13/11/2021
Now when I think of Islam, I think of family, brotherhood/sisterhood and to live purely and freely. Not to live free of fear, as what is destined for you will come to you even if it’s between two mountains and what isn’t yours you will not receive even if it’s between your two lips. But under the guise of separatism and terrorism, innocent people are being put into camps worldwide purely because of their faith.
In the land of the enlightened, Myanmar, we are seeing the Rohingya, a minority Muslim people (around 5% of the population) being persecuted. The UN describes the Rohingya as the worst persecuted people in the world. The Buddhist majority military is pushing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from their homeland (Rakhine state) where they have been settled for centuries. The atrocities have all been brought up to the UN, which right now seems to be a fresh-faced substitute teacher thrown into a special needs school.
1.1 million people now have fled to Bangladesh fearing for their lives after atrocities; people being burned alive, gang-raped and killed.
Where does all this hate stem from?
Well, during World War Two the Rohingya Muslims were allied with the British on the promise that they would have their own state in return, fighting against the Rakhine Buddhists who fought alongside the Japanese. Following Burma’s “independence” in 1948 the Union government who were predominantly Buddhist denied citizenship to the Rohingya, putting them through mass discrimination, which has been widely been described and compared to Apartheid, from political figures like Desmond Tutu.
In 2012 riots broke out and ignited the already fractured tensions between the Muslims and the Buddhists, which ended up forcibly displacing 125,000 Rohingya. These riots which were incited by top-level government officials and ultranationalist Buddhists monks after the Rohingya peacefully protested. These protests were quickly dispersed when the police opened fire. These 125,000 displaced Muslims have been locked down in these detention centres, the government, however, calls them internally displaced person camps. They have no healthcare, no education, surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire, they are not allowed to leave even for work. Any approach from journalists is waded off with bureaucracy or brute force.
The former British colony, whose state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi; an oxford educated Nobel prize peace winner, nonetheless her government has overseen the building of these ‘internally displaced person camps’/Muslim detention centres.
Elicitation to the guards can only get you so far in this dystopia. Malnutrition is rife and the quality of life is below that of what any kind-hearted soul would bestow upon an animal. These human-right violations are totally intolerable in Aung San Suu Kyi’s country. The not so far right Buddhist’s dudes who were displaced during all this commotion in 2012 have been sent back to their land, are allowed to move freely even though they incited the riots and had the best of it. Pacifists enjoying the spoils of war.
Buddhism is all about finding inner peace and enlightenment, Buddhists place great emphasis on non-violence and compassion for all life. But Ashin Wirathu (10/10 supervillain name) is a Buddhist monk who spreads a new mantra inciting hate against Muslims. He doesn’t seem to mind his nickname as the “Buddhist bin Laden”. Scared about the spread of Islam in his country, he has incited so much hate against the followers of Islam that Zuckerberg has shut down his Facebook page numerous times. His ultranationalist stance is based on his insecurity that Islam will outnumber the Buddhists, he refers to Muslims as mad dogs and snakes, he follows the same stance as Modi and China on inter-religion marriages. Wirathu who nods his shiny little head to the EDL for “protecting their native people”.
A revival of hate speech and violence against the Rohingya flared back up in August 2017 after ASRA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) launched deadly attacks on police posts. The military responded by burning Rohingya villages, mass rape and murdering at least 6,700 Rohingya including 730 children under the age of 5 according to Médecins Sans Frontières.
The same sort of agitation tactics used in Xinjiang, with the Uighurs is used here; make the muslims lives intolerable, incite hate, murder/rape relitives, put them into camps without contact all while propagating injustice and when a few rise up and try and fight back, serve the killing blows.
The Rohingya fearing for their lives fled to bordering Bangladesh. The Myanmar government reported that only 400 people died in these “clearance operations” against the “militants’’ and they stopped after September 2017, but BBC correspondents have evidence that they lied, and operations continued until long after this date. Around 288 villages were burned to the ground or partially destroyed in this campaign of hate against the Muslims. Since 2012 hate against the Rohingya has escalated to an intolerable level, pushing them out of their own lands and into squalid refugee camps.
Kutupolong refugee site (Cox’s Bazar – Bangladesh), is now the world’s largest refugee site. Which in itself is quite the achievement, when you think of the number of people who are being displaced in the world right now. The problem with refugee sites is that they are a cesspit for crime and elicitation. Human trafficking has become a worldwide problem, people risking it all just to get to the west, to be stateless, where they will be elicited to work for below the minimum wage. Slave to a foriegn currency, working behind the scenes as cooks, factory workers and in car parks forming communities which eventually leads to deportation, isolation/homelessness or asylum.
Bangladesh, which is already a struggling economy has done a lot for these people and is now facing the same issues that mass refugee migration causes in any country. The Rohingya will work for less than 100 taka (-$1) a day, working for less than the natives obviously causes tensions. Bangladeshi workers get paid around $2.3 per day. Basic supply and demand also comes into play regarding the inflation in the price of daily commodities, which again niggles the natives who are also struggling to feed their families.
But as these people migrate further, the elicitation just escalates. Worldwide we are seeing a rise in far-right nationalism and broken people from destroyed states doing what they need to survive. Whether it be petty theft, drug pushing, prostitution. These stateless people have no security, unknown to the system they can’t be tracked because Myanmar wouldn’t issue them with paperwork/citizenship. They are now being repatriated biometrically by the Bangladeshi government; which is seen as sinister by the Rohingya who have to get repatriated just to receive aid. But the Bangladeshi government says they are doing it purely for organisational reasons but are giving this data to Myanmar. Once repatriated, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government tells the Rohingya to travel back to Myanmar where they will be housed in more of these transit camps, these new camps are built on the land where burned down Rohingya villages once stood.
But Bangladesh is not forcing these people back to Myanmar but instead, something more sinister and utterly dystopian has happened.
Bhasan Char is an island in the Bay of Bengal, which is made from sediments which can rapidly move and reshape. The island is notorious for its erosion, flooding, cyclones and thunderstorms. Despite warnings from environmentalist and human rights groups, 25,000 families have been moved to the island only recently.
The project which has been in the works for the last 5 years run by British architects (H R Wellingford and MDM), has cost the Bangladeshi government around $350 million, probably borrowed from China. Named Ashrayan-3, the huge mini-city concentration camp, has 1,400 cluster homes, 120 cyclone shelters, administrate buildings, offices, schools, two hospitals with twenty beds each, relief centres, warehouses, fire and police stations, a lighthouse, mosques, a helipad, 2-megawatt power plants, and road and drainage networks. A 12.1 kilometres long and two-meters high embankment with integrated drainage has been constructed to protect the inhabitants and onshore infrastructure from floods. Facilities for agriculture, fish and poultry farming, cattle rearing, and dairy production have been provided in the island. Or so says the brochure.
As impressive as all this infrastructure sounds, by the photos it looks surprisingly a lot like a concentration camp. Simple Breeze block structures, which haven’t been constructed by builders but by the Bangladeshi army, a jigsaw puzzle laid out by the architects. No furniture and no livestock on the island, the islanders are purely reliant on aid. The Rohingya are forcibly being transported to this eroding island, where screams can be heard due to the guards incessantly sexually assaulting the Rohingya women. It’s like something plucked out of George Orwell’s nightmares.
We are seeing worldwide, the persecutions of Muslim’s on a scale that hasn’t been seen against a group of people since the holocaust. Previous to the holocaust the masses had the same feeling of dismay, post-great-depression and the great war. Wanting a reprieve from their repetitive and monotonous depressive lives. They looked the other way when hatred reared his bald head, giving the hateful an outlet, seeing the effects of their joint idleness and cowardice later. A campaign of bad press which has spanned over 30 years, peaking over the last 10, dehumanising muslims and immigrants pushing more complex issues on the shoulders of the already burdened and voiceless.
We seem to repeat ourselves, in the same cycles, the joint human condition. Post the great depression we saw WW1 and 2, the worst atrocities in history, but as we grow, we are seeing the atrocities just getting bigger. We have some foresight in our human behaviours due to previous human race behavioural patterns. But should we have to carry on with these human revolutions of behaviour if we already have enough foresight to see the outcome? Technology always bangs when you torture the scientist though, but at the cost of my people? Nothing was worth the cost of the first crusade. The Holocaust. The sanctity of human life. And yet we still follow the same behavioural cycles, in the constant revolution of life. Adjust the sheep, wolf ratio now, not post...
I know that during this pandemic that anxiety has increased through rhetoric, the news, misinformation and just bad leadership. But an anxious mind who looks down at the cracks in the pavement is easier to manipulate with mis-information and redirect, than a man who travels with his eyes above the horizon searching for beauty in their own truth whether the sun is setting or rising on their chosen path.
Humanity's depravity has no depths when it comes to pain that we can inflict on each other, these 125,000 rohingyas have been in these camps for over 8 years. Over a feud which wasn't even incited by them, put upon them by foriegn powers. An island concentration camp where screams can be heard as people are being raped, once living in poverty but happily, now with all their worldly possessions burned to the ground or pillaged, living paperlessly these people could all vanish into the ether and who would really care? A small obituary on page 23, just below some reality stars breakdown.
The western world has just forgotten about them, being muslim now is considered a dirty word so much so, that when children are massacred, people are being burned alive, freedoms and basic human rights are all being violated, the news oppresses the nation with anxiety inducing content, instead of giving a global outlook on humanity. The world forgets what it means to be human by describing them as muslim.