(The Conversation) – When 2022 began, there was trepidation about what might happen in at least ten regions. Topping most lists were concerns about tensions in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

What actually transpired in 2022 were some of the most shocking humanitarian scenes in modern history – with a backdrop of the continuing pandemic and extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.

This has prompted experts to speak of an era of “polycrisis”, where countries are dealing with cascading and interconnected crises.

The World Bank estimates 23 countries – with a combined population of 850 million people – currently face high or medium intensity conflict. The number of conflict-affected countries has doubled over the past decade.

This has triggered massive refugee flows. As of May 2022, a global record of 100 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide.

With the backdrop of last year’s bitter legacy, what crises are most concerning as we head into 2023?

There are a range of new flashpoints and ongoing deadly conflicts the world has largely ignored due to the focus on Ukraine.

2022’s bitter legacy

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been seared into our memories of 2022. It has been one of the fastest and largest displacement crises in decades.

Also making headlines last year was continuing violence in Afghanistan, where six million people were on the brink of famine by August 2022 according to the UN refugee agency, and the mayhem in Myanmar following the military’s February 2021 coup.

The opening days of 2023 look bleak. Those in Ukraine and Afghanistan are now facing winter without access to food, water, health care and other essential supplies.

The situation in Myanmar is only worsening, especially for ethnic minority regions and in Rohingya refugee camps.

New flashpoint: Iran

In Iran, 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini was arrested at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code, and she died after being held in their custody on September 16 last year.

Her death set off a sustained uprising in more than 150 cities and 140 universities in all 31 provinces of Iran, according to UN human rights chief Volker Türk.

More than 15,000 people, including children, have been arrested in connection with the protests and are threatened with execution. At least 26 of them currently face the death penalty, and at least four have reportedly already been executed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps say the average age of arrested protesters is as young as 15.

The prospects of a peaceful resolution of this crisis in 2023 are low and require strong global intervention.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has made firm statements against the death penalty and this “dark chapter” in Iran’s history with her Canadian and New Zealand counterparts, and she should continue this rhetoric.

Tensions in the Asia-Pacific

In our region, Sri Lanka faced economic collapse and a mostly peaceful uprising in mid-2022, and remains in a precarious position.

North Korea remains an aggressive actor. Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply this year as Pyongyang has carried out an unprecedented blitz of weapons tests, including the launch of one of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles in November.

From Australia’s perspective, our primary national security risk remains developments in the South China Sea and Taiwan.

More aggressive language on Taiwan emerged from the Chinese Communist Party Congress, and statements by President Joe Biden indicated the United States would not stand by if China invaded Taiwan.

Current Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to double Japan’s defence spending in response to these tensions.

There’s a high risk of miscalculation on this issue from all sides, and there’s the growing threat of grey zone tactics – coercive measures which don’t qualify as conventional military battle.

We must avoid tunnel vision

What we also witnessed in 2022 was that the world’s gaze and assistance was so firmly focused on events in Ukraine that many other long-running conflicts producing extreme human suffering were ignored or receded into the background.

For example, it’s hard to overstate the severity of the crises in East Africa of food, shelter and health systems – though comparably this has received little media attention.

What’s more, the UN Human Rights Office estimates more than 306,000 civilians were killed over ten years in the Syrian conflict, and any peaceful resolution is still “elusive” according to UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen.

There are deep structural conflicts in Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo threatening people, species and the environment. The global community must pay attention.

Dealing with ‘polycrisis’

Nations, civil society movements and the UN must be nimble enough to deal with the state of “polycrisis” or “permacrisis” the globe is enduring – where armed conflicts combine with and exacerbate issues such as inflation, cyber threats, geo-politics and the energy crisis.

World leaders are dealing with a host of pressing issues:

• the climate emergency

• the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID pandemic, by no means over

• 100 million displaced people

• the increasing global population, now over eight billion

• the rising cost of living.

All this means 2023 is likely to be another turbulent year.

Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Rohingya refugees and victims are suing Facebook for $150 billion. They allege that Facebook played a key role in the brutal crackdown against Muslims in Myanmar by promoting anti-Rohingya posts. This online hate turned into real-world violence, according to the lawsuit.

As stated by Noam Chomsky, author of Manufacturing Consent, in this new digital era, Facebook is not just a platform for sharing knowledge or social networking, it is also a space for manipulation, targeting, and incitement. The Rohingya case and lawsuit, to a large extent, confirms Chomsky’s view.

Meanwhile, this week a letter submitted by lawyers to Facebook’s UK office shows the reality of this case. It says their clients and family members have been subjected to acts of “serious violence, murder and/or other grave human rights abuses” as part of a campaign of genocide conducted by the ruling regime and civilian extremists in Myanmar.

In 2019, I met with Dr Maung Zarni to discuss his book, Essays on Myanmar’s Genocide of Rohingyas (2012-2018). Zarni told me that he had been following and documenting the stories of the Rohingya genocide as a Burmese exiled human rights activist.

I opened the discussion about Facebook’s Rohingya case and asked him: “Does Facebook really support genocide in Rohingya?”

“Facebook acts against its promise. It has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence,” he responded candidly.

In 2018, Facebook confessed that it had not done enough to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech against the Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Myanmar.

Zarni explained: “We understand that the Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers, and civilian officials in the country.”

Seemingly, the campaign in Myanmar looked similar to Russia’s online influence and disinformation campaigns prior to the 2016 US presidential election. According to the book, Hybrid War: Attack on the West, human rights groups focused on the Facebook group, “Opposite Eyes”, which shared Myanmar’s military propaganda pictures.

Facebook is failing to aid an important international effort to establish accountability. This creates global concerns, especially regarding the brainwashing of youth in Myanmar. As observed by the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM) in its September 2018 report: “For most users age between 16-35 [in Myanmar], Facebook is the internet.” The report also states that “Facebook has been used to spread hate” in the country and regretted that the company was unable to provide country-specific information about hate speech on its platform.

Facebook’s manipulation of consent on Myanmar’s genocide policy against Rohingya Muslims is neither new nor shocking. The UN refugee agency even inappropriately collected and shared personal information on Rohingya refugees with Bangladesh, which was then shared with Myanmar to verify people for possible repatriation.

Filtering laws on social media must be applied strictly by governments for the protection of its users.

Elif Selin Calik is a journalist and independent researcher. She is a regular contributor to publications like TRT World, Daily Sabah, Rising Powers in Global Governance and Hurriyet Daily News. She was one of the the founders of the In-Depth News Department of Anadolu News Agency and participated in United Nations COP23 in Bonn as an observer. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies from the International University of Sarajevo and a second MA in Global Diplomacy from SOAS, University of London

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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What’s behind the $150 billion Rohingya-Facebook lawsuit? | DW News

The Indo-Pacific region, which includes 24 nations and stretches from Australia to Japan and from India to the U.S. west coast, is home to both the largest concentration of humanity and the greatest source of global emissions. In 2020, the region produced 16.75 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the consumption of oil, gas and coal — more than all other regions worldwide combined.

Success in the global effort to keep global warming below 2 C and stop catastrophic climate change depends on the region to move away from coal and other fossil fuels. Yet at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, China and India proposed countries agree to “phase down” coal instead of “phase out.”

Insufficient financing and the need to increase total energy availability — especially as more sectors become electrified — remain among the structural challenges to energy transitions around the world. China, however, is currently in a better position than the West to assist the Indo-Pacific due to geography, trade dynamics and its own clean tech sector. This could reorient economic networks and shift the balance of power in the region.

As a researcher in the field of green-industrial strategy, I am worried that the democratic world is increasingly losing ground to China in this emerging geo-economic arena. Unless the West provides an alternate network to help the region meet its energy transition needs, it risks ceding the economic alignment of the Indo-Pacific region to China’s government.

Decarbonization

A recent Bloomberg report demonstrated that many Indo-Pacific states can’t meet their 2050 energy transition needs from domestic onshore solar and wind generation. Energy imports have long been a feature of regional politics, but the economics of the energy transition change existing dynamics, favouring fixed-grid integration over more flexible liquid energy imports.

It costs less, in many cases, to build large grids that deliver energy as electrons compared to the added costs of using an energy carrier like hydrogen, which might need to be imported, to meet clean energy needs. Already the Indo-Pacific is moving in the direction of being “wired up,” as demonstrated by the proposed 3,800-kilometre-long “sun cable” to connect Australian solar resources with energy markets in Singapore.

The most efficient course of decarbonization for many East Asian states is to expand their grid connections to their neighbour’s, but this is marred by geo-security risks. Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam, for example, might be less willing to stand up to Beijing if most of their electricity ran through China. And does Japan really want to meet its renewable energy needs by routing power through Russian grid connections?

In addition, much of the industrial capacity for key green technologies and resources required for Indo-Pacific countries to tap their own renewable resources is based in China. A whopping 70 per cent of global lithium cell manufacturing capacity is found in China, and Chinese firms are responsible for the production of 71 per cent of photovoltaic panels (through a supply chain riddled with the usage of Uyghur slave labour).

Meanwhile, a recent White House report put Chinese firm ownership of global cobalt and lithium processing infrastructure at 72 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.

Export polluting industries

China’s dominance in the production of clean energy technologies is also bolstered by the success of the nation’s trade networks. China is already the largest source of trade for most countries in the region, and through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is increasingly providing financing for regional infrastructure.

The nature of Chinese infrastructure investments through the initiative has, so far, been damaging to global efforts to combat climate change. China had been the largest financier globally of coal plants, following a development pattern established by wealthier countries (western and non-western), of exporting polluting industries to poorer nations.

However, President Xi Jinping, in keeping with his endorsed vision of ecological civilization, has made improving the sustainability of China’s trade networks a priority. China’s established trade networks within the region provide a foundation for an increasingly Sino-centric economic orbit, and will likely be flipped to distribute clean energy infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific.

Energy transitions

It’s important the West develop its own green foreign investment strategy to provide Indo-Pacific states a choice of infrastructure as they transition their economies. Giving Indo-Pacific countries, especially energy-poor South and East Asian states, the option to purchase low-carbon technology and resources from a variety of sources will alleviate pressure to concede to Chinese foreign-policy.

Over the long term, the West must focus on developing supply chains in solar and and lithium-ion batteries to balance out Chinese capacity in these markets. However, there are a range of energy transition technologies that western states hold a competitive advantage in, and that could be the focus of a development strategy for the region — starting right now. Investments should, for instance, immediately focus on lowering the costs of exporting green hydrogen by maritime routes.

Australia and Canada both have favourable renewable energy resources to produce green hydrogen, with Canada a leader in the development of hydrogen fuel cells.

Many Indo-Pacific countries have opportunities to generate power from sources beyond wind and solar, with Indonesia and the Philippines already market leaders for geothermal. When it comes to wind, U.S. and European wind turbine manufacturers share about 60 per cent of the market.

In June, G7 leaders announced the Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, which aims to use their financing potential to help low- and middle-income countries meet an estimated US$40 trillion in infrastructure needs.

It is too early to speculate on the success of the B3W, but its visible actions have been limited to scoping tours in Latin America and West Africa, with another planned for South East Asia.

However, the B3W could look to the recent financing deal between the U.S., Germany, France and the United Kingdom to aid South Africa’s transition from coal power for inspiration. The first B3W funded projects are slated to be announced in early 2022.

Decision-makers in China know that in the short term they are uncertain to come out on top in a hard power competition with the U.S., and have identified economic dominance as another front of strategic competition. Subsequently, if the West doesn’t want to further cede the economic orientation of the Indo-Pacific towards China, it must increase its efforts to provide the region’s states with a strategic choice in how they meet their energy transition infrastructure needs.

Jonas Goldman, Reserach Associate, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Bloomberg: “Why China’s Electric Car Lead Has Been a Long Time Coming”

( 48hills.org) – This week, military officers in Myanmar (formerly Burma) overthrew that nation’s democratically elected government after the party it preferred lost the parliamentary elections. The military claimed voter fraud without presenting any proof. It tried to fill the streets with cheering supporters. It shut down some Internet access and all opposition media. People got their news from the government-owned TV stations spewing pro-military propaganda.

I’ve reported from Myanmar and seen the repression firsthand. This could have been the US, if President Donald Trump had had more support from the military for his attempt to stay in power despite losing the election. Both Trump and Myanmar generals share a similar view about democracy.

Michael Beer, executive director of Nonviolence International, tells me in an interview that the generals in Myanmar “see themselves as overlords” and “look down on democracy and the masses. They saw the dysfunction in the US as a verification of their own need to manage democracy.”

To understand the coup in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, it’s important to understand the country’s past.

US promotes heroin trade

After the 1949 revolution in China, Washington sponsored anti-communist groups in neighboring Burma to disrupt the new, revolutionary government. The Kuomintang, the nationalists who lost the civil war in China, financed its Burmese operations with heroin sales.

Later, the CIA-owned airline Air America shipped arms to anti-communist militias allied with Washington during the Vietnam War and, on the return trip, brought back heroin from Burma and Laos.

While the Burmese drug trade was controlled by ethnic groups in the north of the country, Burma’s military benefited from a system of payoffs and corruption, even offering protection to one of the country’s most infamous drug lords. Today, Myanmar is the second-largest producer of heroin in the world after Afghanistan.

First hand reporting

I reported from Myanmar in 1995. The military had been in power since 1962 and ran a repressive regime. Meeting with opposition leaders involved safe houses and circuitous routes to make sure I wasn’t followed.

“There is no freedom of association, no free press, no freedom of political activity of any kind,” an underground opposition leader told me for an article for the San Francisco Chronicle.

While I was in the country, the military released Aung San Suu Kyi after six years of house arrest. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was the country’s leading opposition figure. She enjoyed strong backing from London and Washington, and was already favoring neo-liberal, pro-US policies.

Subsequently, Suu Kyi was arrested and released many times. By 2015, she and her National League for Democracy (NLD) had won parliamentary elections. The military still exercised strong influence, however, holding a guaranteed 25 percent of parliament’s seats.

Once in power, Suu Kyi further revealed that she is a Burmese nationalist who opposes rights for the country’s ethnic minorities. She defended the military’s attacks on Rohingya villages, which forced more than 1 million to flee the country.

But she also fought to wrest power from the military. Sometimes the NLD and military cooperated; sometimes relations blew up. On February 1, troops loyal to General Min Aung Hlaing seized Suu Kyi, along with numerous NLD leaders, and government officials in early morning raids.

Hlaing was facing forced retirement this summer and all the corrupt riches that come with the job. “He’s accrued enormous wealth,” says peace activist Beer. “Family members get all kinds of special deals.”

For a time, the military was willing to share some power with wealthy business people and the NLD. Ultimately, however, their thirst for power and wealth led them to seize power and to jail their rivals.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Trump had the same motives. Luckily he did not succeed.

The coup that wasn’t

Nine days after the November 3 election, Trump’s lawyers told him he lost, and that no amount of electoral or legal challenges would change the results.

But Trump was determined to stay in power by any means necessary. So he accepted the views of other advisors who promulgate outlandish conspiracy theories. For example, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed a computerized vote counting system was programmed to switch Trump votes to Biden. It didn’t. The company that built the machines, Dominion Voting Systems, has sued Giuliani for $1.3 billion.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn proposed a series of blatantly illegal and unconstitutional tactics. He wanted Trump to “temporarily” suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and have “the military oversee a national re-vote,” and “silence the destructive media.”

Those are the indications that Trump was prepared to toss out the Constitution to stay in power. Here’s my projection of how that could have happened:

Let’s say the Electoral College vote was narrow, with victory hinging on a few thousand votes in swing states. Trump calls on right-wing militias to “safeguard” the vote, which they do by becoming violent.

In response, millions of liberals, progressives and others supporting the Constitution march peacefully. Right wing militias attack the demonstrations and clash with Antifa.

Citing “chaos in the streets,” Trump declares a state of emergency and orders out the National Guard, local police, paramilitary border guards, and whatever other armed security forces that support him. Trump stays in the White House and promises fair elections in 2022.

Trump calls for large rallies of his supporters. Anti-Trumpers do the same. The immediate future of the US then hinges not on the hallowed institutions of “democracy” but on how the Pentagon and other armed forces react to the popular opposition to Trump.

As for Myanmar, there are some signs of resistance. Doctors at a government hospital have gone on strike; residents in some neighborhoods have been protesting the coup by banging on pots and pans. At this time, we don’t know if or how long the coup will last.

But I know this for sure: The people of Myanmar are no more interested in having a military dictatorship than the American people want one controlled by Trump.

48hills.org

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Reuters: “U.N. demands Myanmar coup leaders free Suu Kyi”

Myanmar’s military committed extensive atrocities against the Rohingya, including murder, rape, and arson, that peaked during its late 2017 campaign of ethnic cleansing, forcing more than 740,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. In September 2019, the United Nations-backed International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar found that the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever.”

“The ICJ order to Myanmar to take concrete steps to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya is a landmark step to stop further atrocities against one of the world’s most persecuted people,” said Param-Preet Singh, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “Concerned governments and UN bodies should now weigh in to ensure that the order is enforced as the genocide case moves forward.”

The order follows Gambia’s November 11, 2019 application to the court alleging that abuses by Myanmar’s military in Rakhine State against the Rohingya violate the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and urgently seeking provisional measures. The ICJ held hearings on Gambia’s provisional measures request in December.

The ICJ provisional measures order is legally binding on the parties. In November, Myanmar explicitly recognized the ICJ’s authority and in December, Aung San Suu Kyi, representing Myanmar before the ICJ in her capacity as foreign minister, acknowledged the court’s role as a “vital refuge of international justice.”

The court unanimously ordered Myanmar to prevent all acts under article 2 of the Genocide Convention, ensure that its military does not commit genocide, and take effective measures to preserve evidence related to the underlying genocide case. The court has also ordered Myanmar to report on its implementation of the order in four months, and then every six months afterwards.

The order does not prejudge the question of the court’s jurisdiction to deal with the merits of the case, the case’s admissibility before the court, or the merits of Gambia’s allegation that Myanmar has violated provisions of the Genocide Convention. A case before the ICJ can take years to reach a resolution.

Under article 41(2) of the ICJ Statute, the court’s provisional measures orders are automatically sent to the UN Security Council. Such an order will increase pressure on the council to take concrete action in Myanmar, including through a binding resolution to address some of the indicators of genocidal intent outlined in the comprehensive 2018 report of the international fact-finding mission.

For example, the Security Council could pass a resolution directing Myanmar to lift restrictions on Rohingya’s freedom of movement, eliminate unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian access to Rakhine State, repeal discriminatory laws, and ban practices that limit Rohingya access to education, health care, and livelihoods. Thus far, the Security Council has not taken significant action on Myanmar, in part because of Russia and China’s apparent willingness to use their vetoes to shield Myanmar’s government and military.

“The ICJ order brings increased scrutiny of Myanmar’s horrific brutality against the Rohingya and raises the political cost of the UN Security Council’s weak response to the crisis so far,” Singh said. “China and Russia should stop blocking the Security Council from taking action to protect the Rohingya.”

Even with a deadlocked Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could bring the matter of Myanmar before the council under article 99 of the UN Charter. On September 2, 2017, Guterres wrote a letter to the Security Council president urging the council to “press for restraint and calm to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe,’’ and for “full respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, and the continued presence and safety of the United Nations partners to provide humanitarian assistance to those in need without disruption.”

Other UN bodies should take steps to reinforce the order, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly could pass resolutions calling on Myanmar to comply with its terms. This could spur other countries to take concrete action in their bilateral relations with Myanmar.

In filing the genocide case, Gambia has the backing of the 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. On December 9, 2019, the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, both parties to the Genocide Convention, announced that they considered it “their obligation to support the Gambia before the ICJ, as it should concern all of humanity.” On January 9, 2020, the British government welcomed Gambia’s case against Myanmar. Other parties to the convention should press Myanmar to comply with the court’s order, Human Rights Watch said. If Myanmar fails to act, Gambia could raise Myanmar’s non-compliance with the Security Council under article 94 of the UN charter.

“The growing global support for Gambia’s case raises the stakes for Myanmar to engage in the ICJ process in a meaningful way and change its approach to the Rohingya,” Singh said. “The Myanmar government cannot hide behind its powerful friends or the banner of sovereignty to escape its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention.”

Via Human Rights Watch

Via Human Rights Watch

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

U.N.’s Top Court Orders Myanmar To Take All Measures To Prevent Genocide Against Rohingya | TIME

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi is defending Myanmar in court against accusations of genocide.

According to a case brought by the country of Gambia at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice, the Myanmar military in August 2017 carried out a systematic, targeted campaign of terror, rape and murder against its Muslim population.

UN investigators say as many as 10,000 Rohingya – a Muslim minority in this Buddhist-majority nation – were killed. Another 730,000 Rohingya fled the massacre for Bangladesh, joining 300,000 Rohingya who had previously fled oppression in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi said during hearings at the Hague on Dec. 11 that the charge of genocide is “misleading” because “cycles of intercommunal violence” in Myanmar date “back to the 1940s.” The Myanmar military explains its campaign as a counter-terrorism effort against a violent Rohingya extremist group.

The Conversation has been following the Rohingya crisis closely. Here’s what you need to know about this persecuted Muslim group.

1. A British colonial legacy

The Rohingya story begins well before the 1940s, with the British colonization of Myanmar in the 1820s.

The British encouraged migrant laborers to come and work the rice fields of Myanmar, drawing many Rohingya into the country from neighboring areas. Census records show that between 1871 and 1911, the Buddhist country’s Muslim population tripled, according to Engy Abdelkader of Rutgers University.

In exchange for political support, the British promised to give the Rohingya their own Muslim territory within Myanmar, then called Burma. But Myanmar gained its independence in 1948, leaving the Rohingya to be ruled by a government they had not backed.

Myanmar officials didn’t just reject the Rohingyas’ request for an autonomous state, Abdelkader says. “Calling them foreigners, they also denied them citizenship,” she writes.

Within a few years, many Rohingya staged a rebellion against the new Myanmar government. It was brutally crushed, beginning a decadeslong cycle of repression that culminated, eventually, in the August 2017 massacre.

2. Fall from grace

Aung San Suu Kyi once seemed like a leader unlikely to defend gross human rights violations.

Before taking power in Myanmar in 2016, Suu Kyi was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. She had been imprisoned and then exiled, for fighting to bring human rights and democracy to this longtime military dictatorship. Her win in Myanmar’s first-ever democratic elections three years ago was celebrated worldwide.

Soon, however, Suu Kyi’s “international reputation would be in tatters,” write Anthony Ware and Costas Laoutides.

They cite Myanmar’s jailing of two Reuters reporters who in 2017 documented the atrocities committed against the Rohingya as the beginning of Suu Kyi’s fall from grace as a moral leader.

“It is notable that it was Suu Kyi’s civilian government that prosecuted the journalists, not the military,” they write.

Then came her apparent indifference to the suffering of the Rohingya. As reports of ethnic cleansing emerged, the world reacted with disbelief as Suu Kyi stayed silent.

3. Genocide is documented

In September 2018, the United Nations released a searing report detailing state violence against the Rohingya and demanding that Myanmar’s military leadership be held accountable for “genocide.”

The use of this blunt and powerful word was intentional, write Max Penksy and Nadia Rubaii, who study mass atrocities at Binghamton University.

“In the complex world of global diplomacy, using the term “genocide” to describe a state’s attacks on its own population is extremely rare,“ they write. “Genocide occurs when any number of violent acts are taken with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’”

Since the creation of the United Nations after World War II, few countries have been accused of genocide, among them Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

After the UN’s report drew global attention to the atrocities in her country, Suu Kyi publicly defended the military’s campaign against the Rohingya.

“With hindsight, we might think that the situation could have been handled better,” was her sole public expression of regret.

4. Life in limbo

As Suu Kyi tries to avert prosecution by the Hague, the nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh live with danger and uncertainty.

Bangladesh has tried its best to manage the refugee crisis, says Cornell University professor Sabrina Karim, who visited refugee camps there in January 2018. The government established a new agency to coordinate international humanitarian aid and sent soldiers to guard sprawling new settlements in a previously uninhabited border area.

“But there are other issues that the government cannot completely control,” Karim writes.

That includes communicable diseases like the bacterial throat infection diphtheria, which has killed 45 Rohingya in Bangladesh since 2017, as well as malnutrition.

“Additionally,” observes Karim, “there are concerns about environmental damage as the government cleared forest reserve land to build the camps.”

5. A lost generation

When scholar Rubayat Jesmin visited the Rohingya camps in July 2019, it was their youngest residents that most worried her.

“It is a dismal existence for all,” writes Jesmin, a Bangladeshi doctoral student at Binghamton University. “But it is the plight of the roughly 500,000 Rohingya children living in limbo that strikes me as bleakest.”

Though some Rohingya children take part-time classes from aid groups or Islamic schools operating in the camps, they are not permitted to attend Bangladeshi public schools. Rohingya children in Bangladesh have no access to a formal education and no way to earn degrees.

Growing up in unstable conditions, with no possibility of study, Jesmin says Rohingya children “are at risk of becoming a lost generation.”

Jesmin met a Rohingya boy, seven-year-old Mohammed, whose eyes lit up when he told her he wanted to be a doctor. But, he quickly added,

“I know my dreams will never come true.”

This article is a round-up of stories from the Conversation’s archives.

Catesby Holmes, Religion Editor | International Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

PBS NewsHour: “Why is a Nobel-winning human rights activist defending Myanmar on Rohingya atrocities?”

(Human Rights Watch) – Relocating Refugees to Unsafe Island Would Risk Lives, Livelihoods

Bangladesh authorities say they will soon start relocating over 100,000 Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char, a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Officials said this is necessary to reduce pressure on the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar, where nearly 1.2 million Rohingya have fled to escape military atrocities in Myanmar.

Bhasan Char is a spit of land made of accumulated silt. Officials say the island has been secured with embankments, and the homes and cyclone shelters are better than anything available to millions of Bangladeshis. But they have yet to provide convincing assurances that the refugees will be safe there, and their freedom of movement and right to livelihood protected.

The government brought some diplomats and other foreign officials to see the infrastructure on the island. But Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, who visited in January, noted, “There are a number of things that remain unknown to me even following my visit, chief among them being whether the island is truly habitable.”

Residents from nearby Hatiya Island say it is not. “Part of the island is eroded by the monsoon every year,” one man told Human Rights Watch. “In that time, we never dare go to that island, so how will thousands of Rohingya live there?”

Humanitarian aid groups are concerned about refugee health and safety in the Cox’s Bazar settlement, but isolating them on Bhasan Char, with likely limited access to education and health services, could be even more problematic. Although Bangladeshi authorities say there will be no forced relocations, there is little evidence that any of the refugees would be willing to move there. “Bhashan Char will be like a prison,” one local journalist said.

But when Lee warned that an ill-planned relocation would have the “potential to create a new crisis,” the government said resettling the Rohingya is an internal matter. Minister AKM Mozammel Haq actually blamed nongovernmental organizations for highlighting safety and sustainability concerns.

Dumping a battered and traumatized people on Bhasan Char to face yet another threat to their survival is not a solution. Bangladesh should terminate the relocation plans unless or until independent experts determine that the island is suitable, and until the government ensures that refugees who consent to relocate there will be allowed freedom of movement on and off the island.

Via Human Rights Watch

New technology can have profound impacts on society in ways never intended.

The radio carried codes during the First World War, but later became a household fixture. Early telephones were leased in pairs but after Western Union, a telegraph company, adopted “exchanges,” it led to rapid long-distance communication. Likewise, mobile phones have evolved from bulky “walkie-talkies” to small supercomputers.

And now Facebook, originally a connection platform for university students, conjoins one in four people. But today, in Myanmar, Facebook is helping fuel a genocide against the Rohingya people.

Based on our research in Myanmar and in Cuba, we argue that internet usage in Myanmar is dangerous. Unbridled connection to Facebook creates what we call a “virtual coercive,” a digital space that bolsters coercion. We suggest that Cuba’s internet model may provide lessons to manage social media amid political chaos.

The utility of inventions can be unpredictable, and so too can the social impacts be catastrophic.

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Distracted driving is an unforeseen consequence of mobile phones that kills or maims thousands each year. Dealing with distracted driving involves better driver education, curbing usage behind the wheel and penalties for stupidity.

Radio enabled unimaginable horrors during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

‘Blood on hands’

But in conditions of genocide, can a technology like radio be limited or restricted? It’s an essential service, but with blood on its hands. That’s a burden Facebook now shares.

In 2010, Myanmar had 130,000 heavily restricted internet users. In seven years, SIM card prices plunged from more than US$3,000 to $1. The government also relaxed censorship laws, allowing Facebook to attract 30 million Burmese users. Many of them view Facebook as the internet.

Beginning in late August, Burmese security forces pursued a scorched-earth campaign against the Rohingya. Some 6,700 were killed and 645,000 were forced to to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

Along with ultra-nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, a host of Facebook pages spread hate speech. This vitriolic propaganda further vilifies the already marginalized and much-maligned Rohingya.

Anti-Rohingya content includes explicitly racist political cartoons, falsified images and staged news reports. This content goes viral, normalizing hate speech and shaping public perception. Violence against Rohingya people is increasingly welcomed, and then celebrated online. This virtual coercive serves the Myanmar military’s interests.

The military junta’s monopoly on information has provided little arena to foster media literacy. Such propaganda in this virtual coercive of anti-Rohingya propaganda preys upon the ill-informed. For many, the misinformation spread through Facebook justifies what the United Nations has dubbed a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar citizens now have unbridled access to low-cost internet on their mobile devices. Freedom of speech advocates will laud this. But this open information pipeline reinforces Facebook’s dark side of self-reaffirmation with limited perspective.

This is to the Burmese military’s advantage. Just as radio fuelled genocide in the 1990s, Facebook is making it happen in Myanmar today.

Fiction becomes reality

Facebook’s virtual coercive is one of division, competing realities and a lack of mutual acceptance. In Facebook’s virtual coercive, fiction is reality and lies can validate.

Considering this, we argue that constant Facebook use in Myanmar is too risky to ignore. Societies require spaces for tolerance of differing ideas, trade, negotiation, volunteerism and face-to-face dynamics. This is lacking in Myanmar.

Cuba may be an important example in this discussion.

The nature of internet access in Cuba has not led to the abusive coercion or divisive politics. Protests through social media that are common in other parts of the world do not exist in Cuba.

Why?

Internet in Cuba is, simply put, expensive. Spending US$3 for an hour of WiFi in internet parks is about 10 per cent of a Cuban’s monthly earnings. With only limited time to be online, Facebook’s bandwidth-clogging bulk makes it unpopular in Cuba. Instead, other SMS and chat apps such as IMO, a direct video chat service, is preferred.

Cubans access internet in small doses

Cuba has only limited capacity to monitor its internet traffic, and the government worries about unbridled access.

And so Facebook cannot be accessed during working hours in most government and university settings in Cuba. It creates a disincentive to rely on Facebook for news and connections.

Cubans surf the net in small doses and often in public spaces. This breaks the virtual coercive through face-to-face interactions.

The shortcomings of Cuba’s model are obvious given it creates a barrier to information. Free-speech advocates will be quick to dismiss the idea of limiting the time spent online, never mind the dangers of a state having the responsibility to curtail social media.

But is unbridled access to Facebook really a pillar of free speech if the platform can be harnessed for the purpose of eliminating an entire population?

It’s time to entertain disconnecting from the virtual coercive in order to engage in real space. Maybe in this way, Facebook’s dark side can be kept at bay while still serving its original purpose of connecting people and enriching, not destroying, lives.

Robert Huish, Associate Professor in International Development Studies, Dalhousie University and Patrick Balazo, Researcher, Dalhousie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

CGTN: “No one’s people: Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh”

More than 900,000 Rohingya live in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, mostly in camps, according to the United Nations. For decades, Cox’s Bazar, a strip of land between Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal, has sheltered refugees from Myanmar during ethnic clashes.

“When we came, it (Cox’s Bazar) looked like a jungle, people just choose their own place to build a shelter,” a refugee living in Cox’s Bazaar, Nur, told Aljazeera. “The whole jungle was destroyed.”

The settlement is now spread across 5,800 acres, and much of it cleared forest land. Most Rohingya are terrified of returning to Myanmar, which has persecuted the community for decades, so it remains unclear for how long Cox’s Bazar will remain refuge.

“At Cox’s Bazar, five thousand acres of forest have already been destroyed,” said environmentalist Dipok Shorma.

The exodus began August 2017 when people belonging to the Muslim ethnic and religious minority group fled an army-backed massacre in Myanmar after Rohingya insurgents attacked security posts.

The military crackdown was condemned by the United Nations, United States, Britain and others as an ethnic cleansing, which the government of Myanmar denies.

In October, Bangladesh and Myanmar made a bilateral plan to repatriate Rohingya refugees back to the country from which the persecuted community fled a genocidal army crackdown. However, this plan was ultimately scrapped after officials from Bangladesh succumbed to the U.N. and many of the refugees selected for repatriation fled the camps.

The U.N. says the situation is the “world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis” and describes the military offensive in Rakhine, which provoked the 2017 exodus, as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

On Wednesday, U.S. senators called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to designate the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority a genocide.

“We are deeply concerned that despite clear evidence of genocide amassed by the Department’s own report … that the Department has not made a formal determination that the crime of genocide has been committed,” the senators wrote in a letter to Pompeo, according to Reuters.

Via TeleSur
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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Protecting Rohingya Children During Cyclone Season | UNICEF USA