Humanitarian horror

The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims from the northern Rakhine state of Myanmar has reached a peak in the last week, with the UN estimating that more than 85,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. The persecution of the Rohingya population dates back decades. Despite living in the country for more than a century, Rohingya Muslims have never been given citizenship and are treated as interlopers by the Myanmar government. The Rohingya – originally numbering just over a million – have been systematically deported from Myanmar or hoarded into refugee camps. Those who managed to escape went to either Bangladesh or Thailand but neither country was particularly welcoming, with many of the refugees being sent back to the persecution they faced in Myanmar. The UN has now been blocked from providing any aid to the Rohingya in Myanmar and condemnations have poured in from around the world, including Pakistan.

While the condemnation is welcome, all states around the world – including ours – must also realise that it is their duty to do everything possible to help out the Rohingyas.    That means not doing anything to worsen the plight of the Rohingya or providing legitimacy to the Myanmar government, be it through economic or military cooperation which would be seen as tacit approval of what is being done to the minority community. As a population facing what some are calling genocide, the Rohingya deserve any help they can get. While the US and the European Union maintain an arms embargo on Myanmar, Israel has been supplying it with advanced weaponry. And, since Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, it makes most of the West culpable for the war crimes that are being committed against the Rohingya on a daily basis.

Expecting the authorities in Myanmar to take any positive action is hopeful in the extreme. Nobel Laureate and current leader of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent over two decades under house arrest by   the military junta in her country, has been shamefully silent on the plight of the Rohingya and denied any ethnic cleansing is taking place.  There are already calls that Suu Kyi be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize given her rather          timid – apathetic, in fact – stance on what is now becoming one of the most persecuted communities in the world. While it may be true that the security forces and private militias in Myanmar wield extensive influence, Suu Kyi’s silence has been felt more strongly mainly because of the irony of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient known for her ‘fight for freedom’ so obviously turning a blind eye to essentially a modern-day genocide.       In a letter written to her, more and more activists including other Nobel Peace Prize winners – like Malala Yousafzai – say the tragedy unfolding in Myanmar would soon assume the scale of past genocides such as those in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Malala has urged Suu Kyi to abandon her ‘shameful’ silence, saying the world is waiting for her to speak up. This is a situation that simply cannot be ignored. The suffering of the Rohingya is quite obviously acute. We are witnessing horrific state-sanctioned violence against a people take form before our eyes. The fact that a Nobel peace laureate apparently presides over it is all the more tragic. The world needs to act, and quickly, before more lives are lost.