Is Dhaka Violating Islamic-Humanitarian Rights to Education of Rohingya Refugee Children?

Kayhan Int’l 

   Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, reads:

   "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

   Interestingly, there is a large hand-woven Persian wall carpet at the UN headquarters in New York gifted by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005 and inscribed with the famous poem of the medieval Iranian poet, Mosleh od-Din Sa’di of Shiraz, in the same vein:

  "The children of Adam are members of one frame,
   "Since all, at first, from the same essence came.
    "When time afflicts a limb with pain
   "The other limbs at rest cannot remain.
   "If thou feel not for other’s misery  
   "A human being is no name for thee”.

   Sa’di is said to have been inspired by a hadith attributed to Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) that 

"The example of the believers (Muslims) in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body. When any limb aches, the rest of the body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.”

     If the above mentioned article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been memorized by governments of all world countries especially diplomats visiting the UN and also noticing the big bold golden letters on the Iranian wall carpet in the Meeting Hall of the World Body, Sa’di is a household name in not just Iran and the Muslim World, but throughout the globe which considers the works of this Persian poet among the heritage of mankind.
     Bangladesh, which is hosting around a million Rohingya refugees displaced from their homeland Arakan or Rakhine by the bloodthirsty military junta of Myanmar, is also fully aware of the articles of the UN Charter and of the contents of "Gulistan” and "Bustan”, the masterpieces of Sa’di, including his poem on the World Body’s walls in New York, both in the original Persian and the Bengali translations.
     In fact, Bangladesh is heir to almost eight centuries of the Islamic Persianate culture of the Subcontinent, first as a seat of a series of dynasties of whom one had invited the great Iranian poet Hafez Shirazi (who in reply sent a famous Persian poem to the ruler Ghiyas od-Din Azam Shah), next as a province of the Mughal Empire, followed by the semi-independent Nawab Nazims of Iranian origin, before being annexed by the British to emerge as East Pakistan in 1947, and finally as a fully independent country and UN member in 1971.
     In view of this rich legacy and history, it is a matter of regret that the current government in Dhaka is reportedly depriving Rohingya Muslim refugees of their Islamic right to education.
     Why? Because, if the report released last Tuesday by the Human Rights Watch is to be believed, the authorities in Bangladesh want to prevent the Rohingyas from integrating with local communities, despite the fact that many of them share close cultural ties with the Bengali Muslims.
      The camps, located in the Cox Bazar district, are home to as many as 1 million displaced people -- the largest such refugee settlement in the world.
       The release of the report by the New York-based Foundation, titled, "Are We Not Human” reflects the difficulties faced by the camp’s 400,000 school-age children, who without proper education, will be left more vulnerable to abuse, crime and poverty.
       According to Bill Van Esveld, Associate Children’s Rights Director at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, who acknowledged that "the government of Bangladesh saved countless lives by opening its borders and providing refuge to the Rohingya”, depriving children of education "merely compounds the harm to the children and won’t resolve the refugees’ plight any faster.”
       In his 81-page report he claimed that the Bangladeshi government has barred UN humanitarian agencies and NGOs from providing children in the camps with any formal or accredited education, saying: "Dhaka needs to end its misguided policy of blocking education for Rohingya children.”
      Bangladesh officials, however, deny the report and say the Rohingya refugee children are free to study. If such is the case, then Dhaka should practically carry out its Muslim and humanitarian responsibilities, in order to earn the pleasure of God Almighty for having helped co-religionists forced to seek asylum in the face of the brutal genocide unleashed by the  Buddhists(?) of Myanmar.

No End to Plight of Rohingya Muslims, While Criminal-in-Chief Remains Unindicted

By: Kayhan Int’l 

It is now two years since the Myanmar military, the Tatmadaw, descended upon Rakhine state for a renewed campaign of terror and violence against the country’s long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims, yet the world looks the other way as over a million refugees continue to eke out a pathetic existence in the squalid makeshift camps of Bangladesh’s Cox Bazar.

The UN only resorts to cosmetic measures, while the US, which likes to call itself the defender of democracy is totally indifferent to the genocide of Muslims.

The wealthy Arab states for their part, especially Saudi Arabia, uses their oil riches to kill fellow Arab Muslims in neighbouring Yemen, in addition to assisting the Zionist archenemies of Islam to carry out air raids on Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

This has enabled the Myanmar military to commit unspeakable crimes against the Rohingya Muslims, whose men are hacked to death; children are burned alive; and women and girls raped in thousands.

The irony is that the prime culprit behind these crimes against humanity remains unpunished. 

In other words, the International Criminal Court remains unmoved from taking any action against Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, let alone indict this brutal woman for war crimes and genocide.

According to reports, Suu Kyi, a former prisoner of conscience-turned-de facto head of state who still seems to be the darling of the West, unabashedly defends the Myanmar military’s brutal crimes. 

Jilted by her Pakistani lover of her student days in Britain, this brutal Buddhist lady continues to fan the flames of hatred against the Rohingya Muslims.

Sun Kyi is Islamophobic as was evident during her recent visit to Hungary, where she shamelessly joined far-right Premier Viktor Orban to bemoan the "continuously growing Muslim populations” in their respective countries.

A racist to the very core, she is feted by like-minded senior officials of countries harbouring hatred of Muslims, including her fellow 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos Horta, and US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

She plays a racist role similar to the infamous Joseph Goebbels of Nazi Germany.
According to Azeem Ibrahim, author of "The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide,” by providing the Myanmar generals with cover at every step, she emboldened and encouraged the military to commit the worst crimes against Muslims. 

In view of these facts, will the international community, which claims to care about human rights, take action to tackle the perpetrators of genocide in Myanmar?

The question is likely to remain unanswered, since despite some mild travel bans on a few Myanmar generals, nothing whatsoever has been imposed against Suu Kyi, despite her being stripped of various awards by Amnesty International and the cities of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Paris.

These are nothing but cosmetic measures to deceive world public opinion, and will not redress the plight of Rohingya Muslims – the victims of murder, rape, torture, sexual slavery, persecution and enslavement.

Two years have passed since the mass expulsion of almost a million Myanmar Muslims from their ancestral homes, but no solution appears for the end of their plight in the squalid refugee camps of Bangladesh.

Israel’s hidden role in the brewing India-Pakistan conflict exposed

Israel’s export of Zionism and neocolonialism — and the accompanying oppression that in practice actually helps to create many of the very terrorist groups they fight against — is just as dangerous as its export of arms.

These were the remarks of Chile-based American journalist Whitney Webb in her article for MintPress, titled: “Israel’s hidden role in the brewing India-Pakistan conflict exposed”.

Well-known British journalist Robert Fisk recently wrote a very telling and troubling article in newspaper ‘The Independent’ regarding the outsized role of the Zionist regime in the burgeoning tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers. The story — despite its importance, given the looming threat of nuclear war between the two countries — was largely overlooked by the western media.

The tit-for-tat attacks exchanged between India and Pakistan recently have seen long-standing tensions between the two countries escalate to dangerous proportions, though Pakistan helped to deescalate the situation somewhat by returning and “saving” an Indian pilot whose plane had been shot down in retaliation for India’s bombing of targets in a disputed area administered by Pakistan.

That bombing was retaliation for a car bomb attack launched by Jaish-e Mohamed militants, a group that both India and Pakistan recognize as a terrorist organization, against Indian forces. Some analysts have speculated that India’s decision to bomb this area was made by Indian President Narendra Modi, a Hindu ethno-nationalist, in order to rally his base ahead of upcoming Indian elections in May.

Yet, whatever the reason, the bombing has revealed the close ties that have formed between Modi’s India and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist regime, particularly between their militaries. As Fisk notes, following the bombing, Indian media heavily promoted the fact that Israeli-made bombs — specifically, Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” — had been used in the attack. Fisk writes:

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The ‘300-400 terrorists’ supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.”

Arguably the most important aspect of Fisk’s report is his detailing of the very close ties that have been forged between the Israeli and Indian militaries in recent years. For instance, according to Fisk, India was Israel’s arms industry’s largest client in 2017, spending nearly $700 million on Israeli air-defense systems, radars, ammunition and missiles. Many of those weapons had been promoted as “combat tested” after being used against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison. That same year, India represented 49 percent of Israel’s arms export market.

In addition to arms purchases, many Indian soldiers have traveled to the Negev desert to be trained by Israeli “special commando” units, and at least 16 elite Indian “Garud” commandos were recently based at two separate Israeli air bases.

Just as troubling as this military cooperation is that ethno-nationalism and anti-Islam rhetoric are increasingly becoming the basis for the relationship between the Modi government and the Zionist regime.

For instance, a recent article in the Israeli daily ‘Haaretz’, written by Indian journalist Shairee Malhotra and cited by Fisk, noted that “the India-Israel relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of ideas between their ruling BJP and Likud parties.”

Other reports have noted that this has translated into more “aggressive” policies from Modi targeting Kashmir and Muslims elsewhere in India and that continued Israeli goading of Modi’s anti-Islam tendencies could make life much more difficult for the estimated 200 million Muslims living in India.

While some analysts and reports have warned about this danger, Fisk notes that it will be difficult to prevent the Zionist, fascist nationalism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party from influencing India’s ruling party, writing:

It is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India – the latest of which India, which has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, has already used against militants inside Pakistan.”

Fisk goes on to note that “signing up to the ‘war on terror’ – especially may seem natural for India and Israel which were built on colonial partition.” Indeed, India’s actions in the disputed Kashmir region share many similarities to Israel’s neocolonial occupation of Palestine.

For instance, the Muslim majority of Kashmir are treated as second-class citizens on their own land and their push for self-determination has been brutally suppressed by Indian forces. As of 2016, 500,000 Indian military personnel in the region were present in the region, roughly equating to one soldier for every 25 civilians. As Al Jazeera noted at the time, there have been more than 70,000 killings, about 10,000 enforced disappearances and 7,000 mass graves found since 1947 in Indian-administered Kashmir.

There are many other parallels between Kashmir and Palestine, including the fact that the British government shares a large share of the responsibility for both. Indeed, the British-planned partition creating the current states of India and Pakistan in 1947 is the root of the current conflict in Kashmir much as the Britain-mandated creation of the Zionist regime in 1948 is the root of the current conflict in Palestine. As far as Kashmiris and Palestinians are concerned, the government of India and the Zionist regime picked up where their colonial master of years past left off.

If a deadly conflict ultimately breaks out between India and Pakistan, it will hardly be the first time Israel has armed controversial governments. Israel sold arms to the Rwandan government during the Rwandan genocide and, more recently, to the government of Myanmar during its “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslims.

Yet, as Fisk notes, Israel’s export of Zionist nationalism and neocolonialism — and the accompanying oppression that in practice actually helps to create many of the very terrorist groups they fight against — is just as dangerous as its export of arms.