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The Rohingya Muslims: The Victims of Pure Genocide
By Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal — Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal is an expert and a freelance columnist.
The pure genocide
“Genocide” is the cruelest and the most violent form of crime against humanity. It targets people for arson, rape, torture and total annihilation purely based on race, religion, and language. Therefore, no one needs to do any wrong for becoming the definitive target of genocide. His or her faith, race, language or religion is enough to invite the worst type of murderous thugs, robbers and rapist at the doorstep. The case of Rohingya Muslims is the perfect example of that. It is indeed a violent expression of the very fast growing metastasizing moral cancer. Now it appears that the cancer has deeply affected not only the whole civil and military institutions of Myanmar, but also the country’s Buddhist monks, the political elites, the intelligentsia, the media and a large section of the common people. Because of such a tsunami scale of the moral disease, on 30th October 2017, tens of thousands of Burmese people assembled on the streets of Yangon –the former capital of Myanmar, to show full support for the Army. It was indeed a huge homage to the Army for the execution of its policy of killing, raping and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.
When a moral cancer is not treated at its early phase, its rapid spread cause massive number of deaths, rapes and arson on earth. During Hitler era in Germany, the same moral cancer could quickly engulf the whole Europe. It led to a devastating World War. Because of it, more than 60 million people had to die. Moral disease thus proved to more catastrophic than any physical illness. In fact, no other physical illness could cause such a massive and rapid destruction of life and wealth –as done by this moral disease. In Rakhine state of Myanmar, the same moral cancer is showing its destructive and de-humanizing power. It could cause the “textbook case of ethnic cleansing” and the “fasting growing refugee” on earth. The disease could also get embedded inside the UN and its powerful stakeholders like the USA, Russia and China. The disease could kill the moral authority and the sense of perception of the leaders of the UN and the affected states. As a consequence, even the most visible symptoms of genocide in Arakan could stay unnoticed in their moral radar. This is why, a robust form of genocide could continue for decades in broad day light. These world leaders showed, how easy to condemn a dead Hitler but difficult to avoid close collaboration with the living ones. The UN and these controlling states failed similarly and terribly in the case of genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia.
In fact, the crime of genocide by the Myanmar Army and the crime of inaction by the UN and its stakeholders continued side by side for decades. The recent declaration of support by China, Russia, India and Japan for the Myanmar government has indeed added more fuel to the ongoing genocide. As a direct consequence of such patronizing, the Rohingya villages continue to burn. And the Rohingya people continue to get raped, killed or evicted from them home to Bangladesh.
The word “genocide” was coined with genos (Greek: birth, kind, race) and an English suffixcide by Raphael Lemkin in his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe” in 1944. Now, almost all the international bodies of law label a crime as “genocide” while a state and state sponsored perpetrators of the crime incorporate the “intent to destroy” a population of dissimilar race, language, religion or geographical identity in their operational objective of the crime. In fact, such an intent to destroy the Rohingya Muslims is not hidden in the ruling circle and among the nationalists Buddhists of Myanmar. It is indeed clearly visible in all the anti-Rohingya policy of persecution of the civil and military institutions of Myanmar government. Only in three weeks, ethnic cleansing of more than half a million Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine state, killing of more than three thousands and raping thousands of Rohingya women and girls are the robust expression of such a genocidal intent. Here, the selection of the target for physical extermination, rape and torture are made only on race and religion. And the scale of killing and eviction are conducted only to achieve the stipulated target of elimination of Rohigya Muslims in Myanmar. So, it needs little intelligence or research to uncover the real motive of the perpetrators. Even a Rohingya child can see that. This is why, the Rohingya men, women and children are fleeing from Myanmar amidst harsh difficulties only to save their life.
Even the Head of UN Human Rights Commission had to describe it as the test book example of ethnic cleansing. Therefore, how such a crime of ethnic cleansing can be delinked from the crime of genocide? Cleansing of a race, religion or ethnicity always operates through massive arson, gang rape, mass killing and forced eviction. In Myanmar, all these genocidal tools are being used against the Rohingya Muslims. The UN Human Rights report stated that the Rohingya Muslims are the most persecuted minority on earth. But how such a worst persecution aimed at a single ethnic and religious community could be different from a planned genocide? All the genocidal crimes in human history gave birth to wholesale migration –as happened in the case of the Red Indians, the German Jews and the Bosnian Muslims. That is happening with the fastest possible speed in the case of Rohingya Muslims, too. This is why, the UN Security General Mr Antonio Guterres had to say that they are the fastest growing refugee in human history. Only a highly motivated genocidal regime in Myanmar could carry out such a man-made disaster of an epic proportion.
