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Asia Times Online :: Silence as Myanmar ’genocide’ unfolds
By Nancy Hudson- Rodd – Asia Times Online
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On January 23, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar and humanitarian chiefs voiced ”deep concern” on reports of ”alarming levels of violence” against ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State. When their houses were being robbed in DuChiraDan village, Maungdaw, the Rohingya residents called for help, according to reports. The villagers fled the site when they realiz ed that the robbers included police and ethnic Rakhine extremists.
At 3am that morning, a group of militaries, other security forces, and police raided the village, blocked the entrance, and fired indiscriminately on escaping men, women, and children. At least 40 people were killed and many more injured. The remaining villagers were rounded up, put into two trucks, and carried off to an unknown location. Authorities later declared the village a ”no- entry z one”.
The UN Rapporteur demanded the government immediately investigate the reports of violence. This call was ignored, as have been all the other ”urgent” calls for action by various international groups. Instead, the Ministry of Information announced that journalists responsible for reporting the story would be held accountable for any ”unrest” in Rakhine State supposedly caused by their reports.
The government’s media mouthpiece, New Light of Myanmar, ran an article claiming false reports of violence, citing a Maungdaw policeman who denied any incidents occurred. The article concluded that ”reports of killings caused by racial and religious conflicts seemed to instigate unrest”.
Ethnic Rohingya are not recognized as one of Myanmar’s 135 ”official national races”. According to the UN, they are one of the world’s most persecuted minority groups. The UN refused a Myanmar minister’s request in 2011 to resettle to second countries all of the estimated 800,000 Rohingya now resident in Myanmar. President Thein Sein, meanwhile, refuses to amend the 1982 law which stripped all Rohingya of their citizenship. He recently asserted: ”the law is meant to protect the country and the government has no plans to revise it”. A census to be completed in 2014 has no category for the Rohingya, only Bengali, an exercise that will effectively erase the minority group’s existence from the country.
