US not concerned about ethnic cleansing in Myanmar: Jahangir Mohammed
Press TV
January 5, 2013
An analyst says that the US and its Western allies are not concerned about the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
In the background of this a UN report says some 13,000 people have fled Burma now known as Myanmar chased out by racist Buddhists wanting an all-Buddhist country. Hundreds have been killed escaping and massacres have been committed by the Buddhist group. The government of Myanmar is complicit in the ethnic cleansing as is Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi by her silence in this matter. The mainstream international community are not only permitting this act to go ahead, but their media intentionally keeps this story well in the background.
Press TV has interviewed Mr. Jahangir Mohammed, Director of the Center for Muslim Affairs, Manchester about this issue. The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: We are still looking at the plight of these Rohingya Muslims, but it’s very interesting that the media in one respect has sited this to be the result of sectarian violence.
At the same time what is being done about this? We’ve had Navi Pillay (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) making statements, the UNHCR report etc, but it seems like they’re still stuck in this persecution state.
Mohammed: Absolutely. The United Nations issues these reports and gives us statistics, but the world community doesn’t seem to be interested in doing anything about the plight of the Rohingya Muslims.
They seem to be, just like in the Bosnia conflict in the 1990s, portraying this as a sectarian conflict, an ethnic conflict whereas we know this conflict is religiously based with the Burma Buddhists who want to create a pure Buddhist state, wanting to cleanse Burma of the Muslim population.
And all the time really the West, the US in particular and the European states at the UN still won’t do anything because they are keen to bring Burma into the economic fold of capitalism so they can exploit its resources just as they did with South Africa and portray Aung San Suu Kyu as the next Nelson Mandela.
So this is the issue we have, the West’s economic interests far outweigh the value of the lives of Rohingya Muslims unfortunately. And the world doesn’t seem to care, the media in the West hardly ever shows anything about the plight of the Muslims.
You can get information from Press TV and Muslim sources, but hardly anything in the Western media about the roots of this conflict and what’s happening there.
And it’s a real tragedy that in the 20th century such blatant cleansing of people on the lines of religion can take place.
