myanmar - burma

The West has turned a blind eye to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar in an attempt to maintain its economic interests in the Asian country’s lucrative market.

Myanmar’s President Thein Sein insists that Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations. The country’s current government, run by military figures and accused of massive rights abuses, refuses to recognize nearly-one-million-strong Rohingya Muslims community, which the UN calls one of the world’s most prosecuted people. The government claims the Rohingya are not native and classify them as illegal migrants although they have lived in the country for generations.

Press TV talks with Mohamed al-Asi, Imam of Washington Islamic Center from Washington, regarding the issue. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Myanmar's Muslims keep suffering and the world remains silent, what does that mean and what does that tell you?

Al-Asi: What is happening is truly a human tragedy and if it were happening to another religious minority in some other country in the world, it would have been headline news. Obviously this is not occupying any headlines anywhere.
With the exception of the statement that was made in your report, two governments in the world, in the whole world two governments took notice of this; the government in Turkey and the government in Iran.

It tells us that Muslim blood is cheap; Muslim lives are dispensable and Muslim population are a fair target as it were for the type of dictatorship that are in action as we see playing out in this human tragedy with potentially hundreds of thousands of Muslims being dislocated and then governments playing kickball with them. They try to move from Myanmar over the borders across the river into Bangladesh and the government in Bangladesh is trying to force them back into the terrible state of the affairs that they find themselves in, in Myanmar.

We have not seen as of yet and we have not heard any international organization; there are organizations in the United Nations that are concerned with human rights; no one has taken up their cause.
I think this is not the time to go begging for help and support from such organizations that have in the past shown us that they have a record of looking the other way when these such things happen. The blood spill has not dried up in the theater of massacre of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina just 15 years ago and this is another one of these tragedies and I think it puts in the spotlight the Organization of Islamic Cooperation previously known as the Organization of Islamic Conference which would be the first expected to highlight the plight of these poor human beings who happen to be Muslim and this is going to put them to the test. In other situations where Muslims are dislocated, many times it is between one Muslim country and the rest. But in this case, because of the British colonialism dating back to the 19th century which put these Rohingya Muslims in a legal limbo in which they are characterized as being non-indigenous part of the, what was called, Burma at the time and still up until now, no one has looked into their affairs and with these massacres and with what was called ethnic cleansing by some Western sources notably The New York Times, its correspondent and human rights watch to be fair and honest to just a couple of voices that stood out and expressed themselves on this issue. So I think the Organization of Islamic Cooperation right now is in the balance and its chairman who happens to be of Turkish descent, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, they do not prove themselves in doing something to alleviate the dire circumstances of thousands of Muslims now who are under the gun, then this war should send a very strong message to the rest of the Muslims in the world that such organizations are useless and cannot render any type of assistance when assistance is needed particularly in this type of circumstance that we are looking at here.

Press TV: Then what do you think would be a fair solution to the crisis?

Al-Asi: I think a fair solution would be that those who are in positions of diplomacy and political quo to come down on a government right now that is fashioning itself as a democratic government. I mean if there is a military junta that rules there, but it has opened up to Western interest and you have a Noble Peace Prize winner right now who was in England, Aung San Suu Kyi, who regrettably, as your report said, did not come out and expressed the type of democratic expectations that are in the balance. It is a very, very telling comment to say that a country that goes from being a military dictatorship to a democracy opens up that chapter with ethnic cleansing and a wholesale slaughter of its Muslim population.

MSK/JR

Thursday 14 June 2012

MAKKAH: The General Secretariat of the Muslim World League (MWL) denounced campaigns of violence and persecution targeting Muslims in Myanmar and condemned the recent outrageous attacks against Muslims living in the state of Rangoon (Arakan) adjacent to the Republic of Bangladesh, where the armed groups of Buddhists on Sunday (20/7/1433 H), raided the neighborhoods of the Muslims and killed dozens of them and demolished many homes, mosques and private property of Muslims.
This came in a statement issued by MWL Secretary General Dr. Abdullah bin Abdul- Mohsen Al-Turki.
Dr. Al-Turki said that Muslims living in Myanmar, have been persecuted for the last fifteen years and they are deprived of citizenship rights and suffer most from the policy of discrimination that denied them the right of naturalization, making them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion and displacement.
He called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to follow up the situation of Muslims in Myanmar and to make representations to the United Nations and human rights organizations to end the injustice they suffer and give them the full rights of citizenship, and equality of rights and duties with the other citizens of Myanmar.

Border guards "foiled two separate attempts of Rohingyas to enter" Bangladesh on Wednesday, the national news agency reported, sending 70 people back to Myanmar. About 1,500 Rohingya fleeing Myanmar in boats have been turned back since the weekend, when clashes broke out with the majority Rakhine Buddhist population, the Associated Press reported. "It is not in our interest that new refugees come from Myanmar," Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni told reporters in Dhaka on Tuesday. She reiterated that position Wednesday, the national news agency said.

The United Nations' refugee agency has called on Bangladesh to provide a haven for people fleeing the fighting in coastal Rakhine state. The violence in western Myanmar erupted after the lynching of 10 Muslims in retaliation for the rape and murder of a Buddhist girl, allegedly at the hands of three Muslims. The U.S. joined the public calls on Bangladesh on Wednesday, with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urging the country to ensure refugees aren't turned back to their persecutors, Agence France-Presse reported. "By closing its border when violence in Arakan state is out of control, Bangladesh is putting lives at grave risk," Human Rights Watch refugee program director Bill Frelick said Tuesday. "Bangladesh has an obligation under international law to keep its border open to people fleeing threats to their lives."

Dr Ismail Salami writes in www.PressTV.com:

Described as the Palestine of Asia by the UN, the Rohingya Muslim community in Myanmar is currently going through an unutterable ordeal at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddhists in Arakan who are targeting the Muslim minority with the worst form of religious cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is rife in Myanmar and is turning into a human tragedy of colossal proportions. A confidential United Nations report dated May 29, 2011 and marked “Not for Public Citation or Distribution”, defines ethnic cleansing as a “purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

What is happening in Myanmar to the Rohingya Muslims violates international laws and is to be categorized as crime against humanity. Unfortunately, the Myanmar peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims. Maybe she has forgotten her own words on democracy and human rights that, “The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity.”

Reportedly, the settlement of the Rohingya Muslims in this region dates back to the eighth century. However, in the seventies, the junta embarked on a systematic program of religious cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims who are denied their basic rights, i.e. the right to freedom of movement, marriage, faith, identity, ownership, language, heritage and culture, citizenship, education etc. Deplorable as it is, the Muslims in Myanmar are among the most persecuted minorities in the world according to UN.

According to reports, 650 of nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have been murdered as of June 28. On the other hand, 1,200 others are missing and 90,000 more have been displaced.

US photographer Greg Constantine has recently released a book of black and white photography titled “Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.” He believes that “One of the things that is lost in the discussions of the issues of statelessness-particularly with the Rohingya-are human stories.” He relates the story of 20-year-old Kashida who had to “flee to Bangladesh with her husband. The Burmese authorities had denied her permission to get married, but when they discovered she had married in secret and was pregnant they took away all her family’s money and cows and goats. They forced Kashida to have an abortion, telling her: “This is not your country; you don’t have the right to reproduce here.”

The dire humanitarian crisis has already begun to assume tragic proportions and Muslims and non-Muslims alike are beginning to respond with perturbation and fear.

Iran's Foreign Ministry has called for end to violence in Myanmar. “It is expected that the Myanmar government will prepare the ground for solidarity, national unity and asserting the rights of Muslims in the country and that it will avert violence and a human catastrophe in this regard,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Monday. Iranian lawmaker Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini has suggested that the Islamic Republic of Iran should call on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to hold an ad hoc meeting concerning the Muslim massacre in Myanmar. Also, the president of India’s Jamiat Ulma-i-Hind has voiced concern about the massacre, calling for an end to the humanitarian crisis in the country. Maulana Syed Arshad Madani lashed out at the Myanmar government for being indifferent to the massacre of Muslims by extremist Buddhists. He also criticized the silence of the international community and human rights organizations across the world about this humanitarian tragedy.

The International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has strongly condemned the brutal massacre perpetrated against the Rohingya Muslims and has demanded that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) take necessary and urgent steps to prevent religious cleaning and these crimes against humanity in this region. The statement reads, “The IUMS is reviewing in all concern what has befallen the Muslims in the Muslim region of Arakan, Burma, of fierce killing, displacement and persecution since a long time, not to mention displacement of them, and demolition of their homes, properties and mosques at the hands of the religious extremists in the Buddhist community. Unfortunately, the Buddhist government acts as a bystander in face of the heinous massacres escalating day after day against the Muslim minorities in the country. The numbers of casualties, in the attacks that are considered the most ferocious in the history of targeting the Muslims in Burma, are countless.”

In view of the ongoing inhumane violations in Myanmar, the US and its western allies, which keep pontificating about human rights in the world, have feigned ignorance about this humanitarian catastrophe. Why? Because they will not be able to reap any benefits of their future efforts in the country as they do in the Middle East and elsewhere. To crown it all, they have kept an agonizingly meaningful silence over the massacre. It is certainly incumbent upon every person who cares about human dignity to fly in the face of this inhumanity and give a helping hand to the downtrodden Myanmar Muslims.

As the great Persian poet Sa'di says, “Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you've no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain!”

IS/JR