Haunting images of the Rohingya boat people spread around the world as country after country denied asylum to refugees from Burma. Thousands had fled persecution and hidden genocide in Burma and were slowly starving to death on the sea, abandoned by smugglers who had promised them safety.
News also came in of discovery of mass graves and the human trafficking of the Rohingya. Malaysian and Thai authorities announced the discovery of smugglers’ camps with watchtowers, crude cages of sticks and barbed wire, and nearly 140 graves.
While some charities, such as Partners for Relief, raised money for immediate relief by hiring boats to look for the Rohingya at sea and feed them, here in the United States the Burma Task Force is working on policy changes aimed at stopping the genocide.
As previously reported in the Muslim Link, millions ethnic Rohingya Muslims have been wiped out from Myanmar. These are indigenous people of the area who were included in Myanmar after borders were officially drawn.
Despite having historic ties that span generations and centuries to the land of Burma, the Rohingya people were rendered stateless in 1982 by a highly stratified citizenship law that did not recognize Rohingya as one of Burma’s natural citizenry, and thereby legitimate, ethnicities. As a result, the Rohingya people have been incorrectly and unjustly classified as foreigners or ‘Bengali’ in their own homeland. The Citizenship Law of 1982 has since become the grounds for the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry in Burma.
Rohingya are systematically denied citizenship, be forced into manual labor by the government, they are forbidden to marry without official permission, prohibited from attending public high schools, cannot work for the government or be voted into public office, the government restricts their movement within Rakhine state and beyond its borders.
Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of the Burma Task Force USA, held a phone town hall meeting on May 23, 2015, to answer questions and gauge support for statements prior to the Oslo conference co-sponsored by BTF. The taskforce is a coalition of 19 Muslim organizations. Attendees were able to agree or disagree with stances.
He informed participants that approximately 3000 Rohingya have been rescued but 500-600 are leaving Rakhine state everyday. Mujahid called it a slow burning genocide or hidden genocide. According to Mujahid, the only long term solution to the crisis is to guarantee Rohingya their citizenship and rights in Myanmar. “Your calls to politicians work; your phone calls save lives,” he said sharing the results of BTF’s 10 minute a day campaign.
He applauded the work of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and warned that very few humanitarian organizations have been given access to the Rohingya. Currently there is one doctor for every 80,000 Rohingya in Myanmar.
On May 19, 2015 the government of Turkey dispatched a Turkish Navy ship to the coast off Thailand and Malaysia where thousands of Rohingya Muslims are stranded at sea. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolu said that Turkey was exerting efforts to reach out to the people aboard with a Navy vessel and in coordination with the International Organization for Migration.
On May 20, 2015, the Indonesian and Malaysian governments gave in to intense pressure and offered temporary shelter. "Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those 7,000 irregular migrants still at sea," Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said alongside his Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsude.
The Burma Task Force has asked the American Muslim community to make Rohingya Muslims their Ramadan focus. From making dua for them privately and publicly during Taraweeh, to raising awareness and funds for the action alert campaigns that they organize for the Rohingya. Help is also needed in maintaining and augmenting the email listserv and
Through the work of the task force, the US is the only country in the world that has a bill directed towards the plight of the Rohingya. ‘In 2014, Congress sent a clear message via House Resolution 418, calling on the Myanmar government to protect all its people, including the Rohingya.’
The Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingya was held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen, Oslo, Norway on May 26 and 27, 2015. At the conference Archbishop Desmond Tutu described the persecution of the Rohingya as slow genocide. His thoughts were shared by six other fellow Nobel Peace Laureates: Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams, Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi, Leyman Gbowee and Adolfo Perez Esquivel. According to the United Nations definition of genocide, international law makes it incumbent on governments to intervene once a genocide has been declared.
In a joint statement, the Nobel laureates said “what Rohingyas are facing is a textbook genocide in which an entire indigenous community is being systematically wiped out by the Burmese government.”
In a statement of support, multi-billionaire George Soros stated that what he witnessed happening to the Rohingya reminds him of the Nazi-occupied Hungary from his childhood.
According to a statement, after two days of deliberations the conference issued the following urgent appeal to the international community. “The pattern of systematic human rights abuses against the ethnic Rohingya people entails crimes against humanity including the crime of genocide; the Myanmar government’s denial of the existence of the Rohingya as a people violates the right of the Rohingya to self-identify; the international community is privileging economic interests in Myanmar and failing to prioritize the need to end its systematic persecution and destruction of the Rohingya as an ethnic group.”
As conditions become so atrocious that Muslims and non-Muslim celebrities finally begin shining the spotlight on the plight of the Rohingya, they continue to wait for justice.
To volunteer at the Burma Task force email them at info@BurmaMuslims.org vor call 312-750-1178