Rohingya Muslims Ordeal, A Crime Speaks Of Dead Human Conscience
18 February, 2018
Bangladeshi activists rally in support of Rohingya
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - In July 1995 the Serbian forces, with direct order from the Army of the Republic of Serbia, perpetrated a systematic ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica under the eyes of the Dutch personnel of the UN peace keeping force who stood idle after they had already asked the Bosnians to hand over their weapons, pledging to protect their area’s security. Delving into the district, the Serbian troops isolated males between 14 and 50 years old (up to 8,000) from the rest of the population and killed and buried them in mass graves. The Serbian troops then carried out a systematic raping of Muslim women.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague has ruled that the massacre constituted genocide.
The judge in the case said the massacre was characterized by "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history".
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said "Not since the horrors of World War II had Europe witnessed massacres on this scale". He added "The tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever."
At the time, we erroneously believed that such a calamity will not be repeated again.
But now we see a repeat of that scenario, even in a more horrible manner; again under the eyes of the World that claims the defense of human rights, no matter the race, color or religion of the victim.
The Srebrenica tragedy is now repeated in the Southeastern nation of Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslim minority. The Rohingya who were proved to have lived in Myanmar for the last five centuries are now considered ‘non indigenous citizens’ by their fellow countrymen the Buddhists who drive the death train in the Muslim majority Rakhine State. The ruling military junta has joined hands with the Buddhist extremist groups in the biggest and most fierce torture and expulsion campaign against the Muslims, a campaign that saw the raping of Rohingya women and the seizure of their properties.
What happens in Myanmar is hair-raising by all measures. Muslims are butchered in mass death orgies. Their bodies are burned down in furnaces no less than the fate of the Jews in the Nazi Holocaust. Homes are demolished on the heads of the Rohingya dwellers whose women are raped while the Muslim World, enmeshed in the details of its problems and failures, stays silent.
All that horror continued to take place while we stayed in the dark until the shocking and conscience hurting pictures came out to the open. In the pictures we could see rescue workers with charred bodies hanged and then burned by the Buddhists falling on their heads. We could also see images of children mass killed in an inhumane manner.
The mass exodus of the Rohingya has been described by the UN as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis" and "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
(Photo: Deutsche Welle)
Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has described the humanitarian crisis affecting Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims as unprecedented and said the world was failing in its response.
Yet, it seems that the United Nations backs the genocide of the Rohingya by any means. The British newspaper The Guardian said in its October 2017 issue that the UN food aid agency withdrew a critical report revealing desperate hunger among the persecuted Rohingya population after the Myanmar government demanded it be confiscated.
The July assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that more than 80,000 children under the age of five living in majority-Muslim areas were “wasting” — a potentially fatal condition of rapid weight loss.
The six-page document, which was revealed at the time, has since been replaced with a statement saying that Myanmar and WFP were “collaborating on a revised version”.
That process would involve “representatives from various ministries, and will respond to the need for a common approach” that was in line with “WFP’s future cooperation with the government”.
The report should not be cited in any way, the statement added!
The newspaper went on to say “the revelation that the report was spiked will add to a series of recent criticisms that the UN did not push the government hard enough for the rights of 1.1 million Rohingya in Myanmar or sound the alarm on their spiraling oppression.”
The WFP country office had also been prioritizing its relationship with the government above humanitarian needs.
As Muslims, what did we do to counter these beastly massacres? Where are our Islamic religious and humanitarian agencies and where is the international conscience that reacts when a cat or dog feels a slight rise in its body’s temperature?
It is true that statements had been issued here and there such as the one by the League of Muslim Scholars that urged the Myanmar Muslims to be patient, reminding them that suffering is in the very nature of life; which is sure to be followed by victory. It is my conviction that it is us who should be reminded not the Rohingya. It is us who should remember that the Nation of Islam is one body and that is how it should always be, a one body in which when a single limb suffers the entire body is destined to suffer as Prophet Mohamed, Peace Be Upon Him, said. It is us who should remember to rush to the help of those in need, in particular these poor people who have no way out of this massacre and even when they reach the coasts of Bangladesh in their small boats they are arrested under the claim that they are not registered refugees with the UN and that Bangladesh cannot accommodate more than 30 thousand refugees.
Our moves towards Myanmar are shy and incommensurate with the volume of the calamity that befell the Rohingya. Some groups on Facebook call for helping the Rohinga and Arab and Muslim committees say the same. Some pictures are published urging for the rescue of what has remained of these people in Myanmar, as if we are not able to move alone and cannot exercise political and diplomatic pressure without the help of the ‘decent’ American ally’. Even our consciences would not move until after the consciences of the West move.
Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar security forces of a systematic campaign of sex crimes, including the raping of women and girls from the Rohingya Muslims in the country’s Rakhine State.
"Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military's campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya," said Skye Wheeler, author of the report.
The report by the New York-based rights group comes just days after Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, said sexual violence was "being commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Myanmar”.
All of this has happened when a total of 1.62 billion Muslims around the World are unable to rescue the defenseless Rohingya who seem to have been forgotten by the Muslims of the World. We seem to have nothing other than crying and trying to send aid.
The Muslim World has the unswerving obligation to rush to the rescue of the Rohingya Moslems. It is a Sharia’a duty to do so because the Rohingya are part of the Nation of Islam and the Nation of Islam is one fold. It is written in the Koran that: Moslems are Brothers (Verse 10, Sourat Alhujrat).
"The Muslim World can do quite a lot and has a number of cards in hand to prevent this crime against humanity from reaching its extremes" said Dr. Khalid Fathi, Professor of Medicine, Rabat University, in Morocco, in a report in which he maintains that the persecution perpetrated against the Rohingya can dwarf what happens in any of the horror cinema films.
“We can convene a conference of the Muslim World for the sole purpose of saving the Rohingya ethnicity. This could take the Rohingya cause out of its regional course and turn it into an international cause. We can pressure the United Nations Security Council to hold a meeting about the Rohingya Muslims and we can push for the withdrawal of the Nobel Peace Prize from Myanmar Leader Aung San Suu Kyi who no longer deserves it. International sanctions can be levied against this rogue state, Myanmar. Moslem states can withdraw their ambassadors from Myanmar in one go and can impose an economic embargo against it. Muslims can also support Bangladesh with money, food and medicine to help it grant temporary asylum to the fleeing Rohingyas. We can open up the Muslim and Arab universities for Rohinya youths to arm them with knowledge. The Arab and Muslim media and civil society should mobilize as one force in solidarity with the Rohingya people.”
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