Economic Profits hush West over Muslim Genocide in Burma

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The West has turned a blind eye to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar in an attempt to maintain its economic interests in the Asian country’s lucrative market, a political analyst says.

“The Rohingyas are currently undergoing one of the most violent episodes of their history, and their suffering is one of the most pressing issues anywhere in the world,” Ramzy Baroud wrote in an article published on Press TV website on Monday.

“Yet their plight is suspiciously absent from regional and international priorities, or is undercut by giddiness over the country’s ample resources of hydrocarbons, minerals, gems and timber,” the analyst pointed out.

Over a dozen Muslims were killed on June 3 when a mob of ethnic Rakhines, who are mostly Buddhist, attacked a passenger bus in the Rakhine state in the west of the country that borders Bangladesh.

Over the past two years, throngs of ethnic Muslims have attempted to flee by boats in the face of systematic oppression by the government.

Baroud lashed out at the world’s mainstream media for their “passing and dispassionate coverage” of the Rohingyas’ ordeal, noting that such media blackout takes place against the backdrop of the minority group’s struggles “to escape imminent death, torture or arrest at the hands of the Ethnic Buddhist Rakhine majority, which has the full support of the Myanmar government.”

The analyst also slammed the Myanmarese pro-democracy groups, particularly Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, for “staying on fence” and “sidestepping the hot-button issue.

Baroud argued that the violent targeting of Burmese minorities arrived at a time when the US and Britain have called off their pro-democracy campaign against the country’s junta.

The West’s silence over the bloody crackdown on Rohingya Muslims comes as “Western companies jumped into Myanmar” in an attempt “to offset the near-exclusive Chinese influence over the Myanmar economy,” the writer said.

The analyst went on to say that the Western businesses’ “race for Myanmar” was ushered in following US President Barak Obama’s recent lifting of the ban on American investment in the country and Britain’s opening of a trade office in Rangoon on July 11.

Myanmar’s President Thein Sein insists that Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.

Myanmar's current government, run by military figures and accused of massive rights abuses, refuses to recognize nearly-one-million-strong Rohingya Muslims community, which the UN calls one of the world’s most prosecuted people.

Myanmar claims the Rohingya are not native and classify them as illegal migrants although they have lived in the country for generations.

(press tv)

Mildly edited by PCF Web desk

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