Het kookpunt van de Rohingya in Birma is bereikt

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 19:43 schreef Igen het volgende:
Misschien was ik in de war met het jaar waarin ze de Olof Palme-prijs kreeg. Ze heeft i.i.g. genoeg onderscheidingen voor vrijheid en vrede gekregen.

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 19:36 schreef rutger05 het volgende:

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Mevrouw heeft een hele reeks aan belangrijke onderscheidingen gekregen:

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The new Rohingya Jihad is not the only conflict Myanmar has bequeathed to the region

What will eventually be called the Third Rohingya Jihad has officially begun, as Myanmar watchers anticipated. The August 25 strikes in which 71, including 59 insurgents, were killed is the start of a new, possibly more violent, phase of conflict between the Myanmar government and the Rohingyas. It would be convenient to believe this was an inevitable repercussion of atrocities on the community in the western Rakhine province, which have forced thousands to flee to other countries. Convenient, but inaccurate, and for two reasons.

First, the Rohingya problem has been around for a very long time. Second, because it is yet another symptom of the deep problems that lies at the root of the Myanmarese state.

The first problem in understanding this conflict is the absence of reliable statistics, such as census data. But the disappearance of numbers, or documents, is hardly surprising in a country where people disappear all the time. What we do know is western Rakhine was a region heavily contested by the Rakhine ethnic group and Muslim armies of eastern Bengal, till the colonial period. We do not know exactly how many ethnic Rakhines converted to Islam, but by the late 19th century there were significant numbers of Muslim Bengalis in the region, and they were called Rohingya.

This need not have automatically triggered conflict with ethnic Rakhines. Even today, there are tens of thousands of Rakhines across the Bangladesh border, in Chittagong and the hill tracts. However, in 1948, there was a movement to include Rohingya areas in what had become East Pakistan. The First Rohingya Jihad was put down with a heavy hand, till it re-emerged in the flush of global Islamist movements in the 1970s. Now we witness the third iteration of its kind, and it opens all kinds of questions about the future stability of the region, in a world where Islamist insurgencies are acquiring newer forms.

One can be tempted to dismiss this as a Buddhist-Muslim clash, if it wasn’t Myanmar. But the Rohingyas aren’t the only flash point in that country, nor are they the only stateless refugees that Myanmar has bequeathed to its neighbours in the past seven decades.

There are four major Buddhist ethnic groups in Myanmar. Not counting the Bamars (the single-largest but not, contrary to claims, majority ethnic group), there are Shans in the northeast, Rakhines in the west and Mon in the Irrawady delta and Thailand border. Each of these groups has at various times fought long-running insurgencies against the Myanmar state. Militant groups of the Shans, the second-largest ethnic group in Myanmar, fought against the Myanmar army last in March 2017.

Christian Kachins and Konyak Nagas in the north, and Christian, Buddhist and animist Karens to the southeast have also fought insurgencies and suffered what can be termed ethnic cleansing after Myanmar got independence. Hundreds of thousands of people from all these communities live in refugee camps in Thailand and other countries.

In short, Myanmar regimes before the army coup of 1962 that brought the junta to power, during the junta period, and today, in the Aung San Suu Kyi era, have had running conflicts with Buddhists, Christians, animists and everyone else.

The problem lies in the root and nature of the Myanmar establishment. Even by South and Southeast Asia’s abysmal standards, there is a staggering amount of racism and ethnic supremacism in that county’s establishment, dating back to the rise of the last Burmese dynasty before the colonial period. Ethnic faultlines were never resolved during the colonial period and Bamar superiority became internalized in the power structure.

Suu Kyi’s father, the very complicated Gen Aung San, left a mixed legacy in addressing this divide. The Panglong Agreement of 1947 between these ethnic groups and Aung San promised autonomy to several of them, independence to others, such as the Kachin. However, some ethnic groups were not given such assurances. Others, like the Rohingya, were not mentioned at all.

Panglong became a hypothetical construct after San was assassinated in July that year. By 1962, when the junta took over, there was no possibility of the dominant Bamars ever accommodating the ethnic groups in a fairer deal, leave alone autonomy or independence. In the decades since, the state has only responded to ethnic aspirations with repression, ethnic cleansing and outright genocide.

Democracies are only as functional as the societies that compose them, and the values to which the constituents agree, as we in this country are discovering. The apparent weakening of the Myanmar army’s claustrophobic hold over that country’s systems and structures, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s much-awaited leadership, will not make the slightest difference to the faultlines that exist between the Bamars and everyone else. These divides will only be repaired when the country’s leaders understand the true meaning of an inclusive, multicultural society which is democratic in the truest sense of the term. For that to happen, the Bamars need to take a look at where state repression has led the other ethnic groups to – dogged resistance and a refusal to give up their legitimate aspirations, regardless of the costs to both sides.

The experience in the past few decades does not indicate that these conflicts will be resolved anytime soon. Interim peace, perhaps, and cosmetic changes, but not much beyond that.

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 20:34 schreef Igen het volgende:

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Wat ik lees is dat die mensen in de eerste plaats naar Bangladesh worden gejaagd. Dat is een etnische zuivering, maar géén genocide.

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 18:11 schreef Slayage het volgende:

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ik dacht dat zoiets als recht en onrecht iets universeels is en dat het niet hoeft uit te maken waar het zich afspeelt om er een standpunt in te nemen.

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 20:44 schreef Igen het volgende:

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Het is een belangrijk verschil.

In de periode 1945 - 1950 zijn er bijvoorbeeld ook grootschalige etnische zuiveringen geweest om het huidige Polen en Tsjechië vrij van Duitsers te maken. Maar omdat daarbij slechts 14 miljoen mensen zijn verjaagd en niet zijn vermoord, is dat in de geschiedenisboeken hooguit een kanttekening waard.

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Op woensdag 6 september 2017 20:34 schreef Igen het volgende:

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Wat ik lees is dat die mensen in de eerste plaats naar Bangladesh worden gejaagd. Dat is een etnische zuivering, maar géén genocide.

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Op donderdag 7 september 2017 20:32 schreef Woestijnvos het volgende:
Heb er geen medelijden mee.

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Op vrijdag 8 september 2017 15:37 schreef slashdotter3 het volgende:
Loopt de Islamisering van Birma nog wel op schema?

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Op vrijdag 8 september 2017 15:39 schreef TheJanitor het volgende:
Sinds wanneer financieren we terroristen? Oh ja, al een tijdje.

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Op donderdag 7 september 2017 20:32 schreef Woestijnvos het volgende:
Heb er geen medelijden mee.

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Op vrijdag 8 september 2017 16:11 schreef deedeetee het volgende:

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verdienen ze ook niet, islam ellende brengen in een land dat t al moeilijk genoeg heeft zonder....

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Op vrijdag 8 september 2017 16:18 schreef Slayage het volgende:

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kijk die vluchtelingen dan "islam ellende brengen" door te vluchten voor hun leven

[ afbeelding ]