TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Sectarian violence in Myanmar has caught the attention of United Nations (U.N.) secretary general Ban Ki-moon. The U.N. chief called on the Myanmar government to immediately end all Buddhist attacks on minority Muslims in the Southeast Asian country if it wants to be seen as a credible nation.
"It is important for the Myanmar authorities to take necessary steps to address the legitimate grievances of minority communities, including the citizenship demands of the Muslim/Rohingya," he said on Wednesday.
He added that failing to do so could risk "undermining the reform process and triggering negative regional repercussions." The sectarian violence against the Rohingya Muslims in the Buddhist dominant nation has killed hundreds of people with 140,000 reported to have fled the nation. Some say this presents a threat to Burma political reforms because it could encourage security forces to re-assert control.
In 1982, Burma passed a citizenship law recognizing eight races and 130 minority groups, but omitted the nation’s 800,000 Rohingyas, among Burma’s 60 million people. Many Buddhists in Burma view the Rohingyas as intruders brought in by the British colonialists. Strangely, Myanmar’s neighboring country Bangladesh also does not want to claim these people as their own.
Earlier this year, Burma passed a law limiting Rohingyas in two townships in the western state of Arakan, bordering Bangladesh, to having two children, a law that does not apply to Buddhists. Muslim ambassadors on Wednesdaysaid Burma could not rejoin the community of democratic nations if it doesn’t protect minority rights.
"It is not enough to just have elections, you have to end the killings and persecutions," Saudi Arabian UN Ambassador Abdallah Yahya al-Mouallemi told reporters. He said the Rohingya are barred from citizenship, work, travel, religious practice, and even the proper burial of their dead.
THE IRRAWADDY | NEW YORK TIMES | NATALIA SANTI