Arakan News Agency
Top U.S. diplomat on human rights Tom Malinowski wrapped up visit to Myanmar on Friday with warnings that discrimination against religious minorities in the predominantly Buddhist nation is stoking already dangerous sectarian tensions.
At a news conference concluding his six-day visit, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski said Myanmar’s leaders were at risk of provoking ethnic and religious conflict in their treatment of minorities and urged rejection of proposed laws that would limit interfaith marriage and religious conversion.
“We expressed a concern that the use of religion in particular, to divide people – whether it is done for political or any other purposes, is incredibly dangerous, particularly in an election year,” Malinowski told reporters. “We expressed a concern that this is really playing with fire and exposes the country to dangers that it is not prepared to handle.”
Clashes between security forces and stateless Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine state have killed 240 over the last two years and left 140,000 of the repressed minority in fetid camps without adequate food, medical care or education.
A U.N. General Assembly resolution in November urged the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, to grant citizenship to the Rohingyas, who number more than a million and are the targets of discrimination by much of the Buddhist majority that regards them as illegal Bengali immigrants. The resolution has been denounced by Buddhist nationalists as interference in their country’s domestic affairs with the intent to impose Islamic culture and religion in Myanmar.
In response to pressure from Buddhist politicians, the government of President Thein Sein has introduced measures in parliament that would put up barriers to interfaith marriage.
