The Buddhist Genocide of Muslims

In the Rakhine  state located ion the western coast Myanmar an estimated 10,000 Muslims have been killed in what a United Nations “fact-finding Mission” calls a genocide. The amount of Rohingyas fleeing the country is the largest Southeast Asia has seen since the Vietnam War. The Rogingyas are a mainly Islamic ethnic group that is currently the target of ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist Myanmar government. The U.N. fact finding mission used satellite imagery and expatriate testimony to form their report, as the team of three were not aloud to enter Myanmar. 

The testimony stated many horrendous crimes against the Rohingyas that the government simply pushes aside as exaggerations. The crimes include, arson of villages and shops, gang rapes of women and girls, brutal killings of all genders and  ages mostly perpetrated in front of families, and many reports of Rohingyas being burned alive. 

The genocide began in August of 2017 when the police force and government began targeting Rohingyas villages, which directly lead to hate crimes being committed. 

Many Myanmar government officials have been named by the U.S. and E.U. , including Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing and the head of government (and Nobel peace prize laureate) Aung San Suu Kyi.  

The blame also appears to land on the U.N. itself as the investigators state that the U.N. avoided some of their responsibility as they had a large hand in Myanmar policy as of 2011. 

Associated Press. Investigators call for genocide prosecutions over slaughter of Rohingyas, August 27, 2017.  CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rohingya-crisis-myanmar-genocide-military-commanders-un-human-rights-mission/

China’s Suppression of the Muslim Uyghurs

In modern China there is an aspect of the Government that is simply dystopian. In the article “The Sinicization and Suppression of China’s Muslim Uyghurs” journalist Sarmad Ishfaq explains the almost tyrannical treatment of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government. “the state-approved (Sinicized) path to Islam and Uyghur culture now dictates every aspect of the Uyghurs existence and reality.”

         The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group that have called China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) home for all of modern times and most of history. They speak the Uyghur language and mostly practice Islam. However, the Han (the much larger ethnic group in China, making up almost 92%of the population) claim control of the Xinjiang “… while the Hans, China claims, are one of the earliest people to settle in the territory and hence have a birthright to Xinjiang.” (Ishfaq).

         When the communist revolution took place in the late 1940s’ Mao Zedong promoted a more ethnic China, that while was pointed in the right direction, the Sinicization began, “Since this time, China’s government has established an inflexible, ‘righteous’, and Sinicized path to follow for all people, minorities and otherwise. Dissenting from this path whether with speech or actions is punished vehemently.”

This ‘path’ lays out certain rules for the Uyghur people to follow or they are discriminated against in several ways. They must follow not their religion but the 12 secular values of China. Without following this path the Uyghurs cannot survive economically or socially in modern day China. “The Uyghurs must Sinicize their religion, speech, dressing, behavior, culture, and language in order to compete with the favored Han migrants and that to, unfortunately, in their own homeland of Xinjiang.” (Ishfaq)

Ishfaq, Sarmad. “The Sinicization and Suppression of China’s Muslim Uyghurs.” Foreign Policy Journal, Foreign Policy Journal, 24 Nov. 2018, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2018/11/23/the-sinicization-and-suppression-of-chinas-muslim-uyghurs/.