News / Interviews

US silent on Myanmar Muslims’ plight for oil & gas: Analyst

Tuesday, 25 October 2016 6:28 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 25 October 2016 6:30 PM ]

An armed Myanmar police officer stands guard at the Aung Mingalar ward, a confinement area for the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, on October 13, 2016. (AFP photo)

The United Nations has urged Myanmar government to conduct a probe into new reports of human rights violations, including the massacre of unarmed people in the Muslim-majority Rakhine state. Myanmar troops have killed tens of civilians on the pretext of alleged attacks on police posts along border with Bangladesh, which authorities blame on Rohingya Muslims while rights groups say there are reports of summary executions of civilians, which have terrified Muslims to flee their homes.

Shabir Hassanaly, a political commentator from London, told Press TV that the American authorities are turning a blind eye to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar in the hope of dominating the country’s untapped energy resources in the Bay of Bengal.

Hassanaly said the year 2012 was the time when the persecution of Rohingya Muslims began and the year was also the time when “a lot of American oil and gas interests [were] discovered in the Bay of Bengal, which is pretty much where the Rakhine state is.”

“There is a huge number of American companies that are now digging for oil and gas in the Bay of Bengal,” he said, arguing that the US, which is trying to control everything, “wants to make sure that Muslims are not there,” because the minorities are strategically located all along the coastal region. Therefore, that is why the Muslims are being killed in Myanmar.

Referring to the role of the United Nations in ending the crisis in Myanmar, the analyst stated that the UN has been aware of the plight of the Rohingya Muslims for a long time but the international body has done nothing to reduce their agony; therefore, it has “lost any real legitimacy” in the eyes of the world.

Stating that “the UN cannot do anything because it is held to ransom by the veto-[wielding] powers,” Hassanaly expressed disappointment that the current world powers would not resolve the crisis in Myanmar.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has said that up to 15,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims have been displaced from their villages in Rakhine state in the wake of the recent military raid. Rakhine has been the scene of communal violence at the hands of Buddhist extremists since 2012.

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