Dr. Abid Bahar Ph.D.
The Rakhine xenophob Aye Chan is active again and sending out emails about his new discovery. He is not a rocket scientist to discover a new star in the distant horizon. As a xenophob he is crying wolf again. Aye Chan who earned his popularity among people in the anti democracy movement for his anti-Rohingya activities by writing a book called "Influx viruses" identifying the Burmese Rohingya people as being viruses to be exterminated is active again against the Rohingya people with an old piece of paper he found to put down the entire Rohingya people. This time he claims that he found a leaflet he claims produced by a splinter group of the Rohingya community. With this discovery he is vainly identifying this suffering community as being Islamic terrorists. This is not a new revelation by him, please see his previous works where he use to make people surprised about Rohingya people as being "dangerous" in this practice he does pass along old wine in his new bottle. This time he is not even selling wine but snake oil to be precise.
Such a claim is not new by Aye Chan who has been an anti-Rohingya xenophob: As an example see in my article (Abid Bahar, "Aye Chan’s Enclave with Influx Viruses Revisited" a review of Aye Chan's work link:
http://www.kaladanpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1065&Itemid=38
Aye Chan says, “However, the Elections Commission abolished both the ALD and the NDPHR in 1991. Some of the party members went underground and into exile. Recently, the main objectives of the movement of some groups have been to gain the recognition of their ethnic entity in the Union of Burma and to obtain the equal status enjoyed by other ethnic groups. But some elements have adopted the radical idea of founding a separate Muslim state. The following are the Rohingya organizations currently active on the Burma-Bangladesh border (Mya Win 1992: 3):
RSO (Rohingya Solidarity Organization)
ARIF (Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front)
RPF (Rohingya Patriotic Front)
RLO (Rohingya Liberation Organization)
IMA (Itihadul Mozahadin of Arakan)”
Aye Chan again is using xenophobia as a trick. He says, “Some elements have adopted the radical idea of founding a separate Muslim state.“
When I checked the details, I found Aye Chan showing the case as if this was a trend during the 1990s but in reality it was not. Today most Rohingyas are in favor of their reconciliation and justice through democratic reform in Arakan. Contrary to the current trend, Aye Chan in his work gives us the notion that Rohingyas are some radical elements and their presence is as if “viruses” in Arakan who are required to be destroyed or will eventually destroy the Arakanese Burmese people. This type of dehumanizing literature by so-called academics reminds us of the early signs of genocide in Germany, in the former Yugoslavia, and recently in Rwanda and the literature written by intellectuals in those countries to incite the general public, so as to take up action against its targeted minority.
Aye Chan has been a xenophobic interpreter of history. The following is also from my article (Abid Bahar, "Aye Chan’s Enclave with Influx Viruses Revisited" a review link:
http://www.kaladanpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1065&Itemid=38
Another example of Aye Chan as being an intellectually dishonest person:
Aye Chan continues his anti-Rohingya grievance:
He says “Most of the Bengali immigrants were influenced by the Farai-di movement in Bengal that propagated the ideology of the Wahhabis of Arabia, which advocated settling ikhwan or brethren in agricultural communities near to the places of water resources. The peasants, according to the teaching, besides cultivating the land should be ready for waging a holy war upon the call by their lords (Rahman 1979: 200-204).“
Abid Bahar: What is the purpose in the use of this paragraph from Fazlur Rahman to explain the religious trends in Arakan? My research on Aye Chan’s work reveals his lack of intellectual honesty. In the above quote, Aye Chan misuses the source to prove his point. Firstly, Fazlur Rahman didn't say anything about Arakanese Muslims or about their Faraidi movement or their Ikwan connection because there was no such thing. The fact of the matter is that unlike the Wahabi movement in India, Faraidi movement was largely a homegrown movement against the oppressive Zamindari system in Bengal. Then, it appears that Aye Chan’s motivation has two dimensions, using a Muslim writer as a source to show Aye Chan’s cross cultural expertise which is a pretention/ a fake showoff on the subject and secondly to portray Islam as being dangerous. As we have come this far, based on the above, we are beginning to question Aye Chan’s credibility as a historian.
In this similar effort in 2009 Aye Chan is digging again the long buried dirt of the 60's Rohingya history when like most Burmese ethnic groups Rohingyas also took up arms against the barbarib army rule of Ne Win. Obviously, as Muslims some Rohingyas also used their religious slogan jihad against the military dictator Ne Win Rohingya genocide in Arakan. To our knowledge now in the 21 century most Rohingyas voluntarily choosed to take up peaceful means of lobbying as the means of their goal to democracy, there could be some spilinter jihadi groups survived quite late but now entirely died down from the Rohingya movement in our present time.
While the trend among Rohingyas from surrendering their arms to U Nu through now in lobbying only activities by their leaders in Arakan and in abroad it shows a greater 180 degree shift in the nature and the means of their struggle, but Aye Chan began his renewed anti Rohingya campaign again to prove to his hoodlums that Rohingyas as Muslims by religion are born as terrorists and will die as terrorists. To him they will never change. This type of mindset by Aye Chan to dehumanize a Burmese community is genuinly dangerous for democracy movement to gain strength. It seems that as a xenophob but also a human being he has the option to change but he doesn't want to change. He chosed to remain a xenophob.
Aye Chan's new crusade reminds us about Hitler's anti Jewish propagandist Julius Streicher, blaming the victim, the Jew of Germany. Aye Chan didn't yet learn from a recent Rakhine community organized seminar in London where due to his recorded profile as a notorious inciter of hatred and due to his scheduled presence the entire seminar was cancelled. After this disgraceful example, what else Aye Chan is trying to prove to us to create credibility?
Thinking about Aye Chan's contributions to the growth in Burma's anti democracy moment, many things come to mind; one of them about the movie Good will Hunting, where Will Hunting a prodigy hoodlum from South Boston who works as a janitor at MIT. Whereas Will Hunting was a prodegy in Math, Aye Chan seems is a prodigy in propagating hatred. Will Hunting is a hudlum and Aye Chan is not a hoodlum himself but a leader of hudlums in Japan and elsewhere. People who attended a seminar in a debate in Japan Aye Chan was recorded as one who used his hudlums to humiliate Koi Minto, the latter a Japanese historian was defending the historic origin of the Rohingya community of Burma. Unlike Will Hunter, Aye Chan is neither a jenetor nor works in USA, surprisingly he is a teacher in Japan. We wonder with his disturbing mentality of causing trouble to a helpless Burmese minority, how he is still allowed to teach in Japan. In his selling of the old snake oil in the new bottle, what is apparent here this time is not any discovery by him but his sarcastic defense mechanisms of calling wolf and selling his racial prejudices to the Burmese people. It is time that his once not so sure colleagues working for democracy in Burma should desert him.
Aye Chan conntribution in causing human misery is noteworthy, as the leader of Arakani xenophobic hoodlums the recent emils he is sending to us shows he is even now is actively engaged and instrumental in anti Rohingya activities. In contributing to the Rohingya suffering, it seems that his mind works like a broken heart of a lonely person and people who met him in London after the cancelled seminar reported that he looked like a Weepy Donut.
To me his return only reflects his undying xenophobia and bigotry
References:
1. Why the xenophob Aye Chan of Arakan, Burma should be barred from attending Academic Conferences (See the article below)
2.Abid Bahar, "Aye Chan’s Enclave with Influx Viruses Revisited" a review link:
http://www.kaladanpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1065&Itemid=38
3. Also read for more details: Abid Bahar, "Xenophobic Burmese Literary works and the
problem of Democratic Development in Burma" Link:
http://www.rohingya.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=43&Itemid=72
http://www.rohingya.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=70
4.Habib Siddiqui, Julius Streicher and his relevance in today's Burma | Asian Tribune
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