Events in Myanmar are crime against Humanity

(Photo: AP)

By Harun Yahya

Harakah Daily
January 4, 2014

The scale of the slaughter, persecution, torture and savagery experienced during the ruthless ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya Muslims in the Myanmar province of Rakhine stagger the imagination. 

As a result of the slaughter and displacement carried out in the light of the systematic cleansing policy waged since 1942, only 700,000 out of the original four million Muslims in the region remain. 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 burnt 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. 

In recent years, since the Bangladeshi government 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 regime that wishes to entirely purge the country of Muslims. 

Our Muslim brothers 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. 

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. 

Although the Myanmar regime seeks to give the impression it is not involved in acts of violence and terror, it still supports this genocide by turning a blind eye to attacks, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching Muslims, restricting their freedom to travel and live as human beings and is protecting the aggressors. 

Furthermore, the policies and sanctions imposed on Muslims by the state are completely inhuman. 

The Rohingyan 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. 

Muslims are not allowed to build concrete homes; they can only live in wooden huts and even these meager dwellings belong to the state. They are not allowed to have landlines or mobile phones nor can they own motor vehicles. 

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. 

To date, the persecution of Muslims in Rakhine has been portrayed as an ethnic conflict attributed to fanatical Buddhists. The fact is however, as everyone knows, that because of their beliefs, Buddhists are simple, harmonious and peace-loving people who strongly avoid killing. It is gangs and terror organizations affiliated to the communist secret state that are now known to be the real culprits. The terror group known as “Lion Thein” used to be responsible for the bulk of the violence and killing, although the “969 Movement” has begun assuming responsibility for the recent wave of violence. 

The members of these gangs generally consist of militants from Myanmar who have received communist guerrilla training in Thailand and China. The striking similarity to ethnic cleansing against Muslims in East Turkestan suggests that communist China - Myanmar’s friend and ally - is likely also behind the scenes. 

Myanmar, with its rich underground resources, oil reserves and energy sources, and an important staging position for Middle East oil and gas, is one of China’s most valued strategic partners and it is perhaps not too much to say that the last thing the communist Chinese state would want is to see Muslims having any say in the country. 

As long as so many countries sit back as always and watch the oppression, violence and slaughter inflicted on Muslims across the world, nothing will change in Rakhine. The picture that has remained unchanged for decades is a clear sign that until Muslims heed these verses and unite this pain will never end: 

“Those who are unbelievers are the friends and protectors of one another. If you do not act in this way there will be turmoil in the land and great corruption” (Quran, 8:73) 

And “those who, when they are wronged, defend themselves” (Quran 26:39) 

Those who are unwilling to see Muslims come together and act as a single body, or who regard it as unnecessary, or who remain passive and timid, will have to bear the conscientious responsibility for this suffering, pain and shedding of Muslim blood.