Let me be frank: it shouldn’t take a cattle prod to get socialists to post something in solidarity with the Rohingya. What kind of socialism is that? The white kind? The Rohingya genocide is politically monumental & if you let it transpire without a peep or nod to solidarity, I don’t give a damn what your attitude is toward Marx & Engels or your internecine squabbles & pissing contests. I’ll make you disappear & friend those who do give a damn.
Daily Archives: September 6, 2017
Kashmiri activists & their supporters are often censored on FB. Some lose accounts for a period, others permanently. Twitter was a free zone & if the internet wasn’t shut down in Kashmir by the Indian government it was an invaluable source of information. Now this outrage. Anyone have any ideas for how to protest it?
Media is reporting that 126,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh in the past 13 days. That’s staggering. If they were white would the response be more thunderous? That’s not guilt-baiting but a serious question.
An appeal from Imran Mohammed, a Rohingya refugee & human rights activist:
The legend of Aung San Suu Kyi
A lot of people are circulating an article by George Monbiot from the Guardian-UK titled “Take away Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize. She no longer deserves it.” The good news is that a major publication is writing about her complicity with the military junta. The bad news is Monbiot’s schoolboy credulity & lack of investigative skills. I’ve been studying & writing about the Rohingya struggle against genocide since the 2012 military siege against them. At the very same time that thousands of Rohingya were fleeing for their lives, she was picking up her Nobel Peace Prize & going to several other countries to round up more humanitarian awards without uttering a peep in defense of the Rohingya. That glaring contradiction apparently didn’t strike Monbiot but it should have, as it certainly did me since I’m not given to credulity in politics. I have many posts & articles since that time about her associations with the junta.
This is a two-part article I wrote about Suu Kyi for Pakistan Today last March. Pardon me for tooting my own horn, but it is a much more carefully researched & knowledgeable article than Monbiot wrote. His is more the triumph of facile over fact–many of which he gets entirely wrong.
PS: For the record, since Kissinger & several other war criminals have been recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, there’s no reason to take it from her; she more than deserves it.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/03/the-legend-of-aung-san-suu-kyi/
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/17/the-legend-of-aung-san-suu-kyi-part-2/
By Malak Mattar from Gaza: shades of Picasso without the misogyny or plagiarism. Marvelous.
Assadists & Burmese junta agree that Rohingya insurgents are Saudi-backed
The Burmese junta is hyping up the claim that it’s fighting Muslim jihadists trying to form an Islamic state. This is echoed in the libertarian cesspool called Global Research which published an article today titled “Myanmar: The Rohingya, Saudi Backed ISIS Militants, Aung San Suu Kyi is a US Proxy.” It’s a masterpiece of political sewage which tries to express sympathy (not solidarity) with the Rohingya while agreeing with the junta that the insurgents are Saudi-backed jihadis.
If you want to unravel how they made such a hell of a mess out of understanding Syria, take a look at how Assadists are evolving a line on the genocide against the Rohingya people. It combines the kind of fabrications, conspiracies, libertarian & Stalinist horse manure honed in their apologetics for Assad’s dictatorship.
(Photo of Rohingya refugees from Rohingya Vision)
Burmese general defends scorched earth genocide
Last Friday, General Min Aung Hlaing, the current commander-in-chief of the Burmese armed forces, defended his scorched earth genocide of clearing & torching Rohingya villages. Human Rights Watch has satellite images showing 17 separate Rohingya villages burned to the ground; in one village alone over 700 buildings were torched. Witnesses report the beheading of children, villagers hacked to death & burned alive.
The general said the military won’t be easing off its campaign against the Rohingya because it was “unfinished business” dating back to World War II. He referred to conflict in Arakan in 1942 between the Rohingya who sided with retreating British forces & Buddhists who were allies of the Japanese. Lying through his ass, he claimed tens of thousands died “in a failed attempt to create a Rohingya state.” In fact, it was a pogrom against the Rohingya.
This man named Nurul Huq survived a massacre in the village of Tolatuli but lost seven daughters & witnessed an entire village put to death by hacking, shooting, & burning. This is genocide & has absolutely nothing to do with ARSA insurgents, a small band armed only with knives & spears, if they even exist.
Stop the genocide of the Rohingya people. Full solidarity with their struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.
(Photo from Shafiur Rahman on Twitter)
Socialists on the vanguard edge of extinction
A lot of people who call themselves socialists are vilifying the Rohingya as jihadi terrorists; a lot are going on their merry way posting about pissing contests on the left or historical & academic disputes, as if a genocide wasn’t happening. You want to know what’s wrong with the “left”? Like Elvis, it’s left the building. There won’t be any encores. May that “left” Rest In Peace. Or rot in hell. Whichever comes first. Amen.
Buddhist nationalists march against Rohingya
This is what the KKK, English Defence League, or ISIS would look like in Burma, wrapped in the garb of Buddhist monks. Last Sunday they marched behind their leader Ashin Wirathu (who runs a “monastery” of 2,500 of these guys), called by Time magazine “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in 2013. But of course the face of Buddhist terror is now Aung San Suu Kyi who fronts for the Burmese generals in their genocide against Rohingya Muslims.
The rabidity of Wirathu’s hatred for Muslims is matched by supremacist, nationalist, & fascist forces worldwide–of the kind we see unleashed in Arakan state against the Rohingya & in Syria against the revolution. Dr. Maung Zarni, the Burmese Buddhist dissident in exile, called Wirathu a “genocidal demagogue” unleashed by the Burmese generals. As a Buddhist, he said “Stop calling him a “monk.”
There’s no reason to root around in the teachings of Buddhism, including in Theravāda, the current of Buddhism Wirathu follows, to find the basis of his nationalism–anymore than one can find the roots of ISIS in the Quran or of the KKK in the Bible. These are reactionary, counter-revolutionary political currents that use religion to justify their hatred. The hatred for Muslims that mobilizes these “monks” out of meditation to march down the street chanting hate mantras against the Rohingya is rooted in ethnic conflict in Burma where the Bamar (Burmese) are the dominant group. It is a hatred orchestrated, incited, & unleashed by the generals as Dr. Zarni said.
The way to stop these guys is not to mobilize vigilantes with brickbats to punch-a-fascist-in-the-face but to collaborate with Rohingya activists in building a worldwide solidarity movement to stand against & back down supremacist, nationalist, & fascist forces. They’re thugs & cowards at heart hiding behind state power. Building such a movement is not a pipe dream but a possibility.
Stop the genocide against the Rohingya people. Full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.
(Photo from AFP)