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Is Aung San Suu Kyi culpable for Rohingya genocide?

The United Nation’s Human Rights Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has reported to the UN Human Rights Council that the systematic nature of the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) is possibly genocide.

Mr. Zeid expressed his determination to bring to justice offenders in the dehumanization of the Rohingyas.

As head of UN’s watchdog for Human Rights across the world, his opinions are strongly acknowledged. He is optimistic that Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as head of the Armed Forces, General Aung Min Hlaing, could find themselves in the dock on genocide charges in the future.

“Given the scale of the military operation, clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high level”.

Following the Holocaust, Members countries of the UN signed a convention, defining genocide in Article 2 as

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  1. Killing members of the group;

  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Aware of impending challenges in proving genocide, Mr. Zeid has called for an International criminal investigation into the perpetrators of what he refers to as the “shockingly brutal attacks” against the Muslim ethnic group mainly from Northern Rakhine in Myanmar.

While criticizing Suu Kyi for complacency in stripping the people of their name, failing to use the term “Rohingya”, he recalls his plea to her in August;

“I appealed to her to bring these military operations to an end, I appealed to her emotional standing… to do whatever she could to bring this to a close, and to my great regret it did not seem to happen”.

In his opinion, the Myanmar military grew more confident because the international community took no action against them after the violence in 2016.

“I suppose that they then drew a conclusion that they could continue without fear, what we began to sense was that this was really well thought out and planned”.

In defense, the Myanmar government said the military action was a response to terrorist attacks in August which killed 12 members of the security forces.

However, the BBC Panorama has evidence that preparations for the assault against Rohingya began long before that. There are also proofs that Myanmar had been training and arming local Buddhists;

“Every Rakhine national wishing to protect their state will have the chance to become part of the local armed police”.

A decision, which according to Matthew Smith, Chief Executive of the human rights organization, Fortify Rights, was made to effectively perpetrate atrocities and crimes against the civilian people of Rohingya. A view borne out by refugees in the vast camps in Myanmar who has first-hand experiences with these volunteers, attacking their Rohingya neighbours and burning down their homes.

“They were just like the army, they had the same kind of weapons, they were local boys, we knew them. When the army was burning our houses, torturing us, they were there”, said Mohammed Rafique, who ran a successful business in Myanmar.

Less than five months after the attacks, apprehensive that the repercussion of the violence isn’t over, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is concerned that this could be the “opening phases of something much worse”.

He also expresses distress that groups could form in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh and launch attacks in Myanmar, perhaps even targeting Buddhist temples. The result could be what he called a “confessional confrontation” – between Buddhists and Muslims.

The Rohingya people

Described by the UN as one of the World’s most persecuted minorities, the Rohingyas are a stateless Indo-Aryan people from Rakhine state in Myanmar. Estimated at one million living in Myanmar before the 2016-2017 crises, and as at December, about 625,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh since August 25, 2017.

The Rohingyas have been denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. Majority of the Rohingyas are Muslims, with a few Hindus.

According to Human Rights Watch, the 1982 laws “effectively deny to the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring a nationality. Despite being able to trace Rohingya history to the 8th century, Myanmar law does not recognize the ethnic minority as one of the eight “national races” They are also restricted from freedom of movement, state education, and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been widely compared to apartheid by many international academics, analysts and political figures, including Desmond Tutu, a famous South African anti-apartheid activist.

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