{"id":84182,"date":"2016-12-12T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=84182"},"modified":"2016-12-09T15:00:12","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T15:00:12","slug":"the-ethnic-cleansing-of-myanmars-rohingya-community-is-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/12\/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-myanmars-rohingya-community-is-underway\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ of Myanmar’s Rohingya Community Is Underway"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

A Rohingya mother and her son weep at a border checkpoint into Bangladesh. Thousands have crossed the border to escape the violence.
Mohammad Ponir Hossain\/Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is often seen as a place of military rule, gradually moving towards democracy.\u00a0But in recent weeks, a new story has emerged: what one UN official called the “ethnic cleansing”\u00a0of a religious minority.<\/em><\/p>\n

8 Dec 2016 – <\/em>Refugees fleeing the affected areas have told horrendous\u00a0stories of rapes, killings and house burnings.\u00a0These claims are denied by the government.<\/p>\n

Following a\u00a0military\u00a0crackdown, at least 10,000 members of\u00a0the Rohingya Muslim minority have fled their homes.\u00a0John McKissick, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees\u00a0in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar, told the BBC\u00a0that Myanmar was involved in “ethnic cleansing”\u00a0of the Rohingyas. The military campaign was retaliation for attacks by Rohingya insurgents.<\/p>\n

The Rohingya community\u00a0is\u00a0Muslim\u00a0and has\u00a0linguistic and cultural links to neighboring Bangladesh. The\u00a0vast majority of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist.<\/p>\n

The government has banned journalists from entering Rakhine state, where most of the atrocities are believed to be happening. But members of the Rohingya community have recorded the testimonies\u00a0of women who claim to have been raped and have witnessed\u00a0the killings of male relatives.\u00a0Refugees arriving in Bangladesh have made similar claims about atrocities being committed in Rohingya villages.<\/p>\n

Satellite imagery\u00a0of Rakhine state also shows villages destroyed by fire.<\/p>\n

According to journalist Mobeen Azhar, who recently returned from Myanmar, hostility towards\u00a0the Rohingya is\u00a0driven by a fear of\u00a0Islamicization<\/em>\u00a0and a growth in Buddhist nationalism. “This Buddhist nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon in Myanmar, and it is gaining a lot of traction,” he said.\u00a0“It reflects the international situation where a lot of minority groups are being scapegoated. Many average citizens of Myanmar are facing hardship, and many are living in poverty.”<\/p>\n

The Burmese government has so far denied any wrongdoing. Myanmar’s civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Aung San\u00a0Suu Kyi, has said the media has misunderstood the situation. She told Singapore’s\u00a0Channel News Asia\u00a0that\u00a0\u201cIt doesn\u2019t help if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation, in spite of the fact that there were attacks against police outposts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 pri.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is often seen as a place of military rule, gradually moving towards democracy. But in recent weeks, a new story has emerged: what one UN official called the “ethnic cleansing” of a religious minority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}