Rakhine is burning. The hapless Rohingyas are being butchered, children are thrown into fire, women are disrobed in public before being gang-raped and houses are looted, torched and razed. In the process Rohingya neighbourhoods are destroyed.
In the past, extremist members of the majority Buddhist community carried out such dastardly acts while the security forces looked the other way. Denial was the order of the day and little punitive measures were taken against the perpetrators. Over the last several weeks the situation has taken a turn for the worse. The law enforcement agencies, including the armed forces, have actively unleashed violence. The attack on the security forces allegedly by radicalised Rohingyas was a flimsy pretext for a violent crackdown on this marginalised community. There is a strong body of evidence to argue that such an assault on the Rohingyas was part of a well-prepared strategy involving non-state actors and state agencies. In October 2016, mainstream international media began reporting distribution of lethal weapons among a section of the population in the Rakhine state. This was soon followed by gruesome acts of violence against the Rohingya minority that is now being aptly described as 'planned genocide'. (Courtesy of thedailystar.net)
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