London has been informed and never again

Maung Zarni

Thee Complicity of the (mythical) International Community, starting with the United Nations
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We do live in a fundamentally sick and non-functional global governance structure.  

One would have thought that after the Holocaust, Indonesia, West Pakistan, Sudan, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc. we live in a qualitatively different world. 

Hell, no! 

Never again! is made a poor-taste joke, an insult to the injury of the Rohingyas.

We are witnessing the 21st century's FIRST full-blown genocide. We are witnessing this on our mobile phones.   Images and cries of genocidal victims brought to you by our service providers.   You can watch genocide on a train ride, during long haul flights - if you have WiFi on board; or bus ride, or simply from our garden, or during your dog walks.

(Forget this formulaic phrase "judicial review".  But the time the court is set up most Rohingyas would be either dead and destroyed.    And lawyers are the last group to be trusted with Truth and Justice.   It is not in their intellectual or ideological orientation: neither truth nor justice is their ultimate goal.    That's why renowned Law Professor Philippe Sand at the University College of London (UCL), the author of "East West Street". firmly wrote something akin to "lawyers are least qualified to have the last word on crimes against humanity and genocides". )

Kofi Annan, the man who only last year spitted out the usual excuse - 'judicial review' - before the G word should be used as if those of us who have studied this issue for years, threw it around frivolously, and as  a matter of a campaign slogan.    Yes, that Dr Annan, who saved his bureaucratic career by shelving the now infamous "Genocide telegram" from Rwanda: like a good servant, Annan knew the Masters' mood.   Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright were in no mood for stopping the imminent genocide.   Never mind Slick Willy, but Madame Albright who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary as a "Catholic" girl and raised as such in the new country of USA didn't think genocides were bad for everyone - not just for those who lived under Nazi occupation. 

Knowledge IS not the issue.   Perhaps after the Pentagon and USG - the United Nations is a massive clearing house of information.    UN may be underfunded.   But there is a constant flow of information.

The problem is what flows upward or horizontally (among We the World's People) is determined by the needs and interests of Power and Bureaucracy - not human well-being.  

The UNITED NATIONS have ​indeed ​known the nature of the persecution since July 1978 since the UNHCR from Geneva first got involved.    

In 1993, UN created the mandate for Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar on the basis of its grave concerns, among other things, for Myanmar army's systematic rights violation against Rohingyas.      

As a matter of fact, UNHCR had been a "Bystander" in the genocide, until its local official in Bangladesh blew the "ethnic cleansing" whistle a year go.

As I have always insisted POWER KNOWS TRUTH.   When it isn't not in the interests of the powerful and of the organisations, it pretends NOT to know.

UNHCR had pussyfooted around this issue of Rohingyas. starting with compliance to Myanmar authorities' insistence that the word Rohingyas be not used.

In the midst of the "Rohingya boat people's crisis" those UN and gov officials from various countries who were gathered there adopted this typical Genocide Appeasement policy.

Visiting Auschwitz 6 months ago, I picked up this famous (or infamous) book entitled 'London has been informed"  - published by the Auschwitz National Polish Museum: about how the Polish Resistance did all the research about what was going in concentration camps in Poland.   London was informed, and it didn't give a damn  - because the British Gov was more concerned about securing Hitler's cooperation to flush out the Soviet moles in UK whom the British military intelligence was more paranoid about (they would overthrow the feudal class system of Britain, It was feared) than hundreds of thousands of Jewish prisoners from around Europe being transported in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Alas, never again!  What a poor taste joke!   

​Myanmar Genocide is the first ever Facebooked genocide of this century.   The way things are going Rohingyas will NOT be the last victim of the systematic crime of Barbarity.   Not for this century.   

Nor for the next one (hopefully, there will be no next year as We the humans, especially Humans in charge of powerful institutions, never learn from history.​

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​Again all this rant is immaterial for the Rohingyas, hundreds of thousands of whom are being starved out in my country or languishing in Bangladesh as aid is not really coming in.  

God, what kind of God are you that created this world where genocides are so routine and so recurring a pattern.    What kind of Karma?   

What have the Rohingyas done wrong other than being who they are and where they happen to be?  

 I guess that is a big enough crime in the Burmese eyes! 

How sad that I am a human, instead of a dog,