The
government's official estimate puts the number of Myanmar's Rohingya at
about 1.33 million. Only 40,000 hold citizenship or any legal
documentation.
Out
of the 5 genocidal acts spelled out clearly in the Article 6, Rome
Statute (july 2002 and 1948 Geneva Convention on the Crimes of
Genocide), successive Burmese military governments since in 1970's have,
verifiably, guilty of 4.
The
predominantly Buddhist society at large - the one that taught me the
virtues of Metta (Buddhist term for 'universal loving kindness') is
secondarily murderous towards the Rohingya through their popularly
genocidal speeches, ideas, attitudes etc.
I
have co-authored a baseline study of the Rohingya persecution based on
the findings from a 3-full year empirical research on this issue,
interviews with the Rohingya, communications with ex-Burmese military
officers including junior generals, religious leaders, human rights
researchers, etc since 2011.
The
said study (27,000-words) will be published in the forthcoming issue of
the Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal (Spring 2014), the University of
Washington Law School - see
http://www.law.washington.edu/pacrim/
For
those of us who have systematically studied the Rohingya persecution
over at least 3 and a half decades, the above-mentioned leaked official
documents only reinforce and lend further credibility to our definitive
conclusion.
The
question is NOT whether Myanmar is committing a genocide against the
Rohingya, but rather why has the international community, so-called,
opted to NOT call the plight of the 1.33 million Rohingya by its proper
name: genocide or more accurately, a slow-burning genocide.
If
you think the terms genocide or the slow-burning genocide are nothing
but an activist spin to get the world's attention just have a look at
the objective facts on the ground, which result from the official state
policies - that is, THE INTENT:
1.A:
in
the two largest pockets of Rohingya in the country - Buthidaung and
Maung Daw, the doctor patient ratios are estimated to be: 76, 000: 1
(doc) and 83,000: 1 (doc) (national and local/provincial ratios are
about 375:1 and 550:1 for non-Rohingya
1. B
The Rohingya are NOT allowed to train in medical field, or any other professional disciplines.
2. 60,000
Rohingya children are not registered - in direct violation of the Right
of the Child to have a nationality at birth.
3.
infant mortality rate and the mortality rate among children below 5
among the Rohingya children are also twice or thrice national average.
4.
over 80-90% of the Rohingya adults are illiterate in a country which
won a UN-award for the eradication of illiteracy among adults. They
are by and large denied access to schooling.
5.
over 140,000 are placed in semi-concentration camps where extraction
of forced labor is rampant, sexual violence, summary execution and
extortion are norms.
6.
out of a myriad of Burma's ethnic groups, the state has developed and
attempted to enforced ethnic population control as a matter of policy,
ONLY AMONG the Rohingya - both through severe marriage restrictions and
in many cases forced sterilization
7.
law enforcement agencies throughout the Rohingya regions of Western
Burma enjoy TOTAL AND BLANKET IMMUNITY from whatever persecutorial acts
the former may engage in - rape, gang-rape, execution, abduction, daily
abuses, threats, intimidations, etc - 24/7 and year round.
8.
the Rohingya who are NOT put in the semi-concentration camps have been
living in a total of 11 security grids with heavily armed guarded
posts, and their physical movements even between one community to the
other are closely monitored, controlled and forbidden at the pleasure of
both central and local state authorities.
9.
Myanmar governments regularly deny any wrong doings while covering up
its mass atrocities against the Rohingya and disposes countless number
of dead bodies of the murdered or slaughtered Rohingya - male, female,
children and elderly
10.
empirically, Myanmar governments, in close collaboration of the local
Nazi-inspired segments of the Rakhine Buddhists and backed by the
popularly genocidal Buddhist public, have long attempted to deny,
restrict or otherwise make it difficult for the delivery of any
humanitarian aid, including basic survival food, to the Rohingya.
11.
these Myanmar governments are found to be engaged in a pattern of
systematic and verifiable attempts aimed at the destruction of the
social and economic foundations of the Rohingya community at large over
the past nearly 40 years.
12.
the destruction of the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part, began
with Burma/Myanmar government's deliberate erasure/destruction of their
identity, both self-referential and formerly officially recognized, as
ROHINGYA - as early as 1982. (through the Rakhine-nationalist-inspired
Citizenship Act of 1982 enacted under General Ne Win's one-man
dictatorial rule - 1962-88).
12.
Talking about them as simply 'citizenship-less' or 'stateless-people'
is to look at the symptom of the state-sponsored slow-burning genocide
which began in the late 1970's with the first state-directed large scale
wave of repression of the Rohingya.
13
No UN agencies, no foreign power, 'Eastern' or 'Western', no
multilateral organizations, no reputable academics or lawyers are
calling the Rohingya genocide a genocide - because, as Human Rights
Watch's 12-page report in 1993, put it - and I am paraphrasing it -
there is no strategic gains or commercial benefits from ending the
Rohingya's suffering!
Successive
waves of ground staff of international and UN agencies, especially
those with even the rudimentary understanding of the Genocide Convention
- KNOW first hand this: what they have witnessed about the plight of
the Rohingya most definitely amounts to a GENOCIDE. However, as a
matter of policy, UN gags its staff, both local and international.
The
United Nations agencies around the world are well-documented to trade
their silence in exchange for access to the country - access to do
what? put a band-aid in a cancerously genocidal context???
Now
thanks to FortifyRights and its founder Matt Smith, the world will see
first hand the documentary evidence behind the Rohingya genocide.
The world, especially the governing
global institutions, must bear the responsibility to protect the 1.33
million Rohingya when Myanmar itself is the main genocidal perpetrator.
Further,
the new documentary evidence should reshape or re-shape significantly
the argument about the Rohingya - from the simply 'religious' or
'sectarian' to the GOVERNMENT(s) of Burma or that the violence against
the Rohingya is an unfortunate but 'not unnatural part of any democratic
opening of formerly closed societies - the argument that has been put
into circulation by individuals, governments and organizations (for
instance, the International Crisis Group, Indonesia, etc. ) that want to
cozy up to the Burmese regime which is neither democratic nor
transitional - in any meaningful sense of the words.
That
means the partnering foreign governments and businesses, UN agencies,
international financial institutions can be considered, in theory and
practice, culpable - BOTH the Obama Admin and David Cameron government,
for instance and complicit in the genocide of the Rohingya.
Never
again! will remain a cheap slogan as long as the international
community, especially those who run global governing institutions, look
the other way when ending the genocidal plight of the Rohingya is
considered to have no strategic or commercial value.
Zarni
fr
