By TCN News,
New Delhi: Indian Muslim leaders under the aegis of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM), the umbrella body of Indian Muslim organisations, have asked the world community and major world powers to apply pressure on the Myanmar government to stop persecution of its Rohingya Muslim minority and if the military rulers of Myanmar do not oblige, world powers should boycott it and impose on it the same kind of sanctions which were applied on the apartheid regime of South Africa.
The Muslim leaders, in a press conference held here at the central office on Wednesday, also appealed to the Southeast Asian countries to come to the rescue of the thousands of hapless Rohingyas stranded at present in high seas in the area with no food or water.
The press conference was addressed by Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, president of AIMMM; Nusrat Ali, vice president of Jamaat-e Islami Hind; Mufti Ataur Rahman Qasmi and Masoom Moradaadi, AIMMM general secretaries, a release said here.
The Muslim leaders also spoke on the worsening situation in Egypt. They condemned the wholesale death sentences being dished out there by the military government against its political opponents. The Muslim leaders said that Egypt’s current military government is pushing that country towards the civil war. The Muslim leaders appealed to the US and Gulf rulers, in particular, to pressurise the Egyptian military government to desist from its revengeful acts and to give democracy through free and fair elections a chance.
The press conference also commented on the first year of the Modi government and said that this government has utterly failed to translate its promises and claims into reality. It has given full freedom only to the Hindutva elements to spread hatred and violence and to the big corporates to loot the country.
Following is the Joint Statement
Indian Muslims call upon the international community to help Egypt and Rohingyas
We are utterly disturbed by the ongoing tragedy of the Rohingya Muslims of Mayanmar who, in their thousands, are stranded now at high seas in rickety ships and boats in South-east Asia where they are dying by their dozens every single day. No country is ready to shelter them while their own homeland, Mayanmar, actively persecutes them. Already, around 70,000 Rohingyas are living in refugee camps in their own country after last year’s violence by Burmese chauvinist outfits which receive active encouragement by the Mayanmar government. The internal refugee camps inmates too are dying due to hunger and lack of medical care.
Burma claims that the Rohingyas are not Burmese. The Burmese government has made a strange provision under which a Rohingya has to prove that his/her ancestors were present in Burma in 1840, which is an absurd requirement in a country where official registers of citizens or identity cards were not issued in those times. UN and other organisations and governments have spoken in support of the Rohingyas, but this is not enough. We demand our own government, international organisations and foreign governments to boycott Mayanmar, recall their ambassadors from Yangon and impose sanctions against the ruling junta. Only drastic steps like these will make the Burmese military rulers see the light of reason. At the same time, we ask the countries of the region, i.e. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia to allow these wretched refugees to enter their lands urgently, to live with dignity.
As regards the situation in Egypt, we observe that it is getting worse under the putschist generals who overthrew the country’s only democratically-elected President last July killing over 3000 of the Morsi supporters, injuring tens of thousands and imprisoning over 20,000 people who protested against the coup.
Ever since the Egyptian courts, under the influence of the military regime, have been dishing out wholesale death sentences to the supporters of the deposed president and now he himself is included in the latest list of the wholesale death sentences against over 100 distinguished people. These people including the greatest living Muslim scholar, Shaikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who is now a Qatari national and was not even present in Egypt when the developments leading to and after the military coup took place.
We strongly condemn the revengeful dictatorial policies of the Egyptian military rulers and warn them that they are pushing their country to a state of perpetual civil war and strife, which will ruin the benign civil society of Egypt.
We also call upon the American and Gulf supporters of the Egyptian military rulers to desist from pushing that hapless country to civil war. Instead, they should support democracy which is the only civilised way of governance and political change.
Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, president, AIMMM
Nasrul Ali, vice president, Jamaat-e Islami Hind
Mufti Ataur Rahman Qasmi, general secretary, AIMMM
Masoom Moradabadi, general sectetary, AIMMM