"Though the Rohingya armed groups carried out attacks on security forces and civilians on 9 October 2016 in which nine policemen were killed and on 25 August 2017 in which 30 police outposts were attacked leading to the death of 10 police officers, one soldier and one immigration officer, the [UN] Special Rapporteur Lee failed to name the Rohingya armed opposition groups."
"On all issues, the people of Myanmar are with you. But on the Rohingya issue, the people will never be with you. What is at the heart of this huge gap between perspectives of the majority of Burmese and the international community, and how does this inform making progress on alleviating the genuine humanitarian crisis facing the Rakhine Muslims in Sittwe?"
"On the other side of the political tension in Rakhine state ... are Rakhine Buddhists who are genuinely afraid of a (false) Muslim takeover."
"For Aung San Suu Kyi to retain legitimacy where it matters most, it is understandable that she is not outspoken on an issue that could spark even more violence."
The problem is that application of the term 'genocide' is subject to endless, recursive, despicable politics at the UN.
I wish there was (forcible) injection of ideas from computer science and mathematics into politics. An example, for this case: a subset of general language that could describe a political or humanitarian situation in unambiguous terms, so that there could be no 'wriggle room' for politicians to shirk their duties. (Herbert's Dune featured a 'battle' language.)
And signatories to the UN should be compelled to adhere to a set of clearly defined moral principles, to open the way for action to be taken immediately against violators.
Sure, I've been criticized many times for such 'simplistic' ideas, but why shouldn't it be this simple??
Here's some other genocidal activity taking place right now: Turkey against the Kurds, Russia against the Caucasian peoples (Chechnya, Dagestan, etc.).
Incidentally, Stallone's most recent Rambo movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambo_(2008_film)) addressed the brutality of the Burmese regime. He wasn't afraid to speak out, 9 years ago.
> And signatories to the UN should be compelled to adhere to a set of clearly defined moral principles, to open the way for action to be taken immediately against violators.
International Law is great when there's some incident between nation states, but there's a dire need for intra-national law, where nations can poke their noses into the affairs of an aggressor government.
Case in point: Russian actions in Chechnya back in the early 2000s. When there were murmurs of disapproval, Russia basically just told everyone: "Go away, it's an internal problem." And, shamefully, everyone did just that.
Interesting: this was number 2 on the home page. Time to read the comments and it disappeared from the site. It's not in the first 300 posts of HN. It's left only in the New section (page 2 now) and Search.
Was it flagged by too many people or removed by administrators?
To everyone in discussion here, please ask yourself: what is your goal? It pays to revisit the guidelines, particularly on hot, divisive topics. Are you trying to understand the others you're talking with? To express your opinion? To convince the "other side"? If you're not here for useful, constructive, civil, and respectful discussion, please just refrain from commenting. As the mods repeatedly point out, HN is not the place for ideological flamewars. There are places elsewhere on the internet for that.
To be fair though, they do happen here all the time and often without any mod intervention. IMO the problem is most opinions on HN seem to just get stated as fact and if they happen to be popular opinions then there's no possibility for them every to be discussed because any contrary opinions just get brigaded into oblivion.
> To be fair though, they do happen here all the time and often without any mod intervention.
Yup. The mods are limited in number and readily admit that they don't see everything. If you see something particularly egregious, use the Contact link in the footer to email them and let them know.
> IMO the problem is most opinions on HN seem to just get stated as fact
Also very much agree, and often apparently with very little reflection on the part of the submitter that others may reasonably hold other positions (in that you can follow their logic even if you think it's flawed or disagree with it)—and that some things are often just a matter of taste.
> and if they happen to be popular opinions then there's no possibility for them every to be discussed because any contrary opinions just get brigaded into oblivion.
Compound this with the inherent bias everyone has to tend to notice where their opinion is being attacked and not see where it's being supported, everyone has a tendency to think that theirs is a minority or attacked position. It's tough.
None of this negates that goal of reducing the frequency and intensity of ideological flame wars on HN. One of the reasons I pipe up with comments like this is that I think it's the community's responsibility as a whole to encourage this, not just the mods'.
This is indeed horrible. And sadly enough, it's not unique to Myanmar. Conflict between Hindus/Buddhists and Muslims is pervasive in South and Southeast Asia.
Also, with global climate change, there will be more refugees from Bangladesh etc.
The amount of pro-genocide comments here, on Reddit, etc. makes me lose my faith in humanity. Decades down the line, people will wonder how such nominally reasonable and interconnected people could develop such hateful, vile opinions.
When participating in online discussions, do you not get a sense of what opinions are OK to express even before the conversation gets going? The current zeitgeist in many public forums is very “fuck Muslims at all costs”, and even if those comments do eventually get downvoted, people still feel safe to post them over and over again. In some forums, they even float to the top with frightening regularity; see /r/news et al. In other words, I already knew what I would be seeing as soon as I stepped into this thread.
Even 1% of a population speaking out in favor of genocide is a fucking travesty.
Since you seem to be using HN primarily to fight national/racial/political causes, we've banned this account. If you want to commit to following the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html in the future, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Responding to a terrorist attack clearly doesn't justify the deliberate massacre of civilians, either legally or morally. Most people don't exonerate Bashar al-Assad's crimes against civilians because the Syrian government suffered terrorist attacks (which it very much has).
I agree, but most news outlets are painting this whole thing as a sudden genocidal action from Myanmar without any rhyme or reason. In reality it is response to a terror attack. There is no excuse for brutality on innocents, but there is no excuse for bad journalism too.
The terrorist attack was in response to decades of persecution and genocide. In 2013 they've been described by UN as "the most persecuted population on earth"
Totally agree. And much of the violence being attributed to Burmese forces is just hearsay attributed to Islamists.
Western media/NGOs seems to buy it at face value and support these said Islamist, but hey they also supported ISIS affiliates in Syria against secular Asad regime so that's not surprising to me at all.
This apart from the fact that anyone from subcontinent will tell you that these are not Rohingyas, but Bengalis speaking Bangladeshis who have flooded rakhine and made ethnic rakhines a minority in a few decades.
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines, which state that this site is not to be used for political or ideological battles—let alone national and racial ones.
If you want to commit to keeping such poison off this site in the future, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Anyone who understand Bengali should listen to the "Rohingya" language. The similarities are unmistakable, even if you can't understand either.
If they really have been in that area since the 8th century - an assertion made by Soros' HRW, and mindlessly repeated by the media - you'd expect the language to diverge a lot more.
They are clearly not native to Myanmar.
Also, it's conveniently forgotten that they triggered the latest spurt of violence by attacking Buddhist and Hindu citizens.
It's odd how suddenly this is the latest humanitarian crisis.
Nothing to do with oil and gas pipelines, I'm sure. Unlike Syria, Iraq, Libya and so on.
Call me cynical but I don't see the international community - code for US interests - caring about people in resource poor regions.
Wonder what would happen if NK suddenly was found to have oil fields ...
That's a very weak argument. Eg., the Catalan language is more closely related to French than Spanish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo-Romance_languages). But the Catalans are certainly "native" to Spain, in that they've lived within the current Spanish borders since before Spain existed. And obviously, someone not being "native" to an area doesn't justify killing or terrorizing them.
Clearly you haven't lived in close proximity to these people.
They trickle in, respect no boundaries and no laws.
Now if they integrated and contributed to the regions culture and economy, that would go a long way towards their acceptance. But that's against the tenents of their religion/culture/ideology and it's demonstrated by their violence.
I'd quote Karl Popper on tolerating the intolerant, but it would be another "weak argument."
You can't drag people who insist on living by pre-medieval norms into the 21st century.
Thanks for bringing this up on this forum. There's another conspiracy theory circulating in the region that the devil Noble winner is doing this on instructions of US because the area Rohingyans live is enriched with valuable minerals including Jade stones. The locals are being killed and pushed away from the area, Americans will land and then keep an eye on China.
China on other hand trying best not to give US or UN a chance enter here by any excuse.
I'm sure you feel strongly about defending your group, but so does everybody else. That's why we don't allow people to lash out at others when commenting here—it's a short path from there to internet hell. So if want to keep posting to HN, please control this impulse. We ask the same of everybody: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
"Though the Rohingya armed groups carried out attacks on security forces and civilians on 9 October 2016 in which nine policemen were killed and on 25 August 2017 in which 30 police outposts were attacked leading to the death of 10 police officers, one soldier and one immigration officer, the [UN] Special Rapporteur Lee failed to name the Rohingya armed opposition groups."