Rohingyas Treated Like Animals: Activist

CAIRO – A prominent Rohingya political activist has accused Burmese authorities of treating Muslims like "animals" amid reports the Buddhist mobs have torched dozens of Rohingya homes in Arakan State.

"Muslims in Myanmar are treated like animals," a prominent Rohingya political activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, told International Business Times UK on Wednesday, January 29.

"I'm feeling very afraid. We don't have any kind of protection in this country.

"We haven't got anything here. Our government is against us," the activist added.

Burma Rohingya Muslims have come under several violent episodes led by Buddhist mobs over the past two years.

The latest attack occurred over the past few days when UN humanitarian chiefs and human rights organizations reported credible evidence of a massacre of at least 48 Rohingya Muslims, mostly women and children, in Burma's western Rakhine State.

Official media and the Ministry of Information have strongly refuted the reports.

Yet, a Thailand-based NGO, the Arakan Project, said it had received multiple reports that dozens of Rohingya Muslims were killed by security forces and Arakanese Buddhists.

The incident, just the latest in a string of attacks that left at least 240 people dead and more than 140,000 homeless or displaced in prison-like camps, caused terror in the Muslim Yangon community.

The activist asserted that some people have been threatened by extremists and told "you have to leave, otherwise your fate is going to be like your other Muslim people."

Others living as a minority in Buddhist areas have simply fled out of fear, he added.

Acting like "mafia", extremist monks have been exerting powerful influence over local communities, threatening anyone who might be associated or do business with Muslims, the activist added.

"They say 'if you do business with the kalar [racist slur for Muslims]... we will brand you as a traitor to the nation, to the religion and to the community'," he said.

Isolating Muslims

Human rights campaigners have accused the government of doing too little to stop anti-Muslim discrimination.

"There is a growing movement designed to isolate Muslim communities socially and economically," Matthew Smith, executive director of rights group Fortify Rights, told IB Times UK.

"Buddhist citizens have faced ridicule and worse from their peers for patronizing Muslim-owned shops and businesses. Unchecked community-level intimidation against Muslims is occurring in many areas."

David Mathieson, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, added that the government response to violence and discrimination against Muslims has been "inadequate to the point of complicity".

According to Smith, discrimination against Muslims "runs deep in Myanmar officialdom".

Smith said that at least 40 Rohingya were killed, although, "the actual number of deaths may be higher, but information is circumscribed by the government-imposed restrictions on access to the area".

Described by the UN as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, Rohingya Muslims are facing a catalogue of discrimination in their homeland.

They have been denied citizenship rights since an amendment to the citizenship laws in 1982 and are treated as illegal immigrants in their own home.

The Burmese government as well as the Buddhist majority refuse to recognize the term "Rohingya", referring to them as "Bengalis".

Rights groups have accused the Burmese security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas following the sectarian violence last year.

Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2014/01/30/rohingyas-treated-like-animals-activist/