tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80391816691026502632024-03-14T04:00:09.845+01:00Rohingya BloggerRB Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07364708528501137806noreply@blogger.comBlogger8879125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-34685435886230000332018-12-31T20:17:00.000+01:002019-08-08T12:34:52.086+02:00Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com)</div>
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Dear Readers,</div>
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From 1st January 2019 onward, the Rohingya News Portal 'Rohingya Blogger' will be renamed and upgraded as 'Rohingya Today'. Due to this transition to a new name, our website will be available at <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rohingyatoday.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2n7yocLqDzSxqm_quTYn0VWHAkJWKoCQLebd-Bb1qPNudXH1aJLE6_T2M&h=AT38O-ao-wc2jSHNmnOiQ0_Oo40u-2weJ3Tvro9HlQDrnbizE-AWiV1Faj56vK5ycntHdrizMcHe2bXU0Yjx2EMDq5kVz4tUSqJ7W_KwbYE-YWBx5n9UR1gzGY0XiU7s4stGH1tsxQ4">www.rohingyatoday.com</a> and our primary e-mail address will remain as <a href="mailto:rohingyablogger@gmail.com">rohingyablogger@gmail.com</a>.</div>
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Happy New Year to everyone!</div>
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Rohingya Today (formerly Rohingya Blogger)</div>
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Rohingya Today - English Edition - <a href="https://www.rohingyatoday.com/">https://www.rohingyatoday.com/</a></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-70641186595319671212018-12-26T11:54:00.000+01:002019-08-08T12:37:06.866+02:00Rohingya Refugee Killed in Fighting between Bangladesh Army and Chakma Rebels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rohingya Today | December 26, 2018</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cox's Bazaar – <b>A Rohingya refugee working as a day labourer in a road construction project was killed in fighting between Bangladesh's army and Chakma separatist rebels in Bangladesh on Sunday (Dec 23), sources report.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A clash broke out between the Bangladesh army and the Chakma rebels in the forest in Khagrachari area, Bandarban district, around on Dec 23 morning and the labourers working in a private road construction project in the area got stuck in the fighting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One shot of bullet pierced through the shoulder of a Rohingya refugee working there and killed him soon after that. He was then taken to Chittagong Medical College Hospital for postmortem and handed over to his relatives for funerals on Tuesday (Dec 25).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He was identified as Mohammed Zubair, 23, (son of) Abdu Rahim from Held Shed No: 69, Room No: 01, Kutupalang registered refugee camp, Bangladesh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The Bangladesh authorities identified him using a phone number written on a paper found in his pocket. They called the number and handed his body over to his relatives," said Mohammed Amin, a registered Refugee in the camps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He was given funeral at a football field nearby the Kutupalong registeted refugee camps about 11pm on the same day (i.e. Tuesday).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Also known as Shanti Bahini is a Chakma Buddhist rebel group, the armed-wing of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), fighting for an autonomous/ independent region in Chittagong hilltracts. Chakma is a Buddhist minority group living both in Myanmar and in Bangladesh. They consider themselves distinct from other Buddhist groups (including Rakhine) in Bangladesh, and in Myanmar, are known as 'Dinet' considered as a sub-group of wider Rakhine Buddhist groups.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>[Reported by Ahmed Karim; Edited by M.S. Anwar]</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Please email to: <a href="mailto:editor@rohingyablogger.com">editor@rohingyablogger.com</a> to send your reports and feedback.</span><br />
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RB Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07364708528501137806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-88319057955944973112018-12-19T19:18:00.000+01:002019-01-13T21:13:08.920+01:00Bangladesh Police Beat up Refugee Woman and Obstruct Her from Justice <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh</td></tr>
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Rohingya Today | December 19, 2018</div>
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<b>Cox's Bazaar</b> — Bangladesh policemen beat up a teenage woman in Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazaar and subsequently, obstructed justice being served to her.</div>
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Eighteen-year-old Salima Khatun was severely beaten up and injured by a sub-inspector of police and other five subordinates of his at 'Teng Hali' refugee camp 13 (block C, sub-block at C5) at around 11pm on December 12. The policemen broke into her hut in search of Jamil Ahmed (her father) who was absent, leading them to beat and abuse her instead.</div>
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As a result of that, her marriage fixed with a fellow refugee man in the camp also broke up as the relatives of the man engaged with her feared of repercussions by the Bangladesh authorities.</div>
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As such, the victim went to the Army Officer in charge of the security of the camps and lodged a complaint of the physical abuses. The army, subsequently, gave her a hearing date.</div>
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It has been reported that, as the abuser policeman came to know about the complaint, he sent Mujammil, the Head (Maazhi) of the camps who is also known as a sycophant to the police, to threaten and intimidate her. Then, she was taken to the police station and forced to sign on a paper/letter written in Bangala. The paper was not read out to her.</div>
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"On the day of Complaint Hearing by the Army Officer in charge, the policeman sent the letter to him (the Army Officer) through Mujammil, the Head (Maazhi) and sycophant. Only then, Salima Khatun, the victim, came to know that it was a letter of Settlement (Placation/Pacification) between her and the Policemen. Therefore, she returned to her camp crying, without getting justice," said Mohammed Karim (not real name), one of her fellow refugees in nearby camps.</div>
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She is now said to be severely suffering physically due to heavy injuries and psychologically due to her broken marriage.</div>
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About one million Rohingyas have fled Myanmar and been living in concentrated refugee camps in Bangladesh since the Myanmar military carried out Genocide in 2016 and 2017 respectively.</div>
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<i>[Repored by Aadil Ahmed; Edited by M.S. Anwar]</i></div>
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Please email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your report and feedback.</div>
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RB Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07364708528501137806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-35294174907544416272018-12-16T21:23:00.001+01:002018-12-17T20:28:02.861+01:00Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Photo: Reuters)</td></tr>
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<b>Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide</b></div>
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December 17, 2018 </div>
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We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, call for accountability for genocide and crimes against humanity in Myanmar and for the United States government to take urgent action. We urge the U.S. government to urgently act to hold Myanmar military official’s accountable for genocide. </div>
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The U.S. government has referred to what happened to our people as "ethnic cleansing,” which is partially accurate; however, the U.S. should make a clear legal determination of the facts which amount to the crime of genocide. The Myanmar military and authorities made systematic preparations to commit mass atrocity crimes against our Rohingya community - with the intent to destroy us. </div>
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United States House passed Resolution 1091 stating that atrocities against the Rohingya as crimes against humanity and genocide. The Resolution is calling for “all those responsible for these crimes against humanity and genocide should be tracked, sanctioned, arrested, prosecuted, and punished under applicable international criminal statutes and conventions.” </div>
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On December 3, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum came to the conclusion that there is compelling evidence that the Myanmar military committed crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya of Rakhine State, Myanmar. On the same day, the international law firm Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) hired by the United States State Department to investigate the august 25, 2017 military “clearance operations” on the Rohingya in Myanmar, said it found evidence of genocide based on interviews with over 1,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. </div>
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Many of the undersigned organizations have documented how Myanmar authorities are responsible for human rights violations in Rakhine State including killings, rape, destruction of property, and burning of villages. The Government of Myanmar denies Rohingya citizenship and denies the very existence of our ethnicity. </div>
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On September 24, the U.S. Department of State released its report documenting mass human rights violations against our Rohingya people. The report shows that the campaign was "well-planned and coordinated." However, the report makes no determination that the violence amounts to genocide or crimes against humanity. </div>
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We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, are deeply concerned by international inaction, including from the U.S. government. We urge the U.S. government to make a clear genocide determination and to pursue other policies and responses. </div>
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On September 18, the United Nations independent international Fact-Finding-Mission on the situation in Myanmar <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/myanmarffm/pages/index.aspx">released its final report</a> concluding that Myanmar’s top military generals should be prosecuted for genocide against Rohingya in Rakhine State as well as for crimes against humanity. </div>
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In July, human rights group Fortify Rights published an extensive report exposing how the Myanmar authorities made “extensive and systematic preparations” for attacks against Rohingya civilians during the weeks and months before Rohingya militants attacked police on August 25, 2017. </div>
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We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations call on the administration of President Trump and all people of conscience within the U.S. government to ensure the United Nations Security Council imposes an arms embargo on Myanmar and refers the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC should investigate and prosecute the military’s crimes against our Rohingya people as well as the Kachin, Shan, and others. </div>
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1. Arakan Rohingya Development Association – Australia (ARDA)</div>
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2. Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO)</div>
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3. British Rohingya Community in UK</div>
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4. Burmese Rohingya Association in Queensland-Australia (BRAQA)</div>
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5. Burmese Rohingya Association Japan (BRAJ)</div>
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6. Burmese Rohingya Community Australia (BRCA)</div>
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7. Burmese Rohingya Community in Denmark</div>
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8. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK)</div>
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9. Canadian Burmese Rohingya Organisation</div>
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10. Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative</div>
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11. Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation in Malaysia (MERHROM)</div>
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12. Rohingya Advocacy Network in Japan</div>
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13. Rohingya American Society</div>
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14. Rohingya Arakanese Refugee Committee</div>
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15. Rohingya Association of Canada</div>
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16. Rohingya Community in Finland</div>
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17. Rohingya Community in Germany</div>
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18. Rohingya Community in Sweden</div>
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19. Rohingya Community in Switzerland</div>
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20. Rohingya Organisation Norway</div>
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21. Rohingya Society Malaysia (RSM)</div>
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22. Rohingya Society Netherlands</div>
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23. Rohingya Women Development Network (RDWN)</div>
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<i>For more information, please contact: </i></div>
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Tun Khin (Mobile): +44 7888714866 </div>
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Nay San Lwin (Mobile): +49 176 62139138</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-14118879489952897272018-12-15T15:57:00.000+01:002018-12-15T15:59:09.458+01:00US genocide resolution welcome, but Rohingya need more<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsiPWlkf-bodGEndxm7AWp9yhSDUt8h7AI4aE4hzR4Yy2FA4ijGxsy1XzUyyflpeTDDXmpx2Wwbp5U_eUadpnQivQOB1rXRycSqxrYFhxBroHUEZqmqCENYEASyaNE7arX3GYtC3w-zLY6/s1600/thumbs_b_c_d474685473f10483b9469f65b254e30a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="864" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsiPWlkf-bodGEndxm7AWp9yhSDUt8h7AI4aE4hzR4Yy2FA4ijGxsy1XzUyyflpeTDDXmpx2Wwbp5U_eUadpnQivQOB1rXRycSqxrYFhxBroHUEZqmqCENYEASyaNE7arX3GYtC3w-zLY6/s400/thumbs_b_c_d474685473f10483b9469f65b254e30a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>By</i> Maung Zarni | Published by <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-genocide-resolution-welcome-but-rohingya-need-more/1339732">Anadolu Agency</a> on December 15, 2018</div>
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<b>US will not intercede, and Myanmar's neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed</b></div>
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<b>LONDON</b> -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling the crimes committed by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya Muslims a genocide. This was the right thing to do.</div>
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The U.S. lawmakers deserve to be applauded for trying to turn “Never again!” into a concrete U.S. governmental policy, following the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s declaration that Myanmar is indeed committing a genocide and crimes against humanity.</div>
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The House resolution states that “every government and multilateral body (in the world) should call such atrocities (against Rohingya people) by their rightful names of ‘crimes against humanity,’ ‘war crimes,’ and ‘genocide’.”</div>
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It contains a call that will resonate very well with many in the rank-and-file of the Armed Forces of Myanmar unhappy with the Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing: it adds the commander-in-chief to the list of military commanders deemed responsible for these crimes.</div>
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Despite the much-reported decline of U.S. power globally, the United States still retains unparalleled influence and reach, militarily, institutionally, economically, and ideologically, vis-à-vis Russia and China. Against this background, the unequivocal stance that U.S. lawmakers have taken against the Myanmar genocide has enormous potential to really end the unimaginable misery which 1.5 million Rohingya experience, both in refugee camps in Bangladesh and in their own places of origin within the western Myanmar state of Rakhine.</div>
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However, the calls for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal on Myanmar, or even economic sanctions alone, will have no appreciable impact on either the Myanmar military, which has institutionalized the intentional destruction of Rohingya as a target population since the 1970s, nor on the majority of the Myanmar public, who have been brainwashed to believe UN or external allegations of atrocities as “fake news” concocted by the liberal West and a Muslim conspiracy financed and coordinated by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).</div>
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That is, unless the United States is prepared to take forward the idea of military intervention in Myanmar – like the U.S. Pacific Fleet launching surgical missile-strikes from the international waters of the Bay of Bengal on the military headquarters and residences of the senior military commanders in Naypyidaw. The uses of military actions on grounds of humanitarian intervention are not unprecedented. The NATO bombing of Slobodan Milosevic’s palace and the “accidental” strike on the Embassy of China in Belgrade spring to mind.</div>
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In fact, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad openly suggested “going in” to end the atrocities, in a public talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York a few months ago.</div>
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<b>Unrealistic option</b></div>
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However, this may not be a realistic option for a number of reasons: U.S. President Donald Trump has demonstrated absolutely no concern about the news of Myanmar troops burning Rohingya infants and elderly people alive. In fact, Trump has not even once tweeted the word “Rohingya,” let alone drawn attention to the hellish conditions they are living in. Additionally, sandwiched between India and China, which are vying for influence in Myanmar through strategic, military, and economic collaboration, Myanmar may not be an ideal place for U.S. drone or missile strikes, lest such acts draw these two Asian rivals into the military action.</div>
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With respect to the impact of full and biting economic sanctions, in the unlikely event that the United States eventually imposes such severe sanctions, the four largest investors in Myanmar are China, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong, followed by the U.K. The targeted pinch on the generals and the national economy will be significantly mitigated by these countries.</div>
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None of these governments are likely to follow the U.S.’ lead in the current circumstances. China considers Myanmar, a country in its backyard, an integral piece of its One Belt, One Road grand project whereby it is striving to recreate the New World Order with Beijing as its imperial center. Any talk of persuading China, or Russia, with deep military-to-military ties with Myanmar, to support any punitive measures within the existing global justice and governance mechanisms, including the UN Security Council, is nothing short of delusional.</div>
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The rest of Myanmar’s neighbors, including even India, base their Myanmar policies on commercial interests. India is no match for China, how desperately it may try, to curb China’s sway over the Myanmar military and civilian leaderships.</div>
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Desperate to find bilateral trade deals outside the EU amid Brexit, Britain is single-mindedly pursuing British commercial interests while serving as the “penholder” on Myanmar resolutions in multilateral bodies by virtue of the historical fact that it was the country’s former colonial master.</div>
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In a lengthy Dec. 12 interview with the local Mizzima News Group, British Ambassador Daniel Chugg pussyfooted around the genocide and stressed his ambassadorial goal. In Chugg’s own words, “we are the fifth-largest investor ever in Myanmar, our total stock of investment here is more than $4 billion, and our trade last year was about $500 million, which was up 20 per cent from the year before. So, it's growing but it's still relatively small in global terms and so I hope those figures will improve while I am here.”</div>
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No matter how powerful it may still remain, U.S. measures will come short of what is needed to end the genocide in Myanmar.</div>
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<b>Steps to follow</b></div>
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Whether the Trump administration makes the legal determination – as the U.S. House Resolution urges – that Myanmar is in fact committing crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes not only against Rohingya but also against other ethnic and religious communities such as the Kachin, Shan, and Ta’ang, is less consequential than what it will concretely do if the determination is made.</div>
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The painful truth typically overlooked is that no genocide has ever been committed by the perpetrating state alone, from the Nazi genocide to Bosnia to Rwanda. There are always collaborating and “bystanding” states. The real first-step towards ending the genocide in Myanmar will have to be an international conference of states which have expressed their official concerns about the nature of grave crimes that Myanmar is committing.</div>
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There are 47 member states which voted on the UN Human Rights Council Resolution this fall calling for accountability for the Myanmar perpetrators of international state crimes. Although the U.S. is no longer a member of the council, considering the overwhelming concern about the genocide in Myanmar as evidenced in yesterday’s vote at the House of Representatives, the U.S. government is best placed to host such a conference in Washington.</div>
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The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has done extraordinary work in genocide monitoring and research on the situation for Rohingya, would be an ideal civil society partner to facilitate such a conference.</div>
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One primary conference objective should be to forge a coalition of governments that are prepared to pool their resources, strategic influences, and even military assets to put sufficient pressure on both the Myanmar military and Aung San Suu Kyi’s impotent leadership. Without sufficient pressure, Myanmar -- that is, the civilian government and the military -- will not accept the Rohingya as full and equal citizens, nor will they provide any guarantee for the safety of the survivor communities.</div>
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As a matter of fact, the Myanmar genocide resolution rightly states that “Myanmar’s civilian government, led by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, has not yet taken the necessary steps to address the violence directed against the Rohingya and has failed to create the necessary conditions for returns, including by actively impeding access to northern Rakhine for UNHCR, UNDP, humanitarian organizations, and journalists.” Having aligned the government with Beijing, Aung San Suu Kyi has shown absolutely no sign that she will relent.</div>
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Against this scenario, only such a counter-alliance of states broadly supported by civil society and human rights movements consisting of Rohingya survivors can put enough concrete pressure on the perpetrating regime and the genocidally racist society to allow Rohingya to live in peace on their own ancestral land of Northern Rakhine.</div>
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<i>[Maung Zarni is co-author of the “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya” (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, 2014) and coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition.]</i></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-61054608439015544842018-12-13T11:10:00.001+01:002018-12-31T20:39:30.466+01:00Press Release: Rohingya Denied Access To Education In Myanmar and Bangladesh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>PRESS RELEASE: ROHINGYA DENIED ACCESS TO EDUCATION IN MYANMAR AND BANGLADESH</b></div>
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13th December 2018 </div>
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A whole generation of Rohingya children are being denied the opportunity to shape their own future as they face extremely limited access to education in both Myanmar and in refugee camps in Bangladesh, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said today in a new report based on field research among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.</div>
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<i>“If You Want to Harm a Community, Just Don’t Let Them Study”</i>details how a system of segregation building up to genocide in Myanmar, and onerous restrictions imposed by Bangladeshi authorities, mean that quality schooling is off limits to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children on both sides of the border.</div>
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“The Rohingya are suffering from an ongoing genocide, with Myanmar authorities intent on wiping us out as a people. Now more than ever, we need educated Rohingya who can act as leaders for the community, but as long as educations remains severely restricted this will be impossible. We are facing the prospect of a lost generation,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK.</div>
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“Schooling is vital to allowing people to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and to improve their lives. This human right, however, is denied to Rohingya children – this situation must not be allowed to continue.”</div>
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<b>Genocide in Myanmar</b></div>
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In Rakhine State, Rohingya have faced serious restrictions on their access to education since 2012, when Myanmar authorities imposed a system of segregation following a campaign of state-organized violence against the Rohingya.</div>
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Rohingya children are often unable to attend mixed Rakhine-Rohingya schools but are instead kept in separate education facilities where the quality of teaching is extremely poor. Government teachers often refuse to work in Rohingya schools, or when they do subject students to humiliation and neglect. More than 73% of Rohingya in RakhineState self-identify as illiterate today.</div>
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Mohammad, a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, described how conditions in Rakhine State changed for him in 2012: “After that, the teacher kept us in separate classes. One for Rohingya, one for Rakhine. They gave them all the attention - all the resources. The teacher would call us ‘Kalar’ [a pejorative term for Rohingya] and would no longer want to teach us.”</div>
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There are also reports that since 2017, Myanmar authorities have been targeting teachers and other educated Rohingya - further aggravating the collective capacity for education.</div>
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<b>Restrictions in Bangladeshi refugee camps</b></div>
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In August 2017, the Myanmar security forces launched a “clearance operation” in Rakhine State, killing thousands of Rohingya, torching hundreds of villages and committing acts of sexual violence. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the military’s crimes against humanity, joining hundreds of thousands of other longer-term Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar.</div>
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These close to one million Rohingya refugees are now largely housed in dozens of refugee camps in Bangladesh, including the so-called “megacamp” of Kutupalong, one of the largest refugee camps in the world.</div>
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The Bangladeshi authorities have imposed restrictions on the type of education that can be provided to refugees, including by banning education in Bangla as well as any formal education that can lead to accreditation. This is apparently because Bangladeshi authorities do not want to create a “pull factor” or incentives for refugees to remain in the country longer term – although it is having a harmful effect on the ability of Rohingya children to access quality education.</div>
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Instead, education in the camps is being provided by a range of international and Bangladeshi NGOs as well as community-based organisations. Rohingya are often taught in informal “temporary learning centres” where the quality of education and curriculum can vary significantly depending on the NGO involved.</div>
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“The Bangladeshi government has generously opened its borders and allowed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing for their lives to enter the country. We now urge Dhaka to lift restrictions in the refugee camps – on both residents and aid groups – so that Rohingya children can access schooling unhindered,” said Tun Khin.</div>
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“Conditions are nowhere safe enough for Rohingya to return to Myanmar, and refugees are likely to remain in Bangladesh for the long-term. Only by being able to access education and the job market can Rohingya build a future for themselves and contribute to Bangladeshi society.”</div>
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Through interviews with Rohingya refugees, international and national aid workers, and other stakeholders, BROUK identified a number of pressing issues around education delivery in the camps.</div>
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Classrooms are often severely overcrowded and badly resourced, and recruiting teachers – in particular women – remains a serious challenge. While aid groups have performed heroic efforts in responding to the crisis, there is a lack of long-term planning around education. There’s a shortage of education opportunities for 15-18-year olds, since the emergency context of the refugee response means that primary education has been prioritised over secondary. Some 150,000 children in the camps are still without access to any learning centres altogether.</div>
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<b>What must be done</b></div>
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In Bangladesh, BROUK calls on the government to remove all barriers imposed on the Rohingya refugees’ access to education. Furthermore, it is crucial that aid groups and authorities work together to ensure that Rohingya community leaders are involved in decision making around aid and development, and that the provision of education is treated as a long-term issue.</div>
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BROUK stresses, however, that the only long-term and viable solution to the crisis lies inside Myanmar. The Myanmar authorities must immediately remove all restrictions on the human rights of Rohingya (including on access to education and freedom of movement), and grant Rohingya citizenship under national law.</div>
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“At the heart of the Rohingyas’ lack of access to education are the Myanmar authorities’ genocidal policies. Only when this ends will our community be able to live fulfilled life in peace where we can enjoy our human rights. It is no exaggeration to say that the Rohingya face the real prospect of extinction in Myanmar – the international community must ensure that this does not happen,” said Tun Khin.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-49294914042503733282018-12-08T08:35:00.002+01:002018-12-31T20:39:19.592+01:00Has ASEAN failed the Rohingya?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>By</i> TRT World<br />
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Rohingya activists accuse ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of failing to protect the Rohingya because it hasn't condemned Myanmar’s violence against the ethnic minority as genocide. Is ASEAN protecting Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's generals from international criminal prosecution? </div>
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Maung Zarni </div>
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Coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition </div>
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Tom Villarin </div>
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Member of Philippines’ Congress and ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-7547806176490844712018-12-07T20:34:00.000+01:002018-12-31T20:39:08.064+01:00Don’t let Aung San Suu Kyi off the hook for her role in the Myanmar genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioN6ZLIuQJlYYMgFEW71U13VjRpwBmgA2CkbYHHlBPQEpofr6Z7x1ehe4kvqccpcTgHrSgxLEd8Yyn40wjMLNHpP5Z8b357did3Eecjb-qGs5NHh9zHkSvEqeZAhDjsHQMPQG1WWinkgoM/s1600/10520992864_9d9228ddd1_o-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="735" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioN6ZLIuQJlYYMgFEW71U13VjRpwBmgA2CkbYHHlBPQEpofr6Z7x1ehe4kvqccpcTgHrSgxLEd8Yyn40wjMLNHpP5Z8b357did3Eecjb-qGs5NHh9zHkSvEqeZAhDjsHQMPQG1WWinkgoM/s400/10520992864_9d9228ddd1_o-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><i>Aung San Suu Kyi in 2013. Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/landersz/10520992864/">Shawn Landersz on Flickr</a>.</i></td></tr>
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<i>By</i> Khin Mai Aung | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2L3kWmX">Lion's Roar</a> on December 6, 2018</div>
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<b>Last week, a prominent Buddhist teacher defended Aung San Suu Kyi, the Buddhist Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Myanmar civilian leader, against criticism that she is party to genocide. Khin Mai Aung explains why that defense doesn’t hold up.</b></div>
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Recently, respected Bhutanese lama Dzongzar Khyentse Rinpoche posted an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/djkhyentse/photos/a.167448616613961/2820134431345353/?type=3&theaterhttps://www.facebook.com/djkhyentse/photos/a.167448616613961/2820134431345353/?type=3&theater">open letter</a> on Facebook downplaying Myanmar’s brutal Rohingya genocide and expressing support for the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The politician has come under fire in recent years for her tacit support of the ongoing genocide in her country. In his letter, Rinpoche dismisses these criticisms as Western colonialism. By letting Aung San Suu Kyi off the hook for her complicity in Myanmar’s genocide and largely turning a blind eye to the Rohingya’s suffering, Rinpoche implicitly endorses the anti-Rohingya mindset rampant in Myanmar and the Burmese diaspora. Rinpoche’s stunning failure to exhibit the core Buddhist tenet of compassion for the Rohingya’s suffering at the hands of Myanmar’s military is deeply disappointing.</div>
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In his letter, Rinpoche makes valid and resonant points about Western double standards, hypocrisy, and paternalism. Vestiges of colonialism endure for both colonizers and their former subjects, even today. As I’ve <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-colonial-roots-of-myanmars-rage-against-the-rohingya_us_5a388f2ee4b0c12e6337b051">written before</a>, colonialism is indeed to blame for much of Myanmar’s contemporary troubles. British colonial authorities intentionally stoked tensions between its Bamar Buddhist majority and ethnic minorities through a strategy of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule">divide and rule</a>,” sowing seeds of resentment between the Bamar and minorities like the Rohingya. Rinpoche further reminds us that atrocities committed by Western powers — before, during, and after colonialism — are frequently downplayed and conveniently forgotten. He’s right that abuses committed by Western powers, like the United States pummelling Laos with an <a href="http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a-million-bombs/">unprecedented number of bombs</a> during the Vietnam war, are not as widely remembered as they should be. On a more mundane level, he is also correct that Westerners sometimes co-opt, decontextualize, and exoticize Eastern traditions and practices (like yoga and meditation) — robbing them of their core meaning and essence.</div>
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But his defense of Aung San Suu Kyi’s heartbreaking complicity in the Rohingya genocide based on these legitimate concerns is where Rinpoche swerves off track. Rinpoche says that criticism of Suu Kyi is “a sign of the insidious colonialism that continues to strangle Asia and the world.” He’s wrong. The <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/myanmar-rohingya-united-nations-genocide-667194">global outcry</a> over Rohingya persecution — and Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to denounce it — is not the paternalism of the West imposing its values on Myanmar. Rather, it is a valid response to the Burmese military’s bloody subjugation of a profoundly disempowered minority (using tactics the military has also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/world/asia/myanmar-military-ethnic-cleansing.html">deployed</a> against other ethnic and religious minorities for decades), and the unwillingness of the country’s elected civilian leadership to even question this brutality.</div>
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Rinpoche sets up an East-versus-West dichotomy and cloaks his defense of Aung San Suu Kyi in the righteous language of anti-colonialism, writing “we are expected to kowtow to western morality” and “it’s time to restore the dignity of our own great eastern wisdom traditions and legacies.” In doing so, Rinpoche unwittingly lends support for Myanmar’s alternative narrative of its mistreatment of the Rohingya. This framing opens the door for Burmese apologists — including but not limited to political leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi — to cast abuse of the Rohingya as part of Myanmar’s noble effort to preserve its ethnic and religious identity in the face of Western oppression. In this narrative, Myanmar is merely casting off the yoke of colonial rule by purging the country of “Bengali” foreigners brought into the country by British overseers — not exterminating and expelling a vulnerable and powerless minority group. The contention that the Rohingya are not native to Myanmar is unfortunately reinforced by Rinpoche’s allegation that the British brought “most” Rohingya to Burma during the colonial period as cheap labor to work in rice paddies. It’s true that many people of South Asian descent were <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Thant-Myint-U/Myanmar-s-resurgent-nationalism-shapes-new-political-landscape">imported</a> from the Indian subcontinent into Myanmar by British colonial authorities. But as others have <a href="https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/response-dzongsar-jamyang-khyentse-rinpoche/">pointed out</a> in response to Rinpoche’s letter, both the Muslim Rohingya and my own ancestors, the Buddhist Rakhine (another ethnic minority in Myanmar), coexisted peacefully for centuries on both sides of the Naf River, which now marks the Myanmar–Bangladesh border. Rinpoche overlooks this important fact, capitulating to and reinforcing the Burmese belief that all or most Rohingya are foreigners from Bangladesh.</div>
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It is also not accurate to suggest that Aung San Suu Kyi is being judged according to Western morality, when she herself has spent most of her life campaigning for democracy and free speech. In 2010, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/aung-san-suu-kyi-calls-for-freedom-of-speech-2133807.html">she said</a>, “The basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech.” If that is her belief, why did her political party <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/no-vote-no-candidates-myanmars-muslims-barred-from-their-own-election">bar Muslims</a> from seeking office in Myanmar’s 2015 elections? And why does she remain silent while journalists are thrown in jail for reporting on the Rohingya genocide? Is it colonialist to call on Aung San Suu Kyi to uphold the very principles which she has spent her life promoting?</div>
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Despite his lengthy excoriation of the West, Rinpoche regretfully omits an obvious and relevant example of Western influence negatively impacting Myanmar. He passionately decries the unfortunate influence of Western society, contending that “We Asians have been taught to disparage our own noble traditions and instead to treasure western values, literature and music, to chew gum and wear faded jeans, to embrace Facebook and Amazon, and to ape western manners and institutions.” Rinpoche misses the fact that the Burmese military has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html">actively used</a> Facebook to spread its propaganda and encourage religious violence. If Rinpoche truly wants Aung San Suu Kyi to cast off the yoke of western colonialism, he should question why she condones the Burmese military’s use of western technology to implement its own version of “divide and rule” by inflaming ethnic and religious tensions in Myanmar.</div>
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The profound irony of Rinpoche’s statement that “our own holocausts are conveniently forgotten and buried in the dustbin of history” haunts me. Blinded by anger over Western double standards, Rinpoche doesn’t see how his words may help Myanmar bury its own genocide in the “dustbin of history.” His willingness to let Aung San Suu Kyi (and, by extension, the rest of Myanmar’s civilian government) off the hook for failing to advocate for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar is dismaying. What the international Buddhist community needs is moral and ethical leadership from prominent religious leaders like Rinpoche, and not excuses for politicians unable or unwilling to stand up for the vulnerable. Rinpoche is absolutely right that the Western world can be self-righteous and judgmental toward non-Westerners, and that non-Westerners, in turn, are sometimes unduly deferential to the West. But by viewing foreign criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi only through this prism, he obscures the larger truth of human rights abuses in Myanmar. And, tragically, he overlooks the fact that Myanmar’s civilian leadership has abandoned the core Buddhist belief in each person’s innate human dignity — including that of the Rohingya.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-80837689564148903672018-12-05T22:31:00.000+01:002018-12-16T21:24:38.021+01:00Press Release: Protect the Rohingya Winter School (November 2018) Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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PRESS RELEASE</div>
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December 5, 2018</div>
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<b>PROTECT THE ROHINGYA WINTER SCHOOL (NOVEMBER 2018) COXS BAZAAR, BANGLADESH</b></div>
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This past week members of Protect the Rohingya (PTR) collaborated with members of the Rohingya Community Development Campaign (RCDC) to organise a winter school for 100 Rohingya adults, men and women, based in Balukhali 10, Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. </div>
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The Winter School project curriculum was compiled specifically for adult learners. The project sought to recreate a campus environment as well as impart social media, interviewing and reporting skills to participants. The 5 day classes included poetry from the global south, oral history and comparative genocide studies.</div>
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PTR would like to take this opportunity to thank Nay San Lwin, Fatima Zahra Mayet, RCDC, Adil Sakhawat, Tasneem Fredericks and all those who donated Kindly to make this project a reality. </div>
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Protect the Rohingya is a South African based advocacy organisation that began in 2012 to raise awareness about the plight of the Rohingya. </div>
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For more information:</div>
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@ProtectRohingya</div>
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Tasneem Fredericks - 082 612 1657</div>
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Shabnam Mayet - 0721786102</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-86658065196488359352018-12-03T11:06:00.000+01:002018-12-15T15:57:29.975+01:00Academic withdraws from China-backed event for Uyghurs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>By</i> Sena Güler | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2zyocSP">Anadolu Agency</a> on December 1, 2018</div>
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<b>Maung Zarni says he will boycott Beijing-sponsored events until the country reverses its 'troubling path'</b></div>
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ANKARA -- A human rights activist and intellectual said he withdrew from a Beijing-sponsored forum in London to protest the detention of a million Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang.</div>
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“As a human rights activist, a Buddhist educator and a politically engaged scholar of genocide, racism and violence, I cannot, in clear conscience, participate in the three-day forum which is officially endorsed by the Government of China,” wrote Maung Zarni in his withdrawal letter on Friday.</div>
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Zarni was scheduled to deliver a speech on his country Myanmar’s genocide on Dec. 7 at the 5th Global China Dialogue on Governance for Global Justice.</div>
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“[…] the ruling Communist Party of China today stands credibly accused of commissioning a systematic and racially motivated persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province,” he went onto say.</div>
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Recalling an event, he attended in Geneva in September, Zarni said a Muslim Uyghur man delivered a speech which said his mother had died two weeks ago in one of the concentration camps and the man had not seen his mother for the last 20 years.</div>
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“I was moved by this Uyghur exile – born and raised in what he and his fellow people call East Turkistan vis-à-vis China’s official name for his homeland, Xinjiang,” he said, sympathizing with the man as he also saw his mother for very brief times in the last 30 years before her death in February, “as a Burmese exile from military-controlled Burma, or Myanmar”.</div>
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He also said he saw at the same event some evidence of “a vast complex of concentration camps” – as a German investigative journalist put it.</div>
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“I saw photographic evidence of one complex encircled by a tall concrete wall, with watch towers, CCTV surveillance cameras and machine-gun-holding guards,” he noted.</div>
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Zarni recalled a statement of Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee, saying she was concerned about a UN report, which said China had "turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp".</div>
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He also called on “China’s intellectuals and China-friendly global academics” to work towards reversing the “deeply troubling path” of the country.</div>
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“Until then I have decided to boycott any public or private educational or cultural event that is officially backed by the Government of China.”</div>
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Xinjiang region is home to around 10 million Uyghurs. The Turkic Muslims have long accused China’s authorities of cultural, religious and economic discrimination.</div>
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China stepped up its restrictions on the region in the past two years, banning men from growing beards and women from wearing veils, and introducing what many experts regard as the world’s most extensive electronic surveillance program, according to the Wall Street Journal.</div>
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Up to 1 million people, or about 7 percent of the Muslim population in China’s Xinjiang region, have now been incarcerated in an expanding network of “political re-education” camps, according to U.S. officials and United Nations experts.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-50185046763864367712018-11-29T12:11:00.002+01:002018-12-13T11:10:36.773+01:00An Open Letter to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche from a Burmese Buddhist Activist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">A poster of Aung San Suu Kyi | Photo by theodore liasi / Alamy</td></tr>
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<i>By</i> <a href="https://tricycle.org/author/maungzarni/">Maung Zarni</a> and <a href="https://tricycle.org/author/matthew-gindin/">Matthew Gindin</a> | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2TWHKsH">Tricycle</a> on November 28, 2018</div>
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<b>A former ally of Aung San Suu Kyi responds to the Tibetan Buddhist teacher’s support for Myanmar’s controversial leader.</b></div>
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<b>Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, a well-known</b> teacher of Vajrayana Buddhism, surprised some in the Buddhist world recently when he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/djkhyentse/photos/pcb.2820135831345213/2820134431345353/?type=3&theater">penned an open letter of support</a> to Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of Myanmar’s civil government accused of complicity in the military’s persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority. The letter praises her sacrifice, courage, and principled political actions in pursuit of the rights of her people, while attacking her critics as hypocrites and arrogant colonialists pushing Western interests and values.</div>
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Dzongsar Khyentse is a major figure in contemporary Buddhism. A tulku (reincarnated master) in the Khyentse lineage, he is the son of the revered Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and grandson of the influential Dudjom Rinpoche. An embodiment of the Rime (nonsectarian) movement, he is the guardian of the teachings of the Dzogchen master Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, as well as an accomplished filmmaker and author of popular English language expositions of Buddhism. </div>
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His support for Suu Kyi comes on the heels of a September report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar that said the violent campaign against the Rohingya amounts to genocide, a claim supported by several human rights research and documentation bodies around the world. The report, released at a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, stated that Suu Kyi and her civilian government had “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes” through their “acts and omissions.” As a result of mounting allegations of culpability, Suu Kyi, who was once lauded for her activism on behalf of democracy in Myanmar, has been stripped of multiple awards, including the US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Wiesel Award, her honorary Canadian citizenship, and Amnesty International’s human rights award.</div>
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In response to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche’s letter, Maung Zarni, a Burmese Buddhist, pro-democracy activist, and former ally of Suu Kyi, and I have co-authored an open letter challenging what we view as faulty narratives, misinformation, and questionable reasoning in Dzongsar Khyentse’s letter. </div>
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—Matthew Gindin</div>
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<b>Dear Rinpoche,</b></div>
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In a November 16 letter, you expressed your “deep respect and appreciation” for all Suu Kyi has done “to fight for your people’s freedoms.” You call her a “true heroine of this age, more than worthy of the Nobel Prize and other honours” and say you are “appalled by the removal of awards” she received. You argue that this is a “blatant double standard,” citing the reception of a Nobel Prize by former US President Barack Obama despite his use of drone warfare against Middle Eastern civilians.</div>
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You see this double standard as part of “insidious colonialism strangling Asia and the world,” which you say teaches Asians to “disparage our own noble traditions and instead to treasure Western values and music, to chew gum and wear faded jeans, to embrace Facebook and Amazon, and to ape Western manners and institutions.” </div>
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I (Zarni) am a child of a Burmese Buddhist family with close ties to the military. I grew up with intense pride and deep reverence for the Buddhist tradition and spiritual culture of Burma. After coming to the US to study, I founded the Free Burma Coalition to support the struggle for democracy in Burma and became a hardworking supporter of Suu Kyi, inspired by her personal courage and the mixed discourse of Buddhist loving-kindness and human rights. But early on I began to suspect that she was an ethnic nationalist and a Buddhist chauvinist, more concerned for her own legacy and the interests of the Bamar majority than she was for human rights and a true democracy for all the peoples of Myanmar. In April 2016, Suu Kyi assumed the position of State Counselor. She quickly morphed into a key actor in the longstanding oppression of Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Since then I have been a fierce critic of my fellow Buddhist dissident, who now acts in a joint partnership with our former common oppressor, Myanmar’s murderous military, the Tatmadaw.</div>
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According to statistics from the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) earlier this year, 898,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled violence in Myanmar currently live in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Of them, 686,000 have arrived since August 2017, when the government launched a coordinated military-led campaign of arson, murder, and sexual violence against their communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. This assault, according to human rights organization Fortify Rights, was <a href="https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/violence-rohingya-planned/">deliberately prepared for months in advance</a> by the Tatmadaw. Many Rohingya, faced with proposals over the last year to repatriate them to the country where for decades they faced systemic discrimination and the deliberate deprivation of basic human rights, have said that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/asia/bangladesh-rohingya-repatriation-fears-intl/index.html">they would sooner die</a> in Bangladesh.</div>
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Genocide is not simply incidents of mass killings; it is a long process of systematic, intentional destruction of a target group. Suu Kyi, as the leader of the ruling NLD party, controls several government ministries involved in such efforts against the Rohingya, but she has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/23/aung-san-suu-kyi-fall-from-grace-myanmar">done nothing</a> to protest or attempt to stop her country’s abuse of them. Meanwhile, she has repeatedly and publicly dismissed well-documented reports of the genocidal violence of the Tatmadaw—in one instance referring to systemic sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls as “fake rape.”</div>
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Rinpoche, you cite atrocities committed by Western governments past and present and accuse the modern West of hypocrisy for criticizing Suu Kyi. First, the criticisms of Suu Kyi do not only come from the West but also from people all over the world who oppose the kind of brutal oppression the Myanmar state has subjected the Rohingya to. Second, you erase the distinction between Western non-governmental bodies and activists on the one hand and Western governments on the other. By your logic, the Swedish Nobel committee, local bodies like the Oxford City Council, or Suu Kyi’s own alma mater (St. Hugh’s College, Oxford) cannot criticize human rights abuses if the governments of Britain or Sweden have ever committed atrocities (which of course they have). You lump together governments, private bodies, and activists under the simplistic rubric of “the West.” These kinds of generalizations can become fodder for muddled thinking and racism. After all, many of the Western activists and human rights organizations who have criticized Suu Kyi have also spoken out against the violations of Western countries, and continue to do so. They have also confronted the Chinese state for its persecution of Buddhists and embraced efforts to preserve traditional Asian culture and values, such as the Gross National Happiness initiative in Bhutan. </div>
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A more sober assessment of global politics would recognize that all cultures have committed atrocities and that many have fallen into the temptations of militarism, racism, and colonialism. You present the “noble tradition” of the East as opposed to the ignoble tradition of the West despite the fact that “our East” has as many murderous and colonizing legacies as “their West.” This way of framing the Rohingya crisis and criticism of Suu Kyi does more to obscure the matters at stake than to clarify them. In setting off West against East, your letter focuses on a clash of civilizations instead of the real problem: a clash of values. The true battle is between those who embrace values of nonviolence, compassion, and justice—which the best traditions of both West and East argue for—and those who put first their race, the defense of their traditions, the accumulation of capital, or other divisive values.</div>
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While we sympathize with your criticisms of the hypocrisy, arrogance, and colonial legacy of many Western countries and share your concern for the way that the “capitalist system” is swallowing diverse global cultures, we balk at your emphasis on the Western nature of what is destructive in the world today. The problems we face—growing fascism, violent racism, nationalism, tremendous gaps of wealth between the rich and the poor, the destruction of our shared ecosystem and the destruction of both ethnic and zoological diversity—are now global problems exacerbated by the worldwide embrace of misguided policies that are often championed by those who hold power and wish to cling to it. The current conflict in Myanmar embodies this adoption of destructive policies, in which the fires of ethnic disputes have been stoked in order to <a href="https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/opinion-ethnic-cleansing/">consolidate power for the military and business elite</a>.</div>
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Toward the end of your letter you say that “nothing I write here denies the suffering of the Rohingya people,” but you argue that instead of blaming Suu Kyi, the British “should be taking responsibility for bringing the Rohingyas from Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries as cheap labour” and suggest that the UK should take in the Rohingya refugees themselves. </div>
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Here you are referencing a false narrative, popular in Myanmar, that claims that the Rohingya are not a native ethnicity but rather Muslim Bengali laborers who never went home and who now want to undermine the Burmese Buddhist state. This ahistorical propaganda is used to justify discrimination and violence against them. Suu Kyi has signaled that she accepts this narrative with her refusal to use the name “Rohingya,” a title by which they refer to themselves and that reflects their centuries-old history in the country.</div>
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In fact, the Rohingyas’ presence in the region long predates both the arrival of British colonial rule in 1824 and the emergence of Myanmar as a nation-state in 1948; thousands of Rohingya have been living in the western Arakan Kingdom, now Rakhine state, since the 15th century. Aside from the fact that there were no national boundaries as such in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the pre-colonial societies of the time, demographic and geographic fluidity was the norm. Arakan, or Rakhine, the fertile coastal region of the Bay of Bengal, was a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society until Bamar invaders arrived. Their forces destroyed the nearby kingdom in Mrauk-U and then expanded, annexing Arakan in 1785.</div>
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Although international attention has focused on the plight of the Rohingya, their persecution is only the most egregious symptom of the interethnic conflict that afflicts Burma, a violence fueled by the Bamar supremacism of the ruling government and the oppression it directs at the Shan, Kachin, Karen, Mon, and other historic peoples of Myanmar. Arguably, the idea of an ethnically pure nation-state is a product of the very colonialism you claim to decry. </div>
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“For me,” you write to Suu Kyi toward the end of your letter, “you remain the heroine you truly are. And for many who dare not speak up but who secretly agree, you personify our own #MeToo movement.” </div>
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The #MeToo movement arose because powerful persons used their positions to sexually harass and assault women (as well as some men) and then manipulated or threatened them into keeping quiet about it. If anyone in Myanmar personifies the #MeToo movement, it is the Rohingya women and girls whom the Tatmadaw has gang-raped and murdered. </div>
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Suu Kyi has publicly stated that these rapes did not occur, making her an enabler of the kind of violence that the #MeToo movement arose to stop, not a victim of it. In this situation, it is Suu Kyi herself who is a powerful abuser aiding other powerful abusers. Moreover, we find your attempt to co-opt the #MeToo movement to be acutely disrespectful of both the Rohingya victims of sexual violence and of all the courageous women who stood up to say “me too” to call sexual abusers to account around the world.</div>
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After this quick reference to #MeToo, you then suggest it may be time to seek out “the Westerner’s weak spot” in that “they don’t dare criticize Muslims or Jews for fear of being called Islamophobic or anti-Semitic,” so “perhaps we need to coin new words for anti-Buddhist or anti-Asian bias to evoke their guilt.” Western countries are particularly sensitive to the Holocaust because so many of us were complicit in the deliberate, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews only 70-odd years ago. We are sensitive to Islamophobia both because of the recent warfare between Western governments and historically Islamic ones, and also because of real problems with violent Islamophobia in western countries, such as the mosque shooting in Canada in 2017. There is a great irony in your writing this at a time when the United States government has tried to impose a ban on Muslims entering the country and when heated anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish rhetoric has been normalized.</div>
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To close, we would like to call attention to one voice that is almost totally silent in your letter: the Rohingya themselves. Though your letter is really aimed at “Western” critics of Suu Kyi, the chief resistance to the genocide, and the primary critics of Suu Kyi and the Myanmar state, are not Westerners; they are Rohingya activists like Nural Islam, Razia Sultana, Tun Khin, and Nay San Lwin, to name a few, as well as groups like <a href="https://freerohingyacoalition.org/en/">The Free Rohingya Coalition</a> and <a href="http://www.rohingya.org/portal/">Arakan Rohingya National Organization</a>. Many of these Rohingya have been fighting for the last four decades against their impoverishment and oppression at the hands of the Myanmar state, and no one was more pleased by the revocation of Suu Kyi’s awards for human rights activism than they.</div>
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While there is always room for criticizing specific policies of a specific Western country or institution, when you paint matters with as broad as a brush as your letter does, opportunities for grappling with injustices in the real world are replaced by harmful meta-narratives that, to our mind, simply stoke the fires of conflict and division. It would be more fruitful for those opposed to colonialism, racism, violence, and injustice around the world to work together rather than to close ranks against each other. Your claim that Western institutions are guilty of colonial violence, both gross and subtle, is true. So is the claim that the Myanmar state and Aung San Suu Kyi are guilty of genocidal violence. Instead of putting these truths in opposition to each other, why not join hands to fight against injustice everywhere? Why not recognize greed, hatred, and delusion wherever they rear their ugly heads and create an international coalition of generosity, love, and clarity? </div>
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With goodwill,</div>
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Maung Zarni and Matthew Gindin</div>
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<a href="https://tricycle.org/author/maungzarni/">Maung Zarni</a> is a Burmese activist and scholar. He is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and the founder of the Free Burma Coalition.</div>
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<a href="https://tricycle.org/author/matthew-gindin/">Matthew Gindin</a> is a journalist and meditation teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia. A former monk in the Thai Forest tradition, he is the author of <i>Everyone in Love: The Beautiful Theology of Rav Yehuda Ashlag</i>.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-68796413485705114822018-11-22T20:17:00.003+01:002018-12-08T08:35:52.678+01:00The solutions to the Rohingya crisis: Voices from the Field<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>By</i> Nasir Uddin | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2KoS9ch">South Asia Journal</a> on November 17, 2018</div>
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The world witnessed a massive refugee situation in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2017, where an extreme form of brutality perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces forced hundreds of thousands Rohingya people, known as <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/who-are-the-rohingya-refugees/">the world’s most persecuted ethnic minority</a>, fled to Bangladesh. Myanmar security forces, Burmese (Bamar) ethnic extremists and Rakhine Buddhist fundamentalists combinedly formed an alliance to perpetrate a deadly operation, called <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/myanmar-army-conducts-clearance-operations-in-rakhine-state/4003642.html"><i>clearance operation</i></a>, started from August 25, 2017, which, a <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/MyanmarFFM/Pages/ReportoftheMyanmarFFM.aspx">recent report</a> prepared by a <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/MyanmarFFM/Pages/Members.aspx">three-member-panel</a> appointed by the United Nations shows, compelled more than 725,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh, about 10,000 Rohingyas were killed in the first two months, hundreds of women and girls were raped, and around 392 villages were partially or totally destroyed.Combined with previous and new arrivals, now Bangladesh hosts about 1.3 million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, its South-eastern part, which is considered as <a href="https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/a-firsthand-look-into-the-worlds-largest-refugee-camp/">the world’s largest refugee camp</a>. The newly arrived Rohingyas in Bangladesh explained their horrible experience and the degree of atrocities was so intense that the UN Human Rights council time and again termed it as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/un-myanmars-treatment-of-rohingya-textbook-example-of-ethnic-cleansing">a textbook example of ethnic cleansing</a>”whilst many others called it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/what-is-happening-in-myanmar-is-genocide-call-it-by-its-name/2018/08/29/611a1090-aafe-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html?utm_term=.740ac5eb37d1">genocide</a>. Even before the massive campaign in 2017, some credible research like the ones published by <a href="https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Clinics/fortifyrights.pdf">Yale Law School</a> and the research team of <a href="http://statecrime.org/data/2015/10/ISCI-Rohingya-Report-PUBLISHED-VERSION.pdf">Queen Marry at the University of London</a>found that the way Myanmar security forces were dealing with the Rohingya people is undoubtedly a <a href="https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/lowenstein-report-myanmar-genocide-cited-new-york-times">genocide</a>. The campaign in 2017 seemingly superseded all previous records. Even after such a massive Rohingya influx and despite all out criticisms across the world, the remaining Rohingyas in Arakan still face an acute sense of vulnerability and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/26/put-in-a-cage-rohingya-remaining-in-myanmar-consigned-to-life-of-fear">are consigned to a life of fear</a>. Notwithstanding the prevailing contested situation, Bangladesh and Myanmar made an attempt to start off repatriation process from mid-November, but expectedly failed. Many international actors, rights bodies and even many local people have “doubt” whether the start of repatriation process means really a “start”or an “end”! Will it really bring any lasting solution without addressing the strong Muslim-Buddhist divide, Rakhine-Rohingya ethnic cleavage, state’s exclusionary policy, and the question of legality of the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s state structure? Many policy analysts, political scientists, academic researchers, and career diplomats might come up with an imagined or intelligent prescription suggesting many potential bilateral and multi-lateral engagements and actions, but I intend to unfold here the ways how the Rohingya refugees, the center-point of the entire discussions, want the solution of their problems in which ways. </div>
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On September 12, 2018, I was interviewing a group of Rohingya refugees together, which is academically called Focused Group Discussion or FGD, in Balukhali refugee camp in Ukhia, Cox’s Bazar where three <i>majhi</i> (block-chief), two aged <i>murubbi</i> (superior), three middle-aged Rohingyas were present and took part in the discussion. Everyone wants to go back to Borma [Burma] but everyone echoes the same narratives:<i> joboner nirapotta</i> (life-safety), <i>nagorikottto</i> (citizenship) and <i>maan-ijjat</i> (dignity) should be insured first. I recorded hundreds of similar stories from many Rohingya men and women living in Ukhia and Teknaf refugee camps. Some, of course, demand an active involvement of the UN bodies like UNHCR in the repatriation process. If we deeply look into the contents of the Rohingya narratives, we can find the solutions to the Rohingya crisis by confirming three demands: legal recognition, life-safety, and human dignity. </div>
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The Rohingya people, whose ancestors were living in the Arakan state centuries ago, were deprived of citizenship in the process of adopting <a href="http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/87413/99608/.../MMR87413.pdf"><i>Myanmar Citizenship Law</i></a> in 1982 which legally rendered them stateless people. Since citizenship is the gateway to all sorts of rights, conferring citizenships to the Rohingya people could be the best possible way forward towards resolving the crisis. My fieldwork experience reveals that the Rohingya people believe if they get legal recognition with the citizenship, they can enjoy all kinds of social, political and civil rights like other citizens of Myanmar. That is what they desperately want as they believe legal recognition could bring a positive change to alter their position in Myanmar.</div>
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Many Rohingya refugees whom I met explained that besides conferring citizenship, ensuring life-safety is also important. “If we have citizenship, but no life-safely, what the hell we will do with the legal recognition”—is the sentiment among many Rohingya refugees in the camp. When security forces, and local Buddhist extremists visit Rohingya houses in the village in search of “militants”, they badly behave with the Rohingya people. If they see any form of protest, they physically assault and sometime just shoot on the spot. Even in the market place, on the street, in the public transport, and even in the mosque, the security forces and local Rakhine extremist youths without any reason harass the Rohingya people. If anyone argues and challenges their acts, they start beating publicly, attack with knives & sticks, and sometime shoot on the spot. Their behavior for decades has created a culture of fear in every sphere of Rohingya life in Rakhine state. Therefore, along with the legal recognition, Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar think, social and life safety must be ensured. </div>
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Many Rohingya refugees during my fieldwork in 2017 and 2018 time and again told me that “<i>the Borma military and kichu moiggar fua</i> [some Rakhine youths] quite often harass us at home and outside without any reasons. Their behavior has made us understand that we can’t live there and we are illegal in Myanmar. Sometime, it hurts us deeply as it heats to our self-respect. They behave with us like a <i>januar</i> [animals] not like a <i>manush</i> [human]. We want to lead a human life.” I found the similar sensitivity among many Rohingya refugees who crossed the border following the August campaign. According to their narratives, security forces often raid their houses and not only to harass them but also, they snatch their belongings, saved money, and gold. Sometime they forcibly rape girls and women putting males at home on gun-point. The movement of Rohingya people is still restricted, their freedom of choice is completely absent and there is no liberty to lead a human life. Rohingya people cannot move beyond three kilometers without permission and hence they live in a confinement situation. They need permission to do everything and even to do marriage. Therefore, they think, along with the legal recognition, and life-safety, their human dignity is equally important because they want to lead a normal human life. </div>
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Many politicians and diplomates, local and global media, UN bodies, Human Rights Organizations, global political actors, NGOs, academics, and civil society forums talk too much about Rohingya crisis and give various forms of prescription. What actually the Rohingya refugees want and what their views of the solutions to the Rohingya crisis remain unheard. Based on my field-level experience and long-year engagement with them, I have picked up “three points” as an abridged version of what the Rohingya people think of getting rid of their miseries. Now, the question is: Who will rail the derailed train? </div>
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<b>Nasir Uddin</b> is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), University of Oxford & a Research Consultant at SOAS, University of London. He is a Cultural Anthropologist based in Bangladesh and a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chittagong. He is the author of a forthcoming book <i>The Rohingya: A Case of “Subhuman”</i>(Oxford University Press, 2019). </div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-30195416202724915022018-11-21T20:43:00.000+01:002018-12-07T20:35:25.830+01:00Press Release: Myanmar, not Bangladesh, is responsible for failed repatriation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Press Release </div>
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20, November 2018</div>
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<b>Myanmar, not Bangladesh, is responsible for failed repatriation</b></div>
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On behalf of the Rohingya people, we would like to express regret and disgust at Myanmar's policy of continuously blaming Bangladesh for the failure of repatriation of Rohingya refugees. As we all know, the ground reality in Arakan (Rakhine) State makes repatriation of Rohingya refugees impossible as the brutal state machinery continues their genocide of the defenceless Muslim community, a policy in place for more than half a century. The sad truth is that Myanmar government has no intention of creating condition for sustainable repatriation and is responsible for failed repatriation and deserving of blame. We strongly condemn it. </div>
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On the contrary, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to the government and people of Bangladesh who are hosting more than a million people in their country. Refugees are a burden for every country in the world, including developed nations, as has been seen in Europe over the past few years. Despite being the most overpopulated and a resource constrained nation Bangladesh has shown extraordinary generosity in letting the Rohingya refugees stay, with humanity the only motive. Myanmar's suggestion that Bangladesh does not want the Rohingya refugees is ridiculous. </div>
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The genocide of Rohingyas is still ongoing, and the remaining Rohingyas in Arakan State continue to be persecuted, and preparations are underway to shift them away from their ancestral villages to IDP camps. State sponsored Buddhist nationalists are protesting against the repatriation of the Rohingyas. The situation of those who have been confined to ghettos and IDP camps following 2012 deadly violence shows no improvement. </div>
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The issue of restoring citizenship to the Rohingya and recognition of their ethnic name “Rohingya” are not even being discussed. There is no change of attitude of the Myanmar authorities towards Rohingyas and other Muslim communities in the country. It is this reality that has terrified the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh every time the word repatriation is mentioned. In truth Rohingyas want sustainable return to their ancestral homeland in Arakan in safety, in dignity and with justice, not to killing field, where bloodshed and violence awaits them. </div>
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It is disgusting to notice that the country responsible for the ongoing genocide continues to shift blame on its neighbour Bangladesh, a country which has tried to offer sustainable solutions for this ongoing crisis, including a serious effort to start repatriation on November 15. But because of Myanmar’s unchanged policy, such an effort was bound to be fruitless. </div>
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On behalf of all Rohingya refugees, we maintain that we want to return to our homeland as long as it is protected from the forces that are complicit in the genocide of the Muslims in Arakan. That would require the demilitarization of the zone as it is absurd to suggest that Rohingyas can return to a zone where the Myanmar military retains the ultimate authority. It would also require the Government of Myanmar to legally recognise the Rohingyas as an ethnic minority as well as full citizens of Myanmar, consistent to other ethnic minorities of the country, as opposed to illegal immigrants, and rehabilitate and reintegrate IDPs in Akyab (Sittwe), Kyauktaw, Mrauk U and other townships affected by the 2012 deadly violence in their original habitats and make peace with all ethnic and religious minorities who are being persecuted since the 1960s. </div>
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Instead of doing that, we notice that Myanmar's leaders including State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has persistently laid the blame on the Government of Bangladesh. We would like to reiterate that such a policy is doomed to failure. On the other hand, we would once again like to thank the Government of Bangladesh led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and of course the generous people of Bangladesh who have been persistent in their help for our community especially at a time when we needed it the most. We request Bangladesh to ignore Myanmar's blame game policy and pursue a sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis. </div>
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Last but not the least, we are grateful for Bangladesh's decision not to force the Rohingya refugees out as it would have led them to the killing fields of Arakan. </div>
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<i>For more details, please contact:</i></div>
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Australia: Dr. Hla Myint <a href="tel:+61%20423%20381%20904">+61-423381904</a></div>
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Bangladesh: Ko Ko Linn: <a href="tel:+880%201726-068413">+880-1726068413</a></div>
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Canada: Nur Hasim <a href="tel:(519)%20572-5359">+1-5195725359</a></div>
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Japan: Zaw Min Htut <a href="tel:+81%2080-3083-5327">+81-8030835327</a></div>
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U.K. Ronnie: <a href="tel:+44%207783%20118354">+44-7783118354</a></div>
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U.S.A: Dr. Habibullah: <a href="tel:(443)%20815-8609">+1-4438158609</a></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-78538387891381274772018-11-20T19:10:00.001+01:002018-12-05T22:32:34.684+01:00Ensuring the Safety of Rohingyas as a National Minority Inside Myanmar: Who? How?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYm0BnDWMWzTcAweQq_gD-FNLLYNjFUyjnB9Z8ZQ7PORAvjQGXBO_RHBqPdEYvR9GLQDaxFet5xm08dd5EuWN_A0m5uLq2FLvA9u8Q63tIh6mom8nxwQzuIfXwsf76mYzYzjjMMrl1FxES/s1600/Rohingyas+Repatriation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="750" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYm0BnDWMWzTcAweQq_gD-FNLLYNjFUyjnB9Z8ZQ7PORAvjQGXBO_RHBqPdEYvR9GLQDaxFet5xm08dd5EuWN_A0m5uLq2FLvA9u8Q63tIh6mom8nxwQzuIfXwsf76mYzYzjjMMrl1FxES/s400/Rohingyas+Repatriation.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>By</i> Maung Zarni, Natalie Brinham | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2DCqkvo">Middle East Institute</a> on November 20, 2018</div>
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“It is an ongoing genocide (in Myanmar),” said Mr. Marzuki Darusman, the head of the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission at the official briefing at the full Security Council on October 24, 2018.[1] This official briefing was officially requested by 9 out of the 15 Council members over the objection of China, Russia, Equatorial Guinea and Bolivia). [2]</div>
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On the same day, before the Security Council briefing, Darusman, former Attorney General of Indonesia who headed his country’s National Human Rights Commission and served as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, had held a press conference in New York where he was joined by Professor Yanghee Lee of South Korea, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar.[3]Echoing the UN Fact-Finding Mission Chief’s concerns for Rohingyas’ safety arising out of the continuing existence of structures, institutions, practices and executioners of Myanmar’s genocidal policies, Professor Lee officially opposed the scheme of repatriation of one million Rohingyas who have taken refuge across the borders on Bangladeshi soil.[4] </div>
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Amid calls for international accountability — international because Myanmar lacks an independent and competent judiciary, as well as the political will to bring to justice the main military perpetrators of the genocide[5] — the government of Bangladesh has prioritized the repatriation of Rohingyas.[6] To be sure, the massive influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh has placed a heavy economic, social and political burden on the country. </div>
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The flurry of activities by Bangladesh authorities — including organizing and attending international conferences and hosting countless visits by foreign heads of state and delegations, and celebrities that are focused on addressing the root cause of the recurring waves of refugee inflows from Myanmar — indicate that the continuing presence of Rohingya refugees in the country is an all-consuming concern for both its government and society at large.[7] </div>
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Because third-country resettlement of one million Rohingyas is not a viable solution, Dhaka’s focus on repatriation — as opposed to holding Myanmar perpetrators of genocidal crimes accountable — is not only understandable but also warranted. However, the most crucial question is how to address the justifiable, widespread and profound fear of further waves of attacks and being sent back to live under genocidal conditions among the deeply traumatized Rohingyas in the camps in Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh.[8]</div>
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For two consecutive years, Prime Minister Sheik Hasina has gone to the UN General Assembly and presented her proposal to the international community in order to mobilize support for Bangladesh’s efforts to unload the burden placed on her country.[9] The large-scale impact of neighboring Myanmar’s genocide is all too visible for any visitor to the sprawling camp “city” in Cox’s Bazar. It is also a subject of criminal investigation by the pre-trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court after the ICC issued an unprecedented and fully justified ruling that the cross-border nature of Myanmar’s crimes — deportation and “other (international) crimes” — are within the Court’s jurisdiction and hence the preliminary investigations of allegations and facts must proceed,[10] despite non-signatory Myanmar’s official dismissal of the ruling as “meritless.”[11] </div>
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To her credit, Prime Minister Sheik Hasina has highlighted the essential need of the Rohingya, most specifically the group’s safety, upon return to their places of origin inside Myanmar. In her proposals to the UN in 2017 and 2018, the PM even raised, officially, the issue of establishing “safe zone” for the Rohingyas inside Myanmar[12]— and rightly so.</div>
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Having had to deal with chronically large waves of Rohingya exodus into the Bangladeshi territories since 1978,[13] Dhaka is best positioned to comprehend and appear to fully appreciate, the absence of physical group safety, which is the direct outcome of Myanmar’s genocidal policies and practices, for this largely Muslim ethnic minority population as the prime “push factor.”[14] </div>
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The predominantly Buddhist Myanmar has long singled out the Rohingya population — which qualifies, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission report, as ‘protected group’ under international law[15] — for extermination on Myanmar’s soil. The military-controlled Myanmar state has perceived Rohingyas as a group with a distinct identity, language and culture, and as a demographic proxy which Bangladesh is using to ease its (Dhaka’s) population pressure[16]: although Bangladesh is 40% smaller in area than Myanmar, it is home to over three times as many people. </div>
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Accordingly, the Myanmar military has instituted systematic measures, both violent and non-violent, designed to change the demographic character of the predominantly Rohingya region of Northern Rakhine, having reversed radically the official recognition[17] granted to Rohingyas in the 1950s and early 1960s as an ethnic nationality of the Union of Burma, who are full and equal citizens, like the country’s other minority populations (e.g., Shan, Kachin, Kayah, Chin, Mon, Rakhine, etc.) and that the 2.5 townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathae Daung formed the main administration region of Rohingya people. </div>
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When the Myanmar military realized that its peaceful scheme of changing the Muslim character of Northern Rakhine State of Rohingya homeland through the state-sponsored trans-migration of Buddhist and other non-Muslim internal migrants from other parts of the country was not having any appreciable impact on the region,[18] it decided to resort to waves of state-directed violence against the target-population of Rohingyas.</div>
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Since February 1978, Myanmar’s military leaders have attempted to reduce and eventually erase the Rohingyas’ presence from Bangladesh-Myanmar border region, which stretches 270 miles, framing the region next to the populous Muslim nation of Bangladesh as the “Western gate” of the Union of Myanmar. These systematic attempts at the erasure of Rohingya identity and presence are anchored in the military’s revisionist historical discourse — that Rakhine was a “purely Buddhist” land “contaminated” by the unwelcome intrusions and immigration of Muslims, as openly stated in The State’sWestern Gate (Yangon, 2016),[19] by retired General Khin Nyunt, former chief of the military intelligence services and one of the architects of what Amartya Sen calls “the slow genocide.”[20] </div>
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This official and popular discourse of “Fortress Myanmar” is not applied in the equally porous borderlands with the country’s two giant neighbors, China and India.[21] Inside Myanmar, it is public knowledge that the country has received hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants from the bordering Chinese state of Yunnan — with some estimates putting the number at roughly one million. The Burmese military and political class, including Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party leadership were acutely aware of this illegal Chinese immigration[22] into what is known as “Upper Myanmar,” but both have kept quiet since Myanmar’s relations with China solidified after the post-Cold War Western bloc took punitive measures against the formerly non-aligned State on grounds of the well-documented egregious and pervasive human rights abuses. As a matter of fact, under the previous military-backed government of ex-General Thein Sein (2010-15), Myanmar had even created a new ethnic name — Mong Yang Myanmar — exclusively for the almost 90,000 ethnic Han which assisted the military’s operations against restive Myanmar ethnic nationalities such as the Kokant.[23] </div>
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The fact that Myanmar continues to deny its own official documentation supporting the Rohingyas’ claim of Western Myanmar as their homeland and to categorically dismiss their irrefutable historical and official group identity as Rohingyas[24] while imposing on the group a false identity of “Bengali,” that is, citizens of Bangladesh can only be understood within the framework of genocide.[25] It is not the lack of knowledge on the part of Myanmar leadership that ethnic identities are not simply innate or DNA-based, but are invented by political organizations and communities, states or sub-state level entities.</div>
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The overwhelming majority of the UN member states — save India, Japan, Russia and China — have been vocal in condemning Myanmar’s “gravest crimes in international criminal and humanitarian law,” as the UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar put it. But the public condemnations have not been matched by an equal amount of tangible support for the one million Rohingya genocide survivors in Bangladesh in terms of humanitarian funds, human resources (e.g., trauma counsellors, social workers, etc.), or livelihoods opportunities. Less than half of the need for humanitarian aid has been met.[26] Consequently, Dhaka feels enormous pressure to feed and house, however unsatisfactorily, such a large pool of refugees.</div>
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Against this background, the idea and schemes of repatriation, as well as Bangladesh’s anxiety over the need to begin the repatriation, need to be understood. Beyond the calls for justice and accountability in the form of ICC or ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal on Myanmar (i.e., International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia or International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda), Rohingya repatriation is correctly seen as the only viable, peaceful solution to one of the contemporary world’s greatest humanitarian challenges.[27] </div>
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Importantly, repatriation is interpreted and pursued by different key players for different strategic and policy ends. </div>
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Bangladesh advocates repatriation of Rohingyas, as they put enormous strain on Bangladesh government resources, on society and on the Environment.[28] </div>
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The guilty party of Myanmar agree, largely in principle, to receive the returning Rohingyas back as Aung San Suu Kyi and her foreign ministry strategists regard repatriation as a tactic to placate the outraged UN and other state players calling for the establishment of the international tribunal on Myanmar and supporting the ICC’s criminal investigation of Myanmar’s crimes of deportation and other high crimes. This is an open secret among the politically conscious Burmese. In fact, in a recent interview with the Radio Free Asia Burmese Service, Tun Tin, a well-known member of the Myanmar Chamber of Commerce and a Burmese crony, explicitly stated that repatriation is a way of alleviating the pressure of the international campaign for criminal accountability around Myanmar genocide. </div>
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China is pressuring both Bangladesh and Myanmar to start large-scale repatriation because the Communist leadership do not welcome the deepening of Western involvement in the resource-rich country which Beijing considers an integral component of its long-term strategic scheme of power projection into the Indian Ocean. </div>
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India is following suit out of a different logic: New Delhi has recently begun de-nationalizing the several million Muslims in the country’s restive northeast region of Assam, a first step towards Myanmar-style expulsion and deportation. Additionally, India is vying with China for influence over the ruling Burmese military since the early 1990s, which necessitates Delhi’s unconditional support for Myanmar’s policies towards Rohingyas.</div>
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Japan is pushing repatriation out of its own strategic calculations, lending Aung San Suu Kyi’s government media and money support,[29] in an effort to counteract China’s growing influence over Myanmar.</div>
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ASEAN is split between reformist Malaysia[30] which is openly pushing for strong measures to end the genocide and the rest of the Southeast Asian bloc, made up of largely authoritarian regimes. </div>
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Meanwhile, inside Myanmar, all the key pillars of Myanmar society and politics remain deeply genocidal in their outlooks. Nationally organized Buddhist monks continue to promote venomous anti-Rohingya view while rallying behind the main perpetrator, namely Myanmar Armed Forces. Anti-Rohingya public opinion has largely crystalized, as the direct result of the Myanmar military’s psychological warfare or mass propaganda campaign, using traditional media and, since 2012, Facebook, depicting Rohingyas, falsely as “Islamicists” and “Illegal Bengali invaders” hell-bent on taking over “Buddhist Myanmar.” </div>
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Aung San Suu Kyi herself and her ruling NLD party share the public view that Rohingya identity is “fake” — a political invention dating from the 1950s — and that Rohingyas really belong in Bangladesh. Even if Suu Kyi and her civilian government have the political will — and there is no indication they do — they have no control over the most powerful organ of the State, the Security Sector, and the most culturally influential pillar of Myanmar, the Buddhist Order. Locally in Rakhine, the shared homeland between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingyas, Rakhine nationalists continue to mobilize openly against any large-scale repatriation.</div>
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Against this overwhelmingly hostile background — not to mention Myanmar’s state’s policies of persecution, including laws and regulations, which remain completely unchanged — no repatriation without guaranteed safety for Rohingyas is conceivable. The majority of Rohingyas may be illiterate, poorly educated or disorganized. This is in spite of Suu Kyi’s disingenuous public statement that her government has implemented 81 of 88 recommendations by the Rakhine Commission chaired by the late Kofi Annan.[31] </div>
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The 40 years of life under genocidal conditions have taught a bitter lesson: the Rohingyas’ physical safety in Myanmar — whether they be future returnees (1.2 millions) from Bangladesh, the estimated 400,000 trapped in Rohingya villages and Rakhine’s southern regional town of Buthidaung, or those in IDP camps — cannot be assured without international protection. It is inconceivable that without this requisite safety any repatriation will be voluntary or sustainable.</div>
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Just one week before the planned bilateral repatriation, Myanmar continues with its official — and non-credible — framing of the human rights and humanitarian catastrophe as a direct result of (Muslim) “terrorism.” UN Ambassador Hau Do Suan told Fox News that “the root cause of this humanitarian issue is because of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) — the Muslim terrorist group. They attacked against the government in Rakhine State in October 2016 and again in August 2017. This humanitarian problem was ignited by those terrorist attacks.”[32]</div>
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It is therefore urgently necessary for the issue of the guaranteed safety for Rohingyas in Myanmar to be placed at the center of all international policy discussions on Myanmar’s ongoing genocide. </div>
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However, no meaningful discussion which rightly prioritizes Rohingyas’ need for protection and guaranteed basic human and citizenship rights can take place in the face of the repeated refusals by the powerful Asian governments (such as Japan, China and India) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to accept the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s dire warning that Myanmar genocide is “ongoing.”</div>
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To overcome this obstacle, the Rohingya people urgently need an international coalition of UN member states prepared to pool their respective diplomatic, commercial, political and even military influences in order to bring an effective end to Myanmar’s slow genocide. In his October 4, 2018 talk at the Council on Foreign Relations,Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr. Mahathir Mohammad stated openly that military intervention (in Myanmar) may be needed.[33] </div>
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Such interventions may not be in the cards, but certainly some form of coordinated and collective protection and guaranteed human rights for the Rohingya is fully warranted. In the attempts to set up protection mechanisms, churches and other non-Christian religious and civil society institutions can play more proactive and strategic roles, particularly given the fact that the religious and group identity of the Rohingya minority is a major driver behind Myanmar’s genocide.</div>
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[1] “Marzuki Darusman (Chairperson of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar) on the situation in Myanmar - Security Council, 8381st meeting,” Webtv.un.org, October 24, 2018, <a href="http://webtv.un.org/watch/marzuki-darusman-chairperson-of-the-independent-international-fact-finding-mission-on-myanmar-on-the-situation-in-myanmar-security-council-8381st-meeting/5853018577001/?term=.%C2%A0">http://webtv.un.org/watch/marzuki-darusman-chairperson-of-the-independe…</a>; See also “Rohingya genocide is still going on, says top UN investigator,” The Guardian, October 24, 2018, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/24/rohingya-genocide-is-still-going-on-says-top-un-investigator">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/24/rohingya-genocide-is-stil…</a>.</div>
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[2] “China fails to stop U.N. Security Council Myanmar briefing,” Reuters, October 24, 2018, <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-myanmar-rohingya-un/china-fails-in-bid-to-stop-u-n-security-council-myanmar-briefing-idUKKCN1MY2R8">https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-myanmar-rohingya-un/china-fails-in-bi…</a>. See also “8381st Security Council Meeting: Situation in Myanmar,” UNmultimedia.org, October 24, 2018, <a href="https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2284/2284841/">https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2284/2284841/</a>.</div>
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[3] “Ms. Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar and Mr. Marzuki Darusman, Chair of the UN Fact-finding Mission in Myanmar,” Webtv.un.org, October 24, 2018, <a href="http://webtv.un.org/watch/ms.-yanghee-lee-special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-myanmar-and-mr.-marzuki-darusman-chair-of-the-un-fact-finding-mission-in-myanmar-press-conference-24-october-2018/5852936585001/?term=">http://webtv.un.org/watch/ms.-yanghee-lee-special-rapporteur-on-the-sit…</a>.</div>
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[4] Ibid.</div>
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[5] International Commission of Jurists, “Myanmar: Government’s Commission of Inquiry cannot deliver justice or accountability,” September 7, 2018, <a href="https://www.icj.org/myanmar-governments-commission-of-inquiry-cannot-deliver-justice-or-accountability/">https://www.icj.org/myanmar-governments-commission-of-inquiry-cannot-de…</a>.</div>
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[6] Personal communications with Bangladeshi authorities including the Speaker of the National Parliament of Bangladesh and the Foreign Minister, between November 2017 and Fall 2018.</div>
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[7] Ibid.</div>
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[8] “Aid groups say Rohingya ‘terrified’ about Myanmar repatriation,” AFP, November 9, 2018, <a href="https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2018/11/09/aid-groups-say-rohingya-terrified-about-myanmar-repatriation">https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2018/11/09/aid-groups-say…</a>. See also “Exclusive: ‘Can’t eat, can’t sleep’ - Rohingya on Myanmar repatriation list,” <i>Reuters</i>, November 9, 2018, <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-cant-eat-cant-sleep-rohingya-myanmar-repatriation-120901313.html.%C2%A0">https://uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-cant-eat-cant-sleep-rohingya-myanma…</a>;</div>
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[9] Our 5-point proposal can solve Rohingya crisis: PM,” The Daily Star, October 17, 2017, <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/city/our-5-point-proposal-can-solve-rohingya-crisis-pm-1477597">https://www.thedailystar.net/city/our-5-point-proposal-can-solve-rohing…</a>. See also “PM Hasina at UNGA: UN-Myanmar deal must end Rohingya crisis,” The Daily Star, September 28, 2018, <a href="https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/foreign-affairs/2018/09/28/pm-hasina-for-effective-implementation-of-un-myanmar-deal-to-end-rohingya-crisis">https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/foreign-affairs/2018/09/28/pm-h…</a>.</div>
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[10] International Criminal Court, “Statement of ICC Prosecutor on opening a Preliminary Examination concerning the Rohingya,” September 18, 2018, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBDakDv9s2o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBDakDv9s2o</a>.</div>
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[11] “Myanmar Calls ICC Request For Jurisdiction Over Rohingya Expulsion ‘Meritless,’” Radio Free Asia, August 9, 2018, <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/myanmar-calls-icc-request-for-jurisdiction-over-rohingya-expulsion-meritless-08092018152458.html">https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/myanmar-calls-icc-request-for-…</a>.</div>
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[12] “Bangladesh’s PM at UN urges ‘safe zones’ for Myanmar's Rohingya,” Agence France-Presse, September 22, 2017, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/22/bangladeshs-pm-un-urges-safe-zones-myanmars-rohingya/">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/22/bangladeshs-pm-un-urges-saf…</a>.</div>
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[13] Dr. Jeff Crisp, former head of Policy Development and Evaluation at UNHCR, shares his first-hand knowledge of ‘the shameful history of Rohingya repatriation since 1978. See “We must not repeat the shameful history of returning Rohingya refugees,” <i>Refugee Studies Centre</i>, Oxford University, January 17, 2018, <a href="https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/news/we-must-not-repeat-the-shameful-history-of-returning-rohingya-refugees-jeff-crisp">https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/news/we-must-not-repeat-the-shameful-history-o…</a>" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline. </div>
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[14] See Natalie Brinham, “Breaking the cycle of expulsion, forced repatriation, and exploitation for Rohingya,” <i>Open Democracy</i>, September 26, 2017, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/natalie-brinham/breaking-cycle-of-expulsion-forced-repatriation-and-exploitation-for-r">https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/natalie-brinham/breaking-cy…</a>; and Maung Zarni and Natalie Brihnam, “Waves of Genocidal Terror against Rohingyas by Myanmar and the Resultant Exodus Since 1978,” Middle East Institute,<a href="http://www.mei.edu/publications/waves-genocidal-terror-against-rohingyas-myanmar-and-resultant-exodus-1978">http://www.mei.edu/publications/waves-genocidal-terror-against-rohingya…</a>.</div>
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[15] Members of the Rohingya community are protected under the UN Declaration on the Right of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. See “Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar,” Human Rights Council, September 18, 2018, p. 15, #45.</div>
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[16]See Maung Zarni and Natalie Brinham, “An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide,” Middle East Institute, <a href="http://www.mei.edu/publications/evolution-rohingya-persecution-myanmar-strategic-embrace-genocide">http://www.mei.edu/publications/evolution-rohingya-persecution-myanmar-…</a>.</div>
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[17] Official Encyclopedia of Burma (Burmese), Literary House, Union of Burma Government Press, V. 9, under “Mayu District” (of Rohingya), 1964. See also Gregory Poling, “Separating Fact from Fiction about Myanmar’s Rohingya,” <i>Center for Strategic and International Studies</i>, Washington, DC, February 13, 2014, <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/separating-fact-fiction-about-myanmar%E2%80%99s-rohingya">https://www.csis.org/analysis/separating-fact-fiction-about-myanmar%E2%…</a>; and Brigadier General Aung Gyi, Vice-Chief of Staff - Army, Myanmar Armed Forces, “Rohingyas are equal and full citizens and an ethnic minority integral to the Union of Burma,” Khit Yay (Current Affairs), Ministry of Defence, Rangoon, July 4, 1961, <a href="https://www.maungzarni.net/en/news/rohingyas-are-equal-and-full-citizens-and-ethnic-minority-integral-union-burma-myanmar-military">https://www.maungzarni.net/en/news/rohingyas-are-equal-and-full-citizen…</a>.</div>
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[18] A former military intelligence divisional head of the inter-agency Na Sa Ka based in Rakhine State capital of Sittwe openly admitted in a Burmese language essay that the peaceful means designed to change the demographic character of Muslim region of N. Rakhine failed because the military was not devoting enough financial resources</div>
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[19] See ex-General Khin Nyunt, The State’s Western Gate Problem (in Burmese, hereafter cited as “The State’s Western Gate Problem”) (Yangon: One Hundred Flowers Press, 2016). This is the single most detailed account of Rohingya persecution from the perspective of a key perpetrator, openly explaining different schemes, strategies and rationales, adopted by Myanmar military in order to change the demographic and ethnic character of the predominantly Muslim and Rohingya N. Rakhine State of Myanmar. Khin Nyunt was a young major who had played different roles since the very first state-directed terror campaign against Rohingyas under the false disguise of “illegal immigration” checks in February 1978 until his ouster as chief of military intelligence in October 18, 2004. In 1992, he founded Na Sa Ka, the border affairs inter-agency instrument of persecution made up of the ministries of Immigration, Customs, Religious Affairs, Justice, Home Affairs, Defence, and Foreign Affairs, which was formally dismantled only in 2013: for the agency came under a close scrutiny by international researchers and media as it came to be known as the main instrument of Myanmar genocide. Despite its formal dissolution the same repressive mission and institutionalized practices of persecution continue.</div>
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[20] Amartya Sen, “The Slow Genocide of the Rohingya,” Harvard University, November 4, 2014, <a href="https://tribunalonmyanmar.org/2014/11/15/the-slow-genocide-of-the-rohingya-by-nobel-laureate-amartya-sen/.%C2%A0">https://tribunalonmyanmar.org/2014/11/15/the-slow-genocide-of-the-rohin…</a>; See also Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley (aka National Brinham), “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya,” <i>Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal</i> 23, 3 (June 2014): 683-754, <a href="http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/1377">http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/1377</a>.</div>
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[21] Myanmar shares over 1,000 miles of borders with each of these neighbors in the West, Far North and the East. </div>
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[22] Personal communications with a former member of the National League for Democracy party team which screened public letters sent to the party leader Aung San Suu Kyi who answered written questions in her well-publicised weekly “Democracy Forum” which she held at the entrance of her house in Rangoon. Myanmar military intelligence has been widely blamed for “selling citizenship” to thousands of Han Chinese immigrants, residents and traders from the Sino-Burmese border province of Yunnan.</div>
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[23] “The Mong Wong, Burma’s newest citizens, face backlash,” ReliefWeb, May 6, 2016, <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/mong-wong-burma-s-newest-citizens-face-backlash?fbclid=IwAR1kTI8tYIQJ39IsUvOGfR9c_7Swkl97fEMGwBddlXG7RyNnQOMbSBSMvOU">https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/mong-wong-burma-s-newest-citizens-…</a>" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline.</div>
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[24] At his invitation-only official talk at Chatham House in London in July 2013, the then Myanmar President and ex-General Thein Sein repeated the institutionalized denial: ”We do not have a group named Rohingya.” David Mepham, Dispatches Burma: “Excuse me, Mr. President…”, Human Rights Watch UK, July 19, 2013, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/19/dispatches-burma-excuse-me-mr-presiden">https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/19/dispatches-burma-excuse-me-mr-presi…</a> .</div>
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[25] As part of the systematic destruction of a targeted racial, ethnic, religious or national group, in whole or in part, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, conceived genocide as a two-phase process with respect to the group’s identity or “national pattern”, as he called it: first, the destruction of the group’s identity/pattern and second, the imposition on those group members, who survive the destruction, of a new identity/pattern as chosen by the perpetrators. This crucial point is often overlooked. See Raphael Lemkin, Axis rule in Occupied Europe, (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2008), specifically Chapter IX, “Genocide”: 79.</div>
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[26] “Int’l humanitarian appeal for Rohingya crisis underfunded: UN chief,” China Daily, August 29, 2018 <a href="http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30353212.%C2%A0">http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30353212. </a>;</div>
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[27] For a thoughtful essay on putting the rights, safety and well-being of the Rohingyas at the center of policy discussions, see Bill Richardson, “Accountability Alone Will Not Solve Myanmar's Rohingya Crisis,” TIME, November 5, 2018, <a href="http://time.com/5442807/myanmar-bangladesh-rohingya-acountability-bill-richardson/">http://time.com/5442807/myanmar-bangladesh-rohingya-acountability-bill-…</a>.</div>
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[28] Mehdi Chowdhury, “Rohingya refugees remain a heavy burden on Bangladesh,” The Conversation, August 20, 2018, <a href="http://theconversation.com/rohingya-refugees-remain-a-heavy-burden-on-bangladesh-101570">http://theconversation.com/rohingya-refugees-remain-a-heavy-burden-on-b…</a>. ></div>
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[29] Writing in a Washington Post op-ed, Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Kono exhorts the international “not to criticize, but to patiently support Myanmar’s own efforts for the early, safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation of refugees.” See Taro Kono, “The world must support Myanmar and Bangladesh,” <i>Washington Post</i>, September 25, 2018, <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/s_sa/sea2/page4e_000905.html">https://www.mofa.go.jp/s_sa/sea2/page4e_000905.html</a>.</div>
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[30] PM Mahathir Mohammad, “The world needs to draw the line. Military actions may be necessary (to end Myanmar genocide)," Council on Foreign Relations, New York City, October 4, 2018, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwHmy_3UDQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwHmy_3UDQ</a>. (Hereafter “The world needs to draw the line.”)</div>
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[31] Aung San Suu Kyi, “Democratic Transition in Myanmar: Challenges and the Way Forward,” The 43rd Singapore Lecture, Singapore, August 21, 2018, <a href="http://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/democratic-transition-in-myanmar-challenges-and-the-way-forward/">http://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/democratic-transition-in-myanmar…</a>.</div>
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[32]“Burma doubles down on claims to justify treatment of Rohingya minority,“ Fox News, November 10, 2018, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/burma-un-ambassador-denies-rohingya-genocide-doubles-down-on-claims-they-are-victims-of-muslim-terrorists">https://www.foxnews.com/world/burma-un-ambassador-denies-rohingya-genoc…</a>.</div>
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[33] “The world needs to draw the line.”</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-65127214241441708312018-11-12T19:41:00.001+01:002018-12-03T11:07:20.739+01:00Premature Rohingya Repatriation: Harmful for both Bangladesh and Rohingya<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj</td></tr>
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RB Opinion</div>
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November 12, 2018</div>
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Some may differ. But I believe the government of Bangladesh is currently not seeing beyond Chinese Economic Inducements and some temporary political leverages in the region. It is important to consider all aspects especially when an action could endanger thousands of human lives and is bad for a country's long-term national interests.</div>
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Somebody, please deliver these points to the Bangladesh government and policy makers. </div>
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Here how they are:</div>
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Bangladesh and Myanmar have made a bilateral agreement on Rohingya repatriation (which is due to begin soon). However, the survivors/refugees themselves, all alike, say "we prefer deaths over being forcibly sent back to Myanmar. We will at least get funerals here after deaths. Over there, the cruel Myanmar do not treat us like humans and commit all sort of atrocities." Some refugees have even said that they would commit suicide if foced to go back to the 'Killing Fields in Myanmar'.</div>
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The UN Human Rights Council have proven that Genocide on the Rohingya people is still going on in Myanmar. Under such condition, (possible) forced repatriation of Rohingya by the Bangladesh government and other parties (involved in the process) are violating the act of Non-refoulement and facilitating Myanmar's Genocide (on Rohingya). </div>
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On Monday (Nov 12), Camp-in-Charge (CiC) of Balukhali camp 9 and 10 in Cox's Bazaar summoned all Mazhis (Captains or Focal Points) and Elders from the camps and threatened them to persuade 2,260 Survivors enlisted for repatriation scheduled on November 15. If failed, they were told, the Bangladesh authorities will cease Ration Supply to the refugees, bar the refugee youths from working in NGOs/INGOs, restrict their movements and stop local shopkeepers/vendors from selling foods and goods to them, implying that the survivors/refugees will be kept starved. </div>
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'Go back or die here out of starvation in a confined place.' Just like that? What is so big a crime the survivors have committed by seeking refuge in the country that they deserve to be starved and confined (to death)?</div>
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Coming back to the point, the Myanmar government has explicitly shown its intention that the returning refugee will be confined in internment camps or a very small place of housing arrangement fenced with barbed wire.</div>
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There will be no freedom to move around for Rohingya. Genocide and atrocity crimes against them will continue silently. In turn, that will force the people to flee from the internment camps one by one and silently to Bangladesh. And these people will successfully be assimilating in Bangladesh societies, like it's been going on for decades. Everyone is aware of that. Bangladesh won't be able to stop that gradual migration by the Rohingya (because of Genocide) into the country.</div>
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Consequently, in Myanmar, the population of Rohingya decrease and increase in Bangladesh over the time. Who gains and who loses at the end? It's all clear.</div>
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Therefore, we request the government and people of Bangladesh to 'Make Hay While the Sun is Shining' and not miss this historical opportunity which will not only serve Bangladesh's long term national interest but also end Genocide and shape Rohingya's future. Please be an important part in ending the Genocide going on more than 40 years. Please help them get justice and International Protection to ensure Genocide (on them) never happens again.</div>
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Dear Bangladesh's Government, please see beyond Chinese economic inducements; and bilateral economic and trade ties with Myanmar. Please reconsider your position on the premature repatriation of the Rohingya which will further endanger them. The solidarity of World Citizens are with Rohingya. Thus, if you cooperate with Rohingya and the governments of many countries that are in Solidarity with Rohingya, you could find a way out of Chinese pressures as well, if there are any.</div>
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These people are not threats to Bangladesh but will really benefit the country provided the opportunities. They are not threats to Myanmar sovereignty, either. They are threat to none. Perhaps, their oppressor (Myanmar genocidal regime) perceives them to be threats because they are committing Genocide (on them), just like a burgalar percieves the (house) owner a threat.</div>
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All they want to dream and live like other human beings, like you, like them, like all. Please help them dream and live as equally as other human beings. Yes, they are human beings, too, and human lives are more precious than anything else.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-43343377080933064742018-11-10T19:54:00.004+01:002018-11-29T12:12:29.356+01:00Bangladesh Attempts to Revoke Rohingya 'Refugee' Status<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Rohingya Today</div>
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<b>Cox's Bazaar</b> — Bangladesh attempts to strip UNHCR-registered Rohingya refugees of their 'Refugee' Status, triggering them to go on 'Ration Strike' since November 1 out of fear of forced repatriation to Myanmar, refugees say.</div>
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Approximately 250,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh to escape atrocity crimes committed by the Myanmar armed forces under 'Operation Pyi Thayar' in 1991 and 1992, apart from about one million Rohingya genocide survivors who have fled Myanmar to seek refuge in Bangladesh in last two years. In 1993, a bilateral agreement made Bangladesh and Myanmar to repatriate the survivors/refugees (without their participation).</div>
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As the refugees resisted the forced repatriation to Myanmar, Bangladesh used FORCE. The refugees were beaten, tortured, arrested and detained by the Bangladesh authorities. Most of them were forced to return to Myanmar in years following 1995.</div>
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Some 25,000 refugees who showed resilience and resisted the forced repatriation were registered by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) as Refugees. They have been taking refuge in two camps, Nayapara and Kutupalong, since then. The number of refugees increased to 38,000 as the UNHCR newly registered ‘unregistered relatives’ of ‘the registered refugees’ in 2005.</div>
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<b>Bangladesh, UNHCR and Forced Repatriation</b></div>
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The government of Bangladesh have, since 1st November (this year), been attempting to reduce the status of these (old) registered refugees to that of Genocide Survivors who have sought refuge since 2016 and were merely recognized as 'Displaced' Persons.</div>
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"We demanded the Bangladesh authorities to register new arrival of genocide survivors as refugees. They replied that they wouldn't do that. Instead, they are attempting to revoke our refugee status.</div>
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"They are planning to force us back to the killing fields in Myanmar, an action which will not only put security to our lives in jeopardy but also put our future in further limbo," said Mohammed Islam (not real name), a refugee in Kutupalong registered-refugee camps.</div>
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It has further been reported that as registered refugees in the two camps are refusing to produce their documents before the Bangladesh authorities in fear of unwanted changes, the Bangladesh forces have begun harassing and beating them.</div>
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Over the last two months, UNHCR has secretly changed the title of the Family Sheets of the registered refugees, from MCR (Master Registration Card) to FCN (Family Count Number), and categorized them (the family sheets) under '128' ─ a registration code number applied to the new arrival of refugees ─ and hence, downgrading their recognized refugee status. Similarly, WFP (World Food Programme) has changed the name of the Refugees' Ration Cards from 'Food Card' to 'Assistance Card.'</div>
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<b>Rohingya Refugees Resist Forced Repatriation</b></div>
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After the Bangladesh authorities began coercing the (registered) refugees to agree to their plan (of repatriation) on November 1, they (the refugees) wrote to UNHCR Sub-office in Cox's Bazaar. However, due to the UNHCR staffs at the Office being local Bangladeshis, no response has been made and their effort to find a solution was unsuccessful, according to the refugees.</div>
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The refugees in Kutupalong and Nayapara Camps have gone on 'Ration Strike' as both Bangladesh and UNHCR has remained largely irresponsive. Meanwhile, a refugee in the camp said that they have been trying to reach out to UNHCR Head-office in Dhaka.</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">"We know and there are evidences that Genocide is still going on in Myanmar. We fear of getting killed. And so, after having spent 28 years in dismal condition as refugees, we can't return there without 'International Protection' and equal human rights are restored for us.</span><br />
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"As refugees we were given three options: to return to Myanmar if we feel safe, live in Bangladesh by integrating in the local societies and if none of them is possible, then we are to be resettled to third countries. Therefore, we request the concerned international authorities to find a durable solution for us as urgently as possible," said a refugee going by the name ‘Shomsul Alam.’</div>
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<b>Rohingya Refugees Prefer Death over Repatriation to Myanmar</b></div>
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Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, both old registered and new arrivals alike, unanimously say that they prefer death or getting killed in Bangladesh over being forced to return to Myanmar when the Genocide is still going on there.</div>
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One woman genocide survivor whose name is in the list of the forced repatriation said “I don’t even know how my name appeared in the list. I didn’t give consent for that.</div>
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We prefer death over here. Or somebody kill us here. At least we will get proper funerals. Over there, they behave like animals to us. They are so cruel to us. We won’t there until there is a protection, justice and all other equal rights for us.”</div>
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On September 2, a 48-year-old genocide survivor, Nur Kasim, seeking refuge in ‘Nurali Pura’ camps near ‘Shal Bagan’, fell ill over the fears of forced repatriation to Myanmar and died after a while apparently from Cardiac Arrest. Similarly, on November 4, another 68-year-old Genocide survivor, Dil Mohammed, attempted suicide in Unci-Parang makeshift camps after hearing that he was enlisted for the forced repatriation.</div>
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Dr. Maung Zarni, a human rights activist and Burmese (Myanmar) Scholar, has recently remarked that Bangladesh is committing an Act of Refoulement by forcibly repatriating the Rohingya genocide survivors who have legitimate rights to seek refugee status. And therefore, it also makes Bangladesh complicit in Myanmar's Genocide of Rohingya.</div>
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[Report by Zakir Ahmed; Edited by M.S. Anwar]</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Please email to: <a href="mailto:editor@rohingyablogger.com">editor@rohingyablogger.com</a> to send your reports and feedback.</span></div>
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RB Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07364708528501137806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-62931949125903154472018-11-10T12:44:00.000+01:002018-11-22T20:19:41.486+01:00Press Release: ASEAN leaders must push Myanmar to end Rohingya genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Media Release from Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK</div>
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For Immediate Release 10th November 2018</div>
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<b>ASEAN leaders must push Myanmar to end Rohingya genocide</b></div>
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Southeast Asian leaders must stop burying their heads in the sand and pressure Myanmar to end the ongoing genocide against Rohingya when they gather in Singapore next week, said the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK).</div>
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ASEAN heads of state are meeting for the 33rdASEAN Summit in Singapore between 13 and 15 November, when they are expected to discuss political and economic issues facing the region.</div>
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“ASEAN’s response to the crisis in Rakhine State has been marked by shameful silence and inaction. As heads of state gather in Singapore next week, they must pressure Myanmar to end all abuses against the Rohingya and show that they will not stand idly by while a genocide is unfolding in one of their member states,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK.</div>
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“The almost complete lack of regional pressure on Myanmar will only mean that Nay Pyi Taw feels emboldened to carry out abuse against the Rohingya in the future. ASEAN has a key role to play in ending the atrocities against Rohingya – leaders must take this seriously.”</div>
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Although the ASEAN Charter spells out a commitment to human rights and allows member states to “address emergency situations affecting ASEAN by taking appropriate actions”, in practice the regional bloc’s “non-interference” principle has meant that it has largely stayed silent on atrocity crimes in member states.</div>
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Since the Myanmar security forces launched a “clearance operation” in Rakhine State in August 2017 that killed thousands of Rohingya and drove more than 700,000 to flee across the border to Bangladesh, there has been no official ASEAN condemnation of Myanmar’s actions.</div>
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Some individual ASEAN states and officials – notably from Indonesia and Malaysia – have, however, spoken out. On 29 August, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah called on Myanmar to bring perpetrators of crimes against Rohingya to justice, and to let the Rohingya return “to peace and a life of dignity”.</div>
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“Malaysia and Indonesia have shown moral courage in defending the rights of the Rohingya. Now it is up to ASEAN as body to follow suit, and once and for all prove that it is genuinely committed to creating a region where atrocity crimes are unacceptable,” said Tun Khin.</div>
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The ASEAN Summit in Singapore is taking place as Myanmar is preparing to receive the first group of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, part of a repatriation deal signed between the two states in November 2017.</div>
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Myanmar has announced that 2,260 Rohingya will be returned to Rakhine State in mid-November, even though the refugees themselves have not been formally consulted, and conditions in Myanmar are far from safe and secure for their return. Yanghee Lee, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, earlier this week urged Myanmar and Bangladesh to halt the repatriation plans as Nay Pyi Taw had not taken any steps to create a safe environment for Rohingya.</div>
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BROUK stresses that repatriation effort should not start until the full human rights of Rohingya can be guaranteed inside Myanmar. This must include ending all forms of discrimination against Rohingya, granting them full citizenship, and a guarantee of international protection for Rohingya against further abuses by the military.</div>
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“The rushed plans to push Rohingya refugees across the border into a country where they were subjected to systematic killings not long ago must be stopped. Myanmar continues to impose widespread discrimination against Rohingya, and as long as no perpetrators have been held to account, the risk of further abuse from the security forces is virtually guaranteed,” said Tun Khin.</div>
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“ASEAN leaders should do all they can to ensure that the repatriation plans do not begin until the human rights of returning refugees can be guaranteed. Crucially, the Rohingya community itself must also be consulted about any plans affecting their future.”</div>
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For more information, please contact Tun Khin +44 7888714866.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-11038707767944462512018-10-25T13:37:00.000+02:002018-11-21T20:43:33.263+01:00Activist for Rohingya Muslims calls on Tokyo to speak out over refugee crisis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Thursday. | CHISATO TANAKA</td></tr>
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<i>By</i> Chisato Tanaka, Published by <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/10/25/national/activist-rohingya-muslims-calls-tokyo-speak-refugee-crisis/?fbclid=IwAR2sAN3TDUdnzN1y9vPGsv5gHhkcoIGB1E8eLGlwtW83YrxlxTh1cAIv8oQ#.W9GkcaeB3Uo">The Japan Times</a> on October 25, 2018</div>
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A leader of a global network of activists for Rohingya Muslims on Thursday called on Japan to actively speak out against the alleged abuse and genocide against Myanmar’s ethnic minority by the country’s military and strongly criticized Tokyo for its relative silence on a crisis that has become a major international concern.</div>
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“There are 400 villages burned to the ground … Japan cannot be so out of line from the reality. Rohingyas are treated as guilty (just) because they exist,” Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.</div>
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Around 723,000 Rohingya people fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the year after violence broke out in the Rakhine state in the Buddhist-majority country in August 2017, according to the UNHCR, the U.N.’s refugee agency. More than 40 percent of them were under age 12.</div>
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In September this year, a U.N. fact-finding mission released a report on the situation, saying that the armed forces of Myanmar are the main perpetrator of the “gross human rights violations and international crimes” committed in Rakhine and other states.</div>
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Zarni, who is visiting Japan to give speeches about the plight of the Rohingya people, said international intervention is imperative and Japan could take a leading role as the world’s third-biggest economy.</div>
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“Japan can simply say we are going to have a policy review,” he said, signaling his frustration with the Asian country, which he views as not doing enough to address the humanitarian crisis.</div>
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Michimi Muranushi, an international politics professor at Gakushuin University who will be giving lectures with Zarni, told The Japan Times that the Japanese government appears to be avoiding the use of the term “Rohingya” in consideration of the fact the Myanmar government does not recognize the people as citizens.</div>
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“The government has been really strict about not using that word,” said Muranushi, noting that it instead has usually referred to the people as “Muslims in the Rakhine state.”</div>
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Zarni argued that a language encyclopedia published by the Myanmar government says that “irrefutably and unequivocally, and officially, Rohingya people are an official ethnic minority who have ancestral lands in the northern Rakhine state of Myanmar” and that the Southeast Asian country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi also “has access to this document.”</div>
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When Suu Kyi visited Japan earlier in the month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a joint news conference that he values her efforts “to cope with a difficult agenda,” including economic reforms and “issues related to Rakhine state.” Abe also said the refugee issue poses a “very complex and grave” problem, and Japan will extend assistance to help them return to Myanmar and resettle there.</div>
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The Japanese government is reportedly said to be considering accepting more refugees who have fled their home to neighboring countries for resettlement. Zarni said Abe should accept more Rohingya people as they could become “assets,” for example by becoming part of the country’s workforce, which is experiencing shortages as Japan struggles with a graying population and declining birthrate.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-45466921068116308682018-10-22T16:55:00.002+02:002018-11-20T19:11:14.194+01:00“Genocide cards”: Rohingya refugees on why they risked their lives to refuse ID cards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images.</td></tr>
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<i>By</i> Natalie Brinham | Published by <a href="https://bit.ly/2ExQRw6">Open Democracy</a> on October 21, 2018</div>
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<b>Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s attempts to provide them with documentation.</b></div>
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In 2016, Nural, as a leader in a Rohingya village in Rathedaung, was called to a meeting by a high-ranking officer from the Myanmar Border Guard Police. There, Nural and the gathered village leaders were told all Rohingya must now accept identity cards, known as nationality verification cards (NVCs), or they would “no longer be allowed to remain in the country” and be “driven out”. Despite the risk of speaking out, Nural raised his voice in the meeting, “These NVC cards make us into foreigners who are supposed to apply for citizenship. We are already citizens of this country.” In his frustration and anger, he pounded his fist on the table three times. Four armed officers pointed their guns at his head, escorted him out of the room and handcuffed him to a chair. Fortunately, he was not among the 30 men who were arrested in the village that day. He was not the man who was shot dead while running away from the guards that came searching for his father-in-law. He was not the man who was sentenced to seven years in prison, or the one who was blinded in one eye by police beatings. His village escaped being burnt that day – only to be razed a year later.</div>
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Nural is only educated to primary level, but he knows well the history of his people. He knows his Rohingya forefathers have resided in the north Rakhine region centuries before the Burmese generals in power now, who are Johnny-come-latelies by comparison. He knows that his parents and grandparents carried the same citizenship cards and had the same rights as all other citizens of independent Myanmar. And that Rohingyas’ proof of citizenship and belonging has been systematically removed over the past thirty-five years through the confiscation, destruction, nullification, and targeted non-issuance of documents, all carried out by multiple civilian and military agencies under a single command. He is sure that NVCs are just the latest in a long-line of ID cards that attempt to recategorise Rohingya as foreigners, attack their group identity and remove their rights.</div>
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In all Rohingya communities, village chairmen and yar ein hmu (leaders of 100 households) like Nural were ordered to accept the cards. They were told if they did not, they would be dismissed from their positions and punished under the law. Some held out – others could not. Nural tells me with pride that his was one of eight villages in Rathedaung that stood united against the NVCs. He, himself, held out. He was just one of many Rohingya who resisted the destruction of their identity as a group indigenous to the Rakhine region by refusing the cards. </div>
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Now, after having fled across the border into Bangladesh, Rohingya are facing a new chapter in their struggle against identity cards. But this time threat is coming from an unexpected source – the United Nations refugee agency – who have proposed a form of documentation which Rohingya claim is almost identical to the cards imposed by the Myanmar state.</div>
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<b>Nationality verification and genocide</b></div>
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Between 2016 and 2017, villages were subjected to night-time “security” raids which villagers say were linked to the NVC cards. One man described with tears of anger and sadness that his older brother died after being bitten by a snake while hiding in the forest one night. As the men hid, they left behind <a href="https://www.kaladanpress.org/images/document/2018/RapebyCommandWeb3.pdf">women and girls who were repeatedly subjected to sexual violence</a> at the hands of the security forces. “I cannot even speak of what happened to our women, while we hid.” he said.Across ten focus groups and multiple in-depth interviews, I have been told that without the NVCs, school children were not allowed to sit for final examinations, fishermen could no longer fish, cattle traders could no longer go to market, businessmen could no longer pass through checkpoints, parents could no longer register the births of their children, prisoners could not be released at the end of their sentences, sick people could not go to the hospital, and retirees could no longer draw their salaries. It became barely possible to eke out a living, support a family or survive. The attempted enforcement of identity cards was, and still is, aiding, what the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugHhAwARb98">Indian philosopher Amartya Sen has described</a> as, a “slow genocide” in Myanmar. But still communities hold out. Rohingya accounts of the enforced issuance of NVCs are full of heroism, tragedy, unity, pride and occasionally shame, where they could no longer endure.</div>
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In focus groups, I have often heard NVCs refered to as "genocide cards" by Rohingyas. Following the outbreak of violence in August 2017, the vast majority of Rohingya fled their homelands; many were killed or driven out of the country by terror, their homes burned, and their lands stolen by the state. A nationality verification process, originally (and sometimes still) promoted by international agencies as “a pathway to citizenship” for “stateless” Rohingya, has compounded the physical, symbolic and cultural destruction of a group.</div>
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Unsurprisingly, the 800,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh’s refugee camps are insistent that among their conditions of return to Myanmar is the end of NVCs or NVC-like procedures.¹ They are demanding an end to being labelled “Bengalis”, “foreigners” or “stateless.” They want their citizenship to be recognised and to be called by their own name, Rohingya, as an indigenous group of Myanmar. It is not simply a matter of access to citizenship rights. It is also a matter of safety, security and survival.</div>
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<b>Resistance to UNHCR’s “smart cards” in Bangladesh refugee camps</b></div>
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Displaced Rohingya are also uniting in their resistance to another kind of ID card – the “smart cards” being issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Despite a deep and tangible yearning to return home, they are resisting premature or forced repatriations by refusing to accept UNHCR-issued biometric “smart cards”. These cards are being issued following the <a href="https://progressivevoicemyanmar.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/382854287-The-MOU-between-Myanmar-Government-and-UNDP-and-UNHCR.pdf">memorandum of understanding</a> between the UNHCR, the United Nations Development Programme and the Myanmar government relating to repatriations to Myanmar. Although the UNHCR and the Bangladesh government claim the cards will not lead to immediate repatriation, Rohingya are understandably wary. The UNHCR are in a predicament. Without issuing cards, they struggle to “be operational.” But Rohingya are resolute in their rejection – operations or not.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbzD2o1BekEL2IJagn0nrQAK-vzB_vjLuR6bWAH6EMVTbExxQ5zi_1hawh7rV_MCSesO0Zs3JLNbj1CMk_vAX_R4ix8HtkrJSPCtxBJGlY7Ri2SrlCfaffUxjyHysBP7c3VuxtKnBmeEbf/s1600/PA-36247777.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="460" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbzD2o1BekEL2IJagn0nrQAK-vzB_vjLuR6bWAH6EMVTbExxQ5zi_1hawh7rV_MCSesO0Zs3JLNbj1CMk_vAX_R4ix8HtkrJSPCtxBJGlY7Ri2SrlCfaffUxjyHysBP7c3VuxtKnBmeEbf/s400/PA-36247777.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">A demonstration during a UN Security visit at a Rohingya camp on 29 April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images</td></tr>
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On a visit to a refugee camp in Bangladesh to ask people about citizenship in Myanmar, not smart cards, it soon becomes apparent that the two are linked. The small crowd that gathers around me as I sit in a small open-air shelter steadily grows as the conversation moves on to smart cards. “Please do something about the smart cards, please”, one young refugee begs of me.</div>
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Reports have been circulating for several months among the camp population that there may be shadowy organisations offering 500 Bangladeshi Taka to each family willing to break ranks and take the cards, or that beatings by security officers taking place outside the UNHCR office are doled out for those that refuse. There’s buzzing concern and a subdued sense of confusion and betrayal that a group of residents in another camp have reportedly accepted UNHCR’s smart cards. In almost all of my conversations with refugees over the past two months, the issue of “smart cards” has come up as a major concern related to safety and security on return to their homelands in Myanmar.</div>
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So, what’s wrong with the cards? Firstly, Rohingya are asking that they be recognised on the cards as “refugees”, a term the Bangladesh government is reluctant to entertain fearing it will contribute to the protracted nature of the Rohingya refugee issue in Bangladesh. For Rohingya, whose family and oral histories are ingrained with accounts of repatriations at gunpoint over the past 40 years and the confiscation, destruction and nullification of the documents that prove their citizenship on return, the term “refugee” offers some degree of international protection. It also offers proof that they crossed from their home in Myanmar. Myanmar has labelled past returnees “Bengalis” and the UNHCR, who has presided over the monitoring of returnees in the past, has been powerless to prevent further abuses.</div>
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Secondly, refugees are insisting that the UNHCR cards carry the term “Rohingya”, running contrary to the agency’s practice of not stating ethnic identities on ID cards, lest it result in discrimination. Rohingya demands for recording their identity as a group indigenous to the Rakhine region of Myanmar, relate not to international practices but to practices within Myanmar in which the only variety of citizenship worth having is one based on the membership of an ethnic group considered by the state to be pre-colonial or indigenous – one recorded on all documents. Since these refugees have been targeted for no other reason than their membership of a group, Rohingya understand that the public acknowledgement of their ethnic identity by the Myanmar state is absolutely essential in halting and preventing the ultimate crime against a group, genocide.</div>
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Thirdly, and most significantly, Rohingya repeatedly state that “the smart card is the same as the NVC card”. They have an important point here – smart cards may well not be so different from NVCs in terms of outcomes. All biometric and biographical information handed over to the UNHCR will be shared with the Myanmar government in the event of repatriations, and this can then be used, to produce the identification cards issued by the Myanmar state. But much more importantly, as one bright young refugee explains, jabbing aggressively with his finger at clause 15 of the leaked MOU between UNHCR, UNDP and Myanmar on repatriations, the agreement states after Myanmar has carried out the “necessary verifications” they will issue “appropriate identification papers” and provide a “pathway to citizenship to those eligible”. In short, the ID cards issued on return, using the data from the UNHCR smart cards, will either be NVC cards or something very similar, that require Rohingya to have their nationality verified by a government that has systematically removed evidence of their citizenship and evidence of Rohingya existence, as part of a 40-year genocidal process. If returnees are lucky, or perhaps unlucky, they may be provided with a citizenship document that labels and stigmatises them as “Bengali” – but certainly not “Rohingya”, not indigenous and not entitled to the same rights as other citizens.</div>
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<b>The poisoned chalice of “pathways to citizenship” </b></div>
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What is even more problematic for Rohingya is that the UNHCR along with other international agencies have since the 1990s promoted “pathways to citizenship” as the way to resolve what they have historically understood to be Rohingya’s de jure statelessness. The “temporary registration cards” or “white cards” issued to Rohingya from 1995 onwards, during the UNHCR’s time in the Rakhine state, gave material form to the international rhetoric that Rohingya were “stateless”. One high profile camp-based Rohingya activist claimed, “when UNHCR told us to accept these white cards in Myanmar, they effectively labelled us as stateless.” Since they had citizenship before the 1982 citizenship law, under the law, they should still be entitled to it.</div>
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Rohingya across five countries, have consistently told me how hurtful and harmful they find the label “stateless” as, for many, it suggests that they have never been recognised as citizens. “Pathways to citizenship” is generally a way for international agencies to mediate between a neglectful state and undocumented people. It is perhaps less appropriate in a situation of genocide with the wilful denial of the rights and the existence an indigenous people.</div>
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“The good news”, I tell the young guy angrily prodding a copy of the MOU, “is the UN Fact Finding Mission report is the first UN report that does not call you de jure stateless, but de facto stateless. Just like any other refugee in the world. They recommend the reinstatement of your full citizenship.” His smile flickers, but he doesn’t appear reassured.</div>
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We can only but hope that the change in discourse brought by the FFM report, which also describes the Rohingya persecution as “genocide”, will help to finally bury the idea of NVC cards as part of a solution for Rohingya. In the refugee camps, it is hard to miss the simmering anger and indelible mistrust of the UNHCR for its inability to ensure voluntariness, safety and rights during two previous rounds of forced repatriations in 1978-9 and 1993-4; and for its <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis-news/new-secretive-deal-between-un-myanmar-smells-foul-/1171661">lack of refugee consultation and transparency</a> in negotiating the conditions of potential Rohingya returns this year. Promoting smart cards for genocide survivors, as though ID cards can provide a neutral record of external facts about human beings, just isn’t going to wash this time. As one Rohingya political leader told me, “it is impossible for the UNHCR to ensure repatriations if they cannot even issue the smart cards on a voluntary basis.” It’s time to stop talking about “pathways” – treacherous as they have been for Rohingya – and to start listening to Rohingyas’ own understandings and interpretations of how the genocide has played out, including how they feel about the “genocide cards” and “smart cards”. Rohingyas know the significance of these cards, more than anyone else, UN included. The survivors voice must carry the greatest weight.</div>
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<i>*Names have been changed to protect interviewees.</i></div>
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¹ See also the <a href="http://undocs.org/A/73/332">UN Special Rapporteur report on Human Rights in Myanmar</a>for conclusions regarding National Verification Cards.</div>
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² Some <a href="http://www.rvisiontv.com/coxs-bazar-rohingya-refugees-abused-beaten-in-denial-for-accepting-smatcrads/">Rohingya media</a>has reported the beatings.</div>
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<i>About the author</i></div>
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Natalie Brinham is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London researching statelessness. She has worked for many years in NGOs in the UK and Southeast Asia on forced migration, trafficking and statelessness in both frontline service provision roles and research and advocacy roles. She holds an MA from UCL Institute of Education and a BA from SOAS.</div>
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Nay San Lwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06774613164850045218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-50086108844821137472018-10-06T15:05:00.000+02:002018-11-12T19:43:28.556+01:00Comedy and Tragedy in Burma: Grappling with Aung San Suu Kyi’s broken legacy and the Myanmar genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Oskar Butcher<br />
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Every night in an unassuming shop space located in Mandalay’s 39thStreet, Lu Maw and Lu Zaw – the remaining members of the Burma’s most famous comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers – present their show: a curious combination of comedy, political satire, and traditional Burmese dance. Par Par Lay, the group’s leader, passed away in 2013.</div>
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The Brothers’ <a href="http://splitsider.com/2011/04/the-moustache-brothers-and-the-risky-act-of-doing-comedy-in-burma/">history</a> of human rights activism is no less than inspirational. For decades, they have unrelentingly critiqued their country’s despotic military regime through their comedy. The third generation of comedians in their family, they have suffered terribly as a result. </div>
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Following a performance at the home where Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest in 1996, Par Par Lay and Lu Zaw were dragged from their beds in the dead of night and thrown into the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/par-par-lay-comedian-who-satirised-the-burmese-regime-8775167.html">city jail</a>. The men were locked up for <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/par-par-lay-comedian-who-satirised-the-burmese-regime-8775167.html">five years, </a>with Lay sent to a distant facility and punished through hard labour, breaking rocks. Six years prior, Lay’s humorous take on the regime’s refusal to honour the National League for Democracy’s landslide election victory had already seen him serve six months behind bars. At no point did Brothers’ cutting satire of the regime relent.</div>
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Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s ascent to <i>de facto</i> national leader, the Brothers’ show appears somewhat out of step with the values of human rights and democracy that they have for decades espoused*. Their enduring praise for Aung San Suu Kyi – who is deeply <a href="http://burmacampaign.org.uk/aung-san-suu-kyi-complicit-in-rohingya-ethnic-cleansing-the-guardian/">complicit</a> in the atrocities being carried out by the Myanmar state against its Rohingya minority - leaves their shows with an uncomfortable void. The performance seems indicative of the profound tragedy of Burma’s failed democratic transition. </div>
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Today, Myanmar’s military – who remain the butt of most of the show’s jokes – <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-24/how-military-controls-myanmar-not-aung-san-suu-kyi/8978042">retain control</a> over the country’s most significant levers of power. Their relationship with Suu Kyi, formerly the most prominent thorn in their side, has become increasingly <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-singapore-myanmar-suukyi/myanmars-suu-kyi-says-relations-with-military-not-that-bad-idUKKCN1L60OZ">cosy</a>. Nonetheless, it is unsurprising given the extent of the suffering endured by the Moustache Brothers, that they view their country’s failed democratic <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/understanding-myanmar#chapter-title-0-4">reforms</a> as something of a triumph. The walls of their modest theatre are covered in photos of Suu Kyi. In many of these, she is pictured alongside the comedians. </div>
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Speaking of Suu Kyi, Lu Maw tells of the Brothers’ great pride in seeing her in a position of power. He speaks of their shared struggle for freedom and democracy, how the Moustache Brothers were right there with her, and emphasising that “she is one of us”. When Lu Maw speaks, there is an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. It seems to say: ‘we made it’. </div>
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The state of the country, including basic civil and political rights, has improved significantly in the last few years for the vast majority of the population – Moustache Brothers included. This, however, can never be the measure of human rights or democracy. </div>
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<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanmar/A_HRC_39_64.pdf">The atrocities</a> against the Rohingya have killed well over 10,000 people - with <a href="http://time.com/5187292/rohingya-crisis-missing-parents-refugees-bangladesh/">up to 43,000</a> missing, presumed dead. In total, approximately <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41566561">700,000</a> have been driven from the country. Neither Suu Kyi’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suu-kyi-condemned-over-new-denial-of-ethnic-cleansing-bhc0lqfpf">shocking denials</a> of these atrocities, nor the crimes themselves, are mentioned during the Moustache Brothers’ show. Given the group’s courageous history, it is clearly not fear that has induced their silence. Rather, it is likely something far more human: a need to believe in the purity of the democratic movement of which they have long been a part, and a loyalty to its leader - Aung San Suu Kyi. </div>
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In February 2018, the United Nations recognised Suu Kyi’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/aung-san-suu-kyi-complicit-in-rohingya-slaughter-un-investigator-20180217-p4z0oj.html">complicity</a>in the crimes against the Rohingya; crimes that they six months later have determined amount to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/27/myanmars-military-accused-of-genocide-by-damning-un-report">genocide</a>. Better late than never, these conclusions echo the findings of <a href="http://statecrime.org/data/2015/10/ISCI-Rohingya-Report-PUBLISHED-VERSION.pdf">research</a> conducted by the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University, three years prior in 2015. As any position that Aung San Suu Kyi once held as a moral or democratic authority has been rendered entirely untenable, many of her international honours have been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/aung-san-suu-kyi-honours-revoked-rohingya-backlash-171119052610172.html">revoked</a>. Her popularity across Myanmar, however, remains largely <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1356324">intact</a>- as does the country’s rampant <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/myanmars-enemy-within/">islamophobia</a>.</div>
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In recent years, the virulent Islamophobic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/18/buddhist-monk-spreads-hatred-burma">rhetoric</a> of extremist, monk-led hate groups such as the 969 Movement has sparked deadly anti-Muslim <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/12/burma-ethnic-violence-escalates">riots</a> across the country. According toAmnesty International, their hate speech has become increasingly normalised by the country’s political and military elite, who have encouraged society at large to “hate, scapegoat, and fear” Muslim minorities.</div>
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And whilst today much of the population believes the Rohingya to be ‘illegal <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis">Bangladeshi immigrants</a>’to Myanmar’s Rakhine state, this myth has no basis in fact. As Professor of Asian and Military History at SOAS, Michael Charney explained, there has been extensive movement amongst both the Rohingya and the Rakhine peoples throughout the state historically, and in actuality, “the [Muslim] Rohingya are no more illegal migrants than the Buddhist Rakhine”. Yet the consequences of vicious anti-Rohingya sentiments could not be more severe. </div>
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Whilst military bases are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/myanmar-builds-military-bases-where-rohingya-once-lived-and-prayed-amnesty-idUSKCN1GO001">erected</a> on the ruins of towns and villages where Rohingya lived and prayed only months ago, the Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-journalists-trial-specialrepo/special-report-how-myanmar-punished-two-reporters-for-uncovering-an-atrocity-idUSKCN1LJ167">languish in jail</a> for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rakhine-events/">exposing</a>military massacres of Rohingya civilians. Reportedly “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-richardson-exclusive/exclusive-richardson-quits-myanmars-whitewash-rohingya-crisis-panel-idUSKBN1FD2OJ">furious</a>” upon being asked about the journalists’ ongoing incarceration, the Aung San Suu Kyi who <a href="https://www.mmtimes.com/lifestyle/11534-daw-suu-calls-on-artists-to-address-politics1.html">said</a> in 2014 that whilst moving towards democracy “we all need to work to point out our country’s faults” is nowhere to be found. </div>
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Nonetheless, a number of international <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/rohingya-autonomous-region-repatriation-180220061618141.html">Burmese and Rohingya</a> voices have been <a href="https://freerohingyacoalition.org/en/">active</a> in <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQgMzRBc6P2mmlbqkF70gz2dIwK3ucj5JQTx6ygxjPqveHmT4bR41N_txC38X1ZW1pZ51DgdrEgwbkT/pub">condemning</a> Burma’s crimes, and bearing witness to their country’s genocidal ‘faults’. Local movements opposing the persecution of Muslims, however, are few and far between. Those who do so publicly belong to a small, brave and dedicated group of human rights activists. </div>
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One grassroots campaign, <a href="https://dangerousspeech.org/myanmar/">Panzagar</a>, brings together campaigners in opposition to hate speech, and in particular <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/videos/yatanar-htun-and-ethan-zuckerman-discuss-hate-speech-mits-build-peace?field_country_mission_nid=All&field_sectors_nid=All&language=en&page=3">online</a> and <a href="http://news.trust.org/item/20140403131148-4mqvg/">anti-Muslim</a> discourse. With over 200,000 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/panzagar/">Facebook</a> likes - no mean feat in a country with estimated <a href="http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/myanmar/">2.5%</a> internet access – it would appear that there is greater support for such a movement than first appearances might otherwise suggest. The group has even benefitted from the support of Zarganar, another celebrated Burmese comedian and former political prisoner who is one of the few prominent Burmese figures to have spoken publicly about the plight of the Rohingya. His efforts, however, which have at times been channelled through official <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e5adbc3c-49bc-11e4-80fb-00144feab7de">governmental commissions</a>, have produced <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/01/05/Myanmar-whitewashes-ethnic-cleansing">mixed</a> results. </div>
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When the economic, social, and political status of a majority population improves significantly – as has been the case in Burma since 2011 – it surely becomes more challenging than ever for members of that majority to protest the treatment of a small, marginalised, and scapegoated minority. As the past year of genocidal violence against the Rohingya demonstrates, however, it has become far more urgent. </div>
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The Moustache Brothers are an inspiring illustration of Myanmar’s proud tradition of the finest kind of human rights activism. From a human perspective, their dedication to Aung San Suu Kyi is understandable. However, the Suu Kyi of their movement – the democratic icon who insisted on pointing out her country’s faults – is no more. As painful as it may be to renounce their one-time leader, highlighting her hypocrisy and indifference towards the suffering Rohingya would demonstrate an ongoing commitment to the principles for which Burmese human rights activists have long taken a brave stand.</div>
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As the gears of the international community slowly grind into action - with the UN now recognising the gravity of the crimes perpetrated and the International Criminal Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/19/myanmar-rohingya-crisis-icc-begins-investigation-into-atrocities">launching</a> a preliminary investigation - Myanmar’s military maintains its brazen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/27/myanmars-military-accused-of-genocide-by-damning-un-report">denials</a>, and Aung San Suu Kyi remains enveloped in a deafening <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/28/aung-san-suu-kyis-response-to-un-report-on-rohingya-genocide-silence">silence</a>. Lasting change in Myanmar will not be achieved through international efforts alone, however, and long-term change will require an internal shift in the country’s attitude towards Islam and the Rohingya. Easier said than done, no doubt, but if the country is ever to overcome its tortured past and genocidal present, the rights of all people must be guaranteed regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion. </div>
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*Author visited a Moustache Brothers’ show in October 2017. </div>
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<i>Oskar Butcher is a human rights activist interested in Myanmar and the politics of conflict, justice, and forced migration. He works at the <a href="https://www.deathpenaltyproject.org/">Death Penalty Project</a> and volunteers as a Speaker with Amnesty International. He was awarded an MSc from SOAS, University of London, in 2017. </i></div>
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Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/Oskar_Butcher">@Oskar_Butcher</a><br />
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-66836128021907268962018-10-06T12:51:00.001+02:002018-11-12T19:43:17.077+01:00Five concrete measures can end Rohingya genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>By</i> Dr. Maung Zarni</div>
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<a href="https://bit.ly/2IGiCRD">Anadolu Agency</a></div>
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October 5, 2018</div>
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<i>- The writer is coordinator for strategic affairs at the Free Rohingya Coalition and adviser to the European Center for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge, UK</i></div>
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Five steps can be taken towards achieving justice, repatriation and the rebuilding of Rohingya communities in Myanmar</div>
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<b>LONDON</b> -- Rohingya campaigners and human rights organizations welcomed the UN Human Rights Council’s vote on Sept. 27 to set up a body to conduct a further investigation and future indictment of Myanmar for atrocity crimes, including genocide. The resolution, co-sponsored by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the European Union, was passed by a vote of 35-3 with seven abstentions, with only China, the Philippines and Burundi opposing it.</div>
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The current calls for justice and accountability for the victims of the Myanmar genocide -- ongoing still -- must go beyond conceiving justice in a narrow technical judicial sense and consider the tangible and pressing need of the Rohingya, including the sitting duck Rohingya inside Myanmar, those in camps in Bangladesh and those on the verge of deportation in India.</div>
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While the International Criminal Court and/or other ad hoc international tribunals in the style of the tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda would be a welcome step in the right direction, none of the international judicial processes will likely alter the genocidal conditions in which Rohingya have been forced to exist for several decades.</div>
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Here is a very grim picture: A Harvard Medical School study published in the Lancet (2016) found the doctor-patient ratio for Rohingya in the two predominantly Rohingya towns of Buthidaung and Maungdaw is 1:180,000 while the national average is 1:1,000. According to the World Food Program survey of July 2017 -- which was shelved a week after its release under pressure from the Aung San Suu Kyi government -- of 80,000 Rohingya children under the age of 5 surveyed in a select Rohingya region of Western Myanmar, severe malnutrition and acute severe malnutrition or semi-famine like characteristics are prevalent. A Physicians for Human Rights study in October 2016 uncovered the severe deprivation of access to even rudimentary health services: a Rohingya person is made to go through, on average, three to four security checkpoints from home to the nearest village clinic, typically without a doctor or emergency medical care.</div>
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Genocide against the Rohingya is more than a series of acts of genocide, but it is still an ongoing process, and its instigators remain with impunity at the highest levels of authority in Myanmar. As the 440-page Independent International Fact-Finding Mission report (Sept. 18) noted, the structures, institutions and policies designed to destroy the Rohingya community from its very foundations remain in place.</div>
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These conditions and the decades-old policies that have induced them remain in place. The World Court or other judicial processes, domestically or globally, are not going to alter them.</div>
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And there is something that is even harder to change that serves as the obstacle to ending Myanmar’s ongoing genocide: the utter impotence and non-functioning of the UN Security Council when it comes to large-scale, policy-induced human suffering, from Yemen and Syria to Palestine and Uighur East Turkestan, or Xinjiang, in China. The veto-wielders -- not just the usual illiberal suspects such as Russia and China but also the U.S. and UK -- have proven incapable of upholding the UN Charter.</div>
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Outrageously, one year after the now-well-documented genocidal acts committed by Myanmar, the Security Council has not been able to reach a consensus about what to call the crime, objectively, let alone ending it decisively.</div>
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In light of this realpolitik, the UN system, particularly the Security Council, is the last place where the Rohingya will find any meaningful support for either realizing their long-term needs for justice and closure (such as criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of genocide) or the immediate need for safety and protection of the remaining Rohingya populations inside Myanmar and in the refugee camps in Bangladesh.</div>
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The UN officials and ostensibly pro-human rights members have been urging the creation of “safe conditions” so that 1 million Rohingya in Bangladesh who fled Myanmar’s periodic waves of genocidal terror could return and rebuild their communities. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheik Hasina, has consistently called for safety -- and even “a safe zone” or international protection, “if necessary” -- for the Rohingya population inside Myanmar. She has made this sensible call at the UN General Assembly for the past two years since the genocidal killings hit world news headlines in August 2017.</div>
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No one has heeded these essential calls while promising to throw more aid money at the symptom, namely “the Rohingya humanitarian crisis”.</div>
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Meanwhile, echoing U.S. President Donald Trump, Aung San Suu Kyi’s man of the hour at the UN, Minister Kyaw Tint Swe of the Myanmar State Counsellor’s Office, rejected the World Court’s jurisdiction and dismissed the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar and its 440-page genocide report as having “no hard evidence”. The Burmese rejection of evidence is beyond belief in the face of the satellite images of nearly 400 destroyed Rohingya villages, consistently accurate and credible oral testimonies of thousands of genocide survivors and numerous legal and academic studies as well as journalistic investigations that reach a single conclusion: it is genocide, no less, that Myanmar is committing.</div>
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So what then needs to be done?</div>
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There are five concrete steps that can be undertaken with the view towards justice, repatriation and rebuilding of Rohingya communities inside Myanmar.</div>
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First, there is emerging a network of state actors -- governments, that is, -- which can establish something along the lines of “an international coalition of governments for ending Myanmar’s genocide”. Conceivably, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Bangladesh, the Netherlands, the UK, certain Rohingya-concerned OIC member states (such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Kuwait etc.) and those from Latin and Central America with experience in atrocity crimes at home can form the core of this coalition.</div>
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This coalition can, in a more focused manner, explore concrete ways, with the requisite condition of safety, to facilitate Rohingya's return and the rebuilding of their lives once they are in their places of origin inside Western Myanmar adjacent to Bangladesh’s borders.</div>
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The word “international protection” conjures up images of UN peacekeepers. But the Blue Helmets have an extremely poor track record: consider the Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica whom the ICC ruled to be complicit in the genocide or Canadian troops shooting dogs that came to eat the corpses of Rwandan genocide victims because UN peacekeepers in the capital, Kigali, were ordered to stand down as the genocidal slaughter raged on.</div>
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For instance, the coalition can push for the idea of attaching significant numbers of civilian human rights monitors and experienced military veterans to UN agencies based in Myanmar, as well as to the humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or Medicine San Frontiers. They would need to be based in Rakhine State in Western Myanmar, where these atrocity crimes occurred. The presence of these civilian human rights monitors ought to be made a non-negotiable condition for any interactions and agreements between Myanmar and the coalition’s partners as well as the UN agencies.</div>
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The job of providing for the returning Rohingya or those who remain inside Myanmar cannot be left in the exclusive hands of UN agencies. Besides being toothless even to secure their own unhindered access to the crime sites of Rakhine from where 725,000 fled in a span of a few months, the “UN as a whole” has been called out by the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar for its categorical failures to implement the organization’s “Rights First” policies adopted in the wake of Sri Lanka’s war crimes in 2008.</div>
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Second, the coalition needs to start inter-state conversation about de-militarization of northern Rakhine state, where the persecution has been institutionalized by Myanmar’s military for several decades. Concretely, there needs to be established a de-militarized zone where Myanmar will be forced to engage in community policing designed to minimize and prevent petty criminality in the communities within its border region of Western Myanmar. In this respect, UN member states -- 35 in total -- who voted in favor of the UN Human Rights Council resolution last week to establish an international body tasked with collecting evidence for a future international tribunal on Myanmar may likely join this international coalition.</div>
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Third, as part of the neighboring state, Bangladeshi troops across the border need to step up their security functions to ease Myanmar’s (un-warranted) fear of Islamist “penetration” into the Rohingya communities. That should not be a problem for Dhaka, which has come under heavy international criticism for its heavy-handed if effective handling of radicalization and violence among Bangladeshi communities.</div>
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Fourth, individual nations that are prepared to be a part of this coalition can take unilateral actions designed to signal to Myanmar -- and the world -- that genocide is the red line that no fellow UN member will be allowed to cross.</div>
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As a matter of fact, Canada took an exemplary action when its parliament unanimously declared Myanmar a genocidal state while its executive stripped, in an unprecedented move, Aung San Suu Kyi of Canada’s highest honor -- honorary Canadian citizenship.</div>
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More concretely, other nations in the coalition can review their ties -- commercial, military, intelligence, educational, etc. -- with the view towards using them as leverage or simply suspending them as a signal of condemnation of Myanmar’s heinous Rohingya policies. These nations of conscience need to, at the bare minimum, suspend, downgrade or outright cut diplomatic relations if Myanmar doesn’t change its genocidal course. Specifically, the coalition members need to send Myanmar ambassadors, counsel generals and military attaches packing.</div>
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These measures have been proven effective in the past: when worldwide ostracism of South Africa and its apartheid regime took place, the racists in power were eventually forced to dismantle their savage political system.</div>
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Worldwide, governments and societal actors (universities, football clubs, theatrical groups, etc.) ought to be persuaded to shun Myanmar in various aspects of its foreign interactions and revive the “Pinochet Precedent”. Australia’s lawyers and rights campaigners are using the Commonwealth Law to hold Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi accountable for her vital role in Myanmar’s crimes against humanity regarding Rohingya people.</div>
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Fifth and finally, on the economic front, the governments within the coalition should advise their national investors to either divest from the Myanmar market or not to invest in the country. To be sure, a commercial boycott of Myanmar may not bring about the needed behavioral change on the part of the country’s leaders if only because investments from Myanmar’s neighbors such as China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan make up the country’s largest foreign direct investment.</div>
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But Western and Middle Eastern investors and markets still have sufficient global influence that the medium and long-term impact of such collective action by the coalition partners will affect foreign economic actors from the genocide-bystanding or collaborating states such as India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China.</div>
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China may be too big and too thick-skinned for, say, the reputational damage incurred from such a critical stance and boycotts from the coalition. Already being in a trade war with the United States (and its Western allies), and under close watch from human rights campaigners for its Uighur “re-education camps”, Beijing may be more vulnerable to global negative opinion that is assumed. But less important actors such as Singapore or South Korea will certainly be forced to review their ‘business-as-usual’ ties with Myanmar.</div>
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And the EU and Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, which co-sponsored a human rights resolution on Myanmar on the grounds of a fact-finding mission’s genocidal allegations, will need to reconsider their contradictory behavior on Myanmar: 300+ EU investors and some of the leading investors from the OIC remain very active in Myanmar. Neither bloc can slam Myanmar for committing the gravest of crimes while their money is propping up the genocidal perpetrators in Naypyidaw.</div>
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There are 200 UN member states, and about 140 of them are signers of the Genocide Convention. That is a lot to work with to effect positive change for the Rohingya, and for Myanmar’s violent and regressive politics.</div>
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Since the closure of the last Nazi death camp in August 1945, one hears of “Never again!” ritualistically. It’s the 11th hour of Myanmar’s genocide. Nations of conscience must band together, punish Myanmar’s perpetrating regime and provide effective protection to the genocide victims.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-12413901069395380932018-09-29T00:03:00.000+02:002018-11-10T12:44:45.333+01:00Rohingya Inmate Dies after Being Denied Treatment in Buthidaung Jail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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September 29, 2018</div>
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<b>Buthidaung</b> — An arbitrarily jailed Rohingya inmate has died in Buthidaung jail after being denied of proper medical treatments.</div>
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The victim, identified as 'U Abu Shama, 50, s/o U Basu Meah' from Thayet Oak village in northern Maungdaw, was sentenced to 12-year imprisonment along with his son, Mohammed Zubair, 25, under a false charge of instigating violence in 2012.</div>
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The jail authorities have paid no heed to the repeated requests of his family members for medical treatments outside the jail after he had been infected by Jaundice some four months ago. And the lack of proper medical treatments inside the jail has ultimately led to his untimely demise around 6 am on Friday (Sept 28), according to one of the relatives of the deceased.</div>
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The authorities neither handed over his dead body to his family for funeral nor informed them (his family members) where he was buried. They did not allow the family members (of the deceased) to see him while he was severely suffering from jaundice and other diseases in the jail.</div>
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Thousands of innocent Rohingya villagers were arrested and jailed under arbitrary charges of instigating violence and setting (Rakhine) homes on fire in and after 2012; and having links with Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) after 2016.</div>
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<i>[Reported by Rohingya Eye; Edited by M.S. Anwar]</i></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-27020096680692227032018-09-28T23:27:00.000+02:002018-10-25T13:38:00.875+02:00Two Girls Die after Myanmar Border Guards Shoot at Rohingya Boat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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September 29, 2018</div>
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<b>Maungdaw</b> — Two girls were killed and a few other people arrested when the Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) opened fire at a Rohingya boat off the coast of 'Feran Furu (Mingalar Gyi)' village in northern Maungdaw at around 8 pm on Thursday (Sept 27).</div>
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The two girls got drown and died as they along with others were trying to escape for life after the BGP opened fire while boarding on the Rowboat to flee to Bangladesh. They have been identified as 'Athisa, 9, daughter of Noor Kalam' from 'Shiddar Fara (Myoma Kayindan)' village and 'Senuwara, 17, daughter of Fayaz Ahmed' from 'Shujah (Shwe Zar)' village.</div>
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After they died, the BGP sent their bodies to the Maungdaw General Hospital for examination and post-mortem. The hospital discharged the bodies at around 4 pm on Friday and handed over to the villagers of 'Shiddar Fara' for funeral and burial.</div>
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The other Rohingyas arrested while trying to flee by the boat were charged by the authorities and produced before the Maungdaw Township Court on Friday.</div>
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As the Myanmar government has imposed severe restrictions on the movement of the Rohingya people and confined them within some designated regions, they are unable to travel to Akyab (Sittwe) or the Capital Rangoon even in the cases of medical emergencies. Therefore, they have no other way left but to seek to sneak out to Bangladesh (illegally) for medical treatments, according to a local resident of Maungdaw.</div>
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"The people that usually use this route to go to Bangladesh include the families whose breadwinners have been arbitrarily arrested and jailed by the Myanmar authorities; the Rohingya families whose houses have been burnt down and have to seek shelter in neighbouring villages in displaced condition for a long time; and those who have to seek emergency medical treatments in Bangladesh. They have no other way left but to choose to secretly sneak out to Bangladesh through this route," said villager of Feran Furu.</div>
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<i>[Reported by MYARF; Edited by M.S. Anwar]</i></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-56553139167812249922018-09-27T22:41:00.001+02:002018-10-22T17:24:46.588+02:00Press Release: Creation of UN mechanism a vital step towards justice for the Rohingya genocide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Media Release from Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK</b></div>
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For Immediate Release 27th September 2018</div>
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<b>Creation of UN mechanism a vital step towards justice for the Rohingya genocide</b></div>
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The United Nations Human Rights Council’s (HRC) vote today to create an international and independent mechanism to collect evidence of atrocities against Rohingya is a vital step towards justice for genocide and crimes against humanity, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said today.</div>
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“Today’s brave vote at the HRC marks an encouraging move towards accountability for some of the worst crimes imaginable. Finally, the international community has shown that it is willing to back up statements with action to end Myanmar’s ongoing genocide against Rohingya people,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK.</div>
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Members of the HRC today voted overwhelmingly to create an impartial and international mechanism to gather evidence of atrocity crimes against Rohingya, which can be used in future criminal prosecutions.</div>
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The resolution was passed by the Council by 35 votes in favour, seven abstentions and three votes against (Burundi, China and the Philippines).</div>
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The vote followed the devastating report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Myanmar, which was released in full last week and called for the prosecution of Myanmar’s top military command for genocide and crimes against humanity.</div>
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BROUK have consistently called for the international community to take action and hold the Myanmar authorities to account for their genocidal policies against Rohingya people. Thousands of people have been killed and more than 700,000 Rohingya driven to flee into Bangladesh since Myanmar launched its murderous “clearance operation” in August last year.</div>
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This is just the latest manifestation of a decades-long attempt by the Myanmar authorities to wipe the Rohingya out as a people. This has included vicious state-sponsored discrimination that has confined Rohingya in Rakhine State to an open air-prison, and similarly brutal and violent operations against Rohingya by security forces.</div>
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The HRC resolution does not create an international court or tribunal to try Myanmar military leaders who are responsible for atrocities. BROUK has long urged members of the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to ensure a comprehensive investigation into the range of crimes by the Myanmar military across the whole of the country.</div>
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“The international community must now build on today’s HRC vote and ensure that the evidence gathered by the new mechanism can serve its purpose – to hold those responsible for genocide to account,” said Tun Khin. </div>
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“Members of the UN Security Council must stop hiding behind politics and refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC. If Myanmar is allowed to get away with genocide against Rohingya, it will be a dark stain on the world’s conscience forever.”</div>
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“We now urge members of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee to take the next step and push the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC.”</div>
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For more information, please contact Tun Khin +44 7888714866.</div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8039181669102650263.post-75590270790988351272018-09-27T20:43:00.000+02:002018-10-06T15:09:16.773+02:00Activists: US Stance on Rohingya Not Strong Enough<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar wait to carry food items from Bangladesh's border toward a no man's land where they set up refugee camps in Tombru, Bangladesh, Sept. 15, 2017.</td></tr>
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<i>By</i> William Gallo</div>
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<a href="https://bit.ly/2OUZamu">Voice of America</a></div>
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Activists are criticizing a long-awaited U.S. State Department investigation into the Myanmar military campaign against Rohingya Muslims, saying the United States should to take a firmer stance on what the activists see as genocide. </div>
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The State Department report, released late Monday, blames Myanmar's military for an "extreme, large-scale, widespread" campaign of violence against the Rohingya ethnic minority group over the past two years.</div>
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The report, based on interviews with more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees in neighboring Bangladesh, documented graphic descriptions of torture, rape and mass killing in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state.</div>
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In some cases, Myanmar soldiers threw infants and small children into open fires and burning huts, witnesses told State Department investigators. Others said they saw soldiers ripping fetuses out of the bellies of pregnant mothers.</div>
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The State Department concedes the campaign was "well-planned and coordinated." But, notably, the report makes no determination that any of the violence amounts to genocide or crimes against humanity, and it recommends no specific action.</div>
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"This is extremely disappointing for those of us who have no other country to look to but the United States to do something humane and compassionate and principled," said Maung Zarni, a British-Burmese academic and author of <i>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar's Rohingya</i>.</div>
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"This is not like Rwanda or other places where post facto people realized that genocide happened. This is still ongoing," Zarni said.</div>
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The press office of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, weighed in as well:</div>
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Important <a href="https://twitter.com/StateDept?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StateDept</a> report on Burmese forces’ atrocities against Rohingya in Rakhine state. I called for the report to be made public, and urged accountability for these crimes against humanity. The State Department must call this what it is: genocide <a href="https://t.co/zGwGfbh08j">https://t.co/zGwGfbh08j</a></div>
— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenRubioPress/status/1044584348937277441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Human Rights Watch (HRW) chided the State Department for being "silent on action" and said the U.S. government should follow up the report by imposing new sanctions against those responsible. </div>
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"The State Department's report, confirming the systematic brutality of the Burmese military operations, should jolt the U.S. into action," Sarah Margon, Washington director at HRW, said.</div>
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In August, the U.S. sanctioned four Myanmar military and police commanders for their involvement in what the State Department then referred to as "ethnic cleansing" in Rakhine state. </div>
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The latest report, however, did not use the phrase "ethnic cleansing." But the State Department, in an nonattributed statement, said the investigation's findings "fully support that conclusion" and insisted it would be used to inform future U.S. policy.</div>
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"U.S. efforts have been and remain focused on addressing the underlying conduct, encouraging steps that will improve the situation for all people in Burma and those displaced in Burma, and promoting accountability for those responsible for these crimes," the statement said.</div>
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<b>Effect of terminology</b></div>
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The term ethnic cleansing carries less weight in international law than do the terms <a href="http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.html">genocide</a> or crimes against humanity. The Trump administration is reportedly divided about whether to apply those labels, in part because some fear it could compel the U.S. to intervene.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">Rohingya refugee women hold placards as they take part in a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp to mark the one-year anniversary of their exodus from Myanmar, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2018.</td></tr>
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British author Zarni stressed that intervention does not have to take the form of bombs or even U.N. peacekeepers. It could instead mean the deployment of temporary human rights observers or civilian advisers to Myanmar's government, he added. </div>
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"No one is calling for military intervention. But people want some sort of international mechanism to provide safety for those inside the country and for those who may return," he said. "These are things that need to be discussed — not simply being scared of needing to bomb."</div>
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A U.N.-mandated fact-finding mission in August recommended that Myanmar generals be investigated for genocide and crimes against humanity. It said that estimates of 10,000 deaths were "conservative." More than 725,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh over the past year.</div>
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Myanmar's military-dominated government denies oppressing the Rohingya. It claims it is responding to a series of attacks by Rohingya militants on police stations.</div>
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The Rohingya have long complained of discrimination in Myanmar, including being refused citizenship.</div>
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<i>VOA's Cindy Saine contributed to this report.</i></div>
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Rohingya Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14627125748334999380noreply@blogger.com0