A focus on Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis

The growing Rohingya crisis is one that we had better get up-to-speed with.

If you believe the western media this is a human rights crisis, one with hardline Buddhist monks driving ethnic cleansing and forces Rohingyas to flee into Bangladesh.

The fact that this is becoming internationalised so quickly and that it has the element of Islam associated with it indicates things are a lot more complicated than we’re being told – just like Syria, the Philippines and any number of other places.

In today’s world there is not just human rights, and this should not be the only factor to be taken into account.

There is always geopoliics involved and to understand things this needs to be unpacked.

The posting of the following articles is an attempt to do this. As of now I really don’t have a position on this outside of various impressions. I simply don’t have enough knowledge although from my personal experiences in Thailand and Sri Lanka I could say there is considerable corruption of the Buddhist clergy – but then how is that different from any other religion?

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The first item is a BBC report on the hardline Buddhist monks of Myanmar.

And an item from al-Jazeera on this

And a backgrounder from Indian media

And three articles that discuss the deeper, geopolitical aspects of this.

Myanmar needs a diplomatic solution – not another western backed jihad

While the west and much of the Muslim world ignores Yemen and Palestine, they are perfectly happy to wage ‘holy war’ on behalf of China’s western enemies.

The Duran,

16 September, 2017

Ever since the 26th of March, 2015, Saudi Arabia has  been committing genocide in Yemen. The innocent people of Yemen have caused a man made cholera epidemic and death from starvation is now a common phenomenon for the children of Yemen, virtually all of whom are Muslim. 
 
Where then are the voices of the so-called global Muslim community, the Ummah, when it comes to speaking up for Yemen who are not being killed by Buddhists but by self-proclaimed fellow Muslims? I mention Buddhists because many are calling for the Saudis to come to the aid of Muslim Rohingya people of Myanmar. Perhaps such ‘Muslim’ voices have forgotten that the Saudis are the primary exporter of terrorism to other Muslim countries, including Syria.
 
Furthermore, Turkey which is saying a lot about Myanmar hasn’t lifted a finger for Yemen either.

Frankly, your religion is just a fake cover when you lose your humanity. Humanity is the real essence of religion and those who have no compassion for the people of Yemen have betrayed their own so-called brothers and have revealed their own hypocrisy.
 
In many respects, the issues in Myanmar are just another way for Israel and the west to distract Muslims from the plight of Palestine, the group of mostly Muslim and some Christian peoples who have suffered the longest under oppression, starvation and ethnic cleansing.
 
 Unfortunately, the so-called Islamist Mujaheddin cross the whole world to fight in Syria and kill Syrians under the pretext that they are ‘helping Muslims ‘in Syria and that the government is not Muslim! This is just absurd and dangerous on every level. 
 
Rohingya has its own ‘free army’ now, something which can only made a bad situation worse. Specially this ‘free army’ used to be known as Al-Yaqeen and is related to branches of the banned Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement which continues to receiving funding from George Soros controlled bodies as well as Turkey and the Qatari regime. Recently, the Lebanese television station Al-Mayadeen interviewed a militant in the Rohingya army who admitted he was a fighter, but claimed his only weapons were knives. 
 
Sadly, the so called mujaheddin are the fuel and soldiers for every proxy war that America and Israel want to set it up. Myanmar is an important location along China’s One Belt–One Road. Furthermore, Myanmar’s  oil and gas resources are vital for China and the United States and other traditional financiers of mujaheddin are well away of this. None of this should be forgotten when trying to gain an understanding of the Myanmar situation.
 
Many of the horrible photos which allegedly depict the Rohingya crisis were fake and while others from from different countries or far away disasters. I’m not denying that they many of the Rohingya are oppressed, but the realities of the situation is very different than what is portrayed in the western media.  Those who are quick to believe everything they see in respect of the Rohingya, should remember the White Helmets in Syria who have been subsequently exposed as staging and faking footage to promote their al-Qaeda narrative.
 
We cannot let another Afghanistan happen in Myanmar. To help forge a good solution there, should be a diplomatic initiative and not another proxy war under the name in religion! Mosques in Burma are good and Muslims can go and pray there without anyone hurting them. There are in fact nine mosques there.
 
We cannot afford another western led proxy war in the name of Islam. Such wars only benefit the enemies of all good people, Muslim or otherwise. Diplomacy must solve the solution in Myanmar, not jihad and not jihad’s financiers in the west.

The Rohingya Refugee Crisis and the Disconnect from Objectivity

21^st Century Wire,

15 September, 2017

Written by Gearoid Ó Colman

The article should be entitled: The Rakine State refugee crisis or the Burmese/Bengali refugee crisis. But readers will be more familiar with headings such as Rohingya refugee crisis or Rohingya genocide. Why is that?

On the 25th of August a Saudi-backed terrorist group Arakanese Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA formerly Harakah Al Rakin) attacked thirty police stations in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, murdering 12 security forces and two civilians . The Burmese government responded with a full-scale military counter-insurgency operation. 59 insurgents were killed.

Burmese authorities leaked information which proves that ARSA leader Ullah Ata had planned the attack with help from outside agents in Pakistani intelligence and ISIS terrorists in Iraq. Supporters of ARSA and the Rohingya cause accuse  the Burmese military (Tatmadaw) of  burning down Rohingya (Eastern Bengali) villages. The Tatmadaw say the villages have been burned by the terrorists, embedded among the illegal Bengali immigrant communities. Thousands of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus have fled the violence. Many Buddhist eye witnesses and victims  have described massacres committed by Bengali terrorists to local journalists in Myanmar. The stories have not made international headlines.

Human rights agencies financed by the US State-Department and Saudi Arabia, such as Human Rights Watch have blamed all of the violence on the Tatmadaw.

In previous articles I have explained the reasons for the media war on Myanmar and the complex ethnic, religious, historical and geopoltical forces fueling the violence. No researcher – not even the Burmese government- claims that all of the violence is coming from one side. But all the mainstream media and most alternative media sources blame the Myanmar government and ‘fascist, racist Buddhist monks’.

I have contested that consensus, for the last two years, is a crass over simplification of a complex ethno-religious conflict and will continue to do so. The following is an exchange I had with a Bangladeshi journalist. Bangladesh is making great efforts to care for the hundreds of thousands of Bengali refugees fleeing the violence in northern Rakhine state. The Awami League government under Prime Minister Sheihk Hasina has a long history of anti-imperialist struggle and, like Myanmar, is facing the dire possibility of a US/Israeli-backed destabilisation and regime change programme. The journalist who contacted me is designated as BJ below:

BJ:   I work for the largest circulating English daily newspaper in Bangladesh. All the reporters that are returning from the border area are telling me the same thing, 99.99 percent of those they spoke to tells them that they are fleeing from the government/army. And I know for a fact that at least some of them, are not “intentionally lying/misleading”. However, regarding most things, I have quite a different view about the world from them. This issue, I do not know first hand well enough, but all the information around me tells me that same narrative. Having said that, I am still keeping an open mind. I have followed your work, and believe fully that you are an ethical man, hence, please keep going forward with your work. If what you are saying is true, then people need to know about that, around me in particular and fast. “If” you are right, which I am not saying you are not. Despite so much seemingly “convincing evidence” I have been hearing about, it is exactly at those times that well, there is often a rat somewhere.

GOC: When I was in Syria late March 2011, just two weeks after the first attack by Islamists killed several police and civilians, I spoke to many really amiable anti-Assad people. Some of them were in the Muslim Brotherhood. I had dinner with them. They were extremely friendly. They told me things, lots of things. I heard stories about the ‘Shabiha’- government militia etc, about the lack of freedom in the country; about how countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia would be better. I listened and noted what they said. Then I had dinner with pro-Assad people. 

They were extremely friendly and amiable too. I listened to them. They told another story. When I had spoken to people from all sides, I looked at the wider picture, the global powers involved and the reasons for their hostility to Syria and the history of their destabilisation techniques.

It was easier for me to contextualise what was happening as I had read many US foreign policy research papers and understood what the goal of Zionism was in the Middle East. I had also been writing about the war in Libya and had studied the build up to the French bombing of Ivory Coast the year before. When you study NATO or Western-led wars closely, you begin to see patterns and motifs that recur like movements in a symphony. Many people were fooled by the Arab Spring because they had not researched the history of US democratisation programmes. Although  the US government confirmed that they organised the protest movements, many activists still repeat the slogans and memes diffused by the US agencies. The US empire is not omnipotent but many of its strategists have a higher IQ than their leftist critics.

The mass media regularly publish horror stories from ‘Syrian refugees’ about Assad’s alleged crimes. Yet they never interview people who support him and who have been protected by the Syrian army from Western-backed terrorists. There are millions of such people. Why are they never heard? Did your reporters investigate the pro-government protests which have taken place in Myanmar denouncing the Bengali terrorists and their human rights lobbying groups? Have you looked into all the examples of fake news, photoshopping etc?

The beginning of the war on Syria was very like the one in Myanmar now. Did you interview Buddhist minorities in your country who may be connected to Buddhists in Myanmar? Did you interview any of the thousands of Buddhists who claim to be fleeing Bengali terror, who are now also in refugee camps? The Bengali refugees are misfortunate. They are poor people manipulated by unscrupulous criminals, brain washed by a Satanic ideology imported from Saudi Arabia. The Rohingya identity was concocted by the well-connected local ruling class in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Northern Rakhine. Bengali peasants are the ones who are suffering to please their Muslim Brotherhood lords.

The Wahhabites can pollute the minds of millions. Bias is something some people simply cannot overcome. Any time I’ve asked a Muslim Rohingyarist about crimes against Buddhists, they have simply ignored my question. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that they consider Buddhists to be sub-human. What I find particularly disturbing is just how widespread the bigotry is among Muslims – even those who say they totally reject racism and in many cases support very good causes. I suspect there is an equal level of bigotry among many Budhhists and Hindus. Bigotry won’t solve the problem.

BJ: Very interesting points. I cannot disagree with you on Syria, nor Saudi Arabia. Nor the fact that there is indeed a similarity in Bangladesh (satisfaction amongst people) with that of Syria, before the war started. Like I said Mr  Ó Colmáin, all the evidence around me is screaming of the “official story”, as it usually does when something is up. Even speaking about the fact that that may not be the exact case, well, let’s just say I haven’t done that much of it, just cause people are not going to take it well. That is why I will keep an open mind. I don’t know why, but something feels rotten in all of this. Which is why I will be looking forward to your works, eagerly.

As far as your questions towards me. I personally, have interviewed no one. 

People I know, have interviewed Buddhist Myanmares that are quite anti-Myanmar or NGO (I consider both null and void). They have interviewed Muslim and Hindu Rohingya/ non-Rohingyas. And said the dominant story if you take the 2 groups together is by far that it is the army (but would it be too difficult to pretend to be the army?) but very few Buddhists apparently said it was ARSA.

GOC: Again the problem is as you have stated. The people they have interviewed are anti-Myanmar or NGOs. There are plenty people in Myanmar working for Western NGOs, media outlets etc. And they all sing the same song. But there are millions of other people with a different view. Why are the views of the majority of Myanmar’s citizens automatically invalid? You say people will not take it that well. 

Truth can be hard to take and many people don’t take it well.  The Western media will talk about the lack of “transparency” and  “democracy”  in Myanmar but those terms are meaningless. In the West we live in oligarchies and all important decisions affecting the public are made behind closed doors. The public’s opinions are implanted through soundbites repeated by ignorant corporate media stenographers. In our society truth seeking has become a crime.

BJ: I have 2 questions for you, and I assume you will have to simply guess the answers. 1) What is the AL govt’s view of this, what are they planning given what they understand the situation to be. 2) Same, in terms of Indian govt and Chinese govt?

Also I saw a lot of pictures taken by our photographers directly from the refugee camps. The condition “looks” awful, like really really bad. And most of the people of course look a little different, but also many (maybe 70 percent) have that hint of really classic of Bengali like from-around-that-area-face.

Maybe I will ask my boss to allow me to go down there myself actually.

GOC: There is no question about how awful the refugee camps are and how misfortunate and tragic the Bengali refugees are. Most of the countries calling for the “international community” to do something are themselves  responsible for the creation of millions of refugees and have committed genocide in numerous countries. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the chief Rohingya propagandists! I won’t presume to tell a Bangladeshi about what his own government is up to. But here’s how I see it:

The US wants to crush Bangladesh

The United States never wanted the Alawi League government in power. They have historical links with Russia from Soviet times; they are social progressives with a strong left-wing base. They oppose Noble Prize economist Mohamed Yunus’s micro-credit scams and have a genuine determination to bring Bangladesh up to the level of developed countries through state-driven strategic planning, such as their agricultural policies and desire to be self-sufficient in food. Self-sufficiency in food is the basis of freedom and national independence.The US does not want any country to be food self-sufficient.

There has been, at least since 2013, a covert low-intensity war waged by US agencies against Bangladesh – in particular media and NGOs but also political disturbances which the have been unjustly blamed on the government. The human rights accusations, the concern for disappeared labour leaders who were never labour leaders; the concern for the objectivity of the genocide trials, where much information about US complicity in the 1971 genocide is likely to come out.

Recently, we saw the Israeli plot using the Islamist-friendly BNP party. Israel seeks to lobby the Hindu minority in order to drive Bangladesh and India apart. I suspect they are hoping Modi will go along with regime change in Bangladesh if India can maintain influence there through some form of comprador Hindu/Islamist fusion. Look at Ukraine! Zionists and Nazis. Fusion is the name of the game in US regime change these days.

The Bengali refugees could be used for mass protest movements and insurgencies against the Hasina “regime.” The French press already call it a regime! So we are in the early stages of hybrid war. Sheikh Hasina is an intelligent woman. She understands that the Bengalis the US wants her to take in are pro-Pakistani, Wahhabised and dangerous. She doesn’t want them back. So, she’s dumping the problem back over the Naf river. It won’t work though. She will have to meet Aung Sann Suu Kyi and work out a plan.

But Myanmar can’t solve this problem either as the Rohingya are mostly illegal immigrants as far as they are concerned. Russia has good relations with both countries and will work to diffuse the situation. They may come up with mechanisms to that effect at the UN. China has no time for this kind of nonsense. Beijing will support Naypyidaw but also appease Islamabad and Dhaka, while making lukewarm conciliatory statements at the UN.Islamabad, while playing the Muslim indignation game, is still friendly with Naypyidaw. I suggested it was the Deep State in Pakistan, elements in the ISI and, similarly, in Bangladesh, anti AL, pro-Islamist elements in the DGFI.

There is an international terrorist network operating in those countries but many of their leaders are in London under the protection of British intelligence. The West now want resolutions in the UN. The Russians and Chinese are starting to weigh in. Much depends on how the Muslim countries will react. Russia has a wild man in Chechnya  called Ramzan Kadyrov who acts before he thinks. Putin needs to pull him aside, explain the situation to him and tell him to shut up. The Iranians have already put their foot in it with extremely ill-advised statements. They can always say that the cause has been ‘hijacked’ by the Saudis! As for the leftist- alternative media ranting and raving about genocide, they’ll shut up and pretend they never believed it anyway once the word gets around. I’m only referring to those who claim to be anti-imperialist – not the Chomskyites;  they are already a face.

In the mass media reports  I have heard Bengalis say they were fleeing violence and some said they were fleeing from the army. That makes sense. The army stormed the Bengali communities looking for arms and terrorists. What were they supposed to do? They were probably terrifying and may have committed atrocities but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of the atrocities. So, there are people fleeing violence. That is true. But who started the violence? The ARSA terrorists. And what is the official position of the Tatmadaw? They are looking for the terrorists? Who is burning all the villages? Bengalis say the army, the army says the Bengalis.

In order to ascertain which side is likely to be telling the truth we need to weigh up the forces at play both inside and outside the country. Whose interests are being served by the fires? The Bengali activists have gained much attention and now their narrative of oppression is imprinted on people’s minds. Everyone has heard the term Rohingya and they are the ‘most oppressed people in the world and Myanmar is guilty of genocide’ etc.  So, if I were a general of the Tatmadaw I would be reproaching my soldiers for giving the West what I believe it wants, namely a pretext to impose sanctions or occupy the country with UN troops or both.

Kosovo is the most apposite historical precedent. We could also look at the history of Islamist terror groups. Arson is a common war technique of theirs. We also know that false flag terrorism is the standard technique of al-Qaida-linked groups. So, why should we dismiss the Tatmadaw’s accusations that the Bengali terrorists are setting fire to their own villages? We may yet see conclusive evidence of Tatmadaw arson. But we must keep an open mind and listen to all sides before judgement.

Internet activist: Why is Press TV publishing disinformation about Myamar?

Iran wants to assert itself as a leader in the Muslim world. Iran is an emerging power and potential regional empire, with a long history of cultural and political hegemony in the wider region, extending all the way to Chittagong. The Pakistani philosopher Abul Ala Maududi influenced Ayatollah Khomeini, so there are ideological links too. Maududi  had some interesting ideas but he also said that all other religions must submit to Islam. How would you expect Buddhists in Myanmar to interpret that when they have seen once-Buddhist Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Malaysia now completely Islamic? Buddhists experience violence and discrimination in those countries now.

The Theravada Buddhists of Myanmar fear they are next and in North Rakhine State where Muslims are a majority, they have experienced ethnic cleansing. Many monks have to be accompanied by soldiers to the temple. I hope to see a report on that some day on Press TV. My friend, you say you are unaware of Buddhists in your country. Bangladesh was once full of Buddhists. Islam is not a threatened religion. It is alive and well and on the march. Buddhists feel threatened and the horrible attitude of ignoring their fears, of demonising them, is feeding the perception that Muslims want everyone to tolerate them but will not tolerate everyone. If a dialogue is not opened up between Buddhist and Islamic intellectuals on this topic, both Myanmar and Bangladesh will be engulfed in civil war.

I’m not talking here about the CIA’s Dalai Lama. He supports the ‘Rohingya cause’ because he works for the Americans. You are all being set up to hate and fight each other. It is all part of the US imperial pivot to Asia.

But the problem is that Iran is now fueling the same kind of people they are fighting in Syria. But they did that too in Libya, through anti-Gaddafi rhetoric. Iran supported Bosnian and Kosovan terrorists in the Yugoslav wars. The Republican Party published a detailed report showing that President Clinton had allowed Iranian arms to be shipped to the CIA-backed terrorists. The Bosnian and Kosovan terrorists committed genocide against Serbs. The Catholic Church backed the Croatian fascists and the current ponficus maximus is backing the Christian haters in Myanmar. Lucretius said ‘religuo peperit scelera atque impia facta – religion brings forth wickedness and impious deeds. Lucretius had a point!

At a recent conference for international thinkers in Tehran I met a Serbian nationalist leader. He supports Iran and forgives them for Yugoslavia and Iran now has good relations with Balkan countries. Yugoslavia and Libya were mistakes. Dialogue is the key. I know for a fact that people at the highest level of the Iranian military and intelligence apparatus are totally committed to anti-imperialism. So there is hope Iran will play a more constructive diplomatic role in these conflicts in future.

The Burmese situation is particularly complex and I don’t think Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been well-informed by Iranian emissaries there. That said, Iran’s media is the only one actually seriously discussing it right now, apart from China. It is not possible to express a real opinion about anything in the Western media nowadays. It’s still possible in Iran and Press TV told me they want to know the truth. So, let’s hope we can get the word out there. Iran is the only country capable of mediating in this conflict and taking a leadership role but they will need to care about people of other religions too. I haven’t seen that yet. Take my opponents in the two debates I did on Press TV. None of them expressed concern about Bengali murders of Buddhists and Hindus. They were not concerned. How should one interpret that? It’s very ugly. I have not taken sides on this issue. I have not denied that there has been Buddhist terrorism. The only way to be objective is to question your prejudice.

If the Tatmadaw have thrown babies into fires, if there is proof of such crimes, I will be the first to denounce them. I haven’t seen any evidence of that. I have seen evidence of babies tortured and the videos used to blame the Tatmadaw. Armies torture. NO doubt about it. But no professional army will torture someone, film it and then give it to his enemy to be used against him. One has to weigh up the evidence. I have seen how Al-Qaeda murder children in Syria and blame the government so I am confident in claiming that that is what they are doing in Myanmar too. But if you can provide evidence to the contrary I’ll have to revise my position based on that evidence.

I remember when the first pictures of dead police men in Benghazi, Libya came out in 2011. The media said they were shot by Gaddafi because they refused to shoot their own people.I said then that no military would be so stupid as to film a military execution for treason and give it to the enemy. If the Libyan military wanted to kill them, they would have done it in private and made sure there were no images. One year after Africa’s richest country had been annihilated, Britain’s Independent newspaper admitted that the men had been shot by the NATO-backed rebels to frame the Libyan government. But people have a short memory and poor critical evaluation skills. The imperialists know that. Now they have a new narrative and can watch it take off on autopilot

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Once again well-meaning leftists are the turbo engines of empire.

***Author Gearoid Ó Colmain is a European-based writer and geopolitical analyst. This article was first published on his blog www.gearoidocolmain.org.

The Rohingya: Myanmar Mass Murder Made in America

Global Research,

1 February, 2017

The Southeast Asian state of Myanmar has recently become the epicentre of an expanding humanitarian crisis. But because the current government of Myanmar is headed by a regime favoured by American and European interests, little attention and even less action has been given to the conflict.

A January 10, 2017 Guardian article titled, “65,000 Rohingya flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh following crackdown: UN,” reports that:

At least 65,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar – a third of them over the past week – since the army launched a crackdown in the north of Rakhine state.

The figure, released by the UN, marks a sharp escalation in the numbers fleeing a military campaign which rights groups say has been marred by abuses so severe they could amount to crimes against humanity.

The same article claims:

The stories have cast a pall over the young government of Aung San Suu Kyi, with mainly Muslim Malaysia being especially critical.

Myanmar’s government has said the claims of abuse are fabricated and launched a special commission to investigate the allegations.

However, anyone at all familiar with Myanmar’s recent history and the nature of the current government’s support base knows that the unfolding tragedy among the Rohingya minority was not only predictable, but with Aung San Suu Kyi coming to power, inevitable.

The fact that Suu Kyi’s political party came to power on a decades-long tsunami of US and European cash and political support, despite US-European knowledge of Suu Kyi’s supporters harbouring racist, even genocidal intentions toward the Rohingya, makes the West at the very least partially responsible for the current crisis.

The Warning Signs Were There For Years 

The Guardian would also link the violence against the Rohingya to what it calls, “hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu,” in the very last paragraph of its article, giving readers little explanation as to just how prominent a role both Wirathu and his saffron-clad followers have played both in bringing Suu Kyi to power and persecuting the Rohingya with genocidal violence.

Such lies of omission are common throughout the Western media indicating a systematic attempt to conceal the true nature of Suu Kyi and her followers. In fact, so contradictory is the image the Western media has built up for Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the reality of her political movement’s violence, that many are unable to accept the truth even when evidence finally becomes widely known.

In 2007, the Western media eagerly reported on what it dubbed the “Saffron Revolution,” a political protest led by Suu Kyi’s political allies, including thousands of monks wearing their saffron-coloured robes.

But these same activist groups, including various monk “associations” have systematically been involved in the persecution of and violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.

Occasional articles like the UK Independent’s 2012 report titled, “Burma’s monks call for Muslim community to be shunned,” reveal both Myanmar’s “hardline Buddhists” and even activist groups celebrated in the West for “promoting democracy” are involved in persecuting the Rohingya.

The report would state:

Monks who played a vital role in Burma’s recent struggle for democracy have been accused of fuelling ethnic tensions in the country by calling on people to shun a Muslim community that has suffered decades of abuse.

In a move that has shocked many observers, some monks’ organisations have issued pamphlets telling people not to associate with the Rohingya community, and have blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching them. One leaflet described the Rohingya as “cruel by nature” and claimed it had “plans to exterminate” other ethnic groups.

The Independent would also admit that:

Ko Ko Gyi, a democracy activist with the 88 Generation Students group and a former political prisoner, said: “The Rohingya are not a Burmese ethnic group. The root cause of the violence… comes from across the border.”

It is difficult to discern what then, the Western media means by “democracy activist” when such “activists” openly display racism, bigotry, discrimination, and support a growing conflict that involves both calls for genocide, and violence aimed at carrying out genocide. The 88 Generation Students group has for years repeatedly weighed in on the Rohingya conflict, backing calls to deny them citizenship, voting rights and even basic human rights.

Myanmar’s Minister of Information Was Trained by America 

Not only has the US and UK substantially funded and backed Suu Kyi’s political party, but ministers within her government have been trained by US-funded programmes, including Myanmar’s current Minister of Information Pe Myint.

The Myanmar Times article, “Who’s who: Myanmar’s new cabinet,” would provide Pe Myint’s background, reporting (our emphasis):

Formerly a doctor with a degree from the Institute of Medicine, U Pe Myint changed careers after 11 years and received training as a journalist at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok. He then embarked on a career as a writer, penning dozens of novels. He participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1998, and was also editor-in-chief of The People’s Age Journal. He was born in Rakhine State in 1949.

The Indochina Media Memorial Foundation (IMMF) in Bangkok is run by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT), a collection of US and European media representatives. And according to a Wikileaks document titled,  “An Overview of Northern Thailand-Based Burmese Media Orgranizations,” the IMMF’s funding is revealed (our emphasis):

Other organizations, some with a scope beyond Burma, also add to the educational opportunities for Burmese journalists. The Chiang Mai-based Indochina Media Memorial Foundation, for instance, last year completed training courses for Southeast Asian reporters that included Burmese participants. Major funders for journalism training programs in the region include the NED, Open Society Institute (OSI), and several European governments and charities.

The NED (National Endowment for Democracy) is both funded and directed by the US Congress and the US State Department. In essence, Myanmar’s current Minister of Information and the lies his ministry tells on a daily basis, particularly in regards to his government’s brutality toward the Rohingya, has been made possible in part by US government funding and support.

The fact that the Western media is still stepping around Suu Kyi and her supporters’ role in the violence against the Rohingya, indicates that support is still being provided.

It appears that the plight of the Rohingya will, if anything, only be further exploited to deepen the West’s influence over Myanmar’s current government. While human rights abuses real or imagined have been used to justify entire wars waged by Western military forces elsewhere, very real abuses in Myanmar are being carefully spun to protect the very government and its support base responsible for carrying them out.

Such transparent hypocrisy exposes Western foreign policy as entirely predicated on opportunism and self-interest rather than any actual principle. Many times, as is the case in Myanmar, such opportunism and self-interest find themselves trampling such principles entirely.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.