US President Barack Obama (R) shakes hands with Myanma President Thein Sein in the Oval Office on May 20, 2013.
US President Barack Obama has praised Myanmar President Thein Sein for leading his country toward political and economic reforms but expressed concern about the violence against Muslims in the country.
On Monday, the former general became the first Myanmar president to visit the White House in 47 years.
Sein, who was previously a member of the junta that ran the country, arrived in Washington on Saturday, six months after Obama made a historic visit to the Southeast Asian country that is also known as Burma.
He took office as a nominal civilian in 2011. His name was only deleted from a blacklist barring travel to the US last September.
Obama said US-Myanmar relations had improved because of “the leadership that President Sein has shown in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform,” AFP reported.
However, he expressed “deep concern about communal violence that has been directed against Muslim communities inside Myanmar.”
“The displacement of people, the violence directed towards them needs to stop,” Obama said.
Human rights activists have sharply criticized the Obama administration for inviting Thein Sein, saying the invitation was premature and reduces the pressure on Myanmar to address human rights violations.
The violence that originally targeted Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar is beginning to spread to other parts of the country, where Muslims who have been granted citizenship are now being attacked, according to the website burmamuslims.org.
About 800,000 Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine are deprived of citizenship rights due to the policy of discrimination that has denied them the right of citizenship and made them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion, and displacement.
The Myanmar government has so far refused to extricate the stateless Rohingyas from their citizenship limbo, despite international pressure to give them a legal status.
Rohingya Muslims have faced torture, neglect, and repression in Myanmar for many years.
Hundreds of Rohingyas are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in recent attacks by extremists who call themselves Buddhists.
The extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and have set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine. Myanmar army forces allegedly provide the fanatics containers of petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who are then forced to flee.
Myanmarâ„¢s government has been accused of failing to protect the Muslim minority.
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also come under fire for her stance on the violence. The Nobel Peace laureate has refused to censure the Myanmar military for its persecution of the Rohingyas.
Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued separate statements, calling on Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremists.
MN/HGL
This article originally appeared on : Press TV