Leader Slams Int’l Bodies’ Silence on Atrocities against Rohingya Muslims
"These atrocities are being committed by the cruel government of Myanmar before the eyes of Islamic countries and governments, international organizations and hypocritical, lying governments that claim t be advocates of human rights,” Ayatollah Khamenei said Tuesday.
The Leader called on Islamic governments to exert political and economic pressure on Myanmar’s government to make it stop the deadly crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims in the Southeast Asian country.
"Of course, practical measures don’t mean military deployments. Rather, they (Islamic governments) have to increase their political, economic, and trade pressure on Myanmar’s government and cry out against these crimes in international organizations,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
The Leader added that the crisis in Myanmar is a political issue and should not be reduced to a religious conflict between Muslims and Buddhists although religious prejudice may have been involved.
"This is a political issue because the party that has been carrying out the atrocities is Myanmar’s government, at the top of which is a cruel woman who has won the Nobel Peace Prize. And with these incidents, the death of the Nobel Peace Prize has been spelled,” he said.
Ayatollah Khamenei further said the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should convene to discuss the crisis in Myanmar.
The Leader also said Iran has to be bold in making its stance known.
"The world today is the world of oppression, and the Islamic Republic has to maintain for itself the honor of speaking out against oppression anywhere in the world, whether in territories occupied by Zionists, or in Bahrain, or Yemen, or Myanmar,” he said.
Myanmar’s government has laid a siege to a western state where the Rohingya are concentrated. There, horrific violence has been taking place against the minority Muslims, according to reports and eyewitnesses.
Soldiers and extremist Buddhists have reportedly been killing or raping the Muslims and setting their homes on fire. The Myanmarese government says 400 people, mostly Muslims, have died in the latest bout of violence. The UN says the actual number likely tops 1,000.
Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has taken almost no action to end the deadly violence against the Rohingya in the country’s western Rakhine State.
Recently, she said widespread reports of brutal violence against the Muslims were fake news.
