News & Comment
The Genocide Against the Rohingya Muslims Exposes Yet again the Moral Vacuum of Democracy

News

On Friday 8th September, the United Nations Refugee Agency said that at least 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the Rakhine State in Myanmar in the past 2 weeks to escape the bloodbath being executed by the country’s military and armed Buddhist residents in the province.

This is equivalent to almost a third of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. The UN estimates that tens of thousands more may still flee the country due to the scale of violence they are facing. Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Myanmar also said on Friday that at least 1,000 people had been killed in the violence since August 25th but stressed that this figure is “very likely an underestimate.” Alongside these deaths at the hands of the Myanmar regime and Buddhist terrorists, the media have also reported that dozens of Rohingya women and children trying to flee to Bangladesh by boat to escape the violence have drowned. A Bangladesh border guard told CNN that they had retrieved 8 bodies on the Bangladeshi side of the Naf River on Wednesday 6th September alone, half of whom were children. There have also been reports of the Myanmar military laying fresh landmines on Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh in the path of fleeing Rohingya refugees which have seriously injured a number of Rohingya children.

Comment

Despite clear evidence of a brutal campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing being executed by the murderous Myanmar military against the Rohingya Muslims, Myanmar’s de-facto leader, and the West’s golden-girl and champion of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi has repeatedly denied the scale of the violence against the country’s Muslim minority, stating that the situation is not as bad as it seems. She has also tried to justify this killing spree of innocent civilians under the spurious guise of ‘fighting terrorists’. Meanwhile, it has simply been business as usual for democratic governments across the world in their relationship with the murderous Myanmar regime. They have continued to give Suu Kyi their backing despite her collaboration in the bloodshed, and refused to sever their links with this murderous Myanmar regime regardless of its repeated massacres of Rohingya Muslims.

All this just exposes once again the true ugly face of the man-made democratic system where oppression and the slaughter of innocents are ignored when interests dictate. It highlights the moral vacuum of this utterly hypocritical system which cynically presents itself as the champion of human rights. This is while it simultaneously views mass killings, the destruction of entire villages and expulsion of over a quarter of a million innocent civilians from their homes in a matter of a fortnight due to a brutal campaign of violence, as an inconvenient reality which should not harm their political and economic interests in Myanmar. Even the use of the term ‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ by those politicians and leaders who advocate this democratic system is politicized and based on political interests, while ignoring the true reality on the ground.

Today, every democratic government in the world sees these massacres, hears the screams of the innocent women and children, witnesses the grotesque injustices and indescribable levels of oppression but just turns their eyes away, washing their hands of any duty to protect the lives of innocents, for in their opinion, and according to their inhumane CAPITALIST Ideology, saving these lives has no political or economic gain. Yet they claim that DEMOCRACY is civilised while the Islamic Shariah which obliges the state that rules by it to protect humanity from such atrocities and the oppression of the oppressors, is barbaric! Subhaanallah!

Any system whose moral conscience can be bought by the highest bidder can never be the best system to govern any nation. Indeed, democracy has had its day! Its lies, inhumanity and false promises to the people have been exposed for all to see. Surely this world is in need of an alternative system which has the moral conscience to stand up to such horrendous crimes against humanity, placing the sanctity of human life and dignity above any political or economic gain! And surely this Ummah is in dire need of a state which truly represents the interests of the Muslims and our Deen; a state whose leader is obliged to be the guardian of this Ummah and its blood; and a state whose Islamic system will provide sanctuary, a dignified life and Islam’s full rights of citizenship to the oppressed believers no matter from where they come. This state is nothing other than the Khilafah (the Caliphate) based upon the method of the Prophethood, the System of Allah (swt)! Allah (swt) says,

(وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَعْمَالُهُمْ كَسَرَابٍ بِقِيعَةٍ يَحْسَبُهُ الظَّمْآنُ مَاء حَتَّى إِذَا جَاءهُ لَمْ يَجِدْهُ شَيْئًا)

“As for those who disbelieve, their deeds are like the mirage in a desert, which the thirsty man deems to be water; until when he comes to it he finds it to be nothing...” [An-Nur: 39]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir