A deafening silence from the nobel peace prize winner on the ethnic cleansing going on in the country she now presides over.
QuoteNearly 40,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine state a week ago, the UN estimates.
Scores of people are reported to have died since Rohingya militants attacked police posts on 25 August.
Subsequent clashes have sent civilians from all communities fleeing.
Many Rohingya are trying to cross the Naf river to reach Bangladesh. On Friday, 16 more bodies were found washed up on the shore.
Their discovery brings the number of people believed to have died in capsized boats to about 40.
Mainuddin Khan, police chief of the Teknaf border town, told AFP news agency that the group included a young girl, and said they "had been floating in the river for a while".
On Thursday the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said the "worsening cycle of violence" in Rakhine was of "grave concern and must be broken urgently"
....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41120170 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41120170)
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Did they take away Arafat's prize and I missed it?
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 01, 2017, 08:32:18 PM
Did they take away Arafat's prize and I missed it?
I don't think anybody has ever had a Peace Price taken away.
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Ethnic, racial, religious superiority, it's a heady mix.
These Burmese people are according to government and the Buddhist establishment non-citizens, despite those communities having lived there for generations. Think of them as the Jews of the Myanmar Reich.
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims?
They tend to be violent separatists there.
IIRC Aung San Suu Kyi is President in a power-sharing agreement with the old military dictators. Her ability to act is somewhat restrained.
Quote from: Ancient Demon on September 01, 2017, 10:02:06 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims?
They tend to be violent separatists there.
Well if this is the threat they are under you can hardly blame them.
But I do not know much of the long term history.
Quote from: Barrister on September 02, 2017, 12:19:24 AM
IIRC Aung San Suu Kyi is President in a power-sharing agreement with the old military dictators. Her ability to act is somewhat restrained.
I just read an article about Burma and she's not allowed to hold elected office because her kids or her husband or somebody have foreign citizenship. They made up a title of councilor for her.
She's done more to deserve the award than Obama has. Maybe Mongers should focus on convincing people to take back Obama's Nobel Peace Prize before he sets his sights on the harder retractions.
Textbook ethnic cleansing now going on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, especially the last few days and all the while a stony silence from the country's titular head. :hmm:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41315924 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41315924)
Quote
Rohingya crisis: Suu Kyi does not fear global 'scrutiny'
19 September 2017
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said her government does not fear "international scrutiny" of its handling of the growing Rohingya crisis.
It was her first address to the country about the violence in northern Rakhine state that has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh.
Ms Suu Kyi has faced heavy criticism for her response to the crisis.
What did Suu Kyi say in her the speech?
The Myanmar government does not use the term Rohingya - calling the group Bengali Muslims instead - and Ms Suu Kyi did not do so in her speech.
Delivering her address in a tone of measured defiance, she said she and her government "condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence".
Among the key points:
She did not address allegations against the military, saying only that there had been "no armed clashes or clearance operations" since 5 September.
She said most Muslims had decided to stay in Rakhine and that indicated the situation may not be so severe.
She said she wanted to speak to both Muslims that had fled and those that had stayed to find out what was at the root of the crisis.
She said the government had made efforts in recent years to improve living conditions for the Muslims living in Rakhine: providing healthcare, education and infrastructure.
She also said that all refugees in Bangladesh would be able to return after a process of verification.
How was the speech received?
Ms Suu Kyi has overwhelming support in her home country, where she was a political prisoner for years before coming to power.
But her speech has been criticised internationally for failing to address the allegations of abuse by the military.
The BBC's Jonathan Head, who is in neighbouring Bangladesh, disputed the claim that there had been no clearance operations since 5 September, pointing out that he had seen villages being burned days after that date.
Amnesty International said Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was "burying her head in the sand" by ignoring the abuses by the army.
"At times, her speech amounted to little more than a mix of untruths and victim blaming," the rights group's director for South East Asia and the Pacific, James Gomes, said in a statement.
.....
Now it's textbook denial on her part?
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Because its a fucked up country and somebody must be blamed and they don't have Jews
Not even the one? :(
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Just saw this a few minutes ago - it may be part of the explanation: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world?utm_term=.qcWr6vBOx#.cj54dBZEk
Quote from: Jacob on September 19, 2017, 02:22:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Just saw this a few minutes ago - it may be part of the explanation: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world?utm_term=.qcWr6vBOx#.cj54dBZEk
Oh please I didn't read past the first sentence. there were anti-Jewish pogroms in the Middle Ages because allegedly they caused pestilence. There was no Internet to be found. What is happening to the Rohingya is as old as history, probably older.
This is human ignorance, tribalism, and malice.
Quote from: Tamas on September 19, 2017, 02:32:03 PM
Oh please I didn't read past the first sentence. there were anti-Jewish pogroms in the Middle Ages because allegedly they caused pestilence. There was no Internet to be found. What is happening to the Rohingya is as old as history, probably older.
This is human ignorance, tribalism, and malice.
Yeah, the anti-Rohingya sentiments - and actions - have by all accounts been present in Myanmar since way before the advent of the internet there.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's impossible that the whole scale adoption of the online communication on a society wide scale could be turbo charging the anti-Rohingya sentiment and precipitate wider and more serious persecution. After all, progroms usually start with whipping the population into a frenzy against the designated target. Online communication seems well suited for that task.
Delving more into the dynamics of xenophobic nationalism in Myanmar: http://www.danielgawthrop.com/xenophobic-nationalism-myanmars-curse/
Quote from: Tamas on September 19, 2017, 02:32:03 PM
Quote from: Jacob on September 19, 2017, 02:22:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 01, 2017, 07:13:16 PM
Why is Myanmar so hostile to the Muslims? Is this like if you are not Buddhist you are a threat to our pure cultural waters or something?
Just saw this a few minutes ago - it may be part of the explanation: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world?utm_term=.qcWr6vBOx#.cj54dBZEk
Oh please I didn't read past the first sentence. there were anti-Jewish pogroms in the Middle Ages because allegedly they caused pestilence. There was no Internet to be found. What is happening to the Rohingya is as old as history, probably older.
This is human ignorance, tribalism, and malice.
I blame video games.
I once visited Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and had a rather lengthy conversation with several university students. They spoke good english, and were quite eager to discuss with me the American TV shows they watched. Their outlook on life seemed quite similar to what you would expect in the western world, until they began to discuss somalians. They assured me that somalians were not really humans, and they have the mindset of animals, and this could not be changed.
Both Myanmar/Burma and Ethiopia/Abyssinia were empires for many centuries; maybe that mindset has not really changed despite an underperforming century or two.
I am quite mystified by this.
Yes. That Burma hate the Rohingya, that even buddhists under the right conditions can be total cocks, etc... this is something we've seen before, it can be comprehended.
But that this is happening now...all those years under a military dictatorship, a pariah of the world....and they didn't go this far.
Now they've been making big moves towards democratising and rebuilding their relationship with the world and all that though...they do decide to go and do it.
Factions in the military realise if they don't do it now they never will? A ploy to push Burma away from its current path and back to the old days? Typical example of the good old ignorant conservative countries given democracy choosing something worse than the old regime?
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 19, 2017, 03:30:03 PM
Both Myanmar/Burma and Ethiopia/Abyssinia were empires for many centuries; maybe that mindset has not really changed despite an underperforming century or two.
Well, find a random Hungarian/other East European who dares to be honest with you, and odds are you'd hear only mildly better things about gypsies.
There is a reason why the Shan have their own army.
Quote from: Razgovory on September 19, 2017, 05:09:03 PM
There is a reason why the Shan have their own army.
Drugs?
Quote from: alfred russel on September 19, 2017, 03:19:01 PM
I once visited Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and had a rather lengthy conversation with several university students. They spoke good english, and were quite eager to discuss with me the American TV shows they watched. Their outlook on life seemed quite similar to what you would expect in the western world, until they began to discuss somalians. They assured me that somalians were not really humans, and they have the mindset of animals, and this could not be changed.
Factcheck: true. Somalis are animals.
Unless the sanctions are put back in place, there's no hope of change. Of course, even with them back in place, there's no guarantee things will change.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/u-s-envoy-to-u-n-demands-myanmar-prosecutions-weapons-curbs-over-rohingya-idUSKCN1C30GP
Quote
U.S. envoy to U.N. demands Myanmar prosecutions, weapons curbs, over Rohingya
UNITED NATIONS/YANGON (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over violence against Rohingya Muslims until the military puts sufficient accountability measures in place.
It was the first time the United States called for punishment of military leaders behind the repression, but stopped short of threatening to reimpose U.S. sanctions which were suspended under the Obama administration.
"We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be - a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority," Haley told the U.N. Security Council, the first time Washington has echoed the U.N.'s accusation that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine State was ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar rejects the accusations and has denounced rights abuses.
"The Burmese military must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing," Haley said.
"And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place," Haley said.
Myanmar national security adviser Thaung Tun said at the United Nations on Thursday there was no ethnic cleansing or genocide happening in Myanmar. He told the Security Council that Myanmar had invited U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit. A U.N. official said Guterres would consider visiting Myanmar under the right conditions.
China and Russia both expressed support for the Myanmar government. Myanmar said earlier this month it was negotiating with China and Russia, which have veto powers in the Security Council, to protect it from any possible action by the council.
The Trump administration has mostly hewed to former President Barack Obama's approach of forging warmer relations with Myanmar, partly aimed at countering China's influence in the resource-rich Southeast Asian country.
Meanwhile, international aid groups in Myanmar have urged the government to allow free access to Rakhine, where an army offensive has sent more than 500,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh, but hundreds of thousands remain cut off from food, shelter and medical care.
Refugees are still leaving Myanmar, more than a month after Rohingya Muslim insurgents attacked security posts near the border, triggering fierce Myanmar military retaliation.
Aid groups said on Thursday the total number of refugees in Bangladesh was now 502,000.
The Myanmar government has stopped international aid groups and U.N. agencies from carrying out most of their work in the north of Rakhine state, citing insecurity since the Aug. 25 insurgent attacks.
Aid groups said in a joint statement they were: "increasingly concerned about severe restrictions on humanitarian access and impediments to the delivery of critically needed humanitarian assistance throughout Rakhine State."
"We urge the government and authorities of Myanmar to ensure that all people in need in Rakhine State have full, free and unimpeded access to life-saving humanitarian assistance."
The government has put the Myanmar Red Cross in charge of aid to the state, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross. But the groups said they feared insufficient aid was getting through.
Relations between the government and aid agencies had been difficult for months, with some officials accusing the groups of helping the insurgents.
Aid groups dismissed the accusations, which they said had inflamed anger toward them among Buddhists in the communally divided state, and called for an end to "misinformation and unfounded accusations".
Rights groups have accused the army of trying to push Rohingya Muslims out of Myanmar, and of committing crimes against humanity. They have called for sanctions, in particular an arms embargo.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that the violence against Rohingya Muslims in the northern part of Rakhine could spread to central Rakhine, where 250,000 more people were at risk of displacement.
Guterres told the U.N. Security Council during its first public meeting on Myanmar in eight years, that the violence had spiraled into the "world's fastest developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare."
A group of Republican and Democratic senators urged the Trump administration on Thursday to use the "full weight" of its influence to help resolve the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
A letter seen by Reuters and signed by four Republican and 17 Democratic members of the 100-seat Senate also calls on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green to provide more humanitarian aid.
The British Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, Mark Field, described the situation as "an unacceptable tragedy" after visiting Myanmar and meeting leaders including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has faced scathing criticism and calls for her Nobel prize to be withdrawn.
DROWNINGS
Police in Bangladesh said they recovered the bodies of 14 refugees, including nine children, who drowned when their boat capsized off the coast in bad weather. A Reuters photographer said he saw several babies among the victims.
The U.N. International Organization for Migration later put the toll at 15.
Police officer Afrajul Hoque Tutu said three boats had capsized in heavy seas.
Myanmar was getting ready to "verify" refugees who want to return, the government minister charged with putting into effect recommendations to solve problems in Rakhine said.
Myanmar would conduct a "national verification process" at two points on its border with Bangladesh under terms agreed during a repatriation effort in 1993, state media quoted Win Myat Aye, the minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement, as saying.
Myanmar authorities do not recognize Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group, instead regarding them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
"The government hates us," said refugee Zafar Alam, 55, sheltering from rain near a refugee settlement in Bangladesh, referring to the Myanmar government.
"I don't think I'd be safe there. There's no justice."
Additonal reporting by Tommy Wilkes, Damir Sagolj in COX'S BAZAR, Serajul Quadir in DHAKA and Patricia Zengerle in WASHINGTON; writing by Robert Birsel and Yara Bayoumy; editing by Clarence Fernandez, Michael Perry and Grant McCool
Guterres? I haven't been keeping up. :(
Quote from: Razgovory on September 19, 2017, 05:09:03 PM
There is a reason why the Shan have their own army.
They also have their own hip hop artist.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51QQwWvma8L.jpg)
That was pretty lame.
QuoteAung San Suu Kyi to be stripped of Freedom of the City of Oxford
Council's removal of honour is latest by a British institution over her apparent defence of Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya
Aung San Suu Kyi is to be stripped of the Freedom of the City of Oxford, where she studied as an undergraduate, over her response to the Rohingya crisis.
Oxford city council voted unanimously to support a cross-party motion that said it was "no longer appropriate" to celebrate the de facto leader of Myanmar. The council is to hold a special meeting to confirm the honour's removal on 27 November.
The council leader, Bob Price, supported the motion, reportedly calling it an "unprecedented step" for the local authority, according to the BBC.
In recent months, Aung San Suu Kyi has drawn increasing criticism for her apparent defence of Myanmar's treatment of its Rohingya minority, described by the UN as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
Oxford council bestowed the freedom of the city on her in 1997, when she was being held as a political prisoner by Myanmar's military junta.
The decision to remove the award comes after the Oxford college where Aung San Suu Kyi studied recently removed her portrait from public display.
The governing body of St Hugh's college decided to remove the painting of the Nobel laureate from its main entrance.
A number of British institutions say they are reviewing or removing honours bestowed on Aung San Suu Kyi during her campaign for democracy.
Unison, the UK's second largest trade union, announced last month that it would suspend Aung San Suu Kyi's honorary membership and urged her to do more to denounce the plight of the Rohingya people.
Bristol University, one of a string of universities that awarded honorary degrees to the Burmese leader during her time in opposition, also said it was reviewing its award in light of accusations of brutal mistreatment of the Rohingya.
The London School of Economics student union said it would be stripping Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary presidency.
As a leader of Myanmar's opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi won international praise and a Nobel peace prize in 1991. Despite being barred from running for president, she won a decisive victory in the country's 2015 election, and was eventually given the title of state counsellor.
Meanwhile, a major fundraising appeal has been launched to help the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence in Burma.
The 13 member charities who make up the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) took action to step up their humanitarian relief as more than half a million people sought medical care, food and sanctuary.
The majority have been Muslim Rohingya people, who have fled to Bangladesh amid atrocities and fatalities in Rakhine state, on Mayanmar's western coast, following clashes between insurgents and security forces in recent weeks.
The UK government has pledged to match the first £3m donated by the public to the DEC emergency appeal.