Action speaks louder than words.
Francis Wade, in his book Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim ‘Other’, writes “that the roots of ethnic and religious conflict in Myanmar, especially in relation to anti-Muslim hatred…stretches back more than a thousand years before the camps sprang up along the Rakhine State coastline….” He is quoted by Brandon Tensley in his LARB review of the book.
While Burmese rulers “carried out raids on Muslim villages for territory and slaves, there were no faith-based explosions of violence seen today.” Distinctive features of…Myanmar’s early groups were easily swapped at will: mere change of dress and cut of hair decided ethnicity and belonging.
“Once-negotiable identities” hardened when Britain had swallowed up Burma by 1885 and started “a steady flow of people from Bengal and elsewhere—an immigrant work force that, in time, became part of Burmese society. By the 1920s and 1930s, this flow started to stoke anxieties that these new communities were “stooges of the British” who would corrode Burma’s pacific long-held Buddhist values. But there was something else to this hardening of identities that was more insidious. Britain imported its obsession with racial classification, one that had been used to such deleterious effect in its colonies elsewhere. Boundaries were drawn between peoples where they hadn’t previously existed. It did not help that the Rohingya resisted the Japanese alongside the British.
“While Myanmar gained independence in 1948, the emphasis on ethnicity proved ripe for manipulation throughout the 20th century” in a country of strongly distinct ethnic identities seeking, as all modern nations do, for a single national identity, Tensley says.
The present crisis was shaped by the actions of a Western multinational organization called empire. Action speaks louder than words.
After World War I, a wave of White Russian refugees, denied haven everywhere else, fled the horrors of Europe, and were taken in by the Philippines. This was followed by a wave of Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of anti-Semitism in Europe. In 1939 a third wave of refugees came to the Philippines—fleeing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War—after being turned away by European countries. Chinese refugees fleeing the Japanese invasion of China and the Chinese civil war followed. Some 30,000 Kuomintang families were taken in and became Philippine citizens. After the Red Star rose over China, yet another wave of White Russian refugees was taken in by us. After a savage war of peace in Vietnam, the Philippines welcomed the Vietnamese boat people. After the Iranian Revolution, Iranian students sought asylum and got it. Iranians grew to become the second-largest population of non-Indo Chinese refugees.
After the killings in Myanmar following the alleged rape of a Buddhist nun, then-secretary of justice now Sen. Leila M. de Lima, said they were welcome while other countries rejected them. Last year Philippine President Duterte told Al Jazeera of his decision to welcome refugees into the Philippines, a country of over 100 million where poverty is widespread. “I say send them to us. We will accept them. We will accept them all. They are human beings. They can always come here. I will welcome them until we are filled to the brim.” Actions speak louder than words of which there is never an end.
2 comments
Maybe, we should look at the reason first why Burma is driving out the Rohingyas. Because they are Muslims and Burma is afraid of Muslim extremists. Where Muslims, so are terrorists, radical imams, and their supporters. Burma is just preserving itself and avoid terror attacks. In Japan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. where there are no big muslim communties, it is virtually safe from islamic terrorism. I do not blame Burma for being farsighted. It is preventive self-preservation.
It’s like having a neighbor with 10 members, one who is a rapist, killer, drug addict, etc. You want him dead or arrested but some of his family members support and aid him, some are just neutral, while maybe one or two want him neutralized and dead. The problem is you don’t know who among the family members support him. What do you do? Isn’t it better that you wish the family leave your neighborhood so that your son and daughters can play safely on the street without being recruited or hurt? Basically, what the Burmese are saying is “We don’t want any trouble so out you go.”
Even in Muslim majority countries, Muslims are fighting one another and exporting their sick beliefs. Basically, what the Burmese are saying is “We don’t want any trouble so out you go.”
If islam is a true religion, it should not be sickeningly misinterpreted. It is not a true religion, but a cult that is why.