Rohingya crisis: Why Pope is tougher on Myanmar from afar

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The politics of silence

Pope Francis has appealed to the government of Myanmar twice this year to end a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the minority Rohingya, making the plea from his balcony perch high above Rome's St. Peter's Square.

But when he shared a stage in Naypyitaw today, sitting alongside the country's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Pontiff chose not to explicitly mention one the world's most pressing human rights crises.

"The future of Myanmar must be peace, a peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each member of society, respect for each ethnic group and its identity, respect for the rule of law, and respect for a democratic order that enables each individual and every group none excluded to offer its legitimate contribution to the common good," the Pope said instead.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since military- and militia-led attacks began this summer, following a local insurgency.

Just how outspoken the leader of the world's Roman Catholics would or could be about the Rohingya issue during his heavily-scrutinized three-day visit to Myanmar has been an open question.

Francis' suddenly diplomatic approach to the crisis will come as a disappointment to many. Human right groups such as Amnesty International had urged him to use the visit to put pressure on the government and military.

The Pope's advisors however, reportedly counselled against the use of the word "Rohingya,"for fear it would set off an anti-Christian backlash across the majority-Buddhist nation.

The concerns are real. Christians, who make up about six per cent of the Myanmar's population, according to a 2014 census, have also been the target of ethnic and religious violence in recent years.

A long-running conflict in the northern state of Kachin, where the Christian majority have been seeking independence since the early 1960s, has displaced more than 120,000 people. A report produced last year by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom,an independent bipartisan federal government commission, documented numerous human rights abuses.

"Tatmadaw (Burmese Army) troops have desecrated, damaged, and destroyed churches. The military continues to perpetrate grave human rights violations with near total impunity, including sexual violence in church compounds and the torture of pastors, church workers, and ordinary civilians," the report states.

Last month, two Baptist pastors who helped a journalist photograph a bombed-out church were accused of being members of the Kachin Independence Army and sentenced to two years in jail.

And Christians have also come under attack in the Chin and Naga regions of the country.

In recent months, much scorn has been directed at Suu Kyi, a former human rights champion and Nobel Peace Prize winner, for her own reluctance to speak about the Rohingya.

What is clear from the Pope's visit, however, is that it easier to speak bluntly from afar.

Another wrong, another apology

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will stand in the House of Commons this afternoon and deliver a formal apology to the thousands of Canadians who were forced from their government jobs because of their sexuality.

Starting in the late 1940s, and continuing on into the 1990s, the RCMP and other federal agencies helped Ottawa wage a campaign to root out homosexuals from Canada's civil service and military on the specious grounds that they posed a threat to national security. Countless careers and lives were ruined.

Today's apology for an historic wrong is Trudeau's second in less than a week, following last Friday's meeting with survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ottawa has also reached an agreement in principle to settle a class action lawsuit, brought by many of the affected LBGTQ civil servants and veterans, for $100 million.

For others, however, it is too late to say sorry.

Herbert Sutcliffe was a decorated Second World War veteran and a major in the Canadian Intelligence Corps when he was outed in a sting operation in 1962. Within 48-hours, the 22-year soldier had been shoved out the door. Although his discharge was honourable, and he kept his pension, the shock and shame over his treatment coloured the rest of his life.

In this 1983 Fifth Estate interview, Sutcliffe describes the dark hours after his outing to the CBC's Hana Gartner.

Flushed with success

The "toilet revolution" is Chinese President Xi Jinping's number one and number two priority.

"The toilet issue is no small thing, it's an important aspect of building civilized cities and countryside," Xi told local media yesterday.

The drive to convert China's often primitive, open pit or squat toilets to modern, flushable conveniences began in January 2015:

• The country's National Tourism Administration set a goal of building 33,500 new public bathrooms across the country and renovating 25,000 more.
• Promoted as a way to both improve the quality of everyday life and attract more foreign visitors, the project was given a budget of 20 billion yuan about $3.87 billion.
• In April the plan was declared 90 per cent complete, one year ahead of schedule.
• Chinese authorities say they have now surpassed their initial goal, adding or improving 68,000 toilets nationwide.
• Xi has ordered 64,000 more toilets installed at tourist hotspots by 2020.

China's loo drive isn't just limited to big cities. Improving life for the country's 600 million rural residents has also been a priority of Xi's, who has been in power since 2012, and has been known to drop into private homes while touring the countryside to check out the sanitary situation.

"Although China has become the world's second-largest economy, some toilets in poor rural areas are still little more than makeshift shelters surrounded by bunches of cornstalks, while others are open pits next to pigsties, leading to problems such as contamination and pollution from human waste," Xinhua, the official state press agency explains.

The government spent around $1.6 billion to install bathrooms in the country's poorest communities between 2004 and 2013. It's now estimated that 75 per cent of rural households have access to dry or flush toilets with walls, doors, and roofs.

(In some places, the campaign has been a little too successful. Last March, Beijing authorities had to install facial recognition technology in the public lavatories in Temple of Heaven Park, because people were stealing toilet paper. Visitors are now limited to one 60cm-long strip every nine minutes.)

China's advancements in the toilet race are nothing compared to India's, however.

When Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, he embarked on an ambitious plan to install 75 million toilets and end open defecation across the country by Oct. 2, 2019 the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth.

Tech philanthropist Bill Gates is a big supporter of the program, having sponsored a global challenge to develop a safe and reliable toilet for use in the world's poorest areas.

"Of the 1.7 million people worldwide who die from unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene each year, more than 600,000 are in India," Gates noted on his blog last year. "A quarter of young girls there drop out of school because there's no decent toilet available. When you factor in the deaths, sickness, and lost opportunity, poor sanitation costs India more than $106 billion a year."

• When Clean India "Swachh Bharat" in Hindi began three years ago, just 42 per cent of Indians had access to safe bathrooms.
• The latest update from India's Ministry of Drinking and Sanitation now places that figure at 73 per cent.
• So far, 54 million toilets have been installed and seven of the country's 29 states have been declared "open defecation free."

At the start of the project only eight per cent of India's 641,000 villages had access to modern toilets. Today it's 43 per cent.

Quote of the moment

"Sell them? Who would buy them? There are no buyers in Canada. We're owned by an American hedge fund."

- Postmedia's CEO, Paul Godfrey, explains to CBC radio why he's closing 20 small newspapers his company obtained yesterday in a swap-and-drop with Torstar Inc.

What The National is reading

• Dalhousie offers emergency replacement hijabs to Muslim women facing violence on campus. (CBC)
• Pro-refugee German mayor stabbed in neck. (BBC)
• Baloney meter: How much is Ottawa actually going to collect from tax cheats? (CBC)
• Duchess of Cambridge's uncle sentenced for punching his wife. (Telegraph)
• Virginia mother faces felony charges for having daughter record school bullies. (CNN)
• Russia's dire economy is spurring smokers to grow their own tobacco. (Quartz)

Today in history

Nov. 28, 1981: Beloved author Roald Dahl talks to CBC Radio about his work habits.

"I work from 10 a.m. to 12 or 12:30, and then go down to the house and have a drink and a boiled egg or something."