“The key thing right now seems to be the division between the people in Rakhine province and the Rohingya people who are Muslim and I agree that it’s absolutely outrageous that Islamophobia has grown in the world and that there has been a neglect by the international community of these kinds of problems and issues,” President of Conscience International, James Jennings told Press TV in an exclusive interview on Sunday.

He expressed concern about the situation of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, who have been “killed and displaced in the recent violence.”

Reports say 650 Rohingya Muslims have been killed since June 28 during clashes in the Rakhine state in the west of the country. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 80,000 more have been displaced.

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

The political leaders in the United States and Britain turned the September 11 attacks into a campaign against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jennings added.

“But of course it’s cloaked in diplomatic language and military goals and all that, but the people in the United States have learned a sort of knee-jerk reaction against Islam and I think that is the broader problem,” he went on to say.

The American commentator reiterated the necessity that the Myanmar government recognize the Rohingyas, who have been living there for decades, as citizens.

Over the past two years, scores of ethnic Muslims have attempted to flee by boat in the face of systematic oppression by the Myanmarese government.

AO/MA