Erdogan is receiving undue praise as a champion of the Rohingya people. He’s a shameless grandstander because outside of blowing smoke for media attention he has done nothing for them. In May 2015, when an estimated 25,000 Rohingya were fleeing Burma in rickety boats, they became stranded in the Andaman Sea without food or water because Thailand refused them landing & Indonesia & Malaysia allowed only a few thousand to land. Erdogan talked about sending Turkish navy ships to rescue the thousands left adrift but never gave the order. That not a single country lifted a finger to rescue them is a monstrous crime for which there needs to be an accounting someday. For Erdogan to pretend he’s above such criminality makes him not just a grandstander but a dirtball. He’s no more an advocate of human rights for the Rohingya than he is for Turks.

The BBC is concerned that fake photos claiming to be scenes of genocide in Arakan state will “enflame tension” between Buddhists & Rohingya Muslims in what the BBC considers communal violence. The BBC should be more concerned that the Burmese government has shut down Arakan tighter than a drum so that journalists & human rights monitors are unable to enter the state to document genocide.

Fake photos are a pain in the ass but the truth is nobody knows which are fake & which are real. The BBC has no forensic squad checking that stuff out. Misreporting what’s going on in Arakan as communal violence rather than genocide is a far more consequential issue than whether the photo is from this carnage or another.

Kashmir Mirage uses many of Rollie Mukherjee’s artwork for its covers & honor her contribution to Kashmiri solidarity.

A reminder for Kashmiris that Rollie Mukherjee’s art exhibit & sale begins today. Even if you can’t afford to buy a painting it will be an honor to view her work & meet her. Part of the proceeds will go to orphans & to the work of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

There can be no concessions made to the notion that what is going on in Arakan state is communal violence between Buddhists & Muslims. It is a genocide orchestrated by the Burmese military which exploits the strategy of divide & conquer & organizes & incites Buddhist nationalists to attack Rohingya.

It is an outrage that media reports atrocities have been committed by both sides. The overwhelming number of Rohingya are unarmed civilians at the mercy of a military & civilian goon squads who are torching, raping, murdering, hunting down Rohingya like animals. If Rohingya attempt to defend themselves by any means possible, that is not atrocities but self-defense.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) is not responsible for setting off the current military assault on the Rohingya people. As Dr. Maung Zarni, a Burmese Buddhist in exile, pointed out, several weeks before the current siege “the Burmese military high command was very busy, mobilizing & air-lifting hundreds of troops from Light Infantry Division 33–notorious for merciless & indiscriminate killings of civilians in any urban unrest–to Rakhine; arming & training anti-Rohingya Rakhine villagers in fire arms & fighting; blockading the predominantly Rohingya region of N. Rakhine from accessing food & jobs; & spreading fears of attacks on INGOs & UN agencies providing humanitarian assistance….You can’t analyze Rohingya militancy & recent attacks, without taking into account this build-up of both the government troops & militarizing & arming of hostile local Rakhine villages.”

In this photo, Bangladeshi villagers are covering the bodies of Rohingya women & children who died when the boats they were using to flee genocide capsized.

Stop the genocide of the Rohingya people. Full solidarity with their struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo by Suvra Kanti Das/AP)

The very people who support Assad’s dictatorship & claim opposition to him is all “jihadi head-choppers” now call Hurricane Harvey a false flag operation & the genocide of Rohingya a psyops thing. They ridicule solidarity as a “Save the Rohingya bandwagon.” If that doesn’t snap people out of confusions about who these politically corrupt people are, nothing else will.

A Rohingya child without parents who was brought by other Rohingya refugees to Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He is unable to speak. Words fail. Solidarity with the Rohingya is an imperative. Our silence is not an option.

Stop the genocide of Rohingya. Full solidarity with their struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo from Shafiur Rahman @ shafiur)

A rally in Tral, Kashmir in solidarity with the Rohingya of Arakan state. Enduring the extremes of violence under occupation, they understand the need for international solidarity, the iron law of social transformation.

Another rally in the Pulwama district of Kashmir: https://www.facebook.com/ayashahmed/videos/1436013103120683/?

(From Musa Kashmiri @Musa_Kashmiri)

The man on the right is a Bangladeshi volunteer holding out a hand to a Rohingya refugee family. Volunteers are also greeting Rohingya with water & biscuits.

The humanity of Bangladeshi citizens toward Rohingya refugees is at odds with Bangladeshi government policies but represents the highest ideals of the human race. Our deepest respect.

Stop the genocide of Rohingya. Full solidarity with their struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo from Shafiur Rahman @shafiur)

The origins of the oppression of Rohingya are quite complex but are rooted primarily in the intentionally divisive policies of British colonialism which played ethnic & religious groups off against each other. Classic divide & conquer stuff. That was exacerbated during the WWII occupation of Burma by the Japanese. Arakan state Buddhists allied themselves with the Japanese while the Rohingya Muslims collaborated with the British to defeat Japan.

There’s a lot of mythology around the person of Aung San, a key figure in the independence of Burma from Britain & the father of Aung San Suu Kyi. He was a nationalist, anti-colonialist, & founder of the Burmese Communist Party influenced by Stalin’s nationalist views on self-determination for ethnic minorities. His role is monumental in the formation of Burma, most importantly in laying the juridical & social foundations of discrimination & conflict between the dominant Bamar (Buddhist) ethnic group & other ethnic groups in Burma. Burma now officially recognizes 135 distinct ethnicities but there are many unrecognized ethnic groups, including especially the Rohingya.

The dominance of the Bamar & conflicts with ethnic groups were incorporated into the foundational document of Burma called the Panglong Agreement of 1947. Only the Bamar & three other ethnic groups were allowed to participate & debate if they could form a united state when the conflicts cultivated by the British Raj were far from being understood let alone resolved. The Rohingya were among those excluded. Efforts to deny Rohingya citizenship began with Myanmar’s independence in 1948 but pogroms against them go back much earlier. The entente between the Bamar & the three ethnic groups who signed the Panglong Agreement broke down immediately after independence so that the central government (a military junta since 1962) has been engaged ever since in constant armed conflict with several ethnic insurgencies using the methods of discrimination, torture, arson, robbery, rape, unlawful arrest, & massacre.

The reasons why the Rohingya were singled out to be denied citizenship & subjected to a policy of genocide originated under British colonialism & have nothing to do with influence by Al-Qaeda or ISIS. Burma is a prison house of nations.

Photo is Rohingya refugees who crossed into Bangladesh last Friday after walking days to escape violence.

(Photo by Adam Dean for The NYTimes)

Assadist ideologues & their flunkeys have so debased political analysis that many support not just Assad, Putin, & Trump but also Duterte, Maduro, & Aung San Suu Kyi. They are now circulating articles & video interviews on Iranian & Russian media claiming there are no such people as Rohingya, that there is no genocide against them, & that in fact “Bengali illegals” are conducting genocide against Buddhists under the influence of Al-Qaeda & ISIS.

The fountainhead of this rubbish is a detestable Irish guy named Gearoid O Colmain who is into all that anti-Semitic Rothschild bankers crap, writes mountains about the “bourgeois decadence” of homosexuality, supports Assad’s dictatorship in the name of anti-imperialism, mocks the Arab Spring uprisings as orchestrated by the CIA, & denounces Irish activists who protest US warplanes using Shannon Airport as a refueling depot.

A thoroughgoing analysis of these politics are long overdue. When libertarianism first emerged in about 1974 it was a crackpot, marginalized cult that set out to physically destroy Stalinism & the Communist Party in NYC in “Operation Mop-up”. Their weapons of choice were fists & nunchuks, a martial arts weapon. Other socialists mobilized to defend the CP despite their political differences. It was not through countering the libertarian goon squads with weapons or punching them in the face but in physically defending CP meetings & speakers from assault by forming phalanxes around them. A lot of people got hurt defending against those nunchuks but it was an effective collective method that repelled & ended the physical attacks.

Now as political polarization deepens, libertarianism has become a significant political force & in one of the wretched ironies of politics has joined forces with Stalinism in all of its metastases & with fascism. This process is still unfolding but it requires a conscientious theoretical elaboration. If anyone is interested in collaborating on such a project please let me know.