Angelina Jolie Pitt has recently completed a four-day tour of Burma – also known as Myanmar – to visit the country’s refugees and bring awareness to the human rights situation there. The UN has declared the Rohingya community of Burma as the world’s most persecuted and vulnerable ethnic minority and it accuses the world of being a “silent spectator of their heartrending state of misery.”
The Hollywood actress and special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was in Burma at the invitation of Aung San Suu Kyi. She met with President Thein Sein and other politicians but her planned visit to Rakhine State, where more than 100,000 Muslim minority Rohingya live, was not possible due to heavy rain and storms.
The UNHCR has warned about the ripple effect of the Rohingya conflict. “Suppression of the Muslim Rohingya at the hands of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar has doubtless jeopardized peaceful coexistence of Hindus and Muslims in the entire region of Southeast Asia in particular, and the whole world in general. This issue, therefore, direly needs to be resolved lest these waves of bigoted prejudice and hatred engulf us all.”
For more about Burma and the Rohingya conflict, see our ongoing coverage:
- Leaders around the world respond to the Rohingya crisis (June 3, 2015)
- Three Burmese monks receive World Harmony Awards (June 3, 2015)
- Dalai Lama urges Aung San Suu Kyi to speak up for the Rohingya (May 28, 2015)
- “Buddhists Betray the Teachings” — Jack Kornfield on the anti-Muslim violence in Burma (July 14, 2014)
- The Fire This Time: A look at the religious violence in Burma (March 18, 2014)
- Making sense of the anti-Muslim violence in Burma (November 7, 2014)
- Buddhist-Muslim conflicts in Asia garnering major media attention (June 20, 2013)