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| A Family of Rohingya Muslims |
Rohingya is a community
of Muslims that is living in Myanmar
since more than 500 years ago during the Mughal
rule in Subcontinent and later many of the Bengali farmers were encouraged
by the British Empire to live in
border state of Myanmar, Rakhine,
which was a highly cultivable land. Then a number of Muslims migrated to Myanmar
in 1948 during the eve of Burmese independence. In addition, some of the
Bengali Muslims also moved to Burma during the 1971 anarchy in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Since
then, the Muslim population of Myanmar, accounts only for 5% but it has been described
by many international organizations including UNO, OIC, Amnesty Intl. and a number of highly reputed news
agencies including The Economist, The New
York Times, and Forbes, as “the
most persecuted people on the earth”. The Muslims of Myanmar has been described
by the regional newspapers, as “a minority that has been attacked with
impunity, stripped of the vote and driven from their homes”. And it’s been
getting worse with the passage of time.
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| General Ne Win |
The roots of the current dilemma dates back
to the 1962’s army coup, when
Myanmar’s Army General Ne Win, an
anti-Muslim dictator, overthrown the Myanmar government and took charge of the
country. This proved to be most horrifying and devastating incident in the
history for the Muslims of Myanmar. Since the General Ne Win, took control of
the Government of Myanmar, he started repressing Muslim minority and this
suppression, recursion and resentment ended on the 1982’s Burmese Nationality Law, which declared the Rohingya Muslims
outsider Bengali refugees and grabbed citizenship rights from them. Since then
thousands of Rohingya Muslims are living as homeless and stateless people,
regarded as few of the people who are living on this earth but don’t have any
identity or nationality by the law.
The most recent incident of the Muslim
genocide was the operation in the state of Rakhine in 2012 that culminated with
the thousands of death troll and more than 2 lacs people were forced to migrate
from their lands. But this was not the single issue; the resentment of the
Muslims was continued after Rakhine tragedy that led to the present dilemmatic
situation where Rohingya community was forced to leave their native land and
immigrate to the neighboring countries. But unfortunately it doesn’t provide
any long lasting solution because all the neighboring countries decided to not
allow the Rohingya brethren to step into their lands, which has forced Rohingya
to live in the boats in the sea under the sky and wait for any miracle to
happen. Until now hundreds of Muslims has died in their attempts to cross the
borders, some of them have lost their lives in the sea, but most of them are
suffering from the issues of food shortage and other basic human necessities
which are essential to carry on life.
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| Ashin Wirathu |
Although before 1962 there were very few
incidents of attacks on Muslim minority from Buddhist majority, and the
Rohingya Muslims were enjoying the native citizenship rights as any other
ethnic or religious group was enjoying in the country, but the dawn of 1962
changed everything on the spot which was totally based on the anti-Muslim
agenda of demolishing the Muslim minority. The grudge, cruelty and resentment
of Rohingya brethren has been done by the Myanmar’s
national army, security forces, country’s majority i.e. Buddhist community, which includes the support
and encouragement of religious leader of Buddhists, Ashin Wirathu and the politicians
of the country including the champion of human rights, the Noble award winning Aung San Suu Kyi. According to a report of UNO, all the mosques have been
destroyed, so the Muslims can’t offer their religious duties. There is a lack
of water, food and medical facilities in the camps where they are living. I
think it was never ever the teaching of Siddhartha
Gautama Buddha that a Buddhist majority country has shown.
Amnesty International reports that in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims have taken shelter by
living in the refugee camps, where they suffer from strict rules apposed on
them by the Myanmar government. They are not allowed to move from one place to
another, they don’t have any right to get the education and even though they
are not allowed to marry publicly. They face Government ill will in the form of
mean and brutal taxes, where their lands have been acquired by the Buddhists
and mostly have been devastated by them.
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| Situation of a refugee camp |
The British magazine, Economist, in their editorial says that the Rohingya has faced many
army operations against them led by the Army rulers, which caused a lot of
Muslims to lose their lives, which appears to be a state-supervised genocide.
This forced Rohingya Muslims to
migrate to the neighboring countries, where another episode of cruelty awaits
for them. Thailand government doesn’t
even bothers to look after the refugees and the Bangladesh government treats them with hate, wrath and anger.
Institute of
International State Crime Initiative reports that
the Rohingya Muslim community is facing the state-owned, well-planned genocide
and it leads to the likelihood of the official killing of the Muslims in near
future. The institute also reports that until now even a single person involved
in these genocide crimes has not been prosecuted, which signifies the silent
mark on the sate judiciary and other law enforcing agencies.
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| OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) |
It’s a matter of shame that as usual the
Islamic countries and their representative organizations including OIC, ECO, GCC, etc, had a finger on
their lips, which signifies dormancy from them on the issue. Even though when
the issue had become an international issue still none of the Muslim leader has
tried to settle the issue or has done any attempt to pressurize the Myanmar
government to give the inhabitant Rohingya, right to live in their land; the
land on which they are living since centuries. In this context, the value and
validation of OIC, the biggest body representing Muslims of the globe has been
again on questions. This situation leads me to conclude that, why there is such
a ridiculous organization which in reality has no power to pursue their objectives,
policies and help redress the Muslims grieve, which in fact is the integral
objective of the leading Muslims representative body. However only OIC can’t be
blamed the UNO I think also had no
actual power when it comes to be judicious and justifiable towards Muslims. It
is also ridiculous that no one at the international level is blaming the noble
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the so called champion of human rights, who still hasn’t
commented on the issue and that is just for the sake of the Buddhists majority
votes that she is sought to grab in the upcoming general elections.
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| UNO |
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| Aung San Suu Kyi |
Now lets come to the point that why there is a
silence on the international level and regional level. So let me point out
that, organization representing Muslims of the globe, OIC is an organization or body, that will live defunct or dormant
until someone like Salahuddin Ayubi,
Tariq Bin Ziyad or Quaid-e-Azam M.
Ali Jinnah may emerge on the scenario. The next is UNO, that has a long history of never taking or working seriously for
the Muslim cause, the examples are Kashmir
issue, Palestine issue and Iraq and Afghanistan
wars and now the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar
is the new addition in the list of that failure. I think the neighboring
countries had also shown such an ashamed, humiliated and disgraced behavior towards
their Rohingya brethren; and more importantly they have shown something i.e.
totally against their Muslim ideology, these countries include Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Remember,
this list will never complete, until we put one leading character of the issue,
and i.e. Miss Aung San Suu Kyi. The one who will never raise her hand to
protect the Muslims minority because in the modern world if you want to rule or
lead the government, it is a thumb rule that you simply need lead in votes, and
who would show some insanity to lose the confidence of majority and in Suu Kyi’s
case the majority is Buddhists community, who is being involved in the Muslims
genocide. So literally speaking if we are still looking over these
organizations or the international leaders, then it is about to wait for a
miracle to be happen, so I think issue must has to settle by the Muslims themselves.
However, if we look at the practical
settlement of the issue, then one can say that UNO can force Myanmar to grant
the Rohingya’s their birth right of citizenship and other human rights and if
not so then UNO must put some economic embargos on Myanmar. OIC with all the
Muslim representative leaders need to do something practically without waiting
for the right time to come in order to count the political gains. In addition,
the human right movements need to publicize this issue at global level so that
all the humanity can raise their voice against this state-led genocide of
innocent humans. In addition I think there are a number of Muslim countries
that have huge reserves of land and natural resources, so why not they open the
doors of their land for their Muslim brethrens. Because I think there are about
57 Muslim countries and Rohingya population is not more than 2 million, so this
is not a big deal and it will not take any extra burden on their budgets and
doesn’t requires any extra effort, only thing i.e. needed is to have the
courage to take the first step. |
| Call To Action |
At the end, I want to say that in order to
prevent the reoccurrence of such incidents in the future, then this is the
right time for the Muslim Ummah, to make a well-planned, well-rehearsed,
durable, and applicable policy that would have a lasting impact over the issues
that Muslims all around the world are facing. The Muslim leaders are expected
to take some historical and courageous steps. And the step of matter is that
they can do it, because they have to do it, either now or later.
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