The secretary general of the global rights body, Kumi Naidoo, wrote to Suu Kyi on November to inform her of the organization’s decision to revoke the Ambassador of Conscience Award, which was presented in 2009

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at the plenary session of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN at the Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam September 12, 2018 Reuters

Amnesty International has stripped de facto Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its highest honour in light of the Nobel laureate’s “shameful betrayal of the values she once stood for”.

The secretary general of the global rights body, Kumi Naidoo, wrote to Suu Kyi on November to inform her of the organization’s decision to revoke the Ambassador of Conscience Award, which was presented in 2009.

Naidoo expressed Amnesty’s disappointment that Suu Kyi had not used her “political and moral authority” to safeguard human rights, justice or equality in Myanmar, citing her apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya ethnic minority.

“As an Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience, our expectation was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out against injustice wherever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself,” Kumi Naidoo wrote, according to an Amnesty press release.
“Today, we are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights. 

“Amnesty International cannot justify your continued status as a recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience award and so with great sadness we are hereby withdrawing it from you.”

Perpetuating human rights violations
Amnesty International has repeatedly criticized the failure of Aung San Suu Kyi and her government to speak out about military atrocities against the Rohingya population in Rakhine State, who have lived for years under a system of segregation and discrimination amounting to apartheid. 

During the campaign of violence unleashed against the Rohingya last year, the Myanmar security forces killed thousands, raped women and girls, detained and tortured men and boys, and burned hundreds of homes and villages to the ground.

More than 720,000 Rohingya have since fled to Bangladesh, while a UN report has called for senior military officials to be investigated and prosecuted for the crime of genocide.

Although the civilian government does not have control over the military, Aung San Suu Kyi and her office have shielded the security forces from accountability by dismissing, downplaying or even denying allegations of human rights violations, and by obstructing international investigations into abuses. 

Her administration has actively stirred up hostility against the Rohingya by labelling them as “terrorists”, accusing them of burning their own homes, and by decrying “faking rape”.

Attacks on freedom of speech
Despite the power wielded by the military, there are areas where the civilian-led government has considerable authority to enact reforms to better protect human rights, especially those relating to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. 

In the two years since Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration assumed power, however, human rights defenders, peaceful activists and journalists have been arrested and imprisoned while others face threats, harassment and intimidation for their work.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration has failed to repeal repressive laws – including some of the same laws which were used to detain her and others campaigning for democracy and human rights. 

Instead, she has actively defended the use of such laws, in particular the decision to prosecute and imprison two Reuters journalists for their work documenting a Myanmar military massacre.

First published on Dhaka Tribune

The post Aung San Suu Kyi stripped of Amnesty’s highest honour appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Yanghee Lee, the United Nations investigator of human rights abuses in Myanmar, has expressed deep disappointment in Aung San Suu Kyi for her indifferent response to the Rohingya crisis.

Speaking to reporters at the United Nations on Thursday, the investigator underscored international frustrations over the behaviour of the state counsellor of Myanmar regarding the persecution of the Rohingya.

Child rights expert Yanghee Lee of South Korea was appointed to her United Nations human rights post in 2014, reports the New York Times.

“Well-documented accounts of killings, rapes, burned villages and forced displacement gets no coverage in Myanmar’s news media,” Lee said while talking about the hatred and hostility against the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

She said: “It has really baffled everyone, and has really baffled me, about Daw Aung’s non-position on this issue.

“She [Suu Kyi] has not ever recognised that there is such a people called Rohingya — that’s a starting point. I’m very disappointed.”

The UN investigator added: “If the Myanmar leader [Suu Kyi] were to reach out to the people and say, ‘Hey, let’s show some humanity,’ I think people will follow her — she’s adored by the public.”

“Unfortunately, there seems to be little sympathy, let alone empathy, for the Rohingya people in Myanmar,” Lee said. “For decades, it has been cultivated in the minds of the Myanmar people that the Rohingya are not indigenous to the country and therefore have no rights whatsoever to which they can apparently claim.”

Suu Kyi skipped the annual United Nations General Assembly in September what was widely viewed as a way to avoid hard questions and confrontations over the Rohingya crisis.

She was criticised by other leaders, including some fellow Nobel laureates, for her response towards the torture on the Rohingyas in her country.

According to United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR), at least 604,000 Rohingyas have entered Bangladesh fleeing the violence that erupted in Myanmar on August 25.

Myanmar’s de-facto leader last month publicly addressed concerns over the deadly conflict in Rakhine State, highlighting her government’s commitment to restore peace, stability and rule of law in the region scarred by armed conflict between insurgents – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) – and security forces.

Without mentioning the word Rohingya, she said carefully-worded lines of condemnation, saying that Myanmar has “never been soft on human rights”.

Earlier, on August 29, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that satellite data accessed by the rights body had revealed widespread fires burning in at least 10 areas in Rakhine State, where local residents and activists have accused soldiers of shooting indiscriminately at unarmed Rohingya men, women, and children, and carrying out arson attacks.

Myanmar authorities, on the other hand, claim that Rohingya “extremist terrorists” have been setting these fires during fights with government troops. Human Rights Watch reports they could not obtain any comments on this issue from any government spokesperson.

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune
 

The post The Rohingya crisis: UN official ‘very disappointed’ in Suu Kyi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo credit: Wessex Scene

For nearly one and a half million Rohingyas, it must be a rude shock to realise that they are no longer Burmese citizens. Rohingyas are Burmese Muslims who settled in that part of the world in the wake of British East India Company colonizing Burma. These Muslims primarily came from Bangladesh but they were not the only Muslims living in Burma. Muslim presence in Burma predates the migration of Bangladeshis to this country. But the problem today is that if you are a Muslim in Myanmar then you are considered an outsider and a threat to the country. It does not matter when your ancestors came to this country.

 It does not matter if in the past, Burmese Kings styled  themselves on the Nawabs of Bangladesh and were largely emulative of Islamic culture. What matters today is that the Buddhists do not want Muslims in their country and perhaps will go to any extent to realise this dream of Muslim free Myanmar.

Buddhism proclaims itself as a peaceful religion and goes to the world announcing its non-violence and inclusivity of its faith. And yet today the same Buddhists are baying for the blood of Muslims. Ever since the Buddhists of Burma have experienced nationalism, they have realised the need to project another: in this case an internal enemy who are supposedly bleeding the country dry. The comparisons with nationalisms in other countries have chilling similarities. Accusations of ‘breeding like rabbits’, non-acculturating tendencies of Muslims and of course their link to terrorism is touted as the reasons why Buddhist majority is supposedly losing its patience with the Muslims.

 The truth is always complex: Muslims being poor definitely have higher birth rates but whether it is due to their religion or their class situation is hardly discussed. There is hardly any documented evidence to suggest that Rohingyas have been active within any jihadist networks. But then when nationalism becomes the ruling ideology, truth is always the first casualty. There is no point talking about evidences and facts, what matters are the perceptions.

And the overwhelming perception today within Myanmar is against the Muslims. The problem is compounded by the fact that these Muslims are concentrated in one part of the country-the Rakhine state- and that gives them greater visibility as well as marks them as a community to be discriminated against.

Nothing can justify what is happening to these Muslims. Through a slow process, they are being disenfranchised and there is institutional discrimination against them. In 1982, the Burmese government passed an order which effectively made them non-citizens within their own country by classifying them as Bengali refugees. Moreover laws passed by the Myanmar government have made marriages within Rohingya community extremely difficult.

The two child norm forced by the state for this ethnic community means that other children born within families remain without education and other facilities which other children get. What is most problematic is that after being stripped of their citizenship status, the Rohingyas have been denied freedom of movement which means that they can hardly go outside of the Rakhine state. This essentially means that they are being made to live in ghettos without any opportunity to earn their livelihood.

It is heart rending to hear tales of their persecution including forcible evictions, houses raised to the grounds, shops and establishments being burnt and looted and reports of mass rape. What is perhaps more disappointing is that there is hardly any voice within Myanmar today which can call this injustice by its name: that it is akin to a pogrom or that the state has become committed to a genocide.

 It was hoped that Aung San Suu Kyi would be in a position to urge the international community to take notice of what has been happening in her country. However it is a rather sad commentary on the so called human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner that she has been silent on the whole issue. Not only has she been silent but at times she is even seen to be supporting the military junta over the question of Muslim repression. Her silence only means that there is near consensus within Myanmar over the Muslim Rohingya question.

But the most severe criticism should be reserved for Muslim countries. There are 57 Muslim countries representing a combined Muslim population of 1.7 billion and yet they have hardly been pro-active on this issue. It is true that some Muslim countries have offered refugee status to these Rohingyas but the situation is hardly satisfactory even within these countries. The Rohingya settlements in Bangladesh for example are another ghetto where these Muslims do not have freedom of movement. They are cut off from the rest of the world and independent journalists hardly have access to these settlements. But the real important point is this: that despite Muslim countries having clout in the United Nations and elsewhere, they have not been able to bring international pressure on Myanmar over its treatment of the Rohingyas.

It is not that atrocities against these Muslims have not been documented: Human rights groups have done and have tried to make international bodies aware of it. Despite all these documented proofs, important Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran have not been able to isolate Myanmar over this issue. We need to ask those who swear in the name of the Ummah: is the blood of Rohingyas insipid in comparison to other Muslims?

(Arshad Alam is a NewAgeIslam.com columnist).

(This article was first published on NewAgeIslam).

 

The post Why the Blood of the Rohingyas Does Not Fire the Muslim Ummah appeared first on SabrangIndia.