Wednesday, August 01, 2012

In Buddhist Myanmar, monks gone wild...

For a country steeped in Buddhism, Myanmar is accruing terrible karmic debts.

Alarming news and images of attacks and killings by the Buddhist majority in Rakhine Province against a Muslim minority there have been slowly trickling out onto the Internet and the wider world. Pictures of charred bodies and crying parents have stirred largely unheeded calls for intervention, mostly from Muslim nations.

“The attacks have been primarily one-sided, with Muslims generally and Rohingyas specifically the targets and victims,” Benjamin Zawacki, a Bangkok-based researcher for Amnesty International, told The Associated Press. “Some of this is by the security forces’ own hands, some by Rakhine Buddhists with the security forces turning a blind eye in some cases.”

 The government in Myanmar, recently lauded for taking steps toward democratization, declared a state of emergency in June following the outbreak of violence allegedly sparked by the rape and killing of a Buddhist woman by members of the Rohingya minority -- a largely Muslim group on the country’s western border with Bangladesh. The official death toll stands at 78, though activists say it is likely much higher and prompted the UN to call for independent investigation over human rights violations. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Aung San Suu Kyi facing backlash for silence on Rohingya abuses...
  2. Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar: does Aung San Suu Kyi care about the Rohingyas?
  3. Monks in Burma call for boycott of Rohingyas, block huminatarian aid...
  4. Rohingya: the world's most forgotten and abused people...
  5. ‘Economic profits hush West over Rohingya Muslim plight in Burma’
  6. Aung San Suu Kyi and the rule of law: Burma's Rohingya problem...
  7. Monk in Sri Lanka severly tortures Catholic teen for refusing to learn Buddhism...
  8. Sri Lanka's hidden scourge of religious child abuse...
  9. Mali Islamists destroy holy Timbuktu sites...

No comments:

Post a Comment