“An Ethnic Cleansing”
It took an alarming amount of bloodshed for the world to notice the atrocities taking place in Myanmar. A nation that has spent most of its years post-independence, engrossed in never ending civil wars.
When the British rule ended in 1948, the new government said that Rohingyan Muslims living in the country were illegal immigrants and so, could not be part of the new state. Almost thirty years later, the citizenship law put an end to the argument completely by deeming the Rohingyans aliens in a country they once called home. Labelled outsiders with no real identity in their own country, the Muslims continued to live in the Rakhine province near the border in a state of squalor and desolation.
What’s got the entire world paying attention to the crisis now is the military’s attempt at practically wiping out the Rohingyan Muslims entirely. The violence reached a new high when a group of Rohingyan insurgents attacked several police posts and an army camp this August, killing twelve people.
This act that set the massacre in motion and drastically fueled the outrage and barbaric violence. The army has set itself on a mission that aims to drive out the entire Muslim population out of the country through unthinkable acts of brutality.
The Rohingya crisis is being called “A textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” by the United Nations. The reason it seems like nothing has been done to prevent such violence is because a Nation has the right to self-determination. Meaning a nation has the right to define what a nation is along with who belongs and who can be labelled an “outsider.” A definition which too often drives people to kill those who they think do not fit their definition of those who belong.
It is heart breaking to hear that state officials are denying the brutality and cruelty of the situation. The official spokesperson of the Rakhine State government stated “How can it be ethnic cleansing? They are not an ethnic group” on May 15, 2013. The head of armed forces posted online recently, denying the existence of an ethnic group in the country, implying that the Rohingyans technically “did not exist”. He openly disregarded the existence of 1 million people living in the country and called the violence an, “an organized attempt of extremist Bengalis in Rakhine State.”
This “organized” attempt consisted driving 400,000 Muslims across the border to Bangladesh and the torching of villages by soldiers who have raped women, decapitated children and set whole villages on fire. Families now fleeing for their lives are also not safe due to the planting of landmines in their path.
If the Muslims are successfully driven out by these horrific attempts as the rest of the world watches through their screens, these people shall continue to suffer between the No Man’s Land that separates Bangladesh from Myanmar with no signs of hope.
FILE – In this June 13, 2012 file photo, a Rohingya Muslim man who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, cries as he pleads from a boat after he and others were intercepted by Bangladeshi border authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh. She is known as the voice of Myanmar’s downtrodden but there is one oppressed group that Aung San Suu Kyi does not want to discuss. For weeks, Suu Kyi has dodged questions on the plight of a Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, prompting rare criticism of the woman whose struggle for democracy and human rights in Myanmar have earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, and adoration worldwide. (AP Photo/Anurup Titu, File)