Terrorists and False News

"Stop the violence. Today we have seen pictures of small children killed by Burma's security forces. Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment."
"I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same. The world is waiting and the Rohingya Muslims are waiting."
Malala Yousafzal, Pakistani Nobel Peace Laureate

State security forces have been killing men, women and children. They have been slitting throats, there have been beheadings."
"Soldiers have opened fire on groups of people and then set the bodies on fire, including children."
Matthew Smith, chief executive, Fortify Rights humanitarian group

"[The situation in Rakhine is] really grave [marking time for Suu Kyi to] step in."
"The de facto leader needs to step in -- that is what we would expect from any government, to protect everybody within their own jurisdiction."
Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar

AFP/Getty Images:  Myanmar's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said tensions were being fanned by fake news

Under Myanmar's military junta rule it seemed to the outside world to represent a sad and sorry situation that the Rohingya were persecuted, but it was fully anticipated once the military stepped back and a democratic election resulted bringing the world-famed human-rights campaigner Aun San Suu Kyi to the executive administration of the nation, steps would be taken to protect this religious and ethnic minority. Instead, they continued to be viewed as despised interlopers with no legal status.

Rohingya families have lived in Rakhine for generations, yet they remain, in the view of the Buddhist majority and the government, illegal migrants whose presence is unwanted. Without citizenship rights in Myanmar the 1.1-million Rohingya require permission to travel outside their established villages, as well as needing to acquire official permission to even marry among themselves.

The most recent outbreak of violence, caused by an armed Rohingya group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, that attacked a military base resulted in the army invading villages and burning down the homes of the Rohingya living there, forcing them to move on to avoid being killed. Pushed out of their traditional towns and villages, Rohingya, fleeing death have crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh.

Photo: More than 120,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh due to the violence. (AP: Bernat Armangue)

All they possessed is gone, they are famished and have no resources to maintain life. Smugglers were paid for passage across the Naf river between Myanmar and Bangladesh, leaving the refugees with nothing to support themselves with. The new government of Suu Kyi could have restored the Rohingya with the citizenship that the military junta had stripped them of, but did not.

Myanmar's National League for Democracy appears to support freedom and democracy for Buddhist Burmese, but sees it being of little value to Muslim Rohingya. They are thus stateless, with close to 400,000 searching for haven in Bangladesh now living in squalid refugee camps. The "clearance operations" to flush out insurgents from Rohingya villages has flushed out innocent civilians with nowhere to go, no resources to sustain them.

Photos of a Rohingya man holding mines on the Myanmar side of the border were sent to CNN by activists and examined by a mine expert, who confirmed that the two objects are PMN1 antipersonnel devices

The government of Myanmar insists it was the insurgents themselves who set fire to their own houses and took to slaughtering Buddhists in the western state of Rakhine, while the starving refugees speak of targeted shootings by Myanmar troops who warned them to leave, if they valued life. In their desperation to flee they faced danger crossing the border into Bangladesh as well, thanks to the explosives the Burmese military has planted there.

But this is all, of course, 'fake news'.

Source: CNN  

Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Myanmar