I can hear you asking: So what else is new?
This is the scary thing when you know a good bit about a subject and you see some Leftist media reporter, with a big following (surely you have seen her on Fox), writing about something she knows little about.
In this case it is Betsy Woodruff on the Rohingya.
Here (below) is the title of her piece where she suggests that anyone who doesn’t believe that the Rohingya are pure as the driven snow are themselves inciting violence.
She includes Ann Coulter, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and yours truly as instigators of violence (murder and rape by Buddhists) against the poor, much-maligned Rohingya Muslims of Burma (actually they are most likely Bangladeshis) simply because we haven’t bought the ethnic cleansing story hook, line and sinker.
Daily Beast headline:
The American Far Right Asks: What Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing?
Before you read Woodruff’s yellow journalism, I want to say a few things. I have followed the build-up of the controversy in Burma for ten years and have written 212 previous reports on Rohingya people.
I’ve watched the international Left build a classic propaganda campaign to promote the image of the Rohingya as the poster-children for ethnic cleansing—poor suffering souls who only want to be left alone to build their Muslim community in the midst of a violent (to hear them tell it) bunch of Buddhists.
The fact that famous Burmese human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi has not jumped to the defense of the Rohingya is telling. Dear Betsy, is she a Far Right activist too?
And, finally, yes there have been excesses from the Buddhists. It would be inexcusable for me (although I’m just a blogger) not to say that, but surely a ‘journalist’ of Woodruff’s stature might actually mention the rape and killing carried out by the Rohingya against Buddhists.
Here are Woodruff’s opening comments:
Some of the most influential figures in the far right have suggested that the Rohingya had Burma’s ethnic-cleansing campaign coming.
The Burmese government is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that has displaced more than 600,000 Rohingya civilians from their homes. Burmese military forces have burned dozens of Rohingya villages, raped women and girls, and murdered scores of people, according to an October report from Amnesty International. The government’s brutality against the predominantly Muslim ethnic minority has drawn condemnation from the United Nations, the international human rights community, and the U.S. State Department.
But in far-right media, it’s a different story. Some of the most influential figures of the far right have helped amplify voices that incite violence, and have even suggested that the Rohingya had it coming.
Continue reading as she gasps over remarks by Coulter, Geller, Spencer and unnamed writers at Breitbart including this one (she provides no link) who apparently said this:
(Let me ask you faithful readers if this sounds outrageous to you.)
“Perhaps the Buddhists are trying to maintain their own history and culture in the face of calls for destruction,” it concluded.
What an unthinkable concept that is according to Woodruff (gasping again)!
She does give a link for a recent story at World Net Daily by Leo Hohmann where I am quoted:
And WorldNetDaily, a site best known for promoting birther conspiracy theories***, recently ran a piece indicating Burma’s government was handling the Rohingya crisis appropriately.
“The Buddhists get it,” anti-refugee activist Ann Corcoran told the site. “They are being very politically incorrect.”
(Gasp!)
I urge anyone considering themselves journalists to visit my Rohingya Reports category with over 200 previous posts. You should learn that the Rohingya began the latest round of violence in 2012. First came the rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by Rohingya and retaliation by Buddhists. Then the Rohingya burned some Buddhist villages in Rakhine state….and back and forth it went.
*** Have some fun, go back to Woodruff’s piece and see how many words she uses that are yellow journalism techniques— exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering or sensationalism. Like this: “conspiratorial right-wing Robert Spencer.”
Post is filed in my ‘Laugh of the day’ category, here.