Destruction- annihilation that only man can provoke only man can prevent

September 14, 2017 12:27 PM

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible.
Accused of Genocide; Nobel Peace Prize winner Aug San Suu Kyi's (wiki) armed forces are pursuing a scorched earth policy towards the Rohingha in Rakhine state.
What created the blueprint for Rohingya genocide in Myanmar? Western colonialism.
Borders, Bureaucracy And The Rohingya Crisis – Analysis.
posted by adamvasco (30 comments total)

Uh. Perhaps rich Saudi wahabi assholes funding jihad, at behest of USA/CIA/MIC to interfere with Chinese transportation infrastructure development to link up with a deep water port situated where USN can't so easily choke off energy transport to China?
posted by bert2368 at 1:07 PM on September 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'd guess this bodes poorly for the future of Thailand peace for the Muslim minority in the south of the country.
posted by Keith Talent at 1:14 PM on September 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Aung San Suu Kyi presides over the same Myanmarese military that is steeped in decades of suppression of not only the Rohingya, but also their own people.

But still - she was one of the Good People. She was a serious inspiration for people Under The Boot, both inside and outside the world. Her silence and lack of action is galling - it is criminal.

I'm loathe to put such a flippant quote here but: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.".
posted by lalochezia at 1:18 PM on September 14, 2017 [6 favorites]

Uh. Perhaps rich Saudi wahabi assholes funding jihad, at behest of USA/CIA/MIC to interfere with Chinese transportation infrastructure development to link up with a deep water port situated where USN can't so easily choke off energy transport to China?

That's a hell of a claim. Parsimony suggests it needs documentation and evidence.
posted by lalochezia at 1:20 PM on September 14, 2017 [9 favorites]

> Aung San Suu Kyi presides over the same Myanmarese military that is steeped in decades of suppression of not only the Rohingya, but also their own people.

Presides is a strong word. I don't think it's clear that she could order them to stand down and have it obeyed- the military is by all accounts still extremely powerful in its own right, and the current sort-of power-sharing arrangement they have with her is quite young.

That said, her statement calling allegations of ethnic cleansing "fake news" made it pretty clear that she wouldn't tell them to stop, anyway. It's worse than silence.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:27 PM on September 14, 2017 [20 favorites]

She was a serious inspiration for people Under The Boot,

As history has shown over and over again, people only want out from Under The Boot so that they can put their boot on someone else.

I don't think anyone, despite what they may say, really wants an end to The Boot, they just think it's being applied to the wrong necks.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:49 PM on September 14, 2017 [20 favorites]

As history has shown over and over again, people only want out from Under The Boot so that they can put their boot on someone else.

Incidentally, I have an alt-right FB friend who is terrified of the end of whites' privileged position in the U.S. for this very reason.

Now, I don't think he's correct to be afraid; I don't think society has to be All Boots, All The Time. But if you really believe what I quoted, does that mean you think equality is an unattainable (or even foolish) ideal? I hope not.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:58 PM on September 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

Some people want an end to The Boot. Just not enough of us for it to matter.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:14 PM on September 14, 2017 [14 favorites]

The problem with warning people about The Boot is that when the folks you like are Wearing The Boot, warning about the existence of The Boot and how you don't get to say for certain that somebody you like will always be Wearing The Boot is seen as gross malpractice or disloyalty.

See Glenn Greenwald; beloved by liberals during 2000-2008, hated by them 2008-2016. What changed? Who was wearing The Boot. And The Boot only got stronger and bigger in the last eight years.

Fuck The Boot Forever, or fuck off, imho.
posted by turntraitor at 2:44 PM on September 14, 2017 [6 favorites]

Thank you for posting this to the blue. I follow a few migration and border politics scholars on twitter and have been meaning to learn more. Especially since seeing this headline: Rohingya refugees overtake 2016 Mediterranean migrant numbers in ‘unprecedented’ humanitarian crisis." The scale and the speed of the refugee exodus is stunning: "estimated 370,000 have escaped from Burma’s northern Rakhine state to overcrowded Bangladeshi refugee camps since August 25."

This Nov 2016 post at Amnesty Int'l had noted that Bangladesh was trying to prevent the refugees from crossing over and in fact forcibly returning the refugees to Myanmar: "The move is a violation of the principle of non-refoulement – an absolute prohibition under international law on forcibly returning people to a country or place where they would be at real risk of serious human rights violations."
It sounds like Bangladesh has changed its stance on the Rohingya arrivals?

The images in this Time article are vivid. This photo reminds me of the strength of hope and belief in the future and the sheer physical misery of leaving everything behind. "A Rohingya refugee walks in water carrying a chicken after crossing the border into Bangladesh, September 1, 2017."
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:37 PM on September 14, 2017 [7 favorites]

Aung San Suu Kyi has never been shy about the fact that she is Burmese and her country belongs to the Burmese. Her early book Freedom From Fear contains several allusions to this in its varied essays. She specifically refers to the Rohingya as an "unfortunate" product of colonial rule and, though she does not directly favor ethnic cleansing, certainly gives the impression that they should be gone. But even in much-lauded essays such as the speech given in Shan State where she compares the Tatmadaw government to bad parents, she implicitly turns the Shan into children. One quote from the book, which refers to Europeans, perhaps has wider application:

In spite of the open, laughing face that the Burmese presented to the world, the ingrained, if inarticulate, conviction of their own nationhood prevented them from truly admitting those they saw as ‘foreign’ into their inner sanctums.

posted by CCBC at 4:11 PM on September 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Has any Nobel Peace Prize ever been revoked for the winner's subsequent actions? Is that something that could happen, either legally or in political reality?
posted by acb at 4:19 PM on September 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

I find Aung San Suu Kyi to be a Highly Disapointing Person. I wrote letters in support of her for Amnesty International years ago. Now she's just another despot.
If she can't make the military stop these massacres then frankly all that effort freeing her was a terrible wast of everyone's time.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:22 PM on September 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

acb: I don't know if a Nobel Prize has ever been revoked.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:23 PM on September 14, 2017

Thanks very much for the links. It's appalling what is happening in Rakine. The junta has sown the seeds for insurgency with their actions over the years. When people talking about extreme Islam, attention is typically focused on the middle east. However across SE Asia, there are multiple areas "hotspots" which haven't yet - but easily could - escalate into something really serious.

As always, it's innocent people paying the price for this.
posted by smoke at 4:24 PM on September 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

re: nobel prize - the terms explicitly forbid it being revoked.
posted by smoke at 4:24 PM on September 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Has any Nobel laureate ever been accused of something like genocide, though?

(I mean, besides Obama and the white genocide, of course.)
posted by kevinbelt at 4:25 PM on September 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Henry fucking Kissinger has a Nobel peace prize. If that doesn't tell you what a farce the whole thing is, I don't know what will. It is accorded weight entirely out of proportion with its recipients.
posted by indubitable at 4:45 PM on September 14, 2017 [20 favorites]

No simple solution to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. In fact it's very, very complicated.
posted by unliteral at 5:58 PM on September 14, 2017

No simple solution to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. In fact it's very, very complicated.

It's not. They live there. Not murdering and oppressing them takes literally no effort at all.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:02 PM on September 14, 2017 [9 favorites]

Oh right. All sorted then.
posted by unliteral at 9:49 PM on September 14, 2017 [9 favorites]

You echoed the title of that article, but it does not offer anything to make the situation more complicated than what it is at first glance, a genocidally persecuted minority who a politician is unwilling to defend because the cost of opposing their persecution would be political power, and hence compromise of her political goals:

If Daw Suu [=Aung San Suu Kyi] publicly condemns the Tatmadaw operations that have driven the Rohingya to Bangladesh, she will be condemning both the Tatmadaw and the voters who elected her party in 2015. As a result, her leadership position will probably become untenable.

posted by XMLicious at 10:25 PM on September 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

I keep hearing that if milkshake duck repudiates the ethnic cleansing she'll lose power and have little internal effect. Like, what good is she doing -with- it that's more significant? Her time studying Buddhist principles seems like incomplete lessons were taken away.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:45 PM on September 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Eurasia Review analysis is one heck of a devastating read.

I guess this is what toxic sovereignty looks like. And since the gatekeepers to the international narrative of "human" "rights" are all tough-on-deportation, border-fetish fanatics, and the alternative narrative is unabashed totalitarianism, it's making me f-cking hopeless.

"We have met the enemy and they are us."
posted by runcifex at 2:21 AM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this.
posted by theora55 at 5:51 AM on September 15, 2017

As history has shown over and over again, people only want out from Under The Boot so that they can put their boot on someone else.

I don't completely agree and think that's been used as a justification in the past for imperialists to continue their rule. How many times have we heard, "Well, if we left they'll just kill each other, so it's actually better for us to stay and keep the peace. AND while we're here we might as well make some money too."
posted by FJT at 6:50 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

"WHAT CAN BE DONE?
The rest of the world cannot do much beyond yelling and gnashing its teeth."
"The world has no effective mechanisms for solving these problems. The best it seems able to do is to provide token amounts of humanitarian assistance to the innocent victims of these conflicts."
Wow - 'It’s fair to say that Myanmar is a heaven for saints who rebel and a graveyard for those who govern.' What do you say to that?
posted by unliteral at 7:30 AM on September 15, 2017

I actually found that quote kinda dumb, and not surprising from a CCP bureaucrat - actually Myanmar has been a heaven for the regime personally enriching themselves for literally decades. The implicit paternalism and hand-waving at the abuses is so typical. It's a hell for those who are governed, far more than the regime and the corrupt Buddhists.
posted by smoke at 5:16 PM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/the-rohingya-of-myanmar-pawns-in-an-anglo-chinese-proxy-war-fought-by-saudi-jihadists.html

There was an ethnically driven tense situation there already. But perhaps some outsiders decided pouring gasoline (money, weapons and pro jihad imans) onto the situation served their ends.
posted by bert2368 at 10:23 AM on September 17, 2017

The Burmese circle. (image)
posted by adamvasco at 8:06 AM on September 19, 2017