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01 August 2012 By Saeed Qureshi Will the conscience of the
international community awaken at the brutal ethnic
cleansing of the Muslim minority population in Burma
or Myanmar? The Buddhist monks and the newly inducted
democratic government seem to be poised against a
small-sized Muslim population and have embarked upon
unleashing a reign of tyranny and specter of terror on
them in for about a year now. Following the Myanmar's President
Thein Sein's call in early June this year that the
Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and
sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations, 11
innocent Muslims were killed by the Burmese Army and
the Buddhist mobs after disembarking them from a bus.
Retaliating to the protests by
the Burmese Muslims for this gruesome slaughter, the
army and the Buddhists killed 50 more Muslims.
In the sectarian violence between
Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists, in Burma's western State,
thousands of Muslims' homes have been burnt.
An estimated 90,000 Muslims have been uprooted.
The Muslim population in Burma is
estimated to be 4 per cent of the entire population of
around 60 million. It comes to roughly 2.4 million.
These Muslims have been living in Burma for ages. They
look like Burmese in features and speak the same
language. Briefly they are native Burmese except that
they profess a different faith in a country whose
predominant population believes in Buddhism The state
sponsored carnage of the tiny Muslim minority, is
hurling up a colossal humanitarian disaster. While Buddhists preach peace,
tolerance and compassion, in the case of Muslims there
seems to be an unholy alliance between the tyrannical
Burmese army and the Buddhists monks for massacring
the defenseless and helpless Muslims. It is suspected
that the Burma's large and much feared military
intelligence service, the ‘Directorate of Defense
Security Intelligence' may have agents planted within
the monk-hood. Sadly, there is no let up in
terrorizing and killing the hapless Muslim community
by the hostile Burmese police and government. Those
Muslims, who were pushed or fled on their own towards
the neighboring Bangladesh, were refused entry. They
were returned by the BD authorities back to Burma. The
international humanitarian organizations such as UNHCR
and the Islamic countries have not even mutely
protested or taken up this most heart-wrenching human
crisis at any forum.
One is reminded of the East Timor
ethnic crisis when the Indonesian Islamic regime was
accused of maltreating and suppressing the Christian
population there. The entire Christian world with
Australia in the lead, under the aegis of the United
Nations truncated Indonesia. On May 20, 2002, East
Timor separated from Indonesia and became an
independent Christian state.
Likewise the western countries
and particularly the United States pressurized and
isolated president Omar al-Bashir of the Republic of
Sudan (North Sudan) to such an extent that he finally
gave in and agreed to the cessation of South Sudan as
an independent country.
South Sudan became an independent state on 9
July 2011. The population of Christians in the
south is 80 percent while that of Muslim is 18 per
cent. Understandably the division of Sudan was
maneuvered to create a separate independent state for
the Christians so as to live in peace and to save them
from the civil war. In former Yugoslavia, the NATO
saved Muslim population from a brutal spree of ethnic
cleansing by the Serbian army and that was one of the
most marked human relief and rescue by the Christian
west for the sake of the oppressed Muslims. The Bosnian Serb army committed
atrocious and most heinous genocide against the
Muslims and Bosnian Croats in 1995. Besides, a bloody
campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims was also
carried out throughout the areas controlled by
the Bosnian Serb Army during the 1992–1995 Bosnian
War. The United Nations and NATO"s role (April
1933-December 1995) in ending genocide and ethnic
cleansing of the Bosnians Muslims by the Serbian
military is a golden chapter of history. Otherwise the
Muslims would have been reduced to a tiny minority in
their own territories. Hopefully among the comity of
nations, two countries can play a vital and decisive
role in rescuing besieged and distressed Muslims of
Burma. One is Saudi Arabia that can exert her
influence and persuade other Muslim countries to
approach the United Nations for an urgent action on
the miserable plight of the Burmese Muslims and the
grave existential threat to them. Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan and other Muslim states can also approach the
Burmese regime urging it to stop the persecution and
intimidation of the Burmese Muslims that are entitled
to equal rights as citizens including that of
religious freedom under the constitution.
Secondly, it is China that is in
the strongest position to exert her clout to ask the
Burmese leaders to desist from their bestiality
against the Muslim population. If the Burmese
incumbent government continues its brutal
extermination of Muslims, then it would lose its good
image as a democratic regime established after long
spell of military dictatorship. Its decision to
release the most
prominent Burmese opposition politician, chairperson of
the National
League for Democracy (NLD)
and human rights activist San Suu Kyi after
her incarceration for 21 years, was also lauded
internationally. In
2005, the Burmese Ministry of Religious Affairs issued
a declaration concerning freedom of religion for all
religious communities.
The stated official policy of the government of Burma
is that "all ethnic, religious, and language groups in
Burma are equal". The Burmese Supreme Court observed
in a verdict that "in various parts of Burma, there
are people who, because of the origin and the isolated
way of life, are totally unlike the Burmese in
appearance or speak of events which had occurred
outside the limits of their habitation. They are
nevertheless statutory citizens under the Union (of
Burma) Citizenship Act" In
case of Burmese Muslims' nightmare, the NATO's role is
not at all needed. This grave humanitarian calamity is
in need of diplomatic efforts to prevail upon the
Burmese government to stop aggression against a
community living there for ages and is essentially
Burmese. Nor for Burmese Muslims, it is a
question of a separate independent land for them. It
is essentially to guarantee their survival, security
and equality within the Republic of the Union of
Myanmar against the burgeoning ethnic and religious
challenges to them. |
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