{"id":100955,"date":"2017-10-30T12:01:21","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=100955"},"modified":"2017-10-29T10:56:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T10:56:46","slug":"dying-in-myanmar-when-genocide-becomes-normative-rather-than-aberrational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/dying-in-myanmar-when-genocide-becomes-normative-rather-than-aberrational\/","title":{"rendered":"Dying in Myanmar \u2013 When Genocide Becomes Normative Rather Than Aberrational"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Rohingya refugee woman who crossed the border from Myanmar a day before, carries her daughter and searches for help, in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 17, 2017. \u00a9 Jorge Silva \/ Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

18 Oct 2017 – <\/em>It\u2019s official. Myanmar, according to the UN in its latest report, has given in to wanton murder and systematic oppression to cleanse its streets of its designated undesirables: Rohingya Muslims. However, violence is but the tip of that iceberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cMyanmar security forces have driven out half a million Muslim Rohingya from northern Rakhine state, torching their homes, crops, and villages to prevent them from returning,\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the UN human rights office said<\/a> on October 11, warning that the findings confirmed atrocious human rights violations, including, but not limited to: rape, murder, and torture of children.<\/p>\n

There is something utterly perverse in the targeting of children. It is not so much that their vulnerability commands we offer them protection, but that their very existence represents the future of a people – in this particular case Rohingya Muslims. There is something to be said of the systematic targeting of children when ethnic cleansing becomes a state\u2019s primary political narrative.<\/p>\n

I would say that Myanmar has long confirmed what many rights activists and experts had decried when it turned repression into a general exercise of ethnic cleansing with a strong sectarian undertone. For all the guilt Aung San Suu Kyi (the leader of the National League for Democracy and the first and incumbent State Counselor, a position akin to a prime minister) may presently carry upon her shoulders, Myanmar\u2019s brush with genocide began decades ago when its seat of power choose to anchor its national identity in exclusionism.<\/p>\n

Rohingya Muslims\u2019 plight crystallized<\/a> in 1982 when Myanmar introduced a series of law and regulations demanding that all wannabe Burmese proved ancestry as far back as 1823, thus automatically outlawing entire segments of society.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rDgi9oPwNyU<\/p>\n

While Rohingya Muslims\u2019 suffering may only have reached our screen, their reality has been one the United Nations has decried as profoundly troublesome by the nature of the persecution they have faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted groups in the world,\u201d<\/em>stated<\/a> the UN earlier this September.<\/p>\n

“A textbook example of ethnic cleansing,\u201d<\/em> Zeid Ra\u2018ad al-Hussein asserted<\/a> at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whichever way one chooses to look at Myanmar, it is somewhat evident that oppression and more pertinently mass-murder has been run from the highest office in the land as part of an agenda which roots are anchored in Myanmar\u2019s own sense of national sovereignty. Again, for all the guilt Aung San Suu Kyi should ultimately answer to, our criticism needs to carry further if truly we are to offer justice to Myanmar\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n

I would argue that Myanmar\u2019s genocidal tendencies are a reflection of a malady, or rather an agenda that seeks to rationalize ethnic and\/or sectarian-based cleansing as a normative weapon of war – no longer the aberration to be frowned upon, genocide could then be reinvented as an affirmation of a country\u2019s national identity. We would do well to remember that only a few decades ago certain European capitals entertained that very idea \u2026 fascism, as it were, remains a powerful plague elites love to flirt with to assert their hold over the political narrative.<\/p>\n

If one looks beyond Myanmar to recognize emerging patterns, then connecting those proverbial dots becomes child\u2019s play indeed. In that terrible chess game, Myanmar is but one pawn.<\/p>\n

I will urge readers here not to get bogged down by numbers or even geography, but instead focus on intent. From Bahrain to Yemen, Iraq to Pakistan and Afghanistan, specific ethnic and religious groups have suffered either at the hands of governments or armed militants backed by governments. I am not interested in naming those aforementioned governments. I would much rather concentrate on unveiling those dynamics we too often blank out.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/RT_com\/status\/914001866286972928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-edge%2F407094-dying-myanmar-genocide-violence%2F<\/p>\n

Murder, organized socio-political oppression, forced migration, disenfranchisement based on ethnicity or faith, torture, rape, starvation \u2026 those have been the weapons of an elite against designated targets. Which targets have been systematically dehumanized and their suffering watered-down for the sake of geopolitical pragmatism.<\/p>\n

One may recall how in 2016 Britain was accused<\/a> of \u201cwaging a behind-the-scenes PR offensive aimed at neutering United Nations criticism of Bahrain for its human rights record, including the alleged use of torture by its security forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

One may also recall the glee with which the United States provided<\/a> Saudi Arabia with weapons in the face of Riyadh\u2019s implacable war with neighboring Yemen, or again how Henry Kissinger argued<\/a> the safeguard of ISIS as a means to thwart Iran\u2019s traction within the Greater Middle East.<\/p>\n

Of course, numbers and intensity have varied! Of course one cannot compare Myanmar\u2019s losses, in August the European Rohingya Council reported<\/a> that an estimated 3,000 Rohingya Muslims had been massacred within three days, and that of Bahrain for example. And yet the nature of the agenda behind such violence is one and the same.<\/p>\n

I will posit however that one life is worth that of humanity in general, and that one loss equates to that of our humanity.<\/p>\n

In a report for the Daily Telegraph Nicola Smith covered a rather worrying, and yet telling development in the systematic targeting of the Rohingyas: organized starvation.<\/p>\n

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.@antonioguterres<\/a> has described the #Rohingya<\/a> crisis as \u201cthe world\u2019s fastest developing refugee emergency.\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/LIHCbDps37<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/GWHCrLTcIp<\/a><\/p>\n

— IOM – UN Migration \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf3 (@UNmigration) September 29, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n