By Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd
Rohingya have been persecuted for decades by various military regimes, now to the point of extermination, currently under a quasi-democratic government. The 2008 Constitution ensured military control of three main ministries of defence, home and border affairs, guaranteed 25% of the positions at regional, state and national governments, and the right to take control of the country during a crisis. The Constitution grants immunity to past and current generals for any crimes they may be charged with.
In a brilliant military tactical decision, Aung San Suu Kyi, married to a foreigner, denied the right to become President by the Constitution was granted a special title of State Counsellor. Suu Kyi is the democratic front-piece, visiting world leaders, seeking their investments, dropping of economic sanctions, and silence on Rohingya rights to exist. She has been silent and non-supportive of Rohingya freedom despite requests from fellow Nobel Laureates, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Barrack Obama. The word Rohingya is illegal in Burma.
Nearly 150,000 illegalised, dehumanised Rohingya remain segregated in more than 60 internally displaced camps, isolated behind barb wire, guarded by machine-gun wielding security troops since 2012.
Current military and security forces are attacking the majority of Rohingya who live outside camps in secured towns and villages divided into ‘security grids’ described by human rights researchers as ‘vast open prisons’. Here “without freedom of movement, farmers can’t go to their fields, fishermen can’t go to the sea, traders can’t go to markets, students can’t go to university and sick people can’t go to the nearest hospital” Pierre Peron, spokesman for the UN Humanitarian Aid Operation.
Aung San Suu Kyi, on a state visit to India when she heard of the 9 October border post attacks, urged the military to act within international law in their operations. This is a hollow request. The army acts with impunity, committing atrocities for decades, with no accountability.
The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) announced that it would protect the 200 Rohingya refugees expected to land in Langkawi soon.
All four boats are believed to be carrying Rohingya refugees who are fleeing their homeland following the genocide which is still taking place in their country. It is also believed that no fees were charged the refugees as they are all fleeing their homeland to save their own lives as well as their family members (MMEA, 10 October 2016).
As government forces cracked down on Rohingya, reports emerged of military dug mass graves inside a Muslim cemetery in which Rohingya bodies were dumped, thirty thousand Rohingya hiding in rice fields, women and girls being raped by soldiers, houses and whole villages destroyed. The government use helicopter gunships to support ground troops, then supplemented by local Rakhine men given guns to hunt down Rohingya civilians. The military confirm 130 people have been killed.
The NLD-led government flatly denied accusations by international rights groups of human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings by the security forces. The military continues unfettered with their long-term agenda of Rohingya genocide. There is still no international response to protect the Rohingya, despite the United Nations Responsibility to Protect (R2P) repeated alerts:
Mass atrocity crimes are occurring and urgent action is needed. Stateless Rohingya in Burma/Myanmar face systematic persecution that poses an existential threat to the community.
Urgent requests by the various United Nations authorities for the military to not harm civilians and to permit humanitarian aid to be delivered to the displaced people are ignored. The Government of Burma denies the extent of damage inflicted on communities despite satellite images show 1,250 buildings destroyed, and arson attacks against five Rohingya villages in Maungdaw, but accused the Rohingya of burning their own homes.
Humanitarian organisations, since 9 October, denied access to the 160,000 Rohingya in desperate need of food, life-saving medical assistance, clean water, and other forms of aid, while the military destroys food supplies.
Unless urgent action is taken more Rohingya people will be dying from starvation than from bullets and bombs fired by the Burmese Army. The Burmese government and military will be responsible for a slow motion massacre using hunger and disease as their weapons. Our children, pregnant women and the elderly are the most vulnerable to starvation. What kind of government deliberately targets children with starvation like this and how can the international community stand by and let this happen (Tun Khin, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) 24 November 2016)?
A collective national memory that denies full humanity to Rohingya, has allowed for varying levels of getting rid of, from land confiscation, to destruction of schools, of places of worship, businesses, to removal from public work places, community markets, from farming, health care, from universities, to escape as refugees, to forcible segregation in internally displaced camps, to killing, to genocide.
Professor Penny Green, School of Law, Queen Mary University, London, concluded genocide is taking place in Myanmar and the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) warned of the serious and present danger of the annihilation of the country’s Rohingya population in Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar 2015.
Genocide is defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. As signatory to the Convention, Australia has an obligation, under the convention to take meaningful steps to prevent genocide.
Australia, the wealthiest country in the region, should offer immediate asylum to Rohingya fleeing assault. It could send its formidable border force brigade and navy to rescue Rohingya from boats drifting in the Bay of Bengal. It could loudly condemn the atrocious attacks on the Rohingya people.
Western governments have shielded the offending Burmese government’s abusive policies and practices, cloaked in terms of democratisation and political reform, for too long. By remaining silent, all are complicit in the ongoing genocide. The Rohingya need immediate protection.
Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd is a human geographer, research associate Asia Institute and School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, who has conducted over a decade of research on land confiscation, human rights, and Rohingya in Burma.
26 November 2016