World View: Genocide of Rohingyas in Myanmar Appears Almost Complete

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
John J. Xenakis

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

  • Genocide of Rohingyas in Burma (Myanmar) appears almost complete
  • Syria, Cameroon, Sudan Darfur genocides follow the same pattern

Genocide of Rohingyas in Burma (Myanmar) appears to be almost complete

6,000 acres of Bangladesh land, valued at $86.67 million, have been deforested to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. (United News of Bangladesh)
6,000 acres of Bangladesh land, valued at $86.67 million, have been deforested to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. (United News of Bangladesh)

If a government wants to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing against an ethnic or religious population, then the old ways that our grandfathers’ generations used are no longer practical. Sending people to concentration camps and setting up an elaborate extermination system is way too expensive these days. And starving an entire population, as Stalin did to the Ukrainians in the 1930s and Mao did to the Chinese in the Great Leap Forward, could not be kept hidden from the global media as it was in those days.

Today’s generations of genocidal leaders have new, modern ways for a government to commit genocide now, and we have seen them practiced in Syria, Chechnya, Cameroon, and elsewhere. The basic technique is to make up some excuse to selectively target members of the group to be exterminated with bombs, missiles, jailings, rape, torture, and slaughter, saying that the people being targeted are ordinary criminals. Then when activists in the target group do something in retaliation, the government can declare the entire target ethnic group to be terrorists, including women and children, and use massive force to kill as many of them as possible, and force the rest to flee to other countries.

These new techniques appear to be spectacularly successful in Myanmar (Burma).

Since 2011, Burma’s mostly Buddhist security forces have been committing mass atrocities on mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, in what the United Nations says is “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” and which some Western governments are calling genocide. The atrocities by Buddhist security forces include gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings, and the razing of entire villages in a scorched earth campaign.

In August of last year, the Buddhist security forces got the excuse that they wanted, when a group of activists calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) armed with machetes killed several Burmese security forces in attacks against 30 Burmese police outputs. Using this attack as an excuse, the Burmese army began conducting massive slaughter and atrocities against the Rohingyas, causing hundreds of thousands to flee across the border into Bangladesh.

Today, there are about 700,000 Rohingyas living in refugee camps in Bangladesh: the world’s largest population of stateless people, not citizens of Burma, not citizens of Bangladesh.

The Buddhist army in Burma burned down Rohingya villages as part of the atrocities and, after the population left, the army bulldozed the villages. This was a purposeful act to make it impossible for the Rohingyas to return. Burmese authorities then claimed that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, or even bulldozed them.

In September of last year, BBC reporter Jonathan Head was on a trip through Rakhine state sponsored by Burma’s government. The reporters were closely monitored by Burmese minders, but he happened to see smoke rising through the trees and was able to escape his minder and arrive at the village. He interviewed the Buddhists who were burning down the village, who said that they were helped by the Burmese police. He was able to see one house after another go up in flames, as the Buddhists burned them down.

It was really a pathetic sight. And yet we hear from Burmese officials that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, and mainstream media dutifully report this as if it were some kind of reality.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel prize winner, has played an important role. She sweetly tells reporters, “Oh, it’s not so bad” or “No that’s wrong, it isn’t ethnic cleansing,” and so Aung San Suu Kyi is part of the genocide farce. She previously spent several decades under arrest by the army, but today it seems that the reason they let her go is because she promised to support the genocide.

Bangladesh and the international community are demanding that the Rohingyas be permitted to return to their homes in Burma. But that is impossible since the homes have been burned down and bulldozed.

Human Rights Watch has been interviewing Rohingyas who are newly arrived in Bangladesh. They report that the Buddhist security forces in Burma are still raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing Rohingyas.

The Burmese genocide and ethnic cleansing hashaveen wildly successful. They “cleansed” the area of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, who will no longer be around to ignore them. It is the modern way of doing things, and the results speak for themselves. Reuters and United News of Bangladesh and Dhaka Tribune and Economist

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Syria, Cameroon, Sudan Darfur genocides follow the same pattern

Over the past few years, we have reported Generational Dynamics analyses of countries following exactly the same kind of pattern. The government targets an ethnic or religious population with rape, torture, jailings or other violence to provoke some kind of violent reponse, even an extremely minor one. Once that happens, the government declares the entire population to be terrorists and launches full scale genocide and ethnic cleansing.

After peaceful protests began in Syria in 2011, the country’s president Bashar al-Assad launched air attacks on women and children in schools and markets. Once there was a violent reaction, al-Assad could do what he wanted. He began by massacring thousands of innocent women and children in a Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia in August 2011. He used missiles and barrel bombs, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas, to kill his hated Sunni enemies and to destroy their homes, markets, hospitals, and schools. In 2015, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin joined in with his “Grozny strategy,” where warplanes attack hospitals, schools, and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they are out in the open. Between the two of them, al-Assad and Putin have destroyed and flattened villages and cities and have forced millions of innocent Syrian civilians to flee the violence into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Europe. There are six million internally displaced refugees in Syria and five million that have fled to other countries, with 3.5 million in Turkey, almost one million in Lebanon, another million in Iraq and Jordan, and over a million in Europe.

Then, to complete the ethnic cleansing, al-Assad in April passed “Law #10,” which requires anyone wishing to return to Syria to provide paperwork immediately proving ownership of his or her property. The obvious intent is to make it impossible for these millions of people to return to their homes.

In Cameroon, the Francophone (French-speaking) government has used extremely repressive measures to marginalize the Anglophone (English-speaking) population in the region known as the Southern Cameroons. These government atrocities began in November 2016 when the Francophone (French-speaking) Cameroon government security forces began beating and killing peaceful anti-government demonstrators in the Southern Cameroons. The demonstrators were protesting systematic bias, discrimination, and marginalization towards Anglophones by the Francophone government.

The government got what it wanted in November 2016 when Anglophone Cameroonians began peaceful protests. The Francophone security forces began violently attacking Anglophone protesters. In September of last year, activist separatists began using small bombs to target local security forces.

The government announced that “President Paul Biya has declared war on these terrorists who seek secession.” In the increasingly violent Francophone government crackdown that followed, hundreds of people were arrested and helicopter gunships were used to fire on innocent civilians and kill them. At least 5,000 people have fled across the border to neighboring Nigeria to escape the violence.

In 2006, I wrote a generational analysis of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, following the statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that the Darfur genocide was caused by global warming and therefore by America and Europe.

That fatuous reasoning led me to write an extensive generational analysis of what happened in Darfur, starting in the 1970s and continuing forward. That analysis is still correct, but I now realize that a part of it is in exactly the same pattern we have been talking about in Burma, Syria, and Cameroon.

In April 2002, a Darfurian farmer complained to the local authorities that they were being harassed by a local herder militia group. Instead of listening, the farmers were jailed. This had the effect desired by Sudan’s government. The farmers were infuriated, activists attacked a police station. The response from Sudan’s government was to unleash the Janjaweed militias for a full scale genocide of the Darfurians.

Related Articles

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Burma, Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, Rohingyas, Rakhine State, Bangladesh, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Sarin gas, chlorine gas, Russia, Cameroon, Francophone, Anglophone, Southern Cameroons, Paul Biya, Sudan, Darfur, Ban Ki-Moon, Janjaweed Militias
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