OIC Launches Awareness Campaign on Rohingya Suffering
This follows the violence that erupted in Arakan (Rakhine) Province in Myanmar in August that resulted in burning many Muslim villages and displacing hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, women and the elderly.
These events are part of the numerous persecution campaigns carried out by the Myanmar authorities against Rohingya Muslim minority over the past decades.
The OIC campaign started after fabricated posts began to spread on social networks containing false images and videos about the Rohingya Muslim minority, which has brought the Rohingya issue to chaos and confusion on the media, thus questioning the credibility of their grievances and negatively affecting popular support.
"These false posts do not publish the facts about the conditions of the Rohingya Muslim minority," said Secretary General of the OIC, Yousef Al-Othaimeen. "On the contrary, such fabricated images and clips have a negative impact on the issue. They mislead about the actual suffering of the Rohingya Muslim minority, and thus undermine moral support for them."
Al-Othaimeen added that the OIC campaign would reveal the documented facts about the suffering of the Rohingya and not the misrepresentations and falsifications projected by the authorities in Myanmar. The campaign shall highlight the fact that the Rohingya minority is most vulnerable to persecution as documented by the United Nations itself, and upheld by many international governmental and non-governmental organizations.
He indicated that the Rohingya crisis is a global issue tackled by various countries and is not a transitory issue that some false posts on the Internet could manipulate or disprove.
"The OIC will publish posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others that highlight the shocking facts and figures that confirm the magnitude of recent violations against the Rohingya Muslim minority based on documented photographs and statements from reliable sources. These posts shall carry the OIC logo as an indicated of intellectual property and to ensure their credibility," said, Director of Information Department at OIC Maha Akeel.
Akeel noted the role of the Jordanian advertising company "Leopard’s Eyes", which initiated this campaign with the OIC General Secretariat and volunteered to design its posts in coordination with the OIC, which provided the company with various images and required data.
Akeel said that the OIC extends its thanks and appreciation to "Leopard’s Eyes” and its Director, Saher Saud Barham, for its humanitarian initiative in support of the OIC issues and called on the private sector in the OIC Member States to initiate joint action on various OIC issues, such as Al-Quds, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islamophobia and others. She stated that these matters need a collective effort that should go beyond the governments to the private sector so that we can benefit from its capabilities and significant contributions at a time that requires a collective stand to address the great challenges in the Muslim World.
It is noteworthy that the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar has been experiencing extremely difficult humanitarian conditions in light of the escalating humanitarian needs of hundreds of thousands of its members stranded in Bangladesh after fleeing their villages in Myanmar following State violence targeting them. The Myanmar authorities deprive them of the most basic means of subsistence, deny them their rights to nationality, restrict their employment opportunities, and persecute and assault them amid accusations by the United Nations of mass rape, murder and enforced disappearance by the authorities and extremist groups. This is in addition to the displacement of thousands of children from Rohingya from their homes during the recent crisis.
Source: Islamic News
