Why we don’t know more about the Myanmar genocide

 

By Laura Bohnert

Have you heard about Myanmar? Chances are, you haven’t. Thousands of people are facing acts of genocide in the greatest refugee crisis of the 21^st Century, and there is radio silence surrounding their story.

By all appearances, the issue began on August 25, when a handful of Rohingya militants in Northern Rakhine State led an attack on Myanmar security forces. What has been described as a “brutal” government counteroffensive has forced more than 500,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh in the largest mass-exodus since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

However, while the latest string of violence has finally broken enough records for the rest of the world to start noticing the horrors they have been facing, the Rohingya have actually been suffering through genocidal acts for decades.

The Rohingya have faced discriminatory policies, state-sanctioned rights violations, revoked citizenships, statelessness, increasing restrictions on movement, restricted access to education and healthcare, legal restrictions on how many children couples can have, limitations on how many can gather in groups (no more than five) for events that include marriages, restrictions on home repair and building materials, severe punishments and extortions for minor offenses, and even government and mob-led village raids and burnings, rapes, and murders.

All of these horrific acts against have been intended to cull the population’s numbers and force the Rohingya to leave their ancestral lands.

Since the end of August, the Rohingya have been facing even more extreme violence, including gang rapes, tortures, beheadings, and there have even been reports of infants being tossed into fires.

Why are we only starting to hear about these crimes against humanity that so closely resemble acts of genocide? The government of Myanmar (formerly Burma), for one, continues to deny all of these “false” and “distorted” reports, and Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar has failed to condemn the military violence to the point, some accuse, of covering it up.

The silence surrounding the issue is further perpetuated by a key principle of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean): that South East Asian countries don’t criticize or interfere in each other’s internal affairs.

In 2009, a UN spokesperson referred to the Rohingya as “the most friendless people in the world.” Now, years later and amidst even further atrocities, it looks like that hasn’t changed.