Satellite image of Rohingya village with many homes destroyed by ethnic cleansing (Source: Human Rights Watch)
UN Secretary General António Guterres called Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya people “ethnic cleansing,” saying there’s no better word to describe the now 380,000 people forced to flee a violent military campaign—this after decades of discrimination and repression in Myanmar, where Rohingya are denied citizenship and rights, despite having been in the country for centuries. Rohingya militants killed 12 security personnel at a police post in late August; the government’s response has been a brutal scorched earth campaign, burning villages and attacking civilians, while denying human rights organizations access to the region.
Now. See if you would get that sense from PBS NewsHour‘s September 3 account:
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, urged Myanmar today to stop its military crackdown against minority Muslims there, known as Rohingya. Myanmar officials say 400 people have been killed in recent clashes between soldiers and Rohingya insurgents, who claim Myanmar’s 1.1 million Muslims are persecuted. The government considers the insurgents a terrorist group. The United Nations says about 73,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed the border into Bangladesh in the past 10 days.
So the lead is that a predominantly Muslim country is coming to the defense of other Muslims. There are “clashes”—a favored media term that suggests a symmetry of forces—and an implied balance between the Rohingyas’ “claim” that they’re persecuted and the government’s assessment that insurgents are “terrorists.”
But I thought, that was early days; surely the NewsHour will return to this story with a more humanistic take. I was wrong about that. The September 5 program included a brief clip from a UN Refugee Agency official recounting hardships of those fleeing the country, which Judy Woodruff then followed up (you might say countered) with “army officials in mostly Buddhist Myanmar say they’re responding to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.”
Then on September 13, the show aired a brief clip of the UN chief calling on Myanmar authorities to end the violence, which Woodruff followed with “Myanmar claims that it’s only reacting to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.”
Human rights groups and the UN describe that “reaction” as ethnic cleansing. But the NewsHour seems to think this horrific brutality is more of a potato/potahto sort of thing.
ACTION: Please ask the NewsHour to return to the Rohingya story with a report that treats the question of ethnic cleansing as more than a matter of opinion.
CONTACT: viewermail@newshour.org
PBS ExcuseHour?
I was also disappointed with Moon of Alabama’s take on this, considering he (I think?) has been a voice of objective reason and of very fine explanation of the Syria situation. But the article really, really downplays the current ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, seen here: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/the-rohingya-of-myanmar-pawns-in-an-anglo-chinese-proxy-war-fought-by-saudi-jihadists.html#more
Also reminds me of the Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain, who’s written many articles lauding the propagandist faking Western-backed terrorist-aligned White Hats in Syria. Just goes to show (obviously from my particular perspective, heck maybe I’m totally wrong) that progressives/liberals/rationalists, or purported websites, and The Intercept is fast losing that label*, can have major biases or blind-spots, even if in most ways they don’t. Which again may include myself. A requirement of proper skepticism is self-skepticism.
And yeah, that’s a very dubious lead. Perhaps cleverly and willfully so. As if non-Muslims wouldn’t balk at this situation. “African nations with a lot of black people decry the Rwandan Genocide.” “Southeast-Asian countries speak out against the Cambodian Genocide”. “Muslim states object to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.” That’s like, meta-identity politics. And perpetuates the all-too-real idea that some states (such as the US) and/or its citizens only care about terrible things happening to people they can identify with, whether by religion, skin color, etc.
*Including this incredibly terrible and ignorant, and properly very poorly received article also in The Intercept by Mariam Elba, trying to tie Assad’s Syria to White Supremacist racists: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/08/syria-why-white-nationalists-love-bashar-al-assad-charlottesville/
Do think Assad supporting happened, but because they’re dipshits that want to give a nod to violence and authoritarianism who/wherever it is. And i guess they do support each other, but is it really a big thing as support to Syria, i kindah think not? I think that does show some of these groups true colors..
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/how-the-intercept-smears-syria-by-mistranslating-an-assad-speech.html
See this critical article of that intercept article, but moon of alabama, and claims theintercept outed reality winner without any evidence that this even happened, nor that it was intentional. Lame, bad start.. Also claiming white nationalists “dont want a homogenious society”. Can’t really comment on their claims on translation. But “non sectarianism” could be when sectarianism is not an issue because all but one are beaten into submission. If that is the case, the translation mistake is a rather mild one..
Agreed, that translation or mis-read translation shouldn’t be enough to write such a screed.
And White Nationalists support for Assad is a drop in the bucket. Another drop apparently by media or pundits to try to re-engage there even after the war is pretty much wrapping up, with Syria (sovereignty, even if a dictatorship, and perhaps against the US, who committed the worst international crime, via Nuremberg) the winner. No fan of Assad. But much, much less a fan of US dick-waving and militant solutions, and annual war crimes.
I just hope the US accepts this and doesn’t nuke Syria due to an inability to accept a loss. Something that obviously also plagues them in Iraq, Afghanistan… Domestically here there is hem and haw about how to pay for universal health care. Hm, maybe cut down a bit on that $700 billion a year budget, or the other dispensations that make the cost of war for the past 15 years at least $1 trillion per. And even on Afghanistan–might’ve been better to give Aghans thousands of US dollars each rather than billions to corrupt puppets, or future opium warlords, or building useless and unused bases. Or a completely ineffectual “hearts and minds” strategy.
But to disagree a bit, Reality Winner was outed due to a) her own incompetence, and b) The Intercept’s incompetence. Whichever is more to blame–I doubt many more whistleblowers will trust The Intercept with anything. There were faults on both sides; only one of those sides should’ve had zero, at all faults–the one promising whistleblowers that they wouldn’t compromise them.
yeah the intercept has jumped the shark on Syria and pushing for the corrupt R2P bullshit, they watch too much Al Jazeera and hired Mehdi Hassan, as well Democracy Now plus their owner/funder is Pierre Omydiar founder of Ebay so sadly one has to take them with a grain of salt to. Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal and his team at AlterNet’s Greyzone Project, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beely of 21st Century Wire, and the Real News, Counter Punch and Mint Press are my go to sources on Syria, Venezuela and anti-Russia conspiracy theories which the Intercept and Democracy Now also as of late has jumped the shark on. I guess wealthy donors who are controlled opposition have gotten to them.
Haven’t you missed the rather clumsy and obvious effort to demonize Muslims? Well, clumsy and obvious if one is no longer brain-dead from sixty years of media brainwashing.
IT seems as if all governments of the world have decided that indigenous people of the world stand in the way of progress. . They have decided that there are too many people in the coveted land areas.. In spite of those Nurenberg Laws developed after the WW 2 horrors, every nation state has reverted to bringing back colonial power, and wars which are imploding the planet and bringing on climate change which will make Earth look like a continous Stephen King novel.
How much healthier the planet would be witiout spreading disease with corpses,and dumping depleted uranium all over the planet and fracking our water supply to death. Ethnic cleansing became ALL LIFE life cleansing. WHY is it called ethnic cleansing anyway?A t this point in Earth’s human history we are all genetically related and the only pure thing on the planet is pure hatred and it is spreading faster than the Pandemic of 1918. Where is that supposed FREE PRESS,? It’s more like the ECHO press owned by a few. Is this how Ameriuca ends. I am very depressed. : (
Corporate/State media! the more you watch the less you know. I guess PBS apart from being apologist to whoever maybe our allies of the day thought “Well you know Muslims are causing the most terrorism in the world so! if they cry genocide, its open to debate” that or they really like Saint Aung San Suu Kyi whose been providing cover for the dictatorship that once kept her under house arrest. shame, shame shame.