SPEAKING FREELY Silence as Myanmar 'genocide' unfolds By Nancy Hudson-Rodd <\/p>\n
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. <\/p>\n
On January 23, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar and humanitarian chiefs voiced \"deep concern\" on reports of \"alarming levels of violence\" against ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar's western Rakhine State. When their houses were being robbed in DuChiraDan village, Maungdaw, the Rohingya residents called for help, according to reports. The villagers fled the site when they realized that the robbers included police and ethnic Rakhine extremists. <\/p>\n
At 3am that morning, a group of military, other security forces, and police raided the village, blocked the entrance, and fired indiscriminately on escaping men, women, and children. At least 40 people were killed and many more injured. The remaining villagers were rounded up, put into two trucks, and carried off to an unknown location. Authorities later declared the village a \"no-entry zone\". <\/p>\n
The UN Rapporteur demanded the government immediately investigate the reports of violence. This call was ignored, as have been all the other \"urgent\" calls for action by various international groups. Instead, the Ministry of Information announced that journalists responsible for reporting the story would be held accountable for any \"unrest\" in Rakhine State supposedly caused by their reports. <\/p>\n
The government's media mouthpiece, New Light of Myanmar, ran an article claiming false reports of violence, citing a Maungdaw policeman who denied any incidents occurred. The article concluded that \"reports of killings caused by racial and religious conflicts seemed to instigate unrest\". <\/p>\n
Ethnic Rohingya are not recognized as one of Myanmar's 135 \"official national races\". According to the UN, they are one of the world's most persecuted minority groups. The UN refused a Myanmar minister's request in 2011 to resettle to second countries all of the estimated 800,000 Rohingya now resident in Myanmar. <\/p>\n
President Thein Sein, meanwhile, refuses to amend the 1982 law which stripped all Rohingya of their citizenship. He recently asserted: \"the law is meant to protect the country and the government has no plans to revise it\". A census to be completed in 2014 has no category for the Rohingya, only Bengali, an exercise that will effectively erase the minority group's existence from the country. <\/p>\n
The Rohingya's lack of legal status effectively gives state approval to endemic discrimination. Thein Sein claims sectarian, religious or ethnic tensions are an \"unwelcome by-product\" of political liberalization. Such official deflections deny the state's involvement in the unfolding genocide now taking place in Myanmar. <\/p>\n
They also build upon dangerous psychological and ideological factors that have induced violent grassroots reactions to racist rumors and claims against Rohingya. Progress Magazine, the official journal of the Rakhine Nationalities and Development Party, openly wrote (November 2012) of ridding Myanmar of its Rohingya population. The magazine wrote: <\/p>\n
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