Have you been paying attention to Myanmar? It's about to become an international issue with UN troops, even US troops involved....

via Reuters.

Bound together, the 10 Rohingya captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by soldiers, two of the gravediggers said.

The killings marked another episode in the violence sweeping Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State. The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide. Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by insurgents.

Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most people in majority-Buddhist Myanmar consider them to be unwanted Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. The army refers to the Rohingya as “Bengalis,” and most lack citizenship. In recent years, the government has confined more than 100,000 Rohingya in camps where they have limited access to food, medicine and education. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya have fled their villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh since August.

Reuters has pieced together what happened in the days leading up to the killings in Inn Din, drawing for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims.

Story here. 

I bet most of you guys haven't been paying attention to this drama playing out have you?  If not then let me give you a real quick and nasty.  You have muslim immigrants trying to make their way into Myanmar from Bangladesh. Why they're leaving is beyond me but I get the impression that they're not wanted there either.

So you have immigrants, some would say refugees, fleeing into Myanmar.  The problem, they're not wanted.  The military steps in and tries to stop the flood.

When I first caught wind of this, it was a pure immigration/refugee/humanitarian story.  The UN was pushing for them to be allowed in, and even Nikki Haley spoke about the issue.

Nothing was done and supposedly the Myanmar military got brutal.

Then we started hearing the stories.  Rapes, starving children and now this atrocity.

Why does it matter?

In my mind two reasons.  I can see China leading a UN effort to bring "peace" and security to the immigrants while a settlement is reached AND/OR US troops participating in some fashion in helping these displaced people.

Either way expect your heart strings to get pulled on for either donations or a plea for US military intervention.