Well, Do Something!
What on Earth does the United Nations accomplish, other than wringing its hands with "profound regret" over the world's trouble spots; the outcomes of natural disasters, internecine warfare and other urgent events reflecting their insipid inability to project themselves authoritatively as the world's premier partner for peace and security in the world?Admittedly, it is difficult to persuade enough member-countries to lend enough of their military to the world body to enable it to enter conflict zones with the intention to provide a buffer between warring factions. And since its charter appears to insist that they will enter troubled zones only by invitation of the very totalitarian miscreants who cause all the misery, they're rather hamstrung.
Burma is one of those truculently dangerous hermit states that oppress their people through their churlishly-vicious military-style governance. It wants the outside world to believe it doesn't exist. It cares little how many of its people perish whether as a result of a natural disaster, or through starvation. It simply insists it must go its own way, and brooks no interference. Its great good friend China, respects that.
The Rohingya people, a Muslim minority in Burma exist on the knife-edge of brutal repression and institutionalized privation. Forbidden to own land, requiring permission to marry or to travel, they are prohibited from practising their faith, denied access to public education and to even basic health services.
They are tormented, driven out of their homes, forced to become slave labourers for the Burmese military machine. Their citizenship rights were revoked in 1982, and they are recognized by the United Nations as representing the world's most destitute and persecuted refugees. Perhaps they and the Sudanese Darfurians could take comparative notes in suffering.
They have fled in their hundreds of thousands, hoping for refuge from their living hell, over the border into impoverished Bangladesh. Where they have set up makeshift camps wherever possible, and live there in vastly overcrowded and destitute conditions.
Their squatters' camps earn them the anger of poor Bangladeshis who view the refugees as a challenge to their own miserable hopes for advancement. Roughly a half-million Rohingya have become illegal migrants in Bangladesh.
"They remain trapped in a desperate situation with no future, vulnerable to neglect, abuse and manipulation, and to the kind of intense violent crackdowns they are suffering right now", explained Medecins Sans Frontieres in a news release.
Xenophobic attacks by Bangladeshis - reminiscent of what is occurring in South Africa against desperate refugee Zimbabweans seeking refuge there - has resulted in a surge of beatings, machete wounds and rape. "Malnutrition and mortality rates were past emergency thresholds and people had little access to safe drinking water, sanitation or medical care", reported MSF.
Yet a camp along the Burmese border continues to swell with additional desperate refugees, and there is no hope in sight for these men, women and children. Yet another horrific instance of inhumanity the world looks away from.
Labels: Human Rights, Troublespots, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 18, 2010
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