ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS CLEANSING IN MYANMAR

MYANMAR’S MUSLIM ROHINGYAS BEING
TARGETED AS VIOLENCE CONTINUES IN WEST

www.washingtonpost.com - Communal violence is grinding on in western Myanmar six weeks after the government declared a state of emergency there, and Muslim Rohingyas are increasingly being hit with targeted attacks that have included killings, rape and physical abuse, Amnesty International said. A government spokesman for coastal Rakhine state, which was engulfed by a wave of bloody unrest in June, called the allegations made Friday groundless and biased. Amnesty’s claims are “totally opposite of what is happening on the ground,” spokesman Win Myaing said, adding that the region was calm. Also Friday, the new U.S. ambassador to Myanmar announced a donation of $3 million in food aid to northern areas of the country affected by fighting between government troops and ethnic militias. Amnesty International accused both security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists of carrying out new attacks against Rohingyas, who are seen as foreigners by the ethnic majority and denied citizenship by the government because it considers them illegal settlers from neighboring Bangladesh.

After a series of isolated killings starting in late May that left victims on both sides, bloody skirmishes quickly spread across much of Myanmar’s coastal Rakhine state. The government declared a state of emergency June 10, deploying troops to quell the unrest and protect both mosques and monasteries. Authorities said at least 78 people were killed and thousands of homes were burned down or destroyed - with the damage roughly split evenly between Buddhists and Muslims. The worst of the violence subsided late last month, but communal violence has ground on. Now, Amnesty said, it is being directed mostly at the Rohingya population. Iran urged the United Nations to take action to protect the Rohingyas. “We believe that ethnic and religious cleansing against Muslims under whatever pretext is unjustifiable and inexcusable under international law, and the United Nations must take urgent measures” to protect the Rohingyas by calling on Myanmar’s government to end its “crackdown,” Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, said in a letter Friday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Communal violence has increased in Myanmar, and attacks are mostly being directed at the Rohingya population. The U.N. estimates that 800,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar today. Thousands attempt to flee every year to Bangladesh, Malaysia and elsewhere in the region to escape a life of abuse that rights groups say includes forced labour, violence against women and restrictions on movement, marriage and reproduction. Amnesty International called on Myanmar to accept the Rohingya as citizens. We should see our real identity, beyond the body, to accept everyone as part of our family.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

In spiritual training, perhaps the single most important point to understand is that you are not your body. You are the soul within it. The soul is completely transcendental to the body, and does not come under the same designations that we give to the body. It does not belong to a certain family name or ethnic group. The soul is not Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. It is also not American, Indian, Russian, Chinese, Pakistani, or anything else. According to the Upanishads it is also not happy, sad, frustrated or content, nor does it imagine anything but what it ought to imagine. It does not take birth, grow, change or die. ... There is a saying that anything that is temporary or changes is not the eternal truth. We have to go beyond what is temporary to get a glimpse of what is real and true. And the soul exists in that field of eternity that is completely beyond the mind, body and senses.

Stephen Knapp (Śrīpad Nandanandana dasa) :
"Thirty-one Days to Salvation on the Vedic Path"
"Day Twelve: You Are Not Your Body"
http://www.stephen-knapp.com  -  http://www.stephenknapp.info/
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/thirtyone_days_to_salvation_on_the_vedic_path.htm

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/