KUALA LUMPUR// US President Barack Obama said that the rights of Myanmar’s minority Muslim population were not being fully protected and warned that the South East Asian country would not succeed if Rohingya continue to be oppressed.
On a visit to Malaysia, Mr Obama praised political reforms under way in once-isolated Myanmar but said the danger of democratisation was that it could unleash religious and ethnic conflicts and that such developments could move Myanmar in a bad direction.
“You have a Muslim minority in [Myanmar] that the broader population has historically looked down upon and whose rights are not being fully protected,” Mr Obama told a townhall-style meeting of young leaders from across South East Asia. “Myanmar won’t succeed if the Muslim population is oppressed.”
Members of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority have been the victims of attacks and widespread abuse in recent years blamed by human rights groups and other observers on security forces and anti-Muslim mobs in the country’s Rakhine state.
* Reuters
