Racist attacks on Muslims in Myanmar

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The military regime and fascist monks within the Buddhist clergy in Myanmar (Burma) have been waging an ethnic war against the Rohingya, a mostly Black Muslim minority living in the southwest of the country. Violence against the Rohingya erupted in 2012, leaving villages torched, up to 300 dead, and 140,000 fleeing their homes in terror. It was the worst example of ethnic cleansing in the region in de­ cades. Cops merely watched the spiral­ ing violence.

The attacks began with the rape of a woman in the mostly Buddhist Rakh­ ine state, where most Rohingya live.

The rape was blamed on Rohingya men (likely false), which set-off racist ter­ ror. As a result, there are some 300,000 internally displaced persons in Myan­ mar, a nation of 53 million. The UN says 130,000 Rohingya fled by boat since 2012 to destinations such as Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Some 25,000 left between January and March alone.

The journey into exile is often in filthy, overcrowded boats operated by smug­ glers. Many end up in slave labor camps, drowned at sea, beaten, starved, dehy­ drated, simply abandoned, or tossed overboard to avoid a smuggler’s arrest.

Refugees are even executed when im­ poverished families are unable to pay ransoms demanded by ruthless opera­ tors.

Up to 8000 have been stranded at sea at a time. Mass graves have been found in Rohingya, with bodies either drowned or physically brutalized.

Veteran Asia observer Walden Bello wrote that “violent labor trafficking and ethnic cleansing [form] the dark underbelly of Southeast Asia’s ‘tiger economies.’”

In addition, migrants face racist im­ migration policies. Of late, Australia’s anti-immigrant Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been accused by the press of giving bribes to smugglers to not land refugees. If true, as seems likely, Australia is guilty of ignoring the 1951 (continued from page 6: “The TPPA: Capitalism at its predatory best”) salmon; negative effects on tourism and community values.

“Dissent by third lawyer-judge criticized the decision as challenging the right of government to implement environmental safeguards reflecting community con­ cerns. Further it would have a ‘chilling effect on future environmental policies as governments face possible punishing financial awards.’ He noted, the ruling was a ‘significant intrusion into domestic jurisdiction,’ giving more power to NAFTA than the Canadian legal system.”

Nordquist properly concludes, “Obama’s TPPA ele­ vates corporations from personhood to nationhood.” In truth, it’s always been that way.

Labor bureaucrats put aside token opposition A sideshow to the carefully orchestrated ruling-class squabble over TPPA was the subservient role of the AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka. A June 14, 2015, front-page New York Times headline read, “La­ bor’s Might Seen in Failure of Trade Deal.” The Times credited labor’s powerful lobbying of “progressive Democrats” for the initial congressional defeat of Fast Track approval. Business Day chimed in to tout labor’s power with the headline, “Labor’s Might Seen in Failure of Trade Deal as Unions Allied to Thwart It.” Of course, only the naïve believed that TPPA would be derailed by the tragically impotent AFL-CIO.

Since March, AFL-CIO lobbyists bragged that union members had held 650 events opposing the TPPA; 160,000 phone calls were made to members of Con­ gress, along with some 20,000 letters sent. The fed­ eration also produced digital ads, which have received more than 30 million views, aimed at several dozen members of Congress.

“We are very grateful for all the activists, families, community leaders and elected officials who worked so tirelessly for transparency and worker rights in inter­ national trade deals,” said Richard Trumka. “This was truly democracy in action.” But the “democracy” and praise for “labor’s power” ended abruptly a week later.

Originally, Trumka and Co., along with an extremely Convention on the Status of Refugees, which Australia signed.

There are 1.1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar, and they are 30% of the Rakhine state inhabitants. Myanmar has eight large ethnic groups; 90% are Buddhists, only 5% are Muslim, the rest Christian and Hindu.

After Burmese independence in 1948, the post-colonial government included many minorities, including Rohingya. However, a 1982 law passed by the military dictatorship, which had been in power since 1962, rendered the Ro­ hingya “stateless.” Yet, the Rohingya have been in Myanmar for centuries!

Temporary cards allowed some Ro­ hingya limited voting rights in 2008 and 2010. In 2010, Rohingya voting was conditioned on their voting for the military, with the promise of citi­ zenship. Rohingya voting rights were stripped away again last February in the wake of the 2012 events.

The military refuses to use the term “Rohingya,” preferring to portray them as job-stealing migrants from Bangla­ desh, thus dividing workers with rac­ ism. Rohingya describe round-ups of Muslim youth to perform forced labor for the Army.

Although some monks have spoken out against racism, reactionary monks spew filth. Said racist leader Ashin Wi­ rathu, a Buddhist monk, “Muslims are like African carp. They breed quickly and they are very violent and they eat their own kind … the national religion needs to be protected.” Wirsthu likened Muslims to “mad dogs” and “cannibals.”

These fascistic forces organized the “969 campaign,” which seeks to ban inter-faith marriages and urges Bud­ dhists not do business with Muslims.

Human rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner who spent over 20 years under house arrest—and the daughter of Aung San, a founder of the defunct Burmese Communist Party—surprised some by not calling for an end to anti-Rohingya racism.

She said that she “didn’t know” if they could be citizens and meekly urged the military to handle the situation “care­ fully.”

Finally, after much criticism, her Na­ tional League for Democracy (NLD) issued a statement calling for citizen­ ship rights, but it was not issued in her name, a ploy to hold on to racist votes.

broad range of environmental and social justice organi­ zations, had pledged total opposition to the TPPA, even if TAA provisions were included. But when the chips were down, a week later Trumka and his fast track op­ position team reversed course and agreed to sign onto Obama’s agenda—providing only that a TAA provision for some labor compensation for lost jobs was included, one way or another.

With barely a shrug, Trumka’s team of hardened class-collaborationist bureaucrats, tied to the Democrats hand and foot, jumped ship, leaving its former environ­ mental (anti-climate crisis/global warming) and social justice allies in the lurch and once again identifying la­ bor’s future “fortunes” with the welfare of the U.S. capi­ talist state and its plundering corporate institutions.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a longtime fe­ rocious TPPA and NAFTA advocate, happily engaged in the week-long game of posing as “labor’s friend,” as did virtually all “progressive Democrats.” As with the Dem­ ocrats’ granting Trumka two minutes speaking time at the last Democratic Party national convention, at a time when virtually no one was present in the conven­ tion hall, the Democrats organized to promote “labor’s cause” for a few days before cutting yet another secret deal behind their backs.

The TPPA is the modern-day expression of the needs ... Marriage (continued from page 4: “Same-sex marriage victory: Equal rights struggle goes on”)

Transgender activists have become more visible and are raising their own demands. One example has been Jennifer Gutierrez, the brave trans Latina who interrupted the meeting of predominately white male Democratic Party partisans who were at­ tending a meeting with President Obama. She made her point that transgender immigrants of color are routinely detained in dangerous conditions, brutal­ ized, and sent back to their countries of origin with­ out regard for their safety.

(Left) Buddhist monks protest UN resolution to grant full citizenship rights to Rohingya.

Suu Kyi has declared herself an NLD candidate for president this fall. The NLD is a capitalist party, and she would be expected to win.

But it is disqualified because her deceased husband was British.

Her NLD is expected to do well in parliamentary races—if they happen.

In September 2012, after a wave of racist riots had reached its peak, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was present at a hypocrit­ ical signing ceremony which lifted U.S. sanctions on the dictatorship.

Her distinguished guest? Presi­ dent Thein Sein, dictator of Myanmar.

Since Obama’s and Clinton’s pho­ to-ops in Myanmar, the dictatorship received about $375 million in (sup­ posedly) non-military U.S. aid through fiscal 2014. The domestic aid will help the military elite afford its outsized military budget. Inequality, after all, requires repression. About 26% of the country lives in poverty; 32% of chil­ dren under five suffer malnutrition, 53% in the Rakhine state.

Obama finally called for an end to dis­ crimination in Myanmar, but the real goal of imperialism goes beyond pay­ ing lip service to human rights—the U.S. is looking toward outflanking Chi­ na. Chinese interests, along with Japa­ nese funds, are building a $2.5 billion petroleum line from riot-torn Rakhine to Yunnan, China. Rakhine land is also being grabbed to create a “free trade” zone to operate on starvation wages.

Capitalism in Myanmar has got to go.

A genuine revolutionary party would seek to unite and defend all ethnic peoples against racist violence and ul­ timately overthrow capitalism, the real source of poverty and racism! n of a world capitalism in deep crisis. The ruling rich have no solutions other than at the expense of their corpo­ rate competitors and the broad working class of every nation.

Today’s labor movement stands at a low ebb, with its bureaucratic mis-leaders incapable of offering even the most minimal of challenges to capitalist austerity. That the AFL-CIO tops focused on organizing member phone calls and letter writing to its claimed Democratic Party allies, as opposed to exercising its class power at the point of production, is a testament to its bankruptcy.

A new and fighting labor leadership that operates in the class-struggle instead of class-collaborationist mode, and organizes in the political arena indepen­ dently of all capitalist parties, is an absolute necessity.

Today, the gap is glaring between the pent-up anger and hatred of working people toward the deepening capitalist-imposed austerity and the development of a conscious fightback. But in time, the insults to labor’s dignity and quality of life will fuel unprecedented strug­ gles that will challenge capitalist rule in all its forms.

The precondition for the success of these struggles will depend on revolutionaries’ sinking deep roots in the coming struggles and building a mass working-class socialist party capable of ending capitalist’s inherent horrors once and for all. n Ben Power, the executive director and curator of Northampton’s Sexual Minorities Archive, ad­ dressed the marriage form he would like to have, “For myself, what would be ideal is if my marriage form said ‘Partner’ and ‘Partner’ where we fill in our names and that I could check a box for my gender that said ‘Transgender Man.’”

With the Supreme Court Marriage Equality victory behind us, the LGBT community should move for­ ward with a national strategy.

The last LGBT march on Washington was in 2009, and one of the most memorable speakers was a young gay Black man from Mississippi who said sim­ ply, “As long as we use a state-by-state strategy, there will always be holes in the map of equality.” n SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2015 9

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Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Left) July 1 protest outside the Dominican consulate in Times Square, New York City.

young Dominican crowd in chanting, “Dominican gov­ ernment, shame on you! You uphold racist rule!” and “From Charleston to the DR, Black lives matter!” U.S. racism toward Haitians Although the Obama administration mildly chasised Dominican expulsion policies, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last year praised the racist decisions as a “bold step” and “a path to citizenship.” In this case, the U.S. certainly practiced what it preaches. Racist deporta­ tions from the U.S. totaled over 2 million during the Obama administration, more than under any other president.

The racist Dominican ruling class can draw inspi­ ration from U.S. immigration policy toward Haitians. During the 1980s, Haitian refugees fleeing the U.S.-backed Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti were regularly “interdicted” (stopped) in interna­ tional waters—a violation of international asylum law—and returned on U.S. ships into the clutches of a brutal dictatorship. If they reached South Florida, many were sent to the Krome detention center out­ side Miami for up two years before being released or returned to Haiti. Less than 1% received political asy­ lum in the U.S.

In stark contrast, the mostly white, anti-Castro exiles and Eastern Bloc Europeans were given blanket am­ nesty and quickly released into the community. Dem­