This week’s report of Nobel Prize winning Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) will hopefully stir the conscience of the world and also, of course, Myanmar and the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi. The findings have taken the lid off a pretty kettle of fish, confirming that lies do not stand forever. The chilling truth has eventually been told to the renewed shock and awe of the world that no fewer than 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were shot, burned, and beaten to death in August this year, the first month of the brutal campaign against them, initiated by the junta and the Buddhists generally. More than 700 children were snatched from their mothers’ arms to be murdered.
Call it ethnic cleansing, as the United Nations has done, or communal persecution, it is now more than obvious that the grotesque offensive against the refugees is almost reminiscent of the Pakistani army’s blitzkrieg prior to the liberation of Bangladesh. It is a quirk of history that the Rohingyas have been floundering in search of refuge in Bangladesh, on the border of Rakhine province. The “Doctors Without Borders” (in translation) have effectively binned the Myanmar government’s version that a mere 400 Rohingyas were killed in August when the security forces battled “terrorists”. Trashed as well is the claim that there has been no ethnic cleansing, let alone genocide.
For the past 48 hours, the government in Naypidaw has had its back to the wall; the report lends no scope for even a feeble response to an ugly
truth ~ thousands were killed with abandon four months ago. The report has been crafted on the basis of extensive testimony from survivors, specifically that more than 640,000, i.e. more than half the Rohingya population have fled to Bangladesh, there to eke out an existence in squalid conditions. The MSF document reaffirms previous reports of murder, the systematic use of rape and other crimes against humanity by soldiers, police and local militias.
The MSF data may have overshadowed the recent arrest of two journalists who were working on stories about the violence. Nonetheless, the arrests are cause for alarm and point to the government’s anxiety to muffle information. As much is clear from the information ministry’s claim that the media has been “gathering information illegally with the intention to share it with the foreign media”. Such controls are hallmarks of totalitarian regimes.
The arrests reflect the authorities’ determination to suppress the truth about what is happening in Rakhine province; access to humanitarian aid is also tightly controlled. Whether or not the Security Council refers Myanmar’s crime against humanity to the international criminal court, we must give it to the courage of the survivors that the blood-curdling truth has at last been told, via Médecins Sans Frontières.