http://bdreports24.com
Just a few blocks from the White House, where Myanmar’s
president was feted for working for democracy, another side of his country is
now on display at a more haunting Washington
landmark: the plight of its most beleaguered people, the Rohingya Muslims,
depicted in photos projected at night onto the external walls of the Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
The stark, black-and-white images by American photographer
Greg Constantine combine searching portraits with pictures of the scorched
settlements the Rohingya were forced to flee after a deadly outbreak of
sectarian violence last summer that left more than 100,000 confined to camps
and further darkened the prospects for this stateless people. They are denied
citizenship in
Myanmar,
also known as
Burma,
and are typically regarded there as illegal immigrants from neighboring
Bangladesh.
“It’s disturbing that at a time when there are so many
conversations on the perceived amazing developments in Burma, this tragedy has
been overshadowed by everybody’s interest on what’s been happening elsewhere in
the country with democratic reforms,” said Constantine, who has spent seven
years photographing the Rohingya on both sides of the Myanmar-Bangladesh
border.
The federally funded Holocaust museum primarily
commemorates the genocide against the Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
But it also documents the mass killings that have blighted Bosnia,
Rwanda and Sudan,
and seeks to spotlight situations where it sees a repeat of such atrocities. It
has previously projected images on its walls of Holocaust survivors and from South
Sudan and the Darfur region of Sudan.
“We are not saying that genocide is taking place in Burma,”
said Michael Abramowitz, director of the museum’s Center for the Prevention of
Genocide. “We are not trying to equate these different situations. The
Holocaust was a unique event in human history. But what we do want to do is use
our assets to try to prevent these kinds of crimes from happening to others in
the future.”
Myanmar
authorities’ failure to prevent sectarian clashes between minority Muslims and
majority Buddhists has dented the international reputation of the government of
Myanmar
President Thein Sein.
The former general, hosted by President Barack Obama at
the White House in May, has been applauded in the West for steering the country
from decades of direct military rule. He has eased media restrictions, freed
most political prisoners and been rewarded with a rapid lifting of sanctions.
But crimes against humanity have been reported in the
midst of the democratic reforms. Sectarian violence that broke out between
ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya in the country’s west has spread to other
regions of the country. In all, some 240 people have been killed, mostly
Muslims, and 240,000 forced to flee their homes.
Many thousands of Rohingya have fled by sea. More than 60
died this weekend when their boat capsized.
The Myanmar Embassy in Washington
did not respond to an email seeking comment about the exhibition. Constantine’s
images will also be shown at the European Parliament building in Brussels
at the end of November.
Constantine, who is from Carmel,
Ind., but is based in Thailand,
has traveled to Malaysia,
Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Kenya,
Ivory Coast, Kuwait
and the Dominican Republic
to document stateless people. He regards the situation of the Rohingya, who
have faced persecution for decades, as the most extreme case of all.
He began photographing them in Bangladesh
in 2006, but only last year was he able to visit them in Myanmar,
traveling to the western city of Sittwe.
He said he saw a “complete helplessness” among Rohingya in displacement camps:
people who wanted to return their homes but had no idea there’s little left
there but rubble.
“It was disturbing to see and feel the complete and total
absence of any Muslim presence in Sittwe,” Constantine
said, who last visited in March. “There was no call to prayer going on. All the
mosques were empty or destroyed or Burmese troops were living in them. Every
single Muslim shop was boarded up.”
Facing criticism from the West and the Islamic world, Myanmar’s
government has vowed to prevent further violence, but the Rohingyas’ plight
draws little sympathy among the wider population there.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, a senior investigator on human rights
in Myanmar for
the U.N., said last month the government is showing greater willingness to
address the crisis in Rakhine state but has failed to investigate allegations
of widespread human rights violations, including by security forces.
Constantine,
for one, says the stone facade of Holocaust museum is an appropriate canvas for
his photographs.
“The fact is this is a museum that’s there to elevate
discussion of atrocities against humanity,” he said. “I believe that’s what
happening against the Rohingya right now.
-Fox News.
