NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama has spoken out for the first time about the Rohingya refugee crisis, saying Buddha would have helped Muslims fleeing violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh in recent weeks after violence flared in neighboring Myanmar, where the stateless Muslim minority has endured decades of persecution.
The top Buddhist leader is the latest Nobel peace laureate to speak out against the violence, which the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar says may have killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Rohingya.
“Those people who are sort of harassing some Muslims, they should remember Buddha,” the Dalai Lama told journalists who asked him about the crisis on Friday evening.
“He would definitely give help to those poor Muslims. So still I feel that. So very sad.”
Myanmar’s population is overwhelmingly Buddhist and there is widespread hatred for the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and labelled illegal “Bengali” immigrants.
Buddhist nationalists, led by firebrand monks, have operated a long Islamophobic campaign calling for them to be pushed out of the country.
Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been condemned for her refusal to intervene in support of the Rohingya, including by fellow Nobel laureates Malala Yousafzai and Desmond Tutu.
Archbishop Tutu, who became the moral voice of South Africa after helping dismantle apartheid there, last week urged her to speak out.
“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.
Dalai Lama says Buddha would have helped Myanmar’s Muslims
Dalai Lama says Buddha would have helped Myanmar’s Muslims
Philippine lawmakers start VP Duterte impeachment hearings
- The revived impeachment bid leans heavily on allegations that the younger Duterte misused public funds
MANILA: A Philippine congressional committee began impeachment hearings Monday that could dash Vice President Sara Duterte’s run for the country’s top job.
The daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who recently announced her candidacy for the 2028 presidential election, was impeached by the country’s House of Representatives last year only to see the Supreme Court toss the case out over procedural issues.
The revived impeachment bid leans heavily on allegations that the younger Duterte misused public funds while in office and will see the House justice committee debate three such complaints.
A fourth case was dropped by complainants who hoped to speed up the process.
Duterte also stands accused of making a death threat against her former ally and current President Ferdinand Marcos, with whom she is engaged in an explosive political feud.
Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment triggers a Senate trial. A guilty verdict would result in Duterte being barred from politics and sidelined from the 2028 presidential race.
The latest impeachment bid faces a changed environment with the vice president ahead in recent polls, analysts told AFP.
“The political context will be very different, especially now that Sara declared her candidacy,” University of the Philippines political science professor Jean Franco said.
“It’s definitely going to weigh on the minds of the members of the House of Representatives,” Franco said, adding that a vote for impeachment would effectively see a lawmaker’s career “marked for death.”
Anthony Lawrence Borja, an associate professor of political science at De La Salle University agreed saying: “It is ultimately a question of whether the patronage of the current administration outweighs their fear of Duterte’s condemnation.”
The same committee hearing the case against Duterte last month tossed out a pair of impeachment complaints against Marcos, ruling that allegations of corruption over a scandal involving bogus flood control projects lacked substance.
Michael Wesley Poa, spokesman for Duterte’s defense team, told AFP they were closely monitoring deliberations and trusted “the same standards” used in the Marcos hearing would be applied.
