In advance of Obama’s visit to Burma, the NYT does the Rohingya as victims story

Burma, one of the only countries in the world with the guts to stand up to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Monks protest in 2013: http://www.demotix.com/news/3243077/buddhist-monks-protest-against-oic/all-media

 

I would have to write a book to tell you why this story is so infuriating to me.  I don’t have time for books!  But, I have followed the Burma (Myanmar) Rohingya Muslim issue for years (174 previous posts in our Rohingya category) and it makes me want to explode when I see the one-sided portrayal of the issue by the mainstream (leftwing, pro-Islamist media).

By the way, my initial interest in the Rohingya story was that our refugee resettlement contractors are pushing for the US to take more Rohingya refugees (USCCB here), and in fact have already resettled some in America.  Esar Met, convicted of killing a Burmese Christian girl earlier this year in Utah, was almost certainly a Rohingya.

Oh, how times have changed.  Here is Time magazine on the Rohingya in 2002 (see our 2009 post here to see how Time got with the Rohingya as ‘victims’ meme by 2009).  In 2002:

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas.

Interestingly, the US State Department removed its link where Rohingya had been previously linked to Islamic terror groups.

I don’t see one single word in the New York Times article from last Thursday about what started the latest round of violence between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim Rohingya minority—the rape and murder in 2012 of a Burmese girl by a gang of Muslim men. Not a word about outside Islamic agitators (Muslim “pilgrams”) working among the Rohingya population, and definitely not one word about the Organization of Islamic Cooperation attempting to get an Islamic/sharia foothold in Burma.

Remember everywhere is fair game for the creation of a Sharia state.

Here is the New York Times carrying water for the lecturing Obama again and the Islamist agenda:

SITTWE, Myanmar — The Myanmar government has given the estimated one million Rohingya people in this coastal region of the country a dispiriting choice: Prove your family has lived here for more than 60 years and qualify for second-class citizenship, or be placed in camps and face deportation.

The policy, accompanied by a wave of decrees and legislation, has made life for the Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority, ever more desperate, spurring the biggest flow of Rohingya refugees since a major exodus two years ago.

In the last three weeks alone, 14,500 Rohingya have sailed from the beaches of Rakhine State to Thailand, with the ultimate goal of reaching Malaysia, according to the Arakan Project, a group that monitors Rohingya refugees.

The crisis has become an embarrassment to the White House ahead of a scheduled visit by President Obama to Myanmar next week. [Obama off to Asia here—ed] The administration considers Myanmar a foreign-policy success story in Asia but is worried that renewed conflict between Buddhist extremists, who are given a free hand by the government, and the Rohingya could derail the already rocky transition from military rule to democratic reform.

Mr. Obama called President Thein Sein of Myanmar last week, urging him to address the “tensions and humanitarian situation in Rakhine State,” the White House said.

In his most public appeal to the government yet, Mr. Obama asked the Myanmar leader to revise the anti-Rohingya policies, specifically the resettlement plan. Myanmar must “support the civil and political rights of the Rohingya population,” he said.

The Rohingya have faced discrimination for decades. They have been denied citizenship and evicted from their homes, their land has been confiscated, and they have been attacked by the military. After one such attack in 1978, some 200,000 fled to Bangladesh.

Many paragraphs of blah, blah, blah and this:

The latest flare-up began with an outbreak of sectarian rioting in 2012, in which hundreds of Rohingya were killed and dozens of their villages burned to the ground by radical Buddhists. Since then, close to 100,000 have fled the country, and more than 100,000 have been confined to squalid camps, forbidden to leave.

No discussion of how the latest flare-up started!  Or, how the Rohingya set Buddhist villages on fire and killed innocents.  Typical biased and disgusting coverage!

See our Rohingya Reports category.  And, you could write a book!

Sec. of Homeland Security visits Somali “community” in Minneapolis, hears complaints

Says he wants help in identifying immigrants with bad intentions.  (Well, he didn’t exactly say that.)

In response, Somalis welcome federal help in keeping their youths from wanting to join the jihad, say they need more taxpayer funded stuff to keep them here.  (Well, not exactly in those words.)

Jeh Johnson with Somalis in Minneapolis. Somalis don’t want any airport profiling as they travel in and out of the US. http://www.kare11.com/story/news/local/2014/11/07/homeland-security-chief-johnson-somalis-luger-bihi-dube/18670865/

It seems pretty simple to me, don’t profile at airports as they leave the country, just let them leave and then strip them of their passports!

From Fox9 Minneapolis (emphasis is mine):

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) –

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson was in the heart of Minnesota’s Somali community Friday to listen and let local leaders know they aren’t alone. He encouraged grassroots efforts to build safe, strong and proud neighborhoods, telling the Muslim community this is your America too.

“I want to encourage people to be participants in our public safety, in our homeland security.” Johnson said. “This is your country too.”

Johnson talked about several hot button issues, insisting he is focused on community engagement.

“Muslims are always being targeted because they happen to be Muslims,” Abdirahman Mukhtar, with Pillsbury United Communities said.

The secretary’s agenda includes racial profiling and the extremist recruitment of young Muslims to fight in wars overseas.

“This is an exercise in trust,” Johnson said.

The secretary explained that efforts to block the pipeline that is sending potential fighters from the Twin Cities to far off places like Somalia and Syria starts on the ground in neighborhoods like Minneapolis’ cedar-riverside.

The message from the White House is the federal government needs help.

“If you see somebody who may be headed in the direction of violence, someone disaffected, angry in some way, help us to help you in the community,” Johnson said. “I don’t consider that snitching.”

“We are very happy that we are getting the right attention,” Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali community leader said.

Somali community leaders welcomed the cabinet level visit that included meetings and roundtable discussions with law enforcement and other stakeholders.  [‘Stakeholders’ never include those critical of the government—ed]

The hope is that Washington gets the message that there are problems on the ground here that need addressing to keep young immigrants from becoming disillusioned and influenced by terrorist organizations.

They need more job training, education, and nice places to live (and for you to pay for it!).

“There’s no employment opportunities, no job training, college readiness, the achievement gap,” Amano Dube with Pillsbury United Communities said. “They don’t have an appropriate place to live.”

And, LOL! don’t you dare profile them at airports as they try to get to Somalia or to the Middle East to join ISIS!  It continues to be a great mystery to me why so many “persecuted” Somalis are always flying back and forth to Somalia and East Africa.  How persecuted could they be?

BTW, more Somalis are arriving in Minneapolis every day thanks to the US State Department and its contractors.

Heritage Action: Beware Obama expansion of the definition of ‘refugee’

This is from two weeks ago, but it just came to my attention.  From Heritage Action Sentinel (hat tip: Joanne):

Refugee Memorandum: President Obama recently issued an executive memorandum that will allow for a limited number of children in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to apply for refugee status if they have relatives legally residing in the U.S. This policy is problematic in that it requires officials to justify the refugee status by loosening criteria. Although this proposal may currently be limited in scope, there is concern the administration would then use this justification to offer asylum to thousands of children here illegally, amounting to a massive loophole for administrative amnesty.

The U.S. is already the number one country of resettlement in the world, accepting 66,200 *** refugees in 2013. Our refugee and asylum policy does not need a politically motivated expansion that would trample current law while inviting another surge of illegal crossings. Congress should respond to any new avenue granting executive amnesty with legislation that stops the Obama Administration from continuing to break the law.

See Heritage’s report by clicking here.

Glad to see that it isn’t just the usual immigration restriction groups sounding the alarm.

*** Eskinder Negash, Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, put the number at 143,000.  Go here to see how he gets that number.

Setback! (ya think!)

Look at this incredible map for the House of Representatives published by the National Journal (which says it will update as soon as a few more races become official).  I wonder if these blue areas correlate well with high immigrant population areas (except maybe Vermont which gets very few refugees and immigrants although it brags about being “welcoming.”)

Guess the Dems have a long way to go in turning red states blue!

One caveat:  Having a red Representative does not necessarily mean you have someone with common sense on the immigration issue.

Update:  Map keeps disappearing on me, so if it does, go to the link to view it.

US State Department’s Anne Richard in Berlin: We have 5,000 Syrians in the pipeline to America

The Obama Administration has been dancing around the issue of how many Syrians are on the way to your towns and cities and I suspect that is because they don’t need one more thing before Tuesday to rock the Democrats’ boat.

Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Richard: 5,000 Syrians are being processed to arrive in the US soon (Not enough to satisfy the UN however).

Anne C. Richard is the Assistant Secretary of State who represented the US this week in Berlin, Germany where a confab was held to discuss what the heck the (western) world is going to do to help all those Syrian Muslims flooding UN camps.

Obama announced our refugee plan for FY2015 at the beginning of the month, but was pretty quiet about how many Syrians we are going to admit.  At about that time, it leaked out that the UNHCR had lined up 4,000 Syrians to arrive soon.  However, watch this news clip (just before the 3 minute mark) of Richard in Germany where she says we now have 5,000 in the pipeline.

Germany has accepted 70,000 Syrians (not clear if they are all in the country yet), but check out how the arrival of more Muslims is sitting with the German people as thousands rioted in Cologne last weekend.   See our post of a few days ago by clicking here.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society would like to see 30,000 real soon!  See our post of two days ago where we learned that HIAS (a federal refugee contractor*** being paid to resettle refugees) is getting up a petition to tell Obama to increase our total refugee quota for the year from 70,000 to 100,000.  Why HIAS wants more Muslims in America is beyond my understanding.

*** For new readers (we have many every day) here are the nine major federal refugee contractors (they then have 300 or so subcontractors spread out through America).   And, btw, Anne C. Richard was formerly the VP of one of them—the International Rescue Committee—and before that she worked at the US State Department.  She represents the classic case of the federal contractor/federal agency revolving door.  See also in her bio that she worked for the International Crisis Group which George Soros played an instrumental role in forming.