Update on Rohingya genocide — it is still happening

With the continuously moving newscycle and multitude of community, domestic and international issues surfacing everyday, it is unsurprising that mainstream coverage of the Rohingya genocide has slowed to a trickle.

Unfortunately, that has no correlation with progress— in Myanmar - where the genocide started less than a year and a half ago and is “ongoing” according to the UN — in Bangladesh where over 1 million refugees have little semblance of a dignified life or possess any opportunities for work or education — and amongst the international community which has enforced minor accountability or punishment for the Myanmar regime responsible for the atrocities of thousands brutally killed, raped and removed from their communities (in which they were under apartheid for decades prior). Rohingya refugees and those in Myanmar are also no closer to their end goal and basic right: becoming citizens of the country they have inhabited (please correct if I have misstated; this is based on my own reading and research).

Here are a couple of news stories worth highlighting:

UN Investigator Says Myanmar genocide against Rohingya ‘ongoing’ (Al Jazeera)— Marzuki Darusman, chair of the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar, who released the notable September report on findings of genocide stated in addition to suffering through ‘the most severe restrictions and repression”, that “atrocities continue to take place today”. Although it is expected UN Security Council vetoes would continue to block any action from the body, the article raised the commonly discussed option of investigation into the crime of forced expulsion.

What Myanmar must do before taking back a single refugee (CNN Opinion, Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, senior fellow at Center for Global Policy and author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide”) — despite the conditions in Myanmar, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh attempted repatriation of hundreds of thousands Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh refugee camps. The international community, to their credit, pushed back and not one Rohingya refugee volunteered to go back to Myanmar expressing fear amid protests and others went into hiding. There has been no change in Myanmar’s regime who committed genocide other than some personal sanctions. Yet, refugees who experienced genocide are ridiculously expected to go back.

Canada’s response to Rohingya crisis gets middling grade (CBC) — despite the Canadian governments laudable actions to declare a genocide, announce a strategy based on findings from appointed envoy Bob Rae (anybody know of updates?) and revoking Aung Suu Kyi’s honorary Canadian citizenship, the Rohingya Human Rights Network (alongside the University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Education Centre and the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies at Concordia University) says the government can do much better; “there’s been no action taken against civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who were involved and complicit in the atrocities committed”. All it takes is one country to invoke the UN genocide convention and hold leaders to account. Amnesty International pointed to the urgency of the refugee situation, rating Canada’s peformance as “reflective of a lack of concerted, meaningful action from the international community as a whole.”

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Actions by the international community — other than discussions on how to name the crisis, aid efforts (which are undoubtedly important), I could not find anything on recent international efforts. (has anyone heard any updates on this?)

Personally, I think the Rohingya genocide and humanitarian emergency is slowly becoming normalized. Based on this track, my guess is that we will stay in this holding pattern until this situation flares up again and the Myanmar regime decides to commit more atrocities and/or refugees will be sent back after enough time passes whereby resistance fades. And they will go to a potentially more dangerous environment than in the past while as repeated throughout, the Myanmar regime will not be held accountable.