Witness: Myanmar's imperiled Rohingya <br /> <br />By Andrew R.C. Marshall | TAKEBI, MYANMAR <br />TAKEBI, Myanmar (Reuters) <br /> <br />This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition. <br /> <br />But Takebi's residents are not refugees. They are Rohingya, a #stateless Muslim people of South Asian descent now at the heart of Myanmar's worst sectarian #violence in years. #TheUnitedNations has called them "virtually friendless" in Myanmar, the majority-Buddhist country that most Rohingya call home. Today, as Myanmar opens up, they appear to have more enemies than ever. <br /> <br />Armed with machetes and bamboo spears, rival mobs of Rohingya #Muslims and ethnic Rakhine #Buddhists this month torched one another's houses and transformed nearby Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, into a smoke-filled battleground. A torrent of Rohingyas has tried to flee Rakhine into impoverished Bangladesh, but most are being pushed back, a Bangladeshi Border Guard commander told Reuters on Thursday. <br /> <br />The fighting threatens to derail the democratic transition in #Myanmar, a resource-rich nation of 60 million strategically positioned at Asia's crossroads between #India and #China, Bangladesh and Thailand. With scores feared dead, President Thein Sein announced a state of emergency on June 10 to prevent "vengeance and anarchy" spreading beyond Rakhine and jeopardizing his ambitious reform agenda. <br /> <br />Reuters visited the area just before the unrest broke out. The northern area of Rakhine state is off-limits to foreign reporters. <br /> <br />Until this month, Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to democratic start-up had seemed remarkably rapid and peaceful. Thein Sein released political prisoners, relaxed media controls, and forged peace with ethnic rebel groups along the country's war-torn borders. A new air of hope and bustle in Myanmar's towns and cities is palpable. <br /> <br />But not in #Rakhine, also known as Arakan. It is home to about 800,000 mostly stateless Rohingya, who according to the United Nations are subject to many forms of "#persecution, discrimination and exploitation." These include forced labor, land confiscations, restrictions on travel and limited access to #jobs, #education and #healthcare. <br /> <br />Now, even as the state eases repression of the general populace and other minorities, long-simmering ethnic tensions here are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured a generation ago after communism fell. <br /> <br />SUU KYI 'TIGHT-LIPPED' <br /> <br />Even the democracy movement in Myanmar is doing little to help the Muslim minority, Rohingya politicians say. <br /> <br />Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi last week urged "all people in Burma to get along with each other regardless of their religion and authenticity." But she has remained "tight-lipped" about the Rohingya, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya leader and one-time Suu Kyi ally
