A RALLY was held in Victoria Square on Saturday in order to publicise what is happening to the Rohingya in Rakhine State, which is part of Burma (Myanmar is the present name, but I'll use the more familiar one).

For we should all be concerned about it as an international priority; I am glad that Yasmin Qureshi, the MP for Bolton South East, who spoke at the rally and was interviewed on the BBC the following day, is doing her best and I hope that the two Bolton MPs will associate themselves with her stand.

Just the basic facts of the matter need to be brought to the attention of the public as they are all too little known.

The Rohingya are a Muslim people, just over a million strong, who live in Rakhine state in Burma, which is predominantly Buddhist.

The Buddhist government has oppressed them for many years by denying them citizenship and treating them as stateless though they live in Burma.

This meant that the Rohingya were the victims of constant injustice and oppression.

If people are constantly treated like this with no hope of redress, they are likely to revolt. And so on August 25, an organisation called the Rohingya Salvation Army attacked the police posts of the government enemy in Rakhine That gave the Burmese government the excuse they needed to drive the Rohingya out of Burma completely using terrorist methods.

At least 37,0000 (more than 30 per cent) have been driven out and the villages they inhabited burned to the ground.

The government of Burma is particularly sadistic: It has prevented food and medical supplies reaching the fleeing Rohingya; babies are being born en route in appalling conditions and dying almost as soon as they are born; no journalists are allowed in Rakhine.

And to cap it all, the Burmese government has been responsible for a campaign of disinformation, claiming that the Rohingya are terrorists and burning their own villages down

What has really shaken people of goodwill is that Aung San Suu Ky has not been merely silent, she has given public support to the government of which she is a part even imitating Donald Trump in saying that the reports of the suffering of the Rohingya are fake news.

Until recently, Suu Ky was regarded in the West as a kind of saint and was of course awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not surprisingly, a petition has been launched to deprive her of this honour, which has already attracted 500,000 signatures. Recently, the UN Secretary General has called on her to stop the persecution.

We remember the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. This is much worse, but it has not roused anything like the concern in the West that Milosevic's policies did.

So let me ask the citizens of Bolton to think of doing at least one or two of the following: find out as much as you can about the situation, write to your MP and MEP, write to the Burmese embassy, write to the foreign Secretary calling on the government to put pressure on the Burmese government to recognise the Rohingya as citizens of Burma to cease all hostile action against them; to rebuild their villages and bring them back home; and if Aung San Suu Ky does not heed the UN Secretary General, to sign the petition calling on her to be stripped of her Nobel Prize.

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Bolton