Myanmar rejected as unbalanced comments made by several Nobel Peace Prize winners calling for an end to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims.
\nThe Nobel laureates including South Africa\u2019s Desmond Tutu, Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and former East Timor President Jos\u00e9 Ramos-Horta made the appeal following two conferences in the Norwegian capital last week. They called the situation of Rohingya in Myanmar \u201cnothing less than genocide.\u201d
\nMyanmar\u2019s foreign ministry said in a statement published in Sunday\u2019s newspapers that such comments turned a blind eye to Myanmar\u2019s efforts on rebuilding trust between Buddhists and Muslims in western Rakhine state as well as \u201cgranting citizenship through national verification process to those Bengalis living in Myanmar for many years.\u201d
\nMyanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic community and refers to the more than 1 million members in Rakhine state as Bengalis\u2014immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and basic rights. More than 100,000 are confined to internal camps.
\nIn recent weeks, the plight of Rohingya has turned into a regional crisis when thousands landed on the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with others still believed stranded at sea.
\nThe foreign ministry said Myanmar categorically rejects the \u201cunbalanced and negative comments.\u201d
\nOthers who criticized Myanmar\u2019s policies in Oslo included philanthropist George Soros, who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary and said that there were \u201calarming\u201d parallels between the plight of the Rohingya and the Nazi genocide.<\/p>\n
Source: Asharq Al-Awsat<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Myanmar rejected as unbalanced comments made by several Nobel Peace Prize winners calling for an end to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[135,136],"class_list":["post-4245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities","tag-myanmar","tag-rohingya"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n