In an op-ed piece I had written for this daily shortly after the historic elections in Myanmar in November 2015, I had expressed my fear that among all the euphoria that followed Aung San Suu Kyi's thumping victory, the fate of the disenfranchised and persecuted Rohingyas in Myanmar may continue to remain uncertain if the elected leadership fail to take concrete remedial steps in earnest. A year later, my fears are turning out to be true and in a worse form than what one would have thought.
The history of the sufferings of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is all too well known and is well documented. That the community had been socially marginalised and politically persecuted for long is also an established fact. One had been guardedly optimistic that a democratically elected government would make a sincere effort at rectifying the situation. However, as recent events show, things on the ground have turned for the worse; today the Rohingyas are being subjected to a systematic cycle of military repression that borders on ethnic cleansing, one that should bring back memories of the horrors the world witnessed helplessly in the Balkans in Europe over two decades back. Sadly, the victims in both cases have been Muslims. (Courtesy of thedailystar.net)
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