Myanmar dissident and rights activist Maung ZarniA Myanmar dissent and rights activist has underlined the importance of Bangladesh’s initiative to form a broader international coalition to resolve the Rohingya issue, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
As roughly one million Rohingya refugees have taken shelter in Bangladesh, Maung Zarni reportedly recommended that Dhaka should mobilise the international community by organising a wider global conference in Dhaka to determine the future of the Rohingyas who are Myanmar nationals.
To solve the Rohingya issue “there has to be some form of intervention. I don’t mean the military intervention. There are different types of intervention,” Zarni told the AA in an interview on ‘Global Genocide Day’.
Anadolu’s Sorwar Alam quoted Maung Zarni as regretting that four regional powers plus Israel either support or protect Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority group in the western Rakhine state.
“No genocide is ever committed by a single nation state. Whenever genocide is committed there has always been coalition of friends that either supports the criminal regime or that protects the regime,” the Myanmar activist was quoted to have said.
Russia, China, India, Japan and Israel have both economic and military interests in Myanmar, Anadolu said referring to Zarni.
The genocide in Myanmar is committed “with the collaboration, complicity and support of” these states, he reportedly said, suggesting that a “counter alliance” against these states is crucial to resolve issues such as their safe repatriation.
The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly children and women, fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community.
Zarni, as Anadolu wrote, went on to say that Dhaka should form an “alternative alliance” along with Latin and North American states, EU, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and other countries that oppose the Rohingya genocide at the UN Human Rights Council.
Zarni, who is a member of the board of advisors of Genocide Watch and a non-resident fellow at Genocide Documentation Center in Sleuk Rith Institute, Cambodia, was quoted to have suggested that talking to Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to resolve the Rohingya crisis “is utterly useless”.
Source: Prothom Alo.
