Good for Secretary of State Tillerson! My estimation of him has just risen enormously!
He hasn’t fallen for the propaganda campaign that the Muslim Rohingya have no blame and that the Buddhist government of Burma (aka Myanmar) is made up of evil killer Islamophobes.
Unlike VP Pence who immediately jumped to the international ‘humanitarians’ tune here in September, Tillerson wants more facts!
From the LA Times:
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first official trip to Myanmar on Wednesday, he did not describe the country’s brutal military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as ethnic cleansing, as other diplomats have done.
Now read this next paragraph, so typical of the Leftwing media. NO mention of how some atrocities were perpetrated by Rohingya against their Buddhist neighbors!
Security forces have conducted or allowed what critics call systematic rape and murder against the Rohingya minority, leading more than half a million to flee to squalid camps in neighboring Bangladesh since August.
But speaking in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, Tillerson declined to call for sanctions or other censure, saying more investigation is needed.
“If we have credible information that we believe to be very reliable that certain individuals were responsible for certain acts that we find unacceptable,” Tillerson said, “then targeted sanctions on individuals very well may be appropriate.”
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have already documented atrocities against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority country. In September, the United Nations’ top human rights official accused Myanmar of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Whether Tillerson was ill-informed or following administration policy wasn’t clear. [It is almost laughable how they write the ‘news’!—ed]
This is what really has the Human Rights Industrial Complex (HRIC) steamed. Their hero won’t come to an unqualified defense of the Rohingya:
In Myanmar, human rights groups have been dismayed at the failure of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out on the plight of the Rohingya, especially now that she is state counselor, a position akin to prime minister.
“What people mean is what I say is not interesting enough,” she said of her critics during Tillerson’s visit. “What I say is not meant to be exciting. It’s meant to be accurate, not set people against each other.”
John Sifton, who is following the conflict in Myanmar for Human Rights Watch, said it was “naive” for Tillerson to call for another investigation.
Continue reading here where the reporter gives another opportunity for Republican Senators Corker and McCain to badmouth Trump and the changes being made at the US State Department.
You should know that, in my opinion, Trump and Tillerson are making a huge mistake with this staff cut-back by leaving in place career bureaucrats to run the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), the agency within the State Department that hires the contractors that place refugees in your towns.
But, for the moment, I am thrilled that Tillerson has enough sense to not buy the HRIC line that will soon be followed by demands that we admit even more Rohingya to your towns and cities than we have already (nearly 20,000 in the last decade).
See my Rohingya Reports category here where for nearly ten years I’ve reported on the build-up of this propaganda campaign—that the Rohingya are the sole victims here.