This is a succinct & cogent report on the large number of unaccompanied Rohingya children coming across the border. When it speaks of the dangers they face as refugees without adult guardians, keep in mind that thousands of refugees from African countries who were processed by immigration authorities in Italy disappeared–probably in a pipeline direct to sex & labor traffickers.

These children are in grave danger & we need to demand our governments provide vetted professional humanitarian assistance that the kids will find asylum & not another hell on earth.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/37074629/hundreds-of-rohingya-children-arrive-in-bangladesh-alone/?cmp=st

(Photo of unaccompanied children by Bernat Armangue/AP)

Listen up, Assad supporters: when you post those articles about Saudi Wahhabism fueling Rohingya Muslim terrorism & you don’t post in solidarity with the nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees, you show what Islamophobic swine you are. There’s no nicer way to put that. Amen.

New Delhi stands with the Rohingya at rally today.

(Photo by Zulkarnain Banday)

Cape Town stands with the Rohingya at protest today.

Posting so much about the Rohingya means posting almost nothing about the Kashmiri & Palestinian struggles when the occupying armies have not ceased brutalities in respect to genocide in Burma. There is no way to avoid that. Kashmiris & Palestinians who stood alone for so long understand better than anyone how important it is to stand steadfast with the Rohingya during this apocalyptic genocide.

BBC reports today that nearly 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. Hard to keep up their narrative that it’s communal violence when there is no flight of Buddhist nationalists from Arakan state. According to a Burmese government spokesperson cited by the BBC, 176 Rohingya villages–more than 30% of the total–are now empty. These are the dimensions of genocide.

Consider the hell for this elderly woman too weak to cross the border on her own feet. Consider the extraordinary spirit of the Rohingya refugees who will not leave their elderly behind in flight for their lives.

(Photo from Getty)

We’re expected to accept half-hearted, half-assed expressions of pity for the Rohingya from politicians, journalists, humanitarian icons. Why should we hold them to a lower standard of human solidarity than we hold each other? In a time of genocide, there is no middle ground.

BBC needs to remove Jonathan Head from reporting about genocide in Burma & put him working the beat at Buckingham Palace. He just doesn’t get it. It isn’t that he’s mealy-mouthed but that he’s running interference for the junta. He describes genocide but then calls it communal violence; he accepts what the junta tells him about Rohingya terrorists setting off this onslaught when there is testimony to the contrary that the military prepared for this, including by arming, training, & inciting the nationalist death squads. He doesn’t interview any of the over 370,000 Rohingya who just fled for their lives. Is it possible that who the junta calls terrorists were actually Rohingya self-defense teams? Shouldn’t our man Head ask around & find out?

Now Head presents an apologetics for Suu Kyi–the same script presented in Counterpunch last week. It’s the script for all apologists now: she’s powerless; she’s just a politician & could lose her post; she would make the Buddhist nationalists mad–like Wirathu, the “monk” who said Rohingya are ‘animals who eat with their asses.” You wouldn’t want to rankle those guys. You wouldn’t want a military that burns people alive on your bad side.

Head speaks of Suu Kyi’s “immense moral authority.” Where has he been for the past three weeks? Or for that matter, for the past five years? Her authority went south a long time ago when she became not just the public face but a partner with the military in genocide. If she had an ounce of moral integrity she would long ago have denounced the military, even if she had to go into exile to do so.

Jonathan Head needs to be smartened up; he needs to listen to the voices of Rohingya refugees fleeing for their lives & stop listening to the generals. Otherwise his talents are much better used covering the decrepitudes of British feudalism.

You can read his regrettable apologia here in full: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-41243635

(Photo is Rohingya refugees from TRT)

A Burmese government official has announced that Aung San Suu Kyi will not be attending the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. She will be in hiding in Yangon from the tsunami of international outrage over her defense of genocide against the Rohingya people. She could expect Chinese & Russian diplomats to stand with her at the UN but the roar of protesters outside the UN building in NYC would be too much for her to take since she is more accustomed to fawning & adulation as a human rights champion. The genocide she is presiding over blew that delusion.

For some reason, people continue to rebuke Suu Kyi for her silence about the genocide. She has been far from silent going back as far as 2012 when she traveled to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize & a pile of other humanitarian awards. The catalog of her insults & lies about the Rohingya is multi-volumed, including mocking the claims of Rohingya women last year that the military was engaged in mass rapes as a weapon of war.

She is not a powerless figure in Burma even if she does not control the military. She is a partner with the military & paramilitary death squads in genocide.

Stand with the Rohingya against genocide & in their struggle for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo of Indonesian protester on September 2nd by AFP/BayISMOYO)