A Pakistani man holds a pamphlet, allegedly distributed by the Islamic State (IS), on Sept. 3. The following day Al Qaeda announced a new South Asia front to “wage jihad” in neighboring India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Al Qaeda’s global influence has been eclipsed by the rival terror group. A Majeed AFP/Getty Images

BANGKOK, Thailand — Myanmar’s Rohingya people have been hacked to death, driven from their homes and quarantined in grubby camps. Many are shrunken from malnutrition and disease.

But while most see their condition as a tragedy, Al Qaeda sees opportunity.

From obscurity, the Rohingya plight has in recent years exploded into an international scandal. No country will claim them as their own. Though about 800,000 Rohingya inhabit the western shores of Myanmar, the Buddhist-led government there labels them foreign invaders from Bangladesh. Vigilantes have purged them from cities using arson and murder. Human Rights Watch calls this bloody exodus “ethnic cleansing.”

The Rohingya also happen to be Muslim.

Patrick Winn reports for GlobalPost on Al Qaeda’s efforts to expand into Myanmar.

In the forest, a group of monks tie saffron cloth around tree trunks while chanting a centuries-old Buddhist chant still relevant today. It is a chant of compassion, pity, and love and of a divinity that does not exist in a temple but in the forests that the monks and the villagers both call their home. Image by Kalyanee Mam. Cambodia, 2014.

Nature was born to rescue humanity, just as people were born to protect nature. Without nature we cannot survive.” – Venerable But Buntenh

After journeying seven hours on a bus from the capital city of Phnom Penh, Venerable But Buntenh and a band of 16 young, social-media savvy dissident monks pile onto the back of a pick-up truck and wind their way on a bumpy dirt road to Areng Valley, nestled in the Cardamom Mountain range in southwest Cambodia. The young monks arm themselves with cameras and video recorders, snapping shots along the way, their bright saffron robes flapping in the wind.

Kalyanee Mam reports for the Pulitzer Center on Cambodian monks’ mission to stop the imminent construction of the Stung Cheay Areng dam, a project the government of Cambodian has contracted to Sinohydro Corporation, China’s largest hydropower company.

Draft laws in Myanmar aimed at protecting the country’s majority Buddhist identity by regulating religious conversions and marriages between people of different faiths have “no place in the 21st century” and should be withdrawn, a U.S. government agency said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said the laws risked stoking violence against Muslims and other religious minorities, including Christians. If the laws are passed, it said, Washington “should factor these negative developments into its evolving relationship with Burma (Myanmar).”

The U.S. State Department said it had serious concerns about the pending legislation and had expressed them to the government of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

Reuters’ David Brunnstrom reports on the U.S. response to Myanmar’s proposed law against religious conversion.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/11/us-myanmar-religion-usa-idUSKBN0EM2NZ20140611

BJP leader Narendra Modi gestures to supporters in Ahmedabad, India on May 16, 2014 as initial vote tallies pointed to a landslide for Modi and his party. (Kevin Frayer/AFP/Getty Images)

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by 63-year-old Narendra Modi, will take a commanding majority in India’s parliament, cementing a meteoric rise at the expense of the incumbent Indian National Congress and leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

As vote tallies from across the country were announced Friday, it quickly became clear the BJP’s performance would surpass even many optimistic predictions, winning the first outright parliamentary majority in 30 years. Modi won his seat in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi and the BJP was projected to win more seats in the state of Uttar Pradesh alone than Congress in the entire country.

World leaders placed congratulatory calls to Modi after Congress conceded what may be its worst-ever defeat, while the financial markets continued to show approval for Modi. In his victory speech from his home state of Gujarat, Modi frequently referred to himself in the third person.

“Today every voter became Narendra Modi,” said the man who proudly displayed his humble origins throughout the campaign, standing before a sea of supporters. He celebrated the fact that his administration will be the first born in post-independence India and called for national unity.

Kevin Grant, senior editor of GlobalPost’s Special Reports, writes about India’s elections as part of  the series,  “The Saffron Election.”