Guest contributor
Pacifist Farooq
According to international and Bangladesh media reports, 34 dead Rohingya were found at a beach near Teknaf, located in southeast Bangladesh across the border from Maungdaw Township of Myanmar. Hundreds of people are still missing.
The smell of dead Rohingya has spread as far as Cox’s Bazar, where one million refugees languish inside squalid camps. About 300 who were lucky to survive and somehow made it across the river in boats to Bangladesh were detained by the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) on Aug. 9, then deported back to Myanmar.
When will the world wake up to protect the Rohingya as the international community has promised us?
For me, being a Rohingya means my whole life is a nightmare. As I try to sleep, the corpses of murdered Rohingya float by my eyes. Being born as a Muslim in a Buddhist-dominated country is the biggest crime I have committed.
When I talk on the phone with my relatives living in Maungdaw, all I hear is the sound of gun and artillery fire. No one knows how many thousands of Rohingya have been killed in the crossfire between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA), under the complete communications blackout by the regime, since the war resumed on Nov. 13.
On Aug. 5, over 200 people were killed and over 200 were injured in the multiple drone attacks. I met a survivor, Mohammed Elias, in the refugee camp of Cox’s Bazar.
“Because the fighting was intense in the village, thousands of people, including me and my family members, gathered along the fence near the Naf River, waiting for the darkness to cross it,” Mohammed Elias told me.
“The Arakan Army attacked us with eight to 10 drones. I have lost eight of my family members,” he sobbed.
When I asked him to share his testimony in a video interview, he lamented: “I have nothing left to lose. You can do whatever you like [to highlight what has happened].”
I talked on the phone with another survivor who works with the Myanmar civil society organization, the Center for Social Integrity. He lost five of his children on Aug. 6 when his boat capsized in the river.
“People got killed here and there. At least 50 people were killed each day. So we left the village at night and boarded a small boat. Just after a few minutes, the boat sank due to rough weather. While my little son was drowning, he tore my shirt and screamed,” the man recounted.
One of my friend’s family members was refused entry into Bangladesh five times by the BGB. Thankfully, this person succeeded on the sixth attempt. In some cases, the AA attacked boats with drones, according to my friend. Rohingya civilians are trapped between the genocidal Myanmar military and an increasingly genocidal AA.
The AA has denied all accusations that it targets Rohingya, but it also doesn’t call them by our names. They call us “Muslims” or “Bengalis,” using the same slur towards us that the military uses. Calling Rohingya “Muslims” is nothing but hypocrisy as it is not the name of an ethnic group and has been used by Myanmar society to discriminate against us and not recognize our community.
We never call Rakhine or Burmese as “Buddhist” only. So they must use our name of Rohingya to refer to us. Islam is our religion, but it’s only part of our identity.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya genocide survivors are penned into the open-air prison of northern Arakan State’s Maungdaw and Buthidaung. Rohingya are being starved to death with no access to medicine nor medical facilities.
Over 2,000 have been reportedly arrested by the AA with their family not even knowing their whereabouts. Many more Rohingya youth have been arrested and are in constant fear. The media has been unable to provide up-to-date coverage of this rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground in northern Arakan.
Myanmar media are portraying the AA as heroes for fighting and beating the military. They should understand what is really happening on the ground. If the media remain neutral in times of injustice, they are inadvertently supporting oppression.
It is important to note that the Spring Revolution can be destroyed if nobody speaks out against the oppression faced by minority groups like the Rohingya.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned the atrocities committed by the Myanmar military and the AA against the Rohingya. But this is not enough.
We need the U.N. Security Council to condemn the massacre and act immediately to protect the Rohingya in Myanmar. The international community’s continued inaction against the Myanmar military is what has left the Rohingya to face a second wave of genocide (as I’ve previously warned).
Most importantly, the international community should talk to Bangladesh about opening its borders for the Rohingya waiting along the Naf River to escape the violence and genocidal intent of both sides fighting for control of northern Arakan.
Pacifist Farooq is a Rohingya refugee, poet, and teacher living in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
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