The
Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine province of Myanmar are going through a
brutal ethnic slaughter campaign of an unimaginable size. The scale of
the killings, persecution, torture and savagery are beyond
comprehension.
The
systematic slaughter policy waged towards Muslims since 1942 left only
70,000 out of the initial four million owing to mass murder and
displacement. To date, three million Muslims have been forced to migrate
to neighboring countries, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been
martyred, tens of thousands of settlement units have been burned and
destroyed, tens of thousands of women have been raped, and hundreds of
mosques and madrassas have been destroyed. Thousands of Muslims are
known to have been imprisoned and tortured, though their fates are
unknown.
Muslims
living in Rakhine region have been burned alive in their homes in more
than 330 attacks, which have worsened since June of last year, in which
Muslim villages, including mosques and madrassas were burned. According
to independent human rights organizations, in June 2012 alone 1,000
Muslims in the region were ruthlessly martyred and 125,000 people were
forced from their homes and villages and left to survive in the jungle.
Just
recently, another wave of attack has begun towards Rohingya people and
we have heard at least 40 people died, a village of 340 houses and 4000
inhabitants emptied with many Rohingya tied up, taken as slaves, dumped,
women who were raped and breasts cut off before they were killed, dead
bodies taken by trucks, and arrests of men, women and children. The
events that led to this violence began with another violence, the
killing of eight Rohingya people by the village administrator, after
which a police sergeant was also killed amid the growing clashes.
Human
Rights Watch has published a 153-page report concerning the crimes
against humanity perpetrated against the Rakhine Muslims in recent
months: The report accuses Myanmar authorities of engaging in ethnic
cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine. According to a UN statement,
the Rakhine Muslims are the most persecuted social group in the world.
The
state plays a part in these atrocities by either turning a blind eye or
preventing humanitarian aid reaching Muslims. Furthermore, the policies
and sanctions imposed on Muslims by the state are completely inhuman.
The
Rohingya Muslims enjoy no citizenship rights and have no access to any
state benefits. They cannot obtain passports and are not admitted to
state hospitals. They are forced to work for nothing for the state or in
private institutions. They have no rights to enter the civil service or
even study beyond high school.
Muslims
have to pay taxes simply to go from one village to another. They are
not allowed out after 9:00 in the evening, even to visit relatives or
neighbors, without police permission.
They
have no right to a defense when a crime is committed, and are
imprisoned straight away. The police or military can raid their homes on
no grounds. They can be arrested arbitrarily for no reason.
The
elimination of Muslims in Myanmar, ruled by a military junta between
1962 and 2011, has literally become a policy of state. Power passed to a
supposedly democratic administration, still under the control of the
communist military junta, in the wake of elections in which wide-ranging
fraud took place: As a result, the same military junta is continuing
with the same policy through a puppet government. The aim is to
eliminate the Muslim population by annihilating it or forcing it into
exile.
In
recent years, since the Bangladeshi government has closed its borders
to the refugees, hundreds of Muslims seeking to flee to that country
have drowned in the seas and rivers on the frontier; and this plays into
the hands of the Myanmar administration that wishes to entirely purge
the country of Muslims.
There
are about 150,000 Rohingya displaced from their homes, and recent
attacks forces more and more every day. Myanmar government has put
together these Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) into camps that are
surrounded by checkpoints and wire. Clean water and food are hard to
find in these camps and the inhabitants of the camps are starving. The
residents are not allowed to go out and work, and no working means no
money and no food.
Nine
out of ten of Burma’s 53 million people are Buddhists, yet Buddhists
and Muslims lived in peace for many years in the past. This is because
both religions espouse peace and tolerance towards other religions and
condemn killing. Yet, the ethnic conflict of the recent years has been
attributed to fanatical Buddhists. The fact is, however, the violence
perpetrated against Muslims is executed by mobs and terror organizations
clothed as Buddhist monks.
Now
the world should hear the silent cries of Rakhine Muslims.
International media should be granted access to the region. Otherwise,
if the countries continue to watch the oppression, violence and
slaughter inflicted on Rakhine Muslims, the ethnic Muslim communities of
Myanmar may just vanish off the earth.
Those
who watch the persecution and slaughter of Muslims all around the world
with weary eyes and are reluctant to see Muslims act as a single body,
or who regard it as unnecessary and remain passive and timid, will have
to bear the conscientious responsibility for this suffering, pain and
shedding of Muslim blood.
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