Genocide in Myanmar and no one cares. - Page 9 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14857168
Name a war in the last 100+ years that was based on religion, Suntzu. I'll wait...

The Second Anglo-Boer War? Nope.
WW1? Nope.
WW2? Nope.
Korean War? Nope.
The Suez Crisis? Nope.
The Malayan Emergency? nope.
Vietnam War? Nope.
The Falklands War? Nope.
The Gulf War? Nope.
The Bosnian War? Nope.
The Kosovo War? Nope.
The War in Afghanistan? Nope.
The Iraq War and Insurgency? Nope...
#14863139
Burmese security forces have committed widespread rape against women and girls as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine State.
(New York) – Burmese security forces have committed widespread rape against women and girls as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

November 16, 2017 Report

Sexual Violence against Rohingya Women and Girls in Burma

The 37-page report, “‘All of My Body Was Pain’: Sexual Violence Against Rohingya Women and Girls in Burma,” documents the Burmese military’s gang rape of Rohingya women and girls and further acts of violence, cruelty, and humiliation. Many women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents. Rape survivors reported days of agony walking with swollen and torn genitals while fleeing to Bangladesh.
“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The Burmese military’s barbaric acts of violence have left countless women and girls brutally harmed and traumatized.”

Since August 25, 2017, the Burmese military has committed killings, rapes, arbitrary arrests, and mass arson of homes in hundreds of predominantly Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State, forcing more than 600,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Human Rights Watch has found that these abuses amount to crimes against humanity under international law. The military operations were sparked by attacks by the armed group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 security force outposts and an army base that killed 11 Burmese security personnel.
'The Darkness of Humans’: Investigating Mass Rape in Burma
Human Rights Watch interviewed 52 Rohingya women and girls who had fled to Bangladesh, including 29 rape survivors, 3 of them girls under 18, as well as 19 representatives of humanitarian organizations, United Nations agencies, and the Bangladeshi government. The rape survivors came from 19 villages in Rakhine State.
Burmese soldiers raped women and girls both during major attacks on villages and in the weeks prior to these attacks after repeated harassment, Human Rights Watch found. In every case described to Human Rights Watch, the rapists were uniformed members of Burmese security forces, almost all military personnel. Ethnic Rakhine villagers, acting in apparent coordination with Burmese military, sexually harassed Rohingya women and girls, often in connection with looting.

Fifteen-year-old Hala Sadak, from Hathi Para village in Maungdaw Township, said soldiers had stripped her naked and then dragged her from her home to a nearby tree where, she estimates, about 10 men raped her from behind. She said, “They left me where I was…when my brother and sister came to get me, I was lying there on the ground, they thought I was dead.”

Human Rights Watch reporting on the Burmese military’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.

All but one of the rapes reported to Human Rights Watch were gang rapes. In six reported cases of “mass rape,” survivors said that soldiers gathered Rohingya women and girls into groups and then gang raped or raped them. Many of those interviewed also said that witnessing soldiers killing their family members was the most traumatic part of the attacks. They described soldiers bashing the heads of their young children against trees, throwing children and elderly parents into burning houses, and shooting their husbands.

Humanitarian organizations working with refugees in Bangladesh have reported hundreds of rape cases. These most likely only represent a small proportion of the actual number because of the significant number of reported cases of rape victims being killed and the deep stigma that makes victims reluctant to report sexual violence, especially in crowded emergency health clinics with little privacy. Two-thirds of rape survivors interviewed had not reported their rape to authorities or humanitarian organizations.

Many reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and untreated injuries, including vaginal tears and bleeding, and infections.

“One tragic dimension of this horrific crisis is that Rohingya women and girls are suffering profound physical and mental trauma without getting needed health care,” Wheeler said. “Bangladeshi authorities and aid agencies need to do more community outreach among the Rohingya to provide confidential spaces to report abuse and reduce stigma around sexual violence.”

Burmese authorities have rejected the growing documentation of sexual violence by the military. In September, the Rakhine state border security minister denied the reports. “Where is the proof?” he said. “Look at those women who are making these claims – would anyone want to rape them?”

Human Rights Watch previously documented widespread rape of women and girls during military “clearance operations” in late 2016 in northern Rakhine State, allegations the Burmese government crudely rejected as “fake rape.” In general, the government and military have failed to hold military personnel accountable for grave abuses against ethnic minority populations. Multiplebiased and poorly conducted investigations in Rakhine State largely dismissed the allegations of these abuses.

Burma’s government should end the violations against the Rohingya immediately, cooperate fully with international investigators, including the Fact-Finding Mission established by the UN Human Rights Council, and allow humanitarian aid organizations unimpeded access to Rakhine State.

Bangladesh and international donors have acted quickly to provide relief for the refugees, and are expanding assistance for rape survivors. Concerned governments should also impose travel bans and asset freezes on Burmese military officials implicated in human rights abuses; expand existing arms embargoes to include all military sales, assistance, and cooperation; and ban financial transactions with key Burmese military-owned enterprises.

The UN Security Council should impose a full arms embargo on Burma and individual sanctions against military leaders responsible for grave violations of human rights, including sexual violence. The council should also refer the situation in Rakhine State to the International Criminal Court. It should request a public briefing from the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, who just returned from the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh.

“UN bodies and member countries need to work together to press Burma to end the atrocities, ensure that those responsible are held to account, and address the massive problems facing the Rohingya, including victims of sexual violence,” Wheeler said. “The time for consequences is now, otherwise future Burmese military attacks on the Rohingya community appear inevitable.”

Selected accounts from Human Rights Watch interviews

Fatima Begum, 33, was raped one day before she fled a major attack on her village of Chut Pyin in Rathedaung Township during which dozens of people were massacred. She said: “I was held down by six men and raped by five of them. First, they [shot and] killed my brother … then they threw me to the side and one man tore my lungi [sarong], grabbed me by the mouth and held me still. He stuck a knife into my side and kept it there while the men were raping me. That was how they kept me in place. … I was trying to move and [the wound] was bleeding more. They were threatening to shoot me.”

Hosin, 30, saw one of her children killed when she fled their home village of Tin May, Buthiduang Township. She said: “I have three kids now. I had another one – Khadija – she was 5-years-old. When we were running from the village she was killed, in the attack. She was running last, less fast, trying to catch up with us. A soldier swung at her with his gun and bashed her head in, after that she fell down. We kept running.”
After her village was attacked, Mamtaz, Yunis, 33, and other women and men fled to the hills. Burmese soldiers trapped her and about 20 other women for a night and two days without food or shelter on the side of a hill. She said the soldiers raped women in front of the gathered women, or took individual women away, and then returned the women, silent and ashamed, to the group. She said, “The men in uniform, they were grabbing the women, pulling a lot of women, they pulled my clothes off and tore them off…. There were so many women … we were weeping but there was nothing we could do.”

Isharhat Islam, 40, was raped by soldiers during military operations in her village Hathi Para (Sin Thay Pyin) in October 2016 and then again during the recent military operations. She described the stigma she faces, saying, “I have had to deal with disgust, others looking away from me.”
Three of Toyuba Yahya’s six children were killed just outside her house in Hathi Para (Sin Thay Pyin) village in Maungdaw Township. Then seven men in military uniform raped her. She said that soldiers killed two of her sons, ages 2 and 3. by beating their heads against the trunk of a tree outside her home. The soldiers then killed her 5-year-old daughter. She said: “My baby … I wanted him to be alive but he slowly died afterward … My daughter, they picked her high up and then smashed her against the ground. She was killed. I do not know why they did that. [Now] I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. Instead: thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. I can’t rest. My child wants to go home. He doesn't understand that everything has been lost.”



https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/11/16/bur ... omen-girls
#14864478
If they had oil & being tightfisted with it Trump would have invaded them by now, I'm sure.

There's nothing really at stake in that region. Not anymore. The last big one was the 'Great Game' between Imperial Russia & the British Empire, with Myanmar a British 'protectorate'.

They're brown & yellow-skinned people so the imperialists have nothing to gain at the moment so it's just something to be appalled by.

There is something at stake comparably in terms of crimes in the Yemen Civil War; Britain & the USA are backing Yemen's dictator & Saudi Arabia of course......
#14865211
Possibly there's a glimmer of hope. Time will tell. To be homeless in the monsoon season must of been a nightmare.

Bangladesh has signed a deal with Myanmar to return hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled a recent army crackdown.
No details have been released of the deal, which was signed by officials in the Myanmar capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
Bangladesh said it was a "first step". Myanmar said it was ready to receive Rohingyas "as soon as possible".
Aid agencies have raised concerns about the forcible return of the Rohingyas unless their safety can be guaranteed.
The Rohingya are a stateless minority who have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, also known as Burma. More than 600,000 have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Rakhine state late in August.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Myanmar's military action against the minority Rohingya population constituted ethnic cleansing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-42094060
#14865355
anarchist23 wrote:Possibly there's a glimmer of hope.

From what I read about this agreement, it sounds more like a diplomatic gesture than a real and effective agreement to repatriate the Rohingyas.
- Myanmar insists that potential returnees prove their previous stay in Myanmar and ownership of land, if any. This will be impossible for the overwhelming majority of the refugees.
- Myanmar does not bind itself to a time table. Bangladesh wanted an completion date in two years, Myanmar refused this.
- The refugees are not willing to return if there are no guarantees of safety.
- The UN has been sidelined from this agreement.

And so on, I am not optimistic.
#14865410
redcarpet wrote:If they had oil & being tightfisted with it Trump would have invaded them by now, I'm sure.

There's nothing really at stake in that region. Not anymore. The last big one was the 'Great Game' between Imperial Russia & the British Empire, with Myanmar a British 'protectorate'.

They're brown & yellow-skinned people so the imperialists have nothing to gain at the moment so it's just something to be appalled by.

There is something at stake comparably in terms of crimes in the Yemen Civil War; Britain & the USA are backing Yemen's dictator & Saudi Arabia of course......



Myanmar has oil, gas and other resources besides.

https://qz.com/1074906/rohingya-the-oil-economics-and-land-grab-politics-behind-myanmars-refugee-crisis/


The reason the West postures rather than takes action is because they can’t take action. China and India are too powerful. They are struggling between themselves to control Myanmar. America and Europe has not the strength to do anything.

Get used to this as the West is in relative decline against Asia. Western impotency will be even more evident next decade. The West doesn’t call the shots anymore.
#14868497
redcarpet wrote:If they had oil & being tightfisted with it Trump would have invaded them by now, I'm sure.

There's nothing really at stake in that region. Not anymore. ...

Burma has always played an important role in processing opium-heroin-morphine for the CIA and the various gangsters it has associated with.

Here's a link to a nice, comprehensive overview of SE Asia's (including Burma) involvement in processing drugs and starting civil wars for the CIA and other colonial terror organizations like it:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/01 ... d-the-cia/

It's a fairly long article, but worth the read if you want to see the murky reality of drugs-and-gun-running-for-the-West has teinted SE Asia's local politics and ensured terrible media coverage.
#14897017
With Rohingya gone, Myanmar's ethnic Rakhine seek Muslim-free 'buffer zone'

Image
Koe Tan Kauk is a 'model' village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once dominated by Rohingya Muslims

Buddhist flags hang limply from bamboo poles at the entrance to Koe Tan Kauk, a "model" village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once dominated by Rohingya Muslims.

The new arrivals are moving to parts of Rakhine state mostly "cleared" of its Rohingya residents, whose villages were bulldozed and reduced to muddy stains on a landscape of lush farmland.

The Rakhine migrants, who come from the poor but relatively stable south, are -- for now -- few in number.

But they carry great expectations as the pioneers of a donor-led "Rakhinisation" plan to upend the demography of the once majority-Muslim area.

"We were really afraid of those Kalars and didn't plan to come here," Chit San Eain, a 28-year-old who has moved with her husband and toddler into a basic hut in Koe Tan Kauk tells AFP, using a pejorative term for Muslims.

"But now that they are no longer here, we have the chance to meet again with our relatives who live up here," she added, the ruins of a Rohingya settlement lying a few kilometres away.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from northern Rakhine into Bangladesh since August 25 last year by a Myanmar army offensive against Muslim militants.

Another 300,000 Rohingya were pushed out from the south and centre of Rakhine by army campaigns stretching back to the late 1970s.

The UN has branded last year's military crackdown ethnic cleansing, with a top official saying it carried all the "hallmarks of genocide."

Myanmar vigorously denies the allegations and says refugees are welcome to return.

But so far it has agreed to allow back only 374 of 8,000 refugees whose names have been put forward for the initial phase of repatriation.

Many traumatised Rohingya in Cox's Bazar camps are also refusing to be repatriated to Rakhine -- where holding camps and hostile neighbours await them.

In their absence a blizzard of development projects, government and army-sponsored or privately funded, are transforming northern Rakhine.

Taking space vacated by fleeing Rohingya is an old game in a state seen as the frontline of a Buddhist nation's fight against encroaching Islam.

"The military has been engineering the social landscape of northern Rakhine State so as to dilute the Rohingya population since the early 1990s," says Francis Wade, author of "Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of the Muslim 'Other'".

The Muslim minority are denied citizenship and labelled "Bengalis", outsiders who -- the logic runs -- have successfully been pushed back to their country of origin.

In a pattern with echoes of "the Israeli settler project in the West Bank" Buddhist communities then move in, altering the "facts on the ground" gradually rubbing out Muslim rights to the land, he added.

"I'd expect to see more Buddhists settle there over the coming years. And then we'll forget what the area once was, and that process of erasure will be complete."
Rohingya out, Rakhine in

Chit San Ean is the beneficiary of the Ancillary Committee for the Reconstruction of Rakhine National Territory in the Western Frontier (CRR), a private scheme established shortly after the refugee crisis began.

In a zone under a strict army lockdown the resettlement plan could not fly without military consent.

Funded by ethnic Rakhine donors, the CRR's ambition is to establish a "Muslim-dry" buffer zone running the nearly 100 kilometres from state capital Sittwe to Maungdaw town, according to Oo Hla Saw, a Rakhine MP who advises the committee.

"All of this area was under the influence of Muslims. After the military operations, they had to flee... so we have to establish this area with the Rakhine population," he told AFP.

The CRR will fund jobs and homes "so this little population can grow and grow," he added.

It's a trickle so far, with around 64 households -- some 250 people -- moved by the CRR, with 200 more families on a waiting list.

They are among the poorest of the poor, mostly daily wage labourers from Thandwe around 600 kilometres to the south or squatters from Sittwe.

Two village tracts, Koe Tan Kuak near Rathedaung and Inn Din near Maungdaw, have been designated for the scheme so far.

The army concedes the second site was the scene of extrajudicial killings of Rohingya captives as violence engulfed the region last August.

Koe Tan Kauk was a similarly mixed settlement of Buddhist and Muslim homes.

The CRR-sponsored hamlet promises a rudimentary existence.

There is little work, no electricity or running water but donors have gifted each family a $450 shack on stilts, made from plywood and metal sheeting.

Image
There is little work, no electricity or running water but donors have gifted each family a $450 shack on stilts, made from plywood and metal sheeting.

New residents hope to eventually own land, a prospect previously beyond their reach in Myanmar's second-poorest state.

Rakhine nationalists say the CRR is a bulwark against Islam and a means to ensure their ethnic group has a say in development projects driven by the Burmese-dominated central state, who they distrust deeply.

"Who should be given priority other than Rakhines in Rakhine State?" explained Than Tun, General Secretary of the CRR.
Cronies and soldiers

For its part, Myanmar's government has enlisted powerful businessmen to rebuild the infrastructure of the battered state.

The army is running other projects including beefing up its security apparatus -- in what appears to be a multi-pronged effort to keep out the Rohingya.

An Amnesty International report this week detailed how roads, helipads and security installations are being built, often on top of razed Rohingya settlements.

They labelled the activity a massive "land grab" that threatens to erase evidence of alleged atrocities, including at Inn Din.

Across northern Rakhine, abandoned land and rice fields have been commandeered by the army in an area with access tightly controlled to media, investigators and most aid groups.

The Rohingya lost their legal status in 1982, under a junta-era Citizenship Law. Now their ancestral lands are being stripped away.

That makes return impossible, according to lawmaker Oo Hla Saw.

"These people want to be recognised as 'Rohingya' ethnicity... to enjoy citizenship, to resettle in their native grounds," he says. "Their demands are unreasonable."

Despite their dangerous new neighbourhood, the arrivals at Koe Tan Kauk say they are there to stay.

"I will end my life here," said a 69-year-old woman called Osar. "I'm not going anywhere."

http://www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-cr ... ne-1549069

As I foresaw, the refugee Rohingyas will not go back to Myanmar any time soon.
If ever.
#14897019
Please, Please, please, we need military intervention now!

Places like Telford are in desperate need of military intervention by the Burmese Army.
#14902139
Myanmar lures Bangladesh Buddhists to take over Rohingya land: Officials

Image
Charred debris of homes and vegetation in one abandoned Rohingya village. (Photo: AFP/Joe Freeman)

DHAKA: Myanmar authorities have lured dozens of mainly Buddhist Bangladeshi tribal families to cross the border and resettle on land abandoned by fleeing Muslim Rohingya, officials said on Monday (Apr 2).

About 50 families from remote hill and forest areas on the Bangladesh side, attracted by offers of free land and food, have moved to Rakhine state in mainly Buddhist Myanmar - the scene of a brutal army crackdown which prompted hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee.

The families from the ethnic Marma and Mro tribes have left their homes in the Bandarban hill district, local councillor Muing Swi Thwee told AFP.

He said 22 families departed from their villages in the Sangu forest reserve last month.

The families, mainly Buddhist but with some Christians, were being "lured by Myanmar" to Rakhine where they were given free land, citizenship and free food for five years, Muing Swi Thwee said.

"They are going there to fill up the land vacated by the Rohingya who have left Burma (Myanmar). They are extremely poor."

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine for camps in mainly Muslim Bangladesh since Myanmar last August launched a crackdown which US and UN officials have described as ethnic cleansing.

An agreement to repatriate Rohingya has yet to see a single refugee returned. Rohingya leaders have said the refugees will not return unless they are allowed back to their villages, many of which have been torched by security forces, rather than to supposedly temporary resettlement camps.

Two government officials in the region confirmed the migration, saying up to 55 tribal families had left for Myanmar.

"They are being lured by some people in Myanmar in return for free homes, free food for five-seven years. Some families have shifted there after being attracted by these offers," Jahangir Alam, a government district administrator, told AFP.

He said some of the tribal groups have family in Rakhine and these relatives are being used to woo the Bangladeshi tribals.

"These people have religious and linguistic similarities with Myanmar. Some of their ancestors have settled there in the past," he said.

Al Kaiser, another government official, said a tribal man was killed and several family members were injured in a mine blast when they were crossing into Myanmar from the town of Ali Kadam.

Officials said they suspect political motives behind the migration.

"We think perhaps they (Myanmar) want to make some news using these people, that Buddhists are being tortured and repressed in Bangladesh and that's why they have left the country," said one official on condition of anonymity.

A Bangladeshi security officer told AFP that Myanmar had resettled thousands of Buddhists in Rakhine by using a rsettlement scheme which offers free food, homes, cows and cash.

Muing Swi Thwee said more than 100 tribal families had left his area for Myanmar in the past three years.

Observers say Myanmar authorities are carrying out methodical social engineering schemes in northern Rakhine in the absence of many of the Rohingya.

A series of development projects, either government and army-sponsored or privately funded, are transforming the area, which the military sees as the frontline of its fight against encroaching Islam.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/as ... d-10096624

As I said earlier, the Rohingyas will never be allowed back in Myanmar.
The Myanmar Government does not want them, the local Myanmar Buddhist people do not want them.
#14902224
anarchist23 wrote:Genocide in Myanmar and no one cares because the Rohingya are Muslims.


Not quite true, the U.N. cares, and has been trying to get a foot in the door for decades. Myanmar consistently refuses to allow UN officials to even enter the country. Sanctions need to be imposed.

Zam
#14902559
anarchist23 wrote:Genocide in Myanmar and no one cares because the Rohingya are Muslims.

Zamuel wrote:Not quite true, the U.N. cares, and has been trying to get a foot in the door for decades. Myanmar consistently refuses to allow UN officials to even enter the country. Sanctions need to be imposed.
Zam


When I started this thread sixteen months ago there was no real publicity of the plight of the Rohingya. Thus "No one cares."
Yes. The UN do fine work around the globe..
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