Ship of Fools: Rohingya

Thread: Rohingya Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

While we have been concentrating on Trump and other Western problems, we have overlooked the plight of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar. The Burmese Army has systematically been committing genocide of the people.

Last night the CBC Radio 1 program As It Happens had an interview with a reporter who had interviewed a woman whose village had been wiped out. She said she realized something was going to happen when she spotted government soldiers jogging into her village. They began to set fire to the houses and gathered all the people together. The soldiers separated the men and boys from the women and girls. They shot all the males and forced the women into a cold stream where they selected the ones to be raped. This woman had an infant son. They seized the son and threw him against some rocks, killing him. Then they gang-raped the woman. The woman found herself in a field without any clothing. She eventually was able to get clothing and made her way go Bangladesh where she is in a Refugee Camp of 500,000 people, huddled under no more than plastic sheeting. Now there is a typhoon about to hit the area. (Sorry, As It Happens does not have a link to the interview)

Now, had this been Kosovo, the NATO military would have intervened.

My question is, why hasn't SEATO intervened? Okay, maybe the US is currently myopic because of you know who, but where is Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand in containing this atrocity?

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
My question is, why hasn't SEATO intervened?

Because it was dissolved in 1977? (I have to admit, I didn't know it had either.)

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Oops, I meant ASEAN. [Hot and Hormonal]

I guess ASEAN is not meant to be a military alliance

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Perhaps ASEAN hasn't got involved because its chairman, Duterte, doesn't feel much sympathy for a muslim minority.

As for why the plight of the Rohingya isn't getting greater press coverage, maybe people are baffled that Aung San Suu Kyi isn't speaking out?

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
...As for why the plight of the Rohingya isn't getting greater press coverage, maybe people are baffled that Aung San Suu Kyi isn't speaking out?

It seems to be getting fairly good coverage here, and her silence is a big part of the story.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

What do you suggest Gramps49?

Posted by keibat (# 5287) on :

The Rohingya are getting a lot of coverage in the European media (I include the UK in Europe) - both their appalling plight, and also the near-universal condemnation of Aun San Suu Kyi's failure to speak out (eg by fellow-Nobelists Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai). And the analogies with other genocidal conflicts are very tricky. Yes, the international military intervened, or sort of intervened, in Kosovo, but were powerless to prevent some terrible things happening.

And that was in a situation where no one group was clearly dominant. In Myanmar, it is the military paragovernment – or perhaps one should say, the military government, with the civilians under Aun San Suu Kyi forming the paragovernment – who are persecuting an ethnic minority in a region difficult of access. Intervention would be effectively tantamount to invasion and a declaration of war against the Myanmar state.

Here, as in so many conflicts leading to large-scale refugee movements, there are no easy answers.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:

My question is, why hasn't SEATO intervened? Okay, maybe the US is currently myopic because of you know who, but where is Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand in containing this atrocity?

It is far away from Britain, there are few connections with France. If Australia sounded too supportive they might have to take refugees. Nobody really cares what NZ thinks anyway.

China has North Korea to worry about. We all know what is happening in the USA.

There isn't much to be gained by Russia getting involved.

As it stands, it is a conflict far away which is only really affecting a country long-ruled by a military junta and Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and least important countries.

In the global pecking order of issues, it falls a long way down the list. And if HRH Aung San Suu Kyi hadn't been there in Myanmar, I doubt it would even get the press coverage it has currently been getting.

It's a crazy world.

[ 14. October 2017, 21:31: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

SNAFU

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It is far away from Britain, there are few connections with France. If Australia sounded too supportive they might have to take refugees. Nobody really cares what NZ thinks anyway.

China has North Korea to worry about. We all know what is happening in the USA.

There isn't much to be gained by Russia getting involved.

As it stands, it is a conflict far away which is only really affecting a country long-ruled by a military junta and Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and least important countries.

In the global pecking order of issues, it falls a long way down the list. And if HRH Aung San Suu Kyi hadn't been there in Myanmar, I doubt it would even get the press coverage it has currently been getting.

It's a crazy world.

THIS

Humanitarian is an additional card we pull out of the sack if it suits us. Like when military intervention is carried out in an oil rich country such as Iraq.
The US did attempt a purely humanitarian military venture in Somalia back in the 90s, it didn’t achieve much.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

A truly dreadful affair - difficult to think what might be done (by other countries) to improve matters, other than perhaps to send humanitarian aid to the refugees in Bangladesh.

Martin quoted SNAFU - probably true. May I chime in with FUBAR BUNDY*?

*This may seem horribly callous, but it's ambulancespeak 'shorthand', used amongst members of the emergency services, and the military, too, I expect, when faced with an horrifically-injured casualty:

Fucked Up Beyond All Recovery
But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet

This does NOT denote a lack of simple human sympathy, but reflects - and is a way of dealing with - the realities of the situation.

IJ

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

But that term really doesn't seem to be applicable to a group of people in the same way it might be to an individual.

Many Rohingya have been killed, but that doesn't mean the entire population are unfortunately doomed the way an individual is doomed by a fatal gunshot to the head despite having an otherwise full set of healthy organs.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Well, I was rather thinking that FUBAR BUNDY applied to the situation as a whole in which the Rohingya find themselves, IYSWIM.

IJ

Posted by M. (# 3291) on :

Tangent, and sorry if too lighthearted for this thread, but I thought FUBAR was Second World War parlance, along with SNAFU (situation normal, all - well, my mother said 'fouled' - up) and bumf (bum fodder, i.e., toilet paper).

M.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I was going to start a thread some days ago asking if there was ever a time when a coherent narrative happened to fit the time. And I realised there was no point. No overarching story that we ever had worked. Blair's D:Ream victory anthem - Things Can Only Get Better - beguiled for a few years. On top of late Thatcher, plucky Johnny Major, Bush Snr. liberating Kuwait. Blair stood on those shoulders and went further until 9 11 burst the bubble.

We're back to the Cold War but now it's multipolar. Read some great history this past year, fell in love with Lincoln through Team of Rivals. Max Hastings' perfect All Hell Let Loose. Frank McLynn's Genghis Khan: The Man Who Conquered the World. Things just get more complicated, which is good in that they become interdependent, plural. But the price of progress has always been appalling collateral.

So, the poor Rohingya are the wind sown in Bangladesh. The UN can do more for them there than it can in Burma. There will come a whirlwind.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

I don't know specifically what can be done. I did cite Kosovo because the Serbs were systematically killing Muslim civilians.

I know the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has staff members there but they have very little resources. It is the HCR's hope they can eventually return to Myanmar, but it does not look promising.

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Well, I was rather thinking that FUBAR BUNDY applied to the situation as a whole in which the Rohingya find themselves, IYSWIM.

IJ

FUBAR BUNDY is the view that the situation is hopeless and a quick death is the best outcome.

The Myanmar military has driven half a million into Bangladesh and a similar number are still under threat of burning, torture, rape, and death. I don't see for whom FUBAR BUNDY is an applicable way of "dealing with the realities of the situation". I'm reluctant to suggest the remaining Rohingya simply envy those already dead, or to cast the rest of the world in the role of well-meaning emergency services who are unable to help more despite their best efforts.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
I don't know specifically what can be done. I did cite Kosovo because the Serbs were systematically killing Muslim civilians.

I know the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has staff members there but they have very little resources. It is the HCR's hope they can eventually return to Myanmar, but it does not look promising.

It'll never happen. Except as guerrillas.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

I rather regret mentioning FUBAR BUNDY, which IME deals with the realities of a situation in which emergency personnel sometimes find themselves.

I agree that it perhaps doesn't really apply to Myanmar, but I meant it to convey the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

Apologies for any misunderstanding.

IJ

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

I suppose it's possible that international aid workers have similar shorthand expressions for use among themselves, but then that would imply the existence of related situations which could be successfully addressed without being doomed by international powerlessness and apathy.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
I don't know specifically what can be done. I did cite Kosovo because the Serbs were systematically killing Muslim civilians.

I know the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has staff members there but they have very little resources. It is the HCR's hope they can eventually return to Myanmar, but it does not look promising.

I'm mixing up my former Yugoslav wars I think, but weren't there peacekeepers in Bosnia at the time of the Srebrenica massacre? I checked Wikipedia: there were. There were also peacekeepers in Rwanda when that genocide played out.

I don't believe that anything can be done by outsiders to prevent these types of actions unless they are prepared to fight. Fighting to prevent a massive violation of human rights is hugely problematic, not least because there will always be an argument about whether the prior intervention was justified.

Short of military intervention, all we in the West can do is open our wallets for the international aid organisations that are trying to help.

Myanmar has had a serious go at the Rohingya many times before. Before the current regime came to power, we in the west heard almost nothing about these rolling waves of repression, just isolated reports here and there. I think we know much more about this latest series of attacks because of the reduction of the Military's political power, including the spread of mobile phones to the Rohingya, and the star power of Aung San Suu Kyi. I thing Suu Kyi realises that her condemning the attack on these people will not help them one jot, but will help the Myanmar military in its ongoing battle with her liberalising political movement.

Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Perhaps ASEAN hasn't got involved because its chairman, Duterte, doesn't feel much sympathy for a muslim minority. As for why the plight of the Rohingya isn't getting greater press coverage, maybe people are baffled that Aung San Suu Kyi isn't speaking out?

ASEAN has a long-standing, explicit policy not to interfere with internal affairs of member states. Sorry, but I can't find a more recent link
than this one from 2012 .

Posted by Matariki (# 14380) on :

I was at an conference in Myanmar last week, and every time a foreigner raised the Rohingya issue it was quickly shut down - in as much as local people (and these were Christians) would be drawn on the topic it was to say they believed their government and this was an international media beat up.
As for ASEAN, one of it's principles is "none interference" in the affairs of member states so don't expect anything from ASEAN. Likewise China has declined to comment.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It is far away from Britain, there are few connections with France. If Australia sounded too supportive they might have to take refugees. Nobody really cares what NZ thinks anyway.

China has North Korea to worry about. We all know what is happening in the USA.

There isn't much to be gained by Russia getting involved.

As it stands, it is a conflict far away which is only really affecting a country long-ruled by a military junta and Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and least important countries.

In the global pecking order of issues, it falls a long way down the list. And if HRH Aung San Suu Kyi hadn't been there in Myanmar, I doubt it would even get the press coverage it has currently been getting.

It's a crazy world.
THIS

Humanitarian is an additional card we pull out of the sack if it suits us. Like when military intervention is carried out in an oil rich country such as Iraq.
The US did attempt a purely humanitarian military venture in Somalia back in the 90s, it didn’t achieve much.

It achieved the Rwandan genocide.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Here in our area, the local office of World Vision was in the process of resettling the Rohingya Refugees up until Trump started imposing his travel bans. While every ban has been overturned by the courts, they have effectively put all refugee resettlement in the United States on hold.

We now have to help resettle Puerto Rico Refugees--I say refugees because they have been fleeing PR in droves. In the past month, around 52,000 have been relocated to Florida and that is a drop in the bucket to how many are trying to leave.

Frankly, the world is awash with Refugees. I don't want to despair. I wish I knew the answer, though.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Focus on what's in front of you, what you can touch. Go thy way Gramps49. There is no other answer.

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