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Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images. Propaganda depicting the alleged abuses of Buddhists by Muslims, displayed near the monastery of Ashin Wirathu, an anti-Muslim monk, Mandalay, Myanmar, May 31, 2017

Two years ago, in a village just north of the town of Sittwe in western Myanmar, I met a young man who spoke of a friendship with a Muslim boy that was no longer. Over several days in June 2012, that village and others nearby in Rakhine State had served as a wellspring for mobs of Buddhists who, armed with sticks, machetes, and cans of gasoline, laid waste to a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in the center of Sittwe.

The young man, in his mid-twenties when we met, had been away when the attack happened. But he knew many of his neighbors had boarded the buses that shuttled the mobs into Sittwe, where they razed Muslim homes and sent thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing to displacement camps, and he sympathized with their decision to do so.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar crossed the border into Bangladesh after days of walking to escape violence in their villages. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Among Westerners, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is often mentioned as a paragon of liberty, in the same breath as Mandela and Gandhi, thanks to her decades-long campaign against Myanmar’s kleptocratic military junta. But to the Rohingya, the Muslim minority now fleeing Myanmar (formerly Burma) by the tens of thousands, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the country’s political leader is the embodiment of evil.

Abdul Kalam is one of the Rohingya. A 33-year-old farmer, he was shot in the leg on Aug. 27 by Burmese soldiers as he fled his home in the coastal village of Maungdaw with his wife, children and neighbors.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rohingya from Myanmar at a refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, in December. Some 65,000 Muslims have since fled to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. Credit Associated Press

Just days before the November 2015 general election, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was asked how she would remedy the long-running repression of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, if her party came to power. She replied: “There’s a Burmese saying: You have to make big problems small and small problems disappear.”

Less than a year after the National League for Democracy’s sweeping victory, the big Rohingya problem had only gotten bigger. Violence broke out in the western state of Rakhine, where most Rohingya live, and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was already being lambasted for seeming indifferent to their hardships, is now accused of silently standing by outright abuses.…  Seguir leyendo »

De nouvelles explosions de violence ont remis sur le devant de la scène la question des Rohingya de Birmanie. La cause paraît entendue : une minorité ethnique musulmane non reconnue par son Etat, contrainte au statut d’apatride, et effroyablement maltraitée – le terme de génocide est de plus en plus souvent agité par les ONG et médias occidentaux aussi bien que dans le monde musulman. Le nouveau pouvoir birman, pourtant animé par le Prix Nobel de la paix Aung San Suu Kyi, accomplirait là par son inaction une véritable trahison de ses idéaux démocratiques.

Que les musulmans de Birmanie subissent depuis des années de graves persécutions ne fait aucun doute.…  Seguir leyendo »

An ethnic Rohingya Muslim refugee breaks down during a protest in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images

Two sets of high-definition images of Myanmar taken from outer space: both are shot in the morning, both show the same villages populated by Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state. The first set, collected from 2014, displays a small collection of homes where the virtually stateless minority has settled. The buildings, lying between trees and set back from dirt roads, number more than 100. In the second set of images, taken in the past two months, the homes have vanished, and all that remains is square patches of burnt earth.

Provided by Human Rights Watch, the images reveal 430 buildings that have been destroyed in three different villages, and support the claim from a United Nations official that Myanmar is seeking the “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya” from its territory.…  Seguir leyendo »

Amnesty describes it as "collective punishment". A senior UN official suggested the goal appears to be "ethnic cleansing". Regardless of how it is described, it is clear the violence unleashed by Myanmar against its minority Rohingya Muslim population has been devastating.

John McKissick, with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said security forces in Myanmar were "killing men, shooting them, slaughtering children, raping women, burning and looting houses, forcing people to cross the river into Bangladesh". He accused the Myanmar military and border guard police of engaging in collective punishment of the Rohingya minority, arguing that they are using the killings of nine border guards in October as an excuse for the current crackdown.…  Seguir leyendo »

The world is watching Myanmar as election day nears. The governments of the United States and other countries, which view this contest as a potential watershed for democracy, hope that Sunday’s voting will be “inclusive and credible.” But with just days to go, the election is shaping up to be just the opposite.

A central issue has been the deliberate exclusion of Myanmar’s Muslim minority, including my people, the Rohingya. Like other ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar, the country’s Rohingya — estimated to number over one million — suffered under years of repressive military rule. Today the pseudo-democratic government continues to treat us as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though our people have been in Myanmar for centuries.…  Seguir leyendo »

Migrants believed to be Rohingya rest inside a shelter after being rescued from boats at Lhoksukon in Indonesia’s Aceh Province May 11, 2015. REUTERS/Roni Bintang

Myanmar is currently in the throes of a massive humanitarian crisis. Thousands of ethnic Rohingya are fleeing persecution. Boarding overcrowded boats (and often enduring horrific conditions), they’re going to countries scarcely able to help them — or in some cases, frankly, not interested in helping them.

How did this happen?

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. Many of their enemies refuse to acknowledge that the Rohingya are an ethnically distinct group. They claim instead that the Rohingya are Bengali and that their presence in Myanmar is the result of illegal immigration (more on that later).…  Seguir leyendo »

The impact of Myanmar's repressive policy toward Rohingya Muslims was made clear in recent weeks with scenes of desperate people crammed into boats, an escalation of a miserable maritime flight in which an estimated 90,000 people have fallen prey to smugglers and traffickers since early 2014. The United Nations estimates that around 1,000 people have died on the way.

The root cause is the long-term reprehensible treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar (also known as Burma) -- stateless, officially and socially reviled, with severe curbs on their rights to work, travel, get health care and education, and practice their religion.

Yet even as this anguishing exodus has gripped international attention, it has obscured a connected and equally troubling pattern of rising religious extremism in Myanmar.…  Seguir leyendo »

En Birmanie, les violences contre la minorité musulmane rohingya se sont transformées en attaques systématiques, et une politique nationale de discrimination, de persécution et de destruction a été mise en place par les autorités et les extrémistes locaux. Un grand nombre d’éléments inquiétants constituent des signes avant-coureurs de génocide dans l’ouest du pays. L’avenir des Rohingyas semble se limiter à deux choix : partir ou mourir.

Les violences ethniques, les incendies d’habitations et les rhétoriques haineuses continuent en toute impunité.

Le gouvernement nie catégoriquement l’existence des Rohingyas et s’appuie sur le climat actuel de racisme et sur les extrémistes bouddhistes pour soutenir les lois discriminatoires que ces derniers proposent.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rohingya children walk past shelters inside the Kyein Ni Pyin camp for internally displaced people in Pauk Taw, Rakhine state, April 23, 2014. (Minzayar/Reuters)

Burma stands on a knife edge of hope and fear. During the past three years, President Thein Sein’s government has taken significant steps to relax restrictions and permit a more open society. Many political prisoners have been freed, civil society and media are being allowed more room to operate, and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi sits in parliament after years of imprisonment. The world has rightly welcomed these streaks of hope.

Yet my country’s transformation is still in its infancy. There is a long way to go. The ray of sunshine that the world has heralded is in danger of being replaced by storm clouds.…  Seguir leyendo »

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more appealing than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, and scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and psychology.

Even some of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure. For most of its Western sympathizers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar take a very different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rakhine state, on the western coast of Burma, is among the most dangerous places in the world to be a Muslim.

Just over a year ago, simmering tensions and small-scale clashes erupted into mass violence between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingya, a minority of about 800,000 whose roots in Burma are several centuries old. During these rampages, Buddhist mobs stormed Muslim enclaves, setting fire to villages, destroying schools and mosques and leaving scores of Rohingya dead.

One victim of the violence was Ayessa, a 55-year-old woman who lived in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state. Her husband and brother were killed, and she was forced to flee her home for a displaced persons’ camp.…  Seguir leyendo »