Cardinal Charles Bo predicts that the roughly 600,000 members of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority probably will never return to the country, in part because a Buddhist majority inflamed by “propaganda and hate speech” won’t accept them, and says it’s urgent for the international community to find a solution for this “stateless” people that “the world doesn’t want.”
“It has to be the work of the international community, and not just left to Bangladesh or Myanmar,” Bo, the cardinal of Myanmar’s national capital Yangon, said on February 9.
“In Myanmar, the Buddhist majority, because of the propaganda against them, because of the hate speech and all of that, they wouldn’t accept people coming back from Rohingya,” he said. “In addition, many of these people don’t wish to come back because of trauma and they don’t feel safe to return.”
Illustrating the anti-Rohingya climate in Myanmar, Bo referred to a recent comment by a member of the country’s parliament.
“Just two days ago, a member of parliament of Myanmar made a statement that among the 135 ethnic groups in the country, the existence of the Rohingya was never part of that
history,” he said.
“Because of the oppression of the past, many of them tried to run away to Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia [and became trafficking victims],” he said.
“There have been people who’ve tried to traffic them, to get them out of Myanmar, and many have died in smuggling boats that capsized,” Bo said.
