Letters | Reporting on Myanmar must take care not to reinforce false tropes about Muslims

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A Rohingya refugee performs prayers at a ceremony organised to remember the first anniversary of a military crackdown that prompted a massive exodus of people from Myanmar to Bangladesh, at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on August 25, 2018. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:25am, 23 Sep 2019Updated: 10:25am, 23 Sep 2019

I read your article (“In Myanmar, relationships between Buddhists, Christians and Muslims is taboo. For these couples, love found a way”, September 14) with great interest.

I was, however, disappointed by how the report stated and therefore helped reinforce false tropes about “Muslims taking over” in Myanmar, without adequately discrediting such baseless right-wing Buddhist thinking. The trope of Jews taking over Europe was a media strategy used by the Nazis before the Holocaust.

The article says there are negative perceptions of Muslims in Myanmar, but does not even spare a brief sentence to discredit this line of thinking. This gives credence to the idea that Muslims taking over is why Muslims are disliked, when repeated misinformation is a main reason Muslim minorities are often the target of suspicion.

Curiously, the article also cited the rape of a Buddhist woman in 2012 to qualify why Muslims are hated, but did not provide a hyperlink source to confirm this ever happened. Right-wing Buddhist groups and others often post Facebook messages spreading exactly this kind of misinformation to incite hatred and division among people in Myanmar.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Rohingya women have been raped, and worse. Yet the report does not refer to this except in passing, using the term “mass atrocities” committed by the army. When a Buddhist women is raped, the perpetrator is identified as allegedly being a Muslim but when a Rohingya woman is raped, her religion is rarely mentioned nor is the religion of rapist foregrounded. Why?

Pro-Palestine Israeli journalist Amira Hass once said “the job of a journalist is to monitor the centres of power”. The report regrettably instead amplifies falsehoods.