Can Help Come for Myanmar's Rohingya?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

The Rohingya are a Bengali-speaking ethnic minority that live mainly in the northern region of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh. Numbering around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, they are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country and represent its largest percentage of Muslims.

But the government of Myanmar in 1982 stripped the Rohingya of citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census. It considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

While tensions were already evident between Muslim Rohingya and the Buddhist majority, 2012 saw a major turning point with the outbreak of mass violence in June in Rakhine state.

In the wake of the violence, Buddhist extremist groups in the country, such as the notorious 969 Movement led by Buddhist clergy, were emboldened to escalate their activities.

The most recent problems began in August 2017 after Rohingya militants launched deadly attacks on more than 30 police posts.

A group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formed in 2013, claimed responsibility. Led by a small cadre of Rohingya émigrés from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the group wants self-governance for the Rohingya.

Two months later, they attacked three Burmese border posts along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh, killing a number of soldiers.

Myanmar troops, backed by Buddhist mobs, in turn began to burn Rohingya villages and attacking and killing civilians. At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières.

The massive numbers of refugees who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who had fled Myanmar in previous years.

Kutupalong, the largest refugee settlement in the world according to Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is home to more than 613,000 refugees alone.

An estimated 190,000 live in settlements in the vicinity, along with 330,000 of the most affected host communities.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the UN General Assembly last September that the international community must “understand the untenability” of the status quo.

The head of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, a UN body, warned last Oct. 22 that “there is a serious risk of genocide recurring” against the estimated 600,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority still living in the country.

The mission said that Myanmar should be held responsible in international legal forums for alleged genocide against the Rohingya.

Marzuki Darusman told the General Assembly’s human rights committee that “if anything, the situation of the Rohingya in Rakhine state has worsened,” citing continued discrimination, segregation, restricted movement, insecurity and a lack of access to land, jobs, education and health care.

Myammar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, once a human rights icon and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has repeatedly denied allegations of genocide. She claimed that human rights organizations had arrived at conclusions based on unverified claims and without any real investigation.

Myanmar’s UN ambassador, Hau Do Suan, noted his government doesn’t recognize the fact-finding mission, calling its views “one-sided” and based on “misleading information and secondary sources.” Its government has barred Darusman from entering the country.

Why is The Gambia Taking Myanmar to the International Court of Justice?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Have the names Myanmar and The Gambia ever appeared in the same sentence? It would be a rare occurrence. They are about as far apart and different as two countries can be.

Myanmar, or Burma, is a large Buddhist state of 55.3 million people in southeast Asia, bordering India, Bangladesh, Laos, China, and Thailand, and facing the Bay of Bengal on the Indian Ocean.

The Gambia, the smallest country on the African mainland, is almost entirely surrounded by Senegal, and facing the Atlantic Ocean. Its two million people are made up of at least nine major ethnic groups, a majority of them Sunni Muslims.

Other than both being members of the United Nations, they are not part of any common economic, military or political alliances or organizations. The two countries don’t even have diplomatic relations.

So what has changed? It involves the ongoing troubles faced by the Muslim Rohingya people in Myanmar.

The Rohingya are a Bengali-speaking ethnic minority who live mainly in the northern region of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh. Numbering around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, they are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country and represent its largest percentage of Muslims.

But the government of Myanmar in 1982 stripped the Rohingya of citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census. It considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The most recent problems began in August 2017 after Rohingya militants launched deadly attacks on more than 30 police posts.

Myanmar troops, backed by Buddhist mobs, in turn began to burn Rohingya villages and attacking civilians. At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières.

Soon a massive exodus of Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh began,, as more than 730,000 Rohingya fled the country. They continue to languish in massive refugee camps there.

On Nov. 11, The Gambia filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against its Rohingya minority, drawing praise from human rights groups and Rohingya activists.

The case was brought on behalf of other Muslim countries in the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

“The aim is to get Myanmar to account for its action against its own people: the Rohingya,” Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told a news conference.

In 2003, Tambadou had left The Gambia to join the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he spent more than a decade prosecuting some of the genocide’s most notorious figures.

For Tambadou, what he saw and heard when he travelled to Bangladesh jogged some painful memories. “I saw genocide written all over these stories,” he said in an interview in The Gambia’s capital, Banjul. “It sounded very much like the kind of acts that were perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda.”

Tambadou told the court that “All that The Gambia asks is that you tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people.”

He requested that the ICJ hearing approve temporary measures to protect the Rohingya.

Myanmar’s leader and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Ky also testified and denied the allegations made against her country’s troops, who, she maintained, were engaged in legitimate counterterrorism operations.

In a unanimous decision, the Court ordered Myanmar to carry out emergency “provisional” measures, intervening in the country’s domestic affairs by instructing her government to respect the requirements of the 1948 genocide convention.

“I think this represents a triumph of international law and international justice. And it is the international community -- as represented by the ICJ -- saying in the strongest of terms that genocide will not be accepted under any circumstances by any perpetrators,” Tambadou stated after the decision.

The only reason the plight of the Rohingya is even on the international agenda is because of the tiny West African country.

However, a final ruling by the ICC may be years away. The UN Security Council on Feb. 4 also failed to take any action.

Why Turkey is Getting Involved in Libya

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

In the Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912 the Ottoman Empire lost its Libyan territories of Cyrenaica, Tripoli and Fezzan to Italy. 

Since Libya was the sole Mediterranean region not claimed by another European power, it was the only territory Italy could dominate. The Italians ruled their colony until their own defeat in the Second World War.

Almost eleven decades since the Turks lost Libya, does Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan want it back? After all, unlike his predecessors, he has a fondness for the lost glories of Ottoman Turkey, once an empire to be reckoned with.

On Dec. 10, Erdogan announced that he was willing to deploy troops in the ongoing Libyan civil war on behalf of Libya’s weak and ineffective Government of National Accord (GNA), formed in the capital, Tripoli, in 2015. It is backed by the United Nations and is internationally recognized, but its writ barely runs even inside the capital.

It is under attack by General Khalifa Haftar, who heads the self-styled Libyan National Army from his power base in Tobruk, in eastern Libya. Haftar, backed by a Tobruk administration that includes its own parliament elected in 2014, has now undertaken an assault on Tripoli, in the west. 

Erdogan criticized those nations that backed a “putschist general” and “warlord” and promised to support Prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj’s GNA “much more effectively.” He censured Europe for “betraying its own core values” by “leaving Libya at the mercy of a warlord.”

On Nov. 27, Ankara signed two separate accords with the GNA, on security and military cooperation and on maritime boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean. 

Turkey’s parliament then approved a bill allowing troops to be deployed in Libya. Erdogan is also backing the al-Sarraj government with arms and military training. 

Why is Libya in such a mess? The country was ruled with an iron fist until 2011 by Moammar Gadhafi. That year, NATO-backed rebels defeated and murdered Gadhafi, but his downfall produced, not a democratic state, but years of anarchy and tribal warfare. 

Since then, warring factions have fought a bitter war to maintain power in the North African country.

The political vacuum has drawn in numerous players, including the former colonial power, Italy, as well as France; and Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). More recently, Russia has become involved.

Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, the Saudis and Russia support Haftar, while Italy and Qatar favour Fayez al-Sarraj’s regime. The Egyptians, in particular, want to control their western neighbour, and fear terrorism on their border. 

Egypt and the UAE have worried about the ascent of political Islam in Libya, so they quickly backed Haftar and his avowed “anti-Islamist, anti-terrorist” agenda. Qatar, on the other hand, supports the Muslim Brotherhood, as does the latest entry in this conflict, Turkey. 

Meanwhile, Haftar’s fighters have made small gains in some southern suburbs of Tripoli with the help of Russian, Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries, as well as sophisticated drones shipped by the UAE. In early January, Haftar’s LNA captured the country’s third biggest city, Sirte.

Although Europe and the United States have warned the GNA that forming closer relations with Turkey would endanger its support in the West, authorities in Tripoli felt they had no alternative after months of renewed fighting.

On Jan. 19, Germany hosted an international conference in Berlin, with diplomats from the United States, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Egypt, and the UAE, asking participants to declare their intention to end foreign interference in Libya’s internal affairs. 

Attendees included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompano represented Washington.

But although both Libyan warring sides were present, they did not meet. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the two sides were briefed and consulted by the other parties.

Participants were asked to adhere to the UN Security Council’s arms embargo in Libya, which has been in effect since 2012. It’s doubtful many will, though.

Increasingly the conflict has become another proxy war. Further escalation could open the door to Ankara and Moscow supplanting the West and the UN in the battle to determine Libya’s future.