Int'l tribunal finds Myanmar guilty of 'genocide'

[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]

https://www.facebook.com/

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a former winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and darling of the international news media, is being seen in an entirely new light.
[via The Listening Post]

 

[Banglar Bir]

12:00 AM, September 23, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 06:55 AM, September 23, 2017
Myanmar found guilty of genocide
International peoples' court delivers verdict

From left, judges Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Shadi Sadr, Boehringer, Feierstein, Helen Jarvis, Nello Rossi and Zulaiha Ismal at the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal at University of Malaya yesterday. Photo: The Star Online (Malaysia)
Star Report

Myanmar is guilty of genocide against the Rohingya people, according to the verdict of international Permanent Peoples' Tribunal.

A seven-member panel announced the verdict yesterday after considering documentary and expert evidence as well as the testimony of some 200 victims of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, Kachin and other minority groups in Myanmar, reports The Star Online of Malaysia.

Head judge Daniel Feierstein, who founded the Centre for Genocide Studies in Argentina, read out the findings following five days of hearing held at the moot court of the law faculty of University of Malaya.

On the strength of the evidence presented, the tribunal reached the consensus ruling that Myanmar has the intent to commit genocide against the Kachin and other groups, the tribunal said.

“The State of Myanmar is guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya group.... the casualties of that genocide could be even higher in the future if nothing is done to stop it,” it added.

A preliminary unedited version of the judgment was available on the website of the tribunal last night.

The verdict came at a time when over 4,20,000 Rohingyas fled persecution in Myanmar to Bangladesh in last four weeks.

The influx was triggered by Myanmar army's response to alleged insurgent attacks on 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine State on August 25.

The UN has denounced the “cruel military operation” against Rohingyas as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

The panel, which included Zulaiha Ismail (Malaysia), Helen Jarvis (Cambodia/Australia), Gill H Boehringer (Australia), Nursyahbani Katjasungkana (Indonesia), Shadi Sadr (Iran) and Nello Rossi (Italy), made 17 recommendations.

It said visas and full access must be granted to the UN investigators for probing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, Kachin and other groups in Myanmar.

The Myanmar government should amend its constitution and abolish discriminatory laws to give rights and citizenship to the oppressed minorities, it added.

The tribunal recommended imposing an immediate arms embargo on the government of Myanmar.

About the implication of the verdict, eminent war crimes researcher Mofidul Hoque said the verdict is “very significant” and sends a strong moral message to the world.

Also the director of Centre for the Study of Genocide and Justice in Bangladesh, he said the verdict clearly says that what's happening in Myanmar is not just ethnic cleansing; it's a classic example of genocide.

“The verdict gave a clarion call that United Nations and relevant international bodies must act to bring the Myanmar authority to book for committing genocide,” Mofidul, also a trustee of the Liberation War Museum, told The Daily Star.

This is the first time the tribunal delivered a verdict accusing a government having link with a Nobel laureate, he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar's de facto leader, is now facing growing criticism over the Rohingya issue.

Tureen Afroz, a senior prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, said the verdict established what prominent individuals and different countries and international organisations are saying: Myanmar is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingyas.

“The verdict will help draw international attention to the atrocities,” Tureen, also a law professor of a private university, told The Daily Star.

She, however, called for persuading the prosecution team at the International Criminal Court to initiate trial proceedings against Myanmar for the crimes as the verdict of the people's tribunal has “no legal basis.”

“And, in that case, the tribunal verdict will be helpful,” Tureen said.

The tribunal's findings, judgment and recommendations would be forwarded to international bodies and civil groups, said an organiser.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
The international community must provide financial help to countries such as Bangladesh and Malaysia that are hosting the refugees.

Myanmar must prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses, hate crimes, genocidal massacres, rape, torture, arson and ethnic and religious violence against the Rohingya, Kachin and other groups in its courts. There must be no more impunity for military personnel or militias.

An independent, non-governmental commission should be established to develop a programme for rehabilitation and compensation for victims.

Targeted sanctions, for example freezing of overseas bank accounts and travel ban outside Myanmar, need to be imposed on government officials and perpetrators of human rights abuse.

There should be a plan to escalate sanctions if the government fail in its general duty to protect its people and to stop the human rights violations by the military and private persons and organisations.

An independent, international non-governmental commission should be formed to investigate the causes behind the harms about which the world has now been made aware.

WHAT IS PERMANENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL?
PPT was established in Bologna in 1979 as a direct continuation of the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam (1966-67) and Latin America (1973-76), according to its website.

The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell-Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private body organised by British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre.

It investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam after the defeat of French forces in the battle of Diên Biên Phu in 1954 and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.

Since its establishment, PPT is built around an international network of experts, social actors and scholars from several countries of Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, recognised for their independence and competence.

The characteristic of “permanency” and the selection criteria used in the appointment of its judges, renowned for their independence and expertise, have made this opinion tribunal a laboratory of denunciation and interdisciplinary research, it said.

Based in Rome, the tribunal has held 43 sessions on numerous cases involving human rights and genocide. Cases relating to Armenian genocide, war crimes in Sri Lanka, crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia, among others, were dealt by it.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...-crisis-myanmar-found-guilty-genocide-1466263

 

[Stag112]

Bangladesh should get a genocide verdict for 1971 passed from this tribunal too. This will make their case much stronger. After all a thousand times more people were killed then as per BD and not ONE person was punished.

 

[Homo Sapiens]

This is the first time a nobel peace prize winner convicted for crime against humanity.She could have fight against the prevailing racism,bigotry of her countrymen and genocide carried out by her general and ascend to the throne of admiration and love of the whole world.She may had to loose her position within her criminal govt. but could have gained a saint like position among the people of conscience around the world and go down in the history alongside with Nelson Mandela,Abraham Lincoln,Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa.But she choose to become an accomplice and defender of the crime committing the murderous junta and apologetic to the racism,hate,bigotry of her countrymen.She had opportunity to become a light into the darkness, but she choose to become a dark force herself.History will not forgive her.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Without a Home, and Without Hope
September 23, 2017
Brook Larmer | National Geographic
“Dance!” shouted the army officer, waving a gun at the trembling girl. Afifa, just 14 years old, was corralled in a rice paddy with dozens of girls and women—all members of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. The soldiers who invaded her village that morning last October said they were looking for militants who had carried out a surprise attack on three border posts, killing nine policemen. The village’s men and boys, fearing for their lives, had dashed into the forests to hide, and the soldiers began terrorizing the women and children.

After enduring an invasive body search, Afifa had watched soldiers drag two young women deep into the rice paddy before they turned their attention to her. “If you don’t dance at once,” the officer said, drawing his hand across his throat, “we will slaughter you.” Choking back tears, Afifa began to sway back and forth. The soldiers clapped rhythmically. A few pulled out mobile phones to shoot videos. The commanding officer slid his arm around Afifa’s waist.

Rohingya refugees queue outside Kutupalong camp near the town of Cox’s Bazar, waiting to receive staples from the World Food Programme. About half a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh.
“Now that’s better, isn’t it?” he said, flashing a smile.

The encounter marked only the beginning of the latest wave of violence against the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya who live, precariously, in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The United Nations considers the Rohingya one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. Muslims in a nation dominated by Buddhists, the Rohingya claim that they are indigenous to Rakhine, and many are descended from settlers who came in the 19th and early 20th century. Despite their roots, a 1982 law stripped the Rohingya of their citizenship. They are now considered illegal immigrants in Myanmar as well as in neighboring Bangladesh, the country to which as many as half a million have fled.

Five years ago, clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities left hundreds dead, mostly Rohingya. With their mosques and villages torched, 120,000 Rohingya were forced into makeshift camps inside Myanmar (also known as Burma). This time the assault was unleashed by the Burmese military, the feared Tatmadaw, which ruled over Myanmar for five decades before overseeing a transition that led last year to a quasi-civilian government.

Early in the morning, family members warm themselves around a fire in an alley in Kutupalong. Refugees construct their huts from branches, leaves, and black plastic sheeting. Many of these flimsy shelters were ruined in May by a cyclone.

What began ostensibly as a hunt for the culprits behind the border post attacks turned into a four-month assault on the Rohingya population as a whole. According to witnesses interviewed by the UN and international human-rights groups, as well as National Geographic, the army campaign included executions, mass detentions, the razing of villages, and the systematic rape of Rohingya women. Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, believes it’s “very likely” the army committed crimes against humanity.

The full extent of what happened in northern Rakhine state is not yet known because the government has not allowed independent investigators, journalists, or aid groups unfettered access to the affected areas. Satellite imagery at the time showed Rohingya villages destroyed by fire. Amateur video appeared to show charred bodies of adults and children lying on the ground in the torched villages. Rights groups say hundreds of Rohingya have been killed. One incontrovertible truth is that the army assault triggered the exodus of more than 75,000 Rohingya into overcrowded refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh. Nearly 60 percent are children. (An estimated 20,000 or more Rohingya have been displaced within Myanmar’s borders.)

With no access to Bangladesh’s health facilities, Rohingya women with a malnourished baby wait to be seen by medical professionals who work for international non-profits.

Before the soldiers left Afifa’s village that day, she says they set fire to the harvest-ready rice fields, looted houses, and shot or stole all of the cattle and goats. The devastation and fear compelled Afifa’s parents to split the family into two groups and escape in different directions—to improve their odds of survival. “We didn’t want to abandon our home,” Afifa’s father, Mohammed Islam, told me five months later, when five of the family’s 11 members staggered into Balukhali, a refugee camp in Bangladesh. “But the army has only one aim: to get rid of all Rohingya.”

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. More than a year ago, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi became Myanmar’s de facto leader, and international human-rights groups—as well as many Rohingya—hoped she would help move Rakhine toward peace and reconciliation. The daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero and martyr, General Aung San, she is celebrated for her fearless resistance to the country’s military dictatorship. After enduring more than 15 years under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League of Democracy to a sweeping electoral victory in 2015. (A clause in the military-drafted constitution prevented her from becoming president, so a loyal underling serves as president while she runs the government as “state counselor.”)

“We had a very big hope that Suu Kyi and democracy would be good for us,” says Moulabi Jaffar, a 40-year-old Islamic cleric and shop owner from a village north of Maungdaw, sitting in his shack in Balukhali camp. “But the violence only got worse. That came as a big surprise.”

Men pray at a mosque being built from bamboo at Balukhali, a refugee camp in Bangladesh. The Rohingya are Muslims, while Buddhism is the dominant religion in Myanmar. Buddhist firebrands have stirred up hatred for the minority Rohingya.

Despite her reputation as a human-rights icon, Aung San Suu Kyi has seemed unwilling or unable to speak about the violence against the Rohingya, much less bring perpetrators to justice. When reports of army atrocities emerged late last year, she broke her silence—not to rein in abusive soldiers but to scold the United Nations and human-rights groups for stoking “bigger fires of resentment” by dwelling on the testimonies of Rohingya who had fled to Bangladesh. It doesn’t help, she said, “if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation.” Aung San Suu Kyi has yet to visit northern Rakhine. But in a BBC interview in April, she said, “I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing going on.”

Aung San Suu Kyi remains an immensely popular figure in Myanmar, where 90 percent of the population is Buddhist and the military still wields enormous power. But her role in shielding the army from scrutiny in Rakhine has tarnished her global reputation, even prompting a letter from 13 Nobel laureates upbraiding her for failing to protect the rights of the Rohingya. “Like many in the international community, we expected more of Suu Kyi,” says Matthew Smith, co-founder of Fortify Rights, a Bangkok-based human-rights group. “She is operating in a delicate situation politically, but that doesn’t justify silence or wholesale denials in the face of mountains of evidence. The army launched an attack on a civilian population, and nobody has been held accountable.”

Myanmar set up three commissions to look into the turmoil in Rakhine state, but none is independent. The army’s report, released in May, proclaimed its innocence—except for two minor incidents, including one in which a soldier borrowed a motorbike without asking. A member of the main government inquiry dismissed reports of atrocities and contended that Burmese soldiers couldn’t have raped Rohingya women because they are “too dirty.” That commission’s final report, issued in early August, was another blanket denial, contending that “there is no evidence of crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.” Aung San Suu Kyi says her government will accept outside guidance only from an international commission chaired by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Its report is also due this month, but its mandate is to make policy recommendations—not to investigate human-rights abuses.

Young boys study the Quran inside a madrassa in one of the older parts of the Kutupalong camp. Most Rohingya children in Bangladesh do not have access to formal schooling because they are unregistered refugees. Most attend the many madrassas found throughout the camps.

In June, when a newly formed UN fact-finding mission sought to investigate human-rights violations in Myanmar, including Rakhine, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government refused to grant visas to the team members. “We don’t accept it,” she said, arguing that the mission could exacerbate divisions between Buddhists and Muslims. When Lee, the UN special rapporteur, returned to Myanmar in July, she and Aung San Suu Kyi shared a warm embrace—before Lee excoriated the government for blocking her access and intimidating witnesses, the same tactics used by the military junta. “In previous times, human rights defenders, journalists, and civilians were followed, monitored, and surveyed, and questioned—that’s still going on."

Afia, her father, and siblings spent five months on the run inside Myanmar, sticking mostly to the forests to avoid the military, often going days without food. On their first attempt to cross the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and Bangladesh, a Burmese patrol boat opened fire, capsizing their boat and killing several refugees. It would be three months before they risked the crossing again.

I met Afifa in March on the day that half of her family finally reached Balukhali camp, where more than 11,000 new arrivals have turned the forested hills into a dusty hive of bamboo huts and black tarpaulins. Afifa wore the same soiled brown shirt she wore the day she danced for the soldiers five months before. “It’s all I have,” she says. Another family from their home village of Maung Hnama offered food to eat and a safe place to sleep, but Islam wept quietly. His wife and their five other children were still in hiding in Myanmar.

Rohingya from Shaplapur village, who work for local fishermen, shove a boat to sea, where some will spend the night.Right: Nur Haba dries fish at a factory in Cox’s Bazar, where she has worked for 10 years. She lives in Kutupalong refugee camp with four children and her husband, who has been unable to find work.

The refugee camps that line Bangladesh’s border are a short drive from the Bangladeshi resort of Cox’s Bazar. Tourists there cavort on the wide beach, taking grinning selfies in the surf, while a few miles away, hundreds of thousands of refugees marinate in grief and neglect. In Kutupalong, a sprawling camp with some 30,000 Rohingya refugees, the wood and bamboo dwellings radiate from the center like rings on a tree, each layer marking a wave of violence the Rohingya have fled.

Rozina Akhtar, 22, has lived here since she was seven years old. With no real hope of leaving—“we have no passports, no ID cards, so what can we do?”—she tries to help new arrivals adjust to their lives as refugees. “We can’t reject them,” she says. “These are our sisters and brothers.” Akhtar helps newcomers get medical care, plastic tarpaulins, and food rations, but what they really need are jobs. Men can occasionally get day jobs, fishing, harvesting rice, or laboring in the salt flats for a dollar or two a day, but many of the women beg for money along the road outside the camp.

Under a sprawling fig tree in Kutupalong, new arrivals gather to talk about the atrocities they endured in Myanmar. Nur Ayesha, 40, pulls back her headscarf to reveal bleached-white burn scars across her forehead; soldiers set fire to her house while she was still inside, she says. Residents of Kyet Yoe Pyin say the Burmese soldiers who firebombed their houses also gunned down six women and a man who had stayed behind to attend the birth of a baby—the mother included.

Minara, an 18-year-old in a black burqa, speaks about her missing family members before revealing that Burmese soldiers gang-raped her and several other young women in her village. Her voice barely rises above a whisper. As we talk, Minara, who, like many victims, didn’t choose to reveal her last name, bites the edge of her sleeve, pulling it over her face. By the end, only her eyes, darting back and forth, are visible. “We’re too scared to go back,” she says.

Left: Nur Ayesha says she was burned on her face and arm when the Burmese military torched her house while she was in it. She has received treatment at Kutupalong.Right: Nurul Amain, who also lives at Kutupalong, was shot by soldiers multiple times in his arm, which had to be amputated when he finally found a doctor.

Molia Banu, 60, arrived at Kutupalong about two months before this photograph. She and her daughters fled when the military began burning a house next to theirs. Still suffering from an operation to remove a tumor, Banu supports her family by begging on the main road.

On a hill back in Balukhali camp, I meet a 14-year-old boy, Ajim Allah, getting his hair combed by a friend. Ajim shows me his shriveled left arm, shattered, he says, by a police bullet when he emerged from a madrassa last October; three of his friends died of gunshot wounds that night, he says. In a hut nearby, Yasmin, 27, recounts how soldiers burst into her home in Ngan Chaung village and took turns raping her at knifepoint in front of her five-year-old daughter. “When my daughter screamed, they pointed guns at her and told her they’d kill her if she made any more noise,” she says. The worst moment came after the soldiers left. Yasmin says she went out to look for her eight-year-old son, who had fled when the soldiers came into the village. She found him lying in a rice paddy, a bullet hole in his back.

The Rohingya are caught between two countries—and welcome in neither. More than 500,000 Rohingya now live in Bangladesh. Only 32,000 are officially registered, however, and no new Rohingya refugees have been registered since 1992—an apparent attempt to dissuade more Rohingya from seeking refuge in Bangladesh. That strategy hasn’t worked, but it means that there are close to half a million undocumented Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with no right or access to employment, education, or basic health care.

Toward the end of day, a boy walks along a path past houses in through a more established section of Kutupalong camp toward a playground that attracts many children.

Bangladesh, already poor and overpopulated, shows no enthusiasm for hosting the Rohingya. Conditions in the camps are miserable, but the government has declined many offers of humanitarian aid. It has even floated a plan to move the refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. The radical proposal seemed designed to keep Rohingya away from the tourist hub of Cox’s Bazar—and to push refugees to return to Myanmar. Many Rohingya, however, are too traumatized to go back to Rakhine, an area historically known as Arakan. One rape victim I spoke to recalled the chilling words of her army attacker: “He kept saying, ‘This kind of torture will continue until you leave the country.’”

Children push a child in a wheelchair along a path in Kutupalong where enterprising refugees have set up shops and cafes. Almost two-thirds of the refugees who recently fled Myanmar for Bangladesh are children, raising concerns that they are at increased risk of being forced into child labor, early marriage or the sex trade.
A few years ago, many Rohingya men, including Yasmin’s husband, risked a perilous sea journey to seek construction work in Malaysia or Indonesia. With no citizenship and no passport, travel had to be undertaken illegally. Smugglers packed the refugees onto unregistered ships and cycled them through secret jungle camps, beating or starving to death the ones whose families didn't pay exorbitant smuggling fees. A crackdown on human trafficking in Southeast Asia has closed off that route, leaving a lot of Rohingya men languishing in the refugee camps without any way to make a living. The mixture of despair and marginalization, experts warn, is a recipe for radicalization. Many refugees seek solace in religious faith. In the camps, clusters of young men armed with holy Korans go door to door, urging refugees to pray more devoutly. Out of sight, locals say, is something more ominous: A newly formed militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, is reportedly trying to recruit refugees to join a nascent insurgency against the Burmese army and its local government collaborators.

The last time I saw Afifa, she was sweeping a rectangular patch of dirt on a hill near the refugee camp’s edge—the site of the family’s new shelter. Her father had borrowed $30 from a fellow refugee to buy a horse-cart full of bamboo poles and strips, and he’d already erected the thickest poles at the corners. Islam, a former Arabic teacher, was dressed in a white skullcap and a clean cream-colored tunic, getting ready to attend midday Friday prayers—the jumu’ah—for the first time since he left his village five months before.

Just down the sandy path from their plot, barefoot men in sarongs scrambled to secure the bamboo scaffolding of Balukhali’s new mosque. It would be another week before the structure was finished, with palm fronds as the roof, but the muezzin sounded the call to prayer and dozens of bearded men in white caps gravitated to a small carpet in the center of the mosque. Islam found a spot in the first row and bowed in front of the imam, who stood on a red plastic stool. Later, as Islam walked back from the mosque, he smiled: “I feel better now.”

The misery, however, has continued. In late May, a cyclone ripped through southern Bangladesh, destroying the family’s shelter and thousands of others in the camps. Nobody died in Balukhali, and Afifa’s mother and other siblings have since made it to Bangladesh, easing the girl’s anxiety. Still, food remains scarce, the monsoon rains continue, and there are troubling reports of renewed violence in Rakhine from both sides—military operations by the Burmese army and occasional attacks by Rohingya militants. In this predicament, it’s unclear when, or if, Afifa and her family will ever have a place to call home.

Some Rohingya live outside the camps near Cox’s Bazar. This man lives in a settlement on the Bay of Bengal, near trees planted to prevent erosion and close to a hotel catering to tourists drawn by the beach.
As one neighbor lamented: “Bad days for us never end.”
(c) 2017 National Geographic
http://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/09/22/Without-a-Home-and-Without-Hope

 

[Banglar Bir]

Culpability through denial and inaction
September 24, 2017
C R Abrar | The Daily Star,

A Rohingya refugee cries as he holds his 40-day-old son, who died as a boat capsized in the shore of Shah Porir Dwip while crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, in Teknaf, on September 14, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Finally, the barbaric regime of Myanmar has been put on the dock and found guilty of the crime of all crimes: genocide. The verdict was delivered on the last day of the final session of the Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) on alleged state crimes against the Rohingya, Kachins and other ethnic minority groups on September 22 in Kuala Lumpur after three days of deliberations. In the opening session held in London in March this year, following preliminary hearings on the complaints of Kachins, Rohingyas and other Muslim populations in Myanmar, the court convened this final hearing.

The tribunal, comprised of eminent jurists, genocide scholars and those involved in past genocide trials, heard testimonies of a number of survivors, members of victims' families, witnesses and expert witnesses. Oral testimonies, documents and records, including those of the Burmese government and the military (retrieved from archival sources of different countries), and visual materials (photographs and video footages) were presented before the tribunal.

Although symbolic, the verdict has major significance. For the first time, a conclusion has been drawn by competent authorities following thorough examination of facts and rigorous legal scrutiny: “The State of Myanmar is guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya group.” It went on to observe that “genocide against the Rohingya is now taking place with ongoing acts of genocide and the possibility the casualties of that genocide could be even higher in the future if nothing is done to stop it.” This essay argues that despite overwhelming evidence there has been a palpable reticence of the international community to call it genocide.

The international community refused to acknowledge that the Burmese state's intent and actions were systematically directed to dismantle the structures of protection that the Rohingyas enjoyed until the martial law regime of General Ne Win in 1962. Jettisoning the country's pluralist and secularist practices from the get-go, the military government was hell-bent on ridding the country of the Rohingya population. 1978 witnessed the brutal execution of that intent when about 280,000 were driven out of Arakan with the launch of Operation Naga Min, or Operation King Dragon. The 1978 exodus was not the outcome of any communal strife between the Buddhist Rakhines and the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan. It was the result of a deliberate policy of banishing an ethnic minority from their ancestral habitat by the Burmese state.

Within months of their arrival in Bangladesh, Myanmar (then Burma) had to concede to Bangladesh's demand of taking back the Rohingyas who by law were still its citizens. By the subsequent enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Law, Rohingyas were stripped of their rightful status. In pursuit of its genocidal agenda the Burmese state crafted a comprehensive policy to destroy the Rohingya identity by systematically denying the community members to live in dignity and pursue their faith and cultural traditions. Since then a plethora of laws, regulations and administrative orders have been passed and institutions such as the infamous security force Nasaka were created—subjecting the Rohingyas to what a witness during the Kuala Lumpur trial termed as “sub-human”. Despite the absence of any looming threat, the northern Arakan region was gradually turned into a militarised zone. Its Muslim residents have been subjected to degrading treatment, discrimination, torture, forced labour, forced relocation, and arbitrary taxes, and denied opportunities to practise their faith and culture and access justice. As a logical follow-up to such “systematic weakening” another state-sponsored mass flight was orchestrated in 1992 resulting in 250,000 Rohingyas seeking refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. The international community still chose to look the other way, remaining resolute in its denial mode.

Shrewd Burmese generals by then framed the project of depopulating Arakan of Rohingyas—not by brute force (that would draw international media attention and condemnation) but by creating conditions in which sustaining life became impossible. This resulted in slow and incremental outward movement of Rohingyas in small groups since 1992. Their number cumulatively stood at 300,000 in Bangladesh until the unfolding of events following August 25, 2017. In the interim, spikes in violence in Arakan shored up the number of incoming refugees.

Little effort was given to find out what prompted the cross-border movement of the Rohingyas. Compassion fatigue for the residual caseload of 23,000 registered refugees living in camps (the number by now swelled to 31,000) evoked little interest of the outside world towards the “most persecuted minority of the world”. The Rohingyas' claim to secure international protection was perhaps further constrained by the fact that unlike Iraq and Libya, Arakan remains void of black gold. In the headquarters of international agencies in New York and Geneva and national capitals of concerned countries, it was perhaps a conscious choice to not confront the bitter truth of enduring genocide since it would necessitate urgent international action. Despite the ongoing genocide, Rohingyas were left to face the vicious state forces quite like their poor cousins in Burundi and Rwanda.

By foot-dragging over the issue of recognising the Burmese government's acts as genocide, powerful states and international actors—who champion rule of law, democracy and freedom, and human rights—allowed the murderous Burmese army to act with impunity in implementing its long-drawn-out genocidal agenda on the Rohingyas. The international community's denial also contributed to the Burmese military's decision for the “final solution” of the Rohingya question that the world is now faced with. There appears to be a striking similarity between Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany and that of these entities' strategy of placating the Burmese military.

The heart-wrenching testimonies and video footages presented before the tribunal convinced the judges in no uncertain terms what Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term “genocide”, meant: “Destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” The tribunal concurred with Lemkin that in the Rohingya case, the national identity of the oppressed group was destroyed and national identity of the oppressor was imposed. The Rohingya case also sufficiently meets renowned genocide scholar and Genocide Watch's President Gregory Stanton's ten conditions of genocide: classification, symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, persecution, extermination and denial. Stanton reminds us that these stages are predictable but not inexorable, and the process is not linear. Most importantly, “at each stage, preventive measures can stop it.”

In their rush to embrace the once-pariah state of Myanmar, the powerful countries expediently sacrificed the Rohingyas at the altar of strategic and commercial interests, and international organisations hid behind the façade of intricacies of legal interpretations. Their usage of the term “ethnic cleansing”, a term that has no place in international law, is a scheme to not state the fact. As Daniel Feierstein, the chair judge of the PPT, poignantly reminded the court, “It's a concept created by the perpetrator Slobodan Miloseviç.” It's a shame that the world is resorting to the perpetrator's language to justify its inaction.

Days ago, the UN Secretary-General, in response to a question about whether he agreed with UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein that what's happening in Rakhine State is ethnic cleansing, retorted back to the journalist saying, “When one-third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?”
Yes, Mr Secretary-General, it's the G word.
http://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/09/24/Culpability-through-denial-and-inaction