It’s interesting to note that the pattern of growing nationalism and ethnic homogenization, reversing the trend of the last 45 years, is global:
Welcome to Myanmar, where tremendous democratic progress is being swamped by crimes against humanity toward the Rohingya, a much-resented Muslim minority in this Buddhist country. Budding democracy seems to aggravate the persecution, for ethnic cleansing of an unpopular minority appears to be a popular vote-getting strategy….
This narrative is absurd, as well as racist. A document as far back as 1799 refers to the Rohingya population here, and an 1826 report estimates that 30 percent of the population of this region was Muslim.
Since clashes in 2012 claimed more than 200 lives — including children hacked with machetes — the authorities have confined Rohingya to internment camps or their own villages. They are stripped of citizenship and cannot freely go to the market, to schools, to university, to hospitals. Tens of thousands have made desperate attempts to flee by boat, with many drowning along the way.
This year, the Myanmar authorities have cracked down even harder, making the situation worse. First, the government expelled Doctors Without Borders, which had been providing health care for the Rohingya. Then orchestrated mobs attacked the offices of humanitarian organizations, forcing them out.
As usual, Kristof fails to grasp the implications of “tremendous democratic progress” occurring simultaneously with ethnic cleansing. And it also demonstrates how the diversity dogma that has permitted more than 10 million Asian immigrants to enter the USA is very unlikely to lead to improved inter-tribal relations.
It’s hardly a mystery why the Burmese do not wish to permit any Muslim minority in their midst; one could ask Lee Rigby’s widow about the potential downside there. No one wants the jihad on their doorstep and the people of Myanmar are obviously exercising their rights of national self-determination and freedom of association.
Because Man is a social creature, mass immigration is the crime against humanity. Those who have advocated and permitted it are the parties who should be held primarily responsible for the eventual bloodshed.