Burma’s Deputy Immigration and Population Minister Kyaw
Kyaw Win denied the existence of the Rohingya ethnic group in Burma
during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.
According to a back page report in today’s The New Light of Myanmar, Kyaw
Kyaw Win made the statement twice in response to questions from MPs
Maung Nyo of Sittwe and Daw Khin Saw Wai of Yathedaung, who also used
the opportunity to unleash their own anti-Rohingya comments in front of
the lower house.
Hours later, President’s Office Director Zaw Htay, under the
name Hmuu Zaw, tweeted, “In today[‘s] Parliament, Deputy Minister for
Immigration said there is no [Rohingya] ethnic in Myanmar” on the
popular social networking site Twitter.
Zaw Htay has come under fire in the past for publishing
anti-Rohingya comments on his Facebook page along with inflammatory
pictures when sectarian violence rocked Arakan state last year.
“When government ministers deny Rohingya exist, and it is
repeated by the office of the President, this encourages more prejudice
and violence against Rohingya and all Muslims,” said Mark Farmaner,
director at Burma Campaign UK.
“The international community can’t keep turning a blind eye to
the fact that with statements like this President Thein Sein’s
government is encouraging violence against the Rohingya.”
Ethno-religious riots exploded in June and October in the
restive western state resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands
of residents and left a disproportionate amount of Muslim villages
razed to the ground.
Aid groups have struggled to deliver relief to the thousands of
displaced Rohingya who are denied
humanitarian assistance and not
registered as internally displaced persons.
“The government has denied the Rohingya as an ethnic identity
for decades, branding nearly all Muslims in Arakan State as illegal
immigrants as a matter of discriminatory state policy,” said Matthew
Smith, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
Thein Sein’s government was heavily criticised last July after
the president told a visiting delegation from the United Nation’s High
Commissioner for Refugees that the government would not recognise the
Rohingya and suggested resettling the population to a third country.
The deputy minister’s statement came as two Nobel laureates,
former East Timor Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta and former Managing
Director of Grameen Bank Muhammad Yunus, published a story in the Huffington Post yesterday calling for an end to the discrimination against the Rohingya minority.
“The charge that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants to Myanmar is false,” wrote the Nobel laureates.
“We ask the world to not look away, but to raise its collective voice in support of the Rohingya.”
Correction: Burma’s Deputy
Immigration and Population Minister Kyaw Kyaw Win made the statement on
Wednesday, not Tuesday as originally published.
Source: DVB
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