Not that Burma & Bangladesh fooled anyone, but it’s now clear that voluntary repatriation plan was a set-up for forcible deportation. If international solidarity were at the level it needs to be, there would be protests all over this globe.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/rohingya-shocked-terrified-deadline-myanmar-return-nears-
Burmese & Bangladeshi officials keep insisting the ‘voluntary repatriation’ plan for 2, 25l Rohingya refugees is all set to go for Thursday but not a single Rohingya has stepped forward to volunteer. What’s next? Forcing them voluntarily at gun point? Every once in a while a human rights group or UN rep will peep out a protest when the international clamor should include economic & military sanctions against Burma. But why would they make more fuss about deportation back to the killing fields of Burma than they make about the genocide?
No need to throw the baby out with the bath water but Amnesty is really discrediting itself with its 2015 report blaming Hamas for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians & its 2018 report blaming ARSA for Burma’s genocide of Rohingyas. It’s beyond shameful to politically collusive with the darkest forces in world politics.
Let’s talk about that absolutely appalling Amnesty report titled “Myanmar: New evidence reveals Rohingya armed group massacred scores in Rakhine State” which is a sustained indictment of ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) for “killings & violent attacks against members of Hindu & Buddhist ethnic groups.” First we’d like to know how Amnesty got access to Arakan state since it ends its dishonest report with a call for Burma to “immediately allow independent investigators, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission, full & unfettered access throughout the region.” Were Amnesty investigators allowed special access by the regime? Were they escorted by regime officials? Were restrictions placed on where they went & who they interviewed? Why was Amnesty investigating ARSA who they claim killed 99 Hindus rather than the Burmese military & Buddhist death squads who killed, tortured, raped thousands & sent 700,000 fleeing for their lives? What’s up with that Amnesty? Where’s the sense of proportion?
Amnesty claims that accountability for atrocities is just as crucial for irregular forces as for security forces. Of course, even though the magnitude of the genocide against Rohingyas dwarfs the alleged crimes of ARSA. But the actual charges of Amnesty against ARSA really cannot be considered seriously until Amnesty lays out for us its methodology, who escorted them, what restrictions were imposed by the regime on their investigation, & why Amnesty was allowed access when even the UN has been barred entry.
The fatal flaw in this report is their assertion that the genocide was prompted by ARSA attacks on 30 police posts & an army base, a number which most likely came from the Burmese government. But Rohingya activists, the citizen journalists who were disappeared in the genocide, claimed the military was deploying additional forces in Arakan & preparing for the genocidal onslaught long before August 25th, 2017 when the alleged ARSA incitement took place. Does Amnesty really think it reasonable to blame a handful of irregular ARSA forces for inciting a state-sponsored genocide of such a colossal scale?
To put this report in context, Amnesty issued a report in 2015 on Israel’s 2014 seven-week bombing onslaught over Gaza which was just as shameful as this piece of rubbish on ARSA. The report on Gaza justifies Israel’s murderous siege by claiming it was bombing “possible military targets” in response to thousands of Hamas rockets & mortars (the evidence of which does not exist) when it bombed ambulances, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, refugee centers in Gaza.
There’s a shameful pattern to these reports: Amnesty’s equation of self-defense with military aggression. That equation allows Amnesty to water down the genocidal aggression of Israel & Burma & in that regard these reports are absolutely worthless apologetics. What should concern Amnesty, or at least it should have been mentioned in the report, is the apparent disappearance of ARSA in the past several weeks. Wouldn’t that suggest that the real perpetrator of atrocities in Arakan state was in fact the military & its auxiliary Buddhist death squads? One doesn’t have to be a supporter of guerrilla warfare to understand that in a genocide, ill-trained & inadequately armed irregulars like ARSA had a right to defend unarmed Rohingya civilians. Whether or not they committed human rights crimes against Hindus should be investigated within the context of a genocide against them–not to rationalize their acts but to understand how & why they occurred. As Javed Akhtar commented on Twitter: “If there is a mass grave of Hindus,” as Amnesty claimed, “it must be the army’s doing. Or why were hundreds of Hindus also escaping with Rohingyas?”
Shame on Amnesty. It’s a pity they compromise their credibility by such unsubstantiated & worthless reports that amount to apologetics for genocide.
–Originally published May 23, 2018
(Photo of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by Marko Durica/Reuters)
Amnesty has stripped Aung San Suu Kyi–the genocidaire who wears flowers in her hair–of its highest, if not also entirely worthless, honorific. This is only the latest of several human rights awards taken from her, including Canada’s honorary citizenship, plaques from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, & Oxford. What took them so long? It’s quite inscrutable what she gets out of being a central figure in genocide but because of her father’s role in Burmese history, she may see her own role in some imagined epic or mystical way. She has to know that history will not judge her more favorably than Kissinger or Hitler but deems such ignominy worth it.
When researching Suu Kyi for articles I wrote in Pakistan Today in 2017, I learned there isn’t much there-there to her human rights record. It’s not entirely certain why she was considered a human rights icon except speeches she gave during the national uprising of 1988. But she wouldn’t even have been in Burma if she hadn’t gone home from England just then to attend to her ailing mother. Her role is almost accidental except that both parents were leading political figures, including her mother who worked for the military dictatorship as an ambassador. There was no fall from grace for Suu Kyi so much as a snow job by the organizations handing out honorifics. If Kissinger can win the Nobel Peace Prize, why not Assad or Adolf Hitler? Or Suu Kyi? When she was under house arrest, it was in a family mansion in the most exclusive area of town attended to by servants. Not exactly a gulag.
These are the articles I wrote about Suu Kyi:
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/?
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/09/23/aung-san-suu-kyi-and-the-generals/?
To many, my damnations of powerful institutions (like the Democratic Party, European Union, ASEAN) must seem dogmatic, intolerant, unrealistic. Since we live in the barbaric phase of capitalism, I see damnation more as a form of hard-nosed love in the time of cholera, environmental devastation, genocide, & rising fascism. There are many who want to work ‘within the system’ but I don’t like the class of people there or the compromises one has to make. That’s why my politics involve organizing independent of the power structure where we don’t have to bargain or compromise on principles. Principles matter in politics if you want to keep a steady course & not be blown about by fashion or social pressure. That may sound old-fashioned in these times but there’s nothing more sorry-assed than a rebel who ends up chasing saviors rather than fighting for the oppressed.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit will be held from tomorrow through Thursday hosted by Lee Hsien Loong, the dictatorial prime minister of Singapore. It is absolutely excluded that the Rohingya genocide will be addressed in any meaningful way because ASEAN is a free trade/sweatshop economics & military alliance between ten repressive regimes in Southeast Asia, including Burma, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brunei, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore. Other countries involved with ASEAN include China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, New Zealand, Russia, Canada, Chile, & the US. Genocide in Burma will not come up because vigilante death squads in the Philippines, military repression in Thailand, political repression in Vietnam & other nations will not come up. Human rights are decidedly not the purpose of these summits.
ASEAN adopted a human rights declaration in 2012 (AICHR) which Burma signed while engaged in a genocidal onslaught against the Rohingya people & while the army was accused of using child soldiers & engaging in mass rape & scorched earth methods against other ethnic groups. The declaration is nothing more than window-dressing signifying nothing to the member countries in terms of child labor, human trafficking, drug trafficking, militarism, death squads, occupation, democratic rights to dissent, political corruption, extrajudicial killings, forcible disappearances, rape as a weapon of war & occupation, refugee rights, religious freedom, genocide. Duterte hosted the 2017 ASEAN summit while he was engaged in a death squad war against the urban poor & a military offensive against Moro Muslims.
This year Suu Kyi, Modi, Putin, Pence, Chinese premier Li, Chilean president Pinera, Duterte will be among the honored guests despite the Rohingya genocide, Indian occupation of Kashmir, Russian bombing of Syria, Chinese & Russian arming of the Rohingya genocide, Chinese genocide of Uyghurs, several US wars, Chile’s genocide against indigenous tribes, & Duterte’s ongoing vigilante war against the urban poor. The biggest issues at the summit will be countering Chinese aggression in the South China Sea & not letting the little matter of war, occupation, or genocide come between trade & sweatshop relationships. ASEAN is an institution of oppression, not an agency for liberation. It is to facilitate investments in a time of capitalist crises, not mitigate monstrous human rights crimes against the working poor.
Photo is Suu Kyi & Modi at the ASEAN-India summit meeting last January in New Delhi.
Annie-Lucia & Bellissima doing that guilt-baiting thing they do when they want the food off your plate.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) continues to urgently need contributions for health care & for victims of Israeli snipers & bombers. Please consider donating again.
Photo is two little sisters in Gaza in late 2015 after the Israeli bombing siege in the summer of 2014 had left so many homeless or without warm shelter.
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In an act of supreme sarcasm, George & Laura Bush received the 2018 Philadelphia Liberty Medal for their work with veterans. One would say the invasion of Iraq must be small potatoes to the selection committee except that previous recipients include Shimon Peres, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Robert Gates, George Bush Sr., Colin Powell, John McCain, Oscar Arias–a regular rogue’s gallery of war criminals.
If you want me to get excited about a few mortars from Gaza into Israel, you’ll first have to show some outrage over the thousands killed & injured in Gaza by Israeli snipers & bombers.