Myanmar, Moderate Your Genocide!

POETRY FORMAT, 11 Sep 2017

Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service

My country is committing pogroms
Pogroms against Rohingyas.

I knew this day would come.  And it did come sooner!

Wait! Rohingyas don’t exist.

The victims didn’t exist.  They don’t exist.
And they will not exist – as who they say they are.

For the perpetrators, the victims never exist – not as humans.

We are proud Myanmar.   We don’t care about your pressure.

We have Security Council on our side.

Yes, Blanket Impunity.

Our Commander-in-Chief says, “Finish the unfinished business” from 1942.
General Min Aung Hlaing wants the land, but not the inhabitants.

So now we slaughter these half-starved creatures,
who insist on calling themselves Rohingyas

Wave after wave,
Killers come,
Arsonists come,
Rapists come,
Soldiers come,
Police come,
Rakhines come.

Then they slit girls’ throat,
They rape women, some barely teens.
They slaughter pregnant mothers,
They execute husbands,
They burn old men alive, who can barely walk.
Spare infants? Who would look after these poor creatures.
Send them to Allah.

So tell the survivors.

Not just one, two, three…
Thousands of survivors who tell eyewitness tales,
Tales of horror, tales of inhumanity

The crimes of barbarity

No, No, We Myanmar are engaged in ‘self-defence’.

This is all about “national security”.
Against these extremists.
Against these terrorists.

And repeat pattern of killing, arson, rape, expulsion – by the thousands
Decade after decade, they calibrate the rate, the rate of their kills
The perpetrators tell tales – “illegal immigration” “communal violence” “colonial-unfinished-business” “neo-Balkan transitional issue” …

Myanmar’s narratives keep changing
Don’t you worry, people.
The world will come around.

Pogroms keep on coming – arson, rape, pillage, exodus, etc.

Decade after decade, four to be exact.

The World’s governments have known this for decades.
The United Nations have known this for decades.

They all hold their noses
as they smell the blood of the slaughtered.

They all hear nothing
as toddlers cry, raped mothers scream, old men beg for mercy.

They look, but they don’t see
Charred babies, debilitated men, mutilated corpses in Rakhine mud

Without a prick on their conscience, men and women of power
they stand up and observe a moment of silence, in Live cast ceremonies – from New York, Geneva, Paris, Washington,

How sad the victims of past pogroms have perished
200 million in 100 years.

Stand up! Say one more time!
NEVER AGAIN!

Well, Rohingyas are a different case, potential “security concerns”,

This ain’t Auschwitz.
This ain’t Rwanda.
This ain’t Srebrenica.

Most are Fake News, anyway.

Moderation, Buddhist Leaders.
Restraints in genocide, the World Leaders must advise.
Just don’t accelerate Myanmar pogroms
Lest you invite “Muslim terror”.

Carry on with your “unfinished business” of the slow genocide.
Call it what you will, communal or self-defence.

But just don’t speed it up.
270,000 fleeing in 2 weeks is too fast
for UN to ignore.

8 September 2017

__________________________________

Dr. Maung Zarni is a Burmese activist blogger, Associate Fellow at the University of Malaya, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, London School of Economics, and a nonresident scholar with the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press. He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years.

 

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 Sep 2017.

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2 Responses to “Myanmar, Moderate Your Genocide!”

  1. Tazeen Hasan says:

    I accidentally got your links today and am surprised why the world doesn’t know about you. In fact, listening to your formal and informal speeches and reading your research paper on Genocide.

    I am a student of Journalism at Harbard Extension School. May I request you an interview on current disaster and challenges faced by Rohingyas and Burmese government equally?

  2. Gary Corseri. says:

    An amazing poem! You capture the passions and the horrors in indelible, short bursts of language that weave together to make a statement that is eternal. You have expressed the agonies of the Rohingyas–personalized, humanized and universalized their suffering. I, too, will investigate your links and find out more about you and the plight of the Rohingyas. (BTW, The Nobel Peace Prize committee needs to withdraw the prize it awarded a few years ago to that infamous Lady Macbeth at the head of the Burmese government!)

    Thank you, and thank TMS for giving this the attention it needs.