Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei strongly condemned the massacre of Muslims in Myanmar, and lashed out at the US and the western states for ignoring ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country.

"The obvious manifestation of the false assertions of the West on ethics and human rights is its silence over killing of thousands of people in Myanmar," Ayatollah Khamenei said on Saturday.

He strongly criticized the western civilization, and said this civilization is based on exploiting humans and materialism and is far from ethics.

Ayatollah Khamenei added that the western civilization has brought nothing but corruption and exploitation of human beings wherever it has gone in the past centuries.

"Dignity, prosperity, materialistic and spiritualistic progress, good morality and conquering the enemies all happen by practicing the Quranic teachings," he concluded.

Last Friday, Myanmar's President Thein Sein said Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.

The government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas, who it claims are not natives and classifies as illegal migrants, although the Rohingya are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Burma as early as the 8th century.

According to recent reports, Muslims in Myanmar are in a tragic human plight. Reports say 650 of the nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have been killed as of June 28 during clashes in the western region of Rakhine. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 90,000 more have been displaced.

The UN has described Rohingya Muslim community as the Palestine of Asia and one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

They are deprived of basic rights including education and employment and are subject to forced labor, extortion and other coercive measures.

Source: News agencies, edited by moqawama.org