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The Plight of the Rohingya Muslims; An Overlooked Tragedy

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rohingya muslim plight

Myanmar is a small southeast Asian country bordering India, China and Bangladesh. It is home to one of the most discriminated Muslim minorities in the global south.

The ongoing discrimination perpetuated by the Rakhine Buddhist communities, sectarian violence against the Rohingya Muslims. 

A military crackdown on Rohingya civilians by Myanmar’s security forces displaced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims and was the start of a series of inhuman acts of violence against the Muslim community in northern Myanmar. 

Also Read: Myanmar: The Country of “Oppressed” Minorities”‎

In this article, we’ll tackle the unfortunate situation of the Rohingya Muslims as well as what enabled their oppression to continue for as long as it did.

The Brutal and Systematic Genocide of the Rohingya Muslims

The Rohingya genocide is a series of continuous persecutions and murders by the Myanmar military of Rohingya Muslims. 

It consists of 2 phases as far as we know. The first known phase was in the form of a military crackdown which took place from October 2016 till January 2017, and the second one has been ongoing since August 2017.

The crisis forced over a million Rohingya Muslim citizens to migrate outside the country. Most of them fled to Bangladesh, which gave birth to what we now know as the world’s largest refugee camp, while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, where they continuously face discrimination.

Also Read: Rohingya Muslims: Citizens Of Nowhere

The UN acknowledged this to be a systemic ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.

There are countless harrowing tales that follow the innocent civilians who had their homes broken into, those who fled for a better life and those who suffered long-term consequences for everything they went through. 

Take Uma Suleiman’s story for example. During the raid she had her home broken into, forcibly taken by 2 army soldiers into a rice paddy then raped and left bleeding by them both.

Also Read: Genocidal crimes continue to be committed against Rohingya Muslims

Now she’s living in an overcrowded refugee camp in Bangladesh housing over 900 thousand refugees, taking care of a 3 month old infant who’s a constant reminder of the nightmare/fueled trauma she had suffered a year prior.

Her story is one of many who have suffered either having watched their homes burst into flames, children kidnapped, killed, scarred and mutilated and family members shot execution style.

The mass rapes have resulted in an unknown numbers of unwanted pregnancies and forced survivors with a terrible choice, forcing them to relive their trauma while adding a new layer to it.

That’s not mentioning the hundreds of thousands human tracking incidents that took place in Bengali refugee camps. Luring in Rohingya Muslims with false dreams of finding work and a better life some place far away.

Also Read: Oppression of Muslims in Different Parts Around the World

Another tale is of a woman who got separated from her husband during a clash in which he was attempting to buy them time to flee to safety. Now, the woman is forced to raise her children on her own in a poorly set up refugee camp with not enough food and water for her and her children wondering about the whereabouts of her husband who had gone missing since the day they got separated.

In reality, the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims by the military and police forces of their government dates back to the 70s, and has been a regular occurrence since then.

The continuous ethnic cleansing and killings of them resulted in a refugee crisis, over a million citizens fled the country, the destruction of villages and towns across the northwestern parts of Myanmar.

Refuged Rohingya Muslim Children Denied Education

It’s been almost five years since a brutal military operation caused the unfortunate demise of thousands of Rohingya Muslims and displaced over 800,000 over the border to Bangladesh.

In what seems to be the world’s largest refugee settlement, around five hundred thousand children are in a desperate need of a proper education, which most international relief efforts are failing to provide.

Also Read: Islamophobia in South Asia

The Rohingya Muslims were already denied education in their home country in Myanmar after a military crackdown that took place in 2012 and never let up. And in 2017 the government schools that taught them in Burmese quickly shutdown after Myanmar Military’s offensive in august of that year.

However, after hundreds of thousands migrated to different parts of the world including India in hopes of pursuing better livable lifestyles and a chance to go to school had their dreams shattered.

Take the story of Ibrahim Mohammad, a 10 year old Muslim from northern Myanmar for example. His family says he used to be a vibrant energetic child with a big love for school and learning— but after witnessing the fire burning his parents’ house by Myanmar military, his grandfather murder by aggressive militant soldiers, and his mother forced to deliver a baby in the forest as his family scattered along side hundreds of thousands of other Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh.

Also Read: Myanmar Military Coup: Nightmare Scenario Unfolding By Killing of More Than 40 Children

Ibrahim, who used to hope and dream of becoming a doctor in the future, is now prone to long stretches of silence, mood swings, and he barely smiles anymore.

Any education facilities provided by relief and charitable organizations did not have the children’s best interest at heart.

 Reports say that most of these educational institutions focused on teaching the children songs in foreign languages to impress the foreign press and potential donors without taking into account the children’s other skills like speaking, reading and writing.

That made the parents frustrated and withdrew their children from these schools. The few families working odd jobs that could afford to hire private tutors to teach their children pay around $70 a month to ensure that their children learn.

Social Media’s Roles in Perpetuating, Enabling and Fueling the Hatred Against Rohingya Muslims

It’s a well known fact that social media influences the masses’ way of thinking regarding many topics and discussions. And the Rohingya Muslim situation is no different. Take the poorly constructed hate-speech censorship on Facebook against the Rohingya Muslims made by the Myanmar hate groups have elevated the general consensus and hatred towards the small Muslim minority.

During the UN’s reports on addressing the issue regarding what the Myanmar’s government and military forces and calling it a systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Also Read: Is Social Media Inflicting Extremist Movements and Riots Globally?

But the UN report also addressed Facebook’s slow action regarding the hate speech that spread like wildfire in its platform, the UN report described it as a “useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate,” adding that the company’s response to concerns about its role had been “slow and ineffective.” 

It said that the “extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination must be independently and thoroughly investigated.” 

Facebook then worked to ban hundreds of hate groups created by military officials and citizens of Myanmar spreading hate speech against Rohingya Muslims. It said that some of them were followed by over 12 million people.

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Muslims have more reasons to hate the US than the other way around

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Muslims hate the US

I don’t think that most Muslims hate ordinary Americans who believe in the general principle of “live and let live.” Moreover I don’t think that most Americans would unhesitatingly embrace Israeli Nazism if they had the chance to know the truth about Israel e.g. that it is a criminal state par excellence based on ethnic cleansing land theft and racist and religious discrimination.

Unfortunately most Americans are spoon-fed Jewish propaganda from early childhood. This creates a virtual reality in America’s collective mind about Israel a virtual reality that is nearly completely disconnected from the real reality in Israel-Palestine.

For example many Americans are made to think that Israel and America have much in common in terms of democracy. However the truth is that democracy in Israel is more or less confined to Jews while non-Jews are systematically discriminated against. Their land is confiscated their homes are demolished and their rights and dignity are trampled upon.

And when they seek redress at Jewish courts they discover that non-Jews can’t possibly hope for true justice and equality under Jewish rule. Ask non-Jewish Americans who have been living in Israel and you will hear a lot of hair-raising stories about the Israeli “democracy.”

Some Americans are so brainwashed that they are willing to claim that Muslims hate America for its freedoms.  This is what Georg W. Bush probably the most ignorant President America has ever had once claimed.

The truth of the matter however is that most Muslims hate the US government for embracing tyrannical Arab and Muslim regimes that torment their own people by denying them natural freedoms and civil liberties as well as the right to freely elect their own governments. This is in addition of course to backing and supporting Israel’s Nazi-like policies including ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion at the expense of the native Palestinians.

It is really scandalous that while Americans boasts bout their First Amendment freedoms successive American governments have consistently embraced despotic regimes abroad. In many instances the US intervened either brazenly or behind the scenes to destabilize or overthrow democratically elected governments such as in Iran Chile and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Of courser America’s days of infamy are too numerous to be counted. For example we all tend to view Adolph Hitler as the ultimate embodiment of evil. However it is historically true that the US its allies Stalin Mao murdered more people than the Third Reich ever did.

America wanted to be looked upon as a moral example to be followed. But the beacon of light eventually turned into a ruthless beastly power where military might took priority over moral power.

Take for example America’s stand over Israel. For decades the United States enabled Israel to violate every international law and norm and commit every conceivable crime under the sun including murdering children by raining on them White phosphorus.

This is the same America that allows herself to judge the world for human rights violations while enabling Israel diplomatically politically and mainly militarily to pursue decidedly Nazi-like policies against the Peoples of the Middle East.

Watch the ongoing genocidal onslaught which against our helpless and unprotected people in the Gaza Strip. Some of you might be prompted to think that I am indulging in excessive exaggeration when I speak of a genocidal onslaught.

But I am not. Otherwise, how else can we describe a condition where hundreds of ultra-advanced war planes rain missiles and laser-guided bombs from high altitudes on apartment buildings, homes, and civilian neighborhoods packed with men, women and children? Yet, this is exactly what Israel has done¸ murdering , maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and utterly destroying tens of thousands of buildings.

Read Also: Jewish Nazism is reality not fiction

Israel effectively destroyed Gaza, murdering and maiming untold numbers of civilians. Gaza, more or less, became the Dresden of Palestine. And the whole world looked on rather passively as if the killing-field and the shockingly pornographic destruction of life and property were occurring on a distant galaxy. we are not really talking about war, even an asymmetrical war. We are actually talking about a real massacre, a massacre that is reminiscent of the time when the Nazis ganged up on European Jewry 70 years ago.

The macabre scenes of decapitated and badly-mutilated children were too shocking to be described in words. Reporters at the site of the carnage lost their composure and collapsed as they couldn’t cope with the gruesomeness of the pornographic bloodbath.

In 2006, the Nazi government of Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over Lebanon enough to kill or maim 2-3 million Lebanese children. And instead of denouncing the manifestly nefarious act the US government declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Today there is an anti-Islamic hysteria in the United States. The main reason for this hysteria is the fact that the United States can’t live normally with itself without an external enemy. In short there has to be an enemy in order to keep the American psyche intact. There has to be an enemy in order to keep the military industrial complex functioning. In short capitalism can’t function without war.

In fact Muslims don’t view themselves as enemies of the United States as the vast bulk of Muslims are peaceable people who are mainly interested in the pursuance of their daily life enhancing their daily living improving their standard of living and making ends meet.

Yes there are violent groups here and there but these are tiny groups which in no way represent the Muslims of the world.

I think many Americans are ignorant of these facts. I also think that many other Americans would condemn Muslims right or wrong. I am  talking about people who would burn the Muslim Holy scripture the Quran in order to highlight their hatred of Islam a religion with more than 1.6 billion  people.

Well to those I say one thing: the dogs will keep barking and the caravan will keep going.

Besides if you have one reason to hate us we have a thousand reasons to hate you.

None the less unlike you we are not willing to allow our primitive impulses to decide our behaviors. Our religion the source of our morality and behavior doesn’t allow us to behave the way they do.

This is why we will not burn copies of the New Testament we will not attack churches and we will not call Christianity bad names.

Read Also: The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

It is often claimed that the religion Jesus founded is based on Love. But any fleeting view of your “religion” caricatures a hate-based cult that has very little to do with Jesus and the authentic messages he preached.

Did Jesus ever call children “murderers” as you did recently in Texas? In fact I dare say that you and people who subscribe to your cultist hatefulness are a cancer upon the conscience of Christ.

So you hate us because of the 9/11 events. Well 99% of Muslims condemned in the strongest terms these terrorist acts. And we are sorry for the umpteenth time for the death of dozens of hundreds of innocent Americans including Muslims in these terrorist attacks.

None the less your democratic elected government has been responsible for the death of millions of Muslims. In Iraq alone the United States has killed or caused the death of at least two million Muslims in the past two decades. Hundreds of thousands of other Muslims have been killed in Afghanistan. These are just two examples of America’s genocidal wars against the Muslim world.

Hence if you have the right to cite one 9/11 we can cite hundreds and thousands of 9/11s. And don’t you ever think that your lives are worth more than our lives. All human beings were created by the same God and are equal if only because there is no such a thing as a lesser God.

One day the oppressed will have their day and there will be no spin no hasbara and no propaganda.  And the New York Times and Fox News  and AIPAC and all other organs of lie  will have been evaporated into nonexistence.

God is just.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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Jewish Nazism is reality not fiction

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Jewish Nazism

I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.

Read Also: No forgiveness for Jewish Nazism

These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.

But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.

Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.

Read Also: The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?

The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.

In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.

The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.

However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.

In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.

Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.

For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.

Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!

Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.

To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.

Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.

I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.

A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?

Words can kill; words do kill.

Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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I’m most definitely Palestinian!

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Palestinian

In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.

The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.

Read Also: The age-old Palestinian-fear (of the Israeli thirst)

The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.

Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.

The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.

Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.

I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.

(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.

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