|
December 2016
The Rohingya genocide - no longer a myth
By Habib Siddiqui: A genocide is taking place against the Rohingyas of Myanmar. It has been an on-going ethnic cleansing national program in this Buddhist-majority country to erase Muslim presence soon after Burma emerged as an independent state. After General Ne Win took power in 1962 in a military coup, the status of Rohingya further deteriorated. His military junta adopted a policy of "Myanmarisation", which was an ultra-nationalist ideology based on the racial purity of the Myanma (or more properly Bama) ethnicity and its Buddhist faith. By 1977, the Rohingyas had witnessed at least 13 pogroms. Their condition turned worse in1978 when the Naga Min or King Dragon Operation started on February 6 from the biggest Muslim village of Sakkipara in Akyab (now called Sittwe). The purpose of this operation was to scrutinize each individual within the state as either a citizen or alleged "illegal immigrant". It sent shock waves over the whole region within a short time. The news of mass arrest of Muslims, male and female, young and old, torture, rape and killing in Akyab panicked Muslims greatly in other towns of North Arakan (now called the Rakhine state). Read More
|
