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• The video was largely filmed by police in the town of Meiktila, Burma
  
• Intense bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims last month
• Man is seen alive, but badly burned lying on the floor as police watch
• Sparked after row between Muslim shop owner and Buddhist customers
• HRW: Burmese authorities committed crimes against humanity
  

By JILL REILLY

Horrifying footage has emerged of police officers standing by while Burmese Buddhist rioters set fire to a Muslim man.

The video was largely filmed by police in the city of Meiktila during intense clashes between a gang of Buddhists known as the ’969 squad’ and Muslims last month which left 43 people dead.

In the grainy footage posted on the internet a man -  almost certainly a Muslim – is seen rolling around on the ground in agony after being set alight by an angry mob.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Scroll down for video

Agony: A horrifying moment in the clip is when a man, almost certainly a Muslim, is seen rolling around on the ground having been set alight.

Slow death: His body is charred, but he is still alive and moves helplessly as a crowd surrounds him and several policeman watch

Slow death: Buddhists with sticks are

His body is charred, but he is clearly still alive and moves slowly as a crowd surrounds him. Several policeman can be seen looking on. 

A voice can be heard calling for water, to which another voice replies ‘ No water for him. Let him die.’

The clip surfaced today as Human Rights Watch published a report which concluded Burmese authorities and members of Arakanese groups have committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing Muslims.

The sectarian violence, the worst seen in Asia’s fledgling democracy since last year’s conflict, was sparked after an argument between a Muslim gold shop owner and his customers in the city of Meikhtila. 

Anti-Muslim followers are known as the ’969 squad’ and hand out stickers printed with the number ’969′, which symbolise elements of Buddhism.

Cornered: After a Muslim district is set on fire people are seen fleeing the fire into the bushes, but a young Muslim man is forced into the open

Beating: The rioters can be seen chasing a man wearing black through the long grass and hitting him with sticks

Slaughter: He is pushed on to the ground before a savage blow with a sword strikes him and he is left on the ground, presumed dead

In the grainy clip Buddhist men can be seen looting and attacking the gold shop in the town while police stand by, clearly outnumbered by the crowds – a few monks can also be seen in the angry masses.

The tension escalated after a Buddhist monk was attacked after being pulled off a bike – he died later in the town hospital.

The next morning a Muslim district  in Mandalay is seen burning – riot police are deployed, but again they stand watching.

People are seen fleeing the fire into the bushes, but a young Muslim man is forced into the open.

He is pushed on to the ground and beaten with sticks before a savage blow with a sword strikes him and he is left on the ground, presumed dead.

As a consequence of the violence a Muslim community that dates back many generations has been wiped out.

The unleashing of ethnic hatred, suppressed during 49 years of military rule that ended in March 2011, is challenging the reformist government of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse countries.

Jailed dissidents have been released, a free election held and censorship lifted in Myanmar’s historic democratic transition. 

But the government has faced mounting criticism over its failure to stop the bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims.

Hundreds of Muslims fled their homes to shelter at a sports stadium, said local officials.

The unrest is a bloody reprise of last year’s violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, which officially killed 110 people and left 120,000 people homeless, most of them stateless Rohingya Muslims.

Locals complained there were too few police in this city of about 180,000 people to subdue the unrest.

Human Rights Watch said today that forces were complicit in disarming Rohingya Muslims of makeshift weapons and standing by, or even joining in, as Rakhine Buddhist mobs killed men, women and children in June and October 2012.

The human rights abuses took place in Myanmar despite widespread political, social and economic reforms by a quasi-civilian government that took power in March 2011 and convinced the West to suspend most sanctions to allow aid and investment into one of Asia’s poorest countries.

‘While the state security forces in some instances intervened to prevent violence and protect fleeing Muslims, more frequently they stood aside during attacks or directly supported the assailants, committing killings and other abuses,’ the report said of the unrest, in which at least 110 people died.

 

WARNING graphic images. Burma police look on in violent clashes

Sparked: The sectarian violence was sparked after an argument between a Muslim gold shop owner and his customers in the city of Meikhtila

Violence: Anti-Muslim protestors are known as the ’969 squad’ and hand out stickers printed with the number ’969′, which symbolise elements of Buddhism

Powerless: Police are seen in the video hopelessly outnumbered by the angry mob

The failure to investigate properly or punish state officials had emboldened those behind campaigns against Muslims elsewhere, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW, referring to violence in central Myanmar that killed more than 43 people in March and displaced at least 12,000.

‘People are allowed to incite and instigate in a coordinated campaign – this is the lesson taken in by others,’ Robertson told Reuters. ‘What happened in Arakan (Rakhine) has helped spark radical anti-Muslim activity.’

Ye Htut, a presidential spokesman and Myanmar’s deputy Minister of Information, dismissed the report for only taking news from ‘one side’ in a statement on his Facebook page.

‘Its words are unacceptable. The government of Myanmar is not going to give any special consideration to a one-sided report,’ he wrote, adding that the government would only pay heed to its own investigative commission set up after the initial violence in June.

Violence: Unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar has reduced neighbourhoods to ashes

Side-by-side: Burma is a mainly Buddhist country, but 8- 9 per cent of its 60 million people are Muslims

Devastation: Burnt out houses are a symbol of the violence which unfolded between Buddhists and Muslims

Panic: Rumours that violent agitators were heading for the city had set its Muslim community on edge

A decision expected on Monday by the European Union to lift all but its arms embargoes would only weaken the hand of Western powers seeking to clean up Myanmar’s poor human rights record, Robertson said.

‘They’re going to be hostage to what the military and government does,’ he said. ‘They’re not going to have the kind of leverage and capacity to push back on the government if it becomes more oppressive.’

The report into the Rakhine state violence, which called for international pressure on the government, said authorities had blocked aid from going into the squalid camps occupied by stateless Rohingya and Kaman Muslims, exposing them to malnourishment and diseases such as cholera or typhoid.

Robertson described the segregation of Muslims as ‘ghettoisation’ that left them vulnerable to abuse.

More than 120,000 people fled arson and machete attacks in Rakhine state and thousands have embarked on perilous journeys on rickety wooden boats to other countries, where they are prey to human trafficking gangs.

An estimated 800,000 stateless Rohingyas live in Myanmar, where the authorities restrict their movements and access to employment and consider them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

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Tensions remained high on the Korean peninsula throughout April, due to the massive US-led military exercises, carried out together with their south Korean puppets, aimed at rehearsing a possible invasion and occupation of the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north of the peninsula, as well as a possible nuclear conflict with both the DPRK and China.

The US deployed F-22 stealth war planes to south Korea on 31 March, following two weeks of massive demonstrations of US military firepower, which had included dummy bombing raids by nuclear capable B-52 bombers and B-2 stealth bombers, all this clearly indicating US preparedness to resort to the use of nuclear weapons in the event of any conflict in the region.

B-2 bombers carry 16 B83 nuclear bombs, each with a yield of 1.2 megatons – 75 times the power of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If two B-2 bombers dropped their payloads on north Korea, they would destroy all its large and medium-sized cities.

Furthermore, US B-1 bomber pilots at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas reportedly shifted their training programmes to training for trans-Pacific flights towards targets in East Asia, instead of flights to Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Washington also upgraded a shipment of 60 F-15 fighter planes to south Korea and also sent a large number of Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) trucks. The newspaperUSA Today indicated that these trucks, used to guard against roadside bombs in US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, would “ offer similar protection in north Korea, should US forces need to travel on its roads” – in other words, if US forces sought to invade and occupy the DPRK.

Missile defence targets China

At the same time, the US sent three guided missile destroyers to Korean waters and announced a 50 percent increase in its anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems in Guam and Alaska. Although ostensibly defensive in nature, such missile interceptor systems could, by removing the country’s ability to meaningfully retaliate, potentially leave China at the mercy of a US nuclear first strike.

A recent article entitled ‘War with China’, published in Survival, the magazine of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think tank patronised by and serving the UK’s military and security establishment, sets out some of the calculations in leading US circles regarding the possibility of war with the DPRK or of ‘regime change’.

Written by James Dobbins, a former US assistant secretary of state who currently holds top positions at the RAND think tank, it cites “collapse” in the DPRK as the most likely cause of a war between China and the United States, followed by conflict over Taiwan, cyber war, conflict over control of the South China Sea, and conflicts with India.

Dobbins makes clear that aggressive military operations by the United States, sending forces into the DPRK, is at the heart of any response envisaged by Washington and that it would lead to the distinct possibility of a clash with Chinese forces stationed along the China-DPRK border.

He writes: “The immediate operational concerns for United States Forces-[south]Korea/Combined Forces Command would be to secure ballistic-missile-launch and WMD["weapons of mass destruction"] sites. If any coherent north Korean army remained, it could be necessary to neutralise its long-range artillery; it could be necessary to neutralise its long-range artillery threatening Seoul as well… While south Korea would provide sizeable forces and capabilities for these missions, they would be inadequate to deal with the scope and complexity of a complete north Korean collapse. Substantial and extended commitments of US ground forces would be required to rapidly seize and secure numerous locations, some with vast perimeters .”

Dobbins adds: “The likelihood of confrontations, accidental or otherwise, between US and Chinese forces is high in this scenario.”

US imperialism goes by the playbook

Whilst all these aggressive moves by the US to ratchet up tensions in and around Korea are claimed to be in response to actions by the DPRK, including and following from its third nuclear test in February, on 4 April, mainstream US media, including CNN and the Wall Street Journal, revealed that the Pentagon has all along been following a step-by-step plan, dubbed “the playbook“, drawn up months in advance and approved by the Obama administration earlier in the year.

The flights to South Korea by nuclear capable B-52 bombers on 8 March and 26 March, by B-2 bombers on 28 March, and by advanced F-22 Raptor fighters on 31 March were all part of this pre-arranged script, designed to demonstrate, to the DPRK in the first instance, the ability of the US military to conduct nuclear strikes at will anywhere in North East Asia.

Contrary to lying imperialist propaganda, there is absolutely nothing defensive about any such moves by the US. According to CNN, the “playbook” was drawn up by former defence secretary Leon Panetta and “supported strongly” by his replacement, Chuck Hagel. The plan was based on US intelligence assessments that “there was a low probability of a north Korean military response” – in other words, that the DPRK posed no actual threat, the very opposite of what imperialist governments and mass media have been preaching daily and incessantly for the last several months.

US officials even cynically claimed that Washington would now, following this unprecedented display of US nuclear blackmail step back, due to supposed concerns that American actions and statements “could lead to miscalculations” by the DPRK.

Yet at the same time, Defence Secretary Hagel emphasised the supposed military threat posed by the DPRK, declaring that it presented “ a real and clear danger“. The choice of words was deliberate and menacing, being an echo of the phrase “a clear and present danger” habitually used to justify past US wars of aggression.

British imperialism hitched to the war chariot

British imperialism has also given its full political backing to US imperialism’s war drive in East Asia. Prime Minister David Cameron used a 4 April visit to Scotland to claim it to be a “fact” that the DPRK has the technology to attack both the United States and the United Kingdom with a nuclear missile.

Speaking to workers in the defence industry, Cameron said: “How concerned am I about north Korea? Very concerned, it has extremely dangerous technologies in terms of nuclear and its weapons [sic]… The fact is, as I wrote in a [Daily Telegraph] newspaper article this morning, north Korea does now have missile technology that is able to reach, as they put it, the whole of the United States and if they’re able to reach the whole of the United States they can reach Europe too. They can reach us too, so that is a real concern .”

Even ruling class pundits were quick to nail Cameron’s hyperbole as outrageous lies.

James Hardy, Asia Pacific Editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, a prestigious establishment publication, commented: “ From what we know of its existing inventory, north Korea has short and medium range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula (and perhaps reach Japan), but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental US, Guam or Hawaii .”

If this seasoned military analyst is correct, then the entire basis on which US imperialism, along with its allies and lackeys, is presently targeting the DPRK is completely spurious.

Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the IISS, and a former official in the George W Bush administration, bluntly told ITN News: “North Koreadoes not have any missile capabilities that could hit Britain, and it is difficult to envision circumstances when north Korea ever would want to attack the UK, even if they could .”

Clearly, besides a craven desire to crawl before Washington, Cameron’s major motivation for his Goebbelsian ‘big lie’ is his wish to preserve the ability of British imperialism to do precisely what he accused the DPRK of contemplating, namely delivering a nuclear strike against its enemies.

Cameron used the mythical threat from the DPRK to argue for maintaining and then replacing Britain’s Trident nuclear submarines. Here he was playing politics as the Conservatives are in favour of a Trident replacement system but are presently in conflict with their Liberal Democrat coalition partners as to whether to maintain a continuous at-sea nuclear “deterrent“, given the huge costs associated with commissioning a new generation of submarines.

Cameron told his audience during a visit to one of the Royal Navy’s Vanguard-class submarines: “I strongly believe we should replace [Trident] on a like-for-like basis. … There are nuclear states and one cannot be sure how they will develop.”

Expanding on his theme, he made clear that his broader political aim is to legitimise the ongoing US aggression against the DPRK, up to and including British support and participation in a possible war. A token British military contingent has in fact been participating in the current military exercises in Korea. Around 1,000 British military servicemen lost their lives in the Korean War of 1950-53.

The Prime Minister said: “ I think the question we need to ask ourselves in the context of this debate about a nuclear deterrent, is what will a country like north Korea be like in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years .” He added: “ To me, having that nuclear deterrent is quite simply the best insurance policy you can have that you will never be subject to nuclear blackmail.”

That, of course, is precisely the conclusion that the DPRK has itself rightly drawn from more than 60 years of constant US imperialist threats of nuclear attack, fully backed by British imperialism. But coming from the mouth of a UK prime minister it reverses black and white. The issue is not what the DPRK, or any other anti-imperialist state, might, completely hypothetically do, three decades from now, but rather the very real nuclear blackmail and warmongering practised by US and British imperialism in the here and now.

Once again, the British ruling class is happily helping to serve up the lies necessary to justify military aggression by US imperialism. The parallels with the claims made by the Labour government of Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003 are all too obvious – you only need to substitute Cameron for Blair, Kim Jong Un for Saddam Hussein and you have another ready-made ‘dodgy dossier’ designed to make the case for war.

The only difference is that any war on the Korean peninsula would be even more devastating and destructive than the genocidal war waged against Iraq, as it could very easily turn into a nuclear conflict involving not just the DPRK, but also China and quite possibly Russia, too.

Blackmailing Beijing

It is by playing on such very real fears that US imperialism is exerting enormous pressure on China with a view to weakening or severing its historic alliance with the DPRK.

The two major parties of US imperialism are predictably singing from the same hymn sheet in this regard.

On CBS, Republican Senator, and former presidential contender, John McCain of Arizona said: “China can cut off their [the DPRK's] economy if they want to. Chinese behaviour has been very disappointing, whether it be on cyber security, whether it be on confrontation in the South China Sea, or whether it be their failure to rein in what could be a catastrophic situation .”

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York added: “The Chinese hold a lot of cards here. They’re by nature cautious, but they’re carrying it to an extreme. It’s about time they stepped up to the plate and put a little pressure on the north Korean regime.”

Making it crystal clear how the US build up of missile defence systems is intended to blackmail Beijing, US Deputy Defence Secretary Ashton Carter declared: “If north Korea is causing the US and others to take actions which they [the Chinese] find to be the sort of thing that they do not like to see, there is an easy way to address that.”

In fact, a major US upgrade of missile defence systems in California and Alaska, targeting China, was decided by the Obama administration months ago, long before the recent upsurge in tensions with the DPRK.

Nevertheless, this same message has now been carried to Beijing by a succession of high level US visitors, in the space of two weeks, starting with Secretary of State John Kerry. Speaking in the south Korean capital Seoul before arriving in Beijing, Kerry made clear that the US would continue to deploy anti-ballistic and other strategic weapons whose main target can only be China, unless Beijing “put some teeth” into forcing the DPRK to give up its tiny arsenal of nuclear weapons.

After meeting with Chinese leaders, Kerry said the discussion had included “why we have taken the steps that we have taken” in missile defence. “ Now obviously if the threat disappears – i.e. North Korea denuclearises – the same imperative does not exist at that point of time for us to have that kind of robust forward leaning posture of defence ,” he claimed.

The US is aware that China presently accounts for an absolute majority of the DPRK’s foreign trade and supplies nearly all the country’s oil and much of its food. So long as this state of affairs continues, US-led sanctions cannot have a decisive effect on the country.

It is therefore ardently to be hoped that, in their mutual interest, and that of the working and oppressed people of the whole world, both these socialist countries would resist imperialist blackmail and attempts at ‘divide-and-rule’, and would value and safeguard their historic alliance, which was created and nurtured by such outstanding revolutionaries as Comrades Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and which has served both countries so well, and that neither of them would say or do anything that might undermine their traditional revolutionary friendship.

In Britain, the revolutionary working class movement must give its full support to the DPRK in its courageous struggle against nuclear blackmail and threats of US-led aggression and demand:

Hands off Korea!

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