Who Are The Rohingya Of Myanmar?

This Group Faces Terrifying Persecution, And You May Have Never Heard About It

Anti-Muslim sentiment has a long history in Myanmar, dating back to the colonial period when large numbers of Indians followed the British into the country, as theCrisis Group details in its report. Many of them were Muslims, although Hindus and members of other religions moved in as well. Tensions between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State became violent for the first time during World War II, when the Rohingya supported the country's colonial rulers and the Buddhists sided with Japanese invaders.

Violence and repression flared in the decades that followed and intensified in earnest in the spring of 2012. The rape of a Buddhist girl by several Muslim men set off a wave of reprisal violence in Rakhine State, and members of both communities took part in attacks.

Months later, in October of 2012, a new wave of violence by ethnic Buddhists against Rohingya Muslims broke out, this time in a much more organized way. Local authorities and extremist Buddhist monks riled up Rakhine's Buddhist majority, releasing pamphlets that demonized the Rohingya and public statements that called for their expulsion. Buddhist mobs responded by razing and torching Muslim villages, forcing the inhabitants to flee for their lives.

More than 200 people were killed in the violence of 2012, and about a hundred thousand people -- mostly Muslims -- were forced to leave their homes. The majority ended up in segregated makeshift camps, where their movements became more restricted than ever before.

The following year, attacks spread to the center of the country and were no longer restricted to the Rohingya community, instead targeting Muslims as a whole. Dozens of people were killed and entire neighborhoods destroyed in two waves of riots in the spring and fall of 2013.

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Aung San Suu Kyi's Comments on Muslims Expose Endemic Anti-Muslim Prejudice

I admired this woman since I was a child now I'm horrified by her. :(

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's interview with the BBC during her visit to the UK, has shocked many of her admirers. Despite being repeatedly pressed to do so, she repeatedly avoided giving a clear unequivocal condemnation of the anti-Muslim violence that is engulfing Burma.

Given the opportunity to clearly condemn attacks against Muslims, she repeatedly refused to do so. Instead she generalised by saying she condemned all violence and hatred. She has moral authority like no other person in Burma. When she speaks, people listen. If she strongly condemned attacks on Muslims it would make a difference. It could calm the situation. But she didn't. Instead, she went beyond just trying to explain why the violence was taking place, and sounded like she was making excuses for it. First she did this by saying it was because Buddhists were also living in fear. How can this be true? Buddhists are by far the biggest majority in Burma. Secondly she talked about Buddhists also being subjected to violence and having to flee Burma. The overwhelming majority of violence has been Buddhists attacking Muslims, not the other way around. No Buddhists have fled Burma because of attacks by Muslims. They fled because of repression by the Buddhist led dictatorship. Even if there was real fear as she claims, that doesn't justify people taking to the streets and burning alive their Muslim neighbours.

In the past 16 months alone, 140,000 Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee to squalid temporary camps. This compares to less than five thousand Rakhine Buddhists who fled homes after tit-for-tat attacks when violence against Rohingya began in June last year. Why is Aung San Suu Kyi trying to portray this as two sides suffering equally, when the facts prove this is not the case?

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also started talking about global Muslim power, as if this is some kind of threat to Burma? To hear a Nobel Peace Prize winner talking in the same way about Islam as bigots and racists is very disappointing. There are conspiracy theories about a global Muslim conspiracy to take over Burma, but these kind of things are spread by crazy people on Facebook. It is not what you expect from a University educated leader of a democracy movement. Instead of dismissing these claims as the dangerous nonsense they are, she gave them credibility in the eyes of many Burmese.

When Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was asked about the Monk Wirathu, who incites hatred and violence against Muslims, she also avoided criticising him, again just using generalisations saying she condemns hate of any kind. This hasn't gone unnoticed in Burma.

Perhaps one of her most revealing comments was when she talking about Muslims integrating. She was not only talking about the Rohingya. She was talking about Muslims generally. How and why do people who are native to Burma, having lived there countless centuries, need to integrate? They are Burmese, and unlike most Rohingya Muslims, they have Burmese citizenship. Most have never even travelled abroad, and nor have any of their ancestors. But Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't seem to see them that way. She sees them as different and needing to integrate. Seeing as the only difference is their religion, does she share the common view among many Buddhists in Burma that Muslims are not real Burmese?

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