M Adil Khan

The deposed Hasina government’s toxic politics, which stigmatised their opponents as ‘Islamists’ (meaning terrorists and anti-liberation forces) and projected their loyalists as ‘Chetonabadis’ (pro-liberation forces), ended up dividing the people of Bangladesh into two distinct groups – the ‘Islamists’ and the ‘Chetonabadis’, also known, wrongly, as ‘Secularists’.

The international community has to play a much stronger role otherwise, as someone has argued recently, “like other stateless and unrepresented Muslims, [the Rohingyas] are at risk of producing a persistent terrorist threat” that in the end would not only destabilise Myanmar but also its neighbours.

In late December, 13 Nobel Laureates including Professor Muhammad Yunus and 10 global leaders wrote an open letter to the President of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and its members decrying the Rohingya carnage in Myanmar as “amounting to ethnic cleansing”, that the crisis has “the potential for genocide” and that it “has all the hallmarks of recent past tragedies – Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo”.

Persecution of Rohingyas in Myanmar is continuing with impunity and without a break. Dieng and Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, have confirmed these atrocities and “requested independent UN investigations on the alleged 'ethnic cleansing' and other mass atrocities in the Rohingya region of Rakhine State”.

In its November 14, 2016 issue the Bangkok Post reports, “Myanmar's Rakhine state was hit by fresh waves of violence over the weekend with more than 30 'insurgents' killed during two days of fighting, the military said, as proof emerged of atrocities against villagers.”

In recent times, there have been many reports, mainly in the West, of unhappiness with Erdogan's Islamism and authoritarian style of governing, but no one thought that this would translate into a coup.

The terrible massacre that took place in the Orlando gay club Pulse, which killed 50 and injured another 50 or so, must be condemned in no uncertain terms. The killer, Omar Mateen, who happens to be a Muslim and was shot dead by the police, was apparently a psychopath and a homophobe.

Bangladeshis simply cannot allow extremists to triumph over liberalism and the way to defeat extremism is neither through dagger nor through 'development' but through unadulterated democracy.