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Executive Summary for February 16th

We review key issues related to refugees, including the Myanmar military claiming that their sweep of Rakhine state is over, Assad appearing to back Trump’s ban on Syrians and a spike in anti-Muslim groups in the U.S.

Published on Feb. 16, 2017 Read time Approx. 2 minutes

Myanmar Claims That Operations Against Rohingya Have Halted

Myanmar’s military says it has ended a widely condemned operation in the country’s Rakhine state, Reuters reported.

The U.N. said the military’s actions against the Rohingya minority in the state may amount to crimes against humanity.

The four-month counterinsurgency sweep came in response to the death of nine policemen. It has seen almost 70,000 Rohingya flee across the border into Bangladesh.

The Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims.

The government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied human rights abuses.

A national security adviser said in a statement, “The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilized. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace.”

The Rohingya minority have faced discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and enjoy only limited rights in a system that has been compared to apartheid.

Assad Backs Logic of Trump’s Ban on Syrian Refugees

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad appears to support the U.S. travel ban on Syrian refugees, Reuters reported.

Assad defended the logic of President Trump’s executive order, saying it was aimed at terrorists not Syrians.

“It’s against the terrorists that would infiltrate some of the immigrants to the West. And that happened. It happened in Europe, mainly in Germany,” Assad said in an interview. “I think the aim of Trump is to prevent those people from coming.”

The controversial ban, which has been held up by legal challenges in the U.S., calls for a suspension of the U.S. refugee program and an indefinite block on all Syrian refugees.

Assad did not answer when asked whether he agreed with Trump’s orders but he did say they were “not against the Syrian people.”

Anti-Muslim Hate Groups on the Rise in U.S.

The number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the U.S. has nearly trebled in the past year, the Guardian reported.

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center said the rhetoric in the presidential election partly explained the rise.

The number of hate groups rose from 34 in 2015 to 101 a year later, the survey found.

“2016 was an unprecedented year for hate,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report said “incendiary rhetoric” from the ultimately successful Trump campaign, including threats to ban Muslim immigrants and to create a Muslim registry, had driven the rise.

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