Paris/AIJES - Abdulsalam Alsoudi 

 

A number of humanitarian and human rights activists called on this Friday for a protest against the crimes of humanity with unarmed civilians and Burmese Muslims who are being subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing, killing and displacement by Buddhist armed groups in a flagrant challenge to the international community and the world. Activists of the Nkaz and Mujak fighters held a demonstration on today 8/9/2017 in front of the Embassy of Burma in the Avenue de Courcelles Paris from 3 pm to 5 pm, condemning the crimes committed in Burma against the Muslim minority.

 

We have many problems and crises in our Muslim Arab homeland, whether in Yemen or Syria or Libya and Iraq, but the tragedy in Burma is not described and has exceeded the imagination in criminality and the depth of killing and destruction, Hundreds of thousands of Muslims, or Rohingya, are fleeing Burma by boat. The long-persecuted minority population of at least 1.3 million is being driven off ancestral lands and confined to camps in half a dozen countries without medical care, education, the right to work or other basic human rights. Once thought to number more than 3 million, this abused and persecuted Muslim minority has in the last year been excluded from the national census and disenfranchised from voting. To even say “Rohingya” in their home country provokes angry denunciation or even violence.

Also known as Myanmar, an alternate pronunciation of the same word favored by the military regime, Burma is the poorest nation in South Asia, located between Bangladesh, India and China. After a coup in 1982, the nation was ruled by a xenophobic military government for 30 years until a period of reform following civil unrest.

Despite releasing scores of political prisoners in 2012-2013 and negotiating treaties with some ethnic groups, the transitional government has continued harsh restrictions on certain ethnic and religious minorities, especially the Rohingya Muslims, who live mainly in the Northwestern state of Rakhine.

In the last two years, the situation has become much worse. Allied with the military, the “969 Movement” of extremist monks has been spreading anti-Muslim violence beyond the Rakhine state and throughout Burma.  In an effort to “purify” the nation, these Buddhist supremacists have been committing rape, arson, murder and land confiscation on a massive scale. In 2014, mobs chased out international agencies from Rakhine state, leaving 700,000 Burmese Muslims without medical care.

 

In the years since 9/11, Islamophobia has increasingly become a tool to frighten and divide populations around the globe. In Burma, Buddhist monk organized his 969 Movement to protest the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas in Bamian, Afghanistan. However this movement came to oppose the presence of any Muslims in Burma. Its leadership promotes a ban on interfaith marriage and its monks respond to provocative messages and incite anti-Muslim mobs across the country, even in the more cosmopolitan cities of Yangon and Mandalay.  Even non-Muslims can be beaten if they patronize Muslim businesses as the web site Wikipedia.

 

How is it possible that Buddhists can be so violent when their religion calls for an end to suffering?  Theravada Buddhism is a branch of Buddhism that has some militant traditions with sacred texts that assign more value to Buddhist lives than non-Buddhist lives.  Moreover, most Burmese monks live in a monastery for a year or two before returning to family and job. During that time, monks are often dependent on the military for food. Such deep links between the military and monks can also be found in Sri Lanka, where “360,” another anti muslim movement has been forming.

Human activist Mohammed Kafi says that most of the people suffering from injustice today are Muslims in different parts of the earth and that the least is incumbent upon the Muslim peoples today, one individual to redouble their efforts to save what can be saved, he added "

This is almost like history repeating itself and it's really frightening ..What is most sad is the fact being that none, no, not one earthly inhabitant can see the massive coming storms upon our total world's civilization living in division, hate, violence, diseases, starvation, child abuse, women being used and abused, corrupt governments, and all corrupt religious beliefs worldwide."

 

Meanwhile, human rights activist Ali al-Bahri from Paris said "why is it turning a blind eye to the ongoing suffering of Muslim minorities in Burma? The crisis there has been going on for years.   Do we keep silent because Muslims as victim and Buddhists as perpetrator do not fit the prevailing view of either community? Or are most people simply tired of the suffering of the world, which may seem increasingly vast?

 

I do hope we can agree that forgetfulness is not a solution and an informed and engaged people should be pressuring their representatives to exemplify moral values as well as bureaucratic imperatives. After all, it should be clear by now that we are all connected—on economic, cultural, technological and last, but not least, deepest human levels.