TIME's Essay by Yanghee Lee and Georgia Drake & 3 other items

I would retitle the following essay by The Diplomat as "The Silence of
the Neighborhood Wolves"

Why Are Myanmar’s Neighbors Ignoring the Rohingya Crisis?

The silence of Myanmar’s neighbors over the UN’s genocide allegations
is deeply unsettling.

By Angshuman Choudhury
September 25, 2018

Excerpted:
"On September 18, the three-member Independent International
Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Myanmar, sanctioned by the United
Nations Human Rights Council in March 2017, submitted a damning
440-page report to the Geneva-based body outlining the horrific
excesses of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s armed forces) in northern and
western Myanmar.

The release was accompanied by an unusually emphatic speech by the
Mission’s Indonesian chair, Marzuki Darusman, who briefed the Council
on what the FFM called the “most serious human rights violations” and
“crimes of the highest order under international law” committed by the
Tatmadaw against the stateless, Muslim-majority Rohingya community in
northern Rakhine state and ethnic minorities in Shan and Kachin
States.

Darusman said that it was “hard to fathom the level of brutality” and
“total disregard for civilian life” in the Tatmadaw’s military
campaigns. The long list of charges, which reads like the aftermath of
a gory medieval invasion, confirms this: murder; enslavement; forcible
transfer of a population; rape, sexual slavery and sexual violence;
imprisonment, torture, and enforced disappearance; and persecution.

While the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had already asserted
in September that the situation in northern Rakhine comes off as a
“textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” the FFM report — the most
detailed and scathing UN account so far of the military’s atrocities —
accuses the Tatmadaw of committing pre-planned acts of genocide with
specific genocidal intent. This is crucial, as it ups the overall
scope of allegations against the military and could provide a boost to
an ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the
alleged atrocities.

Myanmar, however, continues to flatly dismiss all allegations of
wrongdoing, in addition to the ICC jurisdiction.

But, unsurprisingly, the FFM report has alarmed large sections of the
international community, nudging passive observers to take stronger
actions against Myanmar while vindicating those calling for greater
accountability. Since its release, for instance, Australia has
declared its intentions to slap targeted sanctions on Myanmar while
Canada passed a parliamentary motion officially recognizing the
Tatmadaw’s violent campaign as a “genocide.”
....

Yet, all the noise seems to be coming only from distant quarters.
Myanmar’s own neighborhood remains silent as the grave."

Read the full text here:

https://thediplomat.com/2018/09/why-are-myanmars-neighbors-ignoring-the-rohingya-crisis/

======================

TIME

There Can Be No Peace for Myanmar Without Justice

Yanghee Lee and Georgia Drake

Yanghee Lee is the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human
Rights in Myanmar and the former Chairperson of the U.N. Committee on
the Rights of the Child. Georgia Drake is Lee's research assistant.

"... is it possible for Myanmar, or other countries that have faced
enduring and divisive conflicts, to reach a sustainable and durable
peace without also achieving justice? As the U.N. General Assembly
convenes this week in New York, it is imperative that member states
think deeply about this question and commit to establishing a credible
accountability mechanism to bring an end to impunity in this Southeast
Asian nation as it attempts to shed its authoritarian legacy.

it is clear from observing the Myanmar government’s actions that it is
impossible for it to undertake a justice process itself. Its actions
are characterized by vociferous denials, cover up and distraction to
shield it from scrutiny, while there is an enormity of credible
evidence of security forces’ possible commission of crimes against
humanity, war crimes and genocide. Despite what Myanmar’s leaders
retort, the government’s actions are entirely averse to that of a
responsible democracy that upholds the rule of law and is working
towards peace and reconciliation.

For this reason, it is incumbent on the international community
instead to exercise its responsibility to ensure accountability for
the people of Myanmar without further delay. Taking more time to do so
is only going to further entrench impunity, fail to prevent future
atrocities and stymie the democratic transition.

The situation of Myanmar needs the attention of the International
Criminal Court, or another credible international judicial tribunal.
As an interim measure, the members of the U.N. Human Rights Council
should establish — and the General Assembly should endorse — an
ongoing accountability mechanism that would monitor and document
allegations of human rights violations around Myanmar, consolidate and
preserve the evidence in a repository, analyze liability of
perpetrators under international law, and provide psychosocial,
livelihood and legal support to victims with the aim of their
rehabilitation and reintegration. Victims have a right to justice;
their participation in the mechanism is paramount and will contribute
to their realization of rights in the long term."

Read the full text here:

http://time.com/5404328/myanmar-accountability-yanghee-lee/

=================

The following two essays I wrote in the previous quasi-democratic
"reform" government of ex-general Thein Sein still hold. They
compliment the above-essay by Professor Lee and Ms Drake's analysis of
'no peace without justice".

Myanmar's Drive for Peace

By MAUNG ZARNI

NOV. 3, 2013

New York Times

Excerpted:

"Based on my experience working with the generals as an unofficial
advocate for Western re-engagement with the country, I know that the
military leaders who may be inclined to compromise hold an
instrumentalist view of reconciliation. For them, peace is not a
worthwhile goal in and of itself but a means to another end: financial
reward.

Myanmar is well-known for its untapped natural resources, much of
which are in the minority controlled areas. Kachin state is famous for
jade; Karenni state’s tungsten deposit is one of the world’s largest;
Karen state has vast virgin teak forests and potential as a source of
hydropower.

A cessation of the violence in these regions is a prerequisite for
commercial development. To be sure, some minority leaders would stand
to benefit personally from the buildup of these areas. But many ethnic
people look at the national leaders and well-connected businessmen
with more skepticism, assuming they will exploit their land.

The idea of a national cease-fire has gained traction, in part,
because former President Jimmy Carter led a delegation of former heads
of state, known as the Elders, to Myanmar. They met with the
government, civil society groups and ethnic minority leaders and threw
their weight behind Naypyidaw’s cease-fire call. Locals explain the
Elders’ endorsement as a case of outsiders being misinformed about the
true nature of the government, which talks peace to the West while
waging quiet wars against the minorities outside the media’s gaze. A
version of this is under way now in the Kachin region, where the
government has recently sent in troops just as cease-fire negotiations
were beginning.

On the eve of independence in 1948, the Burmese nationalist leaders
promised that ethnic equality would be a cornerstone of the new Burma.
But equality has remained elusive.

Until the promise of equality and the vision of a federated union are
genuinely pursued, the government’s offer of peace will have few local
takers. No amount of aid or international cheerleading by celebrity
statesmen will make it work."

Read the full text here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/opinion/myanmars-drive-for-peace.html

===============

Op-Ed Contributor

In Myanmar, Peace for Ethnic Rights

By Maung Zarni

Sept. 24, 2015

Excerpted from the full text at the link below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/opinion/a-myanmar-pact-for-peace.html

"... the greatest obstacle to finalizing a comprehensive deal actually
is the one thing these minority groups share: deep distrust of the
Myanmar military, which they see as an occupying force with a
neocolonialist mind-set.

They are right. I grew up in Mandalay in an extended military family.
Like the vast majority of Myanmar’s people, we are Bamar and Buddhist,
and have been imbued with a dominant culture that is distrustful of
Muslims and condescending toward ethnic groups. For many minorities,
Myanmar’s independence from Britain in 1948 was less a moment of
emancipation than a shift to another form of oppression. Colonial
subjugation morphed into centralized rule under a chauvinistic
majority.

Almost seven decades later, Myanmar politics is inherently sectarian,
and when the government isn’t downright exploitative of minorities, it
is paternalistic and domineering. Small wonder that our military
leaders, who see themselves as the guardians of national sovereignty,
feel little need to pursue genuine peace with ethnic armed groups."