The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide by Azeem Ibrahim

Author:Azeem Ibrahim [Ibrahim, Azeem]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Hurst
Published: 2016-05-31T18:30:00+00:00

International impotence

The role of the wider international community is of importance in preventing genocides. Even authoritarian, insular states have some degree of international links and a need to maintain at least some good relations. As we saw previously, the Myanmar regime is keen to ensure it can make money and buy weapons, and, despite its reservations, has developed substantial international links to assist in these goals. This potentially gives the international community considerable leverage—if it is prepared to use it.

The four instances discussed above show the importance of international partners in restraining, or providing a free hand to, a state on the verge of genocide. In the case of the Ottomans, their nominal allies in the war (Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) had no interest in restraining their actions. There are some reports of German liaison officers intervening in isolated incidents,33 but there was no official attempt to restrain the Ottoman regime. The Soviet attacks on the Turkic minorities were similarly uncontested by their American and British allies. In each incident it is unlikely that co-belligerent allies could have made any difference to the outcome, but what is clear is that in neither instance was there an attempt at restraint. The Nazi Holocaust, as argued above, was actually allowed to go ahead in its full horror precisely as the regime no longer had any conventional goals in terms of international relations. By the end of 1941 it was already embroiled in total war with most of the world, an event that could only end in complete defeat or absolute victory.

However, the Rwandan situation was one in which the international community could indeed have stepped in. It was also unusual in that it is the only one of our chosen instances that did not occur in the context of a full blown wider war. Key to allowing the violence to escalate to genocide was international silence. For different reasons, Belgium and France had links to the existing government yet were not prepared to criticise its actions. And the US was desperate to avoid being forced to intervene,34 which would have been required if the UN Security Council designated the situation as constituting genocide. This silence was fundamental to enabling the genocide. Here, international inaction allowed the violence to escalate when states either with influence over the Hutu government (Belgium and France) or the capacity to intervene (the US) opted instead to stand aside. In planning and carrying out genocide, the Hutu regime did not have to fear an immediate international response. This has direct relevance to the situation in Myanmar as it is unlikely that any final step to genocide will be within the framework of a wider, global, conflict. Instead it will be the choice of the Myanmar regime, perhaps responding to domestic dynamics.35

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