THE purpose of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyans by the Rakhines is to drive away the Rohingyans and confiscate their land. In this case the Rakhines burned the Rohingyan houses and commit atrocities you can’t even imagine.
The more the Rohingyans flee their homes the more successful their operations are. In short the Rakhines win every time a Rohingyan leaves their homes. It is almost impossible for the Rohingyans to return once they leave Myanmar.
That’s the moral dilemma on this issue. If they stay they will be tortured and even killed. Their life is utterly miserable and oppressed. But if they leave there’s no hope at all of ever returning to your homeland. What a wretched option!
This the same method employed by the Israelis. The Israelis purposely bomb and obliterate civilian areas and make the life of the Palestinian unbearable. Those who still live are treated as pariahs. The Israelis will stall the redevelopment and reconstruction of the destroyed area. They too restrict the flow of development funding.
So once the Palestinians leave, they will then confiscate the area. They then will build beautiful subsidized homes with first world facilities that no Palestinian can ever enjoy. And once built they then offer to Jews even from far flung Russia to stay there.
I admire those Palestinians who stayed there despite the bleak future. It is their homeland for centuries that they defend. Tanah tumpah darah Tok moyang mereka. And I admire also some small number of Israeli volunteers who stayed with the Palestinians and got beaten by their own kind for resisting.
The main difference between the Palestinians and the Rohingyans situations are that the sufferings and abuse on the former are much more recorded than the Rohingyans. Though the Palestinian story is muted by leading news agencies, the Palestinian’s story is able to be heard at the UN and its sessions are highly attended. We need to do the same with the Rohinyans.
We need to take their story down on the immense brutalities of the Rakhines that were inflicted on these downtrodden community. How the young, old and woman were killed, prosecuted and fleeced by the Rakhines and the monks. We need to record all this for them as they are totally deprived. We need to tell their stories at the UN.
Lukman Sheriff
Member of iPeguam
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of, and should not be attributed to, ISMA or ISMAweb.
