By Syed Zubair Ahmad,
In the year 2000 I came across a youth from Myanmar in Delhi. The story he told me can chill the blood of even a cruel person. He was a Rohingya Muslim from the state of Arakan in Myanmar. Escaping from the police for fear of being caught, he was sleeping here and there and in the day he would make rounds of UN office to get refugee status in India.
The youth said most of his family members had been either killed or caught by the army. Some were lucky who escaped to Bangladesh or India only to save their life. After getting in India he was trying to get admission in Deoband seminary. Unfortunately one night police raided and caught him. After spending four years in jail he was out to get a UN refugee status. He didn’t know how many members of his family were alive, or if alive at all, and had no trace of them or their whereabouts.
His story has flashed back in my mind now once the images of the mass killings of Muslims in Myanmar started emerging on internet and social networking site Facebook in last few weeks. No need to go into the details of what calamity has befallen in the form of ethnic cleansing. The images are enough to tell what is happening in the country of Noble Peace Prize winner Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, who is on a world tour these days. She has reportedly refused to even acknowledge that any violence took place in her country. She has even questioned if the Rohingyas minority indeed belongs to Burma.
According to reports, more than 20,000 Muslims have been killed only this month in Myanmar by police, army and Buddhist extremists. Fearing persecution whenever they try to cross the border of neighbouring Bangladesh they are forced and pushed back by Bangladesh Rifle. Now a large number of Rohingya refugees are living in inhuman condition on the boats in river or at no man’s land, near Bangladesh. They want to get shelter but Bangladesh does not allow them to enter their country. Dhaka fears if it opens the doors to new arrivals, the xenophobic mobs in Burma will force the entire minority community out, multiplying its problems. This is hardly an unjustified concern considering this is precisely what the Burmese junta has repeatedly tried over the years. In fact the military junta of Burma had only two options in their mind, either eliminate all Muslim population from Burma or drive them away to the neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and India. Bangladesh with a large population and poor economy has not the capacity to handle the flood of refugees of this size. The Rohingyan refugees already in Bangladesh are having a tough time while India is trying hard to get rid of those few thousands Rohingyas who are staying for a long time. There was also news that thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Arakan who were offered shelter in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal are facing deportation. When the monarchy changed about 3,000 families of Burmese Muslims in Mecca and Jeddah were imprisoned and are now awaiting deportation.
This week, a Burmese military chopper destroyed three boats full of refugees fleeing the reign of terror, killing everyone onboard. “The military has (of late) become more actively involved in committing acts of violence and other abuses against the Rohingya including killings and mass arrests,” says the London-based Equal Rights Trust in its latest report on Myanmar.
In his latest article describing the current scenario, Gulf based writer and columnist Aijaz Zaka Syed writes: “Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch have protested that instead of stopping the violence by the Rakhine gangs, the military has joined them in killing, setting thousands of homes on fire and conducting mass arrests of Muslims. President Thein Sein, lately being lionized by the West as a reformer, has a simple solution to the problem: Expel all the Rohingya or turn them over to the UN as refugees!”
He further says: “All this, however, hardly tops the news agenda of the world media, perpetually obsessing over the minutest ups and downs of international markets and the widening economic mess in Europe. Who cares for the little, colored people on the far side of the world anyway! For all they care, this mass extermination of a helpless, long persecuted people may be taking place on another planet. Western defenders of freedom and democracy, salivating over the plump economic pie that is Myanmar, have been deafeningly silent on the genocide unfolding before their eyes. So are China and my country India, the greatest democracy on the planet. Both Asian giants have massive economic interests in the country sitting on rich mineral and natural resources. Only recently India inked a clutch of economic pacts with Myanmar, including a huge oil import deal.”
Aijaz writes that “the gold rush for Burma has begun, as Alex Spillius argues in the Guardian: “One of the last unexploited markets in Asia, a country blessed by ample resources of hydro-carbons, minerals, gems and timber, not to mention a cheap labor force, which thanks to years of isolation and sanctions is near virgin territory for foreign investors” is up for grabs. So this is hardly the time to talk about the rights of a persecuted, dispossessed minority.
“And Myanmar’s rulers are emboldened by the international community’s silence and inaction. Even Aung San Suu Kyi, adored around the world for her heroic struggle, has remained enigmatically silent on the issue even when confronted during her recent European visit. The Arab and Islamic world preoccupied with Syria and other assorted issues too has done little other than issue perfunctory appeals and statements. As for the UN, OIC and ASEAN, the less said the better. Is it any wonder then the Rohingya are seen as easy meat?”
A Rwanda is unfolding in Myanmar. An early and effective intervention by the world community can save the Rohingya from certain holocaust.
The Buddhist leader and Nobel Peace prize winner Dalai Lama who always cry over the atrocities on Tibetan people by China is also silent on mass killings of Muslims in Buddhist Myanmar. The Indian Muslim leadership and Muslim organizations who justifiably cry for killings in far away Palestine are mysteriously silent on ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the neighborhood of India. Isn’t it a criminal silence of Muslim world?
(Syed Zubair Ahmad is a Writer & Journalist. He can be reached at [email protected])