Rohingya Muslims; A Matter Of Shame For Oic And Uno

By Author: Naseem Haider
Total Articles: 4
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Rohingya is a community of Muslims that is living in Myanmar since more than 500 years ago during the Mughal rule in Subcontinent and later many of the Bengali farmers were encouraged by the British Empire to live in border state of Myanmar, Rakhine, which was a highly cultivable land. Then a number of Muslims migrated to Myanmar in 1948 during the eve of Burmese independence. In addition, some of the Bengali Muslims also moved to Burma during the 1971 anarchy in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Since then, the Muslim population of Myanmar, accounts only for 5% but it has been described by many international organizations including UNO, OIC, Amnesty Intl. and a number of highly reputed news agencies including The Economist, The New York Times, and Forbes, as “the most persecuted people on the earth”. The Muslims of Myanmar has been described by the regional newspapers, as “a minority that has been attacked with impunity, stripped of the vote and driven from their homes”. And it’s been getting worse with the passage of time.

The roots of the current dilemma dates back to the 1962’s army coup, when Myanmar’s ...
... Army General Ne Win, an anti-Muslim dictator, overthrown the Myanmar government and took charge of the country. This proved to be most horrifying and devastating incident in the history for the Muslims of Myanmar. Since the General Ne Win, took control of the Government of Myanmar, he started repressing Muslim minority and this suppression, recursion and resentment ended on the 1982’s Burmese Nationality Law, which declared the Rohingya Muslims outsider Bengali refugees and grabbed citizenship rights from them. Since then thousands of Rohingya Muslims are living as homeless and stateless people, regarded as few of the people who are living on this earth but don’t have any identity or nationality by the law.

The most recent incident of the Muslim genocide was the operation in the state of Rakhine in 2012 that culminated with the thousands of death troll and more than 2 lacs people were forced to migrate from their lands. But this was not the single issue; the resentment of the Muslims was continued after Rakhine tragedy that led to the present dilemmatic situation where Rohingya community was forced to leave their native land and immigrate to the neighboring countries. But unfortunately it doesn’t provide any long lasting solution because all the neighboring countries decided to not allow the Rohingya brethren to step into their lands, which has forced Rohingya to live in the boats in the sea under the sky and wait for any miracle to happen. Until now hundreds of Muslims has died in their attempts to cross the borders, some of them have lost their lives in the sea, but most of them are suffering from the issues of food shortage and other basic human necessities which are essential to carry on life.

Although before 1962 there were very few incidents of attacks on Muslim minority from Buddhist majority, and the Rohingya Muslims were enjoying the native citizenship rights as any other ethnic or religious group was enjoying in the country, but the dawn of 1962 changed everything on the spot which was totally based on the anti-Muslim agenda of demolishing the Muslim minority. The grudge, cruelty and resentment of Rohingya brethren has been done by the Myanmar’s national army, security forces, country’s majority i.e. Buddhist community, which includes the support and encouragement of religious leader of Buddhists, Ashin Wirathu and the politicians of the country including the champion of human rights, the Noble award winning Aung San Suu Kyi. According to a report of UNO, all the mosques have been destroyed, so the Muslims can’t offer their religious duties. There is a lack of water, food and medical facilities in the camps where they are living. I think it was never ever the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha that a Buddhist majority country has shown.

Amnesty International reports that in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims have taken shelter by living in the refugee camps, where they suffer from strict rules apposed on them by the Myanmar government. They are not allowed to move from one place to another, they don’t have any right to get the education and even though they are not allowed to marry publicly. They face Government ill will in the form of mean and brutal taxes, where their lands have been acquired by the Buddhists and mostly have been devastated by them.

The British magazine, Economist, in their editorial says that the Rohingya has faced many army operations against them led by the Army rulers, which caused a lot of Muslims to lose their lives, which appears to be a state-supervised genocide. This forced Rohingya Muslims to migrate to the neighboring countries, where another episode of cruelty awaits for them. Thailand government doesn’t even bothers to look after the refugees and the Bangladesh government treats them with hate, wrath and anger.

Institute of International State Crime Initiative reports that the Rohingya Muslim community is facing the state-owned, well-planned genocide and it leads to the likelihood of the official killing of the Muslims in near future. The institute also reports that until now even a single person involved in these genocide crimes has not been prosecuted, which signifies the silent mark on the sate judiciary and other law enforcing agencies.

It’s a matter of shame that as usual the Islamic countries and their representative organizations including OIC, ECO, GCC, etc, had a finger on their lips, which signifies dormancy from them on the issue. Even though when the issue had become an international issue still none of the Muslim leader has tried to settle the issue or has done any attempt to pressurize the Myanmar government to give the inhabitant Rohingya, right to live in their land; the land on which they are living since centuries. In this context, the value and validation of OIC, the biggest body representing Muslims of the globe has been again on questions. This situation leads me to conclude that, why there is such a ridiculous organization which in reality has no power to pursue their objectives, policies and help redress the Muslims grieve, which in fact is the integral objective of the leading Muslims representative body. However only OIC can’t be blamed the UNO I think also had no actual power when it comes to be judicious and justifiable towards Muslims. It is also ridiculous that no one at the international level is blaming the noble laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the so called champion of human rights, who still hasn’t commented on the issue and that is just for the sake of the Buddhists majority votes that she is sought to grab in the upcoming general elections.

Now lets come to the point that why there is a silence on the international level and regional level. So let me point out that, organization representing Muslims of the globe, OIC is an organization or body, that will live defunct or dormant until someone like Salahuddin Ayubi, Tariq Bin Ziyad or Quaid-e-Azam M. Ali Jinnah may emerge on the scenario. The next is UNO, that has a long history of never taking or working seriously for the Muslim cause, the examples are Kashmir issue, Palestine issue and Iraq and Afghanistan wars and now the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar is the new addition in the list of that failure. I think the neighboring countries had also shown such an ashamed, humiliated and disgraced behavior towards their Rohingya brethren; and more importantly they have shown something i.e. totally against their Muslim ideology, these countries include Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Remember, this list will never complete, until we put one leading character of the issue, and i.e. Miss Aung San Suu Kyi. The one who will never raise her hand to protect the Muslims minority because in the modern world if you want to rule or lead the government, it is a thumb rule that you simply need lead in votes, and who would show some insanity to lose the confidence of majority and in Suu Kyi’s case the majority is Buddhists community, who is being involved in the Muslims genocide. So literally speaking if we are still looking over these organizations or the international leaders, then it is about to wait for a miracle to be happen, so I think issue must has to settle by the Muslims themselves.

However, if we look at the practical settlement of the issue, then one can say that UNO can force Myanmar to grant the Rohingya’s their birth right of citizenship and other human rights and if not so then UNO must put some economic embargos on Myanmar. OIC with all the Muslim representative leaders need to do something practically without waiting for the right time to come in order to count the political gains. In addition, the human right movements need to publicize this issue at global level so that all the humanity can raise their voice against this state-led genocide of innocent humans. In addition I think there are a number of Muslim countries that have huge reserves of land and natural resources, so why not they open the doors of their land for their Muslim brethrens. Because I think there are about 57 Muslim countries and Rohingya population is not more than 2 million, so this is not a big deal and it will not take any extra burden on their budgets and doesn’t requires any extra effort, only thing i.e. needed is to have the courage to take the first step.

At the end, I want to say that in order to prevent the reoccurrence of such incidents in the future, then this is the right time for the Muslim Ummah, to make a well-planned, well-rehearsed, durable, and applicable policy that would have a lasting impact over the issues that Muslims all around the world are facing. The Muslim leaders are expected to take some historical and courageous steps. And the step of matter is that they can do it, because they have to do it, either now or later.