Political Quotes

“Mr. President, on August 25, a minority group of Rohingya militants proceeded to attack a number of Burmese police outposts in northern Rakhine State, and they inflicted injuries and killed about 12 members of the country's security forces in the process. These attacks certainly must be condemned, but they have triggered a response by the Burmese Government and military that is beyond horrific--attacks by the Burmese Government and military that have inflicted a massive humanitarian crisis in that nation. The Burmese military, aided by mobs of local vigilantes, carried out the violence against the Rohingya people in a systematic way. These are people who have been in Burma for generations, but they have been stripped of their citizenship under Burmese law. In the attacks that followed, Doctors Without Borders estimates that well over 6,000 men, women, and children were murdered in just the first month of this ongoing assault, and that included hundreds of children--an estimated 700 children ages 5 and under. The survivors have shared countless stories of women being raped, men murdered, children murdered in the most inhumane ways imaginable. Human Rights Watch has reported that the Burmese military and the associated vigilantes have burned 354 villages to the ground. The response of the Rohingya has been to flee the country, desperately fleeing as fast as they could the systematic violence inflicted upon them--systematic rape, systematic shooting, the murder of children.…”