Burma persecutes Muslims

BURMA'S FORGOTTEN ROHINGYA - TOPMike Thompson, BBC News, 3/11/06http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4793924.stmThey have been called one of the world's most persecuted people. Some argue that they are also one of the most forgotten.The Rohingya people of western Burma's Arakan State are forbidden from marrying or travelling without permission and have no legal right to own land or property.Not only that but even though groups of them have been living in Burma for hundreds of years, they are also denied citizenship by the country's military government.For decades this Muslim group of ethnic-Indo origins have been considered the lowest of the low in this mainly Buddhist country.In addition to their almost total lack of legal rights many have been regularly beaten by police, forced to do slave labour and jailed for little or no reason.In 1992, 250,000 Rohingyas, which is a third of their population, fled over Burma's border into Bangladesh to escape the persecution. Fourteen years later more than 20,000 of them are still in the same refugee camps and around 100,000 more are living illegally in the surrounding area. (MORE)