Why on earth has the Myanmar army led by Nobel peace prize hero, Aung San Suu Kyi, suddenly begun picking on this innocent folk called the Rohingya, who have just been going about their business all these decades?
Perhaps it’s because they haven’t merely been going about their business.
A violent group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) is forcing all Rohingya males – even very young boys – to attack Rakhine Buddhists and other civilians and to provoke the Myanmar army into violence. This group has been getting its funding and weapons from countries like Pakistan and Malaysia and its training from al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.
In June 2015, it was discovered that many of the horrifying videos and images of the Rohingya massacre being circulated on social media and major news outlets were of other disasters – the devastating earthquake in China, violent Tibetan activism in India, the terrorism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, and even an oil tanker on fire in the Congo are FAKE. However, let us give the Rohingya the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have not, in fact, torched their own homes for international attention, as the Myanmar government is claiming.
Take Maungdaw, for instance, where the Myanmar army last week burnt down the homes of innocent Rohingya. Precisely a week prior to this incident, ARSA had attacked soldiers and Rakhine civilians in the area, who then had to flee their homes and hide in a monastery in Taung Bazaar. The victims in this scenario are clearly all the non-ARSA parties – all the Rohingya and the local Rakhines not engaging in jihadi violence.
Yet, this still begs the question – why the Rohingya? Why are they – the Muslims of Bangladeshi origin – the only community in a nation where over a hundred different ethnic groups of various religions coexist peacefully, being targeted?
The answer lies in the demystified history of the Rohingya. Since the 1940s (even before Saudi oil money, al-Qaeda training, etc), many Rohingya Muslims tried to wage “jihad” against Myanmar (burning Rakhine villages and massacring Buddhists for decades) and upon realising that they’d lost their bid for an Islamic nation, they have been, since the 1990s, trying to gain citizenship.
Fed up and in no mood to reward this community for its sedition with citizenship, Myanmar has taken a good look at its neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia – where Buddhism is waning, Islamism is increasing, and homosexuals and women are being caned in public, and has simply decided to expel all Rohingya Muslims from its country before the same fate hits home.
Nevertheless, there are thousands of Rohingya who are simply innocent victims – collateral damage, so to speak – in this conflict. In spite of the community’s checkered history, the non-violent Rohingya deserve to be treated differently and separately from ARSA. They deserve the protection and citizenship of a nation – that is their human right.
Historically, the Rohingya were brought as slaves from Bangladesh to Burma by the British. Why doesn’t the United Kingdom take them in and give them refugee status or citizenship? The Rohingya have more in common with the Bangladeshis in terms of religious and cultural identity and, moreover, they share the same ethnicity. What’s holding Bangladesh back? Turkey’s Erdoğan is even willing to cover the costs for Bangladesh taking in these refugees.
The fact is, these countries know only too well what Myanmar already knows – that certain organisations are secretly encouraging and spreading extremist ideologies among the Rohingya and will not cease to do so. Suu Kyi has explicitly stated that international organisations have been complicit in aiding Rohingya militants. But she has been pooh-poohed by Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein from Saudi Arabia and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (which is ironical, like Saudi Arabia’s elevation to the UN Women’s Rights Commission; it’s his word against Suu Kyi’s, and the world has chosen to ignore hers).
In the meantime, Saudi Arabia is busy bombing Yemen into oblivion and starving millions of Yemeni children to death, all the while singling out Israel and Myanmar for human rights violations.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.