Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

The Nonstop Bleeding in Myanmar

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The Nonstop Bleeding in Myanmar

The recent indescribable casualties and sufferings inflicted upon Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have outraged the conscience of scores of people around the globe, including Afghanistan. They are bleeding relentlessly and bear the brunt of atrocities of conflict. The flagrant violation of human rights and dignity and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is an unmistakable fact in Myanmar. Men, women and children are shot indiscriminately – which is against the international instruments and humanity.
The carnage and bloodshed in Myanmar carried out against the ethnic minority group reflects the megalomania of the individuals involved in this act of cruelty. No wonder, scores of bloody wars throughout the history stemmed from claiming racial and religious superiority which led to mammoth debris and countless human fatalities. That is to say, the gory incidents and destructive wars did not only remedy the problems of the human societies but deteriorated the issue and sowed the seeds of revenge among nations.   
The merciless and indiscriminate killings of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar will never ever be a panacea for this country. Religious intolerance and racial bigotry, which are the root causes of wars and violence, will compound the challenges in human societies. It is strongly believed that segregating Rohingya Muslims – who are described as “the world’s most persecuted minority” – and discriminating them on the basis of their religion will be counterproductive and lead to horrible consequence in the future.
To the world’s unmitigated chagrin, the Nobel Prize Laureate and the State Counselor of Myanmar and leader of the ruling National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi has not condemned the flagrant violation of human rights and merciless massacre of Muslims’ ethnic group in majority Buddhist country. Condemning the issue, Pakistani Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai said that she waited for the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to denounce the “shameful treatment” of the Rohingya.
The violence and the exodus started after Myanmar police and paramilitary posts came under the attack of Rohingya militants who intended to protect their ethnic minority from torture by Myanmar security force. The army showed backlash through ushering in indiscriminate offensive called “clearance operations” claiming to root out the militants.
Within the last ten days, about 90,000 Rohingya Muslims have reportedly fled to Bangladesh uprooted by reported rapes, murders and acts of arson.
Trampling upon the rights and dignity of men, women and children and killing them in cold blood are highly outrageous. To put it succinctly, it is too hard to articulate the tragic aspect of Myanmar’s incident.
“This turn of events is deplorable. It was predicted and could have been prevented. Decades of persistent and systematic human rights violations, including the very violent security responses to the attacks since October 2016, have almost certainly contributed to the nurturing of violent extremism, with everyone ultimately losing,” the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein is cited as saying.
Similarly, the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have consistently decried the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar and neighboring countries.
The bloody episode and heart-wrenching stories of Rohingya Muslims have outraged the conscience of large number of people in Afghanistan, too. Posting the riddled bodies with sliced throats of Rohingya women and children in social media, a number of individuals condemned this issue in the strongest possible term and called it a genocide urging Suu Kyi to “return the Noble Prize”. Moreover, countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Chechnya, etc. raised concern over the issue.
When innocent Myanmar Muslim women and children are slaughtered, when innocent Christians are killed in terrorist attacks in Manchester, England, when Yazidi women are dishonored by the self-styled Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, etc. that is a stain on collective conscience. Indeed, when an individual’s right or dignity is violated in any parts of the world, regardless of their racial, religious or ethnic backgrounds, it will be a disgrace for the entire world.
There will be no peace or stability, unless the world practices religious tolerance and racial acceptance and promote the spirit of brotherhood. It is aptly stated in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
To sum up, the Myanmar state will have to respect international instruments and stop violence and bloodshed. Discriminating the ethnic group of Rohingya on the grounds of their religion will never ensure peace and stability in the country. The bloodbath will further blemish the reputation of this country at international level since the UN, along with many countries, condemned the inhuman rehearsal of Myanmar security forces.

Hujjatullah Zia is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at zia_hujjat@yahoo.com

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