A Short but Heated Conversation with a Doggedly Stubborn British Guy at AHRDO Report Press Conference
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
I went to the AHRDO report Press Conference at Central Hotel, Yangon on the 1st August, 2013. There I was quite late and so had to take a seat at the back row. Rick Heizman and Ko Aung Marm Oo were dealing with several questions (which I will not present hereby!). I was so impressed by their explanations and thrilled at the thought that every word and phrase and sentence of the report reflects the real truths in the Rakhine State, Burma, I’m strongly convinced. The world media have been deceitful and fraudulent for a long time with the wrong victims by the name of so-called Rohingya (Bengali Muslims) highlighted in the international spotlight. The real victims have been Arakanese or Rakhine people who have been persecuted, killed, beaten or raped for quite a long time.
Around 1:30 PM, the Press Conference ended. After that, some Muslim people came forward and made aggressive questions to some Arakanese scholars. They seemed to be terribly hurt by the truths exposed by the two great persons: Rick Heizman and Aung Marm Oo. As far as I had heard, they emphasized that so-called Rohingya was really there in the ancient history. The Arakanese scholars explicitly explained that there is no Rohingya in Myanmar and that it was just a faked story. The Arakanese scholar showed the Bengali Muslims a lot of literary sources that he had brought. The Muslims replied that they felt pity on not have brought their literary sources. There came an around-30-year-old British guy rushed towards an Arakanese scholar and poured out a lot of aggressive words at the latter. They had a long debate. At the end, there was no consensus. A young Muslim woman reporter was recording the Arakanese man who was responding with forceful words to the stubborn British guy. (Maybe she might be thinking of a good well-censored video by the name of ‘Aggressive Extremist Rakhine’ which actually should be dubbed to the Bengali Muslims who were really doggedly stubborn argument-addictive Muslims!)
AHRDO ၏ Arakan Violence Report ထြက္ျပီ။
Rick Heizman and Aung Marm Oo
After a while, I took a cup of coffee and some snacks with my friends. The heated discussions seemed to be accelerating. I was watching them from afar. After some time, I could not live without getting involved in the heated debate. At that time, the British guy who was also accompanied by a same-aged Myanmar guy was arguing with two of Arakanese youths. As I was listening at the beginning, the two Arakanese guys were trying their best to explain the real situations to the British guy who did not really understand the real history because of the illusion posed by the Bengali Muslim fake writings.
One of the Arakanese asked the British guy whether he had been to Rakhine State. The British guy said that he had never been there. So he tried to explained him the real aggressive actions of the Bengali Muslims that he himself had faced in his native town Sittwe. But the British guy pretended not to listen to him. Then he said that the explosion of Muslim population was impossible in Arakan and that it was just a made-up story.
At that time, we had the following short but heated discussion:
Stubborn British guy: I don’t believe in the explosion of Muslim population in Rakhine State in 30 or 40 years. They have stayed the same since a long time ago.
Zwe Thit: Why can’t you believe it? There are a lot of situations which can testify the fact that there has been an explosion of Muslim population in Rakhine State. One: Rakhine State is bordered with Bengladesh with an extremely explosive population and so a lot of Bengali Muslims can migrate in huge hatches of large groups to Rakhine State. They could do so because there was no strong borderguard along the border and the Migration officers had taken a lot of bribes from the new illegal migrants. Two: the Muslim men took up to 4 wives and they think that women are just factories for producing children. So the number of Muslims increased by leaps and bounds within decades.
Stubborn British guy: Ha … Ha! By leaps and bounds? This doesn’t really show their number! It’s actually not impossible!
Zwe Thit: Okay! I think you should study the British censuses in Arakan in the British colonial time after the first Anglo-Burmese War. All the data were systematically collected and written in their official records. You can study them in detail.
Stubborn British guy: Oh, I don’t believe in the British censuses! They all are just fake! They colonized a country or a region and then they tried to collect data by asking the names of the natives; but the problem was that they couldn’t understand the native languages so their censuses can’t be accurate.
Zwe Thit: Why not accurate? You thought very lowly of the colonizers! They really knew how to colonize, how to govern, how to do systematic censuses, etc; they really had good brains for that! At the beginning, they might have some language barrier but they would surely have plenty of translators. So they could thoroughly understood what were being talked about even in the remotest rural areas in Arakan let alone easily-accessible urban areas. But the British had stayed in Arakan for a long time – even much longer than the colonization period of the Upper Myanmar. Therefore, they had done a lot of censuses throughout their colonization period! No lie or deceit would have been done unitedly throughout the written records and throughout the long colonization period. Therefore, there had been no such word as “Rohingya” in any of the British official records throughout their colonization. Was there such a term before the colonization period? Even worse off! Not even similar word!
Stubborn British guy: Oh, what about Francis Buchnam’s book? In that book, that term was written! Right? It was written a long time ago.
Zwe Thit: Oh, Francis Buchnam’s term in that book was only Roiinga and that word was suggested by the Muslims as the name to dub them. But Francis Buchnam himself was doubtful. His usages “called themselves Roiinga ” “for what reasons, I do not know, wanted to persuade me that theirs was the common language of Arakan” showed his doubts upon those deceitful Muslims. But he described them as both Hindus and Muslims and their dialects as dialects of Bengali. He also wrote that they were called Kala or Foreigners by native Rakhine people. Didn’t Rick explained you in the presentations?
Stubborn British guy: No! I didn’t hear it because I won’t listen to a liar! He’s just a charlatan!
Zwe Thit: Oh, what a fool you are! You had closed your ears to the other people whose truths you dared not listen to! I’ve known your inner motive or nature! That’s why you have been one-sided and bigoted! I now believe that my words and explanations have gone into the open air instead of your ears! They have just become a pitiful waste! Sorry, man! I should stop making explanations to you! You’re totally gone!
Fr. Buchanan’s book page review
Fr. Buchanan’s book page review
…………………………………………………………
The short but heated conversation ended here!
(Note: that British guy referred to himself as a Yale university student. But he and his Myanmar fellow seemed to be from Burma Campaign UK, according to my friends! We also kept asking which organization they were from; they insisted that they were just ordinary students! What I had learnt from the heated conversation is that if one don’t want to accept others’ views or opinions intentionally, your words of any extent of excellence would get lost! So, all my friends, I want to ask this smouldering questions: WHO ARE REAL EXTREMISTS? WHO ARE LIARS? WHO ARE CHARLETANS? Please use your noodles! Thank you!)
By: Zwe Thit (Rammarmray)
3.8.2013 (Sunday)
Zwe Thit (Rammarmray) 