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How the Rohingya Escaped

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#41

Post by gressquel »

mmanfrin wrote: post #29

We are failing refugees the world over. This is heartbreaking, and so is the situation in Syria, in South Sudan, in Eritrea, and in countless other places. And I don't feel like we're getting any better and we're certainly doing no better at preventing these crises. With the world getting more crowded, is there an end in sight? This piece reminded me a bit of the self-recorded documentary of a Syrian woman trying to…

And Yemen. The US cannot solve every conflict in the world but I wish it would atleast stand up against the thhird party countries that backs vile murderous regimes. Russia in Syria and China in Myanmar (and they are also starting to influence other countries in Asia). We, the oppressed peopleof this world, needs a stronger US. Not the one retreating as under Trump.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#42

Post by pcr0 »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #26
fjsolwmv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ethnic conflict. In conservative societies, there is little difference between religion and ethnicity.

an adjective and distinction which changes what, exactly?

Religion is at least somewhat of a personal choice. You can't change your ethnicity. It's the difference between hating people for exercising their freedom of religion vs hating people for being born.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#43

Post by tim333 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #3

Is this about religion again? Or what exactly are they hated for?

It's a mixture of things - partly the Burmese seeing them as Bangladeshi immigrants taking their land and causing problems, partly religion - the current problems kicked off when some Rohingya formed a slightly ISIS like organisation called ASRA and started attacking police stations and army posts (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41521268) and partly made worse by facebook of all things (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-govern...)

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#44

Post by megaman22 »

gressquel wrote: post #32

Writing this on my iPad so excuse my spelling errors: There is so much evil in this world, what the Rohingya face today my own people endured in 2009. At the hands of thr Sri Lankan government, who also happens to be buddhistic, ten thousands of innocent Tamils were massacred. Women and children raped. Babies murdered. The UN wrote a huge report findng the Sri Lankan government guilty only for China and Russia to vet…

> Throughout history US would come to aid, today its about bowing down to communist human rights abusers like China for fair trade and access to its market.

I'm not sure this is an accurate assessment of US foreign policy in any period. I'm sort of scratching my head to think of any significant US interventions that weren't self-serving. Beyond the original Manifest Destiny expansionism, there's a rich tradition of US fillibusterism[1], gunboat diplomacy, proxy wars, banana dictators, coups, support of the drug trade, the list goes on, and on, and on.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military)

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#45

Post by vkou »

gressquel wrote: post #41
mmanfrin wrote: post #29

We are failing refugees the world over. This is heartbreaking, and so is the situation in Syria, in South Sudan, in Eritrea, and in countless other places. And I don't feel like we're getting any better and we're certainly doing no better at preventing these crises. With the world getting more crowded, is there an end in sight? This piece reminded me a bit of the self-recorded documentary of a Syrian woman trying to…

And Yemen. The US cannot solve every conflict in the world but I wish it would atleast stand up against the thhird party countries that backs vile murderous regimes. Russia in Syria and China in Myanmar (and they are also starting to influence other countries in Asia). We, the oppressed peopleof this world, needs a stronger US. Not the one retreating as under Trump.

> The US cannot solve every conflict in the world but I wish it would atleast stand up against the thhird party countries that backs vile murderous regimes.

Frequently, that would require it to stand up to itself.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#46

Post by agumonkey »

maxxxxx wrote: post #10
ComputerGuru wrote: post #7

Incredibly moving. One of the more impactful interactive reports by the NYTimes. There’s talk about trying to get Aung San Suu Kyi to the ICC. People complained about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, but all objective reports show credible allegations of true modern genocide (shocking for a word meaninglessly bandied about so often) in Kyi’s case, giving the prize a new low with a recipient going from Oslo to The…

History is full of people fighting for freedom for their own when they are suppressed. But then they go suppressing others.

I take that nature rarely get pure equilibrium but rather waves between one node superiority before another one takes over.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#47

Post by xir78 »

tim333 wrote: post #37
strooper wrote: post #34

While the media portraits Rohingya Crisis as religious conflict, it is actually ethnic crisis. UN describes it as ethnic cleansing. Although most of the Rohingya are muslim, Bamar (major ethnic Burmese) hate them calling them "Bengalis" (people from neighboring Bangladesh), despite Rohingyas living there for hundreds of years. The racism and prejudice flared the crisis soon after the military came to power decades ag…

I think you've got that the wrong way around - >This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya to be Bengali, rejecting the term Rohingya as a recent invention, created for political reasons. ( http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/rohingya-m... )

It would be interesting to see a candid interview with what the real reason for not liking then is. I suspect it’s rooted in the Muslim conquests which are still mentioned in Buddhist texts. Needless to say the Muslim religion is not held in much regard due to that, as opposed to Hinduism which is considered worthy of debating.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#48

Post by throwa_way_ »

strooper wrote: post #34

While the media portraits Rohingya Crisis as religious conflict, it is actually ethnic crisis. UN describes it as ethnic cleansing. Although most of the Rohingya are muslim, Bamar (major ethnic Burmese) hate them calling them "Bengalis" (people from neighboring Bangladesh), despite Rohingyas living there for hundreds of years. The racism and prejudice flared the crisis soon after the military came to power decades ag…

Bengali is not the same as Bangladeshi.

Re: How the Rohingya Escaped

#49

Post by jdietrich »

jansho wrote: post #11
justboxing wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this about religion again? Yes. Islam vs Buddhism or Buddhism vs Islam, whichever way you wanna look at it.

That’s an extremely simplistic way of seeing it though. The Rohingya were simple people, mostly poor, and lived in Myanmar for generations; religion would be a code of life for them, not a political tool. It’s likely the opposite for the monks and their followers though; Buddhism is about peace, fundamentally and (in nearly all cases) in practice. My patience with Aung San Suu Kyi has run out completely. Too little s…

>Buddhism is about peace, fundamentally and (in nearly all cases) in practice.

There's a slight subtlety to this. Buddhist ethics are very different to Judeo-Christian ethics. The Buddhist equivalent to "thou shalt not kill" is the first of the five precepts, "panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami", which loosely translates to "I undertake the rule of training to refrain from killing living beings". This is not so much an absolute proscription as a broad axiomatic principle.

In western terms, Buddhist ethics are most closely aligned with negative utilitarianism - broadly speaking, Buddhists seek to minimise net suffering. One study found that, when presented with the trolley car problem, Buddist monks were drastically more likely to push the man off the footbridge than Americans.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/how-d...

The main religious support for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya comes from monks affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, a hardline nationalist group. From their perspective, the Rohingya represent an existential threat to the Rakhine people and the republic of Myanmar. If this assessment were true, then the expulsion of Rohingya people could be interpreted as the least-harm option, even if it involves substantial violence. Although the vast majority of Buddhists condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, it is not intrinsically incompatible with Buddhist ethics.

This conflict is not new. Rohingya Islamist groups have been fighting the government of Myanmar/Burma since 1947, with the aim of establishing an Islamic regime in Rakhine state. The current crisis was most likely precipitated by an attack on border guards in 2016, which Islamist militant groups claimed responsibility for. There is clear evidence that Rohingya guerrilla groups are being trained in Bangladesh; there is also substantial evidence of ties between Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists in Myanmar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western...

I strongly disapprove of the oppression of the Rohingya people and the silence from the civilian government, but I do think that the western media has presented a grossly over-simplified narrative that frames the actions of the Myanmar people as senseless and unprovoked. I would ask the reader to consider how their country would react if Islamist guerrillas were active in their own back yard, sponsored by a neighbouring Muslim nation.

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