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Muslims Raped and Massacred in Myanmar
August 03, 2012
The massacre of the Muslim minority in Myanmar residing near the border with Bangladesh is nothing new- only the scale of the killings and level of atrocities has magnified many folds. The Myanmar regime run by a callous Military junta has no respect for human rights nor does it care about its international reputation. Once again alike 1991, the Military in alliance with the local monks have violated basic human rights of its minority population by burning down Muslim villages and decimating the Muslim population. According to Amnesty international reports “Six weeks after a state of emergency was declared in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, targeted attacks and other violations by security forces against minority Rohingyas and other Muslims have increased.” According to international reports the massacre has been carried out by the security forces in connivance with the Buddhist monks who abhor the local Muslim population. The Myanmar state like other Muslim countries is a silent spectator of the gruesome massacre. So far, the OIC has not come up with any concrete resolution condemning the killings only the Iranian Government and the Pakistani foreign office, which have criticised the killings.
Despite declaration of an emergency in the conflict zone the massive killing of the Muslim families has not stopped. Large scale arrests of the male population by the security forces have been reported and a Bosnia type pogrom of the Muslim population is reported to be in progress. Between 50,000 and 90,000 people have been displaced according to UN reports and are living under open skies on the border with Bangladesh and Myanmar. The Bangladesh Government has refused to accept the Burmese Muslims adding to the sufferings and deaths at the hand of the Burmese security forces and the Buddhist population. The JI chief Syed Munawar Hasan has set up a fund for the Burmese Muslim and has condemned the silence of the international community. The state machinery and the Armed forces were torturing the Muslims, he said. Amnesty International is calling on Myanmar’s Parliament to repeal the 1982 Citizenship Law to ensure that Rohingyas are no longer stateless. So far both Bangladesh and Burma has refused to accept them as their nationals. According to head of the Burmese delegation Noor Husain Arakani who visited Pakistan, the Myanmar Muslims were being forced to convert to Buddhism, and on their refusal, they were being subjected to untold brutalities. The Muslims have been forced to eat pork and drink liquor. Even Aung San SuuKyi the Nobel peace prizewinner is silent about the massacre and is not willing to condemn the monks. Ambassador Derek Mitchell at the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has announced a 3 million dollars food aid donation for displaced people in Shan and Kachin states in northern Myanmar, which would be distributed through the U.N. World Food Program. No other state or the UN or EU has announced any relief assistance for the Muslim refugees.
The sad aspect of the whole tragedy is that the Muslim minority has been rendered stateless and not even acceptable to Muslim states. Pakistan and Bangladesh have greater responsibility to play as according to the 1953 population census report 45 per cent of the Rohingya population is of Pakistani origin. Just as the Baharis in Bangladesh have been rotting in camps for decades, the fate of the Burmese Muslim will be no different. Unless they are either accepted by Burma or Bangladesh or simply decimated by security forces and the Burmese monks. The very survival of this ethnic population is at stake.
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