Nightslantern Suppressed News // #Myanmar, February 17, 2018

23.2.18

Gerald and Maas 2018 suppressed news http://www.nightslantern.ca/2018bulletin.htm#feb16my February 17, 2018 Myanmar: it's increasingly evident Burma has tried to destroy the Rohingya as an ethnic and religious group in Myanmar: humanitarian and witnessing groups including the UN are barred access to areas of alleged crimes. The journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who reported on the massacre at Inn Din are under arrest facing long sentences. Facebook has denied Rohingya witnesses access to share their information. Mass graves, personal testimonies of victims, massive exodus of refugees attest to the crime in progress. Some insight into why the global community has not insisted the crime be stopped is suggested by U.S. treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi (previous), a Nobel Prize winner favoured with awards and praise by the U.S. government and liberal establishment. She refused to intercede or call for a stop to the military's actions against the Rohngya as people died or fled by the thousands. While Aung San Suu Kyi is acknowledged as a primary force behind the power in Myanmar, she doesn't hold government office and Canada has sanctioned instead a specific general, Maj. Gen. Maung Maung Soe, for crimes against the Rohingya. The recognition of a genocide in progress is suppressed which allows the region to maintain its economic standing and ability to honor heavy investment and pay its debts. Canada's envoy to the region, Bob Rae was unsure the Rohingya refugees would be allowed to return home. Several Canadian groups concerned with genocide which usually serve government policies, have helped organize a "Berlin Conference on the Myanmar Genocide," at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Feb. 26, 2018, to let the German and the European public know more about the genocide in Burma. The conference faces the increasing power of Europe's anti-Islamic fascism: murder of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar makes the treatment of Muslim refugees in Europe look more...civilized, overlooking the causes of the Muslim influx where refugees are usually seeking to survive NATO's military and economic policies in their countries of origin. European nationalism finds it politically useful to fault Muslims, Roma, Jews and Africans. The Europeans may also be reluctant to recognize ethnic cleansing or genocide against the Rohingya, given Europe's current difficulty in recognizing its own crimes against the Roma. In Myanmar Rohingya are accused of being a foreign people though many have lived there for generations; this has some parallel to European persecution of Roma people of Europe for over a thousand years. The conference will feature representatives of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, and other luminaries of government and academia prominent in the Euro-American consortium of genocide studies. Night's Lantern has carried an ongoing genocide warning for Myanmar since 2012. Partial sources online: "Reuters Publishes Shocking Report on Burmese Military’s Killing of Rohingya," Feb. 12, 2018, Democracy Now!; "The genocide in Burma continues. Yet the international community is still sitting on its hands," Azeem Ibrahim, Feb.7, 2018, The Washington Post; "U.S. says Myanmar denial of ethnic cleansing is 'preposterous'," Reuters Staff, Feb. 13, 2018, Thomson Reuters; "Canada imposes sanctions on Myanmar general over Rohingya abuses," Levon Sevunts, Feb. 16, 2018, Radio Canada International; "26 February: Berlin Conference on the Myanmar Genocide," Press release, Feb. 12, 2018, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.