MARCH TO MYANMAR EMBASSY
SEPTEMBER 30, 4PM, 1747 Columbia Rd NW, WASHINGTON, DC.
The imperialist rivalry among China, India, and the US is embedded in the destruction of Rohingya villages, the murder of Rohingya people by the military and racist vigilantes, and the forced migration of at least 400,000 refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. These attacks are mainly portrayed as an attack on Muslims who have been denied citizenship in Myanmar, and labelled in the mass media as a religious issue. But is religious persecution at the root of this human crisis? Or is it a storyline meant to mask the true cause: displacement of peasant farmers by capitalist and imperialist interests in order to exploit a strategic, resource-rich region?
For the last 20 years, groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented land grabs by Myanmar’s military regime that have displaced the rural poor indiscriminately across all of the country’s 135 ethnic groups. For example, in Keren province on the border with Thailand--viewed as a prime spot for tourism, industrial expansion and agricultural development—rural populations have had their homes and farmland confiscated without compensation, and been arrested for trespassing when they continue to work the land.
Western sanctions against Myanmar’s military government were in place throughout its rule, up until the 2015 elections, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) prevailed. But despite the election victory, Myanmar remains largely under military control. Current aggressive military actions against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups in the area may lead to a reinstatement of sanctions. The brutal response to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)’s attack on local police stations is being labelled by Myanmar’s government as a “security issue”, while the UN and Western nations portray it as “ethnic cleansing” of a large section of Rakhine province. The value of the territory now being cleared of Rohingya villages and others derives from China’s interest in building a $7.3 billion deep sea port at Kyaukpyu on the Rakhine coast and developing a $3.2 billion industrial park nearby. This is part of China’s $900 billion Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and would give China a foothold in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. India also seeks to strengthen its role in the Bay of Bengal through its deep water port at Sittwe.
With so much at stake, it is clear that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi is as meaningless as that given to Obama—or Henry Kissinger, for that matter. Human rights are easily overlooked in the blinding glare of profits from pipelines and industrial development. Some of the country’s Buddhists, who are impoverished themselves, nevertheless have been won over to carry out ethnic and religious persecution and are helping the military, similar to the way some poor white workers in the U.S. blame their poverty on immigrants and Black people. The only solution to this problem, which is emblematic of others taking place worldwide, lies in class struggle and multiracial, multiethnic unity. The fight against anti-Muslin prejudice in the US and worldwide is part of the antiracist struggles necessary to build the unity needed to destroy the capitalist system worldwide.
The Progressive Labor Party is an international revolutionary communist party with organizers in 27 countries. We support the struggles of Myanmar’s workers and farmers against the government’s efforts to drive people off the land and impoverish them in slave-labor industrial development. We condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and call upon the many oppressed Buddhists and others to join in demanding that the military cease and desist their attacks on the Muslim population and other groups in the area. We need to build a world where workers run the society, not the military and fake Nobel laureates. Fight for communism!
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