Myanmar: Why the World Turns a Blind
Eye to Another Muslim Genocide
By CJ Werleman
September 12, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- If the apartheid state of Israel has taught
the world anything, it’s if you wish to garner
Western sympathy for your efforts to colonize,
occupy, or ethnically cleanse a predominately
Muslim population, your best bet is to
stigmatize those you wish to conquer or suppress
as “radical Islamic terrorists.”
For 50 years, Israel has
conflated
Palestinian resistance to Islamic terrorism.
Well, at least one Nobel Peace Prize recipient
has been paying attention. As Myanmar carries
out what effectively is genocide against its 1.3
million Rohingya Muslim population, its de facto
leader Sang Suu Kyi has attempted to justify the
state’s violence with accusations that the
besieged are
“extremist terrorists”
who target non-Muslims.
Time
will tell whether or not Suu Kyi’s transparent
ploy to divert attention away from her country’s
systematic annihilation of Rohingya Muslims will
distract the international community from the
horrors taking place under her watch, but it’s
also worth examining other reasons for why the
world has done or said so little to bring a halt
to the violence.
From
the perspective of Western political elites, the
extermination of Muslims in a far away land that
neither threatens or benefits the interests and
security of Western political elites. And when
neither the interests and security of Western
political elites is at stake, and when it’s the
lives of Muslims or non-Westerners caught in the
crosshairs of someone else’s gun, and that gun
is being held by a country that many Westerners
can’t find on a map, mobilizing enough political
support to sustain any kind of intervention,
militarily or diplomatically, is a heavy lift.
We have seen this dimension play out time and
time again when
Muslim lives are on the receiving end of
genocide. When
Serbian and Croatian forces were slaughtering
Bosnian Muslims, both the United States and NATO
stood passively on the sidelines for a full four
years, 1991 to 1995. Even when the world learned
of the atrocities carried out in Srebrenica, one
that resulted in the murders of 8,000 Bosnian
Muslims, only 36% of the US public
supported an
intervention.
Worse still, the US and Britain had six weeks
warning that Serbian security forces and
militias were plotting the Srebrenica massacre,
but did nothing, instead
sacrificing
8,000 Muslim lives in pursuit of an ill
conceived grander strategy.
Myanmar’s slaughter of Rohingya Muslims has been
increasing in both frequency and ferocity since
2010, when the country began its transition from
a military junta to a somewhat quasi-democratic
system. During this period, the government has
openly courted an extremist Buddhist monk
coalition, known as the 969 movement, headed by
Ashin Wirathu, who has been described as the
“Burmese Bin Laden,”
portraying Rohingya Muslims as a dangerous,
persistent threat to Myanmar society.
But as
these extremist Buddhists juice the nation up
for more bloodshed against their Muslim
countrymen and neighbors, the reluctance of
neighboring Asian states to offer meaningful
assistance to Rohingya Muslims can only be
described as on par with the West.
Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia are each
Muslim majority countries, and each have washed
their respective hands of the growing
humanitarian crisis, each claiming they’re
financially unable to accept more refugees. “We
have to send the right message that they are not
welcome here,”
said Malaysia’s
deputy home minister. Thailand has also made
similar
claims.
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Larger
and more powerful Muslim majority countries,
such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have also
turned a blind eye to the plight of Rohingya
Muslims. Again, like their Western counterparts,
the systematic killing of Muslims in Myanmar
doesn’t threaten the interests of political
elites in each of the two countries.
Despite their dire predicament, and the
reluctance of both Western and Asian states to
intervene,
protests
against Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims
is spawning a wave of grassroots political
action across the globe. Over the weekend,
tens of thousands
took to the streets in Indonesia, Malaysia,
Bangladesh, and Russia to express their disgust
towards their respective government’s passivity
towards Myanmar’s violence.
These
mass protests are creating media headlines, and
from media headlines comes political pressure,
and from political pressure comes new policy.
For the sake of 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims,
one must hope a more empathetic policy comes
fast and furious.
CJ
Werleman is a journalist, political commentator,
and author of 'The New Atheist Threat: the
Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists.
This article was first published by
American Herald Tribune
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