Links - 26th June 2019 (1) (Rohingya)

Why Jack Dorsey in Myanmar Isn’t the Problem; You Are. - "Some twitterers twisted Dorsey’s enjoyment of the country to say he must be “happy” that the Rohingya are being killed, and some bitingly asked how many dead bodies he had to step over. But many of the opinions tossed out by these reactive people hint that their perspectives are based on limited knowledge. Perhaps they intended to present good conscience, but the reality is that their less-than-280-character tweets are far removed from the actual issues... Journalists, too, have the same responsibility to act. So much about Myanmar is being hidden by the headlines that its international identity has become nothing but the Rohingya crisis... If you do nothing else, take a moment to think before you post on social media. This isn’t just about Myanmar; it’s about making comments on any context that you don’t have the full story. Ask yourself: Is it true? Do you know the whole situation? Are you asking questions, or are you making a judgment? Is that judgment based on multiple perspectives? Why might others be saying what they’re saying? What are you hoping to achieve by chiming in?"

Rohingya militants massacred Hindus in Myanmar, says Amnesty - "The Rohingya military group Arsa carried out deadly massacres and abductions of the Hindu community in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last year, a new report by Amnesty International has revealed... Only those who agreed to convert to Islam were spared... Arsa – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation army – are a group of trained fighters estimated to be in their hundreds. It was formed in around 2012 in reaction to long-term systematic discrimination against the Rohingya community in Rakhine, but only came to prominence in October 2016 after a series of attacks on Myanmar’s security forces.The Amnesty report, which has been verified through hundreds of witness accounts, is likely to be controversial because it backs up the assertion by Myanmar’s military and government that their campaign of violence carried out in Rakhine last year was in response to Arsa’s actions... The accounts by witnesses also reveal the level of fear that victims had about telling the truth, and that eight Hindu women who fled to refugee camps in Bangladesh were pressured by Arsa to make videos claiming the Myanmar military carried out the violence against them."
Just as ISIS enslaved Yazidi women because of US foreign policy, the Rohingya attacked Hindus because of oppression from Buddhist Burmese

Islamists Responsible for Rohingya Refugee Crisis - "Priscilla Clapp, who served as U.S. chief of mission in Burma from 1999 to 2002, strongly disputes the current "narrative" about Kyi and the response of her government to the terrorist attacks in Rakhine last October and August. In a September 7 interview with France 24 (a partial transcript of which was provided by PJ Media), Clapp argued that the attacks were "perpetrated by people in the Rohingya diaspora living in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia coming in through Bangladesh"... Clapp's assertions are backed up by an extensive analysis in 2005, written by Dr. Aye Chan, Professor of Southeast Asian History at Kanda International University in Japan, and discussed recently in a piece by author Andrew Bostom. According to Bostom, Chan's article, "The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar)," on the origins of the Bengali Muslim jihad in Western Myanmar in the late 19th century through the World War II era, illustrates that it is "rooted in Islam's same timeless institution of expansionist jihad which eliminated Buddhist civilization in northern India."Bostom also referred to an open letter, penned by Chan in 2014 to then-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, demonstrating the transparent if "strenuous efforts" of Bengali Muslim migrants to Northwestern Myanmar "to take away Rakhine's [Arakan's] own [Buddhist] ethnic identity from the Rakhine people.""

Indian government says Rohingya Muslims are security threat - "India’s government said Monday that it has evidence there are extremists who pose a threat to the country’s security among the Rohingya Muslims who have left Myanmar and settled in many Indian cities. India’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed on behalf of two Rohingya refugees, challenging a government decision to deport the ethnic group from India...
'the August attack by the Rohingyas was preceded by a similar attack, last October, by the Rohingyas on the Burmese (Buddhist) police, and again, it was not their initial attack, but almost exclusively the retaliation by the Buddhist army, that was the focus of reports in the foreign press last fall. Reports of Rohingya villages being burnt down are reported uncritically... Professor Andrew Selth of Griffith University in Australia... has stated categorically that the name “Rohingya” was taken by “Bengali Muslims who live in Arakan State…most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries.” It is true that a handful of Bengali Muslims drifted down to Burma over the centuries, but Professor Selth makes the important point — unknown to Western reporters — that the vast majority of Rohingyas are recent arrivals, their great migration made possible by the fact that Burma was administratively part of British India until 1937, which meant there was no formal border to cross.'"

The Truth About Myanmar’s Rohingya Issue | The Diplomat - "Rakhine history expert Jacques P. Leider may have put it best in his analysis Rohingya: The Name, The Movement, The Quest for Identity. “By narrowing the debate on the Rohingyas to the legal and humanitarian aspects, editorialists around the world have taken an easy approach towards a complicated issue… where issues like ethnicity, history, and cultural identity are key ingredients of legitimacy... In even a cursory survey of Rohingya history, it is clear that the Rohingya are not an ethnic, but rather a political construction... The group referred to as “Rohingya” by contemporary Rohingya scholars (and most of the international community) today actually display huge diversity of ethnic origins and social backgrounds, and, as Leider argues, the existence of a “single identity” is difficult to pinpoint.”"

Ohio Attacker Was Wrong, Rohingyas Too Have A Bloody History To Answer For - "This demographic shift caused by the unabated migration of Bengali Muslims from Chittagong to Arakan triggered racial tensions between the indigenous Rakhines and the settlers. Clashes started erupting between the two groups, forcing the British to set up a special investigation commission led by one James Ester and Tin Tut (who became independent Burma’s first foreign minister). Though the commission recommended a halt to further migration and sealing the borders of Arakan with Bengal, these remained only on paper since the British retreated from Arakan at the outbreak of World War II.And then started another bloody chapter in relations between the Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines. The absence of the British sparked violent clashes between the two groups. The British had given huge caches of arms to the Rohingyas in northern Arakan to stave off the invading Japanese and act as a buffer to British India, as also to take on the Rakhines who had started supporting the Japanese. In March 1942, Rohingyas killed 20,000 Rakhines in northern Arakan, something that the Somali-origin Artan (the Ohio attacker) who spent seven years in Pakistan before migrating to the US in 2014 would have been blissfully unaware of. Once the Japanese overran large stretches of Burma, they started committing atrocities not only on the Rohingyas, but also the indigenous Burmese (including the Rakhines), Anglo-Burmese, British and the Indian migrants settled in Burma. They all fled to India; about 22,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Bengal. The British once again armed the Rohingyas and organised them under a ‘Volunteer Force’ to harass the Japanese. But the Rohingyas once again turned on the Rakhines, killing them and destroying their houses, Buddhist monasteries and pagodas, raping their women and forcibly converting them. Artan would also have been ignorant of this. The Rakhines started harbouring a deep-seated distrust and animosity towards the Rohingyas. This became more deep-seated when the Rohingyas started demanding integration of Arakan with East Pakistan during the mid-1940s when two-nation demand gained ground. Just before Burma gained independence in January 1948, the Rohingyas appealed to Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah to ask the British to incorporate Arakan in East Pakistan. Jinnah refused, saying he did not want to interfere in Burma’s affairs.But the unfazed Rohingyas founded the Mujahid Party in 1948 to carry on a jihad against the Rakhines in northern Arakan with the ultimate aim of creating a Muslim country of Arakan. They carried out many strikes against the Rakhines and their Buddhist shrines and monasteries, even torturing and killing Buddhist monks. It was only after the 1962 coup in Burma by General Ne Win that the military started cracking down on Rohingya terrorists who had the complete support of all the Rohingyas in Arakan. This triggered a moderate exodus of Rohingyas, who still form about 40 per cent of the population of Rakhine province, to East Pakistan. Many Rohingyas also migrated to West Pakistan."