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Vancouver marks "Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day'"

8-29-2018

On Saturday August 25th, About 30 people gathered at Vancouver Public Library in a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of Myanmar’s violent military operation which has driven out about 750 000 Rohingya refugees, mostly children and women from their native homeland.

The Vancouver rally was to join in solidarity with much of the world marking the first global Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day. The remembrance day was Intiated by Free Rohingya Coalition with partners organization including Burma Task Force, the Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative and Rohingya Human Rights Network among others.

Similar rally’s were held in Toronto and Kitchener which is home to Canada’s largest Rohingya population. A rally was also held at the Parliament Hill which gathered about 50 people.

Last year on Aug. 25, 2017 the Myanmar military began systematically to what United Nations and others have termed “ethnic cleansing” of the Muslim minority Rohingya.

For decades the Rohingya have been persecuted but Aug. 25 marked a new and more bloody chapter in atrocities in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Yasmin Ullah who organized the rally in Vancouver under the banner of Rohingya Human Rights Network is a Rohingya refugee who has now settled in Canada said, “How can it not hurt, Everyone of Us come from each other, and we cannot just deny the safety and security of another.”

She was joined by many voices from Vancouver who spoke on the suffering of the Rohingya and their fight for justice.

Annie Ohana a well known human rights activist in Vancouver asked, “Will we be complicit, silent foot soldiers in yet another genocide? or will we rise up as a Vanguard”, “We must let Trudeau, Trump UN and the Generals know that this will not stand” and “demand justice.”

According to the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA) Myanmar’s state forces have killed more than 24,000 Rohingya Muslims since Aug. 25, 2017,

In its recent report, Forced Migration of Rohingya: The Untold Experience, the OIDA increased the estimated number of murdered Rohingya to 23,962 (±881) from an earlier Doctors Without Borders figure of 9,400.

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More than 34,000 Rohingya were also thrown into fires, while over 114,000 others were beaten, the OIDA report said, adding that 17,718 (±780) Rohingya women and girls were raped by the Myanmar army and police. More than 115,000 Rohingya houses were burned and 113,000 others were vandalized, it added.

Myanmar’s top military generals, including Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine State, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States, a report by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar urged on 27 August 2018.

 About one million refugees have migrated to neighbouring Bangladesh living under extremely dirty and unpleasant conditions.

Although Canada has pledged CAN$300 million in aid over the next three years but has not taken any serious steps to stop the genocide.

“It’s almost indescribably bad,” Bob Rae, Canada’s special envoy to Myanmar, told CTV News Channel in an interview Saturday about the Rohingya crisis.

“The long-term future is going to be very tough unless we figure out a way to make the conditions in the camp more livable than they are, because the way it looks politically is people are not going to go back voluntarily to a situation in Myanmar where they have no rights.”

Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock former Liberal cabinet ministers are calling the Trudeau Government to strip Myanmar’s embattled leader Aung San Suu Kyi, of her honorary Canadian citizenship.

“There is no question in my mind that her honorary status should be revoked. She has done nothing as civilian head of government to counter the military oppression of Rohingya people,” Mr. Axworthy said.

Maitul Alam a former president of Vancouver Multicultural community said, “We need to ask our elected officials and write to our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that we do not want hundred years from now our children to say we are victimized because of our race, color or orientation.”

At The end of the rally those gathered marched along the library square chanting “What do we want, We want Justice”, “Save Rohingya Now” and “Stop Rohingya Genocide.”

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Article Source: ALAMEENPOST.COM