Mohamed Morsi and Aung San Suu Kyi – Two democrats treated differently by the West

By 5Pillars

Left to right: Aung San Suu Kyi and Mohamed Morsi

Mohammed Morsi and Aung San Suu Kyi both believed in democracy, yet the West treated them very differently when they were oppressed, writes Jahangir Mohammed.

The death of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in court after six years of imprisonment and torture, has demonstrated the West’s double standards over democracy.  The West’s championing of democracy as a higher political value does not extend to the Muslim majority world – it is simply a stick to beat Muslims with.

The UK Government has included lack of support for democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual tolerance within its definition of “extremism” (mainly used against Muslims with dissenting views), and a fundamental British value. Yet its own behaviour (like others in the West) in other parts of the world, shows a total disregard for the very values it expects Muslim communities to embrace, and subsequently judges them by.

In six years, the West has made little to no effort to support the first fairly elected president of Egypt or its democracy. Nor has it tried to oppose the intolerance and abuse of the rule of law and human rights in Egypt. Rather, the US other Western nations embraced military dictatorship as a partner in the region.

The case of Mohamed Morsi

Mohammed Morsi and his democratically elected Freedom and Justice Party were ousted in a military coup led by General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi in July 2013. There was no moral outcry in the West. In fact, no sooner had Sisi come to power, some Western countries visited him to secure arms and trade deals.

When Morsi was charged with treason and other trumped up charges, he did not become an international symbol of a “freedom-loving democrat” trying to move his country away from military dictatorship. Nor did Western human rights groups widely champion him as a political prisoner worthy of their highest accolades and mass campaigns. Even the socialists and the left were unusually silent.

Abdel Fatah al-Sisi

When Sisi imprisoned thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and members, and sentenced many to death, there was still no outcry and no political prisoner campaigns.

Western rights groups, politicians and the media appeared to care very little about the masses of pollical prisoners, torture, lack of due process and rule of law.

Yet, when even one European is imprisoned in a country like Iran, they are deserving of the whole machinery of politics and human rights being unleashed.

You would think that the West’s army of feminists would care for the plight of the thousands of women arrested or affected by mass detention in Egypt. Here too they have been largely silent. We have of course seen this before, when 50,000 Muslim women were raped or in camps in Bosnia at the hands of the Serbs, I don’t recall a single Western feminist group taking up the issue.

In the six years that followed the detention of President Morsi, there was little concern about any of these human right abuses and torture. Instead, the West was more concerned about whether the Muslim Brotherhood and former President Morsi cared about or held the same social and political values as the West (both the political Left and Right). The message appeared to be unless you are a Muslim that is like us, you are not worthy of our support.

When sadly he died, there were no tributes from Western leaders or expressions of grief or even anger. Morsi was dead and his belief in democracy mattered not one jot. It was his belief in democracy and faith in the democratic West, that contributed towards his tragic death.

The case of Aung San Suu Kyi

Compare the treatment of Mohammed Morsi to another former political prisoner fighting for democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the uprisings in Myanmar against military rule in 1988.  She then became the President of the National League for Democracy (NLD).  In the 1990 elections, the NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament. The military refused to hand over power and she remained in house detention for 15 of the following 21 years until 2010.

Suu Kyi became the world’s most prominent political prisoner thanks to international Western support. In 1990, she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, in 1991 the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2012 she received the United States Congressional Gold Medal. She became an iconic figurehead for democracy and human rights organisations, and was championed by politicians and movements on both the left and the right of the western political spectrum.

Rohingya refugees in a camp in Cox Bazaar, Bangladesh.

Her “bravery and struggle for non-violent commitment to democracy” were saluted across the Western world. She was seen in the West as “one of us” with little concern to consider her own Buddhist values and political views. Only since her party came to power in 2015 have her Buddhist and political views been criticised, especially in light of her attitude towards the minority Rohingya Muslim community (whose persecution she has denied).

Western imperialism and supremacy

The West’s approach and policies towards Muslims, and the Muslim majority world (irrespective of Left or Right) is still rooted in its pre-colonial relationship and interaction with Islam. This was, and largely still is, infected by ignorance, stereotypes, anti-Islamic propaganda with an attitude of Rudyard Kipling’s supremacist civilising mission.

Muslim social, moral and political beliefs and values have to be just like the West’s to be deemed worthy of their support. Hinduism and Buddhism on the other hand have tended to be viewed in the West in a romantic way as some exotic religion Westerners can study and gain some spiritual benefits from. Islam and Muslims have always been seen as a rival to Western religious, and now secular values, and its global power.

At the time of colonialism, European countries entered Muslim lands saying they were there for trade which would make us prosperous too. Sadly, most Muslim leaders at the time believed this. After the 9/11 attacks, the West told us they were invading our countries to install democracy in the Muslim world. Many believed them. On both occasions, the only thing Muslims got was death, destruction and impoverishment. It is time for Muslims to learn that if we are going to bring an end to tyranny and oppression in the Muslim world, we are going to have to do it all by ourselves within our own traditions and struggle’s.

In a real sense, the Egyptian people’s revolution died at the hands of democracy and the belief that the West would support those Muslims who embraced it.

References to the “West” and “Western” are at the political level, and not directed at ordinary people in the West.

On Refugees….And Myanmar-It’s Not Just The Rohingya

by Dr Arshad M Khan

… And my life’s cold winter that knew no spring;

Of my mind so weary and sick and wild,

   Of my heart too sad to sing.

                       — Paul Laurence Dunbar

The world now has more refugees than at any time since after WW2, more than the population of Britain.  They are often the consequence of wars usually instigated by great powers directly or through proxies.  Civil strife accompanied by the demonization of minorities, killing and expulsion is another reason.  Such is the story of the Rohingya in Burma, or Myanmar as it now likes to be known.

It is a country with the river Irrawaddy as a central artery.  Bordering it is the heartland, peopled by the Bamar who make up 68 percent of the population and are Buddhist.  The Rohingya are Muslim, look different and have lived in Rakhine state for at least five centuries.  During WW2 they supported the British while the Buddhist Burmese supported the Japanese, their coreligionists.  It brought lasting enmity.  After years of propaganda and vilification, the Rohingya were stripped of citizenship.  Not unlike Nazi Germany targeting Jewish people, new restrictive laws curtailed liberties, marriage rights, even children — limited to two.  The vilification turned most neighboring Buddhist villages against the Rohingya, and those attacking and burning their villages were often these neighbors when not the military.

In this latest violence, 90 percent of the Rohingyas were driven out and about three-quarters of a million sought refuge across the border in Bangladesh.  The story does not end with the Rohingya for there are other threatened minorities in Burma occupying the periphery in the north and south:

In northern Shan state, a simmering conflict with the Taang National Liberation Army dating back to 1963 has displaced 300,000.  The army emboldened by the relatively meek response to the assault on the Rohingyas have intensified their efforts also against the ethnic Kokang’s  Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.  The consequence is an addition to the tens of thousands that had streamed from earlier conflicts over the border into China.  Also in the north the largely Christian Kachin minority formed the Kachin Independence Army to defend their villages.   The ongoing conflict has displaced more than 135,000 internally.  And in the south the conflict with the Karen(Buddhist, Animist and 15 percent Christian) resulted in over 100,000 refugees … this time in Thailand, plus a 100,000 diaspora to the rest of the world including some 65,000 in the US.  Myanmar’s perverse antipathy towards all its minorities makes a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi, its leader.  Is meaningful censure an answer, or is innate tribalism an unconquerable primitive amygdala response?

The top five refugee hosting countries might also come as a surprise.  Amid all the news of Angela Merkel’s generous offer to accept everyone entering her country, Germany is not one of them.  Shortly thereafter her party lost by-elections and she is departing.  The actual figures are Turkey (3.5 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Uganda (1.4 million), Lebanon (1 million) and Iran (0.98 million).  The chaos in countries adjoining them (think of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia) explains why, and the great power with a finger in each pie, when not actually baking it, is also not difficult to discern.

Imagine being forced to flee with just the clothes on your back or just a bag.  A word here also for the people who had to do just that to escape wildfires.  They all have our heartfelt sympathy, often taking a concrete form through donations to help.  A happy new year to everyone and a better one for the unfortunate among us.  We can try to make it so.

Dr Arshad M Khan (http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a former Professor based in the U.S. whose comments over several decades have appeared in a wide-ranging array of print and internet media.  His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in the Congressional Record.

World’s Most Persecuted Community Still Waiting for Justice

By: Kayhan Int’l 

The massive rallies day before yesterday in the refugee camps on the outskirts of the city of Cox Bazar in Bangladesh on the first anniversary of the mass massacre and en masse expulsion of a million men, women, and children from their ancestral lands, once again reminded uninterested world powers and an indifferent Islamic Ummah of the plight of Rohingya Muslims – the world’s most persecuted community, according to the UN, which seems powerless to resolve the crisis.

The genocide thus continues, since the government in Myanmar led by Aung San Suu Kyi – that "cruel lady” to quote the words of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei – is adamant the ethnic cleansing should persist, perhaps as vengeance for being jilted by her Pakistani Muslim boyfriend while she was studying at Britain’s Oxford University in her youthful days.

Unfortunately, she is being feted by western leaders who had supported her during her detention by the military junta and continue to do so despite the fact that contrary to her commitments she has not just thrown cold water on the aspirations of the Rohingya on taking power through democratic means, but cold-bloodedly supports their repression.

The crisis, however, began in 1962 when the military Junta started systematic deprivation of the political privileges of the Rohingya people, which until then had enjoyed all democratic rights including election as MPs to the Burmese national parliament in Rangoon.

The first major assault by the military rulers against the Rohingya Muslims was in 1978 when thousands were driven into neighbouring Bangladesh. In 1982 the junta passed laws effectively denying the entire Rohingya nation of its birthrights as citizens by alleging them to be of Bengali origin and excluding them from the "eight recognized national indigenous groups of Myanmar”, despite the fact that Rohingya history has been traced by international organisations to the 8th century.

It means, Muslims have been living in Arakan, or Rakhine as it is known these days, for over a millennium since Islam made its advent in this land to enlighten local people with the message of monotheism.

In other words, long before the arrival of the ethnic Burmese in 1785 and the annexation of Arakan, Muslims, along with other groups like the Hindu minority and the local Buddhists, had led a peaceful life, developing agriculture, contributing to a thriving industry, enjoying trade ties with neighbouring states, and evolving a unique culture rooted in the soil of Arakan.

Even the Empire of Burma acknowledged the rights of the Rohingyas, who thrived during British rule, fought the Japanese invaders, and participated in the political process of the Republic of Burma after World War 2 through the National Democratic Party, as elected representatives in the parliament, as well as ministers, secretaries, and other high-ranking government officials.

All this changed with the coming to power of the military Junta which stripped them of their citizenship in violation of the UN Charter, and systematically drove them into exile through genocide, rape, and razing of their entire townships.

This was a brief history confirming the roots of the Rohingya in Rakhine, a people who have every right to return to their occupied homeland, and it is the duty of the UN to guarantee their save repatriation.

Because of international pressure, Myanmar has agreed in principle to take them back under the repatriation pact signed with Bangladesh, but the World Body and big powers as well as the Muslim countries, should make sure that practical steps are taken in regard with full guarantee to protect them from the bloodthirsty Buddhists settlers that have seized the Rohingya similar to the usurpation of Palestinian lands by illegal Jewish migrants from other parts of the world.

The August 25 rallies in Cox Bazar should not be allowed to pass as a mere commemoration of an anniversary of mass atrocities, but as indicated by the huge placards reading: "We are Rohingya, we want justice”, and "Genocide Never Again”, the international community should mobilize effective efforts for the return home of the world’s most persecuted community.