As the cliche goes history repeats. Genocides and disasters have happened often in history, but the reactions and management of the situations have varied.
In 1933, the holocaust began when Hitler came into office and ordered the Nazi party in Germany to round up millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people and placing them in concentration camps. Between 1933 and 1945, not only were they restricted from receiving proper health care and were severely malnourished, but 11 million people were killed under Hitler’s order.
This mass genocide can be considered a humanitarian disaster for a few reasons. The German minorities were extremely vulnerable. Due to Germany’s economic hardship it was easy to blame minorities for Germany’s struggle. Also, with any disaster lives could’ve been saved with better manageability. Millions of lives were taken, because they were exposed to the horrific treatment from the Nazi’s for years. The situation was made worse by the obvious lack of disaster management from the German government, while the international community was slow to react.
Fast forward to 2014, concentration camps have popped up in Myanmar. In them are the Muslim minority group, Rohingya. The majority of the country is Buddhist, and violence against the Muslim minorities began in 2012 when, according to the NewsRepublic.com, “Three Muslims allegedly raped and murdered a Buddhist girl in southern Arakan.” After that alleged incident there was an increase on the attacks against Muslims. The first incident being the brutal beating and murder of ten Muslims on a bus.
So far, not only have 167 Muslims been murdered but over 250,000 have been displaced, while the government chooses not to recognize the 1.3 million Rohingyas in the country. Now there are hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps. Many people die everyday due to malnutrition and disease, and of February the government has prohibited the group Doctors Without Borders from entering, while the international community has stayed silent. If the Rohingyas attempt to leave to camps they would be imprisoned by the police or lynched by the public.
Now, there are a lot of parallels between the the persecution of minorities during the Holocaust and the current situation, but unlike the Holocaust what’s going on in Myanmar has yet to be considered a disaster even though the Rohingyas were both in a vulnerable position and are constantly exposed to hazards brought upon by the government and the Buddhist majority.
The main difference, besides politics and time periods, is the magnitude. During the holocaust there was no international intervention until millions of people died, but should the international community wait for the scale of humanitarian crisis in Myanmar to increase to also take action? Currently, there is no involvement from the international community and a lack of management and accountability on the government's part.
Below are photos that show similar conditions in the Holocaust and the current situation in Myanmar.
Victims in Thet Kay Pyin Zay Camp
Victims in Auschwitz
Disclaimer: Few pictures cannot capture the entirety of both crisis. Also, the degree and magnitude of both events are not exactly the same, although they are similar in some ways.
Sources:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116241/burma-2014-countryside-concentration-camps
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/history.html
http://time.com/2888864/rohingya-myanmar-burma-camps-sittwe/
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