Burma massacre

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  • Should Aung San Suu Kyi be removed of her Nobel peace prize?

    Around the world there is growing condemnation of Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya minority, but in Yangon the view is very different, as Saw Yan Naing from BBC Burmese reports.

    Speak to those on the street about what is happening in Rakhine state and you will not hear the word "Rohingya".

    The minority is described as "Bengalis", reflecting a mainstream perception that members of the Rohingya group are foreigners - immigrants from Bangladesh, with different culture and language.

    What is seen by many internationally as a human rights issue is viewed in Myanmar as one of national sovereignty, and there is widespread support for military operations in northern Rakhine.

    I've already spoke today on the subject of race and religion in Hoxton's thread, but this story is similar and backs up my opinion on this subject.

    The Burmese see the Muslims as foreigners, even though Muslims have lived in Burma for hundreds of years.

    But as the BBC say in this article Why won't Aung San Suu Kyi act? this is an interesting side note to this terrible story.

    Suu Kyi got the Nobel peace price, but has stayed very quiet over this ethnic cleansing in her own country and one where she is now the head of.

    Some say it's because she is in fear of the military, which maybe true, but if you have seen any of her earlier interviews, there maybe another reason. The reason being that she believes her country should be Buddhist only and although she may not be supporting this massacre, she may secretly like the result that it ultimately brings for her country, one free of Muslims.

    Should Aung San Suu Kyi be removed of her Nobel peace prize?

  • Personally, I think Aung Suu Kyi is afraid not of the military in her own country but of the militant Islamic radicals in most Islamic populations today. She almost certainly doesn't want her own people rammed by trucks and blown up in markets and shopping centres, not after all she has been through to bring her people to democracy. Buddhism and Islam are like chalk and cheese anywhere where these two come together.

    Today's radical Islamist is not yesterday's peaceful acolyte and you just have to look at the clashes between Christians and Muslims in Africa to see that Islam isn't getting along with anyone anywhere and that within Islam there are vast differences between fundamentalists and extremists and that the extremists are gaining the upper hand, as witnessed by events in Turkey and, previously, in Egypt, as well as across the range of the Arab Spring revolts.

    Anyone who is going to argue this is just being an apologist.

    Should she be deprived of her Peace Prize? Nobel prizes are carefully designed for political impact and given out by a very left-leaning elite, so I don't think it matters. What matters is her ability to keep Burma free of a growing peril it does not need.

    Edited once, last by Little Wing (September 19, 2017 at 10:12 AM).

  • Off topic posts removed. Thread tidied.

    Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said her government does not fear "international scrutiny" of its handling of the growing Rohingya crisis.

    It was her first address to the country about the violence in northern Rakhine state that has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh.

    Ms Suu Kyi has faced heavy criticism for her response to the crisis.

    But she said most Muslims had not fled the state and that violence had ceased.

    Who is she kidding?

    At least 400,000 Muslims have left, maybe half a million now, half of the entire Muslim popular in Burma. Even if we're being kind about her and say that she has no responsibility for the genocide, to stand up and say most Muslims have not fled the state is rubbish.

    She is either fully supportive of the Burmese military's actions against the Muslims or in denial, either way, what she is saying is totally incorrect.

  • Either she knows what is happening and is in some kind of denial or ignorant as to what the military are upto. Either way it doesn't look good.

    I don't think there's any doubt that 400,000 Muslims have fled. The idea that they would burn down their own villages is just ludicrous. Having said that if this population had condemned the attacks on the police posts in August by the fanatics and shopped them to the authorites maybe the reaction would not have been so draconian.

  • There is no doubt there was Islamist activity, twelve Burmese policemen were killed, but this has given the Junta the excuse they were looking for, to entirely expel their Muslim population.

    If expulsion were all they were doing, that would be bad enough, but to kill so many innocents is just plain wrong. They could have turned up with tanks at the villages and ordered them to leave. I think they would have got the message, but to kill so many innocents is genocide.

    I agree that the award of the Nobel Peace Prise is political and that is exactly why it should be removed from Aung San Suu Kyi.

  • It doesn't matter whether or not the Nobel Peace prize is withdrawn from Aung Suu Kyi

    It just renders the Nobel Peace prize as even less relevant than it already is

    It's not an annual prize. It's holder is not subject to annual performance reviews.

    Besides what was Aung Suu Kyi ever expected to say about the Rohingya problem?

    That she's extremely sorry for them, even mortified?

    That she wishes they didn't die in such great numbers and that it is absolutely shocking that they are?

    That she would like the whole world generally and the UN specifically to come to the rescue?

    That the Rohingyans need more tents, water, food, doctors, dentists, medication, education?

    That the Burmese police and military shouldn't shoot, beat, rape or drown the Rohingyans

    If she said all those things would she be able to keep her Nobel prize?

    Do you think she cares?

    Is it possible she didn't say all those things because they are blindingly obvious?

    Is it possible she knows some solutions but knows she would be reviled, even assassinated for suggesting them?

    Dare she suggest that Rohingyans stop having so many children?

    Dare she suggest that Rohingyan male refugees must undergo a vasectomy?

    Dare she suggest that the world needs yet another Muslim tribe like it needs a hole in the head?

    Dare she suggest there be refugee camps across the globe open to any refugee agreeing to keep their religious identity and beliefs to themselves, not pray communally and not wear clothes or accessories which denote their religious affiliation?

    Dare she suggest that if a Rohingyan wants to live in Burma they should convert to Muslim, in Israel to Judaism, in Europe to Christian or Catholic and in Muslim countries to whichever type or tribe of Muslim is least likely to get them killed as non-believers?

    Dare she suggest that the religious beliefs and identity which bind Rohingyans together as a distinct tribe of Muslim are a handicap to their acceptance, assimilation and survival in any potential host country?

    Dare she suggest that the increased degree of religious fervour or extremism in the Middle and Far East makes it hopelessly and hideously difficult to maintain a live-and-let-live co-existence between religions - and even between tribes of what were the same religion - and that Europe is beginning to experience that difficulty on their own doorstep, can't agree between themselves on what to do and are therefore in no position to offer advice beyond their own continent?

  • This is the problem, anywhere where this cause is apparent and I'm using this particular source because the BBC avoided mentioning the most significant cause.

    Britain's population will surge past 70 million before the end of the next decade, new forecasts reveal today with more than half the increase caused by immigration

  • Too many questions to answer there Rob, but all I can say that Aung San Suu Kyi is president of Burma and her forces have partaken in genocide of innocents whether she controls that process or agrees with it or not, she is the president.

    The nobel prize is symbolic and that's why I think it should be removed from her. You can't have a peace prize going to someone who is a leader of a country doing genocide.

  • That's the trouble with freedom fighting. You get blood on your hands and some see you as a liberator and others as a murderer.

    In the case of Mandela and his comrades, they really were freedom fighters and after exhausting all avenues of negotiation they changed from a cultural movement into a militia and began the true struggle for freedom. Mandela walked the whole long road and came out of the tunnel as a peacemaker. I don't think certain others will, or have, done so. It is Mandela's greatest achievement and the ensuing ANC have messed up all of his aspirations for the peace prize he and de Klerk shared.

    I think Catalonia is going to have this problem and Burma is having it now. What to do about ethnic strife when it has boiled over.

  • Too many questions to answer there Rob, but all I can say that Aung San Suu Kyi is president of Burma and her forces have partaken in genocide of innocents whether she controls that process or agrees with it or not, she is the president.

    The Nobel prize is symbolic and that's why I think it should be removed from her. You can't have a peace prize going to someone who is a leader of a country doing genocide.

    You're right, Zon, too many questions to answer! But there wasn't a need to answer them, as they're rhetorical. But you could have had a go at commenting on at least one of them!

    There is nothing Aung San Suu Kyi has done or not done that justifies taking away her Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone knows she's a president whose hands are tied by the junta. Besides, even if she was an unshackled leader, what would you suggest she do? Just mouth the necessary politically correct platitudes like the rest of the world? How will that stop these poor wretched people dying like flies?

    I made several suggestions on what Aung San Suu Kyi might say to the outside world rather than staying completely quiet, but neither you nor anyone else has commented on any of them. For all I know you disapprove of all my suggestions or you approve of some but dare not say which in case it causes offence by going against the grain of current day precepts. Maybe Aung San Suu Kyi realises that she too would face that condemnatory silence - damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.

    I think we use words like genocide or ethnic cleansing a little too easily. The opposite of being a good Samaritan or closing your door or border or repelling a mass of people trying to cross your border is not in itself genocide or ethnic cleansing. The fact that it may escalate into a more brutal way of repelling those masses probably does merit a more pejorative description than just wanton neglect.

    But tell me this: what is a country is supposed to do if it is invaded or increasingly overrun by a seemingly unending stream of semi-passive hungry and bedraggled refugees who are tribally and religiously intact and at complete variance with the life-style, values and religion of over 90% of that invaded country's population? What do you suggest? All I hear is to provide land for refugee camps, with tents, food, water, doctors, medicine, education. That kind of suggestion seems a pretty easy way to hold onto one's Nobel prize for peace. Do you have any better suggestion, something with an eye to the future, a little less of a Band Aid solution? Something that doesn't represent the nightmarish downside of the maxim in Field of Dreams ("build it and they will come")

    Re removal of Nobel prize: would you also recommend that someone who was given a military medal for bravery should be asked to return it if years later they became pacifist and were discharged? Do you feel that Sharipova's winning of the singles final at Wimbledon be scratched from the board of winners if she became disbarred several years later for taking a banned drug? In other words, is the Nobel prize simply in recognition of a past achievement or it also conditional on maintaining the approval of the Nobel prize board for future behaviour? I empathise with Bob Dylan's decision to just say thanks but not turn up for the award ceremony. He has an excellent bullsh@@ antenna.

  • Personally, I think Aung Suu Kyi is afraid not of the military in her own country but of the militant Islamic radicals in most Islamic populations today. She almost certainly doesn't want her own people rammed by trucks and blown up in markets and shopping centres, not after all she has been through to bring her people to democracy. Buddhism and Islam are like chalk and cheese anywhere where these two come together.

    Today's radical Islamist is not yesterday's peaceful acolyte and you just have to look at the clashes between Christians and Muslims in Africa to see that Islam isn't getting along with anyone anywhere and that within Islam there are vast differences between fundamentalists and extremists and that the extremists are gaining the upper hand, as witnessed by events in Turkey and, previously, in Egypt, as well as across the range of the Arab Spring revolts.

    Anyone who is going to argue this is just being an apologist.

    Should she be deprived of her Peace Prize? Nobel prizes are carefully designed for political impact and given out by a very left-leaning elite, so I don't think it matters. What matters is her ability to keep Burma free of a growing peril it does not need.

    Your comment is probably past it's reply date. I meant to comment on it earlier but I was having a torrid time getting acquainted with the website's bells & whistles, getting rapped on the knuckles and given a vitriolic dressing down by you for a comment I made which, honestly, was just a friendly wisecrack

    Anyway, I just wanted to say that your views on Aung Suu Kyi's conflicted position reads to me like a breath of fresh air and I agree 100% with what you say (or 110% in Nadal-speak).

    The apologists to whom you refer (a.k.a.Useful Idiots or The Enemy Within or Merkelites) have risen alarmingly in number over the years but I detect that this rise has reached a point of inflexion, will soon plateau and then go into heavy decline. At which point global order will begin it's recovery. Whether the Muslims want to be part of that recovery or self-implode is entirely up to them

  • If I seem a tad abrasive it's just because of past experience on the net with some heavy duty trolls. One never knows when one is going to get walloped by one of them and they can be very unpleasant and have a habit of sticking to their targets like limpets, for years. :(

    I agree that eventually all this ludicrous neo-liberal fascism might come to an end. I feel it could be a somewhat sticky end in some instances as they are determined to turn the world and its peoples into their putty. They are the new supremacists and their idea is not racial this time but moral. They are the new saints and if we don't agree or won't worship them, they use legislation to force us and if that doesn't work, there is always prison.

    As yet another terror incident has occurred in New York this time, it should be obvious why the Burmese do not want radical Islam to creep into their culture and country by the stealth of insurgency among poor Muslims who are ripe for the picking. Russia has the same problem and so do China, the Philippines and North Africa. Where two or more are gathered in their name they demand an Islamic state with Sharia law. (It will start with a "community" and go on from there as it really does have greater aspirations concordant with its text and creed.)

    What is disappointing, and of great concern, is the neo-liberal need to give into their demands and to thrash anyone who doesn't play the game and aspire to sainthood. That is going to, and already has, cause enormous problems in the not too distant future. The Burmese have highlighted the policy (and it is a policy) of Muslim fast breeding to outnumber the infidel enemy culture and take over by default, a la Kosovo. If the Burmese don't do something about this they will end up like the British, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and finally enslaved by the very thing their neo-liberals fought so hard to entrench. Fortunately for the Burmese, the monks are also warriors when the need arises and one can add to this the Hindus and Sikhs of India too. They will not stand for it, but they will be cast aside by the new supremacists if they murmur against it and do not take bombings and street slaughter on the chin.

    If one isn't allowed to say this, then things have already gone far too far for dissidents of neo-liberal fascism and the time will have arrived for heroes of a new struggle. This time the enemy is within on two fronts and one of those is our own people who have seemingly gone mad with a new secular religion that gets ever closer to the great despots of history. If any new alliances are to be made to stop this, then those who are focus skewed must refocus on what they have in common with others round the world. A new supremacy is on the march and it has absolutely no time for heritage of any kind. It is bent on conquest.

  • Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has arrived in Rakhine for the first time since violence erupted in the state in late August.

    She is visiting the regional capital Sittwe and other towns during an unannounced one-day trip.

    She has been criticised around the world for not stopping a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, amid allegations of ethnic cleansing.

    This woman is a total disgrace. She should piss off from that region immediately.

    Whether she had knowledge of the genocide or not, she is the de facto leader of that country, whether she controls the military's actions or doesn't, and I accept it is almost 100% unlikely she doesn't control the Burmese military.

    If she had any shame, she would resign and hand back he Nobel Peace Prize straight away.

    I accept some of the recent comments made in this thread, that she is concerned about her own people from radical Islam, but what has been done to the Rohingya is disgusting and against international law. What's the point of having world rules on genocide if they're not followed or enforced when broken?

  • Easy to say when you don't have the support of your military who were recently the junta in your country. She is caught between two fires. On one hand there is the genocide issue and on the other there is her lifelong aspiration to rule the country and free it from the curse of its recent history. If she just leaves, she will be replaced again by the junta. If she gives them orders they won't obey because they have the monks and many of the people onside, she's political toast in her country.

  • Easy to say when you don't have the support of your military who were recently the junta in your country.

    There's a simple solution to that, she shouldn't have taken up the job to begin with, but she did because:

    She is caught between two fires. On one hand there is the genocide issue and on the other there is her lifelong aspiration to rule the country and free it from the curse of its recent history.

    She wanted the power. Plain and simple, just like her father before her.

    If she just leaves, she will be replaced again by the junta. If she gives them orders they won't obey because they have the monks and many of the people onside, she's political toast in her country.

    Fully agree with all those points there. But she is the puppet, the genocide is being carried out in her name. The minute she started getting reports of killings, she should've have quit. But she wants the power, also.... going by her own statements, she believes in her country free from Muslims. The BBC have highlighted this in the past interviews she has done with them.

    I am not saying she is supportive of genocide, but she likes the results that the "cleansing" is doing and for that, I think she is a total disgrace.

  • If I seem a tad abrasive it's just because of past experience on the net with some heavy duty trolls. One never knows when one is going to get walloped by one of them and they can be very unpleasant and have a habit of sticking to their targets like limpets, for years. :(

    I agree that eventually all this ludicrous neo-liberal fascism might come to an end. I feel it could be a somewhat sticky end in some instances as they are determined to turn the world and its peoples into their putty. They are the new supremacists and their idea is not racial this time but moral. They are the new saints and if we don't agree or won't worship them, they use legislation to force us and if that doesn't work, there is always prison.

    As yet another terror incident has occurred in New York this time, it should be obvious why the Burmese do not want radical Islam to creep into their culture and country by the stealth of insurgency among poor Muslims who are ripe for the picking. Russia has the same problem and so do China, the Philippines and North Africa. Where two or more are gathered in their name they demand an Islamic state with Sharia law. (It will start with a "community" and go on from there as it really does have greater aspirations concordant with its text and creed.)

    What is disappointing, and of great concern, is the neo-liberal need to give into their demands and to thrash anyone who doesn't play the game and aspire to sainthood. That is going to, and already has, cause enormous problems in the not too distant future. The Burmese have highlighted the policy (and it is a policy) of Muslim fast breeding to outnumber the infidel enemy culture and take over by default, a la Kosovo. If the Burmese don't do something about this they will end up like the British, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and finally enslaved by the very thing their neo-liberals fought so hard to entrench. Fortunately for the Burmese, the monks are also warriors when the need arises and one can add to this the Hindus and Sikhs of India too. They will not stand for it, but they will be cast aside by the new supremacists if they murmur against it and do not take bombings and street slaughter on the chin.

    If one isn't allowed to say this, then things have already gone far too far for dissidents of neo-liberal fascism and the time will have arrived for heroes of a new struggle. This time the enemy is within on two fronts and one of those is our own people who have seemingly gone mad with a new secular religion that gets ever closer to the great despots of history. If any new alliances are to be made to stop this, then those who are focus skewed must refocus on what they have in common with others round the world. A new supremacy is on the march and it has absolutely no time for heritage of any kind. It is bent on conquest.

    It’s sad that we find it easier to speak our minds on this issue on line under a pseudonym. If I expressed my views when socialising I would become an outcast (or worse!). This is especially true in the smug complacency of a rural hamlet than in the Metropolis.

    Thanks for explaining that an initial reaction to my much earlier posting was influenced by previous experience of other people's malign responses that never let up. As I'm not them, I wondered what I was letting myself in for joining Forum Box!

    You talk of the threat to our christian society from neo-liberal fascists as the new moral supremacists. I am more concerned about the threat from (1) IslamistsMuslims (who are getting away with murder) and (2) British christians who are over-over-tolerant towards a multi-cultural and multi-faith society (I view such British citizens as the enemy within). Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!

    I confess to being a bit confused about the meaning of neo fascist liberals. I know that neo means new and that fascist means totalitarian, authoritarian, autocratic. But that doesn’t sound like normal traditional liberalism. It smacks of an imposed doctrine of liberalism from a power elite. The doctrine is strongly economic, owing more to Adam Smith than Keynes, and points to substantial redistribution of wealth and the welfare state. It seems to be describing the direction in which the Labour party is headed. Political Correctness under neo liberal fascists will render ordinary citizens into submissive mutes.

    I see no sign that neo-Liberal Fascists are going to take steps to maintain and defend the British christian society against a growing segment of Muslims who believe in the values and ascendancy of Islam, where that segment will outnumber non-Muslims in Britain within the next 40 years.

    The only way Britain will be inspired sufficiently to reignite its traditional British values will be to have several more Muslim-connected terrorist attacks. Eventually Britain will understand Burma’s position. They might even understand Trump’s, if only he talked properly.

    When Forum Box has enough members, it would be interesting to survey members’ views on these pressing issues ….. and publish the results anonymously (ie in aggregate).

  • As I am not a Christian I do not care about any theocratic aspects of societies dominated by these as the political weapon of control.

    Ideology can be as perilous as religion in this regard. Seldom do the actual people and nation have anything to do with why and how its leaders tend to act.

    Islam in the west is a peril yet unknown to liberals and so they scuttle about with their new age lefty supporters bothering about nazis and racists when in fact a different and real threat hovers over them like the proverbial Damocletian sword. They're idiots with a capital "I".

    I agree that the terms "liberal" and "fascist" are incompatible with regard to their definitions but neo-liberals have managed to combine them, possibly by means of a degraded Christianity based on caritas in a secular expression and sheer moral supremacy that has made some of them actually state that they think they are the evolution of an improved human species that is destined to rule the world on account of their attainment of moral beatitude in their planned Republic of Heaven on earth.

    If one has a discrepancy like that motivating one's thinking and action, the results can only be disastrous at best and catastrophic at worst.

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