PERENNIAL VAGARIES: ROHINGYAS' ANATHEMA

She walked barefoot for three days through the forest, with her eight-month-old baby tied to her back with a cloth. The land where she was born had jettisoned her to a stateless and homeless existence. Welcome to her — and the lakhs of Rohingyas' — world, which has shrunk drastically.

I have already introduced Rohingyas to you in Part-1- Introducing Rohingyas: An Epitap of Humanitarian Crisis. Rohingya are an ethnic group in the Myanmar province of Rakhine. Myanmar has gratuitously refused to recognise them as its citizen. There is a large scale exodus of Rohingya to evade persecution, creating world’s worst humanitarian refugee crisis in recent history. I began Part-1 with an outlandish quote, without elucidating much. I quote: “Life is indeed beautiful, but that is not the case with your planet earth.” The diabolical details you are going to read would vindicate it. Castigate me if it won’t.

It is horrendous, insidious, precarious, egregious...... my tome of vocabulary would end soon, but their agonized tale will still be left untold. Surfeit of official commentary has been made and reams of documents have been published admonishing the Myanmar authorities- both civil government and impeious military- for carrying out the lurid atrocities against Rohingya. Cursed with the perennial vagaries of life, they are regarded as unworthy of any rights.

“The situation in Rakhine was best described as ethnic cleansing. When one-third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, could you find a better word to describe it?” - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, September 2017.

“Efforts were being made not merely to forcibly displace the Rohingya but towards committing the crime of genocide through the complete annihilation of the ethnic group.” - Yale Law School Study, October 2015.

“In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity -systematic attacks and forcible deportation of civilians.” - Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director.

“If this continues, the Rohingya community, whatever little of them is still left in Myanmar, will be extinct.” - Faisal Alam, a human rights activist.

“Evidence that the military had organized Buddhist civilians to commit violence against Rohingya would be the closest thing to a smoking gun in establishing not just intent, but even specific genocidal intent.” - Michael G Karnavas, a US lawyer based in The Hague.

On top of the refugees accounts, rape was used as a calculated tool of terror to force the Rohingya out of Myanmar.” - Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

“The actions appeared to be a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without the possibility of return.” - Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. human rights chief.

"Those who commit human rights abuses or violations must be held accountable. The scenes of what occurred out there are just horrific.” - Rex Wayne Tillerson, 69th United States Secretary of State.

“We can not be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be -a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority." - Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

"Children have been living in overcrowded camps with no real place that to call their own. Through their smiles, I could see the vacancy in their eyes." - Priyanka Chopra, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, at Cox's Bazar, May 2018.

“Those carrying out the campaign should remember Buddha. I think in such circumstances Buddha would definitely give help to those poor Muslims.” - The Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibet.

“Massive and immediate scale-up is required to save lives. Without immediate, adequate water, sanitation and hygiene, there will be disease outbreaks.” - Aid agencies.

“The Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar is highly vulnerable, many having experienced severe trauma, and are now living in extremely difficult conditions.” - Robert Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh.

Rohingya refugees queue for aid at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Satellite Image showing the extent of buring in Rakhine.

Ethnic Cleansing. Forcible displacement. Crimes against humanity. Community extinction. Genocide. Human Rights abuse. Paraphrasing these repugnant terms, it can be said with certitude that ‘pogrom’ is the leitmotif in the life of Rohingya. In February 2018, the Associated Press released a video showing what they say is the site of a massacre and at least five undisclosed mass graves of Rohingya in Myanmar. Entire Rohingya villages were being burned down by vigilante mobs and security forces in an orchestrated campaign. At least 288 villages were partially or totally destroyed by fire in northern Rakhine state after August 2017, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Human Rights Watch. In February, a United Nations report had documented numerous instances of gang rape and killings, including of babies and young children, by Myanmar’s security forces.

Women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents before being raped. Many rape survivors said they endured days of agony walking with swollen and torn genitals to reach Bangladesh. Conditions in the border camps are bleak, with aid agencies struggling to provide enough food, shelter and healthcare. Humanitarian organisations once said they need $434 million over the next six months to help up to 1.2 million people, many of them children, who need life-saving help. Half a million people needed food while 100,000 emergency shelters were also needed. More than half of the Rohingya population are children, while 24,000 pregnant women need maternity care, the aid agencies said in their plan.

Rohingya Muslim refugees arrive on a boat in Waikhyan, Bangladesh after crossing from Burma.

The whole world was aghast at the gorier tales of Rohingya’s ordeal. The spate of violence and bloodshed, based on interviews with Rohingya women and girls who had fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, is so gargantuan that it will give you the willies of your lifetime. Interviewers would have blanched at such lachrymose accounts of victims.

“There is no one left to even bury the bodies,” said a man from village of Yae Twin Kyun in northern Maungdaw township.

“The military was targeting civilians with shootings and burning of Rohingya villages in an apparent attempt to purge Rakhine state of Muslims," said a survivor.

“People were holding the soldiers’ feet, begging for their lives,” said a young Rohingya woman. “But they didn’t stop, they just kicked them off and killed them. They chopped people, they shot people, they raped us, they left us senseless.”

"At night, the army men would bang on the doors. They would barge in to look for a pretty girl. If they found one, she would be dragged to the jungle and raped. The fortunate ones would be dropped back on the village road, half-dead. Others would end up with their throats slashed," said the women who walked barefoot for three days through the forest.

“My daughter, who was sleeping, was consumed by the fire,” said another women. Two weeks previously, her husband had been picked up by the Myanmar military. Since then, in late September, she had not seen or heard from him.

The children, said a victim, were given one packet of biscuit and one half-litre bottle of water for the entire day. “The water was not enough, and people were so thirsty that they drank from the confluence, and two persons died after drinking the saline water. They were buried in the marshes.”

“There are cases of children’s head being hit with heavy objects, and men and women without fingers and with bullets in critical parts of the body, around the nape of the neck, or spine, are arriving in thousands,” said Aaron Jackson, a doctor from a non-profit organisation, Planting Peace.

At nine months pregnant, a woman says she was brutally tortured and raped at her home in Myanmar. “My husband was killed five days before soldiers attacked our village. Our three children have never been seen again since,” she said, cradling five-day-old child in the flimsy makeshift tent she now calls home.

“We don’t even have food to eat for this evening. What can we do?” said a Rohingya man. “We are close to the forest where we have leaves we can eat and find some water to survive.”

“I could not eat rice for 10 days; my three children survived eating leaves. Coming to Bangladesh, they can eat here,” said another.

"We want justice. What I want the people around the world to know is: we want justice," a woman said during an interview.

A local NGO distributing food at Balukhali camp.

They seek justice, they seek love and compassion, they seek a shelter they could call their home, they seek bright future for their children, they seek food, they seek a healthy life. They are in millions of number and they are not the only community seeking those amenities. By the end of 2016, 65 million individuals were  forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. Republic of Congo, Syria, Kosovo, South Sudan, Uganda, Yemen, Liberia, Niger tells the same disgusting stories. These are those state which are flagrantly convulsed by the iniquitous act of some jackbooted barbarians, sometime in connivance with local majority populace as in the case of Myanmar. All over the world, the refugee camps are bursting at the seams, and although buckets of tears are shed daily  bemoaning Rohigyas’ anathema, the world did little substantial to ameliorate the perennial vagaries.

SOURCE:- International Newspapers & Reports.