Source Maungzarni, 14 Oct
Suu Kyi's ">50% Muslim villages still intact" speech and Kofi Annan's "let the Rohingyas return home in dignified manner" discourse.
What's wrong with them? Everything.
Here is what is fundamentally wrong with Kofi Annan's stance and report:
1) In the case where even UN is compelled to use Milosevic's euphemism "ethnic cleansing" - but what most of us in the genocide studies KNOW to be a textbook example of a genocide, Mr Annan blatantly disregards the existence of the R2P, a principle he imself championed out of his personal guilt for his well-documented failure in raising his voice as head of the UN Peacekeeping Operations on the eve of Rwanda Genocide in 1994.
2) the Burmese military had a strategy to completely derail and demolish the Kofi Annan's involvement since the establishment of his commission in 2016. The military leaders had made it absolutely clear from the get-go that they did NOT welcome his involvement nor accept the thrust of the recommendations.
For the recommendations go against the military's institutionalized genocidal scheme and worldview, which rests on the three ideological (racist, anti-history) pillars: that Rohingyas do NOT belong in Burma; that Rakhine never had any significant Muslim influence or presence; and that Rohingyas pose a national security threat as potential proxy for any future Muslim take-over of Western Burma.
3) the very "civilian-led" committee Suu Kyi formed is headed by the Social Welfare Minister who just declared that the State (gov) is reclaiming all burned land - yes, belonging to the Rohingyas (in a zone stretching 100 Kilometer).
So, where are the Rohingyas going to go?
Even the 120,000+ Rohingya IDPs inside Burma in camps since Oct 2012 are NOT allowed to return homes and neighbourhoods. Some have been marked as the sites of Special Economic Zone.
Here is Kofi Annan's "let the refugees go home" press conference - 11 minutes.
I think he meant Rohingyas whose name and right to self-identify he is not sanctioned by Suu Kyi to respect.
That's followed by French and UK Reps' Q and A with the press.
Here is the reality check:
Myanmar Troops to Rohingyas before slaughtering them, burning their villages down (over 250 in total) and expelling over 530,000 in 6 weeks (while many thousands still wish to flee, but are trapped inside Burma, with no food and no freedom to seek food):
"You do not belong here – go to Bangladesh."
Here is the UN OHCHR's report - 12 page and most damning in its assessment.
After the arrival of half-a-million refugees in Bangladesh 60% of whom are women and children , with unknown thousands of Rohingya males presumed slaughtered, the world's body shows it is in coma, from which it is unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future.
Not even a non-binding statement is forthcoming from this body - after 7 weeks of this largest humanitarian catastrophe, resulting from a textbook example of a genocide in Burma.
When UN Sec-Gen talked about "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" he was not only being politically pragmatic but intellectually off: Ethnic cleansing was Milosevic's euphemism designed to evade the international conventions such as the genocide and the crimes against humanity.
When the media, human rights charities and UN adopt the language of the supposedly suiciced genocidal killer then the oppressed have no recourse to the global justice or governance system.
Annan in my view is a moral coward, a career bureaucrat, who has always saved his own ass, in the face of others' monumental sufferings. Remember Rwanda? Just the only most obvious example.
The problem is UN: it is SYSTEMIC. It is the collection of STATES, ruled by States' interests, while paying to the lip service to "We the People".
I can't think of a bigger System failure in recorded human history.
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