Myanmar media: Rohingya Muslims are ‘human fleas’

GlobalPost

Myanmar is beset by “human fleas.”

So says the nation’s most widely known state newspaper, now operating under the democratically elected government helmed by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

This “morally bad” group of people are “loathe for their stench and for sucking our blood,” says the Global New Light of Myanmar. And the nation’s citizenry must “constantly be wary of the dangers of detestable human fleas.”

Comparisons to Nazism are cheap, especially in the social media era. But this oped is seen as standing out for sounding remarkably similar to Third Reich propaganda.

“Sure, the Jew is also a human being,” wrote Joseph Goebbels, the future Nazi regime’s propaganda chief, in the late 1920s. “None of us has ever doubted that. But a flea is also an animal — albeit an unpleasant one … our duty is to make it harmless.”

This screed against “fleas” in Myanmar comes amid a violent crackdown along the nation’s marshy western coast. The targets? Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority numbering roughly 1 million.

They are widely hated in their own homeland. In recent years, about 10 percent of them have been driven into grim camps patrolled by armed guards.

The plight of Rohingya Muslims received renewed attention after Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Somali-born student accused of carrying out a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University last week, reportedly protested on his Facebook page about the killing of minority Muslims in Myanmar.

Over the years, officials in Myanmar have called the Rohingya “ugly as ogres” and, more recently, too “dirty” for soldiers to rape. One political faction, with seats in parliament, has spoken warmly of Nazi pogroms and openly promotes “inhuman acts” to rid Rohingya from the nation.

A purge of sorts is now underway. Myanmar’s military is currently sweeping Rohingya villages to root out what the government calls “extremist” elements.

Indeed, a ragtag band of Rohingya militants — armed with sticks, blades and a few guns — emerged in October to attack soldiers and police. But the army has responded with overwhelming force.

Satellite images, commissioned by Human Rights Watch, suggest more than 1,000 buildings in Rohingya territory have been torched. The army, by its own admission, is pitting well-armed platoons against men wielding clubs.

According to the United Nations, at least 30,000 have fled this crackdown toward neighboring Bangladesh.

Macabre images, shot on mobile phones, continue to emerge from Rohingya circles. One clip appears to show a human figure incinerated. Others depict villagers fleeing gunfire.

Is this footage legit? If so, is the army culpable? These questions might be answerable if the government hadn’t declared much of the conflict zone off limits to outside observers — namely journalists and aid workers. Instead, the military prefers to control the terrain and thus maintain a stranglehold on information.

Meanwhile, Rohingya are escaping en masse toward Bangladesh. According to many government officials — including those surrounding Ms. Suu Kyi — that is where they belong.

Bangladeshi officials note that western Myanmar is the Rohingya minority’s proper homeland. Apparently less defensible is Bangladesh policy directing armed units to turn back terrified Rohingya refugees.

“They haven’t got many chances here either,” says Ko Ko Linn, an activist based in Bangladesh with the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation, or ARNO.

He contends that “this is no place to take shelter. If you reach the border, you get pushed back. So how can they survive?”

As for the alleged extremists hunted down by Myanmar’s army?

They are nothing more than “local youth, homegrown youth, who find persecution unbearable,” Mr. Linn says. “You can’t call them jihadis.”

ARNO, among the few international Rohingya-run rights organizations, has been condemned as a promilitant group by Myanmar’s government.

Officials have repeatedly alleged that “foreign terrorist organizations” have nurtured extremism within Rohingya villages.

Even the Western media have been viewed as playing along by stoking fears of the Islamic State group’s imminent rise in Myanmar.