Never again

When I was young, from the University, we went with a demonstration to the Burmese embassy in Dhaka demanding to free Ms. Aung Sung Suu Kyi from her years of house arrest. Last month, I joined a protest demanding her conscious to awake in downtown Edmonton, a city in Canada which recently bestowed Ms. Suu kyi its honorary citizenship – just before the massacre began in Rakhine state of Myanmar.

Thousands of Rohingyas fled Rakhine since August 2017. Their number is, so far, over 600,000 according to the UNHCR. Another 400,000 were already in Bangladesh. Their fault is that they are different: different in language, skin color, and in faith from the ruling majority. ‘If they have to stay here, they have to follow our culture,’ I heard a Buddhist monk saying in an interview with Al Jazeera in his sacred saffron robe. So, now in my icon’s country, with her being in full charge, none can be different. Everyone must morph into same one package despite whatever they originally are. Is this what for which I chanted ‘free Suu Kyi, free freedom,’ in my youth on a summer street?

Rohingyas are older than the country itself. The border that Myanmar now have is a colonial construct. Rohingyas had been there even when this border could not be imagined or conceived. Rohingyas have a more genuine claim on this ancient land of Arakan, now known as Rakhine, than Naypyidaw have. The term Rohingya was first mentioned by famous linguist Francis Buchanan in his epic work “Comprehensive vocabulary of the languages of the Burma Empire” in 1800. Yes, you read it right, it was in 1800, far before the British annexed it in 1824.

 Rohingyas are an ethnicity on their own historical and cultural rights. And the Junta and Ms. Suu Kyi know it, in fact they know it so well that they had been propagating a false narrative since Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s all-powerful military, took over. Denying Rohingyas, and worse more, sponsoring a mass hysteria against them, would not create a pluralistic society, let alone an inclusive state. All those values that once Ms. Suu Kyi symbolized, are now in tatters, bankrupting her of moral legitimacy. Should she fight for the rights of the Rohingyas, the whole world would have been behind her as it once was. And the Tatmadaw would have backed down.

Myanmar wants every Rohingya out, so that they could de-populate the area where Rohingyas live. Since 1978, every time they flashed them out, they took back only few of them in the name of verification. From 1982, these Rohingyas have no document. Their citizenship was withdrawn in that year and they suddenly turned into foreigners in their own land. The land that was once their own kingdom, even before the Burmese took over in 1784, is no more theirs’. They are the largest stateless people in the world.

The stories that are coming out from the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh are beyond nightmares: villages after villages were burnt to grab land, male members were indiscriminately killed, women if not pregnant – many of them are just girls – were raped, children saw their parents killed in front of them, babies were thrown in fire, harvest looted. These are the stories we committed we would prevent, these are the atrocities, we promised ourselves will happen “never again,” after Rwanda. But alas, it is ongoing just in the neighborhood. All this had an earlier beginning, Rohingyas were detained in wired-IDP camps deprived of their livelihood, access to health care, education, and basic rights. An army, that has defeated his own people many times, carried on unhindered. This is a political problem, and if history is the guide, can never be solved militarily, with bombs and bullets. Is this the Myanmar Ms. Suu Kyi fought for? Or she too, secretly, shares the same views of the Tatmadaw?

What baffles many is that how Ms. Su kyi’s government could comprehend that such a ‘textbook ethnic cleansing’ be healthy for their embryonic democracy or market economy. A country, rich with diverse people and culture, could be more attractive than an oppressive closed-one. In South East Asia, countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines have Chinese, Malays, Indians, Spanish, and other ethnic people, with their different color and creed. Diversity was always politically accommodated, co-existed. Should the Myanmar Army be successful, how that would affect this tolerant social fabric of the region? Is ASEAN, at its 50 years of journey, matured enough to face the difficult question? To see the elephant in the room? A million people – frustrated, angry and uprooted – is not good news for peace and stability in the region, for sure.

The solutions to the crisis are already identified by the Anan Commission. Myanmar should sincerely implement those. It should ensure prompt return of all the Rohingyas from Bangladesh to their homes, not to the wired-IDP camps. It should ensure every one of them a safe life with dignity as Rohingya, as equal, as human being.

We will again stand for Ms. Suu Kyi, if she stands for the Rohingyas, or for that matter, for the people of Kachin or Shan or for every ethnic people in Myanmar. But first, she should stop the genocide, ensure the return of the Rohingyas, and secure their safety, rights and dignity within Myanmar. She should ensure a safe zone in Myanmar under International Community to protect them from her rogue army.

We will then again rally for her, in every downtown, in every city, around the world! — Dr. Rafat Alam, faculty, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, [email protected]