January 17, 2017

Syed Hamid: OIC looks to restore Rohingya’s status in Myanmar

The emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Foreign Ministers this Thursday in Kuala Lumpur will discuss restoring the status of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

OIC Special Envoy for Myanmar Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar said the main objective was to create protection for the ethnic minority, whose rights as citizens have been denied.

“Malaysia proposed the meeting because of the urgency of the matter, and not because we want to interfere in Myanmar’s internal affairs. Neither do we want to confront the Myanmar government.

“This is not a communal issue as claimed by the government but rather a religious issue because they (the Myanmarese) are targeting Muslims in their conflict with the Rohingya,” he told Bernama here today. (Courtesy of themalaymailonline.com)

The Lady and the Rohingya

Just days before the November 2015 general election, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was asked how she would remedy the long-running repression of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, if her party came to power. She replied: “There’s a Burmese saying: You have to make big problems small and small problems disappear.”

Less than a year after the National League for Democracy’s sweeping victory, the big Rohingya problem had only gotten bigger. Violence broke out in the western state of Rakhine, where most Rohingya live, and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was already being lambasted for seeming indifferent to their hardships, is now accused of silently standing by outright abuses.

Some of the criticism is deserved, but some of it is not, and the N.L.D. government understandably is chafing. But it has been slinging as much mud at activists and independent media as they are hurling accusations at it, and all this is only obscuring the vexing complexities of the situation in Rakhine. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has inherited an intractable-seeming problem after decades of military rule, and its specifics need to be understood if the Rohingya stand any chance of being helped effectively. (Courtesy of nytimes.com)