
How the Rohingya Escaped - dankohn1
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/how-the-rohingya-escaped.html
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ComputerGuru
Incredibly moving. One of the more impactful interactive reports by the
NYTimes.

There’s talk about trying to get Aung San Suu Kyi to the ICC. People
complained about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, but all objective
reports show credible allegations of true modern genocide (shocking for a word
meaninglessly bandied about so often) in Kyi’s case, giving the prize a new
low with a recipient going from Oslo to The Hague in no time at all.

(EDIT: The link is even more moving in fullscreen on a desktop. Excellent
photography.)

(EDIT2: I'm aware of when Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize and for what. The
irony of going from oppressed recipient of a NPP to oppressor standing trial
in The Hague doesn't change.)

~~~
maxxxxx
History is full of people fighting for freedom for their own when they are
suppressed. But then they go suppressing others.

~~~
agumonkey
I take that nature rarely get pure equilibrium but rather waves between one
node superiority before another one takes over.

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strooper
While the media portraits Rohingya Crisis as religious conflict, it is
actually ethnic crisis. UN describes it as ethnic cleansing. Although most of
the Rohingya are muslim, Bamar (major ethnic Burmese) hate them calling them
"Bengalis" (people from neighboring Bangladesh), despite Rohingyas living
there for hundreds of years. The racism and prejudice flared the crisis soon
after the military came to power decades ago.

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tim333
I think you've got that the wrong way around -

>This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya to be Bengali, rejecting
the term Rohingya as a recent invention, created for political reasons.
([http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/rohingya-m...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/rohingya-
muslims-170831065142812.html))

~~~
xir78
It would be interesting to see a candid interview with what the real reason
for not liking then is. I suspect it’s rooted in the Muslim conquests which
are still mentioned in Buddhist texts. Needless to say the Muslim religion is
not held in much regard due to that, as opposed to Hinduism which is
considered worthy of debating.

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mmanfrin
We are failing refugees the world over. This is heartbreaking, and so is the
situation in Syria, in South Sudan, in Eritrea, and in countless other places.
And I don't feel like we're getting any better and we're certainly doing no
better at preventing these crises. With the world getting more crowded, is
there an end in sight?

This piece reminded me a bit of the self-recorded documentary of a Syrian
woman trying to escape the turmoil there:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/aug/02/escape-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/aug/02/escape-
from-syria-ranias-odyssey-video)

~~~
gressquel
And Yemen. The US cannot solve every conflict in the world but I wish it would
atleast stand up against the thhird party countries that backs vile murderous
regimes. Russia in Syria and China in Myanmar (and they are also starting to
influence other countries in Asia). We, the oppressed peopleof this world,
needs a stronger US. Not the one retreating as under Trump.

~~~
forkLding
We dont need a stronger US, we need a world less dominated by so-called
superpowers like USA, China etc.

There was strong US influence on Latin American and Middle Eastern
dictatorships. Absolute power corrupts all as USA domination on the world
would mean more countries having to comply to USA interests.

I believe rather the world will become a decentralized world govt under a UN
where countries are abolished for regions instead of artifically created
nation states that was predefined through conquering and colonization. Where
we dont define humanity based on countries but as one single species.

~~~
nradov
Good luck getting countries to agree to abolish themselves. What's the
incentive for national politicians to ever agree to that?

~~~
forkLding
Yeah interesting how countries come before people and humanity.

Centuries ago, democracy was looked as mob rule and republics in the Roman
sense were favored because they didnt involve the common folk. Its almost
amazing that aristocrats and nobles (politicans of the time) agreed to it
which they didn't. When a minority gains more than a majority, the majority
will try to fight for its powers. Within countries, theres a minority-majority
play with national authorities if politicans are a self-serving class separate
from that of the general population.

I dont think they will agree but I see it as the future where we start losing
notions of countries and people's cultures start blending together through
tech, media and economy.

Its the trend for successful products and philosophies to gradually expand and
become more global, not the other way around.

I dont pretend to know the future but there have been other theories floating
around like the Dark Enlightenment who call for (in my mind wackjob)
conservative republics with ideals from past centuries that run as competing
corporations instead of countries as the future.

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gressquel
Writing this on my iPad so excuse my spelling errors:

There is so much evil in this world, what the Rohingya face today my own
people endured in 2009. At the hands of thr Sri Lankan government, who also
happens to be buddhistic, ten thousands of innocent Tamils were massacred.
Women and children raped. Babies murdered.

The UN wrote a huge report findng the Sri Lankan government guilty only for
China and Russia to veto against any juridicial proceeding.

One of the reason i am so dissapointed in Trump, he doesnt seem to understand
when good retreats, evil will triump. Not everything in this world is about
fair transaction of money for goods and service. When the oppressed in 3rd
world countries look for justice, they look for strong powers of democracy,
they look upto US.

Throughout history US would come to aid, today its about bowing down to
communist human rights abusers like China for fair trade and access to its
market.

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JBlue42
Unfortunately, most Americans don't understand that people may perceive them
and our government this way.

To be honest with you, at least in my memory of news coverage from the 90s
until the war ended, there was very little if any notice of your civil war or
the plight of the people. The most attention Sri Lankans might have gotten
from average Americans were either post-tsunami (even then, more focused on
Thailand and Indonesia) or when MIA broke onto the music scene (a very small
demographic).

I've been to parts of the world where 'USA' was used as graffiti and people
loved us because of what we had done for them but the average American would
be hard-pressed to identify what we saved them from, if even the where the
country is.

There are massive arguments for isolationism once more in the country, and
ceding both soft and hard power to other countries. Many people don't
understand the good we have done in the world, as well as the bad.

You are definitely barking up the wrong tree if you think the current
administration would have any interest but their own at heart.

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InTheArena
Very powerful - i read this on mobile and the impact of the pictures and
videos portraying The human suffering is immense.

~~~
rspeer
I read this on mobile and got a still image and a progress spinner, with no
way to scroll.

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sharpercoder
Though this deeply touched me, I do wonder what possible motivation is behind
this for the Myanmar people. Hatred most likely number one, yet I wonder what
lies beneath this.

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myegorov
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western_Myanmar)

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amriksohata
Horrific photos and videos. Always made me wonder though when something
similar happened to 400k Kashmiri Hindu Pandits (they were kicked out of their
own homeland in Kashmir, raped and homes taken over)... why was this never in
the news to the same extent?

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forkLding
Its quite a good example of the old saying: "You either die a hero or live
long enough to see yourself becoming the villain".

As well the blatant irony of her Nobel Peace Prize status, I can see a lot of
international fans' heartbroken.

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qwerty456127
Is this about religion again? Or what exactly are they hated for?

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justboxing
> Is this about religion again?

Yes. Islam vs Buddhism or Buddhism vs Islam, whichever way you wanna look at
it.

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jansho
That’s an extremely simplistic way of seeing it though. The Rohingya were
simple people, mostly poor, and lived in Myanmar for generations; religion
would be a code of life for them, not a political tool. It’s likely the
opposite for the monks and their followers though; Buddhism is about peace,
fundamentally and (in nearly all cases) in practice.

My patience with Aung San Suu Kyi has run out completely. Too little said, too
little done, too late for anything else.

~~~
jdietrich
>Buddhism is about peace, fundamentally and (in nearly all cases) in practice.

There's a slight subtlety to this. Buddhist ethics are very different to
Judeo-Christian ethics. The Buddhist equivalent to "thou shalt not kill" is
the first of the five precepts, "panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami",
which loosely translates to "I undertake the rule of training to refrain from
killing living beings". This is not so much an absolute proscription as a
broad axiomatic principle.

In western terms, Buddhist ethics are most closely aligned with negative
utilitarianism - broadly speaking, Buddhists seek to minimise net suffering.
One study found that, when presented with the trolley car problem, Buddist
monks were drastically more likely to push the man off the footbridge than
Americans.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/how-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/how-
do-buddhist-monks-think-about-the-trolley-problem/532092/)

The main religious support for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya comes from
monks affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, a hardline nationalist group. From their
perspective, the Rohingya represent an existential threat to the Rakhine
people and the republic of Myanmar. If this assessment were true, then the
expulsion of Rohingya people could be interpreted as the least-harm option,
even if it involves substantial violence. Although the vast majority of
Buddhists condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, it is not
intrinsically incompatible with Buddhist ethics.

This conflict is not new. Rohingya Islamist groups have been fighting the
government of Myanmar/Burma since 1947, with the aim of establishing an
Islamic regime in Rakhine state. The current crisis was most likely
precipitated by an attack on border guards in 2016, which Islamist militant
groups claimed responsibility for. There is clear evidence that Rohingya
guerrilla groups are being trained in Bangladesh; there is also substantial
evidence of ties between Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists in Myanmar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western_Myanmar)

I strongly disapprove of the oppression of the Rohingya people and the silence
from the civilian government, but I do think that the western media has
presented a grossly over-simplified narrative that frames the actions of the
Myanmar people as senseless and unprovoked. I would ask the reader to consider
how their country would react if Islamist guerrillas were active in their own
back yard, sponsored by a neighbouring Muslim nation.

~~~
xir78
> Although the vast majority of Buddhists condemn the ethnic cleansing of the
> Rohingya, it is not intrinsically incompatible with Buddhist ethics.

For the level of Buddhism practiced in this area (Theravada) it is
incompatible, there’s clearly nothing good that can come from it. They were
clearly taught not to do this, there’s no ambiguity.

Additionally monks have no authority, they are not saints or have even the
slightest clue about anything, anyone can put on a robe and be a monk. This
isn’t understood in the West, where a monk is considered to be a title, but
it’s really a zero, like saying your child got into pre-school.

~~~
lovich
What makes you think monks have no authority? I haven't been to Burma but I've
been to Thailand which also practices theravada and monks are given an extreme
amount of deference. You aren't supposed to talk back to them, when giving
food in the morning to the monks you are supposed to bow and not make eye
contact, monks are even included with pregnant women and the disabled as
people with reserved seating on public transportation. The airports had many
seats showing that they were for the elderly, pregnant, or monks only
regardless of the monks age.

The locals did seem to treat it as more deference to the station than the
person, I met someone who had been a monk and quit three times and his family
treated him as a monk when he was a monk and as a regular guy when he wasn't.
Beyond all that there are still obvious cults of personality where different
monks gain a following that can be quite fervent.

~~~
doxcf434
It's simply because they have zero realization, that's not what the title
means. Also evident in the article, they're clearly clueless.

What you're seeing in Thailand is respect for Buddhism itself, and a way to
keep people interested in Buddhism. In Buddhism there are levels of
realization, and a monk is a zero on that scale. Not sure how else to clarify.
There are other titles, normally translated as Venerable, which should
indicate at least some modest level of accomplishment. But to cite a monk as
having any idea at all is fantasy, you just put on a robe, and anyone is
suddenly a monk, no education or knowledge required, let alone realization.

~~~
lovich
I agree anyone can put on a robe, but when people give anyone with that robe
special treatment and powers, then they have some power and influence.

Anyone in the US can run for a local political position, they are not
powerless just because anyone can do it.

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deedree
I'm crying, can't watch this

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mistercow
Just a warning: this gets really graphic really quick.

