Myanmar`s Rohingya crisis stirs regional protests
Nikkei Asian Review, Jakarta :
The spiraling humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State is prompting anger among Muslims across Asia. Last week, thousands of protestors in several regional capitals slammed Myanmar’s treatment of its Muslim Rohingya minority-even going as far as labelling the country’s de facto leader, a former political prisoner and now State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, as a “butcher” over the military’s brutal crackdown in Muslim-dominated borderlands close to Bangladesh. In Indonesia, home to more Muslims than any other country, around 400 demonstrators, including members of some Islamic political parties, gathered in front of the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta on Nov. 25, shouting demands that Aung San Suu Kyi hand back the Nobel peace prize she was awarded while under house arrest by the Myanmar military in 1991. “I’m sorry Ms. Suu Kyi, we know you accept the Nobel peace prize, but where is the peace in Myanmar? There is no peace in your country for Muslims,” said rally co-ordinator Julkifli Ali.
Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya are concentrated in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, where for decades they have been denied many basic rights-including Myanmar citizenship in most cases. Despite the country’s widely watched transition to democracy and the November 2015 election triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s once-oppressed National League for Democracy, the plight of the Rohingya has not improved. Rather it has taken a turn for the worse since Oct. 9, when more than 250 Rohingya militants killed nine Myanmar policemen in raids on border posts along Myanmar’s frontier with Bangladesh.
That incident, in which the attackers made off with weapons from the border posts, has prompted scorched earth reprisals from the army around the far northern border town of Maungdaw, an area heavily populated by Rohingya.
More than 100 people have been killed since then, mainly “suspected attackers,” according to military estimates, although human rights groups say the real death toll is much higher. Villages have been destroyed and more than 30,000 people have been driven from their homes during the latest turmoil.
Verifying the extent and nature of the crisis is impossible, however, as the government has curbed humanitarian assistance and blocked most media access to the conflict zone.
A United Nations official, John McKissick, told the BBC on Nov. 24 that Myanmar seemed set on ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State. “It’s very difficult for the Bangladeshi government to say the border is open because this would further encourage the government of Myanmar to continue the atrocities and push them out until they have achieved their ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority in Myanmar, ” he said.
The comments sparked a furious reaction from the Myanmar government. Zaw Htay, spokesman for the Myanmar presidential office, said McKissick “should maintain his professionalism and his ethics as a United Nations officer because his comments are just allegations.”
Myanmar’s government has vehemently denied any wrongdoing by the army, dismissing reports of abuse as “fabrication” and saying soldiers are simply defending the country from an armed insurgency.
But multiple claims from eye witnesses and human rights groups of soldiers executing male civilians and raping women have emerged, as well as satellite images showing more than 1,000 homes burnt to the ground.
