Arakan News Agency
US President Barack Obama called on Myanmar Monday to end discrimination against its Rohingya minority if it wants to succeed in its transition to a democracy from junta rule.…
“One of the most important things is to put an end to discrimination against people because of what they look like or what their faith is. The Rohingya have been discriminated against significantly, and that’s part of the reason they’re fleeing,” president Obama said in Washington at an event with young leaders from Southeast Asia.
Myanmar denies citizenship to the majority of its estimated 1.3 million Rohingya and calls them “Bengalis” – shorthand for foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh.
“I think if I were a Rohingya, I would want to stay where I was born. But I’d want to make sure that my government was protecting me and that people were treating me fairly,” Obama added.
Following the comment, Myanmar’s navy escorted a boatload of more than 700 migrants toward Rakhine, five days after it was found adrift in the Bay of Bengal. Around 3,500 migrants have come ashore in Southeast Asia in recent weeks.
“Myanmar has been troubled by ethnic conflicts and this means its neighboring countries are under great pressure,” said Zhao Gancheng, a senior fellow from the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
He added that “it may be disappointing if international society puts all their hopes on the Myanmar government [to tackle the Rohingya problem].”
Source : AFP
