Myanmar said in June that it would refuse to grant visas to three United Nations-backed experts who planned to conduct a human rights fact-finding mission to determine the circumstances of violence against civilians in Rakhine State and other restive areas.
Source/Credit: The New York Times
By Saw Nang/Mike Ives | Aug. 22, 2017
Even before the pope’s expected visit to Myanmar has been officially announced, it has become the subject of boisterous contention in a country riven by religious and ethnic tension.
While Myanmar’s main political and religious leaders described the visit of Pope Francis as a potential salve for the country’s troubles, hard-line Buddhist nationalists warned the pope against using it to champion the Rohingya — a persecuted Muslim minority that many Buddhists in Myanmar insist are from neighboring Bangladesh, even though Rohingya families have lived in the country for generations.
“There is no Rohingya ethnic group in our country, but the pope believes they are originally from here. That’s false,” said Ashin Wirathu, an ultranationalist monk in the former royal capital, Mandalay, and a leader of a hard-line Buddhist movement, Ma Ba Tha, that Myanmar’s top Buddhist authority has tried to suppress. He said he viewed the expected visit as “political instigation.”
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