Rohingya’s Crisis Is Ethnic Cleansing Factually
The United Nations had been stated that Rohingya’s crisis was a campaign of an ethnic cleansing. At the annual UNI General Assembly in New York, United States, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, gave a cautious response and repeated a call for authorities to end the military operations and allow humanitarian access.
“I take note of State Councellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s address today and their intention to implement the recommendation of the advisory committee for Rakhine state, that was chaired by Kofi Annan, within the shortest time possible,” Guterres further.
“But let me emphasize again, the authorities in Myanmar must end the military operations, allow unhindered humanitarian access and recognize the right of refugee to return in safety and dignity, and they must also address the grievances of the Rohingya, whose status has been left unresolved for far too long,” Guterres reiterated.
Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes have mounted a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population. The United Nations rights agency said it was “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. At least, since Myanmar’s military had been attacked Rakhine state to crush the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), that had forced 421,000 Rohingya Muslim fled into neighboring Bangladesh.
Myanmar’s fight against the Rohingya armed group forces does not and can not justify attacks against the civilian population whose mostly Muslim Rohingya. Such attacks must be investigated, not ignored; perpetrators must be brought in to justice, in fair trails and victims ensured repatriations.
According to Usman Hamid, the Director of Amnesty International Indonesia, the recent violence in Myanmar bears all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing. “Myanmar’s security forces are engaged in a vicious and disappropriate campaign, burning down whole villages and firing at random at Rohingya as they are trying to flee,” said former the Missing Persons and Victims of Violence Commission (Kontras) founder.
Previously, western diplomats and aid officials, hoping for an unequivocal condemnation of violence and hate-speech. Long feted in the West as a champion of democracy in the Buddhist-majority country during years of military rule and house arrest, Suu Kyi has faced growing criticism for saying little about abuses faced by the Muslim Rohingya.
Human Rights Watch said Myanmar security forces were disregarding world condemnation and the time had come to impose tougher measures that the generals could not ignore.
It called for governments to “impose travel bans and asset freezes on security officials implicated in serious abuses; expand existing arms embargoes to include all military sales, assistance, and cooperation; and place a ban on financial transactions with key military-owned enterprises”.
However, Myanmar has clearly violated the human rights commitment it is obliged to uphold under the ASEAN charter. ASEAN leader should therefore convene an emergency summit on how to end the violations, ensures humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees in Rakhine and those displaced within Myanmar, the safe return any of the Rohingya’s wishing to do so to their homes and resolving the core cause of the crisis, among them the entrenched discrimination against the Rohingya and the poverty, poor infrastructure and need of sustainable development in the state as whole.
If Myanmar’s military and Myanmar’s government didn’t want to obey those conditions, ASEAN leaders must have decided to excile Myanmar from ASEAN country communities, because the human rights violations is contrary with the spirit of ASEAN, which want to erase, to overcome and to minimalize human rights violations. Hopefully.
*) Johanes Dharmana Oetoro Pamungkas, Senior observer at LSISI, Jakarta.
