Actor Matt Dillon puts rare celebrity spotlight on Rohingya Muslims

Actor Matt Dillon puts rare celebrity spotlight on Rohingya Muslims: ""No one should have to live like this, people are really suffering," said Dillon, one of the first celebrities to get a look at what life is like for Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine. "They are being strangled slowly, they have no hope for the future and nowhere to go."

Though Rohingya have been victims of state-sponsored discrimination for decades, conditions started deteriorating three years ago after the predominantly Buddhist country of 50 million began its bumpy transition from a half-century of dictatorship to democracy.

Taking advantage of newfound freedoms of expression, radical monks started fanning deep-seated societal hatred for the religious minority. Hundreds have been killed by machete-wielding mobs and a quarter million others now live under apartheid-like conditions in camps or have fled by boat - hundreds of dehydrated, hungry Rohingya washing onto Southeast Asian shores in recent weeks."



'via Blog this'