Alwaght- The blazes of hate-fuelled discrimination have long surrounded the Rohingya people whose lives are constantly at threat and whose rights are up in flames under the Myanmar government. However, the international community’s inaction toward this human rights cause has failed to extinguish the conflagrations of this government-sanction persecution of a Muslim minority group.
Military Operation
Recently, a video filmed by a policeman carelessly smoking a cigarette was uploaded on YouTube by a user called Rohingya Blogger. The video shows police officers brutally hitting two male villagers belonging to the Rohingya ethnic group. While Myanmar said it will launch an investigation into the incident, it is highly unlikely that the perpetrators will be punished considering the government’s own partaking in the persecution of the Rohingyas.
The video was allegedly shot in Rakhine state where government forces are conducting a military operation and blocked access for aid workers and journalists.
This comes as the spilling of blood continues in the northern Rakhine state where the operation forced up to 50,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch
On 21 December, 2016, Human Rights Watch published a report saying the Burmese military had conducted a campaign of arson, killings, and rape against ethnic Rohingya that has threatened the lives of thousands more.
The report cited accounts of refugees who had fled the violence to Bangladesh. They told HRW that Burmese security forces have retaliated to the 9 October attacks by Rohingyas on government border guard posts in northern Rakhine State. However, the reprisal has been extraneous with police “inflicting horrific abuses on the Rohingya population.” These abuses include looting and burning homes, killing villagers, including entire families, and raping women and girls.
“The Burmese government says its crackdown is in response to a security threat, but what security advantage could possibly be gained by raping and killing women and children?” said Brad Adams, Asia director of HRW.
“Kasim,” 26, described the military’s conduct in his home town. “The military came into the village and shot indiscriminately whomever they found. Elderly and children were shot dead…. Many people were killed,” he told HRW.
Another resident of the same village, “Jamal,” 24, watched soldiers slaughter a 55-year-old man: “I saw that he was arrested by four soldiers. Then I saw him lying on the ground. After that, I saw them slaughter him with a knife that was about one-and-half feet long.”
A third refugee, Jawad, testified that soldiers were shooting indiscriminately in his village where his brother and two children were killed and tossed into fire. Crops were also burned.
Calls for Action
The rights group called on the government in Myanmar to allow humanitarian access to all of northern Rakhine State so that people would receive food, shelter, healthcare, and other necessities. It also implored the international community to take action.
“Governments with influence in Burma should press the military and civilian authorities to urgently end abuses and grant access,” the report urged.
While there have been calls for action, definite action has been scarce. Despite the maltreatment of Rohingyas, the Western world did not haste to impose sanctions or carry out a military intervention.
In December, more than a dozen Nobel laureates condemned Aung San Suu Kyi over the crackdown, “warning of a tragedy that amounted to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
Earlier last month, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said: “The repeated dismissal of the claims of serious human rights violations as fabrications, coupled with the failure to allow our independent monitors access to the worst affected areas in northern Rakhine, is highly insulting to the victims and an abdication of the Government’s obligations under international human rights law.”
Such pleas have been largely ignored by the international community, leaving the Rohingyas to struggle for their survival.
The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim group in Southeast Asian nation. They make up only one million of Myanmar's 50 million population. They mostly reside in Rakhine, one of the poorest states in the majority Buddhist country. Up to 140,000 Muslims are forced to live in camps which they are not allowed to leave without government permission. They are also denied citizenship, which basically makes them stateless. Under the persecution of nationalist Buddhists and the Myanmar government, their voices are unheard.
