Three cheers for Suu Kyi!
Let me out of here!
Why do we care what is happening in Burma/Myanmar as it relates to the Rohingya/Bengali population? Because once again we are seeing the worldwide media drumbeat badgering Burma and working up to demanding that western countries take in the so-called Muslim “refugees.”
Rohingya are already coming to America as we saw a couple of days ago in our story from New Hampshire, here.
Apparently, so far, Suu Kyi isn’t buying the demand that the violence-prone “stateless” Rohingya be given the right of citizenship in Burma. Many believe they are basically illegal aliens from Bangladesh and Burma wants to keep Burma for primarily Burmese Buddhists which is anathema to the multi-culti crowd.
Here the Global Post builds the spin about the “cause célèbre” to the point where it can blast Aung San Suu Kyi (seven paragraphs into the story):
YANGON, Myanmar — From the depths of obscurity, Myanmar’s highly beleaguered Muslim Rohingya ethnicity has become something of a global cause célèbre.
The United Nations deems the roughly 1 million population group one of the world’s “most persecuted” minorities. In a report last week, Human Right Watch deployed some of the most potent language at its disposal in describing their mistreatment: “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity.” The online pro-Rohingya call to arms #RohingyaNOW was, for a brief blip in March, Twitter’s highest-trending phrase.
Even US President Barack Obama, in his first and only visit to Myanmar last November, urged the nation to accept that Rohingya “hold within themselves the same dignity as you do.”
But these are lofty expectations from a nation in which the government, much of the general public and even progressive activist circles contend that Rohingya is a contrived ethnicity that does not exist — at least not as the people who call themselves Rohingya and their foreign sympathizers believe they do.
This week, the government released its official account of Myanmar’s most explosive violence in recent years: a 2012 wave of killing, maiming and arson sprees waged in large part by Buddhists bent on ridding their native Rakhine State of the Rohingya. But nowhere in the official English translation does the word “Rohingya” appear. The minority is instead described as “Bengali,” the native people of neighboring Bangladesh. [Readers, I haven’t read the report but I followed the 2012 riots and they began because Rohingya were accused of raping and murdering a Buddhist girl! Killing on both sides ensued—ed]
The report insists the stateless group largely descend from farmers led over during British occupation of Myanmar (then titled Burma) in the early 1800s. They are described as procreating heavily, failing to assimilate and inviting over their kin to the dismay of helpless local Buddhists living under colonial rule. Myanmar’s authorities have since reversed the British empire’s policy: The Rohingya are now considered non-citizens even though their alleged homeland, Bangladesh, does not accept them either.
Treating this native-born population as invaders is roundly condemned around the globe. The Rohingya, like many persecuted groups before them, have pleaded for support from Aung San Suu Kyi. The 67-year-old parliamentarian, beloved for challenging Myanmar’s despotic generals, is traditionally seen as a voice of Myanmar’s oppressed.
But in an interview with GlobalPost, the Nobel Peace Laureate’s spokesman and confidante, Nyan Win, confirmed that Aung San Suu Kyi has no plans to champion the Rohingya cause despite criticism swirling around her silence on the crisis.
Let me ask you, readers, why is it our problem when one country wants to expel illegal aliens? Why are we expected to then bring them to America? This is a similar situation to the Bhutanese/Nepalese people where we have taken over 60,000 to America because Bhutan expelled them and their original homeland, Nepal, refused to take them back!
I repeat, why is this our problem?
For new readers, this is our 145th post on the Rohingya spanning over 5 years. See our whole category here.