If I were a Rohingya
I'd convey to the whole wide world Amartya Sen's incisive reading of
our history: "Burma (as a post-independence nation-state created only
in 1947) came to the Rohingya" (not the other way around).

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that We Rohingyas were pre-colonial & pre-Union of
Burma natives of Araccan or Arakan and that our brother/sister
Buddhist Rakhines whom we call Mogh and we Rohingya Muslims shared the
land as our common birthplace. They call us Hkaw Taw Kular and we call
them Mogh. Neither was more "indigenous" between us.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that we have our own respective and respectable
self-identified group names, Rohingyas and Rakhine.

If I were a Rohingya, notwithstanding our racist slurs - Khaw Taw
Kular and Mogh - we have been co-residents of Araccan or Arakan
(Rakhine) before the Bama colonzers came in 1785.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that We Rohingyas were officially recognized as "an
ethnic minority of the original Union of Burma which officially became
Sovereign on 4 January 1948 and that we enjoyed civil and political
rights, as well as full and equal citizenship until the Burmese
military ended a democratic system, flawed but nonetheless democratic.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that our violent communal/racial conflict with
Rakhine in 1942 was nothing exceptional. During WWII, the shifting
alliances between colonizing regimes of racist Britain and Fascist
Japan and us the colonized resulted in different groups slaughtering
others along class and race lines. Bama nationalists were slaughter
Karens - streotyped as "loyal Karens" (of British Burma) and burning
churches and the Karens returning the favour by launching an almost
successful overthrow of the Bama-controlled post-independence
government of Prime Minister U Nu.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that Myanmar's military and civilian Islamophobes
have falsely exceptionalized the old tale of 1942 Rohingya-Rakhine
violence in order paint us as "violent mujahideens hellbent on
seceding from the Union of Myanmar".

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that every ethnic minority dreamed of living as a
free and dignified ethnic community, out of the clutches of
nation-destroying, racist, fascist Bama colonial military rule and
that every group has launched armed revolt - which is typically
falsely portrayed as "insurgency" as if such revolts against the
murderous Colonial State were "illegitimate" and "immoral" - since the
birth of the union of voluntary ethnic communities.


If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that We the Rohingas have been subjected to
40-years of the slow genocide, having been dismembered from the Union
of Burma, subjected to all kinds of systematic policies and ad hoc
moves, all designed, to destroy our ethnic group, in all aspects of a
communal life; we have been starved to death slowly; our economic life
has been crippled; our physical movements have been severely
controlled; our access to life's essential services such as
preventative and emergency medical care has been deliberately
restricted or made non-existent; our community has been made
illiterate and stupid, as a matter of Myanmar national policy; our
leaders have been targeted for destruction; our civil and political
rights have been taken away gradually; our historical presence and
identity have been re-written falsely, to justify these policies that
can only be described as GENOCIDE.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that we are the Jews of Buddhist Myanmar where the
Buddhist church, the Burmese Army, the civilian leadership and the
Burmese public behave more like the Nazis in 1930's than a country in
"democratic transition'.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that the United Nations is selling us down the
river, having failed to even acknowledge the international crime we
experience by its legal name GENOCIDE, let alone rescue us from
Myanmar's way to its "Buddhist" Final Solution.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that the once iconic moral leader of Myanmar - Aung
San Suu Kyi - is whitewashing the military's crimes against humanity
and genocide against our people and that she is both politically and
morally a SPENT FORCE on whom Western and UN policies of
democratization and marketization can no longer rest.

If I were a Rohingya
I'd tell the world that we the Rohingyas will return to our ancestral
homeland and rebuild our communities, only under Inernational
Protection, without which we would be like chickens marching back into
the vast open cage of N. Arakan where the wolves of Myanmar gleefully
await for another round of the carnival of Terror, Mass Rape, Arson
and Loot.

If I were a Rohingya

.......