Stop training Burmese troops

NOBODY could fail to be moved by the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (formerly Burma).

Some 370,000 have fled Rakhine state for Bangladesh since the outbreak of violence last month, with whole villages being burned down and the government accused by the UN of ethnic cleansing.

Given reports of beheadings, rape and children being deliberately shot, it begs the question of why the UK Government continues to train the Burmese military, a task which cost the UK around £305,000 last year.

Based on reports from the UN, human rights organisations and Rohingya organisations, we are seeing human rights violations on a scale extreme even by the standards of Myanmar’s history. Estimates of people killed range from official figures of hundreds dead, to estimates by reliable Rohingya organisations of between 2,000 and 3,000 killed.

Before we pontificate on the actions of the Burmese military, it clearly helps if we put our own house in order, and that means immediately suspending training the soldier of this brutal regime.

Alex Orr,

Flat 2, 77 Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh.

Staying in on a rainy day, reader Andrew Tannahill took this close-up of a lily with a macro lens on an Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. The exposure was 1/20th sec at f/14, hand-held.