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UN does nothing for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar: Academic

Children look on from a flooded house at Nyaung Don township in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy region on August 5, 2015. (© AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Liaqat Ali Khan, professor at Washburn University in Kansas, to discuss the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: From a humanitarian aspect, why is there no show of sympathy towards the people who have been struck by floods, let alone their being cast away from a land on which they have lived for centuries?

Khan: I think that is one of the problems facing the Rohingya Muslims, that they have no allies and no friends and they are totally dispossessed by the country in which they live and by the countries around them.

Rohingya Muslims are ethnically somewhat different from the people in Myanmar. At least the people in Myanmar think that the Rohingya Muslims are mostly from Bangladesh who were moved to Myanmar in the British [time] but that was as you said many centuries ago. So it seems like the local population which is predominantly Buddhist, they are unwilling to accept Rohingyas as part of the national groups and therefore they would like to evict them from Myanmar.

Now Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia, those are the surrounding Muslim countries where these people can go but these three countries are not willing to accept them either. So I think they have no option but to live in shelters and to make adventurous trips through...boats to the neighboring countries. So we see a slow genocide of people who are totally friendless and who have no allies in this world.

Press TV: What about the United Nations, why doesn’t it intervene?

Khan: I think the United Nations makes some efforts but even the United Nations does nothing for the people who are dispossessed and who have no friends. I mean we see lots of problems where persecution continues because these people have no friends in the United Nations. We have Palestinians, we have Rohingyas, we have people in Kashmir, we have many other areas, we have people who are being persecuted for decades but because they have no strong friends in the Security Council, therefore their condition is never really addressed. I mean the United Nations becomes a talking institution when it comes to people who are dispossessed and people who have no allies. So this is no surprise the Rohingyas like Palestinians and other people will be left to the persecution of the home state.


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