Burma: End ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ of Rohingya Muslims

Unpunished Crimes Against Humanity, Humanitarian Crisis in Arakan State

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  Ethnic Arakanese with weapons walking away from a village in flames while a soldier stands by. Arakan State, Burma, June 2012.

   

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  Burma: Ethnic Cleansing in Arakan State

The Burmese government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement. The government needs to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.

(Bangkok) – Burmese authorities and members of Arakanese groups have committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State since June 2012, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 153-page report, “‘All You Can Do is Pray’: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State,” describes the role of the Burmese government and local authorities in the forcible displacement of more than 125,000 Rohingya and other Muslims and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Burmese officials, community leaders, and Buddhist monks organized and encouraged ethnic Arakanese backed by state security forces to conduct coordinated attacks on Muslim neighborhoods and villages in October 2012 to terrorize and forcibly relocate the population. The tens of thousands of displaced have been denied access to humanitarian aid and been unable to return home.

“The Burmese government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “The government needs to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.”

Following sectarian violence between Arakanese and Rohingya in June 2012, government authorities destroyed mosques, conducted violent mass arrests, and blocked aid to displacedMuslims. On October 23, after months of meetings and public statements promoting ethnic cleansing, Arakanese mobs attacked Muslim communities in nine townships, razing villages and killing residents while security forces stood aside or assisted the assailants. Some of the dead were buried in mass graves, further impeding accountability.

Human Rights Watch traveled to Arakan State following the waves of violence and abuses in June and October, visiting sites of attacks and every major displaced person camp, as well as unofficial displacement sites. The report draws on more than 100 interviews with Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese who suffered or witnessed abuses, as well as some organizers and perpetrators of the violence.

All of the state security forces operating in Arakan State are implicated in failing to prevent atrocities or directly participating in them, including local police, Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and the army and navy. One soldier told a Muslim man who was pleading for protection as his village was being burned: “The only thing you can do is pray to save your lives.”

Displaced Rohingya told Human Rights Watch how in October security forces stood by or joined with large groups of Arakanese men armed with machetes, swords, homemade guns, and Molotov cocktails who descended upon and attacked their villages. In some cases, attacks occurred simultaneously in townships separated by considerable distance.

Satellite images obtained by Human Rights Watch from just 5 of the 13 townships that experienced violence since June show 27 unique zones of destruction, including the destruction of 4,862 structures covering 348 acres of mostly Muslim-owned residential property.

In the deadliest incident, on October 23, at least 70 Rohingya were killed in a daylong massacre in Yan Thei village in Mrauk-U Township. Despite advance warning of the attack, only a small number of riot police, local police, and army soldiers were on duty to provide security, but they assisted the killings by disarming the Rohingya of their sticks and other rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves. Included in the death toll were 28 children who were hacked to death, including 13 under age 5. “First the soldiers told us, ‘Do not do anything, we will protect you, we will save you,’ so we trusted them,” a 25-year-old survivor told Human Rights Watch. “But later they broke that promise. The Arakanese beat and killed us very easily. The security did not protect us from them.”

“In October, security forces either looked the other way as Arakanese mobs attacked Muslim settlements or joined in the bloodletting and arson,” Robertson said. “Six months later, the government still blames ‘communal violence’ for the deaths and destruction when, in truth, the government knew what was happening and could have stopped it.”

Considerable local organizing preceded and backed October’s attacks. The two groups most influential in organizing anti-Rohingya activities were the local order of Buddhist monks (the sangha) and the regionally powerful Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), which was founded in 2010 by Arakanese nationalists. Between June and October, these groups and others issued numerous anti-Rohingya pamphlets and public statements, explicitly or implicitly denying the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity, demonizing them, and calling for their removal from the country, at times using the phrase “ethnic cleansing.” The statements frequently were released in connection with organized meetings and in full view of local, state, and national authorities who raised no concerns. Local authorities, politicians, and monks also acted, often through public statements and force, to deny Muslims their rights to freedom of movement, opportunities to earn a living, and access to markets and to humanitarian aid. The apparent goal has been to coerce them to abandon their homes and leave the area.

“Local officials and community leaders engaged in an organized effort to demonize and isolate the Muslim population as a prelude to murderous mob attacks,” Robertson said. “Moreover, since the bloodshed, the central government has taken no action to punish those responsible or reverse the ethnic cleansing of the forcibly displaced Muslims.”

Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of four mass-grave sites in Arakan State – three dating from the immediate aftermath of the June violence and one from the October violence. Security forces actively impeded accountability and justice by digging mass graves to destroy evidence of crimes.

For instance, on June 13, a government truck dumped 18 naked and half-clothed bodies near a Rohingya displaced person camp outside of Sittwe, the state capital. Some of the victims had been “hogtied” with string or plastic strips before being executed. By leaving the bodies near a camp for displaced Rohingya, the soldiers were sending a message – consistent with a policy of ethnic cleansing – that the Rohingya should leave permanently.

“They dropped the bodies right here,” said a Rohingya man, who saw the bodies being dumped. “Three bodies had gunshot wounds. Some had burns, some had stab wounds. One gunshot wound was on the forehead, one on the chest.”

Arakan State faces a major humanitarian crisis brought on by the Burmese government’s systematic restrictions on humanitarian aid to displaced Rohingya.

More than 125,000 Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims, and a smaller number of Arakanese, have been in displaced person camps in Arakan State since June. While President Thein Sein’s government has hosted high-profile diplomatic visits to displacement sites, it has also obstructed the effective delivery of humanitarian aid. Many of the displaced Muslims have been living in overcrowded camps that lack adequate food, shelter, water and sanitation, schools, and medical care. Security forces in some areas have provided protection to displaced Muslims, but more typically they have acted as their jailers, preventing access to markets, livelihoods, and humanitarian assistance, for which many are in desperate need.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya face a range of deadly waterborne diseases if they are not moved to higher ground before the rainy season begins in May.

“The problem with aid delivery in Arakan State is not a failure of coordination, but a failure of leadership by the government to allow displaced Muslims access to aid and freedom of movement,” Robertson said. “An entirely predictable and preventable humanitarian crisis is just weeks away when the rains fall and camps flood, spreading waterborne diseases.”

The displaced Rohingya have not been consulted on their right to return to their original towns and villages, heightening concerns of a long-term intent to segregate the population.

Lacking aid, protection, and facing violence and abuses, tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled the country by sea since June with hopes of reaching Bangladesh, Malaysia, or Thailand, and many thousands more appear ready to do the same – several hundred people have already died at sea.

Under international law, crimes against humanity are crimes committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack by a government or organization on a civilian population. Among the crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya since June were murder, deportation and forcible transfer of the population, and persecution.

“Ethnic cleansing,” though not a formal legal term, has been defined as a purposeful policy by an ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

Central to the persecution of the Rohingya is the 1982 Citizenship Law, which effectively denies Burmese citizenship to Rohingya on discriminatory ethnic grounds. Because the law does not consider the Rohingya to be one of the eight recognized “national races,” which would entitle them to full citizenship, they must provide “conclusive evidence” that their ancestors settled in Burma before independence in 1948, a difficult if not impossible task for most Rohingya families.

The government and Burmese society openly consider the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from what is now Bangladesh and not a distinct “national race” of Burma, denying them consideration for full citizenship. Official government statements refer to them as “Bengali,” “so-called Rohingya,” or the pejorative “kalar.”

Human Rights Watch urged the Burmese government to urgently amend the 1982 Citizenship Act to eliminate discriminatory provisions and to ensure that Rohingya children have the right to acquire a nationality where otherwise they would be stateless.

“Burma should accept an independent international commission to investigate crimes against humanity in Arakan State, locate victims, and provide redress,” said Robertson. “Burma’s donors need to wake up and realize the seriousness of the Rohingya’s plight, and demand that the government urgently stop abuses, promote the safe return of displaced Muslims, and ensure accountability to end the deadly cycle of violence in Arakan State.”

(Source / 22.04.2013)

Palestinians blocked from al-Aqsa for Friday prayers

 

Israeli police forces announced restrictions on Muslim Palestinians who seek to enter Al-Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Friday.

The newspaper stated that intelligence information, which reveals that Palestinians might seek to commit “riot acts”, came behind such decision.

The order allows only Palestinians carrying Israeli identity cards and above 50 years old to enter the mosque. Palestinians who cannot meet these criteria are banned to pray in the mosque, with an exception granted to women.

The Jerusalem-located Al-Aqsa mosque is the third holiest site in Islam. Israel’s recurrent violations against the mosque have historically been a major source of tension and anger among Palestinians.

On 3 March, an Israeli officer attacked Palestinian female students inside the mosque and desecrated a copy of the Holy Quran, according to Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage.

“One of the Israeli officers located inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque attacked two students from a girls’ school near Buraq Mosque next to the Mughrabi Gate,” the media department chief at the Foundation Mahmoud Abu Atta said.

Abul Atta quotes the girls’ account that the officer tried to chase them away to prevent them from reciting the Quran. When they refused, the officer kicked and walked on a copy of the Holy Quran.

He said that a number of men and women gathered near the Mughrabi Gate to condemn the crim, chanting “God is great.”

Al-Aqsa Foundation condemned the “heinous crime” against the students, blaming the Israeli occupation forces of the consequences of what might happen and called for prompt action to defend the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Three days later, clashes erupted in Jerusalem on Wednesday after eight Jewish settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of Israeli police.

The settlers prayed in front of the mosque before clashes broke out with Palestinian Muslims, a guard at the mosque told Egypt’s state news agency MENA.

“Israeli authorities allow military troops, settlers and even tourists to enter Al-Aqsa, which provokes the feelings of Muslims praying in the mosque,” the guard added.

A Palestinian man was shot during the clashes and transferred to a medical clinic. Also, An Israeli soldier removed a Palestinian woman’s veil after she prevented a settler from photographing her.

These tensions came ahead of US President Barack Obama’s three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories that will begin on 20 March.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau said Obama was due to arrive Wednesday, March 20, at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv and then head to Jerusalem for talks with President Shimon Peres and a dinner meeting with Netanyahu.

According to AFP, Israeli media reports and a Palestinian official have said that it will run from March 20-22 and take in talks with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

According to the official Israeli programme released by Netanyahu’s office, Obama is due to visit on Thursday the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and then travel to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority officials.

(Source / 17.03.2013)

97 Rohingya-moslims sterven op zee

De marine van Thailand zou de boot van de moslims hebben gesloopt.

Uit Myanmar gevluchte en vorige week door de marine van Sri Lanka geredde Rohingya-moslims zeggen dat zij 25 dagen op zee gedobberd hebben nadat de Thaise marine hen had onderschept en de motor van hun boot had gesloopt. Terwijl zij in de Baai van Bengalen ronddreven zouden 97 opvarenden van honger zijn omgekomen. De Thaise marine ontkent de beschuldiging.

De overlevenden, 32 mannen en een jongen, verblijven nu in een vreemdelingendetentiecentrum bij de Sri Lankaanse hoofdstad Colombo. Zij voelden zich niet veilig meer in Myanmar en wilden in een wrakke houten boot naar Maleisië varen. Zij waren al ernstig uitgedroogd toen ze afgelopen zaterdag door de Sri Lankaanse marine werden gered.

De 24-jarige Shofiulla verklaarde dat de groep op 10 januari 130 man sterk scheep was gegaan. Na tien dagen varen bereikten ze Thaise wateren en werden ze door twee patrouilleboten van de Thaise marine onderschept. De motor werd van hun boot gehaald en de groep werd zonder eten of drinken op zee achtergelaten.

“Wij dronken alleen zeewater”, zei Shofiulla. Zevenennegentig mensen overleden voordat de rest van de groep door de Sri Lankaanse marine na 25 dagen werden gered. De lichamen van de overledenen werden in zee geworpen. Het Thaise ministerie van defensie ontkent de beschuldiging. “Officieren van de Thaise marine zouden dit nooit doen”, zei woordvoerder Thanathip Sawangsaeng.

“Rohingya’s kunnen op twee manieren worden benaderd: hun voedsel en hulp geven en ze daarna hun zeereis laten vervolgen, of ze oppakken wegens illegale binnenkomst. Maar het bestaat niet dat de Thaise marine iets zou hebben gedaan waar ze nu van wordt beticht.” Rohingya’s worden in Myanmar niet als een aparte etnische bevolkingsgroep beschouwd, maar als illegale immigranten uit Bangladesh.

Ze zijn moslim, spreken een Bengaals dialect en zien er uit als Bengalezen, die over het algemeen donkerder van huid zijn dan de meeste mensen in Myanmar, die overwegend boeddhistisch zijn. Bij sektarisch geweld in het westen van Bangladesh zijn sinds juni honderden doden gevallen en meer dan honderdduizend mensen uit hun woonplaatsen verdreven.

(Source / 23.02.2013)

Christian Zionism promoting Islamophobia in US

It is found mainly in the bible belt region of the United States, from the south to the midwest.

“The growing movement of Islamophobia in the United States is a troubling phenomenon for many. But the factors contributing to it are less well-known. Experts say one of these factors is Christian Zionism.” 

The zealous efforts of evangelical Christians has spurred more publicly discussed subjects such as their anti-abortion and anti-evolution campaigns.

But a lesser discussed issue is their often anti-Islamic views, which experts state correlate with their support for Israel.

Christian Zionists are believed to number around 40 or 50 million in the United States.

The movement’s support for Israel derives from a desire for the return of Jesus on earth, which many Christian Zionists say can only happen if Jews are returned to the Holy Land.

Therefore, supporting Israel is a necessary part to many Christian Zionists’ faith. This has led well-known evangelical leaders, like John Hagee and Pat Robertson, to label those opposed to Israeli policies as enemies.

Analysts say this ideology has made its way into the US government, and has been influencing US policy, most recently with their opposition to Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary.

Christian Zionists have also supported the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and have called for a war with Iran.

(Source / 20.02.2013)

Jewish settlers storm Aqsa mosque

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– Jewish settlers accompanied by media crews stormed the holy Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday to shoot a film on their alleged temple under heavy police protection.

Local sources said that Sheikh Azam Salhab, the director of the Awkaf department, contacted the commander of the police force responsible for security of the holy compound to ask him to get those fanatics out of the Aqsa.

They said, however, that the commander rather ordered the Aqsa guards to keep a distance of 100 meters away from the settlers and the TV crews.

One of the guards said that the storming started in the early morning in the form of small groups that entered the site one after the other.

He said that the settlers toured a number of plazas inside the Haram Al-Sharif while other witnesses said they saw the settlers trying to offer Talmudic rituals.

(Source / 11.02.2013)

All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t

 

CNN recently published an article entitled Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated; according to a study released by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “the terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated.”

Yet, Americans continue to live in mortal fear of radical Islam, a fear propagated and inflamed by right wing Islamophobes.  If one follows the cable news networks, it seems as if all terrorists are Muslims.  It has even become axiomatic in some circles to chant: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims.” Muslims and their “leftist dhimmi allies” respond feebly, mentioning Waco as the one counter example, unwittingly affirming the belief that “nearly all terrorists are Muslims.”

But perception is not reality.  The data simply does not support such a hasty conclusion.  On the FBI’s official website, there exists a chronological list of all terrorist attacks committed on U.S. soil from the year 1980 all the way to 2005.  That list can be accessed here (scroll down all the way to the bottom).

Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil by Group, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database

According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%).  These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion.  These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.

Yet notice the disparity in media coverage between the two.  It would indeed be very interesting to construct a corresponding pie chart that depicted the level of media coverage of each group.  The reason that Muslim apologists and their “leftist dhimmi allies” cannot recall another non-Islamic act of terrorism other than Waco is due to the fact that the media gives menial (if any) coverage to such events.  If a terrorist attack does not fit the “Islam is the perennial and existential threat of our times” narrative, it is simply not paid much attention to, which in a circuitous manner reinforces and “proves” the preconceived narrative.  It is to such an extent that the average American cannot remember any Jewish or Latino terrorist; why should he when he has never even heard of the Jewish Defense League or the Ejercito Popular Boricua Macheteros?  Surely what he does not know does not exist!

The Islamophobes claim that Islam is intrinsically a terrorist religion.  The proof?  Well, just about every terrorist attack is Islamic, they retort.  Unfortunately for them, that’s not quite true.  More like six percent.  Using their defunct logic, these right wingers ought now to conclude that nearly all acts of terrorism are committed by Latinos (or Jews).  Let them dare say it…they couldn’t; it would be political and social suicide to say such a thing. Most Americans would shut down such talk as bigoted; yet, similar statements continue to be said of Islam, without any repercussions.

The Islamophobes live in a fantasy world where everyone is supposedly too “politically correct” to criticize Islam and Muslims.  Yet, the reality is the exact opposite: you can get away with saying anything against the crescent.  Can you imagine the reaction if I said that Latinos should be profiled because after all they are the ones who commit the most terrorism in the country?  (For the record: I don’t believe in such profiling, because I am–unlike the right wing nutters–a believer in American ideals.)

The moral of the story is that Americans ought to calm down when it comes to Islamic terrorism.  Right wingers always live in mortal fear–or rather, they try to make you feel that way.  In fact, Pamela Geller (the queen of internet Islamophobia) literally said her mission was to “scare the bejeezus outta ya.” Don’t be fooled, and don’t be a wuss.  You don’t live in constant fear of radicalized Latinos (unless you’re Lou Dobbs), even though they commit seven times more acts of terrorism than Muslims in America.  Why then are you wetting yourself over Islamic radicals?  In the words of Cenk Uygur: you’re at a ten when you need to be at a four.  Nobody is saying that Islamic terrorism is not a matter of concern, but it’s grossly exaggerated.

Related Posts:

Europol report: All terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that aren’t

RAND report: Threat of homegrown jihadism exaggerated, Zero U.S. civilians killed since 9/11

Update:

A reader by the name of Dima added:

The FBI Terrorism Report shows…[that] the highest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. by region (90) took place in Puerto Rico.

Second Update:

An Islamophobe commented on this article, saying that the statistics are flawed because the FBI included small acts such as “stealing rats from a lab” as an act of terrorism.  Of course, this is patently false.  Here is a breakdown of the terrorist attacks by type (the pie chart is from the FBI’s official website and can be accessed here):

Terrorism by Event, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database

(20 January 2010 / Source / 10.02.2013)

Mali Forces Execute Devout Muslim Students

BAMAKO – Students with a particularly devout Muslim appearance in northern Mali are facing summary execution by Malian forces as French troops continue their airstrikes against Islamist rebels.

“I heard one of them say, ‘For the sake of God, don’t kill me. I’m not the enemy, I’m just a student of the Qur’an,’” an eyewitness, who wanted to remain anonymous, told BBC Newsnight on Thursday, January 31.

“But one of the military guys said, ‘Don’t listen to them, they’re infiltrators’. They discussed what to do, then one said, ‘Fire!’ and they shot all three of them.

The anonymous eyewitness confirmed that he saw three Muslim students shot dead in a public place because they failed to show identity papers.“They dragged them by their feet and threw them into a well.”

He added that the three men had their hands tied behind their backs and they were made to kneel on a patch of waste ground.

The following day he says he saw two more suspects – an old man and his son – shot in similar fashion.

The BBC found bloodstains on three wells in the area, confirming reports about throwing the dead bodies in the wells.

What appeared to be human bodies were clearly visible at the bottom of one, the BBC said.

France has deployed more than 3,500 ground forces in a lightning three-week campaign that has wrested control of northern Mali’s towns from Islamist rebels in the north.

They said the troops targeted light-skinned Arab and Tuareg ethnic groups associated with the rebels.

Muslim students of the Qur’an and others with a particularly devout Muslim appearance also fear they may now be singled out for attack.

A student in the town of Mopti, Muhammad Barry, said he and others were now afraid to study the Koran outdoors for fear they might be arrested.

But he insisted that he and most other pious Muslims had no sympathy with the Islamist rebels.

Abuses

The new revelations came as human rights groups said on Friday that the French-led offensive against Islamists in Mali had led to civilian deaths in airstrikes and ethnic reprisals by Malian troops.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, however, cited eyewitness reports of extrajudicial killings by Malian government soldiers of dozens of civilians in the central towns of Sevare and Konna.

“Neither the Malians nor the French took the required precautions to avoid hitting civilian targets,” Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty’s lead researcher for West Africa, told a news conference in Bamako, Reuters reported on Friday, February 1.

“We’ve asked France and authorities in Bamako to open an independent investigation.”

US-based Human Rights Watch cited evidence that Malian soldiers executed at least 13 people suspected of collaborating with the Islamist rebels and forcibly ‘disappeared’ five others in Konna and the garrison town of Sevare, also in central Mali.

“Malian authorities have turned a blind eye to these very disturbing crimes,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The Malian government should take immediate steps to investigate these abuses and bring those responsible to justice, irrespective of rank.”

Mali, once regarded as a fine example of African democracy, collapsed into chaos after soldiers toppled the president in March, leaving a power vacuum in the north that enabled rebels to take control of nearly two-thirds of the country.

Muslims make up more than 90 percent of Mali’s nearly 12 million population.

The UN said an estimated 30,000 people had fled the latest fighting in Mali, joining more than 200,000 already displaced.

(www.onislam.net / 06.02.2013)

Prince Harry: I killed Muslims to protect my people

Britain’s Prince Harry prepares his Apache helicopter prior to a training mission in the US.

” Take a life to save a life, that’s what we revolve around.”

Upon returning from his five-month tour of duty in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province, the third in line to the British throne, Prince Harry, says he killed Muslims to protect his people.

“Take a life to save a life, that’s what we revolve around,” Harry said.

It is not clear how many people Prince Harry has killed during the Helmand tour, but he has confirmed responsibility for killings.

“If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game,” he said.

Prince Harry, who served as co-pilot gunner, compared killing people from an Apache helicopter to playing video games and described his job as a “joy.”

“It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people that loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he said.

The 28-year-old prince was deployed to serve a 20-week mission with NATO forces in Afghanistan shortly after his scandalous nude pictures at a hotel in Las Vegas were published on the Internet, making headlines worldwide.

According to the website icasualties.org, a total of 3,257 US-led troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2001, when the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across the country, despite the presence of thousands of US-led troops.

Hundreds of foreign soldiers were killed in the war-torn country in 2012 alone.

(www.presstv.ir / 02.02.2013)

The Hidden Genocide

 

Earlier this year a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered in western Myanmar. The authorities charged three Muslim men. A week later, 10 Muslims were murdered in a revenge attack. What happened next was hidden from the outside world. Bloodshed pitted Buddhists against minority Rohingya Muslims. Many Rohingya fled their homes, which were burned down in what they said was a deliberate attempt by the predominantly Buddhist government to drive them out of the country. “They were shooting and we were also fighting. The fields were filled with bodies and soaked with blood,” says Mohammed Islam, who fled with his family to Bangladesh. There are 400,000 Rohingya languishing in Bangladesh. For more than three decades, waves of refugees have fled Myanmar. But the government of Bangladesh considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants, as does the government of Myanmar. They have no legal rights and nowhere to go. This is a story of a people fleeing the land where they were born, of a people deprived of citizenship in their homeland. It is the story of the Rohingya of western Myanmar, whose very existence as a people is denied. Professor William Schabas, the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, says: “When you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of the people, hoping to see that they really are eventually, that they no longer exist; denying their history, denying the legitimacy of their right to live where they live, these are all warning signs that mean it’s not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide.” (www.aljazeera.com / 30.01.2013)

Britain goes to war with yet another Muslim country. Time to repeat: not in our name

It is the responsibility of all of us to scrutinise what our governments do in our name; if we cannot learn that from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, then it is hopeless.

British warplane loading up to go to Mali.

No scrutiny, no build-up, no parliamentary vote, not even a softening-up exercise. Britain is now involved in yet another military conflict in a Muslim land, or so we have been informed. British aircraft are flying to Mali while France bombs the country, arguing that Islamist militia must be driven back to save Europe from the creation of a “terrorist state”.

Amnesty International and West Africa experts warned of the potential disaster of foreign military intervention; the bombs raining on the Malian towns of Konna, Léré and Douentza suggest they have been definitively ignored.

Mali’s current agony has only just emerged in our headlines, but the roots go back generations.

Like the other Western colonial powers that invaded and conquered Africa from the 19th century onwards, France used tactics of divide-and-rule in Mali, leading to entrenched bitterness between the nomadic Tuareg people – the base of the current revolt – and other communities in Mali.

To some Westerners, this is a distant past to be ignored, moved on from, and certainly not used to preclude noble interventions; but the consequences are still being felt on a daily basis. Initially, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested its colonial legacy ruled out a France-led intervention; its sudden involvement is far more rapid than expected.

But this intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media.

Awash with weapons from Libya’s own turmoil, armed Tuaregs saw an opening for their long-standing dream for national self-determination. As the rebellion spread, the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré was deposed in a military coup and – despite allowing a transitional civilian-led government to take power – the army retains its dominance.

There can certainly be no sympathy for the militia now fighting the Malian  government. Originally, it was the secular  nationalists of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad who led the uprising; they have now been pushed aside by Islamist jihadists with a speed that has shocked foreign analysts. Rather than achieving an independent Tuareg state, they have far more sweeping ambitions, linking up with similar groups based in northern Nigeria. Amnesty International reports horrendous atrocities: amputations, sexual violence, the use of child soldiers, and rampant extra-judicial executions.

But don’t fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria’s brutal civil war. Amnesty reports brutality on the part of Malian government forces, too. When the conflict originally exploded, Tuaregs were arrested, tortured, bombed and killed by the security forces, “apparently only on ethnic grounds”, Amnesty says.

Last July, 80 inmates arrested by the army were stripped to their underwear, jammed into a 5sqm cell; cigarettes were burnt into their bodies; and they were forced to sodomise each other. Back in September 2012, 16 Muslim preachers belonging to the Dawa group were rounded up at a checkpoint and summarily executed by the army. These are acts committed by those who are now our allies.

When the UN Security Council unanimously paved the way for military force to be used at some point last month, experts made clear warnings that must still be listened to. The International Crisis Group urged a focus on a diplomatic solution to restore stability, arguing that intervention could exacerbate a growing inter-ethnic conflict. Amnesty warned that “an international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human-rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict”.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, has argued that past wars show that “once started, they can take alarming directions, have very destructive results, and often enhance the very movements they are designed to counter”.

It is conceivable that this intervention could – for a time – achieve its goals of pushing back the Islamist militias, and shore up Mali’s government. But the Libyan war was seen as a success, too; and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback. In Afghanistan, Western forces remain engaged in a never-ending war which has already helped destabilised Pakistan, leading to drone attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and unleashed further chaos. The price of Western interventions may often be ignored by our media, but it is still paid nonetheless.

Western intervention led by France, supported by Britain and with possible US drone attacks on the way will undoubtedly fuel the narrative of radical Islamist groups. As Professor Rogers puts it to me, it will be portrayed as “one more example of an assault on Islam”. With the speed and reach of modern forms of communication, radical groups in Western Africa and beyond will use this escalating war as evidence of another front opened against Muslims.

It is disturbing – to say the least – how Cameron has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretence at consultation. Troops will not be sent, we are told; but the term “mission creep” exists for a reason, and an escalation could surely trigger deeper British involvement. The West has a terrible record of aligning itself with the most dubious of allies: the side we have picked are far from human-rights-loving democrats.

But the consequences could be more profound. As well as spreading further chaos in the region – just as the Libyan war did – France has already put potential terrorist targets on alert, and its allies must be at risk, too. It is the responsibility of all of us to scrutinise what our governments do in our name; if we cannot learn that from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, then it is hopeless.

(stopwar.org.uk / 15.01.2013)