I don’t want to have to write a book (although I have written 201 posts on the topic at my Rohingya Reports category), so I’ll be brief with the background.
Burma is a Buddhist country and they want to keep it that way (I’m not judging them, you may). So as a result, the US has for years been taking tens of thousands of ‘refugees’ representing Burmese minority religions. The largest numbers have been Christians.
So when I saw this latest news about an uptick in violence between the Buddhists and Muslims (Rohingya) by the Associated Press (story below), I had a check of the number of Burmese being admitted to the US and how many are Muslims.
This isn’t just a story about far away Burma, this effects you—Americans—too!
The important takeaway from the numbers is that we brought no Rohingya to America in the first year I wrote RRW (2007), but I see that this year (2017) just over a quarter of the ‘refugees’ admitted from Burma are Muslim according to Wrapsnet.
The AP story references the 2012 riots between the Rohingya and Buddhists. I saw the reports as they were coming in and the media shamefully never mentions that the fuse was lit that year when a Buddhist girl was raped and murdered by a gang of Muslim criminals.
Here are the facts about Rohingya resettlement to America:
In FY2008: We admitted 18,139 Burmese ‘refugees’ to America. The vast majority were Christians. None were Muslim.
I then checked numbers for FY2012: We admitted 14,160 ‘refugees’ from Burma and only 759 were Muslims (5%). After that year the numbers have steadily risen.
This year, so far in FY2017, we have admitted 4,803 Burmese and 1,269 are listed as Muslim (26%).
Here is the AP story which should be entitled, ‘Rohingya insurgent group takes responsibility for latest violence.’ Instead that news is 19 paragraphs down in the story.
Violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state has driven thousands of ethnic Rohingya Muslims fleeing toward Bangladesh for safety, along with a smaller exodus of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
A majority of the country’s estimated 1 million Rohingya live in the northern part of Rakhine state, where Rohingya insurgents launched coordinated attacks last week against police posts, setting off allegedly brutal retaliation by government forces.
Human rights groups and advocates for the Rohingya say the army retaliated by burning down villages and shooting civilians. The government blames Rohingya insurgents for the violence, including the arson.
[….]
Tension has long been high between the Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists, leading to bloody rioting in 2012.
Most of the violence since last week seems to be directed at Rohingya villages, but Rakhine Buddhists, feeling unsafe after the upsurge in fighting, are moving south to the state’s capital, Sittwe, where Buddhists are a majority and have greater security.
[….]