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World must pressure Myanmar over Rohingya Muslims: Activist

Friday, 03 February 2017 7:07 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 03 February 2017 7:07 PM ]

Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who tried to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, are kept under watch by Bangladeshi security forces in Teknaf on December 25, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

A Malaysian flotilla has sailed for Myanmar in a bid to supply aid to Rohingya Muslims amid an escalating wave of crackdown and violence against the minority group.

An activist and political commentator believes that more countries should be sending aid to the Rohingya Muslims who are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

“I think it is important for two reasons. First of all it gives hope to the Rohingya Muslims who really are like an extremely oppressed minority in Myanmar, and secondly, it tells the world that look, we are not going to forget about these people,” Shabbir Hassanally told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

However, he said, there should be more pressure applied on the government in Myanmar to end the plight of the Rohingya Muslims.

He also criticized Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi for doing very little, if anything, to curb the violence against the Rohingya Muslims.

The activist also drew an analogy between the way the Israeli regime and the government in Myanmar act, arguing that there are a lot of “key similarities and parallels” between the two.

The Rohingya community, which the government brands as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh, has been suffering widely-reported systematic aggression for years on end. The violence has been interpreted as an attempt to force them out of the country’s demographic configuration.

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