Why aren’t more voices raised in defence of the Rohingya

A Rohingya woman breaks down after a fight erupted during food distribution by local volunteers at Kutupalong, Bangladesh.The massive refugee camp in Kutupalong was set up in the early '90s to accommodate the first waves of Rohingya Muslim refugees who started escaping violence and persecution in Myanmar. - Bernat Armangue,The Associated Press

I saw a video the other day of Abdullah Karim, a British aid worker on the Bangladesh side of the Myanmar border. Tears streaming from his eyes, he cries "We're coming here and they have family members who have been raped, who've been brutalized, and we're coming here with a bag of rice expecting things to be better. By Allah I'm ashamed of myself. I'm crying because we can't do anything for them … Our leaders should be ashamed. What good is your army? What good is your forces and your tanks? When your sisters are being raped? Have you no shame?"

While the UN debates the semantics of whether its "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" occurring in Myanmar, more than 500,000 terrified innocent Rohingya men, women, children and elderly, including more than 1,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the Myanmar border into Bangladesh in just the past five weeks. According to the UN, these are the most forgotten, most persecuted minority in the world.

Imagine frantically grabbing what you can — your children, your belongings while your homes are being sprayed indiscriminately with bullets. Imaging seeing soldiers kicking babies and toddlers around like "soccer practice," pregnant women getting raped and their unborn babies cut from their bellies and their breasts cut off. Imagine seeing countless innocents getting shot in their backs as they flee. Imagine landmines lining the path of your only escape route, only to end up in a vast muddy "no man's land" with thousands of other terrified hungry people who are just like you. No sanitation, roads, or even food, and where even the country you are seeking assistance from doesn't want you because they too are destitute and hungry.

What has the UN done but talk? What have politicians done but issue statements and talk?

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Our own Prime Minister Trudeau failed to raise this issue at the recent general assembly meeting at the UN — likely to the relief of the other world leaders for to do so would require ownership of the problem and the moral requirement to do something.

Whereas Trudeau issued a strongly worded letter to Aung San Kyi — Myanmar's de facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, honorary Canadian citizen, and "champion of human rights and freedoms" — she declared she "has no idea why the Rohingya are fleeing the country." Incredibly, the Canadian government continues to give millions of dollars in aid to the Myanmar government and greedy, unscrupulous foreign governments line up to sell arms and munitions to Myanmar.

It seems that flouting international human rights and freedoms afforded by the Geneva Convention is in vogue nowadays. Governments know they can freely slaughter innocent human lives — even aid workers and first-responders — with impunity — whether in Myanmar, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Central African Republic, Afghanistan or Yemen.

The UN, charged to step in to prevent genocides like the Holocaust, has failed miserably in its mandate. Its toothlessness, inaction and impotence is deafening.

All of this accomplishes one thing; to keep humanitarian aid groups in business.

Disgusting.

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The Rohingya problem isn't new. It has been brewing for a long time but has only caught our attention because a small band of Rohingya men have had enough of the world's inaction and decided to fight the Myanmar army themselves. They are called "terrorists" by Aung. Through collective punishment which Aung has failed to stop, the Myanmar army has brutalized the Rohingya with hopes they will be too terrorized and too afraid to ever return.

It is working.

When we hear of a raging fire in a land far from us, it is human nature to ignore it. "It's not our problem — others will handle it." However, we fail to realize that such an attitude can cause the fire to spread — sometimes to the point where it does become our problem — directly or indirectly.

Sadly, we live in an era where some communities and faiths feel they are superior to others, and that they have the right to kill, maim, humiliate and decimate others — all over power, land and borders. Humankind has not evolved to the point where we consider each other equals, where we celebrate our differences, diversity of our faiths, and where the resources and wealth of this planet are shared on an equal basis for the good of humankind.

This is not about the Rohingya being Muslim. This is about basic rights, freedoms, decency and respect that should be guaranteed to all human beings equally, anywhere on this earth.

How can any human being eat a meal, lay in a cosy bed, and not feel any sense of guilt or remorse knowing their neighbour — whether near or far — is hungry, cold and oppressed?

As a Canadian, as a human being with freedoms, security and a full stomach, press our government to stop all humanitarian catastrophes whether against our own Indigenous people, or vulnerable people, cultures and populations abroad.

Raza Khan is a Hamilton-born and raised family physician. He is a board member of Islamic Relief Canada.