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Showing posts with label Aung San Suu Kyi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aung San Suu Kyi. Show all posts
Burma has unspoiled beaches (protected by war) and reefs beyond our widlest dreams like southern Thailand's Phuket and India's secretive Andaman Island(azamaraclubcruises.com)
Who is this lady?
Buddhists are right (monks rally to stand against the totalitarian government in a rebellion known as the Saffron Revolution), Buddhists are wrong (mobs of villagers attack Muslim Rohingya minority along border with Bangladesh).
The Lady Aung San Suu Kyi (shown left) is released from house arrest and wins a seat in Parliament, and along with her new best friend Hillary Clinton she remains silent on the military massacre of the Rohingya by a military-government that considers them "illegal aliens" or, more correctly, native non-citizens like an indigenous group running afoul of the majority culture.
Shwedagon by night, built to house the Buddha's hair relics(beauty-places.com)
Tragically there is also silence about other ethnic minorities, such as the Karen and Rakhine, particularly along the border with Thailand. If only there were a website showing the Buddhist beauty and military horror of Burma. Wait. There's The Irrawaddy Magazine. There's USCampaignforBurma.org. There's the BurmaCampaign.org.uk. There's BurmaDigest.org. And the BBC does a decent job of covering the region. News on the Rohingya can be found in the Bangladeshi press.
Barry bathes the Buddha with sky-deva looking on and Hillary nosing in (Reuters).
The Dalai Obama
While the rest of America was in line to re-watch K-Stew out vamp T-Laut and R-Patz and some blended chimera kid, fearless leader President B-SOb (Barry Soetoro Obama, or B.S. Obama) was in Buddhist Burma, the most Orwellian police state in the world.It was George Orwell's inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four.
He worked for England's Indian Imperial Police in Burma, having been born in colonial India, now Buddhist Bihar state, the site of the Buddha's great enlightenment. B-SOb continues his epic tour through Thailand and the formerly devastated "killing fields" of Cambodia.
These Theravada Buddhist countries welcomed the future leader of the planet, groomed by the MIC's clandestine services to assume the position post-disclosure. He will be a great speaker, the Great Communicator (scoot over, actor Ron Reagan), but he will wield no more actual power than anyone. That's what happens when you're just a hired teleprompter reader, as Zaphod Beeblebrox found out in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. (He's "just some guy, y'know?") This is the way the MIC has been running the world for decades since at least the time of a short man with a neat mustache wowed the crowds. And it goes to show, on a positive note, that in the decision between a Brave New World and an Orwellian New World Order, the powers that be seem to be leaning toward the former.
Like Barack or Barry, as he went by growing up, Zaphod is the renegade president of the galaxy. This sounds good, but it is a role that involves no power whatsoever. It merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so that no one asks, Who's really in charge?
This is a role for which Zaphod is perfectly suited. He is the only person to have survived the mind warping Total Perspective Vortex. The TPV is a machine that derives its hideous power from any material inserted into one end, say a slice of angel's food cake. It takes the holographic information contained in that material and reveals a boundless multiverse.
When a person is inserted into the business end of the machine, s/he sees what that arrow is pointing at -- an infinitesimally small speck on an infinitesimally small speck in this vast spectacle of space. A sign attached to the arrow contains the confidence-destroying, reality-warping message, "You are here."
How did Zaphod survive the revelation? In the original BBC radio series, it was established that he survived because he was in an Electronically Synthesized Universe within the multiverse. It was created especially for him, making him the "most important being in that universe." He was thus uniquely equipped to survive that version of the vortex.
His brain-care specialist (psychiatrist) Gag Halfrunt, constantly explains to anyone who will listen, "Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?"
The Lady Aung San Suu Kyi with Pres. Obama
President Zaphod used his position as President of the Galaxy to steal the Heart of Gold, a craft capable of taking advantage of Infinite Improbability Drive at its unveiling. This is quite like the shocking but true reports of a young Barry Obama traveling to the surface Mars via an "elevator" (transporter room) in El Segundo, California. Believe it. Why? Because life and this universe is much, much stranger than fiction. And one thing is sure here: Like Zaphod, Barry is really, really cool. So all salute our handpicked (by the NSA, NSC, CIA, or MIC) leader!
We love him (as a person). We just can't stand those he represents, which are the same secretive behind-the-scenes movers-and-shakers Dick Cheney and the Bush Dynasty represented.
Presidents Obama and Thein Sein during historic visit (zimbio)
(Reuters) "For too long, the people of this [Burmese] state, including ethnic Rakhine, have faced crushing poverty and persecution. But there's no excuse for violence against innocent people," Obama told a packed audience for a speech at Yangon University.
"The Rohingya...hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do. National reconciliation will take time, but for the sake of our common humanity, and for the sake of this country's future, it's necessary to stop incitement and to stop violence."
Thein Sein, in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week, promised to tackle the root causes of the problem, and Obama said he welcomed "the government's commitment to address the issues of injustice, and accountability, and humanitarian access and citizenship."
PRISONERS RELEASED? Some human rights groups objected to the Burma visit, saying Obama was rewarding the government of the former pariah state for a job that was incomplete. Speaking in Thailand on the eve of his visit, Obama denied he was going to offer his "endorsement" or that his trip was premature. More
(Original post in Burmese, Niknayman) I am a Burmese Army engineer from Division 905. Our captain, Ye Win Aung, from my division is forcing everyone in our division to recruit new soldiers. If we are not successful in our recruitment, he threatens to re-deploy us from well-paid positions at the base camp to other places. On top of that, he also demands that we must recruit at least one new soldier per month. We have also been given strict orders to recruit even underage kids, beggars, or homeless people by either offering them money or capturing them by force. Hence, everyone in the division is feeling miserable about having to carry out such orders. Army personnel close to obtaining pensions are especially worried that they might be punished if they do not carry out the orders.
RANGOON, Burma (Naypyidaw, Myanmar) - While Pres. Obama tours Buddhist Southeast Asia, he is seeing some of the worst atrocities wrought since Hitler, Bush, and Idi Amin ruled parts of the world. Today he is in Cambodia where in the US War on Vietnam-era, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge unleashed violence on innocent Buddhists on a scale we can hardly imagine. Not since the US war machine mercilessly and maliciously (not to mention secretly and illegally) bombed Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and anywhere else US munitions could be expended to justify buying more in the self-sufficient industrial-war machine we call the MIC. ("Never again," we said, but we weren't looking ahead to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and take your pick: Somalia, Yemen, Libya...).
Who heads up the military junta the Burmese president belongs to?
Burma or Bust
Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason, Reuters.com
Aging Lady Aung San Suu Kyi, jailed and under house arrest for 15 years after her election and the subsequent coup, is kissed by future world leader B.S. Obama (blogs.ft.com)
YANGON - Barack Obama became the first American president to visit Burma on Monday [local time], using a six-hour trip to balance U.S. praise for the [military-dictatorship's puppet] government's progress in shaking off [obvious signs of ongoing] military rule with pressure to complete the process of [an appearance of full] democratic reform.
Obama, greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the former capital, Yangon [Rangoon], met President Thein Sein [who is the face of Gen. Than Shwe's military junta now holed up in the new capital Naypyidaw]. [Pres. Thein Sein is] a former junta member who has spearheaded [read whitewashed] reforms since taking office in March 2011. [Obama also met with] opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi [, whom he hosted in September in Washington, DC when he awarded her a medal].
"I shared with President Thein Sein our belief that the process of reform that he is taking is one that will move this country forward," Obama told reporters, with Thein Sein at his side.
"I recognize that this is just the first steps on what will be a long journey, but we think that a process of democratic reform and economic reform here in Myanmar... can lead to incredible development opportunities here," Obama said, using the country name preferred by the government and former junta, rather than Burma, which is used in the United States. More
Burma's military junta still in power after coup that followed democratic elections (AFP)
Why?
Why? (simonmainwaring.com)
Why is Obama bothering with one of the world's poorest and most totalitarian countries in the world? Money. The military-industrial complex needs resources, and it also needs to keep them from China. China has been propping up Burma (which the dictatorship renamed Myanmar) and promoting its human rights abuses as a means of ruling. China bought raw resources and offered political protection to the military junta, which is led with an iron fist by General Than Shwe who has a highly placed Chinese relative.
But isn't this good news -- first the Lady Suu Kyi is released from jail, then she is elected to a minor office, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits, and now the leader of the free (market) world comes to give his blessing on the proceedings? No, it is not good news. Nothing is changing; it is only going underground. The country will still be ruled by a small super-rich military junta. But now their will is transmitted and legitimized through the artifice of a "democratic process." It's just like America!
Previously, the people knew things were rotten and authoritarian. Now they can drink and distract themselves into accepting the comforting belief that they elect their leaders, that the leaders do the will of the people or at least what's best for the people, and that all is well. What should one prefer, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's nightmare premonition of a New World Order led by a brutal oligarchy?
Hooray that Aung San Suu Kyi is free! We've been keeping her in our hearts for years constantly calling attention to her plight when readers really couldn't be bothered. She is perhaps the second most prominent Buddhist in the world. She is our heroine. That does not save the ethnic minorities in Burma, the Muslim Rohingya, the shaman Karen, the rebels, the National League for Democracy, and anyone labelled a "dissident" for any reason at all.
Why? It is because IT IS DANGEROUS TO BE RIGHT WHEN YOUR GOVERNMENT IS WRONG.
In this anti-Buddhist propaganda photo suggesting Buddhists monks (Tibetan lamas) are up to no good standing among corpses, what is really happening is quite the opposite. Lamas were brought in to bless and comfort victims after a massive Himalayan landslide in Tibet -- in this inflammatory, undated photo tagged with a url link to a video reporting atrocities committed against Burma's minority Muslim Rohingyas, which the world seems to be ignoring:tinyurl.com/93hqzme.
UPDATE: The editors of Wisdom Quarterly are not apologists (defenders the faith ready to explain any and every negative thing away). If monastics or nominal lay "Buddhists" harm others, we report it.Reports have reached us that Buddhists did NOT go on murderous rampages. They might have, but there is a more plausible explanation. Rohingyas are in a tense stand off with their coompatriot neighbors, Burmese Buddhist villagers and co-religionist Muslims in nearby Bangladesh. Buddhists are angry about a sensational rape of a Buddhist female by Rohingya boys, ongoing drug dealing, and general anti-social behavior. But it is alleged that Rohingyas set fire to their own villages using gun powder provided to them from some outside source agitating for change. Rohingyas want to have their plight recognized, so they had to do something to get sympathy and vital humanitarian relief from either the world in general or Bangladeshi officials in particular.
Burma has a history of massacring minorities.
The worldwide MIC (transnational military-industrial complex) has succeeded in sucking in some Buddhists, tragically pitting some poor Burmese villagers against their fellow countrymen, an ethnic minority known as the Rohingya. Neighboring Muslim Bangladesh has refused to help save lives and prevent this nascent genocide by admitting Rohingyas attempting to flee the violence, which goes both ways with Rohingyas attacking minority Bangladeshi Buddhist temples and villagers and majority Burmese Buddhists retaliating.
But this is not a simple case of neighbor-on-neighbor violence. Pres. Thien Sein of Burma hasadmitted that the monstrous Myanmar military -- which in 2007 attacked, imprisoned, and slaughtered uncounted Buddhist monks and pro-democracy protesters in the ongoing Saffron Revolution -- has been systematically executing Rohingya. The military junta headed by Burmese dictator Gen. Than Shwe have ruthlessly attacked and waged war against many of Burma's ethnic minorities, including Buddhists along the its mountainous borders with Thailand and China.
Stop! Consider the consequences of shortsighted action (karma)! Hatred will never cease by hatred. Every gain will mean even more loss (Ahsanul Bari).
We go to Bangladeshi Buddhist abbot and scholar Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D. for comment.
WQ: "Venerable sir, Buddhists are killing Muslims?"
VK: "Villagers are fighting, but this has absolutely nothing to do with religion. This is not a religious crusade or anything Buddhist monastics sponsor. Rohingya attacked Buddhists in Bangladesh; Buddhists in Burma are attacking Rohingya."
WQ: "Where is Hillary Clinton in all this?"
VK: "That is a good question."
WQ: "Worse yet, where is our heroine Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?"
VK: "This is a very delicate matter, very tragic."
There is a dictum in Buddhism that any person who attacks another is wrong to do so, but a person who retaliates is worse. Revenge is NOT justified in Buddhism, contrary to Western conceptions of God and Jewish-Christian ideals of vengeance, following a tribal God(s) into war against neighbors.
Fortunately, New Testament Christians speak of a new ideal (forgiveness) and a new God (Issa/Jesus) replacing the warring eye-for-any-eye mentality attributed to YHWH.
But many Christians in the West (US, UK, EU, and the Holy See) do not distinguish Old and New Testament Gods when it comes to such things as revenge, war, imperial-crusades, and ethnic-genocides. Conducting war in the name of One God (peruse the Christian Bible's Book of Judges if there's any doubt) and world domination is a mainstay in the Far West and, sadly, the Middle East as well.
The CIA can't make all this war without some help from a minority of Muslims bent on upholding the eye-for-an-eye mentality of monotheistic tradition. But to whom are we to attribute most of the violence in the world today?
Who does what?
(americanbedu.com)
Photographer Kombizz Kashani rhetorically asks: "Who started the first world war? Muslims?? Who started the second world war? Muslims?? Who killed ten million aborigines in Australia? Muslims?? Who dropped nuclear bombs on civilian [non-combatants] in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Muslims?? Who killed more than 100 million Native American-Indians in North America? Muslims?? Who killed more than 50 million indigenous-Indians in South America? Muslims?? Who trafficked ~180 million Africans as slaves with 88% of them dying or being thrown into the Atlantic?? Muslims??"
No, they weren't Muslims! They were mostly [nominal] Christians.
Let's define "terrorism." If a non-Muslim does something untoward, it's a "crime." But if a Muslim commits the exact same misdeed, it's "terrorism." We first have to disabuse ourselves of this biased double-standard.
TheWorld.org, PRI, Public Radio Int'l (audio); Wisdom Quarterly
Dictator Gen. Than Shwe crushed Buddhist "troublemakers" with backing from China until US Sec'y of State Hillary Clinton started coming by and acting like the highest bidder.
The monks rose up for the Saffron Revolution
RANGOON, Burma - Myanmar is emerging from decades of repression and international isolation. The one-time military government has enacted democratic reforms, and the U.S. and others have responded by suspending sanctions.
Now the country also known as Burma is viewed as a promising frontier economy. But there’s a downside. A rush of foreign investment could imperil Yangon’s collection of colonial-era buildings, an emblem of a time when the city was a cosmopolitan hub in the English empire.
The generals who ruled [and renamed Burma] Myanmar since the 1960s isolated the country and drove its economy into the ground. Being stuck in time has been a curse for Myanmar’s people, among the poorest in Asia. But it’s also had the unforeseen effect of preserving hundreds of ornate buildings from the 19th and early 20th century. More
Burma's Pagan or Bagan, an ancient city of thousands of pagodas and shrines (Wiki commons)
An explosive situation in Burma was fueled in 2007 by crushing price hikes for basics opposed by 35,000 Buddhist monks and their supporters, who defied the military dictatorship. Rising prices for essentials set off protests. A junta of generals warned peaceful demonstrators as they staged days of anti-government protests. Military leaders reacted by imposing a nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of more than five people. The country's hard-line military rulers soon resorted to extreme force to stop the biggest anti-government demonstrations Burma had seen in nearly two decades, led by the country's Theravada Buddhist monks. Soldiers in full battle gear were deployed throughout the country's largest city, Rangoon, setting the stage for a showdown with a determined pro-democracy movement previously led by "The Lady," Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who rather than being allowed allowed to rule was deposed in a military coup immediately after democratic election and kept under house arrest for years.
Burma is going through some rapid transitions. In just the last year, the country’s military dictators have freed Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and allowed [rigged] elections [that keep them in control] to be held. Now the country is opening up to foreign business as well. [Enter Hillary Clinton and other suitors.]
This is the story of the most Buddhist country in the world (with 89% of the population as adherents), Burma.
The military coup that took place a half century ago led to the creation of an Orwellian nightmare -- a police state ruled by General Than Shwe and an elite junta of criminal military men, who changed the name of the country to "Myanmar" as they embezzled its wealth, enslaved its people, and aligned with corrupt totalitarian China over corrupt democratic India.
FREE BURMA from police state oppression: Saffron Revolution (gawker.com)
Orwell, who was a colonial British subject born in Burma, wrote 1984 in 1948 with Burma and England in mind.
Told with stunning footage that was shot clandestinely over a two-year period by filmmaker Robert H. Lieberman, the film provides an astonishing and intimate look inside at what has become one of the most isolated countries on the planet. Lieberman lifts the curtain on the everyday life of the people in what was once the Golden Land now held hostage by a brutal and superstitious military regime for 48 years.
A revealing interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Lady Aung San Suu Kyi conducted just after her most recent release from house arrest is interwoven with extensive interviews and interactions with Burmese people from all around this incredibly diverse Southeast Asian nation.
Burma is the home of the modern emphasis on insight meditation (vipassana) in Buddhist practice thanks to its extraordinary monastic system that has produced such luminaries and scholars as Mahasi Sayadaw and the accomplished Pa Auk Sayadaw.
(Kaye Lin) Burma is going through a transition, reform Associate Producer Harold Dinkins says makes this film more relevant than ever before because the film portrays many sociological aspects in the country from health and education issues to the problem of child labor. It is now screening in select theaters across America.
The film, culled from over 120 hours of striking images, is an impressionistic journey that leads viewers across the vastness of Burma. It traces the history of Burma from its beginnings in the ancient city of Pagan (Bagan), through colonial times, the rule of Daw Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, recent uprisings by Theravada Buddhist monks called the Saffron Revolution after the color of their robes, the devastating Cyclone Nargis that killed 150,000 people, up to the present day.
During Lieberman's time in Burma he shot video constantly, even though it was forbidden and a risky thing to do in a totalitarian state, which could have led to him being thrown irretrievably into Insein Prison. Now this rare footage forms an unexpected and deeply expressive portrait of a place the world now calls "Myanmar."
Actor Ellen Page explains who dictator Than Shwe is to Burma
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh - A mob torched and vandalized a village of Buddhists in Cox's Bazar's Ramu Upazila early on Sunday in one of the worst religious attacks in Bangladesh apparently triggered by a Facebook posting allegedly defaming the Quran (Koran).
Eyewitnesses and police said the assailants set fire to at least six Buddhist temples and nearly 20 homes and looted and damaged more than a hundred others until 3:00 am in the hate attack.
Cox's Bazar is rocked by communal violence.
Cox's Bazar district's Superintendent of Police Selim Mohammed Jahangir acknowledged the violence in the Buddhist-dominated locality. He said around 3:00 am situation in the Ramu district headquarters was under control but in areas on the fringe, tension was palpable.
"Police patrols have been strengthened in the Buddhist-majority areas," SP Jahangir added.
Paramilitary BGB personnel have been called out to restore order in the affected areas, Suresh Barua, teacher at a local school, said.
Several houses and Mithhachharhi Bonbihar, some five kilometres from Ramu Sadar Upazila, were set on fire around 3:30 am, said General Secretary of Ramu Upazila Juba League Nitish Barua.
A 100-foot high under-construction Buddha sculpture was also ravaged in Bimukti Bidarshan Babna Centre in the locality, he added.
Gias Uddin Ziku, Office Secretary of Cox's Bazar district unit of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Chairman of Jhilangja Union, said he dispersed Jamaat-e-Islami activists who had gathered around localities of ethnic minorities. He also said he had informed the police of the incident.
Local people said followers of an Islamist party led by several leaders took out a procession around 10:00 pm on Saturday alleging that a photo was uploaded on the Facebook to defame the holy book.
At a subsequent rally, they claimed a youth by the name of Uttam Barua had pasted the purportedly offensive photo in the social networking website and demanded his arrest.
Another militant procession was taken out that marched down towards the Barua Parha around 11:30 pm and some youths from the procession set some homes of the Buddhists on fire.
From then on, 15 homes, three temples including "Saada Ching" and "Laal Ching" were burned to the ground, Dipak Barua, a local, said.
Police, local administration officials and public representatives were trying to quell the arson and destruction that continued at least until 1:30 am.
Cox's Bazar, Banglandesh panoramic view in the morning (en.wikipedia.org)
A local journalist, who was hiding with family in the neighborhood that came under attack, told bdnews24.com the Cheranghata Barakyang Temple close to his home was set alight. He said the flames died out around 2:45 am.
Also, Ramu Maitree Bihar, Saada Chinglaal, Ramy Sina Bihar and Jadiparha Bouddha Bihar were torched, ransacked and looted.
At least 10 Buddhist villages were attacked and Purbo Merongloa locality that had around 20 houses was burned.
Chairman of Ramu Upazila Council Sohel Sarwar Kajal said efforts were on to quell the tension.
Several Facebook users, meanwhile, said Uttam Barua, the Ramu youth being accused of Quran defamation, did not post the photo deemed to be offensive to Islam. They said Uttam was tagged in the photo from a Facebook ID called "Insult Allah" and so he was in no way responsible.
Recently, there was much hullabaloo was created after Rohingya Muslims tried to cross the border into Bangladesh fleeing the religious riot in Myanmar's Buddhist-majority Rakhine state. A section of the civil society in Bangladesh reacted to the government refusing the refugees entry. The government believes communal forces were behind this incident.
Are Burma's troops slaughtering Muslims? Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly
The nominally "Buddhist" police state government of Burma (Myanmar) is killing its ethnic minorities. This has been going on for a long time. The hill tribes have been fending off the central government for decades hiding in the forests and retreating into Thailand and China.
Of course, this brutal regime which imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi is the least Buddhist government in one of the most Buddhist countries in the world. But that country is largely closed off to the world, in spite of Hillary Clinton and the US military-industrial complex's recent attempts to win the resource-rich Burma over to Western interests instead of it being a pawn for Chinese rule.
Sadly, Muslims believe Buddhists in Burma and/or bordering Bangladesh are involved in the slaughter of ethnic minorities along their shared border. Burmese soldiers are more than happy to kill Buddhist monks in robes, Buddhists in the street, and anyone else the junta orders them to slaughter.
Ordinary Buddhists may indeed join in to ethnically cleanse their area and send Muslims into Islamic Bangladesh. And this would explain why Muslim extremists in Bangladesh would retaliate -- under the pretext that a Buddhist's Facebook posting of Islamic material is setting off their religious sensibilities -- and loot and burn Buddhist temples and homes.
But the problem is much more complex. There are minorities on both sides of the border. Bengalis (Bangladeshis) have become a problem even for Burmese Muslims living in Rakhine (Arakan) state, Burma. Similarly, Muslim Rohingyas are a problem in Buddhist parts of Bangladesh. These minorities are upset at their treatment by the larger society that considers them illegal aliens and displaced peoples.
Not surprisingly, they strike back when they can in what little way they can. Now army troops and soldiers will be called in for a police state solution. It seems to be the MIC's preferred answer to all fabricated and spontaneous disturbances around the world, particularly when they involve Occupy Movement activists here and "radical Muslims" abroad.
NOTE: It is not the job or intention of Wisdom Quarterly to be apologists for Buddhists, Buddhism, or any national government. Nor is it the intention of its editors to uphold the additional Mahayana precept of keeping quiet rather than criticizing the sangha (Buddhist community). In the name of fair reporting, we report material detrimental to the image and reputation of Buddhists just as we do anyone else. It is intolerable to show bias in favor of a favored ingroup while disparaging other. it is on account of such bias that deplorable secrets (as seen in the Catholic Church and its ministers as well as the US military and its leaders) have been allowed to flourish while most of the world sits on its hands in denial. The truth will out before long, and we intend to help it out sooner.
In Burma the massacre of Muslims is being carried out ruthlessly, and the world remains silent. The silence of the UN is deafening. US Secretary of State, who is busy currying favor with Burma at all costs, the world community, and the SAFMA do what?
Allegedly a genocide has already taken over 20,000 Muslims -- by murdering, burning, raping, and drowning. There has also been forced displacement of nearly 100,000 -- something triggered by a FALSE news report released by a journalist (as happened in India among the ethnic mountain minorities frightened into leaving other parts of the country).
Meanwhile, the world is silent rarely uttering the word "genocide." Many hold the Burmese government responsible for this atrocity. Islamic Bangladesh has refused to allow the poorest of Burmese-Muslim refugees (the Rohingyas) to enter. Why is Bangladesh reluctant to help them? It does not want more ethnic minorities, particularly as it deals with its tiny remaining population of indigenous Buddhists who inhabit the Chittagong, Hill Track, and Cox's Bazar areas of the country.
There is, of course, also a worldwide provocation and manipulation of Muslims ostensibly set off by an American YouTube video, which was only a trigger that ignited long simmering discontent about many other things. The problem has come to roost for ethnic Buddhists in Bangladesh, just as Burmese Buddhists have suffered for years under the dictator General Than Shwe and his junta's totalitarian regime, funded by China and largely ignored by the US, who has been pandering to China since at least the Clinton administration.
Innocents are caught in the middle. And religion is used to exploit delicate sensibilities for peoples who do not enjoy many personal freedoms, civil rights, or liberal educations. Religion becomes the focus of social, political, and economic thought and activity. The dangerous combination of religious sentiment, profound emotion, and manipulation by Western provocateurs (MIC agents), mainstream media mouthpieces, and temperamental religious leaders has created a powder keg with no easy answers.
Rohingya have been persecuted and discriminated against for decades, but few can even pronounce their name let alone know their plight. The UN describes them as one of the most persecuted minorities, yet their suffering increases. So are the world's democracies ignoring them? Guests: Justin Wintle, Brad Adams, Mohamed Nour, Dina Madani.
Ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Burma (Orwellian police state Myanmar) is being carried out by nominally "Buddhist" police state troops. Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is "criminally silent" about it.
A prominent political analyst says that Burma's president's proposal to expel Rohingya Muslims from the country is an "ethnic cleansing."
"This is ethnic cleansing... the government and even this Nobel prize winner, the Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] is so criminally silent about the problems of this minority in Myanmar," Professor Ghulam Taqi Bangash at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) told Press TV.
The remarks come after Burma's President Thein Sein said that Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.
The government refuses to recognize nearly-one-million-strong Rohingya Muslims community, which the UN calls one of the world's most persecuted people.
Burma claims the Rohingya are not native and classify them as illegal migrants although they have lived in the country for generations. Burma's opposition National League for Democracy party (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to parliament after she was released from house arrest earlier this year.
However, many people are disappointed at the way she has been avoiding the issue.
Last month at a press conference in Geneva, Suu Kyi said she "didn't know" if Rohingya Muslims were Burmese citizens.
The Stream (Al Jazeera English) "The Plight of the Rohingya"
Bangash said Washington is also criminally silent over the issue as the US tries to coax the countries in this region of Southeast Asia to stop them from having better relations with the People's Republic of China.
"Southeast Asia is becoming much more inconspicuous on the economic map for the United States of America," he added.
"They should rather strengthen the sanctions against Myanmar until this problem should be solved, but they are not doing that," Bangash added.
Burma's current government is run by military figures, which have been accused of rights abuse.
Over a dozen Muslims were killed on June 3 when a mob of ethnic Rakhines, who are mostly Buddhist, attacked a passenger bus [in retaliation for an alleged rape of a Buddhist girl] in the Rakhine state in the west of the country that borders Bangladesh [slaughtering 10 innocent Muslims simply for being Muslims].
Over the past two years, throngs of ethnic Muslims have attempted to flee [Burma to go to Bangladesh] by boats in the face of systematic oppression by the [Burmese] government.
"The ties of friendship and understanding that have developed between you and lovers of democracy in Burma compensate for much of the trials we had to suffer over the past decades," Aung San Suu Kyi said after receiving the medal.
She said that, despite its inherent imperfections, democracy remained a "beacon of hope for all of us" and reminded the audience that there were many, in Burma and beyond, for whom freedom was "just a dream."
"There will be difficulties in the way ahead, but I'm confident that we shall be able to overcome all obstacles with the help and support of our friends," she added.
Aung San Suu Kyi herself was released from house arrest in 2010. More
Tragically there is also silence about other ethnic minorities, such as the Karen and Rakhine, particularly along the border with Thailand. If only there were a website showing the Buddhist beauty and military horror of Burma. Wait. There's The Irrawaddy Magazine. There's USCampaignforBurma.org. There's the BurmaCampaign.org.uk. There's BurmaDigest.org. And the BBC does a decent job of covering the region. News on the Rohingya can be found in the Bangladeshi press.
