Bengalis fancy a “Muslim state”: Rakhine ethnic community

EMG CREDIT

The sectarian violence in Rakhine State stemmed from the fact that that ethnic Bengali wanted to turn the state into an Islamic state with that they were counting on technical advice and financial support from religious extremists from foreign countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, according to a report from a commission set up to investigate the incident.

The commission questioned 1200 Rakhine nationals and 800 Bengalis living in the state.

The sectarian violence spread quickly across the state due to the government’s inability to protect the ethnic nationals, corrupt officials taking bribes to let illegal Bengali immigrants in, officials from Union Solidarity and Development Party issuing temporary registration cards to many Bengalis to win the 2010 Elections, the report added.

And the Rakhine community strongly believes Bengalis are trying to control Sittwe, the capital of the state and other main cities as the main waterways across the state are dominated by several Bengali villages making way for illegal Bengali migrants to enter the country easily, the report says.

Bengalis also said the conflicts are occurred due to racist attitudes of Rakhine ethnic nationals who used the rape incident in Kyauknemaw village in October 2012 as a motive to make trouble for them, according to the report.

And the report found that most of the Bengali only knew the killing of 10 Muslims in Taunggok without any knowledge of the Kyauknemaw incident.

The report also concluded incitement of both communities’ leaders is one of the key factors to cause the conflicts in last October.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH GOES TO SAUDI ARABIA FOR BEGGING MONEY ?

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the “globally respected” human rights NGO,

 

HRW – Human Rights Watch အဖြဲ႕အေၾကာင္းပါ၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႉကိုအားေပးတဲ့သူေတြကို HRW ကေရြးခ်ယ္ျပီးဆုေပးတဲ႔အတြက္ေဝဖန္ခံေနရပါတယ္၊ ဒိအဖြဲ႕ဟာေဆာ္ဒီကသေငွးေတြဆီကရန္ံု ပံုေငြနဲ႔ရပ္တည္ေနပါတယ္။ ဖတ္ၾကည့္ပါ။

Shame on Human Rights Watch – Who finance you? 

A delegation from Human Rights Watch was recently in Saudi Arabia. To investigate the mistreatment of women under Saudi Law? To campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia? To protest the lack of religious freedom in the Saudi Kingdom? To issue a report on Saudi political prisoners?

No, no, no, and no. The delegation arrived to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW’s demonization of Israel. An HRW spokesperson, Sarah Leah Whitson, highlighted HRW’s battles with “pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations.” (Was Ms. Whitson required to wear a burkha, or are exceptions made for visiting anti-Israel “human rights” activists”? Driving a car, no doubt, was out of the question.)

Apparently, Ms. Whitson found no time to criticize Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record. But never fear, HRW “recently called on the Kingdom to do more to protect the human rights of domestic workers.

There is nothing wrong with a human rights organization worrying about maltreatment of domestic workers. But there is something wrong when a human rights organization goes to one of the worst countries in the world for human rights to raise money to wage lawfare against Israel, and says not a word during the trip about the status of human rights in that country. In fact, it’s a virtual certainty that everyone in Whitson’s audience employs domestic servants, giving her a perfect, untaken opportunity to boast about HRW’s work in improving the servants’ status. But Whitson wasn’t raising money for human rights, she was raising money for HRW’s propaganda campaign against Israel.

Someone who claims to have worked for HRW wrote to me, “I can tell you that the people on the research and policy side of the organization have little, if any, contacts with people on the donor side.” If that’s true, apparently this is yet another exception HRW makes for Israel: Ms. Whitson, who gave the presentation to potential Saudi donors, is director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division.