This triumvirate of evil has turned its sights on Kashmir

Yvonne Ridley

Russian revolutionary leader Lenin once said, “Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are.” If we apply this to Narendra Modi and India, we can see that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy counts among his closest allies both Israel and Myanmar. That speaks volumes, and does nothing for his carefully nurtured uncle-ji image.

It cannot be lost on anyone that Israel and Myanmar have appalling records for riding roughshod over international human rights and UN sanctions whilst enforcing brutal occupations, committing war crimes and carrying out ethnic cleansing. That’s why the world should not be too surprised that India has delivered a dream scenario to the extremist Hindu nationalists in its ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by stripping Indian-controlled Kashmir of its decades-old special status which gave the Muslim-majority state unique levels of autonomy.

However, the disputed land of Jammu and Kashmir appears to be in danger of being ethnically cleansed by Modi, who has repeatedly demonised the region and its people by labelling it as a hotbed of religious extremism and terrorism. That’s the well-worn terminology used by various tyrants around the world when they want to crush and oppress ordinary people.

Modi’s next move may well be to ethnically cleanse the Kashmiris from their land in a scorched earth policy like the one conducted successfully by the military in Myanmar in 2015 against the Rohingya people. Both may have taken their cue from the Nakba in 1947 when Palestinians were driven from their lands at gunpoint by Zionist terror gangs and the nascent Israel Defence Forces.

At the time of writing, 48 hours have passed and not one word has come out of Washington where Donald Trump, the so-called leader of the free world, remains uncharacteristically mute about what India has done. In Britain, home to the world’s largest diaspora Kashmiri community, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has also remained silent, as has new Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Even the opposition Labour Party has been slow to condemn the unfolding drama. The extremely active pro-BJP political lobby has invested heavily in ways to infiltrate and influence political parties of all stripes on both sides of the Atlantic, and is clearly starting to reap the benefits.

It is quite clear that India spurred on by its close friends, will be emboldened to continue its military campaign. As Modi was putting the final touches to this treachery last weekend, he and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu were playing footsie on Twitter in “honour of Friendship Day”.

“Happy #FriendshipDay2019 India!” tweeted the Israeli Embassy in India. “May our ever strengthening friendship & #growingpartnership touch greater heights.” Modi responded in Hebrew: “Thank you. I wish a happy Friendship Day to the wonderful citizens of Israel and to my friend [Benjamin Netanyahu].” India and Israel proved their friendship throughout the ages, he continued. “Our relationship is strong and everlasting. I wish that our countries’ friendship will grow and bloom even more in the future.” The love-in between Tel Aviv and New Delhi continued with another tweet from Netanyahu: “Thank you, my friend, India PM @narendramodi. I could not agree with you more. The deep connection between Israel and India is rooted in the strong friendships between Israelis and Indians. We cooperate in so many areas. I know our ties will only strengthen in the future!”

Netanyahu apparently intends to visit Modi next month, no doubt to offer more advice on how to make friends and influence people while crushing any resistance to occupation; in other words how to get away with murder in full view of the international community. Modi was probably given similar advice by Myanmar Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing who visited Delhi last month, when India and Myanmar signed a defence cooperation agreement. The Indian leader invited Hlaing to visit India right after the US announced a visa ban on him visiting America due to the Rohingya genocide.

The key players in this triumvirate of evil are all passionate about their brutal occupations of Kashmir, Palestine and Rakhine State, where most of the remaining Rohingya live. The three have spent billions supplying and exporting weapons to each other over the past decade and their police forces have also traded information and training on how to conduct “anti-terror” operations against Kashmiris, Palestinians and Rohingya.

The objective of self-determination held dear by millions of Kashmiris and Palestinians has been thwarted and diminished by the post-9/11 “war against terror”, a euphemism for attacks on “Islamist terrorism”, a term that has gained a lot of currency in Myanmar these days. Written off and demonised as so-called Islamist extremists, this toxic label has made the rest of the world less willing to challenge the cultural, physical and brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Rohingya and now, I have no doubt, Kashmiris.

As the UN once again proves to be a toothless organisation in the face of this latest act against the Kashmiris and their rights, it will be down to global solidarity movements to come together and demand justice. Sadly, there are few crumbs of comfort for the people of Kashmir; not for nothing are its people known as the forgotten Palestinians.

As Israel, Myanmar and India gloat in their solidarity, mutual support and friendship, one can only guess what will be the next stage in what could prove to be the final chapter of Kashmir’s bloody story since 1947 when India and Pakistan became locked in conflict over the Muslim-majority region in the northernmost part of India. It will not be lost on Narendra Modi that Myanmar has ethnically cleansed more than a million Rohingya in recent years without a single prosecution in the international courts. Thanks to Modi’s new best friend Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, the plight of Palestinian refugees has, if anything, worsened year by year over the past seven decades. In short, Modi knows that India is more than likely going to be able to get away with murder, as Myanmar has, and Israel has. This triumvirate of evil has innocent blood on its hands, and things are about to get worse.

World blind on Rohingya – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

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.

Global Peace and Security: Why Wars on Humanity?

by Dr Mahboob A Khawaja

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”  Albert Einstein

The global systems of political governance are dominated by the power politics of the few and fast becoming irrelevant and unrepresentative of the primary concerns and priorities of the vast majority of global humanity. The UNO or superpowers take no preventive measures to protect the mankind in critical situations like Myanmar-Burma (Rohingas), people of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Yemen and Palestine, the global governance tends to be a fantasy than a reality.  You wonder if the UNO has lived up to its role and the Charter-based responsibility to safeguard the people of the world from the ‘scourge of wars’, horrors of planned violence, devastation of human cultures and habitats in good many raging conflicts. All in all, it is the humanity subjected to untold miseries, bloodbath and catastrophic consequences lingering on and unending for the generations to come. These few are the source of evil driving the mankind to unrestrained tyranny. The Statute of the International Criminal Court states “planning and waging a war of aggression is a crime against humanity.”

The Global War Agenda against Reason

The author intends to share a critical analysis of some of the contemporary issues and to inspire global rethinking for a navigational change of the redundant structures and role of the international institutions, inept leadership, obsolete systems of power politics and approaches to peacemaking, security and conflict management. Perpetuated fear and political chaos overwhelms the obsolete global political governance. The war-agenda has shifted actions from the Western industrialized societies to the oil producing Arab world. The Middle East is in ruins by the sectarian warfare, indiscriminate bombing, terrorism, destruction of life and habitats and the natural environment. Nobody can rebuild, what has been destroyed by the war agenda.

To us – the living and conscientious humanity, image of time and accountability makes it clear that global systems are operating contrary to reason. Amongst all the creations on Planet Earth, humans are the only one equipped with thinking, language and intelligence to claim morality as an attribute of life and value. This reality emphasizes and differentiates us from the other creations of God. If we propel uncertainty in our thoughts and behavior, nothing can stop us from surpassing the limit of immorality and insanity. With knowledge-based 21st century human communications improving global collaboration, we are not moving in the right direction that human logic and truth spell out for our conduct in peaceful relationships. The impulse and actions for cruelty and sadistic behavior are increasingly sending alarming trends for the present and future generations to be informed of our implicit wickedness and resulting failure in global affairs. As humans, we are not thinking or moving for the unity of mankind to be at peace and harmony being the chief creation of God. Unless, we are overwhelmed philosophically to imagine that we are something else than humans populating the Earth by chance.

We the People of the Universe and Tyranny of the Few

The 21st century knowledge-based critical thought highlights the unilateral absolutism as the corner stone of superpower’s policies and practices.  David Armstrong (“Dick Cheney Song’s of America”: Information Clearing House: 09/19/2011), points out how the US politicians view the world to be governed by the American strategic dictates:

It was published as Defense Strategy for the 1990’s…. The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions….Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.

Under George W. Bush administration, America continued the same approach to global affairs. Reasoned politics and safeguard of the global humanity were not the purpose of such a belligerent plan. The USSR was already dismantled as a challenger and the US politicians saw the opportunity to determine the future of the global mankind by militarization and occupation of the poor and vulnerable nations. Its first victim was Afghanistan, then Iraq and Libya and onward to whole of the Arab world. Under NATO, America continued its influential role to destabilize the USSR and former allies of the Eastern Europe. There was no balancing of reason. Where power beyond human capacity is entrusted to the few, the chances are it will be misused against the people. The political tensions of militarization of the globe led to oppression and miseries for the people of the world. We have not seen any tangible movement in political behavior to lessen the unstable clash of fanaticism and evil imposed on the innocent victims of humanity. The UNO was overwhelmed by the same scenarios of inept outcomes in situations that warranted urgent and swift humanitarian action to safeguard the civilian population in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine and Kashmir. Why the prevention of man-made tyranny, oppression and conflicts are fast becoming acceptable norms in global systems of governance?  Should the contemporary leaders of the world answer this vital question or should it be left to the impulse of history to explain it to the futuristic generations?

To Imagine Change in the Working of the Global Institutions

The global institutions were aligned to the formative history at the end of the 2nd WW, not to the knowledge-based proactive 21st century of technological innovation, reason and change. The global leadership and systematic working of the international political affairs are managed by wrong thinking, wrong people and wrong priorities. None seem to have the capacity to further the cause of global humanity, peace, conflict resolution and security. The global humanity looks for change but there seems to be no systematic mechanism for integrated change to ensure continuity of encompassed human thoughts, hopes and ideals for tomorrow, the near future or distant future. Despite the sketchy illusions of freedom, democracy, human rights, liberty and justice, we are encroached, stuffed and at terrible risk of annihilation more accidental and by error of judgment than planned scheme of things by Man against Man. The Western political mythology enflames hatred against Islam and blames Muslim as being “terrorists.” The raging wars in the Arab Middle East are a net outcome of ignorance and lack of wisdom against Islam. Western installed puppets Arab leaders do not represent the masses. Often false propaganda, deception and prejudice are combined in a trajectory of plans to sell weapons and console the egoistic leaders as allies of the Western military alliance. This political delusion is full of inherent inconsistencies. Gary Wills (What the Qur’an Meant and What It Matters. Viking, NY, 2017), a leading American scholar explains the reality in his new book:

Our enemy in this war is far less localizable than it was in the World War 2 or the Cold War. Terror is a tool, not a country. Declaring a war on it is less like normal warfare, country versus country, there is No VE Day or VJ Day in such wars… living with fear is corrosive…the less we know about the reality of Islam, the more we will fight shadows and false emanations from our apprehension. Ignorance is the natural ally of fear. It is time for us to learn about the real Islam beginning with its source book – The Qur’an.

Global Leadership and Its Moral and Intellectual Decadence and Humanity

That conscious realization is absent from the global thinking and observations of the outcomes of the major international institutions. None of the global institutions seem to reflect the sacred nature of life and the role of Man (human being) in preserving life and its encompassing standards as the pivotal role of obligations on the planet. What is the cure to the raging indifference and embolden cruelty to the interests of the people of Syria, Iraq, United States and Western Europe and for that matter to the whole of the mankind? 

Remember that civilizations and humanity are not developed by the political-military-industrial complexes led economies, or IMF operative bankers, ruling elite, speculatory stock markets, legal judgments, kings and queens, morally and spiritually decadent generations and crime riddled authoritarian ruler, but are the tangible progressive outcomes of the proactive intellectual and moral visions of the societal thinkers, poets, philosophers, knowledge, truth, compassion and continuous movement by man to support the humanity and its natural strive for new thinking, change and progress. Politics is problematic and increasingly becoming irrational and a burden on man’s conscience. Now, it is up to the focused mind of Man and the spirited Humanity to assume the new-age responsible leadership for a navigational change.  We, the People, We the Humanity are capable to envisage a navigational change for a reasoned dialogue to change and a sustainable future – new proactive visions and new reformed global systems of the working of international institutions to unite the humanity and contribute peace, harmony, security and respect amongst the diverse fabrics of mankind.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and international affairs with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution: Approaches to Understand the Current Issues and Future-Making. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, October 2017.

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.

End of days for Suu Kyi’s iconography

David Scott Mathieson

Amnesty International's withdrawal of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi’s 'Ambassador of Conscience' prize underlines the fact she was never really a rights champion after all, says David Scott Mathieson in his article for Asia Times titled: “End of days for Suu Kyi’s iconography”.

Few if any Asian leaders have been showered with as many human rights honors and accolades as Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Similarly, never has the hallowed image of a rights and democracy icon so quickly crumbled to reveal as flinty and frivolous a leader in the face of mass crimes against humanity.

Western outrage over her disregard and denials for the violent expulsion of Rohingya Muslims, and silence over Myanmar military abuses against ethnic minorities in many other parts of the country, have been sustained at fever pitch for nearly two years.

But Amnesty International may have delivered the coup de grace of Suu Kyi’s human rights credibility by withdrawing on last Tuesday the title of “Ambassador of Conscience” they awarded to her in 2009 while she was in house arrest under repressive military rule.

Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International’s secretary general, sent Suu Kyi a letter warning her the honor would be withdrawn, and saying he was “profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defense of human rights.”

Amnesty also redirected Suu Kyi’s platitudes against her, reminding the world that when she accepted the award in 2012 she exhorted the organization to “not take either your eyes or your mind off us and help us to be the country where hope and history merges.”

The stripping of Amnesty’s honor was a far cry from the time the global rights group celebrated Suu Kyi as the most famous “prisoner of conscience” in the world. Upon her release in late 2010, Suu Kyi maintained the façade of human rights champion, visiting Amnesty in New York where she expressed solidarity with the persecuted Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot.

But in the lead-up to the 2015 elections that catapulted her to power, Suu Kyi’s patience with Myanmar and international human rights groups was already wearing thin. Once in office, she failed to advance rights promoting laws or speak out on behalf of political prisoners.

Amnesty, given its long campaigns for prisoners of conscience in Myanmar, 115 of which are currently members of parliament, has had better access to the inner circles of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) than most other human rights organizations.

But the organization’s exemplary work on documenting Myanmar military crimes perpetrated against civilians in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states strained those relations amid the NLD’s almost total rejection of human rights.

Various organizations have stripped Suu Kyi of previous awards and prizes bestowed upon her for her past commitment to rights. Symbolically, however, Amnesty’s withdrawal is the biggest hit of all.

This isn’t the Freedom of the City of Sheffield, or Canadian Honorary Citizenship, her portrait being taken down at Oxford University, a chapter in her honor in the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls book pressured to be cut in an updated edition, or rent-a-celebrity Bob Geldof huffingly returning his keys to the City of Dublin in protest because Suu Kyi has the same award, or even the Irish band U2 denouncing her silence as “assent.”

About her only remaining friend in the West is US Senator Mitch McConnell who has deplored so much criticism of Suu Kyi, saying in an interview in October that “The pile-on has been quite obvious. It’s also noteworthy that it hasn’t done any good.”

Amnesty International is the biggest human rights organization in the world. It was instrumental in not just “making” Suu Kyi, but also in spotlighting the thousands of political prisoners in Myanmar during the 1990s and internationalizing the human rights situation.

Amnesty’s actions are effectively an excommunication of Suu Kyi from the pantheon of human rights champions. Suu Kyi herself was an arrogant apostate over the last two years with her pitiless apologies for the military’s mass atrocities in Rakhine and northern Myanmar

Hysterical demands for the Nobel Committee to rescind the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to her in 1991 have been outraged distractions, and the committee itself has stated that it never withdraws prizes awarded for past actions, with committee head Berit Reiss-Andersen saying that “(t)he prize winners themselves have to safeguard their own reputation.”

But Suu Kyi, with all her arrogance, aloofness, and idiosyncrasies, has seemed as unconcerned with her reputation as she has the fate of the Rohingya.

Many of the prizes she received were unsolicited, and yet even as the warning signs of her increasing distance from human rights principles grew, prizes continued to be showered upon her.

In 2016, Harvard University named her the Humanitarian of the Year, while she was also given the Helen Keller International Humanitarian Award (with social media satire in Myanmar portraying the award as fitting for someone who couldn’t see, hear or speak).

While Suu Kyi will go down in infamy as a human rights opportunist, if not an aloof and incompetent politician elevated to a position well beyond her competency, Amnesty and others who promoted her façade deserve some of the blame due to their own self-importance, self-promotion and fund-raising agendas.

Ideally, Suu Kyi’s fall from grace gives rise to a more rigorous auditing of personalities who are thrust to public prominence and celebrated without a clear indication of their character.

All this unsolicited hero-worship and symbolic baubles appeared to impress Suu Kyi when she was inundated with them – and she clearly enjoyed the laudatory attention.

So far, she has not shown an iota of contrition over the mass crimes in Rakhine state, or the suffering of so many other people trapped in her country’s endless civil war. She has shown herself incapable, even defiant, of anything so weak as empathy and compassion.

Yet the international convulsions over Suu Kyi’s arrogance and incompetence have been somewhat misplaced considering her silence and inaction has really been a smokescreen to cover those truly responsible for atrocities: the Myanmar military and its top leadership, especially Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

Amnesty has skillfully directed attention towards the commander in chief, portraying him as the figure most responsible for past and ongoing abuses. During the United Nations General Assembly in September, Amnesty drove a truck around Manhattan with Min Aung Hlaing’s pictures displayed on LED screens and the words “Wanted for Mass Murder.”

Suu Kyi will likely bristle at Amnesty’s latest action, but it will have no significant repercussions for the country or efforts to seek accountability. That’s in part because anti-Western nationalism that is rallying around Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s reputation, and the downgrading of relations with the West in favor of less critical Asian nations.

Aung San Suu Kyi tried to reach out to the global community on September 19 in an appeal for support over the refugee crisis the UN has decried as "ethnic cleansing", urging outsiders to help her nation unite across religious and ethnic lines and offering a pathway back to the country for some of the Rohingya Muslims forced to flee by army operations.

There is so little domestic sympathy for the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar that criticism of Suu Kyi has been seen as an attack on the country.

The danger of this resurgent defensive nationalism revolves around how it will be harnessed by the military and ultra-nationalist hardliners ahead of 2020 elections.

Relations with the West, especially the United States and United Kingdom, is at its lowest point in years. The United Nations is woefully divided, with one hand issuing a damning report that documents crimes against humanity and war crimes, with the other agreeing to secretive agreements with Naypyidaw to prepare for the repatriation of over 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

Given the volume of Western pressure over atrocity crimes in Myanmar, with calls for independent tribunals to be established, a looming International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation, and the restoration of Myanmar’s reputation as an international pariah, Amnesty’s repealing a 20-year old award may seem trivial.

But it symbolically underscores how Suu Kyi’s imperious governance style, her government’s general arrogance and incompetence, and the malevolence of the Myanmar military and their leadership, have deeply scarred the conscience of the entire country, domestically and internationally.

Heading towards what are expected to be deeply divisive 2020 polls, Myanmar’s political scene will be bereft of any genuine leadership on human rights, while the military will not have lost a sliver of political or economic power. That will be Suu Kyi’s real legacy: jettisoning her once vaunted principles and getting nothing in return.

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.

Foreign interference in SL Muslim problem

From the very moment that the BBS became prominent in Sri Lanka, there has been speculation about sinister foreign forces operating behind it. There is certainly a Norwegian connection, about which no clarification has been forthcoming. Now the BBS leaders are in the US on a month-long visit, which is reportedly part of a programme to make their movement international. There seems to be big money and power behind the BBS. Most curious of all are the coincidences between what is happening here and in Burma. By Izeth Hussain

I concluded my article, Sri Lankan Muslims in the racist paradigm (The Island of March 18) with the following paragraph: "Were the Bodu Bala Sena and the JHU unaware of what was going on in Geneva, and that the anti-halal campaign could have very adverse consequences there? Commonsense should have dictated that the anti-halal campaign be postponed until the conclusion of the UNHRC meeting. Some who are over-fond of conspiracy theories would say that they are secretly serving the purposes of the US and of India. Others would say that they have been manipulated by the CIA and RAW without being aware of it. I cannot subscribe to such notions. I have the strong conviction that the explanation for the horrendous mistiming of the anti-halal campaign is to be found in the irrationality that goes with racism. The usual paradigm of racism does not include a recognition of the fact that racism and irrationality go together." Let me make my position absolutely clear before proceeding further. Both the BBS and the JHU are very widely regarded as extreme racist organizations, and therefore both have to be regarded as having a proneness to extreme irrationality. It was that extreme irrationality – and not their being traitors – that made them blind to what was going on in Geneva. But, of course that extreme irrationality would also make it very easy for the CIA, RAW etc to manipulate them without their being aware of it. Assuming that they were indeed manipulated, we have to ask what were the presumed objectives of the CIA, RAW etc. The objectives could have been along the following lines: the anti-Muslim hate campaign, which clearly had the acquiescence if not the positive support of the government behind it, could lead to genocide and, therefore, it was impossible for any self-respecting Muslim state to vote against the anti Sri Lanka US Resolution. Without the Muslim vote for Sri Lanka, the US Resolution would have won overwhelmingly, and Sri Lanka would have been seen internationally as a virtual pariah state. That may be precisely what certain sinister forces want for Sri Lanka. Fortunately, the indefatigable campaigning of the Pakistani Foreign Minister and her officials prevented that outcome. Anyway, there is no getting over the fact that objectively – whatever might be the subjective intentions of the BBS and the JHU – their allowing the anti-halal campaign to mount to a crescendo precisely at that time served the purposes of the enemies of Sri Lanka. They should be more alert to the international implications of their actions in the future.

From the very moment that the BBS became prominent in Sri Lanka, there has been speculation about sinister foreign forces operating behind it. There is certainly a Norwegian connection, about which no clarification has been forthcoming. Now the BBS leaders are in the US on a month-long visit, which is reportedly part of a programme to make their movement international. There seems to be big money and power behind the BBS. Most curious of all are the coincidences between what is happening here and in Burma. The T-shirts worn by the demonstrators in both countries look identical except that the logos are different, suggesting that they were produced by the same manufacturer. A new wave of anti-Muslim violence broke out last month, this time in central Burma against Muslims regarded as indigenous Burmans unlike the Rohingyas who were targeted last year. Apparently the rhetoric used by the Buddhist monk leader there is very similar to the rhetoric used here.

Consider this for example: "When the profit goes to the enemy’s hand, our nationality, language and religion are all harmed. They will take girls with this money. They will force them to convert religion. All children born to them will be a danger to the country. They will destroy the language as well as the religion." It seems to be the same unholy brew as in Sri Lanka, with a nexus drawn between money, sex, and conversion. This could be standard fare in racist hate speech, or it could be that the same sinister forces are operating behind the campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. I have no hard evidence to cite in support of my position that the same sinister forces could be at work behind the campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. Even so, I concluded my article Clarifications on Genocide in The Island of April 22 with the following: "I must also say that I have come to suspect more and more strongly that behind the nonsense about halal and the anti-Muslim programme sinister foreign forces have been at work." Though lacking the hard evidence I can however set out the rationale for that position. But, before doing that I must refer to important material about secret service activity in Sri Lanka that I came across while in the process of writing this article. The material is given in Upul Joseph Fernando’s article Paving the way for US intervention in Sri Lanka? (Ceylon Today of April 24). According to the American website World Net Daily a source within the Iranian Intelligence Services told it (WND), even before the identities of the Boston bombing suspects became known, that the Islamic regime was behind them and to look for trails through Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Earlier when the German bakery bomb explosion took place in Pune (India), the chief suspect had in his confession revealed that the final operational plan had been drawn up in Colombo. Various details were given in that connection. Another interesting detail is that President Bush had stated that a Sri Lankan Tamil speaking Muslim was the chief financial officer and money launderer behind the clandestine operations of A. Q. Khan (the reputed father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb). A further detail worth mentioning is that a few months ago the New York based Open Society Foundation had in their report mentioned that Sri Lanka permitted use of its air space and airports for flights associated with the CIA’s extraordinary renditions operations in 2003. There is further interesting material in the article but I will not go into all that as my purpose is merely to point to material indicating that several secret services have been active in Sri Lanka. But I must quote the following from UJF’s interesting speculations in his concluding paragraphs: "In essence, all these revelations and disclosures amount to an alarming trend in Indian and American strategy – vis-à-vis Sri Lanka. Both countries are committed to proving Sri Lanka as a hot-bed of Islamic terrorism targeting Europe, America and India." I will now set out the rationale for believing that the same sinister forces could be behind the anti-Muslim campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. It all goes back to the 1972 Arab-Israel war, in the aftermath of which there was a phenomenal increase in oil prices. One of the main beneficiaries was Saudi Arabia, which chose to spend part of that wealth in spreading its Wahabi version of Islam. Its main instrument for that purpose was the madrasa, which provided free education since under Islam it is forbidden to make money out of religion. The main beneficiaries of madrasa education were members of the poor and the lower middle classes, precisely the classes from which violent revolutionaries are bred. The result was seen in the Eastern Province in the form of violent incidents after the death of a Sufi mystic, who caked himself Pailuwan (wrestler). Later there was violence in Beruwela, the result of what orthodox Muslims would regard as sacrilegious behaviour on the part of Wahabi Muslims. At the time of the conclusion of the war in 2009 there were several Jihad groups in the Eastern Province, and it took some time to make them give up their weapons. Not much more is known to the general public about the impact of Wahabism in the Eastern Province. But as UJF’s article brings out the EP and the rest of Sri Lanka have for years been a hotbed of international secret service activity. The madrasa education has everywhere led to what is called political Islam, militant Islam, and fundamentalist Islam, which has bred hatred of the West and terrorism. The US and India, as well as Pakistan, Iran, and Israel had to be concerned about what was going on in Sri Lanka on the religious front and we can expect that all their secret services have been active here. In connection with the anti-Muslim campaign we have to be concerned mainly about the possible interests of the US and India. The US could want to alert our government to the dangers that could flow from Wahabism. As I have argued in earlier articles, halal is really a non-problem, something that could have been easily solved. But, the halal problem was a way of targeting the ACJU, which significantly is regarded as the spear-head for Wahabism in Sri Lanka. But, I don’t believe that the US will pursue its own interests in Sri Lanka at the expense of India’s interests. If the US did promote the anti-Muslim hate campaign, it would have been to serve India’s interests. How have those interests been served? The hate campaign leads to one resounding question: if the Muslim minority which has been so much on the side of the Sinhalese against the Tamils can be treated in this way, how can we expect the Sinhalese to ever give fair and equal treatment to the Tamils? The question leads to the idea that a political solution for the Tamils has to go beyond 13A or even 13A+. Was that what the TNA President Suresh Premachandran had in mind when he told a visiting delegation of Indian MPs, "We need an interim administration overseen by India or the United Nations until there is a final settlement for the Tamils."

Izethhussain@gmail.com