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Is Rohingya persecution caused by business interests rather than religion?

Banglar Bir

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Is Rohingya persecution caused by business interests rather than religion?
Both Buddhist and Muslim smallholders have been victims of corporate land grabs in Myanmar. Is the focus on religion just a distraction?
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Aung San Suu Kyi requested that the US not use the term Rohingya. Photograph: Aung Shine Oo/AP
[URL='https://www.theguardian.com/profile/saskia-sassen']Saskia Sasse[/URL]
Wednesday 4 January 2017

In the last four years Myanmar’s Rohingya, a centuries-old Muslim minority group, have been subjected to sharply escalating persecution by the Myanmar army, and by a particular sector of extreme nationalist Buddhist monks.

A brutal attack marking a new level of violence(pdf) against the Rohingya occurred in 2012 and led to the flight of thousands to other countries. More recently, military forces entered one of the rural areas occupied by the Rohingya. They destroyed at least 1,500 buildings and shot unarmed men, women and children dead. Earlier this week a video emerged showing villagers sitting on the ground with their arms over their heads, as soldiers appear to beat one of the men.

The world’s coverage of these events has focused entirely on the religious/ethnic aspect, characterising them as religious persecution. Human Rights Watch described the anti-Rohingya violence as amounting to “crimes against humanity,” carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Malaysia’s foreign minister described the Myanmar government’s actions as ethnic cleansing and called on them to stop the practice, leading in turn to a strong response from Myanmar’s government. John McKissick, head of the UN refugee agency, said the Myanmar government was carrying out ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people.

But my research leads me to argue that religion and ethnicity might be only part of what explains this forced displacement.

The past two decades have seen a massive worldwide rise of corporate acquisitions of land for mining, timber, agriculture and water. In the case of Myanmar, the military have been grabbing vast stretches of land (pdf) from smallholders since the 1990s, without compensation, but with threats if they try to fight back. This land grabbing has continued across the decades but has expanded enormously in the last few years. At the time of the 2012 attacks, the land allocated to large projects had increased by 170% between 2010 and 2013. By 2012 the law governing land (pdf) was changed to favour large corporate acquisitions.

We must ask whether the sharpened persecution of the Rohingya (and other minority groups) might be partly generated by military-economic interests, rather than by mostly religious/ethnic issues. Expelling Rohingya from their land might well be good for future business. In fact, quite recently the government allocated 1,268,077 hectares (3,100,000 acres) in the Rohingya’s area of Myanmar for corporate rural development; this is quite a jump compared to the first such formal allocation which was in 2012, for just 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres). To some extent the international focus on religion has overshadowed the vast land grabs that have affected millions, including the Rohingya.

Who are the Rohingya?
Rohingya are an old Muslim minority that has long been part of Myanmar, going back to the 15th century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Rohingya is a self-identifying term that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity.

Over one-third of the Rohingya are concentrated in the western state of Rakhine – one of Myanmar’s least developed states, with plentiful land. The Rohingya are poor, with more than 78% of households living below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates. Their poverty might further enable their evictions to make room for development projects.

Co-existence was never exactly peaceful, but from the 1990s until 2012 there were no major killings (pdf). But in 2012 Arakanese Buddhists called for their persecution after three Muslim men were accused of raping an Arakanese woman. That year, Arakanese political parties, local monks’ associations, and civic groups publicly urged the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya. A particular sect of Buddhists went so far as to re-interpret sections of Buddhist texts to urge people to kill Rohingya. The vast majority of Buddhists did not join in.

After 2012 the Rohingya begin to leave Myanmar in large numbers: it had become clear that they were now an actively persecuted people. The 2012 violence against the Rohingya civilian population “resulted in approximately 200 deaths and over 140,000 displaced” according to the US state department. The UN high commissioner for refugees estimates that since 2012, 160,000 Rohingya left by sea to neighbouring countries – mostly to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. More than 120,000 Rohingya are still housed in over 40 internment camps in Myanmar according to the regional rights organisation Fortify Rights.

But is it about religion?
The treatment of the Rohingya is sometimes described as a crime against humanity. But we need to interrogate its sources. If we bring in some of the larger trends affecting modest rural communities, two major facts stand out. One is the far larger numbers of Buddhist smallholders who have also been expelled from their land in the last few years. And the other is the fact that large-scale timber extraction, mining, and water projects are replacing the expelled.

This combination of conditions have until recently rarely been mentioned in the media, and are absent from the religion discussion. The focus of the global media, and to a large extent inside Myanmar, has been on religious hatred.

There were high expectations that Aung San Suu Kyi party’s electoral victory in November 2015 would bring justice. But she has made a point of not addressing these developments in her public statements. Indeed as recently as May 2016, she requested that the US not use the word Rohingya because, according to one of her spokesmen, the term is not useful as part of the national reconciliation process.

But the land grabs have been silently ignored. In fact, the military were already taking land from Buddhist smallholders and other groups in the 1990s. But in 2012 a change in the law escalated matters and (formally) opened the country to foreign investors. On 30 March 2012, the joint lower and upper houses of parliament approved the revision of two land laws: the Farmland Law and the Vacant Land Law. This amounted to a new Foreign Investment Law that allowed 100% foreign capital, and lease periods of up to 70 years. Compared to mining, the agriculture sector still has some restrictions on foreign investment in that the government promotes joint ventures with local entrepreneurs. However, foreign firms often use local companies as proxies (pdf) for investments.

The 1963 Peasant Law was also annulled in 2012, this piece of statute, which protected smallholders and the “tiller’s rights to the land”, had been in place since the country’s socialist era.
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Protest in Bangladesh against attacks on the Rohingya
Photograph: Abir Abdullah/EPA

Against this background, the escalating displacement of millions of smallholders (mostly Buddhists) from the land was a major change as to who was to manage the land. Smallholders became refugees of a new economic ordering. Myanmar is not unique in this. Similar brutal expulsions of smallholders have been happening across the world as large corporations take over because they “establish” that the smallholders have no contracts showing the land is theirs, no matter how long they and their ancestors worked that land. What is different in Myanmar is the almost absolute control the military have long had over much of the country’s land, and hence their key role in the expulsion of smallholders .

Today there are whole new economies – mining, timber, geothermal projects – where before there were smallholders. Economic development may require this: but it should also work for the millions of displaced and never compensated smallholders. Foreign direct investment is now concentrated in extractive sectors and power generation. Not much of the new investment has gone to sectors such as manufacturing that can generate a strong working class and a modest middle class. For example, Myanmar’s Yadana pipeline project, “required investment of over $1bn (£0.8bn), yet employs only 800 workers”.

Furthermore, the 2012 law empowered foreign investors. It offered government loans – but no help for the smallholders who lost their land. Land properties can range from 2,000 hectares up to 20,000 hectares (5,000 acres to 50,000 acres) for an initial period of 30 years. The extent of land grabs is such that Myanmar is losing more than a million acres of forest a year.

Many, perhaps most, of the contracts signed for major land deals have their own conditions and effects. For instance, regional military commanders and non-state armed groups have de facto control over most land development in northern Myanmar.

Two parallel worlds
The Myanmar of brutal religious persecutions that has led to huge worldwide concern is only getting worse. But then there is the Myanmar of evictions of smallholders to make room for massive land grabs.

Saskia Sassen is Robert S. Lind professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and the author of several books including Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-...ed-by-business-interests-rather-than-religion
 
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বাংলাদেশ অধ্যয়ন কেন্দ্র - Center for Bangladesh Studies(CBS)

27 mins ·
'Myanmar has become a last Asian frontier for our current modes of development – plantation agriculture, mining, and water extraction. Its location makes it even more strategic. Besides being the largest country of south-east Asia, Myanmar is between the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, both hungry for natural resources.

Since that first set of major foreign investors entered the country under the new legal regime, demand for land has become a major factor in conflict. Foreign firms have moved in, land grabs have risen, smallholders keep losing ground. Farmers have become poorer or lost their land. But the land market is booming.

Seen from this angle, persecution of the Rohingya has at least two functions, even if unplanned. Expelling them from their land is a way of freeing up land and water. Burning their homes makes this irreversible: the Rohingya are forced to flee and leave their lands behind. Secondly, a focus on religious difference mobilises passions around religion, rather than aiming, let’s say, at creating pressure on the government to stop evictions of all smallholders, no matter their religion.

Against the background of millions of expelled smallholders, it is remarkable how much religion has captured the attention of observers and commentators. In the meantime, a third of Myanmar’s vast forests are gone, and the government has allocated million of hectares, including a significant allotment in Rakhine state, for further development.'
 
As the geopolitical competition between America and China intensifies, Myanmar, will increasingly appear in Global media headlines thereby, the entire region is likely to have profound implications in the foreseeable future

Bangladesh strategy should to be act as a mature regional power thereby demonstrating her position by not turning into pawns of other vested States.

Bangladesh should rather avail the benefits of such tensions arising between China & the US and the region. Thus, permanently paving a way for mitigating the long-term solutions for the Rohingya crisis .
 
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Muslims are the main target, everywhere in the world. If you are killing cats and dogs, you are criminal. But if you are killing muslims, no problem, it their internal matter.
We muslims are watching it, and we are watching it with great grief, and we are thinking that Jihadists are right.
 
The dirty fossil fuel secret behind Burma's democratic fairytale
South-east Asian country's untapped natural wealth is being opened up, regardless of the environmental and human costs
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Burma has waged 'a campaign of ethnic cleansing' against Rohingya Muslims, according to Human Rights Watch. Photograph: HRW/AFP/Getty Images
Nafeez Ahmed
Friday 26 April 2013 13.18 BST

New evidence has emerged that the systematic violence against ethnic Rohingya in Burma - "described as genocidal by some experts" - is being actively supported by state agencies. But the violence's links to the country's ambitions to rapidly expand fossil fuel production, at massive cost to local populations and to the environment, have been largely overlooked.

Over 125,000 ethnic Rohingya have been forcibly displaced since waves of violence swept across Burma's Arakan state last year, continuing until now, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch's (HRW) latest sobering report. The "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Arakan's Muslim minority, although instigated largely by Buddhist monks rallying local mobs, has been the product of "extensive state involvement and planning", according to HRW's UK director David Mepham.

The group found:
"All of the state security forces [in Arakan] are implicated in failing to prevent atrocities or directly participating in them, including local police, Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and the army and navy."

Burma's Rohingya minority has resided in the country for decades, but been formally denied citizenship by the government, subjected instead to forced labour, arbitrary land confiscations, and routine discrimination. Although the latest violence raises urgent questions about the integrity of Burma's ostensible democratic reform process, the west has refused to allow the campaign against the Rohingyas to interfere with efforts to integrate the regime into global markets.

The last two years has seen first the US, then the UK and the EU, lift decades of economic sanctions with a view to "open a new chapter" in relations with Burma.

Nestled strategically between India and China, Burma is rich in fossil fuels and other mineral resources, including oil, gas, gold, timber and jade. In recent months, even as genocidal violence has escalated, the country has been courtedby world leaders, such as President Barack Obama, British foreign secretary William Hague, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.

As Forbes reports , thanks to Burma's "vast, untapped reserves of oil and natural gas" – estimated at between 11 trillion and 23 trillion cubic feet – "and with sanctions over and a world thirsty for new sources of energy, Western multinationals are eager to sign deals."

But foreign companies must partner with local companies to be able to bid. This condition has spurred Myanmar's crony capitalist elite of fewer than 20 families – many of whom built their business empires on the back of state favours from the former military junta – to rebrand themselves as honest brokers for western investors looking for their next regional venture.

Attempting to consolidate their privileged position in a highly unequal but resource-rich economy, Burma's business families are making renewed efforts to capitalise on the resource rush, highlighting their philanthropic activities, and forging new ties with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Foreign investment is currently dominated by Chinese, Thai and Indian firms, who operated relatively unfazed by western sanctions, but American, British and French multinationals such as Chevron, BP, Shell, and Total are jockeying to make up for lost time.

Yet the scramble to open up Burma for business has played a direct role in inflaming community tensions. One of the most prominent culprits is the Shwe Gas Project led by South Korean and Indian companies, to export natural gas via pipeline from Arakan state to China's Yunnan province. The 2,800km overland pipeline is slated to become operational this year.

The project plans to produce 500 million cubic feet (mcfd) of gas per day for 30 years, supplying 400 mcfd to China, and the remaining 100 mcfd to factories owned by the Burmese government, military and associated business elites.

The losers from this venture are the Burmese people and environment. An extensive report by the Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), a Burmese community-based human rights network, documented the destruction of local fishing and farming industries, including confiscation of thousands of acres of land to "clear areas for the pipeline and associated infrastructure", from 2010 to 2011. Tens of thousands have been left jobless, with little or no compensation or employment opportunities.

The pipeline also cuts through the Arakan Yoma forest ecosystems of the Western Mountain Range, part of the Eastern Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, contributing to soil erosion and endangering species. One third of coral reefs north of Kyauk Phyu town have already been seriously damaged, undermining fish and marine life, and local fishing. Freshwater rivers and waterways have been dredged for sand and gravel for construction purposes, and are set to become dumping grounds for toxic materials.

In December 2011, the pipeline project sparked widespread anger across Arakan's cities and rural areas, as local people demanded provision of 24 hour electricity. Ranked the second most impoverished state of Burma by the UN Development Programme, approximately 3 million people living in Arakan have no access to public electricity, with just a few major cities able to access only five to six hours of electricity per day, provided by private companies at extortionate prices of 400-600 Kyat per unit (compared to 25 Kyat per unit in Rangoon). Overall, Burma is by far the poorest country in Southeast Asia, with a third of the population living in poverty.

The eruption of ethnic violence across Arakan against ethnic Rohingyas six months later in 2012 was therefore most likely triggered by the simmering tensions wrought by escalating economic marginalisation. On the one hand, Arakan's deepening economic crisis, fuelled by the state-backed pipeline project, laid the groundwork for an increase in xenophobia and racism toward the Rohingya. On the other, Burmese state agencies appear to have deliberately fostered the ethnic cleansing campaign to divert populist anger away from the devastating impact of the pipeline project, and instead toward the most easy and vulnerable target to hand.

Even as violence against the Rohingya escalates, conflict has also broken out along the pipeline route between Burmese security forces and local armed resistance groups linked to the Kachin state, where people have faced arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labour, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the Burma Army.

The plight of these different groups underscores that the fairytale of Burma's rosy democratic transition is exactly that - a fairytale.

But lured by the promise of windfall profits, it is a fairytale convenient for competing global powers eager to capitalise on the country's untapped natural wealth, regardless of the environmental and human costs.
This is Dr. Nafeez Ahmed's first post on his new blog, Earth Insight, hosted by The Guardian. Nafeez is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and writer/presenter of the film The Crisis of Civilization, based on his latest book, A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It. You can follow him on Twitter: @nafeezahmed
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...fossil-fuel-secret-burma-democratic-fairytale
 
রুশ বিশ্লেষকদের অভিমতরোহিঙ্গা সংকটের নেপথ্য কারণ বহুমাত্রিক
বিদেশ ডেস্ক
প্রকাশিত: ১৫:১২, সেপ্টেম্বর ০৮, ২০১৭ |সর্বশেষ আপডেট: ১৫:৪৫, সেপ্টেম্বর ০৮, ২০১৭

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ইন্সটিটিউট অব ওরিয়েন্টাল স্টাডিজ অব দ্য রাশিয়ান একাডেমি অব সায়েন্সেস এর সেন্টার ফর সাউথ ইস্ট এশিয়া, অস্ট্রেলিয়া এবং ওশেনিয়াবিষয়ক পরিচালক দিমিত্রি মোসিয়াকভ। রাষ্ট্রীয় সংবাদমাধ্যম আরটিকে দেওয়া সাক্ষাৎকারে তিনি দাবি করেন, আন্তর্জাতিক ক্রীড়ানকরা রোহিঙ্গা পরিস্থিতি আরও উসকে দিচ্ছে। মোসিয়াকভের মতে, রোহিঙ্গা সংকট অন্ততপক্ষে একটি তিন মাত্রিক ঘটনা।

প্রথমত, এটি চীনবিরোধী একটি খেলা। কারণ আরাকানে (রাখাইন রাজ্য) চীনের বিশাল বিনিয়োগ আছে।

দ্বিতীয়ত,
দক্ষিণ-পূর্ব এশিয়ায় মুসলিম উগ্রপন্থা ছড়িয়ে দেওয়ার উদ্দেশ্যে এমনটা করা হচ্ছে।

তৃতীয়ত, আসিয়ানের মধ্যে অনৈক্য (মিয়ানমার ও মুসলিমপ্রধান দেশ ইন্দোনেশিয়া ও মালয়েশিয়ার মধ্যে অনৈক্য) তৈরি করার প্রচেষ্টা এটি।

মোসিয়াকভের তথ্য অনুযায়ী, দক্ষিণ-পূর্ব এশিয়ার স্থিতিশীলতাকে নষ্ট করতে শতাব্দী ধরে চলা এ সংঘাতকে ব্যবহার করেছে আন্তর্জাতিক খেলুড়েরা। বিশেষ করে রাখাইন রাজ্যের উপকূলীয় এলাকায় হাউড্রোকার্বনের বিপুল রিজার্ভের দিকে দৃষ্টি রয়েছে তাদের। মোসিয়াকভ বলেন, ‘মিয়ানমারের সাবেক সেনাশাসক থান শুয়ের নামে প্রচুর সংখ্যক গ্যাস ক্ষেত্র রয়েছে। পাশাপাশি আরাকানের উপকূলীয় অঞ্চলে হাউড্রোকার্বন রয়েছে বলে অনেকটাই নিশ্চিত।’

২০০৪ সালে রাখাইনে বিপুল পরিমাণ জ্বালানি সম্পদের সন্ধান পাওয়ার পর সেখানে চীনের দৃষ্টি পড়ে। ২০১৩ সাল নাগাদ তেল ও প্রাকৃতিক গ্যাসের জন্য পাইপলাইন নির্মাণের কাজ শেষ করে দেশটি। এ পাইপলাইন মিয়ানমারের বন্দর শহর কিয়াউকফিউকে চীনের ইউনান প্রদেশের শহর কুনমিংকে যুক্ত করেছে। তেলের এ পাইপলাইনটির মাধ্যমে বেইজিং মালাক্কা প্রণালি হয়ে মিডল ইস্টার্ন ও আফ্রিকান তেল সরবরাহের সুযোগ পায় বেইজিং। আর গ্যাস পাইপলাইনটি ব্যবহার করা হয়, মিয়ানমারের উপকূলীয় ক্ষেত্র থেকে চীনে হাইড্রোকার্বন সরবরাহের জন্য।

স্পুটনিকের প্রতিবেদনে বলা হয়, ২০১১-২০১২ সালে মিয়ানমারে রোহিঙ্গা সংকট থেকে বাঁচতে যখন ১,২০,০০০ মানুষ অন্য দেশে আশ্রয় খুঁজছিলেন তখন কাকতালীয়ভাবে সিনো-মিয়ানমার জ্বালানি প্রকল্পের উন্নয়ন কাজ শুরু হয়েছিল।

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ইন্সটিটিউট ফর স্ট্রাটেজিক স্টাডিজ অ্যান্ড প্রোগনোসিস অ্যাট দ্য পিপল’স ফ্রেন্ডশিপ ইউনিভার্সিটি অব রাশিয়া এর উপ পরিচালক দিমিত্রি এগোরচেনকভ একে কাকতালীয় ঘটনা বলতে চান না। তার মতে, রোহিঙ্গা সংকটের পেছনে নির্দিষ্ট কয়েকটি অভ্যন্তরীণ কারণ থাকলেও এক্ষেত্রে বিদেশি মদদও রয়েছে, এর মধ্যে উল্লেখযোগ্য দেশ হলো যুক্তরাষ্ট্র।

মিয়ানমারের অস্থিতিশীলতা চীনের জ্বালানি প্রকল্পগুলোতে প্রভাব ফেলতে পারে এবং বেইজিংয়ের দ্বারপ্রান্তেও অস্থিতিশীলতার বীজ বপন করতে পারে। চীনের প্রতিবেশী দেশ উত্তর কোরিয়া এবং যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের চলমান উত্তেজনার মধ্যে ক্রসফায়ারে পড়তে পারে চীন।

হাঙ্গেরীয় বংশোদ্ভূত মার্কিন বিনিয়োগকারী জর্জ সরোস এর অর্থায়নে পরিচালিত কয়েকটি সংস্থার সমন্বয়ে গঠিত বার্মা টাস্ক ফোর্স ২০১৩ সাল থেকে সক্রিয়ভাবে মিয়ানমারে কাজ করছে। ‘রোহিঙ্গা মুসলিমদের ওপর গণহত্যা’ বন্ধ করতে আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায়কে আহ্বান জানিয়ে আসছে তারা। অবশ্য, মিয়ানমারের অভ্যন্তরীণ বিষয়ে জর্জ সরোস হস্তক্ষেপ করছেন আরও আগে থেকে। মিয়ানমারে রাজনৈতিক, সামাজিক ও অর্থনৈতিক পট পরিবর্তনের জন্য অন্য দেশের সঙ্গে যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের সমন্বয় বাড়াতে ২০০৩ সালে একটি মার্কিন টাস্কফোর্স গ্রুপের সঙ্গে যোগ দেন জর্জ সরোস।

দ্য কাউন্সিল অব ফরেন রিলেশন্স (সিএফআর) এর ২০০৩ সালের নথির বরাত দিয়ে স্পুটনিক জানায়, ‘বার্মা: টাইম ফর চেঞ্জ’ শিরোনামের ওই নথিতে ওই টাস্কফোর্স গ্রুপ গঠনের ঘোষণা দেওয়া হয়েছিল। সেখানে জোর দিয়ে বলা হয়েছিল, ‘যুক্তরাষ্ট্র ও আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায়ের সহায়তা ছাড়া গণতন্ত্র টিকতে পারে না।’

আরটিকে দেওয়া সাক্ষাৎকারে ইন্সটিটিউট ফর স্ট্রাটেজিক স্টাডিজ অ্যান্ড প্রোগনোসিস অ্যাট দ্য পিপল’স ফ্রেন্ডশিপ ইউনিভার্সিটি অব রাশিয়া এর উপ পরিচালক দিমিত্রি এগোরচেনকভ বলেন, ‘যখন জর্জ সরোস এদেশে আসেন অথবা ওই দেশে যান...তখন তিনি ধর্মীয়, জাতিগত কিংবা সামাজিক বৈপরীত্য খুঁজতে থাকেন এবং এগুলো থেকে যেকোনও একটিকে বেছে নেন কিংবা এগুলোর মিশ্রণ তৈরি করেন এবং তাদেরকে উষ্ণ করে তোলার চেষ্টা করেন।

অন্যদিকে মোসিয়াকভের মতে, বিশ্বের কিছু প্রতিষ্ঠিত অর্থনীতির দেশ আসিয়ানভুক্ত দেশগুলোর অভ্যন্তরীণ উত্তেজনায় মদদ দিয়ে সেইসব দেশের অর্থনৈতিক উন্নয়নের লাগাম টেনে ধরতে চায়। আঞ্চলিক সংঘাতকে উসকে দিয়ে সার্বভৌমত্বের দেশগুলোতে নিয়ন্ত্রণ প্রতিষ্ঠা এবং চাপ তৈরি করতে চায়।

http://www.banglatribune.com/foreign/news/241199/সরোস-এবং-হাইড্রোকার্বন-মিয়ানমারে-রোহিঙ্গা-সংকটের
 
What the Humanitarian Crisis in Myanmar Misses
Sep 7, 2017
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By Matthew Massee

The Rohingya, the embattled, mostly Muslim minority group from southwestern Myanmar who are fleeing their homelands in unprecedented numbers, are caught in the crosshairs of regional geopolitics.
The area they have long occupied is geographically isolated and historically surrounded by weak states and so has been largely ungoverned for decades. But that space is shrinking. As Myanmar emerges from decades of international isolation, the central government is attempting to exert authority over its restive reaches – no small task, considering it is also trying to manage all the political forces unleashed by its democratization.

China, meanwhile, is pushing south in search of access to the Indian Ocean and influence in a crucial buffer state. Wary of the encroaching forces, Myanmar’s neighbor India is looking for a way to push back. The government in Naypyidaw will seek to play the larger powers off one another, but the Rohingya, effectively a stateless people, have little ability to do so.

India’s Interests
On his way back from the BRICS conference in China, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a three-day trip to Myanmar on Sept. 5, his first to the country since taking office. The stated purpose of the trip is to strengthen bilateral cooperation on security, infrastructure development and trade. The unstated purpose is that Myanmar is uniquely important to India. India has an imperative to develop its hinterlands such as those that border Myanmar, riddled as they are with insurgent movements. Before it can become the power it has the potential to be, it must secure its borders and gain access to foreign export markets, particularly those in Southeast Asia.

Improving relations with Myanmar brings India closer to these objectives. Consider India’s “Act East” policy, which means to improve trade and security ties with all of Southeast Asia but is fundamentally an expression of its interest in Myanmar. The policy promises to increase economic development and trade. (Notably, some of the associated projects have been difficult to complete.

The Thailand-Myanmar-India highway is unfinished in certain areas, and its completion date is unknown. Another project, the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, meant to connect Myanmar and India via sea and road links, has seen delays and is slated to be finished in 2020.)

Consider also that security would improve with better relations. The border they share is porous, and the contraband that has passed through it has made its way into the hands of insurgent groups in both countries, not to mention Bangladesh. It might also help to curb the flow of human traffic.
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A Bangladeshi border guard near the Bangladeshi town of Ukhiya orders Rohingya refugees to return to the Myanmar side of a small canal between the two countries on Aug. 29, 2017. EMRUL KAMAL/AFP/Getty Images

Myanmar benefits from the arrangement too. The country desperately needs infrastructure development and financing, and China, ever the checkbook diplomat, is one of its only sources of aid. A partnership with India could give it leverage when it negotiates the terms of future deals with China.

China’s Interests
China, meanwhile, is also pursuing a closer economic and security relationship with Myanmar. Doing so helps further two of Beijing’s strategic imperatives: gain access to the Indian Ocean through overland routes and improve the economic development of its non-coastal provinces.

According to a 2015 Department of Defense study on the Chinese military, 82 percent of China’s crude oil and 30 percent of its natural gas imports from the sea pass through the Strait of Malacca, a narrow, easily blockaded strip of ocean in Southeast Asia. China’s industrial economy requires energy imports and manufactured goods exports to function, making alternative supply and delivery routes of the utmost importance to China. Since Beijing cannot patrol all the waters from Malaysia to Pakistan, it needs Myanmar to develop supply lines through South and Southeast Asia.

Already there are fruits of this partnership. The Chinese-financed Kyaukpyu port, which sits on the Bay of Bengal, accepts oil tankers from the Middle East and then pipes the oil to China. The pipeline is projected to supply 6 percent of China’s crude oil imports.

Myanmar also offers a way to help China develop its interior provinces, which have seen fewer rewards to China’s economic growth than their coastal counterparts. These landlocked areas have lower incomes and fewer economic opportunities and must rely on coastal ports to access global markets, lowering their potential profits.

Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, is one such province. By gross domestic product, it is China’s second poorest. Greater connectivity to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, with Myanmar as a point of entry, could infuse Yunnan and others like it with much-needed capital and employment.

It would also enable Beijing to enrich these areas by circumventing the need to export through the coast – something China has always struggled to accomplish. Like India, though, China has had trouble completing some of the works underway. It has, for example, failed to complete the Myitsone Dam project because of complaints about flooding, environmental impacts and the greater share of produced electricity that would be sent to China.

Myanmar will take what it can get, but as a vastly inferior economic and military power, it has little choice but to play Asia’s giants off each other and exact from them the best deal possible. The humanitarian crisis with the Rohingya, those displaced peoples from Myanmar, has meanwhile captured the media’s attention, but its geopolitical importance will be measured by how it factors into the larger power struggle underway.

The post What the Humanitarian Crisis in Myanmar Misses appeared first on Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures.
http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=781d962e0d3dfabcf455f7eff&id=a830ae981a
 
its not proper to compare intrest of china and india on myanmar....
india haerdly has any economic or defence trade with myanmar....india is just on its way to build ties.....i must say pakistan has a better defence relation with myanmar then india , they are selling them ,fighters jets...
on the other side , its a one way trafic when you check chinese economic and defence footprint in myanmar......from defence ewuipments to oil exploration ,....china had a sea port ( militery & commercial ) near the south coast where the present problen is currently centered......
 
রোহিঙ্গা নির্রযাতনের মূলে রাখাইন স্টেটের তেল ও গ্যাস সম্পদের নিয়ন্ত্রণ
Control of Hydrocarbons in Rakhine State are behind the Rohingya Genocide
21272354_428241954244140_358360887209622192_n.jpg

রোহিঙ্গা নির্রযাতনের মূলে রাখাইন স্টেটের তেল ও গ্যাস সম্পদের নিয়ন্ত্রণ
রাশিয়ার স্পুটনিক নিউজের খবর-
রোহিঙ্গা সংকটের পেছনে রয়েছে রাখাইনের তেল সম্পদ, ফান্ড দিচ্ছে মার্কিন ইহুদী তেল ব্যবসায়ী জর্জ সারোস এবং কলকাঠি নাড়ছে খোদ আমেরিকা
রাশিয়ার স্পুটনিক নিউজে রাশিয়ান বিশ্লেষকরা সাম্প্রতিক রোহিঙ্গা সংকটের জন্য রাখাইন স্টেটের তেল ও গ্যাস সম্পদের নিয়ন্ত্রণ নেয়াকে দায়ী করেছে। তাদের বিশ্লেষণে-
১) এই ঘটনাটি ঘটনো হয়েছে চীনকে বিপদে ফেলতে। কারণ চীন রাখাইন স্টেটে বিপুল পরিমাণে থাকা তেল ও গ্যাস ক্ষেত্রের জন্য ইনভেস্ট করেছে। এর মাধ্যমে চীনের ইনভেস্টকে অস্থিতিশীল করা হবে।
২) এই ঘটনার মাধ্যমে দক্ষিণ-পূর্ব এশিয়াতে জঙ্গীবাদ বিস্তৃত করা হবে (এই কাজটি করে আমেরিকা)
৩) আশিয়ান দেশগুলো বিশেষ করে মুসলিম মালায়েশিয়া ও ইন্দোনেশিয়ার সাথে মায়ানমারের সম্পর্ক খারাপ করা হবে।
৪) পুরো ঘটনাকে পেছন থেকে কলকাঠি নাড়ছে আমেরিকা।
৫) এর পেছনে দীর্ঘমেয়াদী ফান্ডিং আছে মার্কিন-হ্যাংগেরিয়ান ইহুদী তেল ব্যবসায়ী জর্জ সারোসের।

http://rtnews24.net/international/77430

Big oil, failed democracy and the world’s shame in Myanmar
Ramzy Baroud | Published — Monday 11 September 2017

Aung San Suu Kyi, the “great humanitarian,” seems to have run out of integrity as the UN finally confirms that what is happening to the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar is ethnic cleansing.
Suu Kyi has not even had the moral courage to utter a few words of sympathy for the victims. Instead, she could only say: “We have to take care of everybody who is in our country.”

Meanwhile, her spokesman and other mouthpieces launched a campaign of vilification against the Rohingya, accusing them of burning their own villages and fabricating their own rape stories.
But well documented reports give us more than a glimpse of the harrowing reality experienced by the Rohingya. Fleeing refugees who made it to Bangladesh after a nightmarish journey spoke of the murder of children, the rape of women and the burning of villages. Some of these accounts have been verified through satellite images provided by Human Rights Watch, showing wiped out villages throughout the state.

Certainly, the fate of the Rohingya is not entirely new. But what makes it particularity pressing is that the West is now fully on the side of the very government that is carrying out these atrocious acts. And there is a reason for that: Oil.

Massive deposits untapped because of the Western boycott of Myanmar’s junta are now available to the highest bidder. It is a bonanza, and all are invited. Shell, ENI, Total, Chevron and many others are investing large sums, while the Chinese — who dominated Myanmar’s economy for many years — are being slowly pushed out.

It is this wealth, and the need to undermine China’s superpower status in Asia, that has brought the West back and installed Suu Kyi as leader in a country that has never fundamentally changed, but only rebranded itself to pave the road for the return of ‘Big Oil.’

However, the Rohingya are paying the price. Do not let Myanmar’s official propaganda mislead you. The Rohingya are not foreigners, intruders or immigrants. Their kingdom of Arakan dates from the 8th century. They learned about Islam from Arab traders and, with time, it became a Muslim-majority region.

Arakan is Myanmar’s modern-day Rakhine state, where most of the estimated 1.2 million Rohingya still live. The false notion that the Rohingya are outsiders started in 1784 when the King conquered Arakan and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

Attacks on Rohingya, and constant attempts at driving them out of Rakhine, have continued. This happened after the Japanese defeat of British forces in Burma in 1942; in 1948; after the military takeover in 1962; and in 1977, when the junta drove over 200,000 Rohingya out of their homes to Bangladesh.

The silence of Western countries on the genocide of the Rohingya is a direct result of their rivalry over the country’s unexploited wealth.

Ramzy Baroud
In 1982, the junta passed a law that stripped most Rohingya of their citizenship, declaring them illegal in their own country.

The war on the Rohingya began again in 2012. Every single episode, since then, has followed a typical narrative: Clashes between Buddhist nationalists and Rohingya, often leading to tens of thousands of the latter being chased out to the Bay of Bengal, to the jungles and, those who survive, to refugee camps.

Amid international silence, only a few respected figures such as Pope Francis spoke out in support of the Rohingya. They are good people, the Pope said in a deeply moving prayer last February. “They are peaceful people, and they are our brothers and sisters.” His call for justice was never heeded.

Meanwhile Arab and Muslim countries remained largely silent, despite a public outcry to do something to end the genocide. With access to the reality through their many emissaries on the ground, Western governments know only too well about the indisputable facts, but ignore them anyway. When US, European and Japanese corporations lined up to exploit the treasures of Myanmar, all they needed was the nod of approval from the US government. The Barack Obama administration hailed Myanmar’s opportunities even before the 2015 elections brought Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to power. After that date, Myanmar became another American success story, oblivious, of course, to the facts that genocide has been underway there for years.

The violence in Myanmar is likely to escalate and reach other ASEAN countries, simply because the two main ethnic and religious groups in these countries are dominated and almost evenly split between Buddhists and Muslims.

The triumphant return of the West to exploit Myanmar’s wealth and the US-Chinese rivalries are likely to complicate the situation even further, if ASEAN does not end its appalling silence and move with a determined strategy to pressure the Myanmar government to end its genocide of the Rohingya.
People around the world must take a stand. Religious communities should speak out. Human rights groups should do more to document the crimes of the Myanmar government and hold to account those who supply them with weapons.

Respected South African Bishop Desmond Tutu had strongly admonished Suu Kyi for turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide.

It is the least we expect from the man who stood up to apartheid in his own country, and wrote the famous words: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
• Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California.
Visit his website: www.ramzybaroud.net.
 

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