Burma’s Rohingya Muslims have been described as the most friendless people in the world. But for the past four years they had one powerful friend — and he lived in the White House.
President Obama, who gave a teary farewell to the nation on Tuesday in Chicago, spoke up often for the persecuted Muslim minority. His vocal support followed Hillary Clinton’s historic visit to the Southeast Asian country in 2011, the first by a secretary of state in 50 years, and his own trip a year later, the first by a sitting U.S. president.
The government in this Buddhist-majority nation does not recognize the very term “Rohingya,” and it sees them as newcomers from Bangladesh rather than natives.
But during that first appearance in 2012, Obama used the word “Rohingya” while delivering a speech at Rangoon University, saying members of the minority group “hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do.”
He used the word again during a visit in 2014, and in 2015 he hosted prominent Rohingya activist Wai Wai Nu at the White House for dinner. Many believe he helped raised the international profile of the Rohingya cause.
Read the full “Burma’s Rohingya Muslims mourn the end of the Obama era — and worry about Trump” article in the Washington Post by Joe Freeman where Griffith Asia Institute Adjunct Associate Professor, Dr Andrew Selth has been quoted.
