Hopefully, Trump’s secret service detail are instructed not to let him near the nuclear code. He’s so demented even his Supreme Court nominee is freaked by his conduct.

Reuters reports there was a closed door meeting in Dhaka last Sunday of diplomats, government officials & international agencies to discuss relocating Rohingya refugees to an uninhabitable island in the Bay of Bengal.

Apparently there was some reference to the UN report last week accusing the Myanmar government of a “calculated policy of terror” against Rohingya involving extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearance, gang rape & other sexual violence (including of small children), arbitrary arrests, & deportation.

Put aside for a moment that Bangladesh which is proposing to send thousands of traumatized refugees to an uninhabitable island & that is forcing refugees back to a killing field is in no position to act morally superior to Myanmar’s butchers. A political advisor to the Bangladesh Prime Minister said: “When Bangladesh cited the horrific acts of Myanmar’s law enforcing agencies, the Myanmar representative did not agree with this & was in complete denial.”

The advisor’s use of the psychiatry term”denial” is quite revealing, if not altogether inappropriate. In psychiatry, denial is a defense mechanism whereby unpleasant realities are kept out of conscious awareness to prevent anxiety reactions. The guy sitting there for the Myanmar junta & Suu Kyi may have been disconcerted or felt he was in an awkward spot but if you’re willing to represent a junta conducting genocide, chances are your mind has found comfort in nationalist rationalizations & racism & anxiety reactions are no part of that. Exactly as Suu Kyi has & also as Assad propagandists.

Imagine that children have to flee & stand against genocide rather than be playing ball in schoolyards.

A Bangladeshi guy named Hamidul Haque Chowdhury, associated with the Awami League, the current governing party, said: “Rohingya are the main reason for all the troubles throughout the country, including Cox’s Bazar. They have been associated with criminal offenses such as killing, mugging, larceny & terrorism.”

That echoes Trump’s racist nonsense about Mexican immigrants being all rapists & criminals. Several studies going back decades show the crime rate among Mexican immigrants isn’t even close to that of native-born US citizens. The evidence in Bangladesh is also overwhelming of criminality toward Rohingya, including kidnapping & human trafficking, with no evidence & very little likelihood that traumatized refugees are engaged in crime sprees.

Photo is Rohingya kids learning how to read the Quran at
Kutupalang Unregistered Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

(Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

The Dhaka Tribune, a newspaper owned by a politician in the Awami League (Bangladesh’s current governing party) published an article about the reaction of Rohingya refugee camp leaders to the government’s proposed forced relocation of Rohingya to the uninhabitable island of Thengar Char. Abu Siddique, head of the Kutupalong refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, said “We would rather drown in the Naf River than move to Thengar Char.”

Since October 9th, when the military assault on Rohingya began, nearly 70,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, increasing the Rohingya refugee population to between 300,000-500,000 living in makeshift camps & already suffering severe malnutrition & poverty. Most live in unregistered camps which means the UNHCR provides no services. Most are prevented from registering by the Bangladesh government which does not want them to take up residence.

The new wave of refugees prompted the Bangladesh government to resurrect an old discredited plan & again threaten to move thousands of Rohingya to Thengar Char to wait out deportation back to Myanmar. Though the proposal is clearly deranged, government ministers insist they are going to carry out the plan, are seeking UN funding to implement it, & will build necessary infrastructures like roads & shelter to make it possible.

One official said the relocation would take place only after the infrastructure projects are completed. Reuters sent reporters to check out construction on Thengar Char & said as of a few days ago there was no sign of activity. It’s unlikely the Bangladesh government will be able to persuade construction workers to live in tents & work on a muddy island subject to flooding & cyclones, & with no cell phone reception to call home & beg to be airlifted out.

It’s more likely the Bangladesh government is pulling a fast one with this proposal–not that it shouldn’t be denounced since the level of derangement among capitalist politicians makes it a possibility. But the Thengar Char proposal might be something of a switch & bait maneuver to distract attention from the violence at the Naf river dividing Myanmar & Bangladesh. The real issue of concern is not forced relocation to that island but that Bangladesh officials have been preventing fleeing Rohingya from entering the country & are forcibly returning them to the killing fields they are fleeing. That’s what has to be exposed & denounced.

The article in Dhaka Tribune claimed Rohingya refugees are urging the Bangladesh government to pressure Myanmar to let them back. What the refugee leaders clearly said was that they would rather drown in the Naf river than be dumped like landfill on an uninhabitable island. They do not want to go back to the genocide they just fled from. They want sanctuary in Bangladesh as provided under international law to those fleeing genocide. Asylum from genocide is a right.

End the genocide in Myanmar. Full human & democratic rights for Rohingya in Myanmar & in exile.

The Amnesty report on monstrous torture & execution by hanging in Assad’s gulag is making headlines around the world. His dictatorship stands exposed.

No need for Assad supporters to go apoplectic nor for TeleSur, Counterpunch, or Global Research to write labored excoriations of Amnesty. All that is necessary to determine the integrity of the report is that Assad allow independent human rights monitors unrestricted access to his prisons. If he is falsely accused, he has a way to prove that.

We are fully assured Assad will decline Amnesty’s proposal & even more assured his propagandists & followers will find ways to justify whatever he does, including the crimes he commits in his gulag as they have done for those he commits against civilians in his killing fields.