Myanmar’s pro-Rohingya social media campaign garners massive support Rohingya News

Hundreds of thousands of protesters against Myanmar’s military government have flooded social media with black-clad photos of the solidarity show, the Rohingya, a minority group among the country’s most persecuted.

Since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a February 1 coup, the anti-military movement demanding a return to democracy has shrunk in the fight for the rights of ethnic minorities.

The predominantly Muslim Rohingya – many of whom have long since come from Bangladesh – have been denied citizenship, rights, access to services and freedom of movement for decades.

In 2017, a bloody military campaign in western Myanmar sent about 740,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh to recount rape, mass killings and arson.

The military has long argued that repression was justified in rooting out the rebels, and Aung San Suu Kyik defended the army’s behavior by traveling to The Hague to denounce allegations of genocide in the UN high court.

Myanmar’s public was not very sympathetic to the Rohingya situation, and activists and journalists who reported on the issues were abused online.

On Sunday, activists and civilians took to social media wearing black and waving three-fingered resistance to post photos in posts labeled “#Black4Rohingya”.

“Justice is needed [be] it was served for you and for each of us in Myanmar, ”Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a major rights activist, said on Twitter.

Local media also showed a small protest at Myanmar’s Yangon shopping center, and protesters dressed in black said they were holding Burmese posters “protesting against the oppressed Rohingya”.

By the afternoon, the hashtag #Black4Rohingya was on Twitter in Myanmar, with more than 332,000 citations.

Sunday’s show of support for the Bamar ethnic majority Buddhist population is a far cry from previous years, when the term “Rohingya” was also a lightning rod for discussion.

‘Solidarity is important’

One of the founders of the Nay San Lwin Free Rohingya coalition told Al Jazeera that the #Black4Rohingya campaign “has received tremendous support and solidarity from Burmese this year.”

“In the past we were only international supporters but since the coup, we have received public apologies from the people and organizations in Myanmar,” he added.

“The solidarity of our Burmese is very important to us. We were without friends in our country, we considered them enemies, intruders, messes and sub-humans but now many of them accepted Rohingya as their countryman. Many of them realized that the military had cleared their brains.

“People who used to call us ‘Bengali’ now call us Rohingya. That means they are now respecting basic human rights.”

European-based Rohingya activist Ro Nay San Lwin told the AFP news agency that the online campaign is an annual effort to raise awareness, but that Sunday was the first time that Myanmar has gone viral.

“I am very pleased to see those in Myanmar joining this campaign. I have more hope for a stronger solidarity from them, ”he said.

The Shadow National Union (NUG) government – made up of parliamentarians working to oust Myanmar from power – has also extended an olive branch to the minority group, inviting them to “join hands … to take part in this Spring Revolution”. a recent announcement.

The military regime has called the NUG a “terrorist,” and military leader Min Aung Hlaing has dismissed the word “Rohingya” as an “imaginary term”.

Since the coup earlier this year, more than 860 people have been killed by security forces in brutal crackdowns, a local monitoring group said, with the number of deaths caused by the international community as an alarm.

On Friday, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said Myanmar had plunged from a “fragile democracy to a human rights catastrophe” – she said violence was escalating in regions such as Kayah, Chin and Kachin states.

State television on Sunday evening rejected Bachelet’s comments, saying the international organization “should not be biased.”