Special Report: Plight of Muslim minority threatens Myanmar Spring
Witness: Myanmar's imperiled Rohingya
By Andrew R.C. Marshall | TAKEBI, MYANMAR
TAKEBI, Myanmar (Reuters)
This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition.
But Takebi's residents are not refugees. They are Rohingya, a #stateless Muslim people of South Asian descent now at the heart of Myanmar's worst sectarian #violence in years. #TheUnitedNations has called them "virtually friendless" in Myanmar, the majority-Buddhist country that most Rohingya call home. Today, as Myanmar opens up, they appear to have more enemies than ever.
Armed with machetes and bamboo spears, rival mobs of Rohingya #Muslims and ethnic Rakhine #Buddhists this month torched one another's houses and transformed nearby Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, into a smoke-filled battleground. A torrent of Rohingyas has tried to flee Rakhine into impoverished Bangladesh, but most are being pushed back, a Bangladeshi Border Guard commander told Reuters on Thursday.
The fighting threatens to derail the democratic transition in #Myanmar, a resource-rich nation of 60 million strategically positioned at Asia's crossroads between #India and #China, Bangladesh and Thailand. With scores feared dead, President Thein Sein announced a state of emergency on June 10 to prevent "vengeance and anarchy" spreading beyond Rakhine and jeopardizing his ambitious reform agenda.
Reuters visited the area just before the unrest broke out. The northern area of Rakhine state is off-limits to foreign reporters.
Until this month, Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to democratic start-up had seemed remarkably rapid and peaceful. Thein Sein released political prisoners, relaxed media controls, and forged peace with ethnic rebel groups along the country's war-torn borders. A new air of hope and bustle in Myanmar's towns and cities is palpable.
But not in #Rakhine, also known as Arakan. It is home to about 800,000 mostly stateless Rohingya, who according to the United Nations are subject to many forms of "#persecution, discrimination and exploitation." These include forced labor, land confiscations, restrictions on travel and limited access to #jobs, #education and #healthcare.
Now, even as the state eases repression of the general populace and other minorities, long-simmering ethnic tensions here are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured a generation ago after communism fell.
SUU KYI 'TIGHT-LIPPED'
Even the democracy movement in Myanmar is doing little to help the Muslim minority, Rohingya politicians say.
Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi last week urged "all people in Burma to get along with each other regardless of their religion and authenticity." But she has remained "tight-lipped" about the Rohingya, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya leader and one-time Suu Kyi ally
By Andrew R.C. Marshall | TAKEBI, MYANMAR
TAKEBI, Myanmar (Reuters)
This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition.
But Takebi's residents are not refugees. They are Rohingya, a #stateless Muslim people of South Asian descent now at the heart of Myanmar's worst sectarian #violence in years. #TheUnitedNations has called them "virtually friendless" in Myanmar, the majority-Buddhist country that most Rohingya call home. Today, as Myanmar opens up, they appear to have more enemies than ever.
Armed with machetes and bamboo spears, rival mobs of Rohingya #Muslims and ethnic Rakhine #Buddhists this month torched one another's houses and transformed nearby Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, into a smoke-filled battleground. A torrent of Rohingyas has tried to flee Rakhine into impoverished Bangladesh, but most are being pushed back, a Bangladeshi Border Guard commander told Reuters on Thursday.
The fighting threatens to derail the democratic transition in #Myanmar, a resource-rich nation of 60 million strategically positioned at Asia's crossroads between #India and #China, Bangladesh and Thailand. With scores feared dead, President Thein Sein announced a state of emergency on June 10 to prevent "vengeance and anarchy" spreading beyond Rakhine and jeopardizing his ambitious reform agenda.
Reuters visited the area just before the unrest broke out. The northern area of Rakhine state is off-limits to foreign reporters.
Until this month, Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to democratic start-up had seemed remarkably rapid and peaceful. Thein Sein released political prisoners, relaxed media controls, and forged peace with ethnic rebel groups along the country's war-torn borders. A new air of hope and bustle in Myanmar's towns and cities is palpable.
But not in #Rakhine, also known as Arakan. It is home to about 800,000 mostly stateless Rohingya, who according to the United Nations are subject to many forms of "#persecution, discrimination and exploitation." These include forced labor, land confiscations, restrictions on travel and limited access to #jobs, #education and #healthcare.
Now, even as the state eases repression of the general populace and other minorities, long-simmering ethnic tensions here are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured a generation ago after communism fell.
SUU KYI 'TIGHT-LIPPED'
Even the democracy movement in Myanmar is doing little to help the Muslim minority, Rohingya politicians say.
Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi last week urged "all people in Burma to get along with each other regardless of their religion and authenticity." But she has remained "tight-lipped" about the Rohingya, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya leader and one-time Suu Kyi ally
Category
🗞
News