By Raj Gonsalkorale
The UN deputy human rights chief and the independent
expert on Myanmar have called for targeted sanctions against the leaders of
what they both described as the coup that took place in the country last week,
as the Human Rights Council met in special session on Friday to discuss the
ongoing crisis
While the US and its allies gang against Sri Lanka, which
incidentally is run by a President, a Prime Minister and a cabinet of
ministers, elected by the people, a Parliament elected by the people, overwhelmingly one might add in all the
elections, and a Parliamentary Opposition elected by the people, these
countries led by the US, and the UN Security Council, are uttering meaningless
words without backing their so called condemnation of the brazen Military Coup in
Myanmar with something tangible than empty words. It clearly demonstrates their
impotence and sense of priorities.
More than 80 people have been killed so far in riots
against the Military and scores of people have been detained for taking a stand
on democracy, freedom and liberty. The human rights champion, the UNHRC is yet
to say anything about the deprivations imposed on a free people, and the human
right taken away from them by the Military.
A freely elected political party, an election supervised
by the Military no doubt, was ousted because the Military claimed the election
was not fair and was rigged. If this were true, then it is the Military that
failed because they controlled the conduct of the election. It is a reflection
on them that they did not do their job.
The ardent and vociferous democratic citadels led by the
US are all aware why the Military did what they did. It is because their own
plan to rig the election in favour of the puppet political party they created
to win enough seats to form the next government along with the 25% of the seats
that are allocated to the Military anyway, failed and backfired on them. The
puppets only needed another 25% of the seats, and the Military was banking on
fraud and rigging to get them past that point.
Despite this fraud and rigging, the people of Myanmar saw
through this and decided to increase the party position of the NLD led by Aung
San Suu Kyi.
So, now the Military has coined together a Goebbellian
version of their own, and promising the world they will have free and fair”
elections within a year. If the world does not have the guts to call the
military’s bluff now, would they ever have any power over the military to make
sure there is a free and fair election”? One can bet all their wealth and take
a safe punt on this. That is, the result of the free and fair election” will
be the election of the military backed puppets, and them forming a government with
the Military. That will be the outcome.
That will be the end of democracy and the short lived
breath of fresh air Myanmar enjoyed for a brief period. Unfortunately for
Myanmar and for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, their treatment of the
Rohingya’s will not help the cause of democracy in the country. The shabby and
disgraceful treatment of human beings by human beings, all of whom did not have
any identity at the time of their birth but acquired society’s labels, where,
someone of the stature of Aung San Suu Kyi did not offer any sympathy or
concern or empathy for a group of people so horribly being treated, sadly
removed the glowing lustre that Aung San Suu Kyi had till then.
It is well known that it is the Military that forced her
hand to comply with what they were doing to the Rohingya’s, and her own safety,
and the security of her government may have been compromised had she said
anything in empathy of the Rohingya’s.
Who are the Rohingya People?
In a well-researched commentary in the Wikipedia, it says the Rohingya
people are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic
group who
predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar.
Before the displacement crisis in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to
Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. Described
by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the
world, the Rohingya population is denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. They are also restricted
from freedom of movement, state education and civil service jobs.The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared
to apartheid by some academics, analysts and
political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond
Tutu.
The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court investigating crimes against
humanity, and led to the International Court of
Justice investigating genocide.
The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage
of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals and Portuguese. The community claims it is descended
from people in precolonial
Arakan and colonial
Arakan;
historically, the region was an independent kingdom between Southeast
Asia and
the Indian subcontinent.
The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya as colonial
and postcolonial migrants from neighbouring Chittagong/East
Bengal respectively
Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is
recognized as Kaman, and that the Rohingya conflate their
history with the history of Arakan Muslims in general to advance a separatist
agenda. In addition, Myanmar’s government does not recognise the term
“Rohingya” and prefers to refer to the community as “Bangali“. This account in the Wikipedia outlines the
sad state that history and interpretations of it have placed some half a
million Rohingya people in abject poverty, stateless, and dehumanised by the
Military in Myanmar.
What is the future of Myanmar?
The Buddhist establishment and a vast majority of Buddhists in
Myanmar, have practiced anything but Buddhism in the way they treated the
Rohingya people. There was no Metta, Karuna, Muditha nor Upeksha extended to
the Rohingya people, and sadly Aung San Suu Kyi did not either.
Now, unfortunately, she is no longer on the high pedestal she was
in when she became the defacto leader of Myanmar in 2016. She cannot rally the
world to come to the defence of democracy and freedom in her country as she
would have been able to if not for the Rohingya crisis.
However, it is not Aung San Suu Kyi who is an issue here. It is what
she represented, the future of Myanmar, its democracy and its freedom. It is
bigger than her and it is bigger than the unfortunate blotch on her arising
from the Rohingya people crisis. If for a moment, one gives some thought to who
benefited most from that crisis, it is impossible to say Aung San Suu Kyi did.
In fact, the reality is the opposite.
Who then did? If one extends this thought to the possibility that
the entity that benefited most orchestrated the crisis to trap her and lesson
her influence internationally, then that entity certainly achieved that.
If hypothetically, the Military was indeed that entity and they achieved
the latter, the next step would have been to form the next government with
their puppet party. But, knowing the popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi, they would
have had to plan to win it in whatever way, including by rigging the election
in their favour and not in a genuinely free and fair election.
What probably disrupted such a plan would have been their inability
to have rigged the election sufficiently and the overwhelming vote of
confidence that Aung San Suu Kyi got from the people who not only voted for her
and her party, but also safeguarded the voting process.
The option planned by the Military, not their preferred option, as
that would have been to form a government with their puppet party, would have
been to stage a Coup on the pretext of the election not being free and fair”
and that they would conduct such an election. That is what has happened and the
jig saw is complete now. It’s no longer a puzzle.
Of course they have to eliminate Aung San Suu Kyi from the
electoral process as a diminished standing internationally, has had a reverse
effect in Myanmar with her popularity going up even further. Trumped up charges
against her are unfolding before the world, and her personal safety is at
serious risk. The Military is capable of doing anything to make sure their plan
succeeds and they take formal, democratic” control after the planned free and
fair” election.
Unfortunately, the Military might still prevail as there is no
kudos to be gained for the US and its allies by restoring Aung San Suu Kyi’s
weakened international position. The democratic citadels playing just lip
service and showing feigned outrage at the Military and taking token positions
rather than any decisive action to make the Military back down will not happen.
They will not send any strong messages to China, urging them to get the
Military to restore democracy without pre conditions. Instead, they will work
towards the free and fair” election that the Military has promised, and they
will then announce they will accept the people’s verdict at that free and
fair” election in which the Military puppets will win the election by means
anything but free and fair.
Democracy and freedom will be extinguished in Myanmar until the
next Aung San Suu Kyi emerges at some distant date. The US, and its allies
perhaps do not realise that their impotence would have delivered Myanmar lock,
stock and barrel to China.
