If I were a Rohingya
By MAUNG ZARNI
If I were a Rohingya
I'd
convey to the whole wide world Amartya Sen's incisive reading of
our
history: "Burma (as a post-independence nation-state created
only
in 1947) came to the Rohingya" (not the other way
around).
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the
world that We Rohingyas were pre-colonial & pre-Union of
Burma
natives of Araccan or Arakan and that our brother/sister
Buddhist
Rakhines whom we call Mogh and we Rohingya Muslims shared the
land
as our common birthplace. They call us Hkaw Taw Kular and we
call
them Mogh. Neither was more "indigenous"
between us.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the
world that we have our own respective and
respectable
self-identified group names, Rohingyas and
Rakhine.
If I were a Rohingya, notwithstanding our
racist slurs - Khaw Taw
Kular and Mogh - we have been
co-residents of Araccan or Arakan
(Rakhine) before the Bama
colonzers came in 1785.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd
tell the world that We Rohingyas were officially recognized as
"an
ethnic minority of the original Union of Burma
which officially became
Sovereign on 4 January 1948 and that
we enjoyed civil and political
rights, as well as full and
equal citizenship until the Burmese
military ended a
democratic system, flawed but nonetheless democratic.
If
I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that our violent
communal/racial conflict with
Rakhine in 1942 was nothing
exceptional. During WWII, the shifting
alliances between
colonizing regimes of racist Britain and Fascist
Japan and
us the colonized resulted in different groups slaughtering
others
along class and race lines. Bama nationalists were slaughter
Karens
- streotyped as "loyal Karens" (of British Burma) and
burning
churches and the Karens returning the favour by
launching an almost
successful overthrow of the
Bama-controlled post-independence
government of Prime
Minister U Nu.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell
the world that Myanmar's military and civilian Islamophobes
have
falsely exceptionalized the old tale of 1942
Rohingya-Rakhine
violence in order paint us as "violent
mujahideens hellbent on
seceding from the Union of
Myanmar".
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell
the world that every ethnic minority dreamed of living as a
free
and dignified ethnic community, out of the clutches
of
nation-destroying, racist, fascist Bama colonial military
rule and
that every group has launched armed revolt - which
is typically
falsely portrayed as "insurgency" as
if such revolts against the
murderous Colonial State were
"illegitimate" and "immoral" - since the
birth
of the union of voluntary ethnic communities.
If I
were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that We the Rohingas have
been subjected to
40-years of the slow genocide, having been
dismembered from the Union
of Burma, subjected to all kinds
of systematic policies and ad hoc
moves, all designed, to
destroy our ethnic group, in all aspects of a
communal life;
we have been starved to death slowly; our economic life
has
been crippled; our physical movements have been severely
controlled;
our access to life's essential services such as
preventative
and emergency medical care has been deliberately
restricted
or made non-existent; our community has been made
illiterate
and stupid, as a matter of Myanmar national policy; our
leaders
have been targeted for destruction; our civil and political
rights
have been taken away gradually; our historical presence and
identity
have been re-written falsely, to justify these policies that
can
only be described as GENOCIDE.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd
tell the world that we are the Jews of Buddhist Myanmar where
the
Buddhist church, the Burmese Army, the civilian
leadership and the
Burmese public behave more like the Nazis
in 1930's than a country in
"democratic
transition'.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the
world that the United Nations is selling us down the
river,
having failed to even acknowledge the international crime
we
experience by its legal name GENOCIDE, let alone rescue
us from
Myanmar's way to its "Buddhist" Final
Solution.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the
world that the once iconic moral leader of Myanmar - Aung
San
Suu Kyi - is whitewashing the military's crimes against humanity
and
genocide against our people and that she is both politically
and
morally a SPENT FORCE on whom Western and UN policies
of
democratization and marketization can no longer
rest.
If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world
that we the Rohingyas will return to our ancestral
homeland
and rebuild our communities, only under Inernational
Protection,
without which we would be like chickens marching back into
the
vast open cage of N. Arakan where the wolves of Myanmar
gleefully
await for another round of the carnival of Terror,
Mass Rape, Arson
and Loot.
If I were a
Rohingya
