Scrapping sanctions, he said, "Is the right thing to do in order to ensure that the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business and a new government." In her speech the following evening, Suu Kyi urged businesses to invest in Myanmar to help its people as well as its nascent political transition.
Today, as those fears are coming true, Obama-era officials on all sides of the debate have been looking back on the decisions they made, asking themselves if they could have done anything more to prevent Myanmar's bloody purge.
The Rohingya say many in their community can trace their roots in Myanmar back centuries to when Rakhine, a long strip of land on Myanmar's western coast, was an independent kingdom.
The U.S. approach to Myanmar was initially based on a concept called "Action for action," meaning that Myanmar would have to take a positive step for the U.S. to respond in kind.
In July, as Obama made the sanctions easing official, Thein Sein suggested that not only did Myanmar not want the Rohingya, but that they should be resettled in any third country "Willing to take them." A second wave of violence that year became more organized and more directed at the Rohingya.
In Myanmar, one of the loudest anti-Rohingya voices was that of Ashin Wirathu, a monk dubbed by critics the "Buddhist bin Laden." Wirathu took advantage of the increased freedom of speech and access to social media, delivering anti-Muslim sermons at rallies and warning that the Rohingya were trying to Islamify Myanmar.
At the urging of Samantha Power, a National Security Council official and genocide scholar who later became Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Thein Sein agreed to what became known as the "11 commitments," a set of benchmarks related to Rakhine state and other human rights and democracy-related challenges in Myanmar.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/04/obama-rohingya-genocide-myanmar-burma-muslim-syu-kii-217214
Today, as those fears are coming true, Obama-era officials on all sides of the debate have been looking back on the decisions they made, asking themselves if they could have done anything more to prevent Myanmar's bloody purge.
The Rohingya say many in their community can trace their roots in Myanmar back centuries to when Rakhine, a long strip of land on Myanmar's western coast, was an independent kingdom.
The U.S. approach to Myanmar was initially based on a concept called "Action for action," meaning that Myanmar would have to take a positive step for the U.S. to respond in kind.
In July, as Obama made the sanctions easing official, Thein Sein suggested that not only did Myanmar not want the Rohingya, but that they should be resettled in any third country "Willing to take them." A second wave of violence that year became more organized and more directed at the Rohingya.
In Myanmar, one of the loudest anti-Rohingya voices was that of Ashin Wirathu, a monk dubbed by critics the "Buddhist bin Laden." Wirathu took advantage of the increased freedom of speech and access to social media, delivering anti-Muslim sermons at rallies and warning that the Rohingya were trying to Islamify Myanmar.
At the urging of Samantha Power, a National Security Council official and genocide scholar who later became Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Thein Sein agreed to what became known as the "11 commitments," a set of benchmarks related to Rakhine state and other human rights and democracy-related challenges in Myanmar.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/04/obama-rohingya-genocide-myanmar-burma-muslim-syu-kii-217214
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