The
unabated genocide of Muslims in Burma and the fragmented Muslim leadership…
The unabated ethnic
cleansing of Muslims in the Burma is not a new thing which the world suddenly
came to know, thanks to the continuous social media exposés, but in the past
too, it has been the part of covet agenda perused by both ruling militarily regime
as well as the Aung San
Suu Kyi’s crusaders of democracy to uproot this minority permanently from the
western Burma. Defying all the international laws and brazenly violating the
human rights, Burma has launched time and again a deadly campaign of violence
and round ups in collaboration with the Buddhist extremists to flush out the
Rohingya Muslims in the western state of Arakan. But this time the ethnic cleansing campaign of
Rohingya’s is horrific and heart wrenching than ever before as the pictures and
videos surfaced on the various social media sites showed the extreme suffering,
agony and brutality inflicted on them. The Burma has a diverse ethnic and
religious make-up, but the Rohingya Muslims which numbered more than 800,000 in
the country are neither treated as the citizen of Burma nor recognized as one
of its ethnic group by the Burmese ruling regime. It is not the first time that
the most persecuted minority of the world according to the United Nations are
facing state sponsored holocaust but from the last sixty years this community
has witnessed five bloodied communal clashes in which thousands of Rohingya
Muslims were silenced forever by the country which propagates and practices
lord Buddha’s nonviolent philosophy of life. The latest spate of communal
clashes erupted when a public transport bus in which local Rohingya Muslims
including the members of Tableeghi
Jamaat were travelling was attacked with sharp weapons and set on blaze by the
Buddhist extremists. The bus had left the capital Rangoon and was on the way to
Arakan state but when it reached the Taiyang Gog district, it came under the
attack of armed Buddhist rioters resulted the horrific death of ten innocent
people affiliated to this organization and seriously wounded twenty five
others. However there is another dimension of the story also, which many independent
sources believe became the catalyst for communal violence and hatred in the
area, when two Buddhist girls of an orthodox Buddhist family embraced Islam.
The family with the help of militant Bodo organizations plundered, arsoned the
houses and raped muslin women living in the vicinity so that to put every sort
of pressure to bring them back into Buddhism but their every pressure tactics
couldn’t shake their newly faith. Thus it provided the stimulus for ruling regime
and the Buddhist extremists to launch another barbaric campaign to uproot the Rohingya
Muslims from the western coastal state. This barbarism and gruesome violence
perpetrated by the Burmese security forces in this part of country was even
endorsed by the Burmese premiers’ remark on the state television that these
people don’t belong to Burma and the UNHCR should make an adequate arrangement
to settle them in the third country.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch says “The
government claims it is committed to end ethnic strife and abuse, but recent
events in Arakan State demonstrate that state-sponsored persecution and
discrimination persist."
According to Amnesty International, the Muslim Rohingya
people have continued to suffer from human rights violations under the Burmese
military regime and the extremists since 1978, as a result thousands of people have
fled from the state of Arakan and have taken shelter in neighboring Bangladesh.
They are also subjected to
various forms of extortion and arbitrary taxation; land confiscation; forced
eviction and house destruction; and financial restrictions on marriage.
Rohingyas continue to be used as forced labourers on roads and at military
camps, although the amount of forced labour in northern Rakhine State has
decreased over the last decade." In
1978 over 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, following the notorious ‘Dragon
King’ operation of the Myanmar army. Officially this military campaign directly targeted civilians, and
resulted in widespread killings, rape and destruction of mosques and further
religious persecution .During 1991-92 a new wave of over a quarter of a million
Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. They reported widespread forced labour, as well
as summary executions, torture, and rape. Rohingyas were forced to work without
pay by the Burmese army on infrastructure and economic projects, often under
harsh conditions. Many other human rights violations occurred in the context of
forced labour of Rohingya civilians by the security forces.
Despite earlier efforts by the UN, the vast majority of
Rohingya refugees have remained in Bangladesh, unable to return because of the
negative attitude of the ruling regime in Myanmar. Now they are facing problems
in Bangladesh as well where they do not receive support from the government any
longer. This hostile attitude
of Bangladeshi government against this oppressed community by not allowing them
to enter their territory and let them die in the cruel spates of bay of Bengal
and get killed in the hand of Burmese security forces clearly shows how deep is
running the spirit of Muslim brotherhood in the so called Bangla Muslim
political leadership. This government is even taking steps to expatriate them
living in the various refugee
camps in Bangladesh from so many decades. In between the lines neither the
conciouslesss Muslim world nor the defenders of democracy and human rights
organizations or the so called Muslim liberals are reaching out to this oppressed
community so that to mount a political pressure on the Burmese military regime
to abort the violence and give them their basic rights. They don’t want
independence or have not waged a war against the state but they demand equal
rights and security from the Rangoon. Maybe it’s not the East Timor or the South
Sudan where the Non-Muslims were up against the Muslim state and how the whole
world rallied behind them till they achieve their nationhood but here it’s the
blood of Muslims which is being made cheap or as flies to the wanton boys by
the west and the corrupt Muslim rulers. The fabricated video of flogging of woman
in Sawat valley can make the so called west and their media machines to go
microwave and malign the cannons of Islam but when it boils down to serious and
genuine issues related to the Muslims world they usually turn a blind eye. If such
brutalities and barbarism is being perpetrated against any non-Muslim
community, the western press, UN and NGO’s would have raised an outcry. If the OIC was alive and Muslims rulers had a
sense of honour left, they should endeavor to stop the bloodshed of the Arakan Muslims
going on in the hands of Buddhist extremists. This double standard policy of
west is expected as they have waged a war against the Islamic civilization
after the fall of Soviet Union but the more interesting thing is the criminal
silence of media houses belonging to Muslim world over the this grave issue is
really disgusting and disturbing. If the Burmese regime and Buddhists
extremists succeed in their nefarious designs then it will be a second country
in the world after Spain. Its wake up call for all the Muslim countries
including the gulf satellite states of America to pull up the socks and stop
the genocide of Rohingya
Muslims but so for as usual they are watching like spectators apart from the
press statements except the Turkish prime minster, how disgraceful land
shameful its and the history will never forgive such cnnciousless Muslim rulers
if it happen again.
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