January 26,2014
By Harun Yahya, Istanbul
Burma Times
The
Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine province of Myanmar are going through a
brutal ethnic slaughter campaign of an unimaginable size. The scale of
the killings, persecution, torture and savagery are beyond
comprehension.
The systematic slaughter policy waged
towards Muslims since 1942 left only 70,000 out of the initial four
million owing to mass murder and displacement. To date, three million
Muslims have been forced to migrate to neighboring countries, hundreds
of thousands of Muslims have been martyred, tens of thousands of
settlement units have been burned and destroyed, tens of thousands of
women have been raped, and hundreds of mosques and madrassas have been
destroyed. Thousands of Muslims are known to have been imprisoned and
tortured, though their fates are unknown.
Muslims living in Rakhine region have
been burned alive in their homes in more than 330 attacks, which have
worsened since June of last year, in which Muslim villages, including
mosques and madrassas were burned. According to independent human rights
organizations, in June 2012 alone 1,000 Muslims in the region were
ruthlessly martyred and 125,000 people were forced from their homes and
villages and left to survive in the jungle.
Just recently, another wave of attack
has begun towards Rohingya people and we have heard at least 40 people
died, a village of 340 houses and 4000 inhabitants emptied with many
Rohingya tied up, taken as slaves, dumped, women who were raped and
breasts cut off before they were killed, dead bodies taken by trucks,
and arrests of men, women and children. The events that led to this
violence began with another violence, the killing of eight Rohingya
people by the village administrator, after which a police sergeant was
also killed amid the growing clashes.
Human Rights Watch has published a
153-page report concerning the crimes against humanity perpetrated
against the Rakhine Muslims in recent months: The report accuses Myanmar
authorities of engaging in ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in
Rakhine. According to a UN statement, the Rakhine Muslims are the most
persecuted social group in the world.
The state plays a part in these
atrocities by either turning a blind eye or preventing humanitarian aid
reaching Muslims. Furthermore, the policies and sanctions imposed on
Muslims by the state are completely inhuman.
The Rohingya Muslims enjoy no
citizenship rights and have no access to any state benefits. They cannot
obtain passports and are not admitted to state hospitals. They are
forced to work for nothing for the state or in private institutions.
They have no rights to enter the civil service or even study beyond high
school.
Muslims have to pay taxes simply to go
from one village to another. They are not allowed out after 9:00 in the
evening, even to visit relatives or neighbors, without police
permission.
They have no right to a defense when a
crime is committed, and are imprisoned straight away. The police or
military can raid their homes on no grounds. They can be arrested
arbitrarily for no reason.
The elimination of Muslims in Myanmar,
ruled by a military junta between 1962 and 2011, has literally become a
policy of state. Power passed to a supposedly democratic administration,
still under the control of the communist military junta, in the wake of
elections in which wide-ranging fraud took place: As a result, the same
military junta is continuing with the same policy through a puppet
government. The aim is to eliminate the Muslim population by
annihilating it or forcing it into exile.
In recent years, since the Bangladeshi
government has closed its borders to the refugees, hundreds of Muslims
seeking to flee to that country have drowned in the seas and rivers on
the frontier; and this plays into the hands of the Myanmar
administration that wishes to entirely purge the country of Muslims.
There are about 150,000 Rohingya
displaced from their homes, and recent attacks forces more and more
every day. Myanmar government has put together these Internally
Displaced Persons (IDP) into camps that are surrounded by checkpoints
and wire. Clean water and food are hard to find in these camps and the
inhabitants of the camps are starving. The residents are not allowed to
go out and work, and no working means no money and no food.
Nine out of ten of Burma’s 53 million
people are Buddhists, yet Buddhists and Muslims lived in peace for many
years in the past. This is because both religions espouse peace and
tolerance towards other religions and condemn killing. Yet, the ethnic
conflict of the recent years has been attributed to fanatical Buddhists.
The fact is, however, the violence perpetrated against Muslims is
executed by mobs and terror organizations clothed as Buddhist monks.
Now the world should hear the silent
cries of Rakhine Muslims. International media should be granted access
to the region. Otherwise, if the countries continue to watch the
oppression, violence and slaughter inflicted on Rakhine Muslims, the
ethnic Muslim communities of Myanmar may just vanish off the earth.
Those who watch the persecution and
slaughter of Muslims all around the world with weary eyes and are
reluctant to see Muslims act as a single body, or who regard it as
unnecessary and remain passive and timid, will have to bear the
conscientious responsibility for this suffering, pain and shedding of
Muslim blood.
No comments:
Post a Comment