A Crime against Humanity

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Facing disaster: The Muslim Rohingya of Myanmar
Emanuel Stoakes
Wednesday 15 February 2017

The plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Myanmar, mirrors the struggle of the Palestinians, the Sahrawi and other oppressed Muslim groups which have suffered from decades of relentless state-backed persecution

Farouk’s restrained manner contrasted unsettlingly with the slow creep of tears along the fringes of his cheeks.

'They took my child and threw him into the fire by his neck'

- Farouk, Rohingya Muslim
A fine-featured, skeletal middle-aged man, (his name has been withheld at his request), he spoke haltingly as he describes how and why he fled his native Myanmar.

“The fires started at my house at 8.30am on the first day,” said Farouk, adding that they were started by a local Buddhist mob accompanied by the Myanmar army.

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“They fired weapons at the children and the elder people who were hiding in the paddy fields. They took my child and threw him into the fire by his neck. He was four years old.”

A history of violence
Farouk’s account was one of several wrenching testimonies given to Middle East Eye by members of the Rohingya Muslim community in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Two Rohingya refugees in the Kutupalong refugee camp, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh (Emanuel Stoakes)
The region, home to an eponymous city and the longest stretch of beach in the world, also hosts a growing number of Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled from neighbouring Rakhine state in Myanmar. There, roughly a million Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions, coexisting with the dominant ethnic Rakhine community, who are largely Buddhist.

This mostly stateless minority have endured decades of persecution in Rakhine, punctuated by occasional pogroms, the latest of of which may be occurring now.

In 2012, tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were burnt out of their homes across Rakhine and forced to live in squalid camps for the displaced. According to Human Rights Watch, it was part of an ethnic cleansing campaign involving state security forces and Buddhist mobs.

Since then, the Rohingya Muslims have seen their few remaining rights eroded further, a process culminating in outright disenfranchisement prior to an historic poll in 2015, the first openly-contested general election in 25 years.

The total death toll since 2012 is unknown: successive governments have sealed off areas hit by violence, and official estimates have been impossibly low. However, agencies of the United Nations believe the number is at least 1,000 dead in recent months.

"The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation - we could be looking at thousands," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, Reuters reported.

Myanmar government in denial
The latest round of violence began in October 2016, when a group of Rohingya militants conducted a surprise attack against three border guard police posts near Maungdaw, leaving nine dead.

Although the assaults, by a limited group of insurgents, were the the first attack of this kind for decades, rights groups have said that the Myanmar security forces targeted whole communities retributively.

A policeman at the entrance to the Aung Mingalar ghetto, in Sittwe (Emanuel Stoakes/MEE)
A report released on 3 February by the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), accuses Myanmar’s military of committing possible crimes against humanity as part of “clearance operations” against rebels, allegedly resulting in “hundreds” of deaths, and involving systematic rape (around half of the women interviewed by the organisation said that they had been violated). Reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch corroborate many of its claims.

Until recently, the Myanmar government in Naypyidaw simply responded to such charges with blanket or pat denials. A foreign ministry spokeswoman summarised the official stance by stating that, when it comes to allegations of abuse levelled by the Rohingya Muslims, “the things they are accusing us of didn’t happen at all.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and once an embattled democracy campaigner, is now de facto head of Myanmar’s government. She has presided over this cruel farce, going so far as to allow a social media page run by her office to publicly shame a woman who alleged that she had been raped by security forces

Elsewhere, her office attempted to debunk other allegations of rape, including those contained in a report by The Guardian.

And lawmaker Aung Win, who led an earlier inquiry into the allegations against the army, told Middle East Eye that “the [non-Rohingya people] from the military and the police are not interested in ‘Bengali’ [the term used for Muslim Rohingya] women because they are very dirty.” The line, which he also used during a notorious interview with the BBC, was followed by a short laugh.

In the aftermath of the UN report, the government relented on its months-long campaign of refutation. Instead, in February 2017, it issued a bizarre, self-refuting statement to a BBC journalist, claiming that “our position is not a blanket denial... we will cooperate with [the] international community.”

'The things they are accusing us of didn’t happen at all'

- Myanmar foreign ministry spokeswoman

In a recent development, the army announced that it would investigate itself over allegations of abuses against the Muslim Rohingya.

U Pe Than, a parliamentary lawmaker, told The Irrawaddy that the investigation committee members – all members of the military - were “under the control of the Tatmadaw or the government,” but he believed that their enquiries would be “independent and truthful”.

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But media access to the conflict zone remains restricted, many government officials reject the OHCHR report and military operations continue.

The only way to access affected Rohingya Muslims and gain a counterview, as a foreign journalist barred from the area, was to interview some of the refugees who crossed the border into Bangladesh.

Tales of horror
If the government are right about Rohingya Muslim “lies,” then the people I met in Cox's Bazar are incredible actors.

Besides Farouk, I talked to a young woman who told me that her husband had been brutally hacked to death in front of her as they fled their house.

“When we went out, my husband encountered the soldiers. We saw that he had been hacked at the neck,” she said. “Our house was burnt down as soon as we left it.”

A refugee in the UNHCR camps for Muslim Rohingya, near Sittwe (Emanuel Stoakes/MEE)
A man in his twenties told me how his son had starved to death because he had been forced to flee from his village. He did not realise that his wife had also been taken away to be raped. “My heart broke for my baby,” he said, through tears. “He was just six months old.”

And another witness, a man in his early thirties, presented what appeared to be a bullet wound in his leg, which he said he sustained during an early morning assault. Eventually he found his way across the Naf river, in a fisherman’s boat, which marks the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

“The military came at night,” he said. “They stayed in the military camp. They started shooting at the crowd early in the morning. Some people could escape and some could not escape. [Up to] 50 people died.”

Matthew Smith is chief executive of the monitoring group Fortify Rights, which recently visited refugee camps in Cox's Bazar such as Kutupalong, where the Rohingya make up the biggest group. He said that he and a team of investigators had witnessed multiple cases of new arrivals from Myanmar bearing gunshot wounds, and that they had referred several women who showed signs of rape to medical doctors in the area.

'Soldiers slit throats and burned bodies with impunity. It's horrific. Entire villages were burned to the ground'

- Matthew Smith, Fortify Rights
"We documented how army soldiers raped Rohingya women and girls, and killed untold numbers, including children," Smith said. "Soldiers slit throats and burned bodies with impunity. It's horrific. We documented mass arbitrary arrest and forced displacement. Entire villages were burned to the ground."

Smith added that the government in Naypyidaw had failed to adequately investigate the abuses, while efforts had been made within the administration to cover up or obscure the truth.

"The Human Rights Council should mandate a commission of inquiry into international crimes without delay," he said

Calls for international action
It would appear then that fresh atrocities have occurred against the Rohingya Muslims; at the very least, evidence for lesser types of crime is overwhelming. The International Commission of Juristsnotes that hundreds of Rohingya Muslims have been detained without access to lawyers or a fair trial, in contravention of Myanmar and international law. Six of them have died in custody.

Daniel Aguirre, international legal Advisor for the ICJ, told MEE that "unless the judiciary can adequately oversee 'clearance operations,' an international inquiry is the only means to achieve accountability."

Kutupalong refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, home to Rohingya refugees (Emanuel Stoakes/MEE)
But the government of Myanmar has dismissed calls for a UN-led independent inquiry. Instead it has commissioned two probes: from the outset, both lacked Rohingya representation and credibility.

Predictably, the findings of both investigations so far (one is completed, the other has produced an interim report) have backed up the government line. The second investigation in particular asserted demonstrable falsehoods as fact and made sweeping, methodologically unsound conclusions based on limited or even irrelevant information.

Yet the probe was described as “independent” by Alok Sharma MP, speaking for the British government in the House of Commons in December. (One wonders at the source of his briefing, given that reliable analysts took precisely the opposite view.) Sharma has, however, consistently expressed concerns in parliament about the situation in Rakhine and other parts of Myanmar, most recently last month.

The government of Myanmar’s response to the OHCHR report was simply to pledge more domestic investigations.

When will the UK make a stand?
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson visited Myanmar in January, where he met Aung San Suu Kyi. According to his own account, one of the topics under discussion was “human rights,” particularly in Rakhine state.

But Johnson did not issue a public call for accountability regarding abuses in the region; there were no press conferences. He did, however, seem to find time to send a video message to a Yangon rugby club.

The UK has form in acting spinelessly on behalf of the Rohingya Muslims. Around the same time that Sharma’s evasive response was issued in parliament, the UK decided to opt-out of a diplomatic call to reopen parts of Rakhine state to humanitarian deliveries, despite the move being led by no less an ally than the United States, along with 13 other embassies.

Sittwe statue of Buddhist monk Sayadaw Ottama, peaceful protester against the British (Emanuel Stoakes/MEE)
Andrew Patrick, the UK ambassador to Myanmar, had the misfortune of running into me at the airport in Yangon, Myanmar's commercial centre, in December. Naturally, I asked him about the Rohingya Muslims. Without revealing details of what he said, the clear impression I got was that he preferred to take the diplomatic route than challenge the government directly.

In many respects, this approach is valid. As others have argued cogently, Suu Kyi’s government are not directly responsible for the violence, perpetrated by the autonomous armed forces. Ultimately, she needs international support to do the right thing. The Tatmadaw (as the military are known in Burmese) still retain ultimate power in Myanmar and, thanks to a constitution they drafted, hold multiple levers over the elected government.

Assassination 'a warning'
Furthermore, a recent disturbing incident confirms the combustibility of Myanmar’s political and religious fissures. On 29 January, Ko Ni, the legal advisor to Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party, was shot and killed in broad daylight at Yangon airport. He was the highest-profile Muslim associated with the government. He had just returned from an overseas conference on the situation in Rakhine state.

There is already much speculation that it was a political assassination, intended to be a “warning” to the civilian government, although no evidence of this has yet emerged. Whatever the truth, a social post praising the actions of the killer went viral in Myanmar, demonstrating that anti-Muslim bigotry is still a force to be reckoned with.

Such considerations may explain Suu Kyi's public expression of solidarity with the military, an institution that was once her former foe, and her decision to strictly limit expressions of sympathy for the Muslim community. She opted not to attend Ko Ni’s funeral.

The British position - and that of many other nations - was to forge closer ties with the Myanamar government, while doing next to nothing for the Rohingya Muslims

While such decisions may seem squalid, they are ultimately tactical, given that, in the words of Mark Farmaner, head of the pressure group Burma Campaign UK, “Burma's so-called transition to democracy has been a transition to a new form of military control with a civilian face.”

However, there are limits to the value of diplomacy in the face of probable atrocity crimes, especially where efficacy is limited. In 2012, when the Rohingya Muslims were subject to alleged crimes against humanity perpetrated by local mobs and state security forces, no international inquiry was forthcoming. Instead, a sham domestic probe reached identical results to recent inquiries.

The British position - and that of many other nations - at that time was to forge closer ties with the Myanamar government, while doing next to nothing for the Rohingya Muslims. Consequently, the oppression of the group continued apace, with new and severe rights restrictions imposed on them.

UN: Oppression could tip into genocide
The need for justice at this juncture transcends even the importance of holding the perpetrators of recent crimes to account.

Instead, there needs to be some way to halt the forward movement of Rohingya abuse, which the UN’s special advisor on Genocide has suggested may, if enough is not done, culminate in the ultimate crime.

A burnt-out mosque in Sittwe, torched during clashes in 2012 (Emanuel Stoakes/MEE)
But will the international community, including the UK, push for this? Some hope remains. Prior to Johnson’s visit, a debate was held in Parliament on human rights in Myanmar during which Sharma, once again speaking on behalf of the foreign office, consistently refused to rule out supporting a UN inquiry into the Rohingya crisis.

If the UK takes a lead in pressing for an impartial probe, then it would be an act of moral courage. Sources with links to the US embassy in Myanmar have indicated to me that the US is supportive of the idea on the ground, although the caprices of the Trump administration mean that few can predict what the final decision will be.

If the UK takes a lead in pressing for an impartial probe, then it would be an act of moral courage

If no such move is forthcoming from London or Washington, then the chances of an inquiry will be greatly diminished and the dispensability of the Rohingya Muslims reaffirmed.

The moment is ripe for Britain to live up to its self-proclaimed commitment to promoting human rights globally. Given the fear of heightening Rohingya oppression, it would seem that calling for a meaningful investigation is the least it could do.

- Emanuel Stoakes is a journalist and researcher who specialises in human rights and conflict. He has produced work for Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Independent, The Huffington Post, Foreign Policy, The New Statesman and Vice among many others.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Image: A migrant, who was found at sea on a boat, at a temporary shelter outside Maungdaw township, northern Rakhine state on June 4, 2015 (AFP).
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French editio
http://www.middleeasteye.net/essays/desperate-plight-myanmars-muslim-rohingya-1607894390

 

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12:00 AM, September 13, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 02:25 AM, September 13, 2017
Reporter’s Diary: Alive, barely

To expose the brutality of the Myanmar security forces, we are running this photograph going beyond our editorial policy.
Osama Rahman

The day after the Eid moon was sighted, while the Muslim world collectively celebrated, Khurshida, 32, sat in her home in Buthidaung in Maungdaw, watching her two sons play, a seven-year-old and one-year-old, Hayat. They weren't allowed to be too excited though. They were only allowed to survive, a dark spot in the shining visage of Myanmar's newfound democracy.

Today Khurshida sits in Sadar Hospital, Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, a whole country away, with Hayat lying on the hospital bed, recounting a horror. Hayat's entire body is covered in burns; his eyes are fixed on the ceiling and he whimpers from time to time. He is going through so much pain that even mustering a cry hurts. He does not cry. He only whimpers, softly, a sound of muted anguish.

“At 2:00pm, the military surrounded our house and set it on fire. My older son panicked. He dropped Hayat and ran out of the house,” Khurshida remembers. “I ran back inside to get him but a piece of the flaming ceiling had fallen on him,” she says. I ask her the name of her elder son, but Khurshida is suddenly distracted. She delicately wraps her pink aanchol around her face, her eyes fixed on Hayat. With her other hand on his forehead she checks his fever. What else can she say? Now is when you want to tell her that everything will be alright and to have faith. But you can't. No one knows what will happen next.

Faith has become a luxurious comfort. Her son, Hayat, is only one-year-old and has already seen and suffered more than any one-year-old should.

On the next bed is six-year-old Faisal. His hand is heavily plastered. He sits with his mother. His eyes are darting everywhere. Is it out of curiosity or fear? “We were running away from the army. They would not stop shooting at us,” Faisal's mother says. In the rush, Faisal fell, tumbling down the steep hills, breaking his arm.

A broken arm was better than the fate the Myanmar military had in store for him. Faisal's eyes still retain the gleam of youth unlike Hayat's, who has been robbed of the innocence even before he had the chance to nurture it.

In another room, the first thing that greets you is blood-stained sheets. The patient occupying the bed has been moved for further examinations. A selfish relief washes over, having avoided another gut-wrenching story. But before one can breathe easier, there's more to come.

On the very next bed behind her is Nur Haba. She lifts her bandaged arm to show where the bullet went through. “It was around Fajr. We woke up to the screams of our neighbours who were being slaughtered next door,” she says. “As soon as we realised what was happening, we got out and ran towards the hills. The military men were slaughtering everyone in sight and burning all our homes,” she adds.

She pauses for a few seconds, collecting herself. As they ran, the army began shooting. “They did not stop shooting. They came suddenly, armed with rocket-propelled grenades. We are farmers. What could we do?” she asks. This is when you ask what you could now do for her apart from offering a few words of consolation. How do you console someone whose suffering refuses to end?

On the bed across sits Sura Khatun with her grand-daughter, Zamila Khatun, a girl who is around 15. She wishes to show the gaping bullet hole in her grand-daughter's back, left after a bullet ripped through her chest. In some twist of fate, the girl survived, the bullet missing any vital organs and going right through her, leaving behind only a mark and an unforgettable memory.

But at least her grand-daughter was still alive. That must be a small blessing for her, a story of resiliency in the making. But Myanmar's crackdown was not conceived with an option for positive stories; it was about unleashing brutality, one that would haunt the memories of its victims and their future generations for centuries to come.

“My son was shot. My four-year-old grand-son…” she pauses, and then breathes in, her eyes brimming with tears. She wants to continue but doesn't know how to put in words what happened next. “My four-year-old grandson, I saw the bullet go through his head,” she says, pointing at her own temple. In that instant her face contorts into a mask of melancholy and she breaks down. She can say no more. But her eyes tell you that Rakhine is no longer her home and can never be again.

Once her sobs subside, she goes back to telling her tale.

“At 1:00 pm, while the men were finishing their prayers, the military surrounded the mosque and started shooting indiscriminately. At least 200 people died,” she says. “They wouldn't allow us to go to mosques or madrasas to pray. They allowed us nothing,” she concludes wishing to say no more.

Today Sura has her grand-daughter to take care of with the help of a few relatives. Her husband, who was blind, has been missing since the attack.

It was time to leave. Just outside the cabin, the halls filled with the cries of a child. Rushing out, we met 13-year-old Jubair, clinging on to his mother. Shirtless, he clutched his stomach and kept groaning in pain. It was a stomach infection, a nurse informed. When Jubair's mother was handed a prescription for a 15 taka medicine, she slowly led Jubair into a ward, her head bent low, and placed him on the bed. Jubair refused to let go of his mother's arm.

He wasn't shot. He wasn't burned. He had a stomach infection, probably from eating scraps, as that was all they had. But his mother still seemed troubled. Turns out she did not have the 15 taka she needed to save her son from this unbearable pain.

Before we left, Sura called us back and asked us to take a picture of Zamila's bullet wound. She wanted the world to see what had happened to them. Like her, many refugees in the camps had also been willing to tell their stories and show their scars. They firmly believed that if the world saw them and heard them, they would help.

Does anyone have the heart to tell them that the world turned their backs on them a long time ago? Could anyone tell them that the international leaders, who they imagine to be their saviours, refuse to acknowledge their suffering?

In Sadar District Hospital Cox's Bazar, it dawns upon you that there is no point wrapping what happened in fancy packages of nice sounding terms. It is time to call it what it is. This is genocide. Let there be no doubt about it. If Hayat lives, he will not shy away from telling you the same.
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#Burma - Ashrafiyya Islamic University in #Maungdaw was burnt to ashes and a mosque burned by #Myanmar army.
#Rohingya #RiseForRohingya

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10:20 AM, September 14, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 10:38 AM, September 14, 2017
176 ethnic Rohingya villages now empty after all residents fled: Myanmar presidential spokesman

Newly arrived Rohingya refugees wait for their turn to collect building material for their shelters at the Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh on Wednesday, September 13, 2017. Photo: AP
Associated Press, Bangkok

Myanmar presidential spokesman has said 176 ethnic Rohingya villages are now empty after all residents fled.
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Rohingya Blogger
Tun Khin, President of BROUK briefing the situation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

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The suffering little children
Tribune Editorial
Published at 06:46 PM September 21, 2017
Last updated at 06:57 PM September 21, 2017

It should be of the utmost urgency to take care of the Rohingya childre
As the Rohingya crisis rages on at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, the most helpless and vulnerable of the victims of Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing operations are the children.

It is indeed a blight on the world’s conscience that hundreds of thousands of children are starving at the border, and suffering from a variety of diseases due to malnutrition.

Bangladesh has been doing its best — we have welcomed the Rohingya into our side of the border and are providing food and shelter, but the reality is that this is a crisis of such vast proportions that more always needs to be done.

When children are on the verge of mass starvation, it is time for the world to wake up and admit that a humanitarian catastrophe is imminent.

Rohingya families often have to travel on foot for 10 days or longer, with children falling ill from exhaustion and starvation, newborn babies deprived of their mother’s milk, and the lack of any sort of medical attention.

This is no way for human beings to live.

There needs to be more outrage, and more support for the children, who are being punished so cruelly for no reason other than having been born Rohingya.

Some money has come our way from governments around the world, but so far it has been a mere drop in the bucket compared to what is needed.

It should be of the utmost urgency to take care of the Rohingya children, and make sure they have enough to eat — not just because it is our humanitarian obligation, but also to prevent a wider health catastrophe throughout the region.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/2017/09/21/suffering-little-children/

 

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International People’s Tribunal starts hearing on atrocities against Rohingya
Tribune Desk
Published at 12:20 PM September 19, 2017
Last updated at 12:23 PM September 19, 2017

A Rohingya refugee girl collects rain water at a makeshift camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 17, 2017 Reuters
The tribunal will listen to the victims of the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar
International People’s Tribunal has begun its hearing in Malaysia on alleged atrocities and state crimes against the Rohingya, Kachins and other ethnic minority groups in Myanmar.

Rome-based Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT), an international public opinion tribunal that operates independently, became the convener of the opinion tribunal which has started its hearing from Monday.

The tribunal will listen to the victims of the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The tribunal also aims to stop other crimes in the country.

The process will be similar to a hearing, with the Myanmar ethnic groups testifying before a seven-member jury in Kuala Lumpur from September 18-22 at Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Law, reports IANS.

According to the report, the tribunal will make a conclusion based on oral testimonies on the atrocities and give findings to the United Nation’s Fact Finding Mission that was tasked to send its official to Yangon on September 22.

The stateless minority group of Rakhine state, Rohingya, has experienced persecution in Myanmar for years.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, accused the Myanmar military of burning Rohingya villages and raping women. Meanwhile, the Myanmar army denied the accusation and said it was responding to attacks by militants.

The Myanmar military response has sent more than 410,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, escaping what they and rights monitors say is a campaign aimed at driving out the Muslim population, reports Reuters.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar rejects that, saying its forces are carrying out clearance operations against the insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which claimed responsibility for the August attacks and smaller raids in October.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/s...-tribunal-starts-hearing-atrocities-rohingya/

 

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Tambru burns – A first person account of a Bangladeshi journalist who snuck into Myanmar on September 21
Amanur Rahman Roney
Published at 01:13 PM September 22, 2017
Last updated at 06:56 PM September 22, 2017
Tambru, an area in Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh, once bustling with life, now lies empty. Rohingya people have been driven out of the area by Myanmar army and Rakhine Buddhists. Bangla Tribune's Amanur Rahman Roney visited Tambru on Thursday to see the devastation for himself.

Rohingya refugees have set up makeshift camps in no man’s land, on the other side of the Naf River. Two Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) members asked me not to go any further. We were suddenly interrupted by rain around 2:30pm. The BGB men went away seeking shelter from the rain.

I took advantage of the situation and went near a bamboo grove with my companion Biplob, a photojournalist who understands the Rohingya tongue. There, we gestured at a Rohingya girl, aged about 10, to get us an umbrella. The girl, who said her name was Rebeca, swam across the shallow river to get to us.

It stopped raining about half an hour later. I was worried whether the BGB troopers were keeping an eye on us but fortunately they were not. We turned to the Rohingya and inquired, using sign language, about the shallow part of the river.

A Rohingya man sent his eight-year-old son to fetch us. We quickly followed him into the Rohingya camp. There, we spoke with the men. Some of the old men forbade us to venture into Myanmar. However, several young boys said they could take us inside Rakhine but advised us to strictly avoid Mogh (local Buddhist) settlements.

The reporter snuck into Tambru, in Rakhine state, on Thursday to see the situation for himself | Amanur Rahman Roney/Bangla Tribune

Several youths came forward to assist us. I sent two of them – Hamjal and Khalek – to go ahead and see if it was safe to go there now. They went near a Mogh settlement about a kilometre inside the border and told us that it was okay.

I was confused at that point about what I should do. I wondered what would happen if we came across the Myanmar army or the Moghs. But I finally decided to go to see for myself why hundreds of thousands of innocent Rohingya were fleeing into Bangladesh leaving behind their homeland and everything.

At the border, the barbed wire posed the first challenge. It was impossible to get across quickly. The fleeing Rohingya cut the barbed wire at two points at Tambru border on August 26 but it was still dangerous. Hamjal and Khalek were calling us, eager to show us how their houses had been destroyed.

We took two other Rohingya men – Nurul Amin, 48, and Nur Alam, 35 – with us. Amin, the more courageous of the two, assured us that it was safe. Finally, we were standing on Myanmar soil.

The reporter peeks into an abandoned Rohingya house | Amanur Rahman Roney/Bangla Tribune

Near the road used by Myanmar border patrols, Amin showed us a spot where the army had planted four landmines. From there, we walked for about 20 minutes and crossed two hills. We gazed at the cultivated land lying below. My companion Biplob was busy taking photos.

After a while, we finally arrived at an abandoned tiny Rohingya settlement. There were about 50 small houses that have been burned by the Myanmar army and local mob.

I asked my Rohingya companions to wait outside and entered one of the mud houses. The roof had been destroyed by fire. Dresses of children, utensils and rice baskets were scattered all over. The small houses sat close to each other on the hilltop. Everything was in ruins.

The five of us were two kilometres inside Myanmar territory. We were whispering, fearing the Moghs would find us. Our next stop was near a Mogh village. We saw the Moghs working in the fields and children playing near a tin-roof school. Next to the place was a burned down, empty Rohingya village.

Residents of this house in Tambru have fled to Bangladesh | Amanur Rahman Roney/Bangla Tribune

My Rohingya companions Amin and Khalek were describing the atrocities committed by the military and Moghs. They told me not to go any further or the Moghs would recognise us. So, we walked towards the north where we saw empty Rohingya houses, looted by the Moghs.

Khalek called us from behind and said the place was not safe as the Moghs patrol the area. He said he did not want to put our lives in danger. Around 4:30pm, we meet two Rohingya men in the village. They were secretly visiting their houses they had been forced to leave behind.

From a hilltop, they showed us the big but sparsely populated Tambru area. The villages were spaced out. There was a road along the border. They said they used the road to travel to Maungdaw and Tambru town.

Hossain, one of the Rohingya we met in the village, lived in East Tambru. He showed us his house. “The Moghs looted everything. They came with the army and opened fire. The Moghs destroyed our houses and set them afire,” the man said.

He said he had been staying in no man’s land with seven members of his family for the last 26 days. “I came to see my house. It won’t be possible to live here because of the Moghs. So, I left with my family,” he added.

The house was looted and burned by the Myanmar army and Rakhine Buddhists | Amanur Rahman Roney/Bangla Tribune

In north Tambru, we met another Rohingya, Nur Islam. He, too, had come to see his home. There was nothing there. Everything was in ruins.

We moved out quickly. The Myanmar army had set fire to another village in the north. Around 4:45pm, we headed back to the no man’s land leaving behind the empty Rohingya villages.

We were looking back frequently to see if we were being followed. I finally heaved a sigh of relief after crossing the barbed wire fence.

I headed to the north along the border. After a 20-minute ride on a three-wheeler, I saw a house on fire just on the other side of the fence. As I rushed towards the border, the Myanmar border guards called me out.

I walked into a bush and stood near the fence. There I saw the house owner Nasima Khatun wailing. She was shocked and fainting from time to time. I told her children to pour water on her head.

I recorded the burning house on my mobile phone before getting back. Nasima was still unconscious.

A screenshot taken from a video posted by Bangla Tribune shows the burning of a village in Tambru, in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, on Thursday.
This article was first published on Bangla Tribune
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2017/09/22/tambru-still-burning/

http://time.com/4951180/myanmars-shame-aung-san-suu-kyi/

 

[Banglar Bir]

Int'l tribunal finds Myanmar guilty of 'genocide'
7-member tribunal calls on Myanmar authorities to put an end to violence against Muslim minorities
September 22, 2017 Anadolu Agency
Since Aug. 25, some 429,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN.

The refugees are fleeing a fresh security operation in which security forces and Buddhist mobs have killed men, women and children, looted homes and torched Rohingya villages. According to Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali, around 3,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown.

The tribunal also called on the international community to provide financial help to countries such as Bangladesh and Malaysia that are hosting the influx of refugees escaping the violence.

UN estimates $200 mln needed for Rohingya in Bangladesh for six months
The United Nations estimates that $200 million will be needed over the next six months to help Rohingya Muslims refugees who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in "massive numbers" to escape a bloody military campaign.

Bangladesh and humanitarian organisations are struggling to help 422,000 Rohingya who have arrived since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a Myanmar counter-insurgency offensive that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh was already home to some 400,000 Rohingya who fled earlier bouts of violence and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.The United Nations launched an appeal for $78 million on Sept. 9, but the refugees have kept coming."Right now, we’re looking at $200 million," Robert D. Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh told Reuters in an interview in his office in the capital, Dhaka, on Friday."It has not been confirmed, but it is a ballpark figure based on the estimates on the information we have," he said, adding that would be for six months."We base these appeals on immediate needs, and right now we know they’re going to be here for six months.

"Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying its security forces are fighting insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who claimed responsibility for attacks on about 30 police posts and army camp on Aug. 25.The insurgents were also behind similar but smaller attacks in October last year, that also led to a brutal Myanmar army response triggering the flight of 87,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh.Watkins said the exodus since Aug. 25 was much bigger than the flows sparked by ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s."It’s different from that here because the numbers are so much bigger ... massive numbers in such a short period of time," he said.Video:

Thousands rally in Pakistan to protest the persecution of Rohingya Muslims'SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY'The monsoon rains have compounded the problems for the aid agencies, turning roads into quagmires. Watkins said the United Nations was working with Bangladeshi authorities to build new roads.He said the situation had not stabilised in terms of new arrivals so it was difficult to say for how many people they were planning for, or for how long."We don’t want to plan a 10-year operation, obviously, because we want to maintain hope that there will be a way for negotiating a return of the population," he said."We can’t plan too far in the future because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the one hand, politically, it sends a strong signal, which we don’t want to send, which is that people are going to be here for a long time."And our donors are not prepared to respond to anything beyond a one-year time frame given the massive amounts of money we are asking for.

”The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and most are stateless.Video: Rohingya Muslims slaughtered by fanatic Buddhists Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 under which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back "without any problem".But many Rohingya are pessimistic about their chances of ever going home, partly because many do not have official papers confirming their residency. Video: Humankind 'insensitive' to persecution of Rohingya Muslims: Erdoğan

Malaysia currently hosts one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world. As of 2014, some 146,020 refugees and asylum seekers had been registered with the UNHCR in Malaysia, of which the vast majority or some 135,000 are from Myanmar.

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

Last October, following attacks on border posts in Rakhine's Maungdaw district, security forces launched a five-month crackdown in which, according to Rohingya groups, around 400 people were killed.

The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.
Rohingya crisis in numbers
The number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar is increasing by the day. The extent and implications of the crisis remain uncertain and the numbers paint a grim story.
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/gundem/...glish&utm_campaign=facebook-yenisafak-english

 

[Banglar Bir]

Suffering has a name
Aung San Suu Kyi’s response to the crisis at home is starkly duplicitous and false
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, September 22, 2017

Suffering is universal and part of the human condition and life. In history however, suffering is quite specific. Suffering carries a name, sometimes of an individual and often of a community. Suffering has a face, or faces. Today we are witnessing the suffering of isolated groups of individuals who are victims of terror attacks. But we are also witnessing the deep violence against communities that are targeted in the name of racist and religious nationalism. These are forms of historical violence that do not fall within the general idea of universal suffering. It includes the collective plight of people, of refugees and minorities, who face majoritarian violence. These instances are often accompanied by the apathy of the state or its direct or tacit encouragement. These sufferers have a name. These names belong to people who suffer the logic of territoriality that dogs the spirit of history and the nation’s paranoia.

Rohingya is such a name. That is why Aung San Suu Kyi’s not mentioning “Rohingya” in her address to the nation, where she refers to the specific crisis at home in general terms, appears odd and deliberate. As if the word is taboo, the name too hard to utter. Rohingya is just not the name that designates a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar, but a minority that is suffering majoritarian violence. The word is not simply a political category, but resonates with an ethical appeal in relation to their specific condition. It is a condition born out of historical prejudice and political malice. Meanwhile, the Rohingya crisis has spilled over, posing questions for other nations to rehabilitate political refugees. The UN raised eyebrows over India’s handling of the crisis, as the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that the Rohingya people posed a threat to national security. The paranoia of security has become a legitimate logic used by the state to absolve itself of ethical responsibilities. Yet Suu Kyi, despite facing worldwide condemnation and petitions to strip her off the Nobel Peace Prize, maintained a disturbingly long silence.

Suu Kyi’s address comes very late. To be late is a problem, for it betrays reluctance and perhaps even refusal to address the nature of crime. This dubious style of responding late to serious crimes where the victim isn’t named is currently being pursued even by the political regime in India. Suu Kyi’s response to the crisis at home is starkly duplicitous and false. She said, “We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence.” That is a misleading statement, for she does not need to answer a universal problem but the problem of a minority. To say “all human rights violations” is to not mention the one violation which alone is everything that she has to respond to. That one is the singular universal. The universal cannot be reduced to the concrete one. It is a trick of language, to subsume the one within the universal and erase it. Erase its name. The politics of the universal is the politics of not naming (the one).

Universal suffering is not political. Only particular people in historical time have suffered violence. To take their names, mention their suffering in relation to their perpetrators, is our ethical and historical task. Not to name the one, in this sense, shows a lack of responsibility. All responsibility is ethical and for that reason, particular. No one is (held) responsible for universal suffering. The language of affectation is as much an ethical sensibility. The language of mourning is also meant for the one, for that one name who suffers, not for everyone, for any universal notion of the sufferer. To mourn is always to mourn for the other, for that one, bereaved other, who is the victim of fate or history. This is what the French ethical thinker, Emanuel Levinas, calls the “inter-human”, which takes cognisance not of the universal, but the particular other, the neighbour, who needs help, care or justice.

In her most recent interview to ANI, Suu Kyi reiterated the problem, pointing to the “controversies with regard to the term used to describe the Muslims of the Rakhine.” Her explanation reveals her position vis-à-vis this politics of naming: “There are those who want to call them as Rohingyas or who want to refer the Muslims there as Rohingyas. And the Rakhines will not use any term except Bengalis, meaning to say that they are not ethnic Rakhines. And I think that instead of using emotive terms, this term has become emotive, and highly charged. It’s better to call them as Muslims which is a description that nobody can deny.” The politics of naming is contextual.

In India, the term ‘Muslim’ is enough to name a minority being targeted by Hindu vigilante groups in the pretext of violating majoritarian sentiments. The political establishment in turn won’t name the Muslim in the pretext of not adding communal colour to crimes that are communal in nature. In Suu Kyi’s case, ‘Muslim’ is more politically suitable, for the term ‘Rohingya’ designates an etymology and history that establishes their relationship with the region, gives it pre-colonial status and disturbs the territorial idea of a nation-state. It is a term that contests the unitary claims of the “ethnic Rakhines” to be the sole, legitimate inhabitants of Myanmar. Suu Kyi is clearly siding with the sentiments of the ethnic Rakhines by shying away from using the word Rohingya.

No wonder that Suu Kyi does not want to name the name Rohingya. To mourn or take responsibility were not her intention from the beginning. To name that minority will mean two things, she probably wants to avoid: First, take responsibility for the condition of what that name, of what people who bear that name, faces today in her country; and second, to accept the suffering specific to that one community, of the minority she can’t wish away in the name of a fantasy she may call her nation. A nation where a minority cannot exist is a majoritarian fantasy. It is the minority that presents the problem of the one, for by naming her the majority’s claim is divided into two, and the majority wants absolute claims. Majoritarian politics would always want to deny the one its place, so that the majority remains the only, incontestable one.

The difference between Mahatma Gandhi and Suu Kyi is that Gandhi recognised the twoness between Hindus and Muslims. Remember Gandhi invoking the simile of “two brothers” in Hind Swaraj for the Hindu-Muslim relationship. In a historically unique and perhaps unparalleled gesture, Gandhi placed the Muslim demand before (prior to) the Hindu. When Gandhi said, “unity cannot be reached without justice between communities”, his placing the question of justice prior to unity is precisely to endorse the minority’s claim first. There is no need for justice if the majority is the sole, legitimate claimant to political power. It is the minority that introduces the question, the necessity, of justice in a nation-state in the first place.

In contrast, without recognising the minority, Suu Kyi said, “We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people caught up in the conflict.” It may easily mean both victims and perpetrators, as both are “caught up” in the “conflict”. It is a gross violation of ethical sensibility and intention. This political language that speaks for “all” deliberately hides the suffering of the one. In the ANI interview, Suu Kyi said, “We have to be fair to all communities. We have always maintained this that we don’t condemn either of the communities. We condemn actions that are against the rule of law and that are against the humanitarian needs of all people. But we have never condemned communities as such.” This equalisation of violence and victimhood is certainly not fairness. It is unfair to the beleaguered, outnumbered, persecuted people, who are at the receiving end of what the UN has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Again, you find the politics of language where the one is subsumed by an apparently fairer concern for the “all”.

Apart from being a late response, Suu Kyi’s statements are strategically silent on meaningful clarification and intent. In the light of her language, it is difficult to accept her claim that her “true feelings are very very simple”. Both language and silence fall short of naming the violence. Silence is surely not the language of justice. Suu Kyi hasn’t spoken the language of justice yet. Something that hinders the idea of justice holds back her tongue. Call it the silence of prejudice or the prejudice of silence.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee teaches poetry at Ambedkar University, New Delhi. He is a frequent contributor to The Wire and has written for The Hindu, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Outlook and other publications.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/22/suffering-has-a-name/