Who carried out the genocide of Muslims in Burma. Exposing Islamic social media about the genocide of Muslims in Myanmar. When did the current outbreak begin?

Alexander Gelovani

What do we know about Myanmar? Almost nothing, someone else has heard something about Burma, old rockers have heard about Bangladesh, thanks to Harrison’s “Concert,” but about Myanmar...

Let's start with the fact that Myanmar is not Bangladesh at all and very much Burma. That is, from the moment it gained independence from Great Britain in 1948 until very recently, namely until 1989, this country was called that way - Socialist Republic Union of Burma, or simply Burma. The renaming itself has no meaning, well, you never know how and why they are renamed. Ultimately, maybe people like to be called Myanmar rather than Burma. But the thing is that all these renamings are the result of a long civil war and a whole series of military coups, painted in bright red colors. Bright red is socialist in the sense, although so much blood was shed that using a color analogy in this regard would also be quite appropriate.

It is clear that the people living in Myanmar can hardly be called calm. But you never know the places on the planet where people are violent and blood is shed. In order to get into the world media feeds, this is clearly not enough. That is, in order for the people of the planet to learn about the death of thousands of people, two conditions are necessary. Firstly, the scale of the disaster must be comparable, for example, with the tragedy of the Tutsi people in Uganda. Well, secondly, the leading world powers should be interested in ensuring that everyone knows about the tragedy. This is exactly what happened in Myanmar.

Recent history of Myanmar

But in order to understand what actually happened there and why, it is necessary to again turn to history, this time recent. So, Myanmar is a multinational and multi-religious country. Along with the Buddhists, who make up the vast majority of the population, there is also a Muslim minority, which is completely different from the majority, even different races.

Naturally, in conditions very far from the norms of a civilized society, this very minority, Muslims of various nationalities, were constantly oppressed, which led to excesses, those that are commonly called a civil war. While the communists were in power in Burma, and then the generals in Myanmar, everything was clear and understandable. A dictatorship is a dictatorship for the purpose of suppressing any dissent and resistance, and not by velvet methods.

But in 2012, democracy came to Myanmar. Inspired by the slogan of then US President Barack Obama, “Yes, we can,” Myanmar democrats managed to participate in the elections. True, the parties led by the same generals won the elections with an overwhelming advantage, but it was not for nothing that the whole world was inspired by the slogan - yes, we can. So the generals were able to become democrats.

Democracy and illusions

In general, the matter turned out to be not tricky. The release from prison of the Burmese symbol of resistance to the dictatorship of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, and not just a symbol, but also a Nobel laureate, showed the whole world - Myanmar was able, Myanmar is changing. After only five years, during which Aung San Suu Kyi managed to go to Washington and hug not just anyone, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself, and, of course, visit the Oval Office, and her party, the National League for Democracy managed to win a landslide victory in the elections. If she did not have foreign citizenship, Aung San Suu Kyi would probably have become president. But bad luck, according to the laws in force in the country, the post of president cannot be held by a person who has or has had foreign citizenship. Aung San Suu Kyi had such citizenship; she, like her late husband, was a subject of the British Crown.

They did not change the law specifically for the Nobel laureate. It’s inconvenient, but it’s still a democracy. But they introduced a new position - State Counselor of Myanmar, which in fact is no lower, if not higher, than the presidential one. For our sad story about Burmese democracy, this would not be of fundamental importance if this very democracy were for everyone. But, as the further course of events showed, democratic reforms are for the majority. Minorities are unlikely to be aware of the changes, and if any of them had any illusions about this, they have clearly already dissipated.

To be fair, it must be said that assessments of the events in Myanmar vary - from compassion for the representatives of the small Rohingya people and outrage at the actions of the Burmese authorities, to “understanding” of the harsh actions of the authorities on the part of the powers that be. After all, the Nobel laureate and symbol of democracy is fighting “Islamic terrorists,” and Europe and America know firsthand that Islamic terrorists are very bad. True, the fact that as a result of this very struggle, tens of thousands of people have already become refugees, and the army is carrying out large-scale punitive operations in Rakhine State, which can no longer be concealed, is somehow not taken into account by sympathizers.

The Nobel laureate herself states that the figure of 140 thousand refugees is misinformation. Let's say, but then how much less? Twice? Three times? When the army of a democratic country carries out a military operation, as a result of which thousands of residents of the country, who, by the way, are denied citizenship, become refugees, questions about such a democracy cannot but arise.

Tragedy without intermission

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the same one who came up with the New Deal and went to war with German Nazism and Japanese militarism, is credited with the phrase about the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza Anastasio (Sr.) - “Somoza, of course, is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.” It is quite possible that the great American president never said this, but the phrase is so plausible and reflects what is now commonly called the fashionable concept of realpolitik that it not only outlived its supposed author, but was included in many history and political science textbooks.

But he was a frostbitten Latin American dictator of the mid-twentieth century. Now there are completely different times and customs. It’s even somehow inconvenient to apply such an excuse to a Nobel laureate and symbol of democracy. So isn’t it better to just not notice what’s happening to the small Rohingya people? In total, some eight hundred thousand, well, at most, a million. The numbers certainly won’t reach a “full-fledged” genocide. However, what is genocide and what is not is decided not on the sites of the tragedy, but in the newsrooms of world news agencies and in the quiet offices of leading think-tanks. But it’s also somehow impossible to not react at all to what’s happening.

In the age of the Internet, information spreads almost instantly, because in democratic Myanmar, the use of the Internet is no longer limited. Gone are the days when a blogger was imprisoned for 59 years just for posting a video of the destruction after a cyclone online. And that blogger has been free for a long time.

Myanmar authorities often complain about the spread of fake information about the atrocities of their army against civilians. And here you need to believe them, because fakes are what accompanies any war today. But, to paraphrase the well-known expression “If you know for sure that you have a persecution mania, this does not mean at all that no one is chasing you,” let’s put it this way. The presence of fake materials about the atrocities of the Myanmar army against the Rohingya people does not at all prove that these atrocities do not exist.

And while politicians argue about what is fake and what is true, the tragedy of the Rohingya people continues. Tragedy without intermission.

Myanmar has Rakhine State, which is inhabited by an ethnic and religious minority called the Rohingya people, or Rohingya. Its representatives are mainly adherents of Islam, while the majority of the country's population professes Buddhism. Moreover, even in Rakhine, a region densely populated by Rohingya, Buddhists predominate.

Myanmar authorities consider the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh (so residents of Rakhine may not hope for citizenship), and, after the 1942 massacre when Muslims killed tens of thousands of Buddhists, almost as occupiers. Modern history The confrontation between the Rohingya and the Burmese authorities has been going on for decades.

In the summer of 2017, Rohingya militants carried out a series of attacks on Myanmar police and border posts. In response, the authorities organized a punitive expedition, which led to a new round of violence in the region.

I found in the Kazakh online magazine “Vlast”, the director of the fund named after. Friedrich Ebert in Myanmar. In it, he talks in detail about the situation in the country and the roots of the humanitarian crisis. I shortened it a little and left only the essence.

"On August 25, there was a sharp escalation of the situation in the north of the Burmese state of Rakhine. Masses of Rohingya refugees are leaving their villages and camps and trying to cross the border into Bangladesh. According to today's estimates, their number could reach 90,000, there is information about dozens of people who drowned in the border river Naf.

The reason for the mass exodus of the Rohingya was a massive punitive operation by the Burmese army; according to the latest official figures, which may be extremely underestimated, about 400 people have already died in the clashes. Burmese military forces have launched a clean-up operation in northern Rakhine after armed extremists attacked police and Burmese government border posts.

Myanmar- a former British colony on the Indochinese Peninsula. Most of its inhabitants are Bamar Buddhists, but the country is very heterogeneous, with 135 ethnic groups officially recognized by the government. Since gaining independence in 1948, the country has been mired in a series of internal conflicts, many of which continue to this day, with the Burmese Civil War believed to be the longest in modern world history.

Behind last years The Myanmar government has managed to sign truce agreements with 15 armed ethnic groups, about eight remain in open confrontation.

Rakaine State is a narrow strip of land along the Bay of Bengal, its northern end touching Bangladesh. Rakaine, like the rest of Myanmar, is far from homogeneous; at least 15 ethnic groups of different religions, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians live in it. Closer to the north, near the border with Muslim neighbor Bangladesh, Muslims make up the majority of the population.

Rakain, like many other areas of the country that do not belong to the “true Burma” (Burma Proper), is a zone of protracted political and military struggle for independence or even independence. At the same time, it is the most complex of all Burmese conflicts because the Rohingya are the only ones not recognized by the government as part of Myanmar's multifaceted and complex people.

Rohingya- a Muslim ethnic group that numbers about a million people in Myanmar. Burmese Buddhists often refuse to call them by this name and prefer to use the term "Bengalis", indicating the historical roots of the group. Burmese nationalists claim that "Rohingya" is a fictitious concept, but in fact refers to Muslim settlers from British India who were moved en masse to Burma in the 19th century.

Relations between Rohingya Muslims and Bamar Buddhists have historically been very complex. During World War II, the Rohingya fought on the side of the British forces, while the Rakain Buddhists sided with the Japanese army. The leader of the nation and founder of modern, independent Burma, General Aung San (by the way, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the current co-ruler of Myanmar) promised the Rohingya his status and equal rights. After the war and before the military coup in 1962, many Rohingya served in high positions in the Burmese government.

After the military junta came to power, a phase of systematic oppression and discrimination began. The Rohingya are still denied Burmese citizenship and cannot enter public service, the Pale of Settlement is designated for them and they are not accepted into government educational institutions. Even today, in the most educated and advanced circles of the Burmese elite, everyday racism towards the Rohingya is not bad manners. Ethnic clashes and pogroms broke out periodically, followed by harsh purges - this happened, for example, in 1978, 1991, 2012. Since 2012, Bangladesh has accumulated almost half a million Rohingya refugees. Bangladesh is unable to provide them with long-term prospects and many of them tried to flee to Australia, hundreds dying along the way. The UN considers the Rohingya to be the world's largest group of stateless people.

On August 25, early in the morning, fighters of the so-called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA, formerly known as Harakah al-Yaqin or Faith Movement) launched a coordinated attack on a number of Burmese border and police posts. The group first made its presence known in October last year, killing several Burmese border guards and police along the border with Bangladesh and apparently seizing the weapons and ammunition used last week.

The ARSA group is led by Ata Ullah, a militant originally from Karachi. The Myanmar government says he was trained in Taliban camps in Pakistan and has support among powerful Saudi Arabian circles.

Commander-in-Chief Myanmar Armed Forces, Min Aung Hlaing, is leading the clearing operation in the border area. In his own words, the army is “finishing the unfinished work of World War II.” This formulation extremely clearly shows the logic of the actions of the armed forces and military elite of Myanmar. According to the country's de facto ruler, the army will do everything to prevent a repeat of 1942, when Rohingya brigades tried to "wrest Rakain from the body of Burma."

In an official briefing for diplomats and the foreign press, representatives of the Burmese security forces said that the overarching goal of ARSA is the creation of an “Islamic state” in the territory between Bangladesh and Myanmar. The army is ready to take “necessary measures” to prevent the return of Malaysian, Maldivian, Indonesian ISIS fighters from the Middle East to the region and therefore intends to completely clear northern Rakhine of “terrorist” elements.

The outbreak of violence by Rohingya extremists was the perfect excuse for the Burmese army to move to the “final stage of resolution” of the issue. Satellite images show that entire villages are being burned, and they are being burned systematically, since it is the rainy season and it is difficult to imagine the spontaneous spread of fire. Burmese authorities say extremists are setting villages on fire for propaganda purposes.

But in fact, there are victims on the part of the Buddhist inhabitants of Rakain. About 12,000 Buddhist residents of the state were evacuated deep into the central territories, and there are reports of attacks on Buddhist monasteries where Buddhist refugees from the conflict zone were staying. The already fragile world of recent years is rapidly disintegrating.

Total:

– Armed extremism among the Rohingya is real. The existence of an organization such as ARSA, capable of coordinating insurgent operations, producing propaganda, and possibly maintaining contacts with groups abroad, is undeniable.

– Systematic oppression of the Rohingya is real. After decades of discrimination and persecution, they are forced to exist in an extremely marginalized situation. And this is always an ideal incubator for extremism, Islamic or any other.

– We still know very little. There is no access to the conflict zone for international observers or journalists. Everything we read in the media is based on interviews with Rohingyas who managed to cross the border into Bangladesh. A press tour organized by authorities two days ago to Maungdaw, the town in Rakhine where it all began, did not provide any reliable information.

– This is a very old and very complex conflict., it has deep roots in colonial history. There is every reason to fear that the Burmese army will seize the chance to provoke a mass exodus of Rohingya from Rakhine.

– Transformations of Myanmar– this is the most complex and complex transition process of our time. Perhaps, only the level of complexity of the someday upcoming North Korean transit can be compared with it.

New Myanmar is only a year and a half old. The military regime is being transformed into a democratic system. The conflict-crisis economy is being transformed into a peaceful one. Isolation is transformed into openness, self-sufficiency and scarcity are replaced by consumer capitalism of the masses. Society is moving away from closed barracks mobilization and moving on to peaceful life. A weak state is transformed into a functional bureaucracy.

All at the same time. All at once. Against this background, the alliance between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military elite is not surprising. No matter how bitter it may be, for them the Rohingya issue was absolutely not a priority until August 25th. And now we can only guess how radically they are ready to solve it."
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What is Myanmar? At one time, this country in Southeast Asia was known as Burma. But local residents do not like this name, considering it foreign. Therefore, after 1989, the country was renamed Myanmar (translated as “fast”, “strong”). Since the country's independence in 1948, Burma has been in a civil war involving the Burmese authorities, communist guerrillas, and separatist rebels. And if we add to this explosive “cocktail” the drug traffickers of the “Golden Triangle”, which in addition to Myanmar also included Thailand and Laos, then it becomes obvious that the situation on Burmese soil did not symbolize peace and quiet. From 1962 until 2011, the country was ruled by the military, and the head of the opposition Democratic League that won in 1989, the future laureate Nobel Prize peace, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for a long time. The country found itself in quite noticeable isolation from the outside world, including due to Western sanctions. But in recent years there have been noticeable changes in Myanmar and elections have been held. And last year, Aung San Suu Kyi became foreign minister and state councilor (de facto prime minister). In a country with a population of 60 million people, there are more than a hundred nationalities: Burmese, Shans, Karens, Arakanese, Chinese, Indians, Mons, Kachins, etc. The vast majority of believers are Buddhists, there are Christians, Muslims, and animists. – Myanmar, as a multiethnic country, is experiencing a lot of problems this kind, – comments the director of the ASEAN Center at MGIMO Viktor Sumsky. – The new government of the country is making attempts to resolve conflict situations, but in fact it turns out that it is the Rohingya problem that has come to the fore... So, who are the Rohingya? This is an ethnic group living compactly in the Myanmar state of Rakhine (Arakan). Rohingya profess Islam. Their number in Myanmar is estimated to range from 800,000 to 1.1 million. It is believed that most of them moved to Burma during British colonial rule. Myanmar authorities call the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh - and on this basis denies them citizenship. The law prohibited them from having more than two children. The authorities tried to resettle them in Bangladesh, but no one was really expecting them there either. It is no coincidence that the UN calls them one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Many Rohingya are fleeing to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. But a number of countries in Southeast Asia - including Muslim ones - refuse to accept these refugees, and ships with migrants are turned back to sea. During the Second World War, when Burma was occupied by Japan, in 1942 the so-called. "Arakan massacre" between Rohingya Muslims who received weapons from the British and local Buddhists who supported the Japanese. Tens of thousands of people died, many people became refugees. Of course, these events did not add confidence to relations between communities. From time to time, serious tensions flared up in areas where Rohingya live compactly, often leading to bloodshed. While Buddhist Burmese are carrying out pogroms against Muslims in Rakhine, Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama called on Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to support the Rohingya. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also spoke out in defense of Burmese Muslims. The West, both the European Union and the United States, were not silent on this issue (although, of course, the problem of the Muslim minority did not play the first role in the sanctions imposed against Myanmar at the time). On the other hand, the problem of Muslims in Burma in past decades was actively used by various theorists of “global jihad” - from Abdullah Azzam to his student Osama bin Laden. So it cannot be ruled out that this region could become a new point of conflict, where supporters of the most radical jihadist groups will be drawn - as happened, say, in the Philippines. The situation became especially aggravated after...

Myanmar is once again in the spotlight of the world press: on July 1, a Buddhist mob burned down a mosque in the village of Hpakant, Kachin State. The attackers were infuriated by the fact that a Muslim prayer building was built too close to a Buddhist temple. A week earlier, a similar incident occurred in the province of Pegu (Bago). There, too, a mosque was destroyed, and a local Muslim resident was also beaten.

Reuters

Such incidents are not uncommon in modern Myanmar. This Southeast Asian state borders China, Laos, Thailand, India and Bangladesh. From Bangladesh, a population of 170 million, Muslims are illegally migrating to predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, with a population of 55 million. Those who call themselves Rohingya made this journey many years ago. They settled in Rakhine State (Arakan), a historical land for the Myanmar people, the cradle of the Burmese nation. They settled, but did not assimilate.

Migrants with roots

“Traditional Muslims of Myanmar, such as Malabari Hindus, Bengalis, Chinese Muslims, Burmese Muslims, live throughout Myanmar,” explains orientalist Pyotr Kozma, who lives in Myanmar and runs a popular blog about the country, in a conversation with RT. “Buddhists have had experience of coexistence with this traditional Muslim ummah for many decades, therefore, despite the excesses, it rarely came to large-scale conflicts.”

With the Bengalis, the Rohingya are a completely different story. It is officially believed that they entered Myanmar illegally several generations ago. “After the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, came to power, the official wording was adjusted. They stopped saying “Bengalis” and started saying “Muslims living in the Arakan region,” Ksenia Efremova, an associate professor at MGIMO and a specialist in Myanmar, tells RT. “But the problem is that these Muslims themselves consider themselves the people of Myanmar and claim citizenship, which is not granted to them.”

Reuters

According to Peter Kozma, for many years the Myanmar government did not know what to do with the Rohingya. They were not recognized as citizens, but it is incorrect to say that they did this because of religious or ethnic prejudices. “There are many Rohingya who fled Bangladesh, including due to problems with the law,” says Pyotr Kozma. “So imagine enclaves where radicals and criminals who escaped from a neighboring state rule the roost.”

The expert notes that the Rohingya traditionally have a high birth rate - each family has 5-10 children. This led to the fact that in one generation the number of immigrants increased several times. “Then one day this lid was blown off. And here it doesn’t even matter who started it first,” concludes the orientalist.

Escalation of the conflict

The process got out of control in 2012. Then in June and October, armed clashes in Rakhine between Buddhists and Muslims killed more than a hundred people. According to the UN, approximately 5,300 homes and places of worship were destroyed.

A state of emergency was declared in the state, but the cancer of conflict had already spread across Myanmar. By the spring of 2013, pogroms moved from the western part of the country to the center. At the end of March, riots began in the town of Meithila. On June 23, 2016, the conflict broke out in Pegu province, and on July 1 in Hpakant. It seemed that what Myanmar's traditional ummah feared most had happened: Rohingya grievances were being extrapolated to Muslims in general.

Reuters

Inter-communal controversy

Muslims are one of the parties to the conflict, but it is incorrect to consider the unrest in Myanmar as interreligious, says the head of the department of regional studies at Moscow University state university Dmitry Mosyakov: “There is a significant increase in the number of refugees from Bangladesh who cross the sea and settle in the historical region of Arakan. The appearance of these people does not please the local population. And it doesn’t matter whether they are Muslims or representatives of another religion.” According to Mosyakov, Myanmar is a complex conglomerate of nationalities, but they are all united by a common Burmese history and statehood. The Rohingya fall out of this system of communities, and this is precisely the core of the conflict, as a result of which both Muslims and Buddhists are killed.

Black and white

“And at this time, the world media talks about the exclusively affected Muslims and says nothing about Buddhists,” adds Pyotr Kozma. “Such one-sidedness in covering the conflict has given Myanmar Buddhists a feeling of being under siege, and this is a direct path to radicalism.”

Reuters

According to the blogger, the coverage of the unrest in Myanmar in the world's leading media can hardly be called objective; it is obvious that the publications are aimed at a large Islamic audience. “In Rakhine State, not much more Muslims were killed than Buddhists, and the sides are approximately equal in the number of destroyed and burned houses. That is, there was no massacre of “peaceful and defenseless Muslims,” there was a conflict in which both sides distinguished themselves almost equally. But, unfortunately, Buddhists do not have their own Al Jazeera and similar worldwide rating TV stations to report this,” says Peter Kozma.

Experts say that the Myanmar authorities are interested in smoothing out the conflict or at least maintaining the status quo. They are ready to make concessions - for Lately peace agreements have been reached with other national minorities. But this will not work in the case of the Rohingyas. “These people board junks and sail along the Bay of Bengal to the Burmese shores. A new wave of refugees provokes new pogroms of the local population. The situation can be compared to the migration crisis in Europe - no one really knows what to do with the flow of these foreigners,” concludes Dmitry Mosyakov, head of the department of regional studies at Moscow State University.

In the state of Arakan in Myanmar, over the past three days, about two to three thousand Muslims have been killed as a result of a military attack, and more than 100 thousand Muslims have been evicted from their homes.

How it conveys website, Anita Shug, spokeswoman for the European Rohingya Muslim Council (ERC), told Anadolu Agency.

According to her, in last days The military committed more crimes against Muslims in Arakan than in 2012 and October last year. “The situation has never been so dire. A systematic genocide is practically being committed in Arakan. Only in the village of Saugpara in the suburbs of Rathedaunga there was bloodshed the day before, as a result of which up to one thousand Muslims died. Only one boy survived,” Shug said.

Local activists and sources say the Myanmar army is behind the bloodshed in Arakan, an ERC spokeswoman said. According to her, at the moment, about two thousand Rohingya Muslims, evicted from their homes in Arakan, are on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, since the official Dhaka decided to close the border.

The spokeswoman also reported that the villages of Anaukpyin and Nyaungpyingi are surrounded by Buddhists.

“Local residents sent a message to the Myanmar authorities, in which they noted that they are not guilty of the events taking place, and asked to lift the blockade and evacuate them from these villages. But there was no answer. There are no exact data, but I can say that there are hundreds of people in the villages, and all of them are in great danger,” Shug added.

Earlier, Arakan activist Dr. Muhammad Eyup Khan said that Arakanese activists living in Turkey called on the UN to facilitate an immediate end to the bloodshed against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state by the Myanmar military and Buddhist clerics.

“There is an unbearable atmosphere of persecution in Arakan: people are killed, raped, burned alive, and this happens almost daily. But the Myanmar government does not allow not only journalists from other countries, representatives humanitarian organizations and UN staff, but also the local press,” said Eyüp Khan.

According to him, in 2016, several young Muslims, unable to withstand pressure from the authorities, attacked three checkpoints with clubs and swords, after which the Myanmar government, taking advantage of the opportunity, closed all checkpoints, and security forces began attacking towns and villages in the state Arakan, killing local residents, including children.

The activist recalled that on July 25, the UN established a special commission of three people, which was supposed to identify facts of persecution in Arakan, but official Myanmar said that it would not allow UN staff into the state.

“Taking advantage of the inaction of the international community, on August 24, government forces besieged another 25 villages. And when local residents tried to resist, bloodshed began. According to the data we received, about 500 Muslims have died in the last three days alone,” said Eyup Khan.

According to UN norms, sanctions should be imposed on countries where genocide was committed, but international community does not agree with the fact that genocide is being committed against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the activist noted. “The UN prefers to call what is happening here not genocide, but ethnic cleansing,” Eyup Khan emphasized.

According to him, about 140 thousand people in Arakan were expelled from their places of permanent residence. Houses of Muslims are being burnt down in the state and they are being housed in camps.

According to the activist, Islamophobic sentiments that have reigned in Myanmar since the early 1940s are part of a special plan under which the Myanmar government and Buddhists are trying to cleanse Arakan state of Muslims using the most brutal methods.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said Ankara strongly condemns the mass killings of Muslims in Myanmar, which “are in many ways similar to acts of genocide.”

“Türkiye is concerned about the increase in violence and the killing and injury of Myanmar people. The UN and the international community must not remain indifferent to these events, which in many ways resemble genocide,” Bozdag said.