Archive for July, 2012

The beautiful mountains of Arakan divide the state from central Burma and the beautiful plains of the state house a population of 800,000 |Rohingya Muslims who claim to be living on these shores for hundreds of years. A claim resolutely denied by the Military rulers of Burma and the Buddhist community as they believe that Rohingya population are descendants of Chittagong Bengalis and only moved to Burma in 1863. Even if the twisted version of the dictator party is accepted as correct still it has been a good 150 years since these people started living their lives in Burma. They are not considered citizens though and are not issued with passports or rights of citizenship by a government which derives its power from the Buddhist religious base. Over the last 70 years these Muslims have been given the rough end of the deal by British, Japanese and the Burmese governments resulting in a mass exodus to Bangladesh and Thailand. Situation changed dramatically when Bangladesh decided to seal her borders to these refugees as they are struggling with the sheer numbers and the thigh border guards let the ship of these refugees sink and the men and women aboard drown.

A month ago three Muslim boys were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist girl and were arrested. One of them was reported to have killed himself while other two were sentenced to death after a trial of 4 days. The Muslim version of story varies from the state version as Muslim community argues that one of the boys fell in love with the Burmese girl and managed to flee with her, later to be captured and tortured to death in custody and the other two boys were innocent. Whichever version was correct didn’t matter as the local Buddhist community attacked a bus killing 10 Muslims. Military moved in after 30 Muslims deaths and within 2 days the death toll for Rohingya Muslims raised to 680 as the military and security forces of Burma led the Muslim hunting process which is continuing with no end in sight. UN or aid agencies are not allowed in |Rakhine and media organisations are banned as well. Any food or life saving supplies can not be given directly and have to go through the government aid agency. This leaves Muslims of Arakan helpless, hopeless and in a miserable plight awaiting torture, death and destruction on daily basis.

In this heart wrenching state of affairs UAE government continues to spend billions on a football club, Saudis are celebrating the crowning of new prince, Turkey is rejoicing on its economic success, Pakistan is dealing with its political crisis, Bangladesh has ceased to invite any more refugees and Iran is fighting against UN  sanctions. Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and other rich Arab countries are falling over each other to get in to good books of US. When the governments fail to take up a serious issue the media of those countries screams about the injustice and cruelty to make the governments act, but in this case all the major Muslim media organisations have better news and affairs to discuss and deal with.

The silence of the graveyard, where lies the corpse of Muslim ummah and their unity and brotherhood. As for Burmese Rohingya Muslims the writing is on the wall, no oil, no money, no state of their own and no monitory benefits to attract the Muslim governments and their media, so all they can do is to await the slaughter that shall come sooner or later. One resolution in UN unanimously drafted by Islamic world could do the trick by putting diplomatic pressure on militant rulers of Burma but frankly who cares and who has got the time to avert the spice of life and think about poor Muslims of Burma.

Source: saachtv

http://www.columnpk.com/muslim-massacre-in-myanmar-dr-asjad-bokhari/