I've noticed that if ISIS do something to non-Muslims, everyone talks about it. But when the reverse happens to Muslims - in this case from extreme buddhists - the world is mostly quiet. In fact many people try to put the issue down and start talking about recent democratic reform in Myanmar, like that somehow is a good exchange for the government murdering and raping Muslims.
The Rohingya face ethnic cleansing and most people don't seem to care.
John McKissick, head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox's Bazar, told the BBC that troops were "killing men, shooting them, slaughtering children, raping women, burning and looting houses, forcing these people to cross the river" into Bangladesh.
The scale of human suffering was becoming clear on Thursday, as desperate people like Mohammad Ayaz told how troops attacked his village and killed his pregnant wife.
Cradling his two-year-old son, he said troops killed at least 300 men in the village market and gang-raped dozens of women before setting fire to around 300 homes, Muslim-owned shops and the mosque where he served as imam. "They shot dead my wife, Jannatun Naim. She was 25 and seven months pregnant. I took refuge at a canal with my two-year-old son, who was hit by a rifle butt," Ayaz said.
Human Rights Watch said this week it had identified, using satellite images, more than 1,000 homes in Rohingya villages that had been razed in northwestern Myanmar.
It's really not surprising that some Rohingya started an armed group against constant oppression from the police and armed forces. But I'm sure, the Rohingya will be the one's called terrorists even though they've been getting killed, their women being raped and their homes being burnt. I have followed this issue for years and years, the atrocities happen on a regular basis, just this time, the army has gone in with full force rather and it's made it more noticeable.
Because most people seem to think Buddhism is some hyper peaceful religion, or this news gets drowned out by the volume of news about Muslims not getting on with their host country.
I think the issue is a lot more complicated. For example, Christian groups have also suffered persecution in Burma. Hundreds of thousands of the Christian Karen people live in refugee camps on the Thailand border, fleeing the Karen conflict, which is the longest ongoing war in the world. There have even been reports of Karen refugee camps being attacked by Burmese military. If the Rohingya receive little media attention, the Karen receive almost none. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_conflict
Anyway, in terms of Burma, pretty much all persecuted minority groups go unreported in the west. The Rohingya are not even the only Muslim group in Rakhine state in Burma. The Kamein/Kaman people also live in Rakhine state, although unlike the Rohingya they have been permitted Burmese citizenship, but they too have also suffered backlash and persecution. Some of the refugees fleeing have been from the Kamein/Kaman people, but most likely get reported as being Rohingya.
I would imagine that his underlying argument is that the media doesn't have a choice on what to cover because there aren't many non-Muslim assaults on Muslims. So even if it did wanted to cover the other side of such attacks, they wouldn't have any cases, or any cases of enough significance, to cover.
Or maybe the media wants to report things that will draw the majority in and interest the majority of this country. People tend to be interested in things that they believe could affect them. So reporting the things that non muslims do to muslims would only interest muslims which are a minority in this country. Non muslim attacks on muslims do happen in this country and other countries. ISIS kills more muslims than non muslims as well