Who are the Rohingya?


   

I had not heard about the Rohingya people until reading about them in a recent Commonweal. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmar (Burma) estimated at about one million people. The Myanmar government regards them as illegal immigrants even though they have only known life in Myanmar. According to Human Rights Watch, laws discriminate against them, denying their freedom of movement, education, property rights, and employment. Thousands are currently fleeing to Bangladesh because of persecution by the government. In fact, many believe that this is comparable to the Rwanda genocide in 1994.

This is most troubling since the current de facto leader in Myanmar is Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She has long fought for human rights and a democratic government, but seems to have no control over the military who are carrying out what the United Nations human rights chief has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Rohingya who've fled have spoken of their homes being torched, of neighbors turning on neighbors, of relatives taken away never to be seen again.

The world needs to reach out to these people who have no means to defend themselves and no land to call their own. The United Nations must demand that Myanmar stop this genocide and give these people, especially the children, a chance for survival. We cannot stand by and let this brutal situation continue without reprisal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
    “Wonderfully Made” When I took a college English course, our first assignment was to write an essay about whether we would rather lose our sight or lose our legs. It was a thought-provoking choice. If we became blind, we would miss seeing our loved ones and all the beauty of our world. If we could not walk, we would be hindered from traveling and moving around without help. I chose to keep my eyesight since I love to read and write and enjoy the variety and beauty that surrounds us.   Of course, I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice in real life, but it was a thought-provoking assignment. It made me think about how much we take our bodies for granted. I began to think about all the organs, veins, arteries, canals, nerves, and bones we have in our bodies and how they all work together to keep us alive and healthy. It is not until we lose one of them that we realize how magnificent we are, created in the “image and likeness of God.” God loves each and every one of us as if
Read more
Image
  Overcoming Discouragement Sometimes discouragement and failure take over our lives, and we cannot seem to crawl out of our hole. Even if in reality they are not a true picture, we can be blinded by the seeming darkness.  It often takes another person to uncover what is hidden from us and to see through the cloudy picture.  I am reminded of a story about Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He tells of how he felt his dream of starting a group for people with drinking problems was not going anywhere. Then unexpectedly Father Dowling, a disheveled priest, came to his door in the middle of a snowstorm. Bill’s caretaker told him that a “damn bum” was at the door. Bill was tired but agreed to see him and in doing so had his “second conversion experience.” Bil and Father Dowling talked way into the night, and Bill told of his “high hopes and plans, and spoke about his anger, despair and mounting frustrations.”  It turned out that the elderly priest had had similar feel
Read more
Image
  Shaper of our Journey While we are living our lives, we make decisions, have jobs, make friends, travel, and do all sorts of activities, and think we are directing our lives. We don’t realize how God is shaping us until we look back. “God shapes us on our journey,” Daniel Horan once said. God uses all we do to make us into the persons we are. He puts us in the family we have, with all its problems and shortcomings. Our jobs and college degrees influence our lives. All our decisions and people we have known have made us who we are. Even the mistakes and hardships are part of us and God uses all of these, shaping who we become.   While we are living day to day, we don’t think about God molding us into the unique persons we are. But when we look back, we can see how it all fits together, the good and the bad, the ups and the downs.   Sometimes we have to change our paths due to circumstances we did not anticipate. Often, we observe this in other’s lives, like Stephen Hawking who
Read more