The UN accuses Burma of “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya.

The promises of national reconciliation ventured by the Burmese leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, when she came to power in last year’s historic elections are diluted by blows of reality.
The new wave of violence against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in a country with a Buddhist majority, whose rights are systematically denied to the dismay of international organizations and the indifference of local authorities, has led the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazar, John McKissick, to denounce a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” promoted by the Naypyidaw government to expel the Muslims.
The Rohingya are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh by Burma, despite having lived in the South Asian country for several generations.
Speaking to the BBC, McKissick said that the Burmese Armed Forces, which launched a bloody military operation in Rakhine state on October 9 after an insurgency operation in which nine uniformed personnel were killed, “have launched collective punishment against the Rohingya minority”.
“They shoot men, kill them, massacre children, rape women, burn and loot homes and force these people to cross the river” to Bangladesh, the international official said.
“It is now very difficult for the Bangladeshi government to say that the border is open because that would further encourage the Burmese government to continue its atrocities and push the Rohingya to achieve their main goal: the ethnic cleansing of Burma’s Muslim minority,” he added.
The Rohingya, one million inhabitants, are the target of a historic campaign of anti-Muslim violence relaunched in 2012 by the extremist Buddhist Movement 969, led by the monk Ashin Wirathu – who defines himself as the Buddhist Bin Laden – and adopted as its own policy by the central executive, generating 100,000 displaced people.
Some 140,000 Rohingya have been confined to ghettos and displacement camps where they survive in inhumane conditions and without basic rights such as free movement.
Following the insurgent operation in Maungdaw district last month, the Tatmadaw (army) response has been the most serious violence in four years.
According to satellite imagery obtained and analyzed by Human Rights Watch, some 1,200 houses have been burned in Rohingya villages in the past six weeks in raids that have involved serious abuses including gang rape, torture, and summary executions, according to survivors who have fled to neighboring Bangladesh.
Speaking to AFP, one of them, Mohammad Ayaz, recounted how soldiers attacked his village and killed his pregnant wife.
“They shot dead my wife, Jannatun Naim. She was 25 years old and seven months pregnant. I hid in a canal with my two-year-old son, injured by a gust of fire.”
According to Ayaz, on that day there were 300 deaths in the market, dozens of women were raped, some in groups, and some 300 houses were set on fire.
However, the estimates used by activists reduce the number of fatalities to 86 and speak of hundreds of arrests.
Authorities in Dhaka estimate that some 30,000 Rohingya have fled their villages for fear of the Tatmadaw, sparking a massive influx of refugees into Bangladesh. “Despite our efforts to prevent their entry, thousands of desperate Burmese citizens, including women, children and the elderly, continue to cross the border,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
“Thousands more are waiting at border crossings,” the Bangladeshi official added.
On Tuesday, Bangladesh forced about 20 Rohingya-occupied boats back to Burma to the dismay of refugees: seven of them drowned, according to witnesses quoted by the international press, in an attempt to swim across the river to escape.
Yesterday, according to the Efe agency, seven other boats suffered the same fate.
Although the official policy of Bangladesh (where some 500,000 Rohingya reside irregularly) is not to accept refugees – Amnesty International denounces that the Bangladeshi Border Guards have detained and deported “hundreds” of Rohingya in recent weeks – the government in Dhaka has assured that thousands of Burmese Muslims have been accepted in recent days. and has summoned the Bangladeshi ambassador to Burma to express its “deep concern” about the military operations in Rakhine.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the government demanded that Naypyidaw “take urgent and appropriate measures so that Muslim minorities are not forced to take refuge on the other side of the border”.
In the opinion of the UNHCR director in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal city and natural destination for Rohingya refugees – there, the Kutupalong and Nayapara camps host 33,000 refugees – Dhaka will have to change its policy.
“As difficult as it is to assist and protect them, I believe that the Bangladeshi government has no choice, as the alternative is death and suffering,” he said.

Sticks and knives

The Naypyidaw government, which links Rohingya insurgents who stormed three border posts with sticks and knives in early October with ISIS, claims to be carrying out anti-terrorist operations, claims that all the fatalities are fighters, claims that the Rohingya set fire to their own homes “to attract international attention” and rejects accusations of rape claiming that Rohingya women “are very dirty”.
The Burmese government has banned journalists and aid workers from accessing the affected areas, making it difficult to verify official information or activists’ complaints.
Humanitarian aid on which some 150,000 people depend has been suspended since the military operation began 40 days ago.
The UN has warned that 3,000 malnourished children are at risk of imminent death if they are not given the ‘green light’ to introduce medicines and food.
The situation is so alarming that demonstrations are taking place in neighbouring Muslim countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh against Burma’s policy, which argues that the Rohingya are burning their own homes to “attract international attention” and blames the media for distributing “lies fabricated by Rohingya lobbies”.
The youth wing of the ruling Malaysian Umno party has called for a demonstration today in front of the Burmese Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to demand an end to the violence in Rakhine and has called on the government to withdraw the national football team from the ASEAN Football Championship being held in Burma. something that is being seriously studied by the authorities, as confirmed by the Minister of Sports and Youth, Khairy Jamaluddin, on his Twitter account.

The Nobel laureate, ‘disappointed’

In Dhaka, dozens of members of the Islamic Cultural Association took part in protests against the “genocide” in Rakhine and demanded an international response.
In Indonesia, hundreds of people waved banners with the phrase Stop the Muslim Genocide in front of the Burmese Embassy in Jakarta.
Even US State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson has expressed concern about “reports of ongoing violence and displacement in the northern state of Rakhine” and demanded an independent investigation, in what is perceived as a rare pressure on State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. who refuses, like the rest of the Burmese, even to call the Rohingya community by name.
For the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has never defended the rights of her country’s Muslim community, it is difficult to respond to international criticism without confronting the all-powerful Tatmadaw, and after 25 years of military junta she needs the support of the army to govern.
In the past six weeks, Suu Kyi had maintained a stubborn silence, avoiding even press conferences.
Last Wednesday he broke that dynamic to express his “disappointment” at the fighting that has been going on for six days in Shan State between the army and an alliance of guerrillas from four ethnic minorities – the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the militias of the Taang and Kokang minority and the paramilitaries of the Arakan Army – and to demand that the first three join the national reconciliation process. Panglong XXI Century that he promoted last August, in which 18 of 21 Burmese armed groups participated.
These latest fightings, which have already claimed nine victims, some thirty wounded and 5,000 displaced, are taking place on the border with China, a country that has put its troops on high alert in the area.
“Just as the people of Burma are striving to achieve peace and national reconciliation that has eluded them in the past, it is extremely disappointing and sad that these incidents have been instigated,” Suu Kyi said Wednesday in a statement published by the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, which made no reference to violence against the Rohingya community. http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2016/11/25/5837c2dd468aeb822d8b4652.html