Democracy as Domination: Myanmar, Muslims and the Push for Ethnic Hegemony

27.3.13

Democracy as Domination: Myanmar, Muslims and the Push for Ethnic Hegemony - There are many lessons to be learned by the latest, I stress latest, violence inflicted upon Muslim peoples in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Not least of these is the Muslim response, awaiting these many long years to be ignited in indignant rage by reporting of massacres of thousands of Rohingyas through western media outlets. It is as the native peoples of the Americas experienced – recognition only through the ‘discovery’ of Western eyes, a brutal and violent denial of their existence let alone worth and humanity, before a coloniser’s view was turned onto them. Perhaps more on that debacle later... Back now to 1996, and a chance meeting I had in Khartoum with a group of Rohingyas, desperately seeking out the help and support of other Muslims during a time when ideas of the ummah (pre-the internet revolution by about 18 months) were running amazingly high. We are all one, screamed so many sermons. The truth, as we saw then and now, is something else. Anyhow in my naivety, I had asked these brothers from Burma what Aung San Suu Kyi has said about their plight. Feted as the pro-democracy leader and poster victim of SLORC, Suu Kyi’s voice was the voice heard in the West as both indictment of the junta that ruled Myanmar and hope for its post SLORC future. “There are no Rohingyas, only Burmese,” was their report of her answer.