Time to break the silence

There is wholesale attack on civilians going on in our backyard. Villagers have been massacred, their houses have been burnt to the ground, a hundred thousand have been made homeless and corralled into virtual concentration camps, and hundreds, perhaps thousands murdered. Inevitably, women and children have borne the brunt of the brutalities perpetrated in the name of Lord Buddha whose ashes must surely be in turmoil.
There is no need to identify these hapless people as Muslims, Rohingya, Bengali or indigenous -- it should be sufficient that they are human beings who now face extermination despite being in Arakan for a very long time because "they are not of our ethnicity." The world needs to wake up to this unfolding human tragedy, and I believe that we in Bangladesh have a duty to sound the alarm bells as loudly as we can.
It is time for our civil society to make itself heard. It is time for our media to face up to this tragedy squarely for what it is worth. It is important that our mainstream political parties prevent the Rohingya issue from being marginalised as an Islamic issue, which it clearly is not. Most importantly, and this is something that the international community can perhaps identify with, the Rohingya issue should not be allowed to degenerate into an Islamic jihad. However, if the Rohingya have no one to turn to their only alternative would be to turn to jihadi groups -- the implications of that surely should give us some pause.
The international community needs to get off its haunches and urgently review its Myanmar strategy -- with Arakan in flames and zero concern for human rights, the government in Napitaw must be held to account. Burmese security forces and Rakhine vigilantes engaged in human rights violence must be reminded that they will have to account for their crimes against humanity, and that great Nobel Laureate should be made to understand that she did not deserve that honour.
I am waiting for a call for a vigil in front of the Central Shaheed Minar for the godforsaken people of Arakan. I am hoping that this call will come from the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims of Bangladesh.
I am hoping that our foreign minister will take up the issue in all major world capitals and in the UN.
I am hoping that the world will not abandon the Rohingya.

The writer is an economist and an occasional contributor.