As a responsible Government, you don’t just go around hollering ‘genocide.’ You say that acts of genocide may have occurred and they need to be investigated.
David Rawson, United States Ambassador to Rwanda((As quoted in Douglas Jehl, Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, NEW YORK TIMES, 10 June 1994.))
The Rohingya in Myanmar have by all accounts – save for those of the Myanmar government and military – been on the receiving end since at least 2012 of consistent, widespread, presumably organized, and arguably sanctioned acts of violence amounting to crimes against humanity. Take your pick of alleged crimes: persecution, rape, murder, forcible transfer, deportation, extermination, arbitrary detention and imprisonment, and arguably, apartheid. The full treatment.
Ethnic cleansing with tinges of genocidal acts seems to be the obvious goal, or more ominously put, the desired solution: to expel and, if necessary, eradicate the Rohingya Muslims from the Rakhine state of Myanmar. Meanwhile, the international community and those most expected to speak loudly and repeatedly contently wait, naively or apathetically, for the criminal acts against the Rohingya to dissipate, for their plight to be resolved. Wishful thinking based in part on willful blindness. Continue reading “Is the Myanmar government and military flirting with ‘acts of genocide’ against the Rohingya?”