Castanet

Here is a short history of the Rohingya people.

8th Century: The Rohingya, a people of South Asian origin, dwelled in an independent kingdom in Arakan, now known as Rakhine state in modern-day Myanmar.

9th to 14th Century: The Rohingya came into contact with Islam through Arab traders. Close ties were forged between Arakan and Bengal.

1784: The Burman King Bodawpaya conquered Arakan and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Bengal.

1790: Hiram Cox, a British diplomat sent to assist refugees, established the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where many Rohingya still live today.

1824 to 1942: Britain captured Burma—now known as Myanmar—and made it a province of British India. Workers were migrated to Burma from other parts of British India for infrastructure projects.

1942: Japan invaded Burma, pushing out the British. As the British retreated, Burmese nationalists attacked Muslim communities who they thought had benefited from British colonial rule.

1945: Britain liberated Burma from Japanese occupation with help of Burmese nationalists led by Aung San and Rohingya fighters. Rohingyas felt betrayed as the British didn’t fulfill a promise of autonomy for Arakan.

1948: Tensions increased between the government of newly independent Burma and the Rohingya, many of whom wanted Arakan to join Muslim-majority Pakistan. The government retaliated by ostracizing the Rohingya, including removing Rohingya civil servants.

1950: Some Rohingya resisted the government, led by armed groups called Mujahids. The insurgency gradually died down.

1962: General Ne Win and his Burma Socialist Programme Party seized power and took a hard line against the Rohingya.

1977: The junta began Operation Nagamin, or Dragon King, which they said was aimed at screening the population for foreigners. More than 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, amid allegations of army abuses. The army denied any wrongdoing.

1978: Bangladesh struck a U.N.-brokered deal with Burma for the repatriation of refugees, under which most Rohingya returned.

1982: A new immigration law redefined people who migrated during British rule as illegal immigrants. The government applied this to all Rohingya.

1989: The army changed the name of Burma to Myanmar.

1991: More than 250,000 Rohingya refugees fled what they said was forced labor, rape and religious persecution at the hands of the Myanmar army. The army said it was trying to bring order to Rakhine.

1992 to 1997: Around 230,000 Rohingya returned to Arakan, now known as Rakhine, under another repatriation agreement.

2012: Rioting between Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists killed more than 100 people, mostly Rohingya. Tens of thousands of people were driven into Bangladesh. Nearly 150,000 were forced into camps in Rakhine.

2016: Rohingya militant group Harakah al-Yaqin attacked border guard posts, killing nine soldiers. The army retaliated. More than 25,000 people fled Rakhine to Bangladesh, bringing accounts of killing, rape and arson. Aung San Suu Kyi’s government denied the atrocities.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, is now all over the news, being taken to task for “not speaking out” against the mistreatment of the Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Myanmar, almost all of whom live in the western Rakhine State of Myanmar. 365,000 people have signed a petition demanding she be stripped of her Nobel Prize for not speaking out and denouncing the Buddhists of Myanmar; in Pakistan, a country renowned for its humane treatment of minorities, her photograph has been publicly burned; Al Jazeera has denounced her, and so has that champion of justice Tariq Ramadan.

In the last month, the world media reports, 250,000 Rohingya have now fled the latest cycle of violence, that began with Rohingya attacks on the military in mid-August, for Bangladesh. In fact, Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken out, but not in the way that many expected. They wanted her to categorically denounce the Burmese military and to depict the Rohingya as entirely innocent victims of Buddhist attacks; this she has refused to do. She believes the story of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is more complicated than the outside world believes. She has noted that “fake news” about atrocities in Myanmar have been relied on by much of the world’s media. More than a few of the stories about the Rohingya have indeed been accompanied by photos purportedly showing the violence against them, but which, in fact, have turned out to be photos of other atrocities experienced by other peoples, having nothing to do with Myanmar. Even the BBC’s south-east Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, concedes that “much of it [the photos, and the coverage] is wrong.” A closer look reveals that many of the pictures supposedly from Myanmar have come from other crises around the world, with one of those tweeted by Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek even dating back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

dirtrider wrote:
The Buddhists in Myanmar have been murdering Muslim since the 11th century AD, when they arrive there. It hasn't stopped...the Buddhists are just as brutal as the Muslims. Like I've said before, it's not religion that's at fault here, it's just the blood thirsty nature of man.
mar

The paradox of tolerance, first described by Karl Popper in 1945, is a decision theory paradox. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.