ASIA/FOREIGN POLICY/MINORITIES/RELIGION/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Myanmar’s military campaign to kill or drive away its ethnic minorities is worsening despite a growing international outcry, according to a State Department religious freedom report that was released on Tuesday [5-29-18]. Violence against the Rohingya, nearly all of whom are Muslim, in the country’s Rakhine state has been likened to ethnic cleansing and has tarnished the reputation of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate whose party now controls Myanmar. The new report found that an unknown number of Rohingya are displaced throughout Myanmar, formerly Burma, and an estimated 688,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Additionally, the State Department said authorities in Myanmar were ‘doubling down’ against ethnic minorities with a new campaign against the largely Christian minority in Kachin state…The Trump administration has tended to de-emphasize human rights as a foreign policy priority. Former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson often said that life-or-death issues, such as terrorism, were far more important than those of individuals’ rights. But the administration’s evangelical supporters see the issue of religious freedom, particularly that of Christian minorities in places like the Middle East, as deeply important.”
-Gardiner Harris, “Myanmar Is Intensifying Violence Against Ethnic Minorities, U.S. Says,” The New York Times online, May 29, 2018