DUBLIN – Buddhist leader Dalai Lama said on Friday evening that the lord Buddha would have helped Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar.
“Those people who are sort of harassing some Muslims, they should remember Buddha,” the Dalai Lama told newsmen in the backdrop of the deteriorating situation in Rakhine stat.
The Nobel laureate expressed that the Buddha would definitely give help to those poor Muslim.
“So still I feel that. So very sad,” he added.
Myanmar, a Buddhist majority nation has been constantly targeting Rohingya Muslims after the 1982 General Ne Win’s government enacted the Burmese nationality law.
Lama, who enjoys widespread respect amongst his devotees is the latest to decry the policies opted by the de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her refusal to intervene in support of the Rohingya.
Earlier, Nobel laureates Malala Yousafzai and Desmond Tutu also called upon the Myanmar administration to resolve the issue.
“If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep,” Tutu said in a statement.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Sunday also condemned Myanmar for ‘systematic brutal acts’ against its Rohingya Muslims asking it to accept international monitors.
A fresh spree of violence sparked international controversy on August 25 when a few insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base.
The attacks triggered a sweep by the Myanmar security forces, in which refugees and right groups say many innocent Rohingya have been targeted.
The recent deadliest violence in Myanmar’s north-west has so far claimed nearly 400 lives, with the army claiming it is conducting operations against “extremist terrorists”.
The region has witnessed tension between its Buddhist and Muslim populations since communal violence broke out in 2012.
By comparison, communal violence in 2012 in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, led to the killing of nearly 200 people and the displacement of about 140,000, most of them Rohingya.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, evacuated more than 11,700 “ethnic residents” from the area affected by fighting, the army said, referring to the non-Muslim population of northern Rakhine.
The treatment of Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by some Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution.
