Myanmar – Rohingya Muslims and US Realpolitik

Maung Zarni, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

November 14, 2014

“Parts of the reform effort have stalled, parts have moved forward and parts, we’ve seen, have even moved backward, so it’s a mixed picture,” said US deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes. If Barack Obama would like a foreign policy success Myanmar might not be it especially as the plight of Rohingya Muslims deepen. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen calls it a “slow genocide”. Will Obama be able to give this pressing human rights concern equal focus against the competing demands of US strategic and economic interests? We explore.

This is a report by Haniff Baharudin, Malaysia's BFM (The Business Station).