News / Interviews

'Myanmar army seeks to cover up genocide of Rohingya Muslims'

Wednesday, 01 March 2017 10:51 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 01 March 2017 10:51 AM ]

A security guard stands next to Rohingya Muslims detained for illegally crossing the border in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (File Photo)

The United Nations has on several occasions warned about large-scale violence being committed against minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, saying such acts of violence could amount to crimes against humanity. But Myanmar's government remains defiant, with the country’s military rejecting reports of gross human rights violations against the minority groups in the troubled state.

Jahangir Mohammad, director of the Center for Muslims Affairs, believes that Myanmar’s army chief is either “delusional” or he is covering up the truth, arguing that nobody will take his remarks seriously given all the UN reports about human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims in the country.

He said the Myanmarese government is acting like all other regimes that “commit genocide” but which somehow convince themselves that these crimes are not taking place.

“We have seen it many times in history where they simply fail to accept the responsibility that they should for what is happening. But of course this is not surprising,” the analyst told Press TV in an interview on Wednesday.

But the world, he said, is well aware that Myanmar’s military has been participating in a “state-sponsored genocide” of the Rohingya Muslims for nearly five years.

There is an “organized attempt” throughout Myanmar to remove the Rohingya and to claim that they are not citizens of the country and do not belong there, he noted.

Mohammad further stated that Western powers adopt their policies on the basis of self-interest rather than human rights principles, and that their strategies are mainly driven by economic motives and other interests of their own people in different parts of the world.

Therefore, Mohammad concluded, Western states do not really care about what is happening to the Rohingya people; rather, their aim is to open a new market for exploitation and trade, and Myanmar “fits the bill nicely.

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