Arakan News Agency
The plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority fleeing Myanmar is similar to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era, according to accounts shared at a conference that opened Tuesday in Norway.
“The parallels to the Nazi genocide are alarming. Fortunately, we have not reached the stage of mass killing,” said US investor and philanthropist George Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary during World War II.
In his pre-recorded statement to delegates gathered at the Nobel Institute in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, he added: “I feel very strongly that we must speak out before it is too late. Individually and collectively.”
Soros said in his remarks that he, as a Jew in Budapest in 1944, felt like a Rohingya.
The government of Myanmar does not consider the Rohingya to be an indigenous ethnic group, leaving many of the more than 1 million-strong group stateless.
That was highlighted in another recorded appeal made by South African Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.
He called for adopting a “common position making funding of development of Myanmar conditional on the restoration of citizenship, nationality and basic human rights to the Rohingya.”
The three-day conference in Oslo was planned before recent reports in the news highlighted the acute situation faced by thousands of Rohingya refugees, Audun Auge, one of the conference organizers told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
He is director for the Norwegian Burma Committee, a non-governmental organization that works with information about Myanmar and runs development projects there.
Since 2012, thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar since sectarian violence broke out in the western part of the Buddhist majority Asian country.
Former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said the images of the refugees in South-East Asian seas highlighted “the desperate situation of this stateless Muslim group.”
The Norwegian government pledged 10 million kroner (1.3 million dollars) to improve conditions and reduce tensions in Rakhine state, home to most of the Rohingyas, State Secretary Morten Hoglund of the Foreign Ministry told news agency NTB.
Source : Europe Online
