I’ve told you before that I turn on CNN every morning so I get a feel for where the Left is going every day and today I said uh-oh, here we go on the Burmese Rohingya again. CNN featured a longer piece on the “plight” of Rohingya Muslims in Burma (a Buddhist country).
I couldn’t possibly rehash the decade long controversy (the decade I chronicled in my Rohingya Reports category where 220 posts are archived), but I want you to know why this matters to you and that is that we are admitting Rohingya refugees to live in towns near you—14,882 in the last decade—including over 1,000 since Trump became President (So much for a so-called “Muslim ban!”)
Before I get to the numbers breakdown over the last ten years….
…here is a bare bones story about stepped-up UN (with the US!) efforts to smackdown the Buddhist government of Myanmar.
Continue reading “Rohingya 'refugees' back in the news (why you should care)!”
Tag: Burma
Pope Francis arrives in Burma, will he use the ‘R’-word—Rohingya?
We will be watching!
By the way, in Burma (aka Myanmar), the majority Buddhist population does not think the group of people referred to as Rohingya are anything more than Bangladeshi ethnics who got in to the Buddhist country from Muslim Bangladesh over decades. That is why the word, setting them aside as some special ethnic group, should the Pope utter it, will not sit well with his hosts.
From Malta Today:
Pope Francis has arrived in Myanmar, becoming the first pope to ever visit the southeast Asian nation.
The world’s most high-profile Christian takes center stage in a staunchly Buddhist country accused of horrifying acts of brutality against its Rohingya Muslim minority.
The Pope previously decried the violence against the Rohingya, calling them his persecuted “brothers and sisters.”
Experts warn that this trip will require balancing a uniquely complicated set of humanitarian, diplomatic and religious questions. Even his own cardinal has advised the Pope to steer clear of the word Rohingya for fear of stalling his message of reconciliation before it has even begun.
Aaron Connelly, research fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute, said that there was little chance the Pope’s visit to Myanmar was going to be a “generic Papal visit.”
“Clearly the thing that motivated this visit was always a desire to talk about the Rohingya,” he said.
“The question is … is he going to do that in a way which is less confrontational and engages?” Connelly added. “Or is he going to say, this is outrageous, these people have a right to be in Myanmar?”
Reading almost like an afterthought, here is the last line of this news:
While Pope Francis’s stance on the Rohingya crisis will likely dominate headlines, the Pope is also expected to push for greater rights for the several million members of Myanmar’s Christian minority.
Why does all of this matter to you in America? We have already admitted nearly 20,000 Rohingya ‘refugees’ in the last ten years. I’ll be updating numbers soon.
For more on Rohingya, see my Rohingya Reports category here with 214 previous posts.
Trump and Pence show ignorance about Rohingya situation in Burma
I saw the virtue-signaling by Vice President Pence on Fox News yesterday and wanted to throw something at the TV. The Fox reporter had swallowed the Leftwing media meme (built over the last decade) hook, line and sinker that the Rohingya are victims (just peaceful Muslims minding their own business).
Here is my recommendation to him and to Trump on the decades-old conflict in Burma between the Buddhists who run the country and the increasing numbers of devout Rohingya Muslims who the Buddhists say are really illegal migrants from Bangladesh….
Shut up!
I didn’t see the Burmese government chastising you, Mr. President, when you (fearing for the safety of Americans) initiated your ‘travel ban’ aimed at migrants from Muslim countries. Aren’t the Buddhists allowed to protect their people?
Until you have put someone to work studying the complex problem, someone who can fully brief you, simply don’t say a word!
***Update*** Journalists who know the facts call for balanced reporting (instead of constant pro-Muslim biased stories from AP, Reuters, BBC, etc), see here (hat tip:Joanne).
Here is Aljazeera thrilled to report what Pence (and Trump) said out of ignorance this week:
US President Donald Trump wants the UN Security Council to take “strong and swift action” to end violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya.
Speaking at a Security Council meeting on peacekeeping reform, Vice President Mike Pence accused the Myanmar military of responding to attacks on government outposts “with terrible savagery, burning villages, driving the Rohingya from their homes”. [Those attacks came from armed Rohingya militants!—ed]
Pence repeated a US call for the Myanmar military to end the violence and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution for the majority-Muslim Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants. [Did he call for the Rohingya to stop their violence?—ed]
[….]
It was the strongest US government response yet to the violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that has forced more than 420,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, fleeing a military offensive the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.
Get the facts…..
I bet Trump and Pence don’t even know that we have admitted almost 20,000 Rohingya to live in your towns and cities in the last ten years, including this upstanding future American citizen in New Hampshire.
Or how about this one agitating in Arizona (once their population gets high enough, the political agitation begins).
Just checked Wrapsnet and found that Donald Trump admitted 715 Rohingya (likely picked up in Malaysia or Thailand) since inauguration day. They couldn’t have been screened any more easily than the Syrians!
And, we are going to ‘welcome’ more Rohingya for Pence to love in that batch of failed asylum seekers from Australia.
See my Rohingya Reports category here—-it includes over 200 posts going back ten years—if anyone seriously wants to try to understand some of the facts buried by the mainstream media!
Get ready for Rohingya! Refugee flavor of the year…
Maybe you haven’t noticed yet, but Syrian refugees are last years’ refugee poster children.
Now the media is moving on to the Rohingya (click here for what I think is the best pronunciation). Everywhere I turn there is media coverage of the Burmese Buddhist government attempting to limit the expansion and disruptive influence of its Muslim minority population.
I want to move on to other topics this morning, so I can’t possibly fill you in on ten years of posts I’ve written (203 so far) on the Rohingya problem. Someone should write a book and I’ve done a lot of research for wannabe authors in my category called Rohingya Reports, here.
But, I want you to know this morning that the strife in Burma (aka Myanmar) with the Muslim Rohingya (fleeing to Bangladesh, a Muslim country) is being placed front and center at the UN just as President Trump speaks there today.
Here is Amnesty International taking its whack. Surprisingly, there is one little line in this article that you don’t usually see as most reports depict the Rohingya as pure as the driven snow. And, of course, it is ALL Trump’s fault!
“The USA’s policy towards refugees has to be viewed in a global context. In the shadow of Trump’s cruel policies, other countries around the world have continued to dehumanize refugees and turn their backs on them,” said Salil Shetty.
“Whether it’s the EU condemning refugees to abuse and exploitation at the hands of criminal gangs in Libya, or Australia subjecting refugees to severe physical and psychological damage in its offshore detention centers, rich countries have contributed substantially to the alarming deterioration of refugee rights.
“It is against this backdrop of governments’ callous treatment of people fleeing conflict and violence that the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis is unfolding before our eyes in Bangladesh.”
Bangladesh is a Muslim country and most Burmese believe the Rohingya are just a Bangladeshi ethnic group that illegally inserted itself in Burma decades ago.
Trump is getting an earful in New York this week, but he likely will never be told about the last few words in this paragraph….
World leaders gathering in New York for this year’s UN General Assembly are expected to discuss the spiraling situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, from where the long-persecuted Rohingya population have been forced to flee because of an unlawful and totally disproportionate military response to attacks by a Rohingya armed group.
Gotta give Amnesty a little credit, they are at least reporting that the Rohingya have been agitators of recent waves of violence.
You need to know! This is not about some far off Asian country!
We have admitted 19,110 Burmese Muslims to the US since FY07 (according to Wrapsnet).
One of the contractors welcoming the devout Rohingya to your towns and cities is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. See my story, here, in 2013.
When a Leftist Pope gets between a rock and a hard place (laugh of the day)
Or more specifically when he gets between the Muslims and the Buddhists in Burma.
Scratching his head: How can two “peaceful” religions be killing each other?
See Pope in a pickle by George Neumayr at American Spectator (hat tip: Judy).
(Before you go on with your laugh, you need to know that the Buddhists do not recognize the label ‘Rohingya’ because they think the Muslims in Burma (aka Myanmar) are simply Bangladeshi Muslims who moved into Burma illegally and deserve no special label. I’ve followed the issue for ten years and have a huge archive, Rohingya Reports, here. The latest outbreak of violence that began in 2012 resulted from a brutal rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by a gang of Muslims, something the media never mentions! You also need to know that the US has admitted thousands of Rohingya to America, most of them arriving in recent years.)
In late August, the New York Times reported on a controversy only a pope like Francis would bother to court. Like many of his fellow Jesuits, Pope Francis exudes enthusiasm for every religion except his own. Out of this hyper-ecumenism has come a torrent of flaky tributes to what his predecessors would have called “false religions” and silly trips to remote countries with almost no Catholics. The Times reported on one such upcoming trip to Myanmar/Burma: “Pope’s Planned Visit to Myanmar Risks Stoking Religious Tensions.”
The tensions to which the article refers don’t involve Catholics. There aren’t enough of them around to start a fight. The article refers to the fighting between Muslims and Buddhists. The latter group evidently finds the pope’s Islamophilia annoying and wants him to keep his nose out of their business. In February, Pope Francis rebuked Burma’s Buddhists for mistreating Muslims from Bangladesh who call themselves the Rohingya: “They have been suffering, they are being tortured and killed, simply because they uphold their Muslim faith.”
[….]
Besides, talking about his “Rohingya brothers” gives him a break from the difficult work of having to explain away jihad. Here is an opportunity, as Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister pointed out, where he can defend Muslims in the role of the persecuted instead of the persecuting. But the problem, as Magister notes, is that it also puts him in the awkward position of criticizing Buddhism, another religion that he is inclined to cast as impeccably peaceful. Maybe he can find a way to blame the tensions on Catholics, whose numbers in Burma’s dioceses have swelled to the point where they can fit into the back of a mini-van.
The Times gingerly approaches this squabbling among two groups of religionists it normally wants to protect and sanitize. The Times is also loath to criticize an interfering liberal pope. But even from its elliptical reporting one gets the sense that the Buddhists would prefer that the pope virtue-signal somewhere else…
This is a must read for those of you who love irony (and how dumb Leftist drivel gets them in trouble).