Muslim Minority Suffers Under Harsh Myanmar Rule

by Michael Sullivan

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Morning Edition, June 22, 2009 · Myanmar is a place of misery for many of its citizens. Political dissent isn't tolerated by the repressive, often brutal military rulers. And neither, it seems, is the country's ethnic Muslim minority, known as the Rohingya. NPR's Michael Sullivan visited the country and examined their plight.

A friend brought me some pictures a few weeks back that were pretty disturbing. He works for an international aid agency, and the pictures were from a trip he took to visit some villages in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, near the border with Bangladesh.

The state is home to the Rohingya minority. He was showing me the pictures because he was outraged that people had to live in such squalid conditions. Some of the children were badly undernourished. Their mothers' faces were lined with despair.

It was the despair in these women's eyes that got to my friend the most — the utter lack of hope. My friend, who doesn't want to be named — has been in this line of work for a long time, and he has seen places that he says he does not want to remember.

But none have bothered him as much as this.

Ugh, just when the think the dick-hole military junta in Burma can't get any worse...What is really striking to me I guess is the extent to which Burmese in general seem ok with the treatment. The government seems to have completely convinced the Buddhist population that the Rohingya aren't really from Myanmar so treating them terribly and confiscating land, virtually starving them out of existence is ok. Damn. It never ceases to amaze me how much people suck.