World View: UN Report on Burma Shows Scale of Atrocities Against Muslim Rohingyas

Areas of Rakhine in Myanmar have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands
AFP
John J. Xenakis

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

  • Devastating UN report on Burma shows scale of ghastly atrocities
  • Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s government may have to respond to the report
  • Generational Dynamics interpretation of Burma (Myanmar) atrocities

Devastating UN report on Burma shows scale of ghastly atrocities

File photo of Rohingyas fleeing violence (Reuters)
File photo of Rohingyas fleeing violence (Reuters)

A devastating new report by the UN office of human rights shows a huge scale of ghastly atrocities committed by Buddhists targeting ethnic Rohingya Muslims.

For months, Burma (Myanmar) police and soldiers have been committing ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State by scorched earth attacks, burning down their villages, and committing massacres, rapes and other atrocities that have forced tens of thousands to flee for their lives across the border into Bangladesh.

Burma has tacitly admitted guilt by forbidding any journalists or humanitarian groups from entering Rakhine State to investigate. As we’ve reported in the past, evidence of atrocities keeps leaking out, despite desperate and laughable attempts to hide them. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented the ethnic cleansing through a series of “before and after” satellite images. Burma’s government agrees that the satellite images show that Rohingya villages are being burned down, but they make the laughable claim that the Rohingyas are burning down the villages themselves in order to embarrass the government. There have also been dozens of videos showing Burma’s police beating and raping Rohingya civilians, but Burma’s government claims that all of these videos are phony and have been fabricated.

So to get around Burma’s restrictions, the UN office of human rights conducted extensive interviews of hundreds of the tens of thousands of refugees who had been forced to flee across Burma’s border into Bangladesh, and were living in filthy refugee camps such as Cox’s Bazar. In addition, the UN team interviewed numerous representatives of UN system agencies, NGOs, health professionals and other experts.

The interviewers heard one story after another of killings, beatings, rape, sexual violence, shootings, stabbings, and wholesale destruction of home and property. 52 of the 101 women interviewed reported being raped or subjected to sexual violence. Seven of them were girls who had been gang-raped. Some of the raped girls and women were killed afterwards.

The report contains many personal stories. A woman said, “They killed the baby by stomping on it with their heavy boots. Then they burned the house.”

A 12-year-old boy said: “I was at home with my 13-year old uncle, when the army broke into the house. They beat us with sticks, metal rods and kicks. We were crying, pleading for mercy. An army officer hit me hard with a metal rod on my right arm, causing severe injury. We were dragged out of the house, which was set on fire. My uncle, who attempted to flee was caught, beaten and thrown into a burning house.” Independent (London) and UN human rights report on Burma and BBC

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Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s government may have to respond to the report

Burma’s government has refused to allow any international journalists or investigators into the region, and has used every possible disinformation technique for months to deny that the atrocities are taking place. These include the laughable technique of claiming that the Rohingyas are killing each other and burning down their own villages to embarrass the government.

However, this new report has been so devastating that Burma’s government has been forced to acknowledge it. Even so, U Zaw Htay, the spokesman for Burma’s president Htin Kyaw, said on Friday that they hadn’t seen the report, and added, “We will review the report from the UN and we will respond, either in an official statement or in an individual response (to questions).”

Later on Friday, the spokesman said, “These are extremely serious allegations, and we are deeply concerned. We will be immediately investigating these allegations through the investigation commission led by Vice-President U Myint Swe Where there is clear evidence of abuses and violations, we will take all necessary action.”

International pressure is building on Aung San Suu Kyi, who is believed to be the most powerful politician in Burma today. When she was under arrest for many years by the army, she won the Nobel Peace prize, and now she is considered a human rights heroine. But this slaughter of Muslims by Burmese Buddhists has been going on for years, and has become far worse in the last few months, and she continues to deny that there are serious crimes being committed.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said on Friday, “I did speak to Aung San Suu Kyi about an hour and a half ago. I called upon her to use every means available to exert pressure on the military and the security services to end this operation.”

We’ll have to see whether anything gets done or can get done. This is a growing problem that will destabilize the region, and lead to new hostilities, possibly triggering a major regional generational crisis war. Irrawaddy Times (Burma) and Reuters

Generational Dynamics interpretation of Burma (Myanmar) atrocities

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these atrocities are coming out of deep hatred by Buddhists of Muslims, based on numerous generational crisis wars between the two groups over the centuries.

Every time I post a story about Burma, some commenters apparently get confused and think that it is the Rohingyas that are killing, torturing and raping the Buddhists. But no, it is not. For the last few years, the Buddhists have been the perpetrators, and the Rohingya Muslims have been the victims.

In fact, as I’ve described several times in the past, the actions being taken by Buddhists against Muslims today are very similar to actions taken by Nazis against the Jews. These kinds of atrocities are standard fare for all religious and ethnic groups.

One commenter in the past pointed out that Muslims conducted atrocities against Buddhists in previous wars, decades and centuries ago. That is undoubtedly true. That is part of how the generational cycle works, with new generations in each side vowing revenge for atrocities committed against their grandfathers. Each side vividly recalls the atrocities committed by the other side, but strangely enough have no memory whatsoever of atrocities committed by their own grandfathers.

Some people believe that Buddhists are such peace-loving people that they never fight or never rape or never commit atrocities. Any ethnic or religious group that really lived that way would not survive for long, but would be exterminated by some other ethnic or religious group before long. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, all religious and ethnic groups act the same way, and in fact use religion to justify their actions.

The Buddhist xenophobic hatred of Muslims in Burma goes very deep. The root of the violence is xenophobic attacks by Buddhists led by Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu and his “969 movement,” against the Rohingya Muslims, including rapes, torture and other atrocities committed by Buddhists, targeting the Rohingyas. The Rohingyas have a darker skin than Burmese, and they speak a Bengali dialect.

What is clear is that the current situation is becoming increasingly dangerous for the entire region.

The Buddhist atrocities started to become significantly worse since October 9 of last year, when nine Myanmar border police were killed in an attack blamed on Rohingya militants. This was the first act of violence by Rohingyas in revenge.

CNN has reported on an interview with members of Harakat al-Yaqeen, or “Faith Movement,” who are claiming responsibility for the October 9 attacks, and who are the first armed insurgency to emerge from the Rohingyas. The leader Atah Ullah said in the interview:

We, the vulnerable and persecuted people, have asked the international community for protection against the atrocities by the government of Myanmar, but the international community turned its back on us. Finally, we cannot take it anymore.

This armed insurgency is only the beginning. The government of Muslim-majority Malaysia is furious, and is condemning the government of Burma, violating the regional rule of not interfering in the internal affairs of neighbors. And the situation is ripe for infiltration and recruitment by jihadists, such as al-Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). CNN and Reuters

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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Burma, Myanmar, Rohingyas, Bangladesh, Cox’s Bazar, U Zaw Htay, Htin Kyaw, U Myint Swe, Aung San Suu Kyi, Zeid Raad al-Hussein Harakat al-Yaqeen, Faith Movement, Atah Ullah, Malaysia
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