A group of Rohingya Muslims that attacked Myanmar border guards in October is headed by people with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday, citing members of the group.
The coordinated attacks on Oct. 9 killed nine policemen and sparked a crackdown by security forces in the Muslim-majority northern sector of Rakhine State in the country’s northwest.
At least 86 people have been killed, according to state media, and the United Nations has estimated 27,000 members of the largely stateless Rohingya minority have fled across the border to Bangladesh.
Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar’s government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, blamed Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the Oct. 9 attacks, but has issued scant additional information about the assailants it called “terrorists.”
A group calling itself Harakah al-Yakin claimed responsibility for the attacks in video statements and the Brussels-based ICG said it had interviewed four members of the group in Rakhine State and two outside Myanmar, as well as individuals in contact with members via messaging apps.
The Harakah al-Yakin, or Faith Movement, was formed after communal violence in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed and about 140,000 displaced in Rakhine State, most of them Rohingya, the group said.
Rohingya who have fought in other conflicts, as well as Pakistanis or Afghans, gave clandestine training to villagers in northern Rakhine over two years ahead of the attacks, it said.
“It included weapons use, guerrilla tactics and, HaY members and trainees report, a particular focus on explosives and IEDs,” the group said, referring to improvised explosive devices.
It identified Harakah al-Yakin’s leader, who has appeared prominently in a series of nine videos posted online, as Ata Ullah, born in Karachi, Pakistan, to a Rohingya migrant father before moving as a child to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
“Though not confirmed, there are indications he went to Pakistan and possibly elsewhere, and that he received practical training in modern guerrilla warfare,” the group said. It noted that Ata Ullah was one of 20 Rohingya from Saudi Arabia leading the group’s operations in Rakhine State.
Separately, a committee of 20 senior Rohingya emigres oversees the group, which has headquarters in Mecca, the ICG said.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a news briefing on Thursday that the United States was aware of the report and reviewing it, but declined to comment further.
Groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent have referred to the plight of the Rohingya in their material, and the battlefield experience of at least some of the Rohingya fighters implied links to international militants, the ICG said.
However, ICG said the group has notably not engaged in attacks on the civilian Buddhist population in Rakhine. Harakah al-Yakin’s statements to date indicate its main goals are to end the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and secure the minority’s citizenship status.
“It is possible, however, that its objectives could evolve, given its appeals to religious legitimacy and links to international jihadist groups, so it is essential that government efforts do not focus only or primarily on military approaches, but also address underlying community grievances and suffering,” the ICG said.
Lately, people have been emphasising the importance of the concept of mercy in Islam. Personally, i feel this is a great thing. I do wish at times that some Muslims would follow the example of our Christian brethren in underscoring love and mercy in their faith. Gentleness would undoubtedly be a better ambassador than harshness in most cases.
Yet, one must be cognizant of certain realities. One who constantly talks about love and mercy, but chooses to remain silent when there is a need to speak of justice and condemn oppression, has very little credibility then when he/she champions the former qualities as essential aspects of Islam. It is only natural that people would question what his/her motives are when he reiterates love and mercy, but neglects justice or fairness.
What, or perhaps whose, agenda is one serving when one engages in such cherrypicking?
To paraphrase Professor Tariq Ramadan, when people with religious authority condemn acts of violence by the lay people, but are silent when dictators commit oppression, that is a sure way to drive more young people toward the path of extremism.
It is indeed strange that some people harp on mercy, but ignore justice. Worse still are those who are quick to display harshness when Muslims are aggressors, but somehow suddenly find their merciful side when Muslims are victims, or when powerful people are doing the oppressing.
[YANGON] Myanmar has called an emergency Asean meeting to discuss the Rohingya crisis, a diplomat said Monday, as regional tensions deepen over a bloody military crackdown on the country’s Muslim minority.
More than 20,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh over the past two months, fleeing a military campaign in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.
Their stories of mass rape and murder at the hands of security forces have galvanised protests in Muslim nations around the region, with Buddhist-majority Myanmar facing diplomatic pressure from its neighbours.
Last week Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak lashed out at Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi for allowing “genocide” on her watch, speaking before thousands of angry protesters in Kuala Lumpur.
Myanmar, which has vehemently denied the accusations, responded by angrily summoning Malaysia’s ambassador and banning its workers from going to the country.
A diplomatic source in the Philippines confirmed Myanmar had invited them for an emergency Asean meeting to discuss “the Rohingya issue”.
The source declined to give more details on the meeting, which the Nikkei reported would be held in Yangon on Dec 19. Myanmar officials could not be reached for comment.
The bloodshed presents the biggest challenge to Nobel Peace prize winner Ms Suu Kyi since her party won the country’s first democratic elections in a generation last year.
Last week the UN’s special adviser on Myanmar criticised her handling of the crisis, saying it had “caused frustration locally and disappointment internationally”.
Ms Suu Kyi also held talks over Rakhine with the foreign minister of Indonesia, after cancelling a visit to the country in November following protests and an attempted attack on the Myanmar embassy.
State media report almost 100 people have been killed – 17 soldiers and 76 suspects – in the army operation in Rakhine that followed deadly raids on police border posts on Oct 9.
That includes six suspects who died during interrogations, the Global New Light of Myanmar said on Saturday, out of some 575 people who have been detained.
Advocacy groups put the death toll in the hundreds, but foreign journalists and independent investigators have been barred from visiting the area to verify the figures.
With the crisis showing no sign of abating, the government over the weekend extended a 7.00pm to 6.00am curfew across the locked-down area for another two months.
Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, reflect on your own complicity in the genocide of my fellow Rohingya people, instead of dismissing well-documented allegations of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide as “exaggerations” and “fabrications”
Myanmar State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, both personally and from her Office, attack the growing allegations of her government’s policies of persecution of Rohingya people.
This is the latest and official attack on the video-clip which has been viewed over 96,000 times on YouTube.
I am a Rohingya activist and professional, fluent in Burmese, Rohingya and English languages, living in exile. I made the 2-minutes video-clip with English language subtitles and posted it on YouTube with the purpose of exposing Aung San Suu Kyi’s culpability and complicity in the crime of genocide against my peoples, including babies, children, women, men and elderly people.
Here is my subtitled video of you LAUGHING OUT LOUD at the genocide allegations.
The clip was a complete Burmese language exchange between a questioner and the State Counsellor from the live webcast of her public meeting with the Burmese in Singapore on 1 Dec 2016.
The literal translation of both the question, submitted in writing, which Aung San Suu Kyi herself read to the audience, and her own Burmese language response, was – and still is -100% impossible. For the whole Q and A exchange was coded.
Therefore, the inferences were made against the backdrop of Myanmar’s overwhelming public and official dismissal as “exaggerations” and “fabrications” the Rohingya identity, existence and genocidal policies – all to the best of my linguistic capabilities and in complete honesty.
This dismissal has dominated the Burmese public discourse, official statements by the governments (both the previous Government of Thein Sein and the current NLD Government or formerly opposition party) and in the social and real time mass media in Burmese language, over the past 4 years since the two bouts of large scale organized violence against Rohingyas broke out in June and October of 2012.
In her press meetings, Aung San Suu Kyi has used consistently the word “exaggerations” in reference to allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Rohingya people in the months leading up the election in November 2015. She has also reportedly used that expression “fabrications”, “biases” and “exaggerations” in her official meetings with foreign diplomats whom she chided them as relying on false or biased media reports.
The subtitles were the result of the deciphering of what those “fabrications” might be, when she laughed them out, apparently finding these “exaggerations” and “fabrications” to be nothing more than a laughing matter.
Even a YouTube which was posted by a Facebook user named “Thura Soe”. in Aung San Suu Kyi’s defence in the comment session in the State Counsellor Office’s Facebook page Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi needs to reflect on her own complicity in the genocide.
In that alternative deciphering or interpretation of the completely coded Q and A ‘fabrications’ were interpreted as “reference to the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party” or USDP.
The fact is USDP is never referred to by either Aung San Suu Kyi or her government’s Information Committee led by former USDP Government spokesperson ex-Major Zaw Htay. Nor USDP, which NLD dealt a crushing electoral defeat, has presented Aung San Suu Kyi any major headache, unlike the growing and worldwide accusations and criticisms of her complicity and silence.
Furthermore, Aung San Suu Kyi herself has openly dismissed any credible allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing as “biased” or “fabrications” or “exaggerations”.
Additionally, the Myanmar Information Committee from her office has directly scathing if baseless accusations against Human Rights Watch, BBC, CNA, CNN, Reuters, etc. rejecting even the satellite images of charred Rohingya villages.
Both these pieces of contextual information and the reports of Ms Suu Kyi’s dismissal of our Rohingya people’s collective plight as ‘exaggerations’ as well as her reported and repeated characterisation of Rohingya – including our identity as a once officially recognised ethnic minority of the Union of Burma – as “non-factual” had compelled me to come up with the only plausible deciphering as reflected in my subtitle.
I had also checked with other native speakers of Burmese who are fluent bi-lingual English-Burmese speakers and scholars. They all agreed with my deciphered subtitles.
Of course, you can also deny because the Burmese speech pattern that you resorted to will allow you “the space of deniability.” Admittedly, I could never presume to know exactly what you had in your anti-Rohingya, anti-Muslim racist mind.
However, I would like to ask Ms Suu Kyi to tell me, the accused, what exactly was coded in that Q and A on 1 Dec.
Finally – and more importantly, as a Rohingya in exile, I would like to urge strongly Ms Suu Kyi to search her soul deep and see why she finds these well-researched findings of ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity “exaggerations”.
How could you, Ms Suu Kyi possibly know, let alone dismiss, these international allegations, since you have never documented any human rights abuses in your entire life, nor ever bothered to travel to the crime scenes of my birthplace – N. Arakan – and set foot on a Rohingya IDP camp or an impoverished and oppressed Rohingya village?
After all, the name of the crime of Rohingya persecution have been accepted as crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide by some of the most world’s credible organizations, university research centres, UN special rapporteurs – including Ms Suu Kyi’s friend and teacher Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen, Desmond Tutu, Jodi Williams and Jose Ramos-Horta, Human Rights Watch, Yale University Human Rights Law Clinic, respected legal scholar and practitioners Sir Geoffrey Nice and Katherine Southwick (of Yugoslavia), renowned scholars of mass atrocities Professors Gregory Stanton and Penny Green, Human Rights Watch, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, just to name a few.
— Eye-opener on genocide against my People:
Amartya Sen, “The Term ‘slow genocide’ is appropriate because you deny [Rohingya] people health care, nutritional opportunities.” –
George Soros, “In Aung Mingalar, I heard the echoes of my childhood. You see, in 1944, as a Jew in Budapest, I too was a Rohingya. Much like the Jewish ghettos set up by Nazis around Eastern Europe during World War II, Aung Mingalar has become the involuntary home to thousands of families who once had access to health care, education and employment. Now, they are forced to remain segregated in a state of abject deprivation. The parallels to the Nazi genocide are alarming.”
Desmond Tutu, “The government of Myanmar has sought to absolve itself of responsibility for the conflict between the Rakhine and the Rohingya, projecting it as sectarian or communal violence. I would be more inclined to heed the warnings of eminent scholars and researchers including Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics, who say this is a deliberately false narrative to camouflage the slow genocide being committed against the Rohingya people.” (source: http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/2015/05/29/desmond-tutu-the-slow-genocide-against-the-rohingya)
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo held a meeting with former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Thursday to discuss humanitarian aid for the Rohingya people in Rakhine state, Myanmar.
The 30-minute bilateral meeting took place before the President officially opened the ninth Bali Democracy Forum, in which Annan, who served as UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006, became the keynote speaker.
Annan, who founded the Kofi Annan Foundation, is now the head of the Advisory Committee for Rakhine State. During the meeting, he explained to Jokowi his findings during his visit to the conflict area and advised countries to take urgent steps to help victims of the humanitarian crisis.
“Indonesia will soon dispatch humanitarian aid for the Rohingya people. I have ordered the relevant ministers to prepare the necessary logistics, especially food and blankets,” Jokowi said after the meeting.
Accompanying the President at the meeting, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said Annan appreciated the Indonesian government for taking prompt action to provide humanitarian assistance for victims in the troubled state.
“In the longer term, we will also support Myanmar in terms of providing capacity building in the field of good governance, democracy and human rights. We have started these programs and will continue to do that, because it is very important,” she explained, citing results of her recent discussion with Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Delegations from 94 countries and observers from several organizations are attending the two-day conference to discuss democracy, religious tolerance and pluralism and strengthen global cooperation.
