Pope met group of refuge­es from Myanma­r's statel­ess Muslim minori­ty in DhakaYANGON: Pope Francis’s embrace of the Rohingya during a trip to Bangladesh has sparked some angry comment on social media in Myanmar, where just days earlier he chose not to publicly air their plight. On Friday the head of the Catholic church met a group of refugees from Myanmar’s stateless Muslim minority in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. He referred to them as “Rohingya” — a term unacceptable to many in Myanmar where they are reviled as alleged “Bengali” illegal immigrants rather than as a distinct ethnic group. “They wept too.”The comments sparked a flurry of online anger in Myanmar, a country locked off from modern communications for five decades but which now has an active social media. Myanmar’s Catholic church had advised Francis not to stray into the incendiary issue of the status of the Rohingya in Myanmar, in case he worsened tensions and endangered Christians.

Source: The Express Tribune December 03, 2017 11:46 UTC