Myanmar
Far from home, Rohingya Muslim refugees count their blessings at Eid
By Priyadarshini Sen — June 15, 2018
(RNS) — Among the 17,500 Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar, a small band has landed in near Kolkata where they can observe the holiday ending the holy month of Ramadan with a semblance of security and the flavors of home.
I visited the Rohingya camps in Myanmar, and here is what I saw
By The Conversation — June 11, 2018
(The Conversation) — Myanmar is still not safe for the return of its estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape an ongoing state-sponsored military campaign and persecution from Buddhist neighbors.
End the Buddhist terror in Myanmar now
By Hozan Alan Senauke — April 11, 2018
(RNS) — Today, ultranationalist Buddhist monks stand behind the military and urge them on, sometimes participating in the violence themselves.
Myanmar bulldozes what is left of Rohingya Muslim villages
By Delta Systems — February 23, 2018
(AP) — Human rights groups say Myanmar's government is destroying crucial evidence of mass atrocities against the nation's ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority.
‘I feel trapped’: Violence fuels fear among Myanmar Muslims
By Foster Klug — February 12, 2018
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Rohingya in Yangon describe a sense of rising persecution and hatred, of vanishing freedoms and opportunities, of Buddhist neighbors and friends suddenly more willing to publicly express sympathies with the military's destruction of Rohingya villages in Rakhine.
Massacre of Rohingya Muslims and mass graves in Myanmar
By Jerome Socolovsky — February 1, 2018
BALUKHALI REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh (AP) — The graves are the newest piece of evidence for what looks increasingly like a genocide in Myanmar's western Rakhine state against the Rohingya, a long-persecuted ethnic Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist country.
Pope on 2018: Forget life’s ‘useless baggage’
By Cathy Lynn Grossman — January 1, 2018
(AP) Don't let freedom be corroded by consumerism and 'the overpowering waves of empty chatter,' Pope Francis urged.
In strife-torn Myanmar, love trumps hate for a Muslim-Buddhist couple
By Cathy Lynn Grossman — December 30, 2017
(AP)When a Buddhist widow married a Rohingya Muslim, her parents disowned her. The couple lives in fear in the shadow of violence.
Pope Francis laments ‘winds of war’ blowing around the world
By Cathy Lynn Grossman — December 25, 2017
(AP) — The Christmas message has become an occasion for popes to survey suffering in the world and press for solutions.
AP: Rohingya methodically raped by Myanmar’s armed forces
By Jerome Socolovsky — December 12, 2017
UKHIA, Bangladesh (AP) — Interviews with 29 women and girls now in Bangladesh bolster the U.N.’s contention that Myanmar’s armed forces are systematically employing rape as a ‘calculated tool of terror’ aimed at exterminating the Rohingya people.
Pope says ‘Rohingya’ in emotional encounter with refugees
By Nicole Winfield — December 1, 2017
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Francis apologized for the 'indifference of the world' to their plight and then pronounced the name of their ethnic group to a gathering of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Christian leaders — a name he had been warned not to utter.
Pope in Bangladesh, continues diplomatic tightrope walk
By Christopher Lamb — November 30, 2017
DHAKA, Bangladesh (RNS) — Bangladesh is the second and final leg of one of the most politically fraught trips of Francis' papacy, where his outspoken concern for refugees has been tempered by sensitivities on the ground.
Pope Francis, diplomatic prophet in Myanmar
By Thomas Reese — November 30, 2017
(RNS) — Pope Francis was faced with a terrible dilemma: Be prophetic and put at risk Christians in Myanmar, or be silent and compromise his moral authority. He chose neither.
Pope demands rights for all in Myanmar, omits ‘Rohingya’
By Nicole Winfield — November 28, 2017
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Francis didn't cite the crackdown on the Muslim minority or even utter the contested word 'Rohingya' in his speech to Myanmar's civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and other authorities and diplomats in the capital.
Pope dives into Rohingya crisis upon arrival in Myanmar
By Nicole Winfield — November 27, 2017
(AP) — Rohingya Muslims have faced state-supported discrimination in the predominantly Buddhist country for decades.
