Plight of Rohingya Muslims worsening by the hour

The situation on the eastern borders of Bangladesh is tense because of the increasing violation of the rights of the Rohingya Muslims by the regime in Myanmar, which according to reports is massing troops and constructing military barracks on the lands of the displaced Muslims in violation of all international and humanitarian norms.

Now we have a Viewpoint in this regard that appeared in Iran’s English language daily Kayhan International titled “Plight of Rohingya Muslims worsening by the hour”.

The daily said: “Atrocities are increasing by the hour, and not by the day, month or a year in Arakan, which the regime in Myanmar calls Rakhine and claims suzerainty over this historical coastal strip on the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal that has been almost depopulated of its once thriving Muslim majority.

“The UN, which makes a hue and cry when US-Saudi supported cannibalistic terrorists are weeded out from Eastern Ghouta near Damascus by the Syrian army, but turns a blind eye to the catastrophe inflicted upon Yemen by the 3-year long state terrorism of the regime in Riyadh, seems to have also washed its hands off the genocide in slow motion against the Rohingya Muslims.

“Hounded out of their homes and hearths and stranded on Bangladesh borders are almost a million Muslim men, women and children, with tales of torture, gang rapes, and child-killing by the Mayanmar military, under direction of that most cruel woman, Aung San Suu Kyi – as the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei referred to her in one of his speeches.

“Yet the self-styled advocates of human rights, who cry hoarse over a few stray incidents in countries whose independent policies they do not like, prefer to be tightlipped over the ethnic cleansing of an entire Muslim nation, whose roots in Arakan go back more than a millennium when Arab traders settled in the early days of the advent of Islam.”

Kayhan wrote: “Arakan in those days, as well as in the subsequent centuries, was not a Burmese region. It was viewed as part of the extension of the northeastern parts of the Subcontinent and its Sanskrit culture that welcomed the visitors and provided fertile ground for spread of monotheism.

“As a result, a rich metropolitan culture evolved as the Persianized Turks and Moghals of the Subcontinent, intermingled with the local Muslim people of Arakan to develop an indigenous art and culture.

“It was only in the 17^th century that an assertive Buddhist kingdom of Burma began to encroach upon Arakan, whose flourishing economy was attracting settlers from the yellow ethnicities of the east.

“Interestingly, when Burma began to increase its political influence in Arakan and lay claim to the region as Rakhine, without any historical or archeological evidence, the British who had taken control of the post-Moghal Subcontinent, felt danger to their imperialist interests and launched on 5^th March 1824 the first of their three wars that would end in 1885 with annexation of the whole of Burma.

“Britain, which is no friend of the Muslims, granted independence to Burma in 1946 after ridding it of the Japanese occupation of World War 2, but – as in the case of Kashmir in 1947 and Palestine in 1948 – deliberately left Arakan to the mercy of the new Burmese government, which now took total control of Arakan and began a policy of discrimination and oppression.”

Kayhan International continued: “In short, what we are witnessing these days is the result of this historical injustice, at which the West likes to issue toothless statements without allowing the UN Security Council to take any decisive decision.

“The reason is obvious. Myanmar has rich hydrocarbon resources, which the US covets, and in view of the country’s geographical, political, trade and economic links to Southeast Asian powerhouse China, prefers to prolong the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, rather than angering the regime.

“At the same time, in order to worsen the situation of the refugees and give the regime in Myanmar the much needed pretext to justify its genocide of Muslims, the US has tasked the Wahhabi regime in Riyadh to inject Takfiri thoughts in the so-called humanitarian aid to the persecuted Rohingyas.

“Myanmar, which has lately been massing troops at the no man’s land near Bangladesh to intimidate that country against any coordinated international efforts for return of the displaced Royingyas to their homeland, wasted no time in making the next provocative move.

“Recently, it arrested former Rohingya MP, Aung Zaw Win, a major property tycoon, while he was about to board a plane at Yangon international airport for a business trip to Bangkok, accusing him of financing the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.”

As Kayhan International noted: “The Muslim tycoon’s arrest has raised eyebrows, since this former Rohingya MP, is more close to the Myanmar military than his own persecuted community whom he has pressured time and again to accept Bangla identity that would imply they are not native to Myanmar but immigrants from the Subcontinent.

“For his divisive efforts that include creating conditions for military crackdown on Rohingyas and fomenting violence in 2012 Aung Zaw Win was rewarded land in Yangon and Naypyidaw by the regime, which now wants to have the last laugh upon him for his treason to his own community, by treacherously dispensing off with a Muslim turncoat of no use any more.

“His fate should serve as a lesson for all those traitorous elements conspiring with the enemies against their own country, people, and religion, for a fistful of dollars, oblivious of the fact that they those who use them will eliminate them at the first opportunity.”

“This is the hopeless situation of the Muslims of Arakan, who in addition to the million-plus forced into Bangladesh, have settled in large numbers in Malaysia and Indonesia, braving the pirate-infested sea routes and their humiliatingly torturous consequences, while the Muslim World contents itself with mere statements of protest and the West chuckles in delight at their plight, prompting the Pope in the Vatican to visit Rohingya refugee camps to scout for converts to the catholic sect of Christianity by doling out food and clothing to a dehumanized people.”

AS/ME