Tag: Burma

The OIC does not need an office in Burma (Myanmar)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
No OIC! No Sharia Law! Take Foreign Bengalis to your country! Monks protest in Sittwe last Friday

But, they sure would like one. 

It is my view that it would serve no purpose other than to create a political agitation foothold in the largely Buddhist country.  If the rich countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation want to send humanitarian aid (food and supplies) to their fellow Muslims, let them do it through established international channels!

My alerts this morning are filled with Ihsanoglu crying stories, but here is a surprisingly (slightly) more balanced story written by Nizam Ahmed at The Financial Express (emphasis is mine):

US Ambassador Derek Mitchell was hanging around during the OIC visit according to The Financial Express.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) urged Myanmar to allow opening a country office in Naypyitaw so that the organisation could cooperate and contribute to socio-economic development programmes in the Buddhist-majority country, diplomatic sources said in Dhaka Saturday.

The call was made during official level talks between an OIC delegation and Myanmar officials in the capital of the Southeast Asian country Thursday, the second day of a four-day visit.

The delegation led by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu concluded the visit Saturday after assessing the level of human rights abuse against minority Muslim Rohingyas, the sources said.

However the delegation while visiting camps of homeless people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, displaced during the communal riots in western Rakhine state over the past one year, met noisy protests of ethnic Buddhists in Sittwe, the capital of the state Thursday.

About 3,000 Buddhists led by monks staged the protest when the OIC delegation visited different camps of displaced Rohingyas and met local officials in the Rakhine state (formerly Arakan), bordering Bangladesh.

However Rohinygas welcomed the delegation comprising senior officials of the respective foreign ministries of seven member countries namely Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who visited the camps, said a senior official at the ministry of foreign affairs in Dhaka.

The ethnic Buddhists staged the protest as they feel that the international aid groups are biased for Muslims in Myanmar, he said. [yes they are!—ed]

Now this is unbelievable!  For the first time in a very long time someone actually mentions that the latest upheaval resulted from the rapes and murders of  Buddhist girls by Muslims!

Rakhine state was the scene of communal clashes between Muslims and ethnic Buddhists last year that left some 200 mostly Rohingya Muslims dead and 140,000 others displaced.   [Rarely does anyone mention that Buddhists died in the clashes too!  Some Muslims were killers as well, but you would never know it from western media reports!—-ed]

The riot that erupted last year over alleged rape of two women by Muslims, opened up an old wound of sectarian animosity and hatred between the two communities.

Here is one more point of fact rarely mentioned these days.  Buddhists claim the Rohingya are largely illegal migrants who have come over from Bangladesh in modern times.

Myanmar Buddhists consider Rohingya Muslims illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, brought over by the British when they ruled over colonial India and Myanmar, also known as Burma. The Rohingyas say, in response, that they have lived in the country for generations.

The protest photo is from this story.   I loved the banner telling the OIC to take the ‘Bengalis’ (Rohingya) to their countries.  That is exactly what I’ve been saying!

As I said yesterday:

Editors note:  Pay attention!  This is not some faraway problem—it will be yours in the West when they start pushing in a big way for the resettlement of Rohingya to your towns!

This past May the US Conference of Catholic Bishops implored the US State Department to bring MORE Rohingya to America.

Anyone want to write a book?  See our previous 160 posts in our Rohingya Reports category.  LOL!  We have your research done!

Burma again: Did he cry for Americans on 9/11?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  Pay attention!  This is not some faraway problem—it will be yours in the West when they start pushing in a big way for the resettlement of Rohingya to your towns!

World Muslim leader Ihsanoglu and Hillary at the US State Department in 2012

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turkish Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, who headed a delegation of Islamists to Burma (Myanmar) last week (here) reportedly cried for the Rohingya Muslims of Burma, or so he told the world media including the Associated Press (via the Washington Post).

I’m telling you I have watched this public relations campaign build over the last 6 years—they build a drumbeat of victimhood and the Muslims are NEVER anything but the victims!

It makes me want to scream!  The western media NEVER reports when the Rohingya instigate violence in Burma, or India, or Bangladesh or Malaysia!

Here is the WaPo today:

YANGON, Myanmar — The secretary general of the world’s largest bloc of Islamic countries said emotional visits with members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim community — chased from their homes in Myanmar by Buddhist mobs and arsonists — brought him to tears.

“I’ve never had such a feeling,” Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said late Saturday, as he and other delegates from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation wrapped up a three-day tour to Myanmar that included talks with the president, government ministers, interfaith groups and U.N. agencies.

Never had such a feeling!  Never for the thousands upon thousands of innocent people killed in the name of Islam, never for the Christians slaughtered in Africa almost every Sunday, never for the innocent victims of 9/11?

Aung San Suu Kyi gets it!  (see our previous post here)

The Post (AP) ends with this:

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi — who has said little in defense of the religious minority — declined to meet with the OIC delegation.

A woman with such power must really p***-off the OIC!

Endnote:  In 2009 we reported that the US State Department had linked Rohingya to terrorist groups operating in that part of the world, but lo-and-behold in 2012 (during Ms. Hillary’s reign) that link was no longer available at the State Department’s website.

Burma: One of the few places in the world telling the OIC to take a hike!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Protestors Nov. 15th with NO! OIC stickers and banners. Photo: AFP

The OIC, of course, is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Buddhists in Burma (Myanmar) believe they have come to their country to help facilitate the expansion of the Muslim population and Islam in the mostly Buddhist nation.

Here is the story in the Irrawaddy (one of many today) about protests that greeted OIC members from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, Egypt etc.   My view is that if they are so concerned about the “plight” of the Rohingya, then resettle them to their Muslim countries!  (emphasis below is mine)

RANGOON — A high-level delegation from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was greeted by an estimated 3,000 protestors Friday, when the group that includes foreign ministers from Islamic countries arrived in western Burma’s troubled Arakan State.

Monks: Get out OIC!

A group from the 57-member OIC arrived in Burma on Wednesday to meet with officials and investigate the situation of Rohingya Muslims, who make up the majority of the estimated 140,000 people displaced by two waves of violence in Arakan State last year. At least 192 people were killed in inter-communal violence between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya, who the government of Burma does not recognize as citizens.

Buddhists have staged demonstrations across the country this week accusing the OIC of trying to interfere in Burmese affairs.

On Friday, the delegation landed at about noon at Sittwe Airport, where angry demonstrators held aloft banners saying “Get Out OIC,” and “We Don’t Want OIC.”

“Our people arrived here at 7 am. We have over 3,000 people,” Tun Hlaing, an organizer of the protest, told The Irrawaddy. “We all shouted to them that we do not want them to come here.”

The Burmese government has approved the visit and reportedly guaranteed the security of delegates, who include OIC Secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Malaysian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Djiboutian and Bangladeshi officials.

Tun Hlaing said the group did not leave the airport, but was taken by Burmese military helicopters to parts of Arakan State where the population is majority Rohingya.

Having watched this situation evolve for nearly 6 years, I believe this is exactly correct:

Tun Kyi claimed the conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in Arakan State is stirred up by international involvement.

And, for the umpteenth time, Americans should be concerned because the federal refugee contractors want more Rohingya resettled in your towns and cities.   Some are already here.  See our Rohingya Reports category with its 158 previous posts to learn more.

Top photo is from this story (Radio Free Asia).   The second photo is from the Irrawaddy.

Next big health issue for refugees—drug-resistant Malaria

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Refugees being treated on the Thai border. Photo: Mae Tao Clinic

Burma and the Mekong River area of Southeast Asia is the breeding ground.

From The Irrawaddy (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON — US experts are raising the alarm over the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Burma and several Southeast Asian countries, endangering major global gains in fighting the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 600,000 people annually.

While the communicable disease wreaks its heaviest toll in Africa, it’s in nations along the Mekong River where the most serious threat to treating it has emerged.

[….]

The report warns that could be a health catastrophe in the making, as no alternative anti-malarial drug is on the horizon. The UN World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that what seems to be a localized threat could easily get out of control and have serious implications for global health.

“Absent elimination of the malaria parasite in the Mekong, it is only a matter of time before artemisinin resistance becomes the global norm, reversing the recent gains,” writes Dr. Christopher Daniel, former commander of the US Naval Medical Research Center, in the report for a conference at the Washington think tank Tuesday.

[….]

Nowhere are the challenges in countering the threat to drug-resistance greater than in Burma. Some 70 percent of its 55 million people live in malaria-endemic areas, and as a nation, it accounts for about three-quarters of malaria infections and deaths in the Mekong region, the report says.

[….]

It’s an issue of regional concern as Burma has large transient populations in its border regions, including ethnic minorities displaced by fighting and migrant workers who cross borders.

There is more, read it all.

The US resettled 16,299 Burmese refugees to your towns and cities in fiscal year 2013 alone (second only to the number of Iraqis which topped 19,000), click here.  Were they all tested?

Update:  Superbugs could erase a century of medical advances, here.

Burmese champion of human rights doesn’t take the Muslim Rohingya side and it steams them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Hillary (and Huma!) must surely be unhappy with Aung San su Kyi on the Rohingya issue!

Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be beaten up in the western media for refusing to condemn her co-religionists in the on-going conflict between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Burma (aka Myanmar).

And, why should you, living in American cities and towns, care what is going on in Burma?

Because we have been resettling tens of thousands of Burmese, largely Christian refugees for years.  In FY2013 we resettled 16,299 refugees from Burma (how many were Burmese Muslims?).

Increasingly there will be Muslim Rohingya among them especially if the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has its way.

I don’t have the time or energy to go back through the controversy, but I can assure you there is blame to be shared and the Rohingya are not pure as the driven snow as this Rohingya author (at the Huffington Post) would have you believe.  In my view, Aung San Suu Kyi is correct when she gave an interview to the BBC and did this:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s interview with the BBC during her visit to the UK, has shocked many of her admirers. Despite being repeatedly pressed to do so, she repeatedly avoided giving a clear unequivocal condemnation of the anti-Muslim violence that is engulfing Burma.

Author Tun Khin can barely contain himself.  If it quacks like a duck!

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also started talking about global Muslim power, as if this is some kind of threat to Burma? To hear a Nobel Peace Prize winner talking in the same way about Islam as bigots and racists is very disappointing. There are conspiracy theories about a global Muslim conspiracy to take over Burma, but these kind of things are spread by crazy people on Facebook. It is not what you expect from a University educated leader of a democracy movement. Instead of dismissing these claims as the dangerous nonsense they are, she gave them credibility in the eyes of many Burmese.

Count me among the crazy people!

We have 157 previous posts in our Rohingya Reports category, here, for anyone who wants to get the full picture going back 6 years on the growing conflict.  You will note that we have begun resettling Rohingya to American cities despite earlier reluctance by the State Department to do so.