A suffering refugee summed it up best: “It’s so sad to see that even the holiest man cannot cite our identity.”
So said Kyaw Naing, a Rohingya stuck in a confinement camp in Rakhine state, to the Associated Press of Pope Francis’ remarks Tuesday in Myanmar, a k a Burma.
The pope called for peace without naming the victims of an ongoing ethnic cleansing.
Most Rohingya have lived in the country for generations, certainly since the birth of the modern Union of Burma in 1948. But the military dictatorship (which also imposed the name “Myanmar”) rescinded the citizenship of this ethnic and religious minority.
Though it has ceded some power to civilians, the military retains overall control — and went berserk after militant Rohingya rebels attacked government forces last year.
Regime forces have burned villages down, raped women, beheaded children and even burned innocents alive. More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to next-door Bangladesh.
Perhaps the pope had harsh words in private for the military ruler, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. But his bland public comments only urged “respect for each ethnic group and identity” and “a commitment to justice and respect for human rights” to advance “the arduous process of peace-building.”
Local Catholic officials reportedly asked Francis not to say more for fear of reprisals against Burma’s small Catholic community.
Count it as a grim lesson in how to move Pope Francis away from his much-vaunted willingness to speak truth to power.