{"id":12129,"date":"2017-11-29T03:14:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T03:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=12129"},"modified":"2017-11-29T03:44:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T03:44:09","slug":"in-myanmar-pope-urges-justice-respect-for-ethnic-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/in-myanmar-pope-urges-justice-respect-for-ethnic-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"In Myanmar, Pope urges justice, respect for ethnic groups"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pope Francis, who is on a historic visit to Myanmar, has called for \u201cjustice\u201d and respect for the human rights of ethnic groups, a thinly-veiled reference to the minority Muslim Rohingya who have been facing state-sponsored violence in the Southeast Asian country.<\/p>\n

Peace can only be achieved through \u201cjustice and a respect for human rights,\u201d the Pope said in a Tuesday speech.<\/p>\n

He also called for \u201crespect for each ethnic group and its identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pope arrived in Myanmar on Monday.<\/p>\n

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PressTV-Pope Francis arrives in Myanmar to discuss plight of Rohingyas<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Pope Francis has arrived in Myanmar for a six-day visit that will later take him to Bangladesh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Shortly after the pope’s arrival, Myanmar\u2019s military chief paid him an unscheduled visit.<\/p>\n

General Min Aung Hlaing later said that he had told the pontiff \u201cthere\u2019s no religious discrimination in Myanmar,\u201d\u00a0blatantly denying the heavily-documented cases of horrific violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in the Southeast Asian country.<\/p>\n

The general is in charge of the country\u2019s internationally-condemned military crackdown on ethnic Muslims in Myanmar\u2019s western Rakhine State. The United Nations (UN) has described that campaign as similar to \u201ctextbook ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 600,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority group have been forced to flee the state-sponsored violence to Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

Myanmar is estimated to have about 700,000 Christians, which is another minority group in the country.<\/p>\n

The pontiff, who has in the past used the term \u201cRohingya brothers and sisters,\u201d was reportedly advised not to use the term \u201cRohingya\u201d \u2014 which means a resident of Rakhine \u2014 during his stay in Myanmar.\u00a0That advice was reportedly given by Myanmar\u2019s sole Catholic cardinal so as not to\u00a0invoke the rage of the country\u2019s officials and Buddhist establishment against the minority Catholics.<\/p>\n

In his Tuesday speech, Pope Francis avoided the term \u201cRohingya\u201d and did not even directly speak about the persecution of the Muslims in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

Myanmar\u2019s officials use the term \u201cBengali\u201d for the Rohingya. The group, which has lived in Myanmar for decades, has been denied citizenship in both Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

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PressTV-Rights groups urge intl. monitoring of Rohingya return<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Prominent human rights groups have called on international agencies to monitor the safe return of Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On Tuesday, the Pope also met with Myanmar\u2019s State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.<\/p>\n

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Suu Kyi has refused to take any action to end the crackdown on the Muslim group.\u00a0She came to power in 2016 after five decades of rule by a junta.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh have voiced sorrow that the Pope has no decision to visit them there.<\/p>\n

Refugees in the Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh say they were \u201cdisappointed\u201d by Pope Franceis\u2019 schedule, who after visiting Myanmar is due in Dhaka but not at their camp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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https:\/\/t.me\/wilayahinfo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis, who is on a historic visit to Myanmar, has called for \u201cjustice\u201d and respect for the human rights of ethnic groups, a thinly-veiled reference to the minority Muslim Rohingya who have been facing state-sponsored violence in the Southeast Asian country. Peace can only be achieved through \u201cjustice and a respect for human rights,\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65,1423,1353],"class_list":["post-12129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-myanmar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12129"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12132,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129\/revisions\/12132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}