March 26, 2013
Progressive Press
Nicholas Goroff
Human rights advocates throughout the globe are working overtime today to draw attention to the increasingly dire state
of affairs in Myanmar. In recent decades, the centuries old ethnic
tensions between the majority Buddhist population and the minority
Muslim population (known as the “Rohingya,”) have led to increasingly
bloody clashes between the two communities.
This month alone over thirty people have died in waves of violence
carried out against the Rohingya villages and neighborhoods by Buddhist
mobs.
Some reports claim that many of the mobs were led by area monks, who
have allegedly been publishing anti-Muslim propaganda and inciting acts
of arson and other violent attacks against the Rohingya. One monk in
particular, hailing from the Meikhtila area, has been especially
concerning to observers, as tensions escalate.
The self described “Bin Laden of Buddhism,”
monk Wirathu, has remained a central figure in the conflict for over a
decade, having been admittedly responsible for wide scale anti-Muslim
propagandizing which in February resulted in a mob of 300 Buddhists
descending on and destroying a school reported to be in the process of
converting to a mosque.
In a press release
by the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation on Saturday, the call was
let out to end what they call “the systematic killing of Muslims in
Burma.” It continued, claiming that since Wednesday, at least 14 mosques
and hundreds of Muslim homes had been destroyed and that upwards of
20,000 ethnic Rohingya had been displaced.
On Saturday, 106 Rohingya people were found, starving and dehydrated, in a small boat floating adrift off the coast of Phuket.
Though unclear if these 106 are specifically part of the estimated
20,000 displaced from the past week’s violence, a total of 402 Rohingya
refugees have been found at sea by Thai authorities alone, since the
beginning of this year. Similar and at times greater numbers of refugees
and expatriated Rohingya have also been reported throughout the region,
with Malaysian authorities struggling to deal with increasing numbers
of these desperate and displaced people.
Official state responses to the violence have been muted at best. Over
the last two weeks, several hundred police and security forces have been
dispatched to the troubled areas such as the state of Arakan, where
violence and ethnic clashes have been a regular occurrence for decades.
However despite their presence, as recently as last night, fifteen more
Muslim homes were burned and destroyed, and as many as seven people were
killed.
Concerns over state complicity and potentially even participation in the
anti-Muslim violence are very real throughout the both human rights
circles as well as area Rohingyas. According to a 2004 report
by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR,) regular
violence and forced displacement of Rohingyas by Burmese/Myanmar
military and security forces were common during 1990s and early 2000s,
with hundreds of thousands being forced from their homes, murdered or
otherwise disappeared.
Though historically the conflict has been considered an ethnic/religious
one between the Buddhists and the Muslim minority, new concerns
regarding economic interests have watchdogs ratcheting up their calls
for international attention and possible intervention. The newly
developed Shwe pipeline, which is set to open later this year, has caused worries that further forced displacement and violence is impending.
With major Western economic and banking interests such as the Royal Bank
of Scotland (RBS, owner of the U.S. “Citizens Bank” corporation,) as
well as British finance giant Barclays backing the development of the
pipeline, numerous calls for divestment throughout the human right
advocacy community have been made, dovetailing concerns over further
violence.
UK based human rights advocate and founder of “Save the Rohingya,” Jamila Hanan said of the coming developments, in a statement to energy industry watchdog “Priceofoil.org”:
“We are anticipating a third massacre of the Rohingya on the same scale which took place in Rwanda. We have been informed that this will take place sometime between now and mid-April.”
As outrage over both the atrocities taking place in Myanmar, as well as
Western media’s relative silence on the matter continues to rise, the
“hacktivist” group Anonymous has launched its own initiative to draw
attention to the crisis.
Dubbed “OpRohingya,” Anonymous in collaboration with online and grassroots partners, has planned matching “Twitterstorm”
and “Paperstorm” actions, aimed at pressuring officials and media
outlets throughout the globe and Myanmar specifically, to speak up and
condemn the violence which continues to plague the Rohingya.
During a tour of the affected areas in Myanmar on Friday, UN special adviser Vijay Nambiar expressed
“deep sorrow” over the violence and destruction and called on religious
and community leaders to “abjure violence, respect the law and promote
peace”. However, between the long standing, deep rooted nature of the
conflict, as well as the Myanmar government expressing little more than
lip-service concern over the violence, of which they’ve directly taken
part in previously, there is little expectation that any effective
Burmese domestic solutions are on the horizon.
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