Readers: Why should you care about what is happening in far away Burma’s internal affairs? Because the humanitarian grievance lobby is working overtime to make the West think that the only solution in the end will be for more Rohingya “refugees” coming to your town with the help of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other federal refugee contractors.
I wasn’t planning to write another post so soon on the Rohingya problem, but I can’t stand the hypocrisy of the Saudi government and its megaphone—-The Saudi Gazette.
But, here they are pontificating in an editorial on the plight of the allegedly poor persecuted Rohingya in Burma and Bangladesh when there are abundant reports about Muslim Rohingya living in hell in RICH Saudi Arabia.
Here is the hypocritical Saudi Gazette:
WILL Amnesty International’s latest report, released on Friday, open the eyes of the world community to the sad plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar before it is too late? [Someone! Give them a hanky!—ed]
Mostly concentrated in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, they have always suffered persecution and discrimination at the hands of local authorities or the majority Buddhists, sometimes both acting in unison. Many have fled the country to escape persecution, mostly to Bangladesh. Nearly 600,000 Rohingya Muslims live in Saudi Arabia, according to one estimate. [Note here in Demographics of Saudi Arabia there is no mention of any significant number of Burmese—ed]
[….]
Far too long the world community has behaved as though this is a problem concerning only neighboring Bangladesh because of ethnic affinity between Bengalis and the Rohingya. This has only made Myanmar more intransigent and the Rohingya more vulnerable to abuses of every conceivable kind. Amnesty’s latest findings, we hope, will enable the world community to see the problem in right perspective and come out with appropriate solutions. [LOL! The only thing the Saudis want you to see is that Muslims are the victims—always the victims!–ed]
Meanwhile, we reported previously about allegations that thousands of Rohingya men, women and children are residing in Jeddah prisons, here.
Now check out The Sail, a pro-Rohingya on-line publication on the treatment of Rohingya in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia mistreats Rohingya).
About 3,000 Rohingya families are awaiting deportation in Saudi prisons, but like the rest of their people, they have nowhere to go.
They have been described as some of the world’s most persecuted refugees, and among the most forgotten, too. During my imprisonment in Jeddah I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma.
Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.
[….]
But the interesting question is: where will they be sent when they are eventually deported? Burma doesn’t want them. Bangladesh, with a large population and poor economy, doesn’t have the inclination or the ability to handle a refugee population of this size. The Rohingyan refugees in Bangladesh are having a rough time as it is. Other Muslim countries play silent spectators.
[….]
The late King Faisal’s decision to offer them a permanent abode in Saudi Arabia was a noble gesture. However, later Saudi rulers have found the Burmese Muslims a thorn in their side. With strict regulation on their employment and movement within the kingdom, they are easy targets for extortion and torture.
There are said to be about 250,000 Burmese Muslims in Saudi Arabia – the majority living in Mecca’s slums (Naqqasha and Kudai). They sell vegetables, sweep streets and work as porters, carpenters and unskilled labour. The fortunate ones rise to become drivers.
In Saudi Arabia it is not uncommon for poor Rohingyas to marry off their young (sometimes underage) daughters to old and sick Saudis in the hope of getting “official favours”. But this hasn’t worked for many. Rohingyan wives of Saudi men, who have to survive as second class human beings on the periphery of society.
Those whom I met in Jeddah prisons seem to have accepted the situation as a fait accompli. But it is unfortunate that they are being made to suffer in a country considered to be the citadel of Islam.
So much for the much ballyhooed Muslim charity.
And, by the way, the Saudis send Somali asylum seekers back to Somalia on a regular basis. As far as I know the chickens at the Obama State Department are silent about this.
And one more thing, since it appears most Rohingya in Saudi Arabia are from Bangladesh, here is a post that might be somewhat edifying from March of this year.
Saudi Arabia authorities are closely observing Bangladeshi expatriate workers as some of them were allegedly involved in various criminal offences in the Gulf kingdom, according to a Bangladesh minister.
“At the moment they (Saudis) are not willing to recruit workers from Bangladesh until the crime tendency among Bangladeshi workers goes down,” Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain told reporters at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka yesterday on his return from the Gulf country.
Mosharraf, who led a six-member delegation to Saudi Arabia, said involvement in crimes by a few Bangladeshi workers has damaged the image of the country.
So, here is the bottomline! We should stay out of their business and out of their civil wars. Let these RICH Muslim countries take care of their fellow Muslims. We don’t need to be showing our generosity by importing Muslims rejected by Saudi Arabia! to the US. In fact, Saudi Arabia should stop pouring so much money into the US for mosque building and instead take care of the suffering of Muslims in Muslim countries!
And, how dare the damn Saudis lecture any other country about human rights abuses.
New readers: See our entire category, Rohingya Reports, for five years of background posts on the Rohingya.