Domestic peace in Myanmar hangs by a slender thread. Meiktila, a trading town of 100,000 people in the central Mandalay region, is a reminder of how terribly slender it is and how the world community can no longer remain indifferent to the plight of the Muslim minority, known as the Rohingya, in that country. Buddhist mobs have marauded through several towns in central Myanmar since violence erupted on March 20 following a trivial dispute over a broken gold clip between a Muslim jeweler and a Buddhist customer. The death toll from communal violence in the center of the country over the past 10 days has risen to 43 with more than 1,300 homes, mosques and other buildings destroyed, according to the state media. Surely, there is a pattern to the anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar and “Buddhist extremism and hate campaigns” must be behind it as Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told a contact group meeting in Jeddah on Saturday. Ministers from OIC states are to meet in Saudi Arabia on April 14 to discuss the Myanmar developments. The devastation in Meiktila was eerily reminiscent of last year's clashes that left hundreds of people dead and more than 100,000 displaced — almost all of them Muslim. Described as one of the world's most persecuted or one of the most beleaguered, the Rohingya are a people who found themselves in the wrong country or on the wrong side of the border because the colonial authorities redrew the map of an existing country or added new territories to it. Until 1937, Myanmar was part of British India. So in a way the Rohingya are history's victims. Myanmar's politics only added to their misery. Successive governments in Yangon have refused to grant them citizen status and have enacted strict rules governing their lives. Mostly concentrated in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, the Rohingya have always suffered persecution and discrimination at the hands of local authorities or the majority Buddhists, sometimes both acting in unison. The security forces' passivity in the face of massive violence in Meiktila has invited charges of state collusion in what is going on in Myanmar. “There's no excuse for violence against innocent people, and the Rohingya hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do,” President Barack Obama said last year while addressing students at Yangon University. Obama's visit to Myanmar, the first by a serving US president, came after two major outbreaks of violence beginning in June 2012. Yes, the crux of the problem lies in denial of “dignity” or citizenship to Rohingyas. In fact, continued denial of citizenship for the Rohingya and discriminatory practices against them are two sides of the same coin. Far too long, the world community has behaved as though this is a Bangladesh problem because Rohingya are mostly of Bengali origin. Far too long, the UN has been indulgent toward the junta in Myanmar just as the government in Yangon has been turning a blind eye to the activities of Buddhist extremists. This has to stop. The UN has to do some plain speaking to Myanmar backed by credible threats if it continues to fail in its primary duty: Giving protection to the person and property of its most vulnerable sections of the people.
