{"id":97839,"date":"2017-09-04T12:01:34","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T11:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=97839"},"modified":"2017-09-04T11:54:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T10:54:21","slug":"are-the-rohingya-militants-responsible-for-derailing-kofi-annan-commissions-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/09\/are-the-rohingya-militants-responsible-for-derailing-kofi-annan-commissions-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"Are the Rohingya Militants Responsible for Derailing Kofi Annan Commission’s Recommendations?"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 Aug 2017 – <\/em>To start with, Annan’s report itself stressed that all the military\u00a0MPs in the national parliament joined hands with the military-backed\u00a0former ruling party Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and\u00a0Rakhine nationalists’ Arakan National Party attempted to officially\u00a0stop the establishment of Annan Commission in the parliament. They\u00a0did not succeed.<\/p>\n

Within the past 1 year since Annan Commission was created by Aung San\u00a0Suu Kyi in Sept 2017, the military and its proxies in society – such\u00a0as Ma Ba Tha, anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya monk group have pushed\u00a0non-operation with it, something the final report itself noted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Weeks before Annan Commission released its final report, the Burmese\u00a0military high command was very busy, mobilizing and air-lifting\u00a0hundreds of troops from Light Infantry Division 33, notorious for\u00a0merciless and indiscriminate killings of civilians in any urban\u00a0unrest, to Rakhine, arming and training anti-Rohingya Rakhine\u00a0villagers in fire arms and fighting, blockading the predominantly\u00a0Rohingya region of N. Rakhine from accessing food and jobs, and\u00a0spreading fears of attacks on INGOs and UN agencies providing\u00a0humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n

You can’t analyze Rohingya militancy and recent attacks, without\u00a0taking in to account this build-up of both the government troops and\u00a0militarizing and arming of hostile local Rakhine villages.<\/p>\n

As a matter of the Burmese Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing’s\u00a0Burmese language Facebook timeline – updated after his meeting with\u00a0Kofi Annan in the morning of the day of the Final Report’s release –\u00a0made it clear that the military leadership did not agree with reports’\u00a0findings. His Facebook posting said the report contained factual\u00a0errors, meaning not credible.<\/p>\n

Min Aung Hlaing also apparently attempted to deceive Kofi Annan and\u00a0his commission that the Burmese troops are simply engaged in the\u00a0“clearance operations” targeting only the “Bengali terrorists” in the\u00a0mountain hideouts where there are hardly any innocent civilians.<\/p>\n

Then hours later the Burmese Air Force gunship helicopters were\u00a0reportedly firing rockets and bombing targeted Rohingya villages.<\/p>\n

So, “who is terrorising whom”” is the question that needs to be\u00a0confronted head on.<\/p>\n

There is something else that needs to be called out: the mass media’s\u00a0misframing of Rohingya militants as “jihadists”.<\/p>\n

Both the realities on the ground and the media narrative covering the\u00a0realities are quite skewered in favour of the perpetrating Burmese\u00a0regime’s framing. It frames the militant Rohingyas as “Jihadists” – a\u00a0term with a religious connotation as if Rohingyas were religiously\u00a0motivated along the lines of ISIS. The leader and some rank and\u00a0files may have been trained in fighting in countries like Pakistan, but their emergence is not triggered by their extremists\u2019\u00a0interpretations of Islam. By their statements you can definitively\u00a0tell that they do not want the crippling ghetto-like conditions all Rohingya\u00a0communities have been forced to live in for almost 40 years.<\/p>\n

Their goals are not creating an Islamic state in the predominantly\u00a0Buddhist country, nor independence from Myanmar. They have made it\u00a0clear publicly, they want simply what the rest of the public have -equality before the law, freedom to live in peace, freedom to move\u00a0about so that they can work, earn a living and feed their children,\u00a0recognition that they are citizens and they belong in Burma, not in Bangladesh, whatever the colonial history from 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

The least the activists can do on the ground – or internationally – is\u00a0to correct this narrative.<\/p>\n

They are armed with machetes and farm tools, equipped with some mobile\u00a0phones and use the most primitive type of explosives, which make all\u00a0this reportage about Rohingyas receiving catches of AK-47s and Saudi\u00a0money, citing “un-named intelligence sources” utterly non-credible.\u00a0My own experience with years of dealing with intelligence officials\u00a0is, I take their words with a giant grain of salt: they are simply\u00a0un-trust worthy, by profession spreaders of misinformation about target groups.<\/p>\n

The western media and government officials (and think tanks) –\u00a0infested with general Islamophobia – are too quick to frame any\u00a0Muslim who resists against injustices or fight back any power that\u00a0subjects their communities to Hell-like conditions as “prospective\u00a0Jihadist”, “jihadist” or “extremist” or “Terrorist”.<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi’s military partners have been attempting to play this\u00a0“we-are-fighting-the-war-on-terror” game since 2012. Just\u00a0yesterday, Suu Kyi has just joined this band-wagon when she uses the\u00a0label “terrorists” to refer to the Rohingya militants and condemns\u00a0them while she has only defended her father’s army against the\u00a0enormity of allegations of crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

Getting this record straight is one concrete thing activists and\u00a0Rohingya victims themselves can do.<\/p>\n

This is the war that Myanmar – both the army and Suu Kyi’s government – are\u00a0waging against Rohingyas to further demonize and criminalise them\u00a0while maintaining the ghettoized conditions on the grounds for more\u00a0than 1 million Rohingyas.<\/p>\n

You lift these conditions, and I guarantee that the Rohingya militancy\u00a0will immediately stop.<\/p>\n

For these young Rohingya men, primitively armed, are not fighting to\u00a0go to Heaven as Martyrs, they are fighting back because they and their\u00a0communities are sitting ducks awaiting the next round of mass\u00a0slaughter.<\/p>\n

When these young and ‘angry’ men – as UN Special Rapporteur on human\u00a0rights in Myanmar Professor Yangee Lee put it – fight back the mighty\u00a0oppressor, Myanmar Tatmadaw, they are making a bad choice, of course,\u00a0among all bad choices. Do they subject themselves to semi-slavery in\u00a0the hands of human traffickers, or risk drowning in the high sea? Do\u00a0they allow themselves and their families to remain in semi-famine\u00a0conditions? Do they simply lie down and let themselves slaughtered by\u00a0the organized gangs of racist Rakhine neighbours who want to cleanse\u00a0the entire N. Rakhine of any and all Rohingya Muslims, with the full\u00a0backing of the military State? Do they want for UN intervention\u00a0which will never materialise?<\/p>\n

Most everything the world is hearing about all the recent\u00a0killing spree of civilians in N. Rakhine by “ski-masked gangs” and\u00a0other stories framed as “terrorist activities” come from the single\u00a0source: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Information Committee. Well, she has\u00a0become part of the genocidal hell for Rohingyas, covering up and\u00a0denying the systematic and pervasive rights violations and violence committed by her father’s army.<\/p>\n

Finally, Annan, Western Governments (USA, France, UK, etc.) and UN\u00a0office in Myanmar are too quick to condemn Rohingya militant attacks\u00a0as “undermining” Kofi Annan’s peace and mediation efforts while the\u00a0very same entities have held their nose on what they know to be at\u00a0best crimes against humanity and at worst a full-scaled genocide in\u00a0slow motion which Rohingyas have been subjected to over the last\u00a0almost 40 years.<\/p>\n

Like all previous genocidal cases, wittingly or not these external\u00a0players are complicit in the verifiably systematic and pervasive\u00a0attempts by Myanmar to destroy the entire ethnic community.<\/p>\n

If there is anyone or group who deserves unequivocal condemnations\u00a0for the escalation of violence and militancy in N. Rakhine its both the perpetrators and the\u00a0external enablers which I mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Even in Auschwitz and crippling ghettos, Nazi victims and inmates rose\u00a0up taking as many SS Exterminators as they possibly could with them,\u00a0knowing full well their eventual fate.<\/p>\n

Should we the bystanders condemn the Nazi inmates who attempted to\u00a0rise up and put the desperate violence of the oppressed on the moral\u00a0parity with the systematic genocidal violence by the perpetrators?<\/p>\n

I for one am NOT prepared to condemn violence across the board,\u00a0whatever that makes me. I may or I may not choose to resort to\u00a0violence or militancy were I in Rohingya situation. But I have\u00a0absolutely no moral authority to condemn them as a privileged man\u00a0whose family and himself live in comfort and safety.<\/p>\n

Above all I respect the dignity and the need for self-respect of even\u00a0the most wretched among us to decide their own fates, whatever their\u00a0choice.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Maung Zarni is a Burmese activist blogger, Associate Fellow at the University of Malaya, a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>, 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<\/em> a nonresident scholar with the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.<\/em> He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 maungzarni.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Who is terrorising whom”” is the question that needs to be confronted head on. There is something else that needs to be called out: the mass media’s misframing of Rohingya militants as “jihadists”. Both the realities on the ground and the media narrative covering the realities are quite skewered in favour of the perpetrating Burmese regime’s framing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}