Vanessa Beeley, the Leni Riefenstahl of the Assad dictatorship, is now promoting the most detestable slanders against the Rohingya people whilst they are in the midst of a genocide. To her demented mind, Rohingya terrorists provoked the military junta who she supports into trying to exterminate the Rohingya people. What does it take to smarten up her disciples that she is a fascist?

Posting photos of grieving Rohingya refugees is not to exploit their suffering but to show how war, occupation, genocide are deeply personal, filled with tragedy & loss–not just another horror passing through a news cycle.

Little Afeefa Bebi who crossed into Bangladesh with her mom Yasmeen Ara holds her newborn brother while her mother gets examined at a community hospital in the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar.

Believe it or not, Afeefa is one of the lucky ones since she has an adult guardian to protect her from predators–unlike the hundreds of unaccompanied children refugees.

Stand with the Rohingya people against genocide & demand the refugees, especially the unaccompanied children, be provided every protection.

(Photo from ABC News)

Abul Basar who crossed into Bangladesh with his 50-year-old father Nur Ali grieves as he buries his father from fatal gunshot wounds. Hundreds of Rohingya are crossing with life-threatening injuries & infections from accidents, beatings, gun shot wounds.

Stand with the Rohingya against genocide & for full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights. Demand the immediate delivery of massive humanitarian aid to the refugees. Our deepest condolences for their losses.

(Photo from ABC News)

A young Rohingya mother Hanida Begum grieving her infant son Abdul Masood who drowned when the boat they were fleeing in capsized.

Condolences & condemnations both fail the enormity of her loss.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)

For those who think militarism can play any progressive role in human freedom: just saw a video of Indian soldiers desecrating the corpse of a Kashmiri. As we have seen videos of Israeli soldiers desecrating Palestinian bodies, Burmese soldiers mutilating Rohingya bodies, & US soldiers desecrating bodies in Iraq & Afghanistan. And still there are those who consider self-defense to be terrorism. What you call it tells others which side you are on.

The Burmese government announced today that US State Department official Patrick Murphy will be allowed to meet with officials & visit a few cities, including Sittwe, the capital of Arakan state, & he can attend Aung San Suu Kyi’s address to the nation next Tuesday but he will not be allowed to enter the Maungdaw district of Arakan at the heart of the Rohingya genocide.

Murphy is the State Department guy who said the generals should respond responsibly to the terrorist attacks that incited the military–essentially advising them to conduct genocide “in accordance with rule of law & international human rights.” Do the generals think Murphy would blow the whistle on genocide? When the US has so much invested & is in competition with China & Russia in currying favor with the junta? In a pig’s eye! Squeamish is not the character of US foreign policy when it comes to war, occupation, genocide.

Manchester, England will stand with the Rohingya at a rally this coming Sunday.

Reposting this from September 15th, 2016 whilst Kashmiris were sustaining a brutal siege by the Indian army–although the distinctions between siege & day-to-day life are not evident. It has relevance also to the genocide against the Rohingya people:

“The monstrous military siege in Kashmir has now gone on for 10 weeks. It kicks the crap out of those just following & reporting about it. I would say that it must be a ‘living hell’ for Kashmiris but the metaphor seems inadequate.

These horrors are also going on in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan & so many other places.

Humanity has the capacity to organize, mobilize, & put an end to this reign of military terror & that remains our historic mission which no generation & no battle fatigue can exempt us from.

Rebuild the international antiwar movement. Solidarity is the iron law of social transformation.”

International human rights law is a labyrinth to figure out, not enforceable, & selectively applied. It’s confusing to unravel how the International Criminal Court in the Hague would prosecute ethnic cleansing as distinct from genocide because they do make distinctions even though the human rights crimes involved are identical. Perhaps these juridical distinctions need to be rethought so they cannot be politically manipulated to avoid prosecuting what the elites call ethnic cleansing.

The UN, Human Rights Watch, & other elites are insisting on calling the slaughter of Rohingya an ethnic cleansing, which is at least a step up from calling it communal violence or Saudi-backed terrorism as so much media does. Rohingya activists & their supporters call it a genocide, a far more apt designation. These elite institutions are not going to be the political forces that will build solidarity with the Rohingya & force the military junta & Suu Kyi to stop the genocide but by equivocations they undercut & weaken solidarity & miseducate about what is happening to the Rohingya people.

This is a very strong presentation of the case for calling genocide against the Rohingya what it is. Amal de Chickera, the author, is a human rights activist & co-director of the Institute on Statelessness & Incluson.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/amal-de-chickera/when-is-genocide-genocide