Stealing Their Heritage

Myanmar's Slow Genocide
(The Darkness Visible series)

When a tyrant finds that they can no longer effectively kill off a targeted community the endgame scenario they often turn to is no less atrocious then the original sin. It is an option for genocidal regimes that has been a persistent fix all throughout the history of genocide. For the Germans it was the cattle car solution to the "Jewish Question". In Armenia it was defined by death marches into the wilderness where the victims were made to suffer a slow death if not immediately executed. And in Myanmar it is expressed clearly in the eyes of every "refugee" created through the government's barbarism.

Slow Genocide

"We will take responsibility for our ethnic people but it is impossible to accept the illegally entered Rohingyas, who are not our ethnicity," ~Thein Sein

Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of members of an ethnic, religious, or national group with intent to destroy the group in part or in whole. It can include the imposing of living conditions meant to bring about the death or deterioration of the group in any capacity. This means that the deportations of members of the group can be interpreted as intent to impose living conditions that would destroy the group in part or in whole. For this reason the use of deportations on any scale is a tactic of savagery by a state that can legally be defined as genocide. However slow it might be... it is still genocide. 

In previous post we have explored the intent on Myanmar's part to create refugees of it's minority populations with intent of "ethnically cleansing" it's lands of said groups. Though there are arguments amongst some about the supposed difference between ethnic cleansing and outright genocide, it is the opinion of this blog that the two are the same crime regardless. For that reason the use of such tactics on the part of Myanmar constitute a history of genocide and the continuation of it when dealing with all it's minority groups. 

For the Rohingya this slow bleed has been up to this point has been a genocide characterized by pogroms designed to look like "flash point" events of ethnic unrest. These supposed spontaneous attacks have been accompanied by military action that rapidly follows up behind state supported Rakhine mobs. Where the civilian attackers cannot finish the job the Burmese military picks up the slack. This cooperation shows that despite the appearance of spontaneity, the attacks are often organized and carried out in the same military fashion Myanmar has displayed in the Shan and Kachin states. 

The initial blitz approach to genocide lost steam as the world turned it's eyes upon the newly "democratic" Myanmar. Feeling the pressure to maintain appearances, Burma turned away from outright slaughter and moved toward a slower version of death. Rohingya were rapidly placed into concentration camps without regard to living conditions for the Rohingya themselves. This aspect of organizing IDP camps that would bring about disease, starvation, and eventual death should had shown the intent of genocide on Myanmar's part. But the world looked the other way as Burma sealed off Rohingya villages and created the ghettos that Poland once endured. 

During this entire campaign of slowing down the death toll in the Arakan state the government of Burma expressed a desire to begin deportations. Under the Nasaka small scale deportations did exist. Yet with the old SA gone and the new SS building up it's numbers, the deportations have all but ended. Border security in Myanmar still utilizes human traffickers to deport the Rohingya in boats and along dangerous paths into neighboring countries. This turns a profit for the corrupt Myanmar regime while at the same time fulfilling the government's desire to ethnically cleanse the Arakan. 

Endgame

"We will send them away if any third country would accept them," Thein Sein. "This is what we are thinking is the solution to the issue."

When Hitler laid out his 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Question' he did so with the same vitriol that can be heard in Thein Sein's voice when talking about Myanmar's Rohingya question. The hatred that spewed forth in Mein Kamph can be read in every sentence that has come forth from Thein Sein when addressing the "issue" of Rohingya in Myanmar. It isn't enough that the man calls an entire ethnic group and "issue" but that he feels a need to find a "solution" to them. This is the nature of Burma's endgame.

It is not beyond reason to imagine that if Myanmar cannot deport enough Rohingya fast enough (before the next elections) that Thein Sein could look toward more "spontaneous" actions to reduce the Rohingya population. But for now the endgame solution that Burma has chosen to move forward with is that of deportations and concentration camps. The relationship between the two methods is vital to the endgame that Thein Sein's regime (note that Thein Sein is a puppet to a military backed government) has chosen for the genocide of the Rohingya people.

Deportations are a complex operation when carried out by the state. It has historically been shown that the leaders of such crimes feel a compulsion to document the events a dozen different ways. States compelled to expel ethnic groups in mass seems to need such documents to prove the enemy is really gone. But for whatever reason, the removal is always capable of being proven through the perpetrators' own accounts.

One way to organize these crimes has been to first create ghettos, concentration camps, or detention centers of some sort. These facilities, no matter how inhumanely constructed, are vital to the efforts by states to expel any portion of their population. It helps to confine the members of a targeted group so as to prevent people from escaping what they might rightfully perceive as a slow form of death. It also frees up land and property that was owned or occupied by the targeted group.

Once the ghettos are created the state can take an inventory of their victims. The Germans used tattooing to identify victims as they were deported to death camps outside the view of the rest of society. The Ottomans used decapitations and kill houses to count off the dead so as to keep track of how many Armenians they had removed from the empire. Yet in every case the use of some form of confinement has offered the state an opportunity to commit even more atrocities then before.

For the Rohingya the inhumane confinement of Burmese concentration camps and ghettoized villages has offered the state the chance to extort money, carry out sexualized violence, and other depravities. These crimes have all been forms of torment that have kept the Rohingya under living conditions that are meant to kill. And yet these forms of torture are not the endgame for the Rohingya as far as the Burmese regime is concerned.

In the camps there is a stalwart that the government of Myanmar cannot kill through starvation, with bullets, or through disease. It is the most basic refuge of what makes a human a human. It is the deeply planted seed of hope. It is the basic desire for life that keeps even the most anguish ridden soul alive beyond the point of rationality. In the camps there is this clinging to life that Burma's leaders have not yet been able to trample.

For this reason the government has turned to deportations. If they cannot outright kill the entire population with impunity, and death has not yet set in through mass neglect, the final solution comes in the form of removal. That is why Thein Sein, the puppet with whom the world is met, turns to propositioning the world to take the Rohingya away.

In the words of this tyrannical government rest a message that the world will be fullish to so passively overlook. In the offers to deport the Rohingya lay the warning of what awaits those who remain. Though there is no date given in those few words, there is the intent to end this slow genocide once and for all. If the Rohingya are not allowed to be removed they will face death one way or another.

This is an ultimatum that cannot be ignored. And yet it is the rational of an unsound mind that cannot be reasoned with. We cannot accept the deportations of a people and thus end a genocide through a slightly better means then death itself. Yet the leaders of Myanmar are hinting that they will find a way to force the worlds' hand.

Deportations are already underway. Rohingya are pushed out to sea every day. They are bought and sold like cattle and sent off to lives that barely can be called living. These small scale deportations are Burma's way of testing the waters (so to speak). Our tolerance of them only emboldens the perpetrators of these crimes. Our silence helps drive the nail into their coffins.

A Plea... A Scream.

I will close this post in a way that many of Alder's Ledge's contributors have heard time and time again. It is a story that has tainted post after post here on this blog. And though I don't talk about it near as often as some might want... it is a story that best sums up why Alder's Ledge has kept it's voice raised for so long.

I have said before that I can see the faces of my ancestors in the stories that come out of Burma. Time and time again I have faced a part of my own past in a land I knew nothing about just a couple years ago. It has bonded me to a people that I may never get the chance to meet in person. It has connected me to a struggle that many have never heard about. For this reason I scream.

When the Germans entered Croatia they stole from me something that I hadn't even been given yet, my heritage. The holocaust of my ancestors took from my family the will to identify with their past. It stole from them their name, their lineage, their history. For that reason I lost entire portions of a history that I have fought to restore my entire life. It is a battle that led to Alder's Ledge's creation in the first place. It is the heart and soul of why this blog exist. And it is the blood in our cracked voices as we scream for those suffering that same fate. 

I know that many who read this blog don't have that scar to keep them entangled in what can be easily written off as "someone else's fight". It isn't easy to deal with genocide no matter what you own history with it might be. And it certainly isn't a topic that we often think about bringing up, let alone as often as this blog does. 

But I would like to make this plea once again. 

When I look at Burma I see entire masses of people being forced into the struggle I have faced since my eyes were first opened. What is being stolen from them isn't something that they will ever be able to restore to the way it was prior to all this. Many of them are already a generation or two into this battle to hold onto their heritage. Their mothers, their fathers, and for some their grandparents... all watch as their children are robbed of their culture, their history, their family. 

There is no good way to describe the suffering that comes along with this. Anger, hatred... both taint the soul as a person fights to take back what they were denied so violently. For some, those emotions never succumb to the love for life that they feel was crushed beneath the heels of their assailants. 

For me this is just a little of why I fight. It is what motivates these post. And hopefully, the heart of this has been seen in every word. 

Now I would like to ask that those reading this put these post into their own words... with your own heart. Take everything you can from these articles and utilize them to get the message out. Don't let your voice be silent as the Rohingya people are robbed of their humanity. Scream with us. Join us. Fight with us.

Want to learn how you can help? 

Contact @alders_ledge on Twitter

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Some Sources Used:

AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/myanmar-moots-camps-deportation-rohingya-solution-093554931.html

Bangkok Post
http://www.bangkokpost.com/lite/topstories/365525/human-rights-watch-opposes-border-camps-for-rohingya

HRW
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/20/thailand-release-and-protect-rohingya-boat-people

Arakan Still Smoldering

Is Next Wave Of Violence Lingering Over Horizon?
(part of The Darkness Visible series)

 (Camps are "more like prisons")

During the past week I have been seeing more and more tweeters sounding the alarm that the next wave of ethnic cleansing is about to strike in the Arakan. Almost a year ago I would have thought this was a tad bit overly dramatic. Today however it feels closer to reality than ever before. 

These days the Rohingya within Burma are living in a situation where they are waiting for the next boot to drop. Their lives are in constant danger as the radical Rakhine continue to rally Buddhists to their cause. All the while they are starved in camps that the UN says are "more like prisons". More of the Rohingya die daily of hunger and disease in villages that are locked down behind blockades the government has erected. 

For the Rohingya it always feels as though the next wave of violence is persistently lingering over the horizon. 

So what could the next wave of violence look like if it were to happen tomorrow?

After the last two outbreaks of ethnic cleansing in the Arakan the Rohingya were effectively disarmed and rounded up into camps or confined to their villages and ghettos. This has left the Rohingya unable to mount any effective form of defense against attacks from well organized Nasaka backed mobs or Rakhine nationalist that were not disarmed after the fighting. It is important to also note that Rohingya prior to the fighting had only been able to use agricultural tools and common household items to fight back. The Rakhine on the other hand have the support of modern weapons and vehicles to readily move their forces onto target. Thus the mere "fighting strength" of the two communities is already disproportionate. 

When you factor in the length of time that the Rohingya have been starved and deprived of communication with family and friends the ability to organize is depleted as well. With no ability to openly communicate with neighboring villages or camps the Rohingya are isolated. They are for lack of better words the proverbial sitting ducks in this situation. 

In addition there is no reason for the Rakhine to wait for an excuse to attack either. 

The initial violence was blamed on an alleged rape and murder of a "Rakhine" Buddhist woman. The result was an untold number of Rohingya arrested, raped, murdered, and made homeless. Of course there were a handful of Rohingya that fought back to save their homes and loved ones and these were killed or arrested while their attackers went free. But the fact remains that the initial campaign of ethnic cleansing was a result of a planned campaign in which a rape was exploited and rolled into a larger crime. 

After the campaign began the Rohingya were sent off to concentration camps or had their homes turned to ghettos. This was intended and has been carried out to further isolate the targeted community. It leaves the victims vulnerable to further exploitation and potential extermination. It was the same method used in Poland with the Jews in Warsaw. It was the same method used in Bosnia by the Serbs to exterminate Muslims. 

All of this leaves one to guess that if the "ethnic violence" returns it will be targeted at a community already living under siege. If or when the next stage of this campaign of ethnic cleansing begins it has the possibility of being the Rakhine extremists' version of Hitler's "Final Solution".

If it begins as early as March (an estimate given by tweeters following the genocide) then we are almost guaranteed to see Burmese police clearing out ghettos and emptying the camps. Mass executions could be possible as Rakhine extremist find that they have no ability to deport or drive out the thousands of Rohingya caught in their ghetto liquidations. Rohingya attempting to flee would face Nasaka forces ready and willing to shoot first and ask questions after the killing is finished.

Now by this point many people reading this probably think that I'm jumping directly to the worst possible scenario. For many the thought of this sort of thing happening in our time is uncompromisable. We are supposed to be living in a modern age of civility and tolerance. Burma however lives in an age and culture of ethnocentrism and Junta law. And this sort of tragedy is already taking place on a daily basis in the Arakan region of Myanmar whether our Western press and media like it or not.

Rohingya within Burma are living a day to day life as they wait to see if their government will kill them all or just let this latest outburst of violence build upon a long history of oppression and discrimination. For them, it is not a question of if the next wave of violence will happen... it is when it will begin.

Source Documents

(note not all sources are listed)

Democratic Voice of Burma

http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-army-torture-kachin-rebel-suspects-un/26440

Eleven Myanmar 

http://elevenmyanmar.com/politics/2475-un-envoy-says-bengali-meets-with-activists

http://elevenmyanmar.com/politics/2482-human-rights-envoy-quintana-visits-rakhine-state

The Irrawaddy 

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/27020

Mizzima News

http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8920-rohingya-camps-more-like-prisons-says-un-envoy.html

From Warsaw To Aung Mingalar

Welcome To The Ghetto
(part of The Darkness Visible series)

(Hitler Used The Ghetto As A Steppingstone To Auschwitz)

From day one the residents of Warsaw's ghetto were told that they were being housed here because they were no longer equals to their once neighbors and countrymen. The ghetto was never meant to be a permanent solution to the "Jewish Question" in Poland and Europe. It was only meant to segregate the "unclean" from the "pure Aryan" race. For many in Warsaw the ghetto was just the beginning of the end. 

In Aung Mingalar, a modern ghetto in its own right, the segregation they now face is obviously not meant to be a permanent solution to the situation that Myanmar has manufactured. This crises, or series there of, is not being wasted upon the government of Burma. The creation of ghettos and camps across the Arakan is just one step in the long game that the old Junta set in motion. For many in Aung Mingalar this ghetto will simply be the beginning of the end. 

It has long been a model of history to repeat itself. In doing so it has shown us that by ignoring the lessons it has attempted to teach us we are assuring ourselves the opportunity to repeat them. In the case of genocide the lessons have not been learned. With every repetition of this lesson we watch without fail as the world misses the opportunity to learn... the chance to set old wrongs right and to save more victims from history's darkest fate. 

(Burma's Open Air Prison. Aung Mingalar Ghetto)

"I have lost everything," Mohammed Rafi, a Rohingya man who's house was burnt on the same day that his father-in-law was hacked apart with machetes. 

During the June outbreak of ethnic cleansing the Rohingya of Sittwe were targeted for segregation and annihilation. Entire Rohingya neighborhoods were razed as the Rakhine mobs were pointed toward their intended targets. The military offered resistance only for villages and neighborhoods where they would turn around and barricade the Rohingya within. Almost over night the ghettos of Burma were erected and the crisis had begun. 

Violence and the perception of anarchy gave the Burmese military a smoke screen that can not be overlooked. It was with this crisis that Burma acted out its darkest desires and sickest fantasy. By exploiting the racial tensions that already existed the Burmese government was able to fan the flames into and inferno. And with the help of the Buddhists monks they were able to guide the fire across the map just as they desired. All the Burmese government had to do was set back and wait till they could step in and "restore order" to the burning Arakan. 

The tragedy that occurred in June of 2012 was orchestrated. The chaos was planned in as much a manner as how Hitler's SA had planned the pogrom of Kristallnacht. With the use of religious fervor and racial hatred, Burma was able to go forward with their plan to ethnically cleanse the Arakan once and for all. 

In previous post Alder's Ledge has laid out the eight stages of genocide and just how Burma has been checking off the stages. Much like the Nazis of Germany, Burma is using these stages a blueprint to their final goal of solving their Rohingya question. The ghetto is simply a tool used to achieve the construction of a "pure" society. 

“If they gave us the security and allowed us to go the market, then I think that could easily solve the problem,” says Rafi. “The Rakhine [Arakanese] can go to the market and they can go to the hospital, but we cannot.”

Through segregation and isolation the Burmese government has been able to increase the rate of death at a higher rate in the ghettos than in the refugee camps. With overcrowding and poor sanitation common diseases are able to spread easily. To further the spread of these diseases the Burmese have taken the ghetto a step further by denying medical aid and blockading any form of medical assistance or supplies. In doing so the government of Myanmar has created the perfect conditions for higher mortality rates and the rise of what would otherwise have been easily preventable diseases. 

To increase the rate of death even further than disease alone could afford, the Burmese also have taken the measure of preventing food and water from entering the ghettos. Without predictable and reliable access to food and water the people of these ghettos resort to scavenging what few resources they can come across. Food items that would have been overlooked in better days are now utilized regardless of their cleanliness. Water that would have been thrown out is now a source of drinking water regardless of the risk it presents. 

The Jews of Warsaw saw the same steps taken by the German SS. As the Warsaw ghetto became more and more crowded the German SS made fewer and fewer patrols through its streets. This was mainly due to the amount of human waste, the smell of death, and lice and other petulance that plagued the ghetto. For the most part the German SS only entered the ghetto when they believed that food or weapons had been smuggled into the ghetto by children who routinely risked their lives by slipping in and out of the ghetto to scavenge for their families.

“Segregation affects both communities economically, but its impact on the Muslim communities is absolutely disastrous,” says Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project. “It curtails their livelihoods, confines them to squalid camps or ghettos making them dependent on humanitarian aid whose delivery is hampered by security threats on aid workers.  [Seven] months on – this is outrageous, unsustainable and inhumane.”

History has shown us that once a government engages in this behavior it is highly unlikely to stop utilizing these criminal tactics on its own. Had it not been for the actions of Polish Resistance fighters the attempts to wipe out Poland's Jewish population would have been successful. It was only through the actions of outsiders that the German regime was halted in its attempts to fulfill their genocidal aims. Burma's case is no different. 

If the government of Burma is allowed to continue forward with its use of ghettos the world will undoubtedly see death camps in Myanmar's future. After all, this is a regime that is facing countless rebellions by ethnic groups it does not believe are "purely Burmese". In the Kachin the Burmese have been using weapons considered illegal by the conventions adhered to by the UN. In the Arakan they have been openly utilizing methods that recreate the crimes of the Nazis and other genocidal regimes. Yet as a world community we treat Burma as though it is special. 

When Cambodia fell into the hands of Pol Pott and the Khmer Rouge the crimes that followed were leaked out to the world almost routinely. We as a world community knew of the "killing fields" and did nothing to stop it. It was only with the invasion of the Vietnamese that the brutal genocide in Cambodia came to an end. 

Burma is no exception to the lessons history has taught us. Just because it has put on the charade of pretending to be in midst of "democratic reform" does not mean it is not committing genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi may very well be the world's sweetheart for her role in this "democratic movement", but that doesn't wash her hands when it comes to ethnic cleansing. 

In the end we will have to look back on Burma in the future and admit to ourselves that we were there when the ghettos went up. We will have to look back on this day and tell ourselves honestly that we did nothing to end the suffering of the Rohingya people. And when that day comes the world will undoubtedly tell itself in the most vain way it can manage... never again.