Press Release: Gathering of Southeast Asian Female Opinion Makers Raise a Unified Urgent Call for the Establishment of the Khilafah to Solve the Rohingya Crisis
Gathering of Southeast Asian Female Opinion Makers Raise a Unified Urgent Call for the Establishment of the Khilafah to Solve the Rohingya Crisis
On Saturday 6th June, female opinion-makers from across Southeast Asia gathered at an important event in Malaysia entitled, “Rohingya: Stateless at Sea OR Part of Khairu Ummah” hosted by the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in coordination with Hizb ut Tahrir in Malaysia. The gathering aimed at bringing international attention to the heartbreaking plight of Rohingya women and children in Myanmar, and to address the immediate actions and fundamental solution needed to save the Rohingya Muslims. Attendees included members from NGO’s and human rights organisations, including those representing the Rohingya, as well as lecturers, activists, community leaders, female scholars and members of political parties and student associations. The event was part of a global campaign organised on the subject and was broadcast to viewers internationally.
Speakers were female members of Hizb ut Tahrir from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Britain, and the Arab world. Testimonies were also given by Muslim women from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Talks shed light on the horrendous scale of persecution facing Rohingya women and children in Myanmar as well as their appalling treatment by the neighbouring Muslim regimes who abandoned them, leaving them to face the violence of ethnic Buddhists; or to die at sea; or treating those who reached their shores as illegal immigrants, denying them basic rights, and placing them in disease-ridden camps not fit for animals. Speakers explained that this scandalous behaviour of the governments in the Muslim lands was due to their embracing the toxin of nationalism and Western-imposed national borders between the Muslim lands which had killed Islamic brotherhood and inhibited Muslims from fulfilling their Islamic obligation of saving their oppressed brothers and sisters. The inaction of these governments of accounting the regime in Myanmar has encouraged the continuation of its campaign of terror against the Rohingya Muslims. Additionally, the forum explained how ASEAN could never resolve the crisis was for it was a toothless non-interventionalist body and tool of Western colonial governments functioning primarily to serve their economic imperialistic interests in Southeast Asia; nor should hope be placed in the UN which had proven to be a powerless, redundant body that had failed repeatedly to protect Muslims from slaughter whether in Syria, Gaza, the Central African Republic or elsewhere. Speakers also emphasized how trust should neither be placed in Western governments to save the Rohingya Muslims for they had ignored this genocide for the sake of safeguarding financial interests in Myanmar, demonstrating again the willingness of capitalist democratic states to discard human rights and disregard the slaughter and repression of innocent women and children if the price is right.
The forum ended by raising demands to the governments of the Muslim world to act immediately to save the Rohingya Muslims, including opening their borders to the Rohingya refugees and granting them full rights of citizenship, as well as sending rescue missions for those stranded at sea, and putting political and military pressure on Myanmar’s regime to stop its brutality towards the Rohingya. The final talks emphasized however, that it was the urgent establishment of the Islamic Khilafah state which offered the only practical means to solve the Rohingya crisis and the oppression facing Muslim women globally. This is through its unification of Muslim lands, removal of national borders, and provision of sanctuary and full rights of citizenship to all oppressed Muslims regardless of nationality, as well as its use of all state tools, including the mobilisation of its army to protect the blood and dignity of Muslims. The event ended by attendees signing a declaration in support of the Rohingya Muslims. It called for the unification of the Muslim lands and the rejection of nationalistic systems and borders. It also contained a pledge to exert full efforts to re-establish the Khilafah in order to bring a swift end to the persecution and suffering of the Rohingya and other Muslims globally. The forum talks, pictures and declaration can be accessed at: http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.info/info/english.php/contents_en/entry_47619 and www.facebook.com/WomenandShariah.
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir