Arakan News Agency
As a military crackdown continues in Myanmar’s Arakan state, the country’s cultural affairs ministry has said via a Facebook post it will publish a book refuting the Rohingya people’s claims to ethnic minority status.
The Ministry of Cultural and Religious Affairs in Myanmar has announced that it plans to publish a book detailing the “true Myanmar history” – which will not include the Rohingya Muslim minority.
According to a statement posted by the ministry on Facebook, the text would be published as a response to foreigners who “aim to tarnish Myanmar’s political image” and “stir things up by insisting the Rohingya exist.”
“The real truth is that the word Rohingya was never used or existed as an ethnicity or race in Myanmar’s history,” the statement added.
There are an estimated one million Rohingya living in Myanmar. And their descendants have populated the country’s western Arakan state for generations.
The former military government introduced a law in 1982 ruling that any recognized ethnic minorities must have lived in Myanmar before the first Anglo-Burmese war of 1824-26.
Source : AFP
