Pro-Rohingya rally urges Ottawa to help end persecution in Burma

Jacques Gallant 

Staff Reporter 

JACQUES GALLANT/TORONTO STARAbout 100 people attend a rally in Queen's Park Saturday that urged Ottawa to press Burma to end persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country.

Ottawa should be far more vocal in urging Burma to end the persecution of the Rohingya people in the Southeast Asian country, said demonstrators at Queen’s Park on Saturday.

In an article published Thursday in the Star, a group of Rohingyas resettled in Kitchener told of the harsh conditions faced by the Muslim minority in Burma, where they must request permission to marry, sign pledges to have no more than two children and are forced into labour projects.

Many Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they live in refugee camps.

About 100 people took part in Saturday’s rally, sharing tales of rape, beatings and house-burnings at the hands of Burma’s Buddhist majority. They lamented the lack of western media coverage of their plight. One called the Star’s front-page story this week “an anomaly.”

Tabasum Hussain, a rally participant who learned of the plight of the Rohingyas only a few weeks ago, said the silence on the issue is frightening.

“This place, Burma, is it of no geopolitical interest to the major global parties that are involved in the Middle East? Why is it just the Middle East attracting attention?” Hussain asked. “Thousands of people are being massacred in Burma: where is the condemnation? Where are the sanctions? Where are the calls for NATO troops to be flown in? Don’t these lives have any value?”

The demonstrators want Canada to press Burma to repeal a 1982 law that stripped Rohingyas of citizenship rights. They also want an independent investigation into the violence, a call echoed earlier this month by Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN’s special envoy on human rights in Burma.

In a statement emailed to the Star this week, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s media secretary Rick Roth said Baird has expressed his concerns to his Burmese counterpart, and Canada continues to monitor the situation.

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