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Nov-04-2012 14:42printcomments

Ethnic Cleansing of the Rohingyas of Myanmar: Part 2

Part two of three: Ethnic Cleansing of the Rohingyas of Myanmar

Endangered Rohingya boat people
Endangered Rohingya boat people

(PHILADELPHIA, PA) - The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people is a text book case. It has become a national project that is led by the Myanmar state at the central level and the Rakhine state at the local level, supported by a good percentage of the Buddhist nation and its dominant Burman and Rakhine ethnic groups, and which employs large institutional and material resources. The local Rakhine politicians and terrorists, the Buddhist monks and mobs, and the entire state apparatus from the local to the central government level are enthusiastic partners in this project towards final solution of the Rohingya problem.

It was no accident, therefore, to witness demonstrations of monks, esp. those organized by Young Monks Association, supporting Thein Sein’s plan to expel the Rohingyas from Myanmar. The largest such demonstration was led by Wirathu, considered a venerable teacher by many Buddhists. He is a criminal who was imprisoned in 2003 for inciting violence against the Muslims. It is no accident that Suu Kyi spoke with forked tongues and that her NLD party has actually been supporting the national project towards elimination of the Rohingya people. Many of the so-called ‘democracy’ leaders have proven to be no better than fascists and are actually worse than the KKK members.

The worst criminals in this extermination campaign are, however, the fellow Rakhine Buddhists, whose ancestors settled in Arakan beginning in the 11th century, i.e., centuries after the darker complexioned Indo-Bengali ancestors of the Rohingya people had already settled in this coastal territory once ruled by the Hindu Chandra dynasty, which had closer ties with Bengal (today’s Bangladesh).

With that intrusion, albeit a violent one, of the Tibeto-Burman people, the forefathers of today’s Rakhine race, who professed Buddhism, the original inhabitant Hindus and Muslims gradually became minority religious groups. However, in 1430 when two contingents of Muslim Army from Bengal, comprising of more than 50,000 soldiers, restored the fleeing Arakanese king Narameikhla (Maung Saw Mawn) to the throne of Arakan, and a great many of them were asked to protect the regime against any future Burmese invasion, the new settlements of the Muslim garrison around the new capital city of Mrohang (Mrauk-U) greatly added to the size of the minority Muslim community.

The Arakanese rulers of Mrauk-U dynasty adopted superior Islamic culture from nearby Muslim Bengal/India, and issued coins with Islamic inscriptions. They patronized Bengali literature. They also adopted Muslim names, a practice that was to continue for generations well into the 16th century. Muslims played major roles in administration, courts and defense of this multi-ethnic kingdom that maintained its independence for centuries until its annexation by the Burmese king Bodawpaya in 1784.

Bodawpaya was a Buddhist religious fanatic who tried to demolish everything Islamic. He introduced racism and bigotry into this multi-religious region. He destroyed mosques that once dotted the shorelines of Arakan and patronized building Buddhist monasteries and pagodas. He massacred tens of thousands of Muslims, and took another 20,000 as prisoners during his annexation of Arakan. During his tyrannical rule, some 200,000 Arakanese also fled to Bengal (today’s Bangladesh), which by then was under the British rule. After 40-years of Burmese rule (1784-1824), Arakan was occupied by the English East India Company who ruled the territory until Burma won its independence on January 4, 1948.

During the Second World War, taking advantage of the Japanese occupation of Burma, the Buddhist forces which had allied themselves with the Fascist Japanese Imperial Army against the British Raj, targeted the Indian and Muslim population and their homes and businesses. Even the Rohingya Muslims who lived in the western territories did not escape the extermination campaign. Nearly a hundred thousand of them were killed in that joint campaign. They were pushed out of the southern parts of the Arakan state; and many managed to survive by living in northern territories, closer to the Bengal, where they were a solid majority. Another 80,000 settled permanently in Bengal to save their lives. Two hundred and ninety four Muslim villages were totally destroyed.

Even after Burma achieved its independence, sadly, the mass elimination and targeted violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims continued. To the best of my knowledge, at least two dozen campaigns have been directed against them to ethnically cleanse them. These are:

01. Military Operation (5th Burma Regiment) - November 1948 
02. Burma Territorial Force (BTF) - Operation 1949-50 
03. Military Operation (2nd Emergency Chin regiment) - March 1951-52 
04. Mayu Operation - October 1952-53 
05. Mone-thone Operation - October 1954 
06. Combined Immigration and Army Operation - January 1955 
07. Union Military Police (UMP) Operation - 1955-58 
08. Captain Htin Kyaw Operation - 1959 
09. Shwe Kyi Operation - October 1966 
10. Kyi Gan Operation - October-December 1966 
11. Ngazinka Operation - 1967-69 
12. Myat Mon Operation - February 1969-71 
13. Major Aung Than Operation - 1973 
14. Sabe Operation February - 1974-78

15. Naga-Min (King Dragon) Operation - February 1978-79 (resulting in exodus of some 300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh; 40,000 died) 
16. Shwe Hintha Operation - August 1978-80 
17. Galone Operation - 1979 
18. 1984 Pogrom in Taunggok

19. Anti-Muslim riots - Taunggyi (western Burma), Pyay and many other parts of Burma including Rangoon - 1987-88

20. Pyi Thaya Operation – July 1991-92 (resulting in exodus of some 268,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh)

21. Na-Sa-Ka Operation  – since 1992

22. Race riot against Muslims – March 1997 (Mandalay)

23. Anti-Muslim riot in Sittwe – February 2001

24. Anti-Muslim full-scale riot in Central Burma – May 2001

25. Anti-Muslim violence throughout central Burma (especially in the cities of Pyay/Prome, Bago/Pegu) after 9/11 – October 2001

26. Joint extermination campaign – June 3, 2012 – to date.

 

Every attempt has been made by the Myanmar government since the days of General Ne Win to ethnically cleanse the Rohingya people and deny them human rights. They were declared stateless, thus licensing every crime directed against them; not a single Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was honored. Here below is a shortlist of such crimes against the Rohingya people:

  • Denial of Citizenship
  • Restriction of Movement or Travel
  • Restriction on Education
  • Restriction on Ability to work
  • Forced Labor
  • Land Confiscation
  • Forced Eviction
  • Destruction of homes, offices, schools, mosques, etc.
  • Religious persecution
  • Ethnic discrimination
  • Restrictions on Marriage of Rohingyas
  • Prevention of reproduction and forced abortion
  • Arbitrary Taxation and Extortion
  • Registration of births and deaths in families and even of cattle, and the associated extortion
  • Arbitrary arrest, torture and extra-judicial killing
  • Abuse of Rohingya Women and Elders
  • Rape as a weapon of war
  • Depopulation of Rohingya community
  • Confiscation of residency/citizenship cards
  • Internally displaced persons or undocumented refugees and statelessness
  • Destruction or alteration of historical Muslim sites and shrines to erase its symbolism or Islamic identity.

 

Part 3: All Over Arakan It’s Bosnia Again!

In a meeting (in which I was invited to speak on the Rohingya problem) held in Luton (located 30 miles north of London), UK, on October 13, a British MP mentioned close parallel between what is happening today against the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan and what happened in Bosnia in the early 1990s against the Bosnian Muslims. He is right.

 

The Arakan state, which per estimates made by Dr. Shwe Lu Maung alias Shahnewaz Khan, in his book – The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar – a Social Darwinist’s Analysis – had probably as many Rohingya Muslims as there were Rakhine Buddhists living in its four districts before the latest extermination campaign that began on June 3 of this year, is now almost devoid of any Muslim village that is unharmed or intact by Buddhist Rakhine terrorism.

The series...

Genocide of the Rohingyas of Myanmar: Part 1 - Dr. Habib Siddiqui for Salem-News.com

Ethnic Cleansing of the Rohingyas of Myanmar: Part 2 - Dr. Habib Siddiqui for Salem-News.com

Ethnic Cleansing of the Rohingyas of Myanmar Part 3 - Dr. Habib Siddiqui for Salem-News.com

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