাহ করছে না, অন্যান্য ক্ষেত্রেও এবং বিশেষভাবে অর্থনৈতিক সহায়তা ও প্রযুক্তি রপ্তানির ক্ষেত্র তৈরি করছে। ২০১৩ সালে পারমাণবিক চুল্লি তৈরির ব্যাপারে রাশিয়ার সঙ্গে মিয়ানমারের সমঝোতা স্মারক সই হয়েছে। এর আওতায় দুটি পারমাণবিক বিদ্যুৎকেন্দ্র তৈরির চুক্তি হয়ে গেছে। রাশিয়ার নজর রয়েছে মিয়ানমারের তেল ও গ্যাসক্ষেত্রগুলোর দিকে। রাশিয়ার সরকারি কোম্পানি ‘গ্যাজপ্রম’ অফিস খুলেছে ইয়াঙ্গুনে। গত মে মাসে মিয়ানমারের প্রেসিডেন্ট হিতিন কেইও রাশিয়ায় দেশটির প্রেসিডেন্ট ভ্লাদিমির পুতিনের সঙ্গে জ্বালানি তেল ও গ্যাস উত্তোলনে রাশিয়ার বিনিয়োগ ও প্রযুক্তি দিয়ে সহযোগিতার ক্ষেত্র সম্প্রসারণের আলোচনা করেছে। এ ক্ষেত্রে মিয়ানমারের প্রেসিডেন্ট রাশিয়াকে সব ধরনের বিশেষ সুযোগ-সুবিধা দেওয়ার অঙ্গীকার করেছেন।

ভারতের কাছ থেকে অস্ত্র সংগ্রহের লক্ষ্যে মিয়ানমারের সেনা কর্মকর্তারা ভারত সফর করেছেন। রাশিয়া ও ভারত—এই দুই দেশই মিয়ানমারের সামরিক কর্মকর্তাদের সামরিক প্রশিক্ষণ দিচ্ছে। কিন্তু পরিস্থিতি যা-ই হোক, মিয়ানমার চীন থেকে সম্পূর্ণভাবে মুখ ফিরিয়ে নিতে পারবে না। চীনের সঙ্গে মিয়ানমারের দীর্ঘ সীমান্ত ও বিদ্রোহের কারণে ভূকৌশলগত এই নরম-গরম সম্পর্ক বজায় থাকবে বলেই মনে হয়।

ওপরের আলোচনার পরিপ্রেক্ষিতে এটা পরিষ্কার যে বর্তমান রোহিঙ্গা সংকটকে জাতীয় স্বার্থের বিবেচনায় ভারত, চীন বা রাশিয়া মোটেই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বলে বিবেচনা করছে না। বিশেষ করে, রাখাইন ও উত্তর মিয়ানমারে ভূকৌশলগত গুরুত্ব ও বিশাল বিনিয়োগ নিয়ে প্রতিযোগিতার কারণে ভারত ও চীনের কাছে এই সংকটে বাংলাদেশের পক্ষ নেওয়ার চেয়ে মিয়ানমারের পক্ষ নেওয়া বেশি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বলে বিবেচিত হচ্ছে। বিভিন্ন তথ্য ও বিশ্লেষণে সেটাই দেখা যাচ্ছে। ভারতের একাধিক বিশ্লেষকও মনে করেন, বাংলাদেশের এ ক্ষেত্রে কিছু আশা করাও উচিত নয়।

রোহিঙ্গাদের সঙ্গে জঙ্গিদের যোগাযোগ অথবা আরসা জঙ্গি তৎপরতা চালাচ্ছে—মিয়ানমারের এমন অবস্থানের সঙ্গে চীন প্রকাশ্যে সায় দেয়নি। কিন্তু এই অঞ্চলে রোহিঙ্গা মুসলিমদের উপস্থিতিকে চীন বিপজ্জনক হিসেবে বিবেচনা করে। ‘উইঘুর’ অঞ্চলে মুসলিম বিদ্রোহীদের দমাতে চীন এখনো হিমশিম খাচ্ছে। কাজেই ভবিষ্যতে কোনো সময়ে রাখাইনে কাচিন, কারেন অথবা ওয়াহ স্টেট আর্মির মতো শক্ত বিদ্রোহী গ্রুপ দাঁড়ালে তা চীনের স্বার্থপরিপন্থী হবে। অন্যদিকে ভারতের বহু রাজনৈতিক ও আন্তর্জাতিক ভূকৌশল বিশেষজ্ঞ মনে করেন, রাখাইনে রোহিঙ্গাদের উপস্থিতি ভবিষ্যতে জঙ্গি তৎপরতার জন্য সহায়ক হলে তা ভারতের স্বার্থের বিরুদ্ধে যাবে।

রোহিঙ্গা প্রশ্নে এই তিন দেশ যে বাংলাদেশের পাশে থেকে মিয়ানমারকে চাপ দেবে না, তা প্রায় নিশ্চিত। এরপরও রাখাইন অঞ্চলে রোহিঙ্গাদের ফিরিয়ে নেওয়া এবং নাগরিক অধিকার ফিরিয়ে দিতে বাংলাদেশের দাবির বিষয়ে অন্তত মধ্যস্থতার উদ্যোগে রাজি করাতে বাংলাদেশের কূটনৈতিক প্রচেষ্টা অব্যাহত রাখতে হবে। এই তিন দেশকে বুঝতে হবে যে একটি দুর্বল জনগোষ্ঠীকে শক্তিশালী রাষ্ট্রীয় সন্ত্রাসের মুখে নিশ্চিহ্ন হতে দেওয়া যায় না।

যাহোক, রোহিঙ্গা ইস্যু যেমন বাংলাদেশের জন্য সংকট সৃষ্টি করেছে, তেমনি মিয়ানমারকে ঘিরে এ অঞ্চলে বৃহৎ শক্তিগুলোর ভূরাজনৈতিক প্রতিযোগিতা বাড়ানোর আশঙ্কা রয়েছে। সে ক্ষেত্রে মিয়ানমারের রাখাইন ও রোহিঙ্গা পরিস্থিতি আরও জটিল হওয়ার আশঙ্কা রয়েছে এবং তেমন কিছু হলে এর মাশুল গুনতে হবে বাংলাদেশকে।

এম সাখাওয়াত হোসেন: সাবেক নির্বাচন কমিশনার, কলাম লেখক ও পিএইচডি গবেষক।

hhintlbd@yahoo.com

 

[Banglar Bir]

UN official in Myanmar tried to stop rights groups from visiting Rakhine
Tribune Desk
Published at 12:07 PM September 29, 2017
Last updated at 08:32 PM September 29, 2017

Renata Lok-Dessallien, head of the United Nations Country Team in Myanmar UNFPA
The UN in Myanmar 'strongly disagreed' with the BBC findings
A former UN official allegedly said the head of the UN in Myanmar tried to stop human rights advocates from visiting sensitive Rohingya areas.

In the wake of almost 501,800 Rohingya fleeing the crackdown by Myanmar military and crossing over to Bangladesh for shelter, the BBC has found out questionable steps taken by the UN in Myanmar fours years ago which have worked as a catalyse to the current crisis.

Sources from within the UN and the aid community both in Myanmar and outside have talked to the BBC’s Jonah Fisher and confirmed the matter.

They said the head of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT), a Canadian called Renata Lok-Dessallien who had earlier been posted to Bangladesh, “tried to stop human rights activists travelling to Rohingya areas; attempted to shut down public advocacy on the subject; and isolated staff who tried to warn that ethnic cleansing might be on the way.”

The UN in Myanmar “strongly disagreed” with the BBC findings, writes Fisher.

He quotes an aid worker, Caroline Vandenabeele, who had a “crucial job” in the UNCT in Myanmar between 2013 and 2015.

According to Vandenabeele, the crackdown on the Rohingya in 2012 which led 100,000 Rohingya to the camps “presented a complex emergency for the UN and aid agencies.” They needed the assistance of the Myanmar government and the Buddhist community to get basic aid to the Rohingya. At the same time they were aware that “speaking up about the human rights and statelessness of the Rohingya would upset many Buddhists.”

Ultimately, it came to a point where talking about the Rohingya became “almost taboo” for the UN staff.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher writes: “During my years reporting from Myanmar, very few UN staff were willing to speak frankly on the record about the Rohingya. Now an investigation into the internal workings of the UN in Myanmar has revealed that even behind closed doors the Rohingyas’ problems were put to one side.

“Multiple sources in Myanmar’s aid community have told the BBC that at high-level UN meetings in Myanmar any question of asking the Burmese [Myanmarese] authorities to respect the Rohingyas’ human rights became almost impossible.”

Vandenabeele told the BBC that it soon became clear to everyone that raising the Rohingyas’ problems, or “warning of ethnic cleansing in senior UN meetings, was simply not acceptable.”

Fisher says Vandenabeele told him that she was often instructed to find out when the UNOCHA representative was out of town so meetings could be held at those times.

Fisher writes: “The head of UNOCHA declined to speak to the BBC but it has been confirmed by several other UN sources inside Myanmar. Vandenabeele said she was labelled a troublemaker and frozen out of her job for repeatedly warning about the possibility of Rohingya ethnic cleansing. This version of events has not been challenged by the UN.”

Attempts to restrict those talking about the Rohingya extended to UN officials visiting Myanmar, Fisher adds.

Another senior UN staffer told Fisher: “We’ve been pandering to the Rakhine community at the expense of the Rohingya.

“The government knows how to use us and to manipulate us and they keep on doing it – we never learn. And we can never stand up to them because we can’t upset the government.”
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/s...reventing-rights-groups-visit-rohingya-areas/

 

[Banglar Bir]

Analysis by analogy: Myanmar is not Syria
by Tony Cartalucci | Published: 00:05, Sep 30,2017 | Updated: 23:18, Sep 29,2017

MANY geopolitical analysts and commentators have noted many worthwhile similarities between the Syrian crisis and the one now unfolding in the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar. However, what is different about these two crises is just as important as what is the same.
The similarities
PARTICULAR focus has been placed on evidence emerging that US-ally Saudi Arabia is serving as an intermediary fuelling militancy in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The militants, however, consist of a foreign armed, funded, and led cadre, constituting a numerically negligible minority of the Rohingya population they claim to represent, and are in fact no more representative of the Rohingya people than militants of al-Qaeda and the so-called ‘Islamic State’ are representative of Syria or Iraq’s Sunni Muslim populations.

While it is crucial to point out the foreign-funded nature of a militancy attempting to co-opt the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, it is equally important to understand precisely where this militancy fits into Saudi Arabia’s and ultimately its American sponsors’ larger plans.

Another similarity pointed out by analysts is the use of US and European-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations. These include larger organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as organisations on the ground in Myanmar funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy, its various subsidiaries including the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, USAID, and Open Society.

These organisations are intentionally seeking to control the narrative, inflame rather than smooth over tensions, and create a pretext for wider and more direct intervention in Myanmar’s expanding crisis by western nations.

Analysts and commentators, however, cannot stop here. They must commit to equal due diligence in unravelling what stands behind Myanmar’s government — who it was that assisted them into power during the relatively recent 2016 elections, who built up their political networks across the country over the course of several decades, and what role their actions play in Western designs for the nation’s near and intermediate future.
The differences
SYRIA’S government is the creation and perpetuation of localised special interests — backed by various alliances ranging from the former Soviet Union in the past, to Russia, Iran, and to a lesser degree China in present day.

The United States and its Arab partners — particularly Saudi Arabia — have engineered militancy along and within Syria’s borders beginning in 2011 for the explicit purpose of overthrowing Syria’s government and dividing what remains of the nation among proxies and client regimes controlled from Washington, London, and Brussels.

In Myanmar, while the US and its Saudi partners are apparently fuelling militancy among the Rohingya population, it was the US itself who for decades built up the political networks of the current ruling regime, with Aung San Suu Kyi a whole-cloth creation of Western media narratives, immense funding and political support, and a carefully crafted facade to obfuscate from the public for decades the true, nationalist and even genocidal nature of Suu Kyi’s supposedly ‘Buddhist nationalist’ support base.
An extensive 2006 report by Burma Campaign UK titled, ‘Failing the People of Burma?’ would reveal how virtually every facet of Myanmar’s current government is a creation of Western political and financial support. (Note: The US and the UK still often refer to Myanmar by its British colonial name, ‘Burma’).

The report would lay this out in great detail, stating:
‘THE restoration of democracy in Burma is a priority US policy objective in Southeast Asia. To achieve this objective, the United States has consistently supported democracy activists and their efforts both inside and outside Burma…Addressing these needs requires flexibility and creativity.

Despite the challenges that have arisen, United States Embassies Rangoon and Bangkok as well as Consulate General Chiang Mai are fully engaged in pro-democracy efforts. The United States also supports organisations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute (nb no support given since 2004) and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities. US-based broadcasters supply news and information to the Burmese people, who lack a free press. US programs also fund scholarships for Burmese who represent the future of Burma. The United States is committed to working for a democratic Burma and will continue to employ a variety of tools to assist democracy activists.’

The 36-page report would enumerate US and European programmes in detail — ranging from the creation and funding of media, to organising political parties and devising campaign strategies for elections, to even scholarships abroad to indoctrinate an entire class of political proxies to be used well into the future upon transforming the nation into a client state. Virtually every aspect of life in Myanmar was targeted and overturned by western-backed networks over the course of several decades and an untold amount of foreign-funding.

Similar evidence reveals that many of the so-called ‘Buddhist’ nationalist groups also enjoy a close relationship with US and European interests and that they played a pivotal role in bringing Suu Kyi to power.

Additionally, many in Suu Kyi’s current government are the recipients of US-funded training. Narratives concerning the current Rohingya crisis are being crafted by Suu Kyi’s ‘Minister of Information,’ Pe Myint.

Pe Myint was revealed in a 2016 article in the Myanmar Times titled, ‘Who’s who: Myanmar’s new cabinet,’ to have participated in training funded by the US State Department. The article would report (emphasis added):

‘Formerly a doctor with a degree from the Institute of Medicine, U Pe Myint changed careers after 11 years and received training as a journalist at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok. He then embarked on a career as a writer, penning dozens of novels. He participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1998, and was also editor-in-chief of The People’s Age Journal. He was born in Rakhine State in 1949.’

The Indochina Media Memorial Foundation is revealed in a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks as fully funded by the US state department through various and familiar intermediaries. The cable titled, ‘An Overview of Northern Thailand-Based Burmese Media Organisations.’ would explicitly state (emphasis added): ‘Other organisations, some with a scope beyond Burma, also add to the educational opportunities for Burmese journalists. The Chiang Mai-based Indochina Media Memorial Foundation, for instance, last year completed training courses for Southeast Asian reporters that included Burmese participants. Major funders for journalism training programs in the region include the NED, Open Society Institute, and several European governments and charities.’

Many of those among Myanmar-based US-funded ‘NGOs’ apparently opposing Suu Kyi’s government are in fact alumni of the same US-funded programs as many members of the current government.
In essence, the primary difference between Myanmar and Syria is that while in Syria the US is fuelling militancy to topple a government beyond its reach and influence, in Myanmar, the US is manipulating the entire nation via two vectors its controls entirely — a militancy it is growing on one side, and a political establishment it has created from whole-cloth on the other.
Moving beyond analysis by analogy
HELPING readers understand various aspects of the current crisis in Myanmar by comparing it to various aspects of Syria’s ongoing conflict can be instructive. However, drawing entire conclusions about the implications of the Myanmar conflict by simply assuming it is repeat of Western efforts in Syria is fundamentally flawed.

While the US seeks to divide and destroy the entire state of Syria, its efforts in Myanmar are concentrated to the western state of Rakhine with little possibility of spreading because of Myanmar’s demographics.

This is also precisely where China has invested deeply in its One Belt, One Road project, with a seaport in Sittwe, central Rakhine, and road, rail, and pipeline projects slated to expand onward toward China’s border and eventually Kunming.

Opposition in the form of local NGOs underwritten by US State Department cash, or violence covertly backed by the US and its intermediaries, have attempted to systematically disrupt Chinese infrastructure projects around the globe, including in Myanmar. Chinese-built dams in Myanmar are opposed by networks of US-funded NGOs, militant groups accused of receiving US backing have attacked Chinese projects throughout the nation, and the current conflict in Rakhine fuelled on both sides by the US threaten to not only derail Chinese projects there, but may even serve as a pretext for positioning Western forces inside Myanmar — a nation that directly borders China.

Placing American forces — in any capacity — along China’s borders has been a long-term stated goal of US policymakers for decades. From the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers to the 2000 Project for a New American Century report, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences,’ to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, a singular theme of encircling and containing China either with client states obedient to Washington, or chaos all along China’s peripheries has prevailed.

It is clear that American designs in Syria and Myanmar employ similar networks and tactics and that both conflicts fit into a larger, global strategy. There are undoubtedly familiar themes emerging from both conflicts. However, what is different about Syria and Myanmar’s conflicts is just as important.
Analysts and commentators must account for the decades of US and European funding that placed the current government of Myanmar into power.

They must account for the surgical nature of destabilisation confined to Myanmar’s Rakhine state versus the full-spectrum destabilisation being fuelled in Syria. They must also identify the motives underpinning US designs in Myanmar.Simply assuming that a US-Saudi-backed militancy exists to topple a government rather than grease the wheels for another, more indirect objective — one that perhaps even aims at preserving Myanmar’s current government rather than toppling it by pinning blame on the nation’s still powerful and independent military — will only aid rather than impede injustice. Analogies drawn from two different conflicts are only helpful in simplifying explanations and conclusions analysis by deep research have already arrived at.

New Eastern Outlook, September 26. Tony Cartalucci, a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, writes especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/25131/analysis-by-analogy-myanmar-is-not-syria

 

[Banglar Bir]

US ups pressure on Myanmar as refugee exodus tops 502,000
SAM Report, September 30, 2017

A woman covers the face of a Rohingya refugees body on Inani beach, near Cox’s Bazar after their boat capsized. At least 19 drowned on Sept 28 with scores more feared dead after the boat went over off Bangladesh. Photo: AFP/Fred Dufour

More than 50 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were missing after their boat capsized, with 20 confirmed dead, Bangladesh police said on Friday, as a new surge in the numbers fleeing a Myanmar military campaign took the total to more than half a million. Reports Reuters.

The refugees drowned in heavy seas off Bangladesh late on Thursday while, in New York, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over violence against Rohingya Muslims.

It was the first time the United States had called for punishment of Myanmar’s military, but she stopped short of threatening to reimpose US sanctions which were suspended under the Obama administration.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and has denounced rights abuses.

Its military launched a sweeping offensive in response to coordinated attacks on the security forces by Rohingya insurgents in the north of Rakhine State on Aug. 25.

Refugees arriving in Myanmar have told of attacks and arson by the military and Buddhist vigilantes aimed at driving Rohingya out.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council the violence had spiraled into the “world’s fastest developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare”.

Bangladeshi border officials said more refugees had arrived over the past day or two after the number seemed to be tailing off. Aid groups said 502,000 refugees had arrived in Bangladesh since late August.

20 bodies recovered, including 12 children
“It stopped for a while but they have started coming again,” Colonel Anisul Haque, head of the Bangladeshi border guards in the town of Teknaf, told Reuters, adding that about 1,000 people had landed at the main arrival point on the coast on Thursday.

The refugee boat that capsized went over in driving wind and rain and high seas. Police said 20 bodies had been recovered, 12 of them children, while 27 people survived and more than 50 were missing.

Survivor, Abdul Kalam, 55, said at least 100 people had been on board. His wife, two daughters and a grandson were among the dead, he said.

Kalam said armed Buddhists had come to his village about a week ago and taken away livestock and food. He said villagers had been summoned to a military office and told there were no such people as Rohingya in Myanmar. After that he decided to leave and headed to the coast with his family, avoiding military camps on the way.

US accuses Myanmar of ethnic cleansing
In a sharp ramping up of the pressure on Myanmar, also known as Burma, Haley echoed UN accusations that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine State was ethnic cleansing.

“We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be – a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley told the UN Security Council.

The United States had earlier said the army response to the insurgent attacks was “disproportionate” and the crisis raised questions about Myanmar’s transition to democracy, under the leadership of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, after decades of military rule.

Suu Kyi has no power over the generals under a military-drafted constitution that bars her from the presidency. She has nevertheless drawn scathing criticism from around the world for failing to speak out more strongly and stop the violence.

The military campaign against the Rohingya insurgents is well supported inside Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has surged over the past few years.

Haley said the military must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

“Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing,” she said.

“And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place,” Haley said.

UN Secretary-General Guterres invited to visit
Myanmar national security adviser Thaung Tun said at the United Nations there was no ethnic cleansing or genocide in Myanmar.

He told the Security Council that Myanmar had invited Guterres to visit. A UN official said the secretary-general would consider visiting under the right conditions.

China and Russia both expressed support for the Myanmar government. Myanmar said this month it was negotiating with China and Russia, which have veto powers in the Security Council, to protect it from any possible action by the council.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/30/us-ups-pressure-myanmar-refugee-exodus-tops-502000/

 

[Banglar Bir]

The Rohingya Crisis: Conflict Scenarios and Reconciliation Proposals
By Andrew Korybko
Global Research, September 08, 2017
Oriental Review 7 September 2017
Region: Asia
Theme: Global Economy, Police State & Civil Rights, Terrorism

The Rohingya Crisis will probably get a lot worse before it gets any better, and it might even escalate to the point of prompting a multilateral international intervention, but the only real and globally acceptable solution that Myanmar might have left to avoid this eventual worst-case scenario is to involve the Rohingyas in some capacity in the ongoing Panglong 2.0 federalization peace talks.

The Rohingya Crisis has taken the world by storm over the past two weeks, but none of what’s happened should come as a surprise for those who’ve been astutely following the Myanmar Civil War. The background into this conflict is very complex, and for that reason the author is going to simply refer the reader to some of his earlier published pieces on the matter in order for them to become familiarized with the overall situation:
June 2015:
“The American Plan For A South Asian “Kosovo” In Rohingyaland” (Part I and Part II)
October 2016:
“Hybrid War Country Study On Myanmar” (History, Political Transition and Geostrategy, Ethno-Regional Contradictions, and Scenario Forecasting)
September 2017:
“The Rohingya Crisis: Reality, Rumors, And Ramifications”
Instead of rehashing most of what’s contained in the abovementioned materials, the present analysis will focus solely on Myanmar’s conflict scenarios and the most realistic possibilities for bringing peace to the war-torn country, which will constitute the first and second parts of this research. The third and final one will then discuss the way that China could overcome the challenges to implementing the proposed peace plan in Myanmar and thereby play an indispensable role in facilitating the conflict resolution process there.
From Bad To Worse
The following scenarios aim to shed light on the most likely way that the Rohingya Crisis could escalate to the point of triggering an international “humanitarian intervention”, which is understood as the worst-case scenario from a geopolitical perspective. The reader should be under no illusions that the below-mentioned conflict phases will necessarily happen in the order that they’re described, or that any of them will even occur at all.

The whole point of this exercise is to obtain an accurate idea about the most likely trajectory that the country’s war will proceed along given its current dynamics and the most probable ends that it could lead to.

It should be kept in mind at all times, however, that each stage of the conflict could either climax at its current level, or rapidly proceed to the final phase of a large-scale Libyan-like war if the US and/or its “Lead From Behind” regional allies decide to launch one on the pretext that the Tatmadaw is guilty of ethnic cleansing or genocide (whether against the Rohingya Muslims or the Christian peripheral minorities in the North and East).
Swift Success:
As the best-case scenario implies, the Tatmadaw achieves a swift success in stamping out the Rohingya’s “terrorist”/”rebel” forces, thereby quickly ending the crisis. This may, however, result in disproportionate civilian casualties as “collateral damage”, whether inflicted by the insurgents themselves, the military, or both. The media hype surrounding this affair soon dies down, although some international activists and foreign information outlets will continue to agitate for this cause. China’s investments in Myanmar are secured, and a future high-speed railway is eventually built parallel to the two oil and gas pipelines leading from the central Rakhine port of Kyaukphyu, thereby formalizing the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) as a complement to CPEC in the other northern corner of the Indian Ocean.
Regional Crisis:
The Rohingya Crisis only gets worse in its humanitarian, military, and diplomatic dimensions, which leads to it becoming a globally recognized regional crisis due to the overspill into neighboring Bangladesh and the resultant destabilization that it inflicts on this already fragile state. India, China, the US, ASEAN, and the UN become more vocal about the evolving, though still obscured, events in Rakhine State, and uncertainty prevails over exactly what’s happening there because Myanmar refuses to let international observers into the region ostensibly for their own security. Non-state actors such as concerned Bangladeshis, Muslim volunteers from abroad, NGOs, and even terrorist groups (none of which are mutually exclusive) begin to get involved, and this catalyzes a violent hyper-nationalist reaction from the country’s majority-Buddhist population which ends up leading to deadly pogroms.

Due to these destabilizing events, the future viability of CMEC becomes uncertain, and China begins to worry about the safety of its oil and gas pipelines in Rakhine State, as well as the hefty investments that it’s pouring into developing Kyaukphyu Port. Myanmar feels compelled to reach out to its Chinese and Indian neighbors for military aid, though attempting to play one off against the other in their New Cold War rivalry in a bid to reap the most benefits from this competition. For the time being, China and India avoid being drawn into an escalating security dilemma with one another in the territory of their mutual neighbor, though they begin to wonder which geopolitical direction Myanmar will ultimately lean closer towards if it’s successful in resolving this regional crisis.
Jihad Central:
Rakhine State, and Myanmar more generally, becomes the new international jihadist destination after Daesh is driven out of “Syria and its supporters across the world decide to focus on the perceived plight of the Rohingya Muslims. It’s still not clear exactly what’s going on in the Southeast Asian country and who’s truly at fault for the escalating violence there, but the outcome is undeniable as hundreds of thousands of refugees swarm into Bangladesh, and most international media organizations and their state allies unite in laying the blame solely at the feet of the Tatmadaw. Whether intentionally or not, this development and the attendant flood of fake news which will inevitably follow it end up encouraging the radicalization of Muslims in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines), South Asia (Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan), and the Mideast and inspiring them to wage militant jihad in Myanmar and repeating the Syrian scenario from a few years prior.

Rakhine State marked in yellow.

China gives up any plans that it ever had for developing CMEC, and its energy pipelines turn into an irresistible terrorist target and are soon brought permanently offline. China and India’s in-country citizens are attacked by jihadists who are angry that their governments are providing military aid to the Tatmadaw, blaming them for being “complicit in the genocide of Muslims”. Several lone wolf, or possibly even Daesh-coordinated, terrorist attacks occur in these two countries as a result, and India’s Trilateral Highway through Myanmar becomes endangered, too. International investment plummets in this once-promising emerging economy while the US and its Western, and possibly even Eastern (ASEAN and some Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC]), partners contemplate sanctions against the country. The UN tries to push through heavily politicized resolutions which could open the door for multilateral military intervention just like they did in Libya, but this attempt is as unsuccessful as it was in Syria because Russia and China unite in opposing it.
The Ceasefire Ceases To Exist:
The Rohingya Conflict leads to a regional crisis, which eventually gives way to a terrorist one that in turn snowballs into a state of affairs whereby most or all of the previous ceasefire signatories realize that they have more to gain by pulling out of the agreement and recommencing full-scale hostilities against the state. The Panglong 2.0 federalization peace talks totally collapse, and more countries implement sanctions against Myanmar in response, which turns Suu Kyi into a “Southeast Asian Saddam” in terms of just how far she’s fallen from being the one-time darling of the West to its now-hated pariah. Whether coordinated through some new mechanism or carried out independently of one another, the country’s various rebel groups go on a large-scale offensive which inflicts heavy losses on the Tatmadaw, pushing it into relying on even more forceful countermeasures which lead to the ever-expanding conflict spilling over the border into Northeastern India (where it threatens to set off a chain reaction of unrest), Southwestern China, and Western Thailand.

Myanmar’s two Great Power neighbors fortify their borders in response and begin contemplating emergency contingency measures for safeguarding their frontiers, which could likely involve China and India carrying out limited military operations modelled off of Turkey’s “Operation Euphrates Shield” in Syria. Russia joins with its BRICS and SCO partners to extend military and diplomatic support to Myanmar, though choosing to formally stay out of direct involvement in the conflict owing to Moscow’s lack of immediate national interest in its outcome and the massive geographic distance to the battlefield which would severely strain the Kremlin’s logistical networks. Many members of the Ummah take serious umbrage at China, India, and even Russia’s support of Myanmar, and this is exploited by the US in order to fan the flames of distrust against these Great Powers with the ultimate intent of disrupting their connectivity projects through Muslim-majority countries (China’s CPEC and its Central Asian Railway plans to Iran, and Russia & India’s North-South Transport Corridor through Iran and Azerbaijan).
Myanmarese Meltdown:
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, as it’s officially known, collapses into the type of Hobbesian conflict unseen since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, thereby triggering large-scale stabilization interventions from China and India. Herein lays the crux of the geostrategic problem, though, because one or both of these states might not have been invited by the central authorities to assist like how Russia was in Syria, thereby skyrocketing the security dilemma between these two Great Power rivals and raising the chances that they might clash somewhere in central Myanmar if their forces come within proximity to one another. There’s of course the very faint chance that they’d coordinate their in-country operations or at least leave some sort of communication mechanism intact between them so as to avoid accidental military clashes, but this can’t be taken for granted and it’s much more probable that a direct engagement between the two forces would take place.
Libya 2.0:
Myanmar is completely in shambles as its ultra-diverse population goes on multi-sided killing sprees following the collapse of central authority that accompanies the rebel advance, and neither China nor India is able to put a stop to it, or at least not quickly enough. The US and its allies, one of which might very well have been India to begin with, decide that now is the right time to launch a “shock and awe” military campaign against the country in order to complete its “Balkanized” fragmentation into a constellation of identity-centric (and potentially mutually antagonistic) statelets.

The ostensible pretext for this massive intervention is that it’s the only thing that can “stop the killing”, but in reality it would serve the ulterior purposes of assisting Indian forces in their drive to secure the Trilateral Highway; preventing China from reestablishing control over its pipeline corridor and formerly envisioned CMEC one; and creating a checkerboard of “South Asian Kosovos” for the US to ‘leapfrog’ across in eventually deploying its military forces right on China’s mainland doorstep. Just like with Libya, the US would leave behind an enduringly destabilizing regional legacy that would take years to fix.

Peace And Its Problems
Myanmar doesn’t have to turn into the next Libya, or even the next Yugoslavia, so long as the Rohingya Crisis is nipped in the bud through a creative peace settlement before it spirals out of control in engendering the phased conflict escalations that were just described in the earlier section. To this end, here’s the two-step process that’s proposed for resolving this issue, followed by an analysis of the three categories of problems which could impede its implementation:
Reconciling With The Rohingyas:
“Terrorists” vs. “Rebels”
It’s hard for any observer to know the exact proportion for certain, but it’s objectively recognized that there are militant Rohingya groups mixed in with the majority-civilian population. These organizations, especially the leading “Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army” (ARSA), are designed at “terrorists” by the Tatmadaw, though it can be assumed that many Rohingyas and of course their myriad international state and non-state supporters abroad lionize them as “rebels” fighting for “democracy” and “freedom”. The intent here isn’t in render outside judgement about which of the two categories the ARSA and other armed groups fall into, but just to draw attention to the fact that Myanmar sees the Rohingya militants as terrorists whereas it recognizes other fighting forces elsewhere in the country as rebels.
The Syrian Model
This distinction allows for the possibility that the Tatmadaw could come to consider some of the Rohingya forces as rebels too, though possibly in exchange for them taking up arms to fight against the ARSA, which Naypyidaw will probably never reconsider as less than terrorists. In exchange for rendering their anti-terrorist services, non-ARSA armed Rohingya could then be officially recognized as rebels party to the ongoing Panglong 2.0 federalization peace talks, following the “normalization” model first spearheaded by Russia in Syria when it abruptly switched from seeing Jaysh al-Islam as terrorists to feting its leader Mohamed Alloush as the senior rebel representative in Astana after the group turned against Al Nusra and Daesh. In theory, this model could also be applied to Myanmar’s conditions in enticing “moderate” Rohingya militants to break ranks with the “hardline” ARSA.
Panglong 2.0
Should this plan be successfully put into practice, then official Rohingya representation in the Panglong 2.0 peace process could potentially placate the demographic’s concerns that the government is criminally neglecting their needs, though Naypyidaw would of course first have to grant citizenship or some type of legal interim status to the Rohingyas (at least those who remained in Myanmar) in order to legitimize this group’s participation. This is a lot easier of a scenario to talk about than to implement into action, though Myanmar might feel pressured to comply with the proposal in order to relieve the heavy international pressure being brought against it for its extant refusal to even recognize the Rohingya. Provided that this happens, then the non-ARSA Rohingya rebels would acquire a political-administrative stake in the country’s forthcoming federalized structure.
Double Devolution
There’s no chance that the central government, and probably even most of the Rohingyas’ “fellow rebels”, will ever allow this group to carve out their own separate federal state in the country, so what could conceivably happen is that they seek to nest a “federation within a federation”, or in other words, engage in “double devolution”. This model was described both in general and in specific pertinence to Myanmar in the author’s article about “Identity Federalism: From ‘E Pluribus Unum’ To’ E Unum Pluribus’” for Russia’s National Institute For Research Of Global Security last year, and the idea is that Rakhine State – just like its much more diverse Shan State counterpart in the East – could federalize within its sub-state administrative boundaries to form a “doubly devolved” constituent in a future Federation of Myanmar/Burma.
Bosnifying Burma
Essentially, this would be recreating the Bosnian Scenario, which in its namesake case is a state-wide federation comprised of Republika Srpska (Serbs) and the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina (Muslims and Croats). In the Myanmarese one, however, this would take place on a much larger geographic and population scale within the country’s two prospective “federations within a federation”. It might seem difficult to understand at first read, but this would basically see each state within Myanmar becoming a separate federal entity, with Shan and Rakhine States “doubly devolving” into “federations within a federation” due to their distinct demographic makeup. Of relevance to this research, the Rohingya would obtain control over the northern part of Rakhine State, while the Buddhist Rakhine would control the central and southern parts, making the former a de-facto extension of Bangladesh and the latter the guardians of China’s New Silk Road terminal.
Roadblocks To Rapprochement:
Buddhist Bamar
It’s expected that the abovementioned proposal for the state to enter into a rapprochement with the “moderate” Rohingyas and subsequently enact “double devolution” would be met with furious opposition from the Buddhist Bamar majority, the most hyper-nationalist and extreme elements of which could carry out pogroms against the ethno-religious minorities in their periphery out of anger at what they see as the imminent internal partitioning of their country. There could be other unspoken factors at play, though, such as the majority demographic’s refusal to cede the sovereignty of the central government over the resource-rich minority-populated periphery, which the Tatmadaw would do anything to prevent. Moreover, if the authorities went forward with this proposal despite lacking the support of the Buddhist Bamar majority and Tatmadaw, then a Color Revolution or military coup could be launched against them in putting an immediate halt to this process.
Competitive Connectivity Complications
The other factor which could stand in the way of the peace proposal, though much more indirectly than the Buddhist Bamar, are China and India’s concerns that their competitive connectivity projects through the country could be negatively affected by its “peaceful Balkanization”. Neither Asian Great Power wants to have their trade and energy corridors going through a checkerboard of quasi-independent identity-centric statelets due to the inherent hard security risks that this entails if some of them become militantly at odds with one another. There are also worries that the devolution of a formerly centralized state into a collection of semi-sovereign stakeholders could lead to each transit entity competing with the one another, the federal government, and China over taxes and tolls, which could unnecessarily complicate what had hitherto been a smooth bilateral state-to-state agreement and consequently diminish the attractiveness of doing business along these routes if the issue isn’t resolved.
Geopolitical Pitfalls
Expanding off of the previously mentioned point, the next logical one is that the quasi-independent and identity-centric statelets that would be formed from any forthcoming federalization of Myanmar (including its possible “double devolution” of “federations within a federation”) could be exploited to function as “lily pads” for the US to “leapfrog” its military forces up to China’s southwestern border. Beijing has every reason to be worried about this happening because it fully aligns with the US and its UK hegemonic predecessor’s historic divide-and-rule stratagem all across the world, being seen most recently in relation to the US’ desire to carve the “second geopolitical ‘Israel’” of “Kurdistan” out of the Mideast for the same purposes vis-à-vis the four targeted and thenceforth surrounding states. The same springboard principle could be applied against China, too, except instead of one big “geopolitical ‘Israel’”, many so-called “South Asian Kosovos” could be created to this effect.
The Chinese Key To Success
China has the most to lose by far from what’s happening in Myanmar out of any external stakeholder, so it therefore must play the leading role in offsetting the fast-developing Hybrid War there. Whether it plays out violently as per the first part of the research’s scenarios or peacefully in accordance with the second one’s proposals, the current dynamics in their present state are leading to a slew of outcomes which work out to China’s grand strategic disadvantage in one way or another, so it must harness the political will to get involved in what’s occurring. China, however, has no experience in anything of the sort that’s required of it because of its long-standing policy of non-interference in its partner’s affairs, though it’s nowadays becoming compelled by the circumstances to consider modifying its approach in order to protect a major Silk Road investment.

Whether it’s in Myanmar in the near future or elsewhere across the world in any of the countless countries that are participating in the One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, China will eventually have to sooner or later take on a leadership role in safeguarding these corridors, so an argument can be made that it’s better for it to experiment within doing so in its “Near Abroad” of Southeast Asia before it attempts to do so further afield in Afro-Eurasia. Bearing this in mind, it’s worthwhile to consider the ways in which China could use its possible experience in the Myanmar case to develop and refine its own unique conflict resolution model for utilization all across any future Silk Road battlegrounds, so the concluding part of this research will attempt to create the structural basis for this approach.

Before proceeding, it should be mentioned that there are several situational qualifiers which will impact on the success of China’s possible peacemaking initiative in Myanmar, just as other country-specific factors will influence the same in whatever other state Beijing might end up applying this strategy towards. In this instance, everything is conditional on India not interfering to the degree that it actively works to counter China’s moves, which in this example would be either through the extraordinarily unlikely odds that it would support armed groups in Myanmar (which it has no history of doing and probably never will) or the more probable chances that it could seek to commence its own rival peace initiative instead. In addition, if the conflict escalates per the aforementioned scenarios, especially if actual or suspected ethnic cleansing and genocide are used to suddenly commence a Libya 2.0 “humanitarian intervention” scenario, then China might not have any chance whatsoever at success.

Having explained all of that, here’s the four-step conflict resolution model that China could debut in Myanmar and perfect for future application abroad in any Hybrid War hotspots that the US succeeds in cooking up along the New Silk Roads:
Broker Third-Party-Hosted Talks:
China can learn a lot from Russia in this respect because of Moscow’s experience in attempting to do this for Ukraine through the Belarusian-hosted Minsk Peace Process for Ukraine and its eventually much more successful Kazakh-based Astana one for Syria. The pattern here is for a Great Power to lead conflict resolution talks in the neutral territory of a relevant allied state, so in the case of Myanmar, China could request that Laos fulfill this role in hosting Rohingya peace talks or even the broader Panglong 2.0 ones if anything comes up to interfere with the latter’s ongoing progress (i.e. repeated violations by either side and a subsequent breakdown in trust).
Become A Neutral Balancer:
Once again, China could take a useful cue from Russia when it comes to positioning itself as a neutral balancer. Just as Moscow’s foreign policy progressives are working to diversify their country’s foreign partnerships to the point of one day dispelling any plausible accusations of bias towards any given state or another, so too could Beijing attempt to do the same in counteracting the perception that it’s too supportive of the Myanmarese government. In pursuit of this, it could expand its internal partnerships within the country with various rebel groups beyond those located in its immediate borderlands of Shan and Kachin States just like Russia has sought to do with its multidimensional outreaches to the “moderate rebels” in Syria.

The reason why it’s important to become a neutral balancer is because it endows the relevant Great Power with the irreplaceable role of a trusted mediator, thereby allowing it to powerfully determine the course of any conflict resolution process and subsequently shape its outcome. In regards to Myanmar and in particular the Rohingya Crisis, however, this takes on an even more significant and sensitive purpose because it would contradict the weaponized infowar narrative that China is “anti-Muslim” because of its support for Naypyidaw. The US is hoping to exploit this carefully crafted and misleading perception in order to undermine China’s New Silk Road projects in the Muslim-majority countries of Central Asia, the Mideast, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia (the latter of which is relevant for its billions of dollars of Vision 2030 investments).

So long as China can prove that it’s not an “enemy of Muslims worldwide” by balancing its approach to the Rohingya Crisis, then it can avoid falling into the soft power trap that the US has set for it. Not only would this ensure the stability of China’s Silk Road investments in the Ummah, but it would also provide less fuel for provocateurs to use in trying to stir up anti-government resentment in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, which is one of OBOR’s main continental hubs. That being said, China mustn’t ever waver from its unflinching zero-tolerance approach towards terrorism, especially that which is being waged under radical Islamic slogans, so it would have to work with Myanmar in separating “moderate” Rohingyas from the “hardline” ones just like Russia cooperated with Syria in doing the same concerning the former’s armed groups.
Suggest Decentralization:
China should encourage conflict resolution outcomes which at the very least provide some sort of symbolic administrative-territorial decentralization rights for the “moderate” identity-centric adversaries which break from their “hardline” counterparts, as this could provide the basis for an enduring post-conflict political solution. The reader should remember that decentralization doesn’t always mean devolution, with the former usually being known for its autonomous zones while the latter is marked by federal states. In any case, it shouldn’t be assumed that either of them automatically endangers the unity of the host state, though that could end up being an inadvertent outcome which would predictably play out to the US’ anticipated divide-and-rule “Balkanization” grand strategy for the Eastern Hemisphere.

For example, Uzbekistan has the Karakalpakstan autonomous republic, which in no way poses any threat to the centralized Uzbek state due to the practical limits placed on its actual autonomy. Likewise, China has several autonomous regions and even bestows local autonomy for certain minority groups in some prefectures and counties in the country, though this also doesn’t impede with the centralized operations of the People’s Republic. As for federations, Ethiopia is a good example of one in which federalism pretty much only carries a symbolic purpose, in this case for placating the main ethnic groups in the country after the end of the civil war, and it for all intents and purposes functions as a centralized state. Russia, too, is a federation, though one with considerably more rights granted to its subjects, especially those inhabiting autonomous republics, but it doesn’t have any real problems. Bosnia, however, is the worst example of a federation and is utterly dysfunctional, representing the type of governing model that the US would ideally like to reproduce all across Afro-Eurasia.

The Russian-written “draft constitution” for Syria proposed controlled decentralization which could in theory broaden into devolution if the people voted for it, and this was suggested despite Damascus’s previous well-known opposition to these processes, so it wouldn’t by any comparison be amiss for China to facilitate the already-ongoing federalization talks of its Myanmarese partner. What’s absolutely imperative for either the Syrian or Myanmarese decentralization-devolution processes to succeed is for the prospective statelets to not have the power to conduct their own military-political relations with foreign states, except in a cynical sense if it’s with Russia and China respectively. If the negotiations stall at this point, then it might be necessary for the central government to concede greater (resource) revenue flows to these entities in order to “buy” their “loyalty”.
Silk Road Incentives:
Last but not least, and in connection with the “trade-off” that might have to take place in ensuring the “patriotic commitment” of the prospective decentralized-devolved entity to the country that they’re (at least still) formally a part of, it would be best if China were to craft creative ways to make the transit statelets self-interested stakeholders in protecting and stabilizing its New Silk Road corridors. The possibilities for this include allowing them to reap a yearly payment from the People’s Republic for securing and enabling the flow of resources and products across their Chinese-financed (and in some cases, -built) infrastructure; offering free educational and job-training programs for the locals; and assisting with post-conflict stabilization measures in the relevant territory.

About the latter point, Article 52 of the 2017 Xiamen BRICS Declaration emphasizes “the important contribution of BRICS countries to United Nations peacekeeping operations, and the importance of United Nations peacekeeping operations to international peace and security”. This suggests that China, as the world’s largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, might seek to self-interestedly leverage its experiences in this field in one day safeguarding its Silk Road investments through Beijing-led UN or unilateral (as per the agreement of the host state and relevant, likely by then federalized, territory) missions in these strategic transit regions after an earlier conflict has been resolved (also through Chinese mediation per the aforementioned four-step model).

It should also be added that training local security forces would epitomize China’s neutral balancing strategy between state and non-state actors as well, and it would provide the People’s Republic with invaluable military-diplomatic knowledge that could be later applied elsewhere across the world as needed. If China can succeed in offering a host of Silk Road incentives to its partners in helping them and their warring compatriots resolve their differences in a win-win manner, then Beijing can solidify its role as the main driving force in the emerging Multipolar World Order and sustain all of the positive gains that it’s achieved thus far. It would also make China the only country in the world capable of competing with the US in this regard, thereby elevating it from the level of a Great Power to a Global Superpower, though with all of the attendant strategic risks for overreach that this entails.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
All images in this article are from the author.
The original source of this article is Oriental Review
Copyright © Andrew Korybko, Oriental Review, 2017
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-r...cenarios-and-reconciliation-proposals/5608149

 

[Banglar Bir]

Myanmar: Top UN official in Myanmar to be changed
By Jonah Fisher BBC News, Myanmar
13 June 2017

Image copyright UNDP
Image caption Renata Lok-Dessallien is currently on leave
The United Nations has confirmed that its top official in Myanmar is being moved from her position.
Diplomatic and aid community sources in Yangon told the BBC the decision was linked to Renata Lok-Dessallien's failure to prioritise human rights.

In particular, this referred to the oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority.
Internal UN documents - shown to the BBC - said the organisation had become "glaringly dysfunctional", and wracked by internal tensions.

A UN spokeswoman confirmed Ms Lok-Dessallien, a Canadian citizen, was being "rotated", saying this had nothing to do with her performance which she said had been "consistently appreciated".

Media caption Rohingya Muslims "hated and hounded from Burmese soil"
Late last year as tens of thousands of Rohingya fled rape and abuse at the hands of Burmese soldiers, the UN team inside Myanmar was strangely silent.

Ms Lok-Dessallien and her spokesman declined simple requests for information; and on one absurd occasion she visited the conflict area, but on her return refused to allow journalists to film or record her words at a press conference.

The BBC was told that on numerous occasions aid workers with a human rights focus were deliberately excluded from important meetings.

Those moments reflect a wider criticism of Ms Lok-Dessallien and her team, namely that their priority was building development programmes and a strong relationship with the Burmese government - not advocating that the rights of oppressed minorities, like the Rohingya, should be respected.

In an internal document prepared for the new UN secretary general, the UN team in Myanmar is described as "glaringly dysfunctional" with "strong tensions" between different parts of the UN system.

Ms Lok-Dessallien is currently on leave but has been told that her position is being upgraded, bringing her role to an end after three-and-a-half years, rather than the usual term of up to five years.

 

[Banglar Bir]

India rules out mediation between Myanmar, Bangladesh on Rohingya issue
SAM Report, September 30, 2017

A boat carrying Rohingya refugees leaves Myanmar on the Naf River while thousands of others wait their turn. Photo: Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said that the government has no plans to act as a mediator between Myanmar and Bangladesh to solve the Rohingya refugee crisis. Reports Sputnik.

India has categorically said that the government will only provide humanitarian assistance to Bangladesh to deal with the heavy influx of Rohingyas who have been entering the country after fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

“We are focusing on the humanitarian assistance under ‘Operation Insaniyat’ and we have sent out three sorties of relief material. Thousands of family packets have been delivered, these items consist of materials to be used by the families who have been displaced and who are in Bangladesh,” MEA Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said today.

“The two countries are in close touch, they are coordinating the situation which is developing out of the arrival of the displaced persons in the country. We are committed to assist Bangladesh and are extending our full support in handling this issue,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said.

Earlier, Bangladesh had asked India to use its influence to put pressure on Myanmar to end violence in Rakhine state.

The sudden influx of around half a million Rohingyas in Bangladesh has put enormous strain on the government. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has appealed to the international community for help.
India Reluctant to Send Its Diplomats to Tour Myanmar’s Volatile Region
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has declined to confirm the participation of Indian officials in the international ‘Diplomatic Core Team’ that is to visit Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state next week.

The team comprises diplomats from various countries invited by the Myanmar government to have a sense of the ground situation in Rakhine state where the government forces and the Rohingya community, the majority of which are Muslims, are engaged in a bloody armed conflict. The Myanmar government which is under strong international pressure to stop the military action against the Rohingyas has denied any human rights violation and has instead accused the Rohingyas of unleashing terror.

India’s reluctance to send a government team to visit Rakhine comes amid reports of the alleged massacre of Hindu Rohingyas by the Muslims. The Indian government has said it hopes authorities in Myanmar would punish the perpetrators of the crime and ensure safety and security of the Hindus.

“We have seen the press reports about the Hindu graves. We are also looking at the statement that was issued by the State Counselors’ office. I can say that we condemn terrorism in all forms, we emphasized that there is no justification for any acts of terrorism which targets civilians. In this conflict, we do hope that the authorities will be able to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. We hope that the families of the victims will be extended all possible assistance so as to instill a sense of security and return of normalcy,” the MEA spokesperson said during the presser today.

Myanmar’s Army has claimed that they have discovered a mass grave of Hindus in Rakhine state and has blamed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for those killings.
SOURCE SPUTNIK
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/30/india-rules-put-mediation-myanmar-bangladesh-rohingya-issue/

 

[Banglar Bir]

Al Jazeera English
These Rohingya refugees are racing to find lost kids before human traffickers get to them.

https://www.facebook.com/

Press TV
This is how Rohingya children entertain themselves in Bangladeshi camps

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[Banglar Bir]

Myanmar-Russia ties reviewed
THE MYANMAR TIMES 27 MAR 2017
Myanmar and Russia are commemorating their 70th anniversary of relations next year with strong military, rather than economic, cooperation. But their relationship is evolving and diversifying to cover other non-military areas – such as science and technology, education and tourism.
Dr Ludmila Lutz-Auras, assistant professor at the University of Rostock, Germany, pointed out that Russia views Myanmar as part of its pivot to Asia, and as key to extending Moscow’s foothold in Southeast Asia. “Engagement in Myanmar offers a good opportunity to check its own positions on the international political stage,” she said.
She viewed Russia as a new “balancer role” in Myanmar’s relations with major powers, especially the US, China and India. Both countries could further exchange experience regarding political and economic transformation.

Although Myanmar-Russia ties are comprised mainly of military sales, she said, they were not aimed at any one country. “For Russia, it is about economics, not against anyone or to engage in conflict,” she said, adding that the US arms embargo also contributed to Russian arms sales.

Russia could also impart its expertise on military technology, energy, and science and technology, she said.

In addition, it could serve as a gateway for Myanmar products to post-Soviet areas and other new markets. Russia leads the Eurasia Union, a new free-trade grouping comprising newly independent states that were formerly part of Soviet Union. Vietnam is the only ASEAN member to join.

The Russian oil company Bashneft and Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise have secured block EP4 PSA in the central Myanmar Basin, for which Bashneft has invested US$38.3 million.

In 2015, bilateral trade reached $130.5 million. This was small compared to trade with China, which reached $10 billion. This year, Myanmar-Russia trade is expected to increase to $500 million.

Besides arms sales, Myanmar imports Russian machinery, industrial equipment and vehicles, chemical products and metals, while exporting rice and textiles to Russia.

Myanmar was the fifth biggest importer of Russian weapons and fighters, spending $20.4 million on Russian weapons in 2014, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

In 2009-10, Russia exported a squadron of MiG 29B, MiG 29SE, MiG 29UB fighter jets worth $511 million, according to Ludmila’s research.

She was speaking Friday at “Myanmar-Russia: Friends in Need”, an event organised by the Yangon-based Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS).

Both Russia and Myanmar have suffered from economic sanctions imposed by western countries, Ludmila said, so they naturally sympathize with and want to help each other.

Russia, as well as China, opposed UN resolutions that sought to condemn Myanmar for the 2007 conflict. The two countries also recently vetoed a UN resolution on the situation in Rahkine State.

Russia and Myanmar established ties in 1948, and three years later, opened embassies in each other’s country. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited Myanmar in 1955.

In a regional context, ASEAN and Russia last year commemorated 20 years of relations with a special summit meeting in Sochi, where Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with ASEAN leaders for the first time.

Russia hopes to become a strategic partner of ASEAN soon. Other strategic partners of the group include China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand and the US.
https://www.mmtimes.com/national-news/25467-myanmar-russia-ties-reviewed.html

Rohingya refugee crisis: The fundamental questions
www.thestateless.com/2017/09/rohingya-refugee-crisis-the-fundamental-questions.html

Rohingya refugees react as they see the remains of a family member, whose family says he succumbed to injuries inflicted by the Myanmar Army before their arrival, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
By Tom Farrell, Big Issue

Is it Aung San Suu Kyi’s political expediency or fundamentalism that is fuelling the Rohingya refugee crisis? Tom Farrell visited Myanmar to report on the latest horrific chapter of a long-persecuted minority
It has been one of the most harrowing examples of ethnic cleansing in recent years. And it is a bitter irony that the exodus is taking place in Bangladesh. In 1971 newly independent Bangladesh was scene to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the late 20th century. That year’s calamity inspired massive relief efforts and a concert organised by George Harrison, as millions of refugees, fleeing civil war, poured into India.

Firstly, there has been the reaction of Myanmar’s ‘state counsellor’ Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, long feted by the likes of Bono and Barrack Obama, to the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) expelling over 420,000 Rohingyas from their lands in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where most of them live. Her response was silence at first.

Then asinine complaints followed about “an iceberg of misinformation” surrounding the Rohingya. When she finally acknowledged the crisis on September 19, her speech downplayed the civilian suffering and was seen as deferential to the military. Is she genuinely a racist or simply in fear of the same 400,000 strong Tatmadaw that ruled Myanmar (Burma) for decades and placed her under house arrest for 15 years?

Armed Forces guard a checkpoint into Aung Mingalar, a suburb inhabited by Rohingya

Secondly, there has been the rise in militancy by many Buddhist monks, applauding the expulsion of what they claim are unwelcome Muslim invaders. Accustomed to the smiling benevolence of the Dalai Lama and its unworldly mysticism, many westerners are taken aback: surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?

Some time before the current wave of violence erupted, I took a flight from the Myanmar capital of Yangon (Rangoon) to Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State. Its population is a mix of Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists.

The town appeared as a somnolent sprawl from my upper storey guest house window, corrugated iron rooftops and the occasional gleaming temple amid lines of tamarinds and coconut palms. But also visible, skulking at checkpoints, were border police and soldiers from the Tatmadaw.

Rohingya refugees Dildar Begum and her daughter recover in hospital in Bangladesh, after being stabbed by Myanmar soldiers

Sittwe had already been purged of most of its Rohingya population. The 19th century Jama Mosque was cordoned off, with policemen sitting in front of barbed wire. The mosque still bore the fire damage of the previous year when it was torched by a mob of Rakhine Buddhists, allegedly with Tatmadaw complicity.

A few streets away, I found a row of gutted and bullet pocked buildings, former Rohingya houses and shops. When I started snapping shots, shouting locals chased me away.

I already had the number of a local community leader named Aung Win and we arranged to meet in the last remaining Rohingya sector of the town. But having hailed a motorised trishaw, I was stopped at a checkpoint because I had no clearance. A surreal episode then ensued as Aung Win, visible down several hundred yards of road, chatted with me.
Surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
“It started June last year,” said the 57-year old via his mobile. “Rakhine’s extremists arrived and they attacked Rohingya villages. My family was very lucky because my neighbours didn’t attack my house.”

All the while, the police sat near the checkpoint and looked listlessly at the few vehicles allowed to proceed into the Rohingya area

I ventured into the local government buildings, hoping to secure an afternoon pass into the ‘Rohingya area.’ A Rakhine civil servant scowled at me under spinning fans.

“They are not called Rohingyas! They are called Bengalis!” he snapped.

This reflected a prevailing view that the Rohingyas, contrary to archaeological evidence, are just migrants from next door Bangladesh.

“When we got independence [from Britain] in 1948, the parliamentary government already recognised the Rohingya as one of the ethnic groups in Burma,” Abu Tahay, a Rohingya legal expert told me in his office after I returned to Yangon. He added that the junta stripped them of citizenship in 1982, two decades after the military takeover.
Refugee crisis: “Every pair of shoes tells a story”
In Yangon it is easy to find CDs and DVDs of inflammatory sermons by right-wing monks, inveighing against rising Muslim birth rates in Myanmar and reminding the faithful that Buddhism’s reach across Asia was once much greater, Islam having extinguished its presence centuries ago.

Most prominent is the ‘969 Movement,’ led by Ashin Wirathu, a monk who was imprisoned from 2003-10 for inciting hatred against Muslims. The sermons of Wirathu, who in one interview said: “We would like to be like the English Defence League: not carrying out violence but protecting the public,” are all over social media and disseminated in the markets via DVD.

Sinhala Ravaya monks clash with police outside government buildings

But it is hard to believe Mrs Suu Kyi and Wirathu are cut from the same cloth. As her biographer Peter Popham has pointed out, there is little evidence of personal Islamophobia. After arriving in Oxford in 1964, Suu Kyi’s first serious boyfriend was a Pakistani fellow student. A close confident within her National League of Democracy (NLD) was a Burmese Muslim journalist and satirist named Maung Tha Ka, who perished in jail in June 1991, soon after the old junta cancelled an election result that the NLD had decisively won.

Mrs Suu Kyi’s inaction on the recent Buddhist-led violence may be explained by the Myanmar constitution. It prevented her from becoming President due to her having foreign sons with her late husband, British academic Michael Aris.

With a ‘caretaker’ military-backed regime now in power, she decided to stand for parliament in 2011, deeply suspicious of the document, imposed three years before, in a rigged referendum. In December that year, under pressure from Hilary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, she agreed to abide by the document.

Children in the town of Tak Bai, near the Malaysian border, have an armed escort

The constitution has ensured that the Tatmadaw still has massive powers. It has block representation within parliament and control of three key ministries: home affairs, defence and border affairs. The generals can still suspend democracy in the name of national security.

But Buddhist militancy is also on the rise in Sri Lanka and Thailand: the 969 Movement is known to have contacts with the Boda Balu Sena (Buddha Strike Force) in the former country. Operating as a kind of Buddhist vigilante group, the Buddha Strike Force has organised attacks on mosques and Christian churches.

In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s murderous 26-year civil war, many more right-wing Buddhists feel validated in their belief that Buddha himself once consecrated ‘Holy’ Lanka as uniquely sacred to the faith. Likewise in Thailand, the separatist insurgency in the Muslim far south since 2004 has drawn many monks towards a more intolerant stance against Thai Muslims, even if many Muslims reject the notion of an independent state.

As more Rohingyas pour out of Myanmar, the much vaunted ‘Burma Spring’ seems as dead as its Arab namesake. Regardless of the faith in question, fundamentalism and militarism are a lethal mix in any nation’s politics.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya are human, too: How we can deal with persecuted refugees and still keep India safe
www.thestateless.com/2017/09/rohingya-are-human-too-how-we-can-deal-with-persecuted-refugees-and-still-keep-india-safe.html
By Chetan Bhagat

By Chetan Bhagat, The Times of India
News reports suggest BSF is using pepper spray and stun grenades to stop Rohingya refugees from entering Indian territory. The government also seems keen to get rid of 40,000 odd Rohingya already in India, citing security threats.

Many of our TV news channels seem to want the same. We have even heard anchors screaming, “Let Rohingya be found floating around in the Indian Ocean. Don’t dump them here.” Well, we are talking about human beings here. That includes little children, women and elderly people. These are people who live in our neighborhood.

Some border villages of Myanmar’s Rakhine province (where Rohingya come from) are about 100km from towns in Mizoram. These people are ethnically close to Indo-Aryans. Their own country has marginalised them for decades.

Illustration: Chad Crowe
They are denied citizenship or passports, need state permission to marry (which takes years), need state permission to travel to neighbouring villages, and are denied state jobs. Worse, there is a systemic campaign of racism and hate against them in Myanmar. Imagine living in your own country like an officially hated outsider, denied basic rights, and people from your community routinely killed from time to time just for being who you are.

If you can understand this suffering as a human being, then it is perhaps also time to disclose that majority of the Rohingya are Muslims. Does it make a difference? Is their suffering any less because of their religion?

So why are we pepper spraying their kids and screaming to get them out?

There are several reasons. Some are actually valid. Others simply reek of our bigotry and lack of human empathy. They also ignore potential benefits and opportunity here for India in being a regional big brother.

But first, the valid reasons for not having Rohingya. According to the government some Rohingya in India may have terror links, or are at risk of radicalisation. The assessment is not wrong. Unfortunately, there are fundamentalist groups within Rohingya.

To fight the injustice Rohingya have been subjected to organisations like Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) popped up, using violent means to grab attention for their cause. In fact, the recent purge of the Rohingya by the Myanmar government was a result of ARSA terror attacks.

Rohingya are not just seen as victims, but also a community with significant radical elements. People who have grown up in strife, have limited means and are discriminated against, are more vulnerable to being indoctrinated. In fact, plenty of Indians fit these criteria and can be exploited too.

Having said that, if we had a proper registry of the Rohingya in India, and we could monitor them better, such probability is reduced. If we gave them a legal way to stay in India as refugees (rather than hide from authorities), say by issuing refugee cards, we could have a better idea of what they are up to. Like any community, over 99% of them would not be terrorists.

Spraying them with pepper or sending them back to the country that will probably kill them doesn’t seem something a civilised, democratic and humane country would do. Another reason cited for doing so is the ‘burden’ refugees create on the state. For one, the total number of Rohingya left in Myanmar is probably around a million now.

Most of the Rohingya refugees move to Bangladesh, as where they live in Myanmar borders Bangladesh. In the recent exodus alone Bangladesh received over 4,00,000 refugees, 10 times as many as the total Rohingya in India. These refugees fend for themselves, get very little state benefits and mostly work as daily labour. Are they really going to create such a burden?

The bigger question is how do we handle refugees in general. What would we have done, for example, if Hindus were persecuted in Pakistan to the point they were forced to run to us? Will we accept them and give them asylum, or will we pepper spray them back?

We need to provide a mechanism for refugees in our neighbourhood to legally apply for asylum. If they can prove persecution, religious, ethnic or otherwise, they may be eligible. Economic reasons alone will not be enough. These refugees will be tracked. They would be obligated to inform of their movements and activities more than regular citizens.

Of course, a formal refugee policy doesn’t mean India alone takes refugees while the rest of the continent does nothing. Just as in the EU, there should be sharing arrangements in the Asean region to handle any refugee crisis. Richer nations can contribute more money for resettlement.

Meanwhile, if India took the lead in handling the Rohingya crisis, it would lift our image as a serious power and problem solver in the region. Instead, if we fear monger and pepper spray, it will only show us as immature.

Ultimately, the Myanmar government cannot be absolved of its actions which have created the crisis. To deny citizenship to people who have lived in your country for decades is deplorable and unjustified, whatever the rationale. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country. We see Buddhism as one of the world’s most non-violent religions. Hence, the extreme violence meted out to Rohingya is, frankly, shocking to most Indians.

India can play a big role in pressuring Myanmar to fix this problem peacefully. We have to decide. Are we going to be the scared, xenophobic and closed-minded India of the past, or a more open, humane and mature society?

How we treat the helpless at our door goes a long way in determining that.

The Rohingya issue: The need for humanistic retrospection
Frances Bulathsinghala, October 1, 2017

That the Rohingya community is one of the most victimized of communities, hounded and subject to that of a stateless position, is clear to the world. Also clear is the fact that yesterday’s persecuted is not necessarily tomorrows empath.

Case in point being Aung San Suu Kyi hailed as a democracy campaigner for her country who had the sympathy of the world when she was held under house arrest for most of her political life and bestowed with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Accepting the prize in 2012 after the end of military rule in Myanmar, it would be ironic now to recall her words that were part of her prize acceptance speech.

Steven Erlanger wrote in The New York Times that she “asked the world not to forget other prisoners of conscience, both in Myanmar and around the world, other refugees, others in need, who may be suffering twice over, from oppression and from the larger world’s compassion fatigue.”

Now as the State Counselor of Myanmar and having been in that position since November 2015 following the victory of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD)in the General Elections, we have in Aung San Suu Kyi a Nobel Prize Winner making an absolute mockery of that prize.

Five years after she expressed distress for the world’s persecuted, we have her watching on as her country brutalizes the rights of fellow human beings; the Rohingya community which have had a long and consistent historical affiliation with the Rakhine territory that they are now chased away from. Prior to British colonization and the coming to being of the concept of nation states the Rohingyas were a community who were part of the Rakhine region who exercised freedom of movement to the adjoining Bangladesh (then India). These are the people who are now branded as stateless and declared by Myanmar to be ‘Bengalis.’

At best, the benefit of doubt to Aung San Suu Kyi would be to say that her mind, conscience and will power is still under the arrest of Myanmar’s military. This would mean that Myanmar’s current ‘democracy’is merely a dictatorship that is run through its former prisoner, to fulfill goals of the military Junta.

And in a world where religion is (selectively) equated with terrorism we now have the justification of the fear to treat the Rohingya community with the humanism they deserve and offer then refugee status, by branding them as religious extremists or potential religious extremists.

The treatment of those such as the Rohingyas are to be contemplated upon as we approach the month of October, the month in which the United Nations came into being in 1945. Seventy two years after its inception it would be an interesting introspective process to ask ourselves if the UN charters and strictures have significantly prevented human atrocities in the world.

The purpose of the conceptualization of the United Nations, coming at a time when the world was still aghast at the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Jews, was to see that such crimes never occurred again.

Its main aims was to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,…to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

The year 2015 saw pleas from the then U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, appealing to Southeast Asian leaders in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia to uphold international law and obligation of ‘rescue at sea’ in the wake of thousands of Rohingya migrants being stranded in the Andaman seas.

Meanwhile, if vile elements that use religion to garb terrorism, use this hapless community for their devious ends, it would be the fault of the modern world, which, checkered by demarcations of territories and restrictions, have forgotten the basic aspects of humanity. Wewho have split the atom and propelled humans into a vast realm of technological innovations have not departed from the mental attitudes of those of the ancient tribalism and cannibalism era.

What then will we, people who have inherited the modern, colonization-triggered concept of the nation states, do with thousands of our fellow humans who have been for the past years stranded at seas, prevented entry at the countries they tried to get refugee status in, and overall treated as dirt.

Before we qualify to be called humans, it would do us merit to think whether we are twisting humanistic philosophies such as Buddhism to tie it to the flagpole of nationalism and browbeat others on account of their faith such as that of the Rohingyas.

In 2016 and 2017 in the wake of increased brutality against Rohingyas in Arakan,thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh while others attempted to get some safety and redress from neighbouring countries in the region such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka. Recently Sri Lanka saw some 31 Myanmar Rohingya refugees who had earlier fled to India and had been settled in the Hindu part of Kashmir, arriving in the island and subsequently being the victims of a dastardly attack led by few extremists Buddhist monks.

However, on Friday Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province said it is ready to accommodate these refugees while the Sri Lankan government has announced that it is proceeding against police officers who looked on passively as a mob led by Buddhist monks threatened to storm into the houses of Rohingyas despite the fact that the refugees were under the charge of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC).

Given that every human being is a human resource with unlimited potential to make a change for the better of this planet earth, let this be realized and humans no longer victimized and demonized on account of either their faiths, their ethnicity or their geographical location.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/01/rohingya-issue-need-humanistic-retrospection/

 

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12:00 AM, October 01, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 03:34 AM, October 01, 2017
WFP to help feed 5 lakh Rohingyas

Rohingya women with their toddlers, suffering mostly from fever, on Ukhia Upazila Health Complex premises yesterday. They began to gather there since daybreak and waited for the service that started at 9:00am. Photo: Anisur Rahman
Staff Correspondent

The World Food Programme will provide food support to the five lakh Rohingyas, who have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, until they are repatriated, Relief and Disaster Management Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya yesterday said.

It will also give special food for children and pregnant women, he told reporters after a meeting with WFP Executive Director David Beasley at Westin Hotel in the capital.

For the time being, the displaced Myanmar nationals will be sheltered in Cox's Bazar, but if their repatriation is delayed, they would be shifted to Bhashanchar of Noakhali where Bangladesh Navy is developing land.

"Cox's Bazar is a tourist area. We have to protect it. Besides, there are safety issues," Maya said, explaining why the Rohingyas would probably be relocated.

Asked if the refugees were getting all the basic things they needed in the camps, the minister avoided giving a direct answer but said, "No one has died of food shortage."

The government is working with the international community to increase pressure on Myanmar for fast repatriation of the Rohingyas. "We are not alone. The whole world is with us," Maya added.

Children receive plates, jugs and dry food. Photo: Anisur Rahman
WFP official David Beasley said the world leaders need to do "everything possible" to pressure the Myanmar government and other actors into solving the problem diplomatically so that the refugees from Myanmar can go back home.

"The other most important task now for the international community is to support Bangladesh so that Bangladesh does not bear the burden of the refugees alone," said the WFP official on a visit from Geneva to see the Rohingya crisis.

"We are very proud that Bangladesh has been so cooperative to every one of us ... ," he said.

1,300 LEARNING CENTRES
The UN Children's Fund will establish over 1,300 learning centres for Rohingya children who have fled violence.

Currently, the Unicef runs 182 learning centres at Rohingya camps and makeshift settlements in Cox's Bazar with 15,000 children enrolled.

"It plans to increase the number of learning centres to 1,500” over the next year to facilitate education of 2 lakh children, a statement issued yesterday.

“These children, who have suffered so much in this crisis, should have access to education in a safe and nurturing environment,” said Unicef representative in the country Edouard Beigbeder, so that they get a future to look forward to.

CHOLERA VACCINE
The International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision will release 900,000 doses of the Oral Cholera Vaccine from the global stockpile to prevent the spread of cholera among Rohingya refugees and host communities in Cox's Bazar.

The ICG, a coordinating body of the World Health Organisation, Unicef, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the International Federation of the Red Cross, approved the appeal in 24 hours after Bangladesh government's request on September 27.

ICG partners – with support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – will deliver 900,000 doses of OCV to Bangladesh within two weeks for an immunization campaign due to start in October, says a press release of the WHO yesterday.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...crisis-wfp-help-feed-5-lakh-rohingyas-1470139

 

[Banglar Bir]

New deal with Myanmar Red Cross to boost aid in Rakhine: Turkish Red Crescent
SAM Staff, October 1, 2017

A renewed cooperation deal with Myanmar Red Cross will help the Turkish Red Crescent (TRC) access hard-to-reach places in Myanmar’s state of Rakhine, where people have been suffering as a result of government’s campaign against the insurgents, TRC President Dr.KeremKinik told Sputnik on Friday.

On Wednesday, the TRC renewed a cooperation agreement with Myanmar Red Cross for another three years.

“TRC’s renewed partnership and scaled up humanitarian operation in Myanmar will include capacity-building and experience-sharing activities with the Myanmar Red Cross and implementing further community resilience- building programmes. Having greater access via the signed cooperation agreement to hard-to-reach areas in Rakhine State, where, if not all, most targeted and affected populations are Muslims, TRC’s programmes will continue to assist all people in need in the area with no discrimination of any kind but based on humanitarian needs only,” the TRC president said.

The organization has been also helping the refugees from Myanmar, mainly the members of the Rohingya minority, fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh. According to Dr.Kinik, a large fund-raising campaign is launched in Turkey, which is ongoing with generous contributions of the Turkish people, the government, NGOs and private sector.

“Funds raised in this campaign will be used in relief activities both in Myanmar and Bangladesh hubs for the displaced populations and host communities in need,” Dr.Kinik underlined.

According to the humanitarian organization’s president, the TRC has started to deliver food, hygiene kits and other necessities to 10,000 people daily, in partnership with the Turkish Development Agency (TIKA), “particularly for new arrivals in Kutupalong and Balukhali refugee and makeshift camps,” and plans to increase its capacities in the next few weeks.

“Regular delivery plans have been scheduled for the months ahead and local procurement of 50,000 monthly family food packages and 50,000 hygiene kits have been completed. In addition to this, in partnership with the Ministry of Health of Turkey, two field hospitals from Turkey will be shipped by the TRC and activated soon, in Cox’s Bazar [a city in Bangladesh, not far from the border with Myanmar’s troubled state of Rakhine],” Dr.Kinik said.

The logistics capacities of Bangladesh Red Crescent, helping refugees from Myanmar, are set to be improved by new mobile storage units, he added.

“An air delivery from Turkey is being prepared to transport the field hospital, mobile storage units and other items assessed as necessary,” the president specified.

Dr.Kinik expressed gratitude to the government of Bangladesh, which facilitated the access to people in need for the humanitarian organizations.

“TRC will continue to engage, together with the Bangladesh Red Crescent, with the Government of Bangladesh and likewise in Myanmar and maintain a regular dialogue with the authorities and decision-makers to ensure that rights and needs of those seeking refuge and protection in Bangladesh or those in Myanmar are addressed and policies are informed of humanitarian imperatives and principles,” the TRC president said.

Myanmar’s government has been leading a military campaign in the state of Rakhine against Rohingya insurgents since late August. The operation followed an attack on the state security forces’ posts.

The Rohingya minority is denied citizenship under Myanmar’s law as a result of a decades-long conflict.

The international community has repeatedly urged the country’s government to address the crisis.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/1...cross-boost-aid-rakhine-turkish-red-crescent/

 

[Banglar Bir]

The plight of Rohingya refugees | Turning Point
CBC news
The National
As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees flee Myanmar for Bangladesh, questions linger about how to intervene and whether the term “ethnic cleansing" applies.

https://www.facebook.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[Banglar Bir]

The World Knew Ahead of Time the Rohingya Were Facing Genocide

By Kate Cronin-Furman
Foreign Policy
September 20, 2017
We've never known more about oncoming atrocities, but are still mostly helpless to stop them.
A humanitarian crisis is unfolding on the border between Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Bangladesh. Over the last three weeks, nearly 400,000 Burmese Rohingya have fled the country, driven out by the devastating violence unleashed upon them by the military. Their stories are horrific: parents slaughtered in front of their children, systematic rape and sexual torture, wholesale destruction of villages. Aid and advocacy groups describe the rate of population displacement as unprecedented and the human misery among the refugees as unparalleled.

The violence is shocking, but at the same time it is entirely unsurprising. For the past three years, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Early Warning Project has identified Burma as one of the top three countries most at risk for a mass atrocity. Other researchers argued as early as 2015 that a genocidal campaign was already underway. With such clear indications that a crisis was coming, why did the world fail to protect the Rohingya?

The question is all the more puzzling because in 2005, the member states of the United Nations endorsed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework, which obligates the international community to protect civilians from mass atrocities when their governments are “unwilling or unable” to keep them safe. R2P was borne out of collective guilt over the mass slaughter of civilians in Rwanda and Bosnia and promised a new era of “timely and decisive” atrocity response. In pursuit of this goal, early warning efforts to identify the precursors of mass atrocities became a focus for both international and state actors.

But if the Rohingya crisis has revealed anything, it’s that early warnings were never going to be enough to prevent mass atrocities.

As the death toll mounts, many observers are asking whether Burma is committing genocide. But the question hinges on intent, not scale. The mass slaughter of civilian members of a minority group by state forces is a crime against humanity. It may also be genocide if committed with the goal of destroying that group “in whole or in part.” And, practically speaking, the distinction doesn’t matter — neither for the Rohingya, who are being subjected to a brutal and systematic attack whatever the motive, nor for the international community, whose options and obligations in the face of mass atrocity do not depend on the name of the crime.

Called “the world’s most persecuted minority,” the Muslim Rohingya have suffered decades of discrimination and abuse at the hands of their Buddhist neighbors and the Burmese security forces. Although the Rohingya have lived in Burma’s western Rakhine state since the era of British colonial rule, Burma does not recognize their citizenship and insists that they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. As a result of this deprivation of nationality, they have been systematically discriminated against and denied access to state services.

The Rohingya’s precarious legal status has made them particularly vulnerable to violence from other groups. In 2012, when ethnic riots erupted between Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine state, 100,000 Rohingya fled their homes. Human rights groups documented the collusion of state forces in the violence, suggesting that the Rohingya’s subsequent forced relocation to squalid displacement camps and urban ghettos in the name of security was part of a deliberate plan to restrict their freedom of movement. In 2015, another alarm bell rang: The situation in the camps had become so dire that thousands of Rohingya boarded unsafe vessels on the Andaman Sea. An international crisis ensued when, in the face of the unprecedented numbers seeking asylum, Burma’s neighboring countries began turning back the boats.

When Rohingya insurgents attacked several border posts in October 2016, the government responded with unrestrained fury. Openly invoking the hate speech propagated by militant Buddhist monks, government officials have characterized the Rohingya as “dirty,” terrorists, and liars.

By November 2016, human rights groups were warning that the military was systematically employing extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual violence against the civilian population in the name of counterinsurgency. And in February 2017, a U.N. report concluded that the so-called “clearance operations” likely amounted to crimes against humanity. The violence, already severe, escalated sharply following the deaths of 12 security officers on Aug. 25.

In response, the military launched an all-out attack on the Rohingya. Credible estimates suggest that over a third of the Rohingya population has fled. Thousands more attempt to cross the border into Bangladesh every day.

The plight of the Rohingya suggests that early warnings do little to prevent atrocities against vulnerable groups. The high risk of mass atrocities was clear from the escalating communitarian violence, the documented uptick in online hate speech beginning in 2012, and the tightening of official restrictions on the Rohingya’s movement and activities.

And the Rohingya are not the only post-R2P victims of long-telegraphed mass atrocities. In 2009, Sri Lanka slaughtered tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in the final phase of its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The bloodbath was neither sudden nor unpredictable. The security forces had committed systematic abuses throughout the conflict and had expelled aid workers and journalists from the field of combat in late 2008. More recently, South Sudan’s descent into violence and anarchy was preceded by the breakdown of a power-sharing agreement and rumors of ethnic militias forming. In both cases, the threat of atrocities was clear, yet the international community took no action to prevent them.

These examples underscore the fact that a lack of advance notice is not the critical obstacle to action on mass atrocities. It’s politics. Many powerful countries are reluctant to permit action that impinges on another state’s sovereignty, lest the precedent be used against them later. This is particularly true for countries (like China, India, and Russia) fighting insurgencies within their own territory. And for those who lack these disincentives, the costs of action may still present a barrier. International actors are aware that humanitarian interventions are rarely simple exercises and often presage long-term commitments. And in the aftermath of the Libyan intervention, where R2P was explicitly invoked, they are particularly wary of the potential for making a bad situation worse.

Early warning has not saved the Rohingya because it can’t offset the countervailing interests or cooperation challenges that make preventing or halting mass atrocities difficult. And unfortunately, these dynamics are particularly pronounced in the present crisis. The Burmese government, including its Nobel Peace laureate civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has made a concerted push to brand the Rohingya as Islamic militants. Tapping into international counter-terrorism narratives simultaneously bolsters the legitimacy of the military operation against the Rohingya and undermines their status as innocent civilian victims of state abuse.

Additionally, the international community is already struggling to respond to mass atrocities elsewhere, most prominently in Syria, but also in the often-overlooked wars in Yemen, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In tandem, these two factors mean that the Rohingya are in competition with other atrocity victims for attention and assistance — and the terrorism allegations, however far-fetched, may make them appear comparatively less deserving.

Finally, the fact that the attacks on the Rohingya are taking place against the backdrop of a singularly apathetic U.S. administration further reduces the likelihood of intervention on their behalf. Under President Trump, the U.S. has removed human rights conditions on arms sales, gutted the State Department’s human rights and democracy promotion mission, and threatened to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

However vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy the United States has been in the past, its rhetorical commitment to human rights and willingness to exert pressure has provided a constraint on repressive states that seek the support of the West. But a world in which the United States openly ignores human rights constitutes a permissive environment for the commission of atrocities. Burma knows this, and it has seized the opportunity to finally rid itself of the Rohingya with little risk of interference.
Photo credit: Allison Joyce/Getty Image

 

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Rohingya Children Witness Crimes Against Humanity

Two brothers, "Abdulaziz" (age 9) and "Zahid" (age 6), watched from across the river as their family was massacred. They watched the attackers execute their father along with the other men in the village, and then take their mother and three siblings to a house which was set on fire. Kutupalong camp, September 25. © 2017 Anastasia Taylor-Lind for Human Rights Watch
By Peter Bouckaert
Human Rights Watch
September 29, 2017
Orphans are traumatized after Burmese Security Forces Abuses
“Abdulaziz” is only nine years old, but his serious look and stern demeanor makes him seem much older. There’s a reason for that: three weeks ago, he watched Burmese soldiers murder his parents and siblings, and now he has to look after his little brother, “Zahid,” 6, the only survivors from what was once a family of seven.

When Burmese soldiers attacked hundreds of Rohingya Muslims in the village of Tu Lar To Li on August 30, Abdulaziz took his brother Zahid by the hand, and together they swam across an adjoining river to escape, even as soldiers fired at them, killing some of those swimming alongside.

From across the river, the little boys watched as the soldiers first shot dead their father Mufiz, 35, and then took their mother Rabu, 30, their brothers Janatullah, 10, and Shabullah, 5, and their sister Mumtaz, 3, into a nearby house. The house was soon engulfed in flames.

Nearby in the sprawling Kutupalong refugee camp on the Bangladeshi side of the border stood another little boy, 10-year-old “Ali,” whose parents and three siblings were killed in the same massacre by the Burmese military. According to those taking care of him, Ali has not spoken since the killings.
The ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslims since an attack by Rohingya militants on police posts in late August has harmed countless children, many of them shot or hacked to death by uniformed soldiers.

Approximately 480,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, and according to UNICEF the majority among them are children. These children are deeply traumatized and have had their lives ripped apart by the violence they have experienced and witnessed.

Reading about half a million Rohingyas fleeing violence in Burma in just over one month may leave many feeling powerless. But each refugee, like Abdulaziz and his brother Zahid, have real needs that can be met – from safe shelter, food, and clean water, to psychosocial counseling to deal with the trauma they experienced, and, urgently, an education that can eventually help them realize their full potential.

Sadly, the United Nation’s emergency request for funding for education has fallen on deaf ears, even though more than 100,000 of the refugees are children who should soon be in school.
Those responsible for these crimes need to be held accountable. But for the children who have lost their families, experiencing some sense of normalcy, as well as justice, is essential to healing such deep wounds.