Western media ignores plight of Muslims in Myanmar: Analyst

Press TV:

March 30, 2013

An analyst says the international community seeks economic exploitation in Myanmar rather than stopping the plight of Muslims there by extremist Buddhists.

United Nations official, Vijay Nambiar, said the houses and mosques of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have been targeted with “brutal efficiency” in recent attacks. The statement came on Tuesday by Nambiar, a special advisor to the UN secretary general on Myanmar, who toured the country after the latest round of attacks by extremist Buddhists on March 20, in which over 40 Rohingya Muslims were killed in the city of Meiktila.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jahangir Mohammed, the Director of the Center for Muslim Affairs from Manchester, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Jahangir Mohammed if I want to ask you anything that’s the lack of action by the international community who know what is going on in Myanmar especially with the most recent developments occurring there.

Mohammed: Yes absolutely the international community is not interested in the plight of Muslims in Myanmar, they are basically interested in trade with Myanmar and opening it up for economic exploitation, just like they did with South Africa.

The result is that Muslims in that country are suffering persecution, oppression; many of them have fled, and are living in camps ...

This is part of a state sponsored policy of the Buddhist, fanatical Buddhists in power in that country and their aim is to create a pure Buddhist state. This is not mentioned or indeed referred to in the West.

In the West only Muslims can be extremists and fanatics, Hindus and Buddhists and Christians and Jews are not portrayed in that way.

And we see the result of this in Myanmar and now interestingly we see that there are attacks on Muslims by Buddhists, extremists and fanatics …

So we can see that the rise of Buddhist extremism is particularly affecting the Muslims in that state in Myanmar, but it’s growing elsewhere as well and there’s no analysis from that perspective at all in the Western media.

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