Dr Maung Zarni, co-founder of FORSEA, spoke at the 3rd International Conference on Islamophobia held virtually by İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim Üniversitesi in Istanbul, Turkey on 28 March 2021.
The whistleblower on Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingyas, he dissected the 4-decades of policies and practices of genocidal persecution of the national minority who live in their ancestral home region of Western Myanmar. He contextualized this persecution against the backdrop of Islamophobia, which is a major ideological pillar of increasingly racist Myanmar military called the Tatmadaw. He shed light on the Burmese military’s persecution and repression of different ethnic and religious communities throughout the country over the last 60 years.
Zarni highlighted the seismic shift in Myanmar public’s collective consciousness triggered by the latest wave of military’s repression targeting even the ethnic majority Bama or Burmese public at large. Finally, he called the neighbouring regimes of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan out on their collaboration with Myanmar’s genocidal military regime.
