THERE are people for whom things always get better and there are those for whom things only get worse. Rohingya, a group of about a million Muslims living in Myanmar, belong in the second category. This despite the concern expressed over their plight by US President Barack Obama and former UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon, among others.
Rohingyas form nearly two percent of Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist population but are excluded from the official list of ethnic minorities and remain without citizenship — denied freedom of movement, access to education and the ownership of property. They are even denied their identity. Myanmar authorities want the group labeled “Bengalis” so they can cast them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
Aung San Suu Kyi says her government will not recognize the term Rohingya. She went to the extent of advising the US ambassador to her country to refrain from using the term. This, in fact, gives you an idea of the situation in which this minority, perhaps the most persecuted in the world, finds itself in. Everybody thought that once Suu Kyi came to power,
Rohingyas’ plight would improve. Instead, their living conditions have only worsened after she won a landslide victory in a free vote in November 2015, ending nearly 50 years of military rule.
Suu Kyi continues to be nearly silent even after dozens of Rohingyas have been killed since early October. If earlier the violence was by driven Buddhist mobs, this time the perpetrators were the army that launched a crackdown after a Rohingya attack killed nine police officers. Instead of taking action against those responsible, the army seems to have used this attack as a pretext to uproot tens of thousands of impoverished civilians. In the resulting crackdown, over 100 people have reportedly been killed,
hundreds detained by the military, and at least 30,000 have fled for their lives. Residents and rights groups say that soldiers have raped Rohingya women, burned houses and killed civilians during the military operation. Human rights groups speak of the use of helicopter gunships against civilians. Visuals captured by some rights groups over four days in November show the burning of entire villages in Rakhine state where almost all Rohingyas live and destruction by fire of more than 1,250 buildings. On Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya could be tantamount to crimes against humanity, reiterating the findings of a June report. Tyler Giannini, a professor at Harvard Law School and a co-director of its International Human Rights Clinic, said there is enough evidence to warrant an independent commission similar to one conducted in the Darfur region of Sudan under the auspices of the United Nations in 2004. That inquiry found the Sudanese military had committed war crimes and referred the matter to the International Criminal Court.
To the shock of the international community, Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has chosen not to visit the area, close to the border with Bangladesh, which has been sealed under a military directive designed to keep out foreign aid workers and journalists. So far, her government has declined requests to appoint an independent inquiry into the military’s abuses. “Show me a country without human rights issues,” Suu Kyi asked defiantly at a news conference on Oct. 12. A few weeks later, during a visit to Tokyo, she showed she was not averse to trafficking in false equivalence. Suu Kyi said, “We have been very careful not to blame anyone until we have complete evidence about who has been responsible.” If every country in the world has “human rights issues” why did she suffer 15 years of house arrest campaigning against the military junta? Why does she keep on expressing her gratitude to the United States for enacting sanctions that applied pressure on the military rulers to restore human rights?
