35309 - The Genocide of Rohingya people

N. Lygeros

Crimes against Humanity are being committed by the military and police against Myanmar’ s Rohingya Muslim minority. That’s the official terms to describe this genocide, at least for the moment. The Rohingya people are in majority Muslims but some of them are Hindus. They are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. Myanmar law doesn’t recognize this ethnic minority. They are persecuted for a long time but now they are victims of a real genocide. Many Rohingya refugees have fled to southeastern Bangladesh but more than one hundred thousand Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons. Myanmar tries to manage the problem as internal only but in reality it’s already an international question. The “clearance operations” of Myanmar military is nothing else than acts of barbarism and in fact the practice of a genocide process. In 2015 we had a refugee crisis. In 2016, a conflict but since 2017 the crisis is transformed in genocide. The military described victims as militants or even terrorists, but the point is that they are all dead. The government and not only the military have already to answer and respond to these massive cases of horrific torture. Because they have committed crimes against their own people. It’s no more difficult to say that it’s only an internal problem and even the silence is suspicious. The United Nations have already accused security forces in Myanmar of committing serious human right abuses, including gang-rape, severe beatings and child killing. The perpetrators want to exterminate them. Members of the army and the police had burned homes, schools, mosques, markets. Their target is also the religion of Rohingya people. For all those reasons, we have to condemn this genocide but also to stop it. It’s no more the problem of a country, it’s not only a question of racism. It has already the level of a genocide. There is no need to have the expertise of Lemkin to see the reality of this genocide. It’s now the problem of a political conviction at international level. The United Nations have to force this government of barbarity to stop right now its crimes against Humanity.