Taliban threatens Burma over Muslims’ plight

The Pakistani Taliban is threatening to attack Burma over treatment of a minority Muslim group, the Rohingya.

Attacks to avenge crimes against the Rohingya will begin, it said, unless Pakistan halts all relations with the Burmese government and shuts the country’s embassy in Islamabad.

An umbrella group for the Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), made a rare statement focused on the plight of Muslims abroad.

TTP told Muslim men and women in Burma: “We will take revenge of your blood.”

A spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, demanded that the Pakistani government halt intra-national relations and close Burma’s embassy.

“Otherwise we will not only attack Burmese interests anywhere but will also attack the Pakistani fellows of Burma one by one,” he said in a statement.

The TTP frequently claims attacks on security forces in Pakistan.

Thousands homeless

US officials say there is evidence the group was behind a failed 2010 attempt to bomb Times Square in New York, for which Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was jailed for life.

TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud has also been charged in the United States over the killings of seven CIA agents who died when a Jordanian Al-Qaeda double agent blew himself up at a US base in Afghanistan in December 2009.

Recent clashes in western Burma between Buddhist ethnic Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya have left dozens dead and tens of thousands homeless.

Indonesian politicians have come forward to condemn the violence against the Rohingya.

This includes the president of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, Eva Kusuma Sundari.

Ms Sundari, who is from Indonesia’s PDI-P party, told Radio Australia’s Asia Pacific that ASEAN and the rest of the international community need to put political pressure on Burma to take action.

Last week, Amnesty International said hundreds of people, mostly men and boys, have been detained in sweeps of areas heavily populated by the Rohingya, with almost all held incommunicado and some ill-treated.

Amnesty said there were “credible reports” of abuses – including rape, destruction of property and unlawful killings – by both Rakhine Buddhists and the security forces.

Decades of discrimination have left the Rohingya stateless. There are thought to be 800,000 in Burma.

They are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

The Lahore Times Read more: http://www.lhrtimes.com/2012/07/26/taliban-threatens-burma-over-muslims-plight/#ixzz2Ag7JwbK1