By Marella Oppenheim

The Guardian

May 13, 2017

Critics of Ashin Wirathu and his denim-clad disciples say the monk incites racial violence against Rohingya refugees. He claims he is merely protecting his people

“Aung San Suu Kyii would like to help the Bengali, but I block her,” says Ashin Wirathu with some pride.

Branded the “Face of Buddhist Terror” by Time magazine, Wirathu has his own compound within the Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay. Before being offered a comfortable chair, visitors are greeted by a wall of bloody and gruesome photographs.

The pictures show machete-inflicted head wounds and severed limbs, disfigured faces and slashed bodies; Wirathu claims, without the slightest evidence, that the images are of Buddhists who were attacked by Muslims. 

Next to the display, under which a monk is methodically sweeping the floor, stands a long table. The newspapers spread across it confirm that, for Wirathu’s followers, daily reading is a matter not just of spiritual texts but also of politics.

An orange-robed assistant adjusts a film camera on to a tripod; another brandishes a Nikon fitted with a large zoom lens. This interview will be carefully recorded by the monks in every way.

Wirathu is a man of unassuming features. His baby face belies the power he holds over nationalist activists in Myanmar as the spiritual leader of the 969 movement and head of Ma Ba Tha, the Organisation for the Protection of Race and Religion.

Wirathu perches on one of two teak armchairs; the wall to his left is covered with poster-sized photographs of him. He stands accused of inciting violence against the minority Muslim population in Myanmar, where racial and religious faultlines are increasingly exposed. In 2012, fuelled by his speeches, riots erupted in Meiktila, a city in central Myanmar, leaving a mosque burned to the ground and over a hundred dead.

In a soft and measured voice, Wirathu claims his speeches are neither “hate” nor racist, but serve merely as a warning to protect his people. What people make of those warnings is not his doing, he says calmly.

“I am defending my loved one,” he says, “like you would defend your loved one. I am only warning people about Muslims. Consider it like if you had a dog, that would bark at strangers coming to your house – it is to warn you. I am like that dog. I bark.” 

Wirathu speaks of protecting his flock – “his beloved” – against what he perceives as danger. His denial of responsibility for the violence that has followed his sermons contrasts with eyewitness accounts of knife-wielding monks, denim jeans visible under their robes, leaving Wirathu’s monastery during the Mandalay riots of 2013. 

Islam represents only 5% of Myanmar’s population of 54 million, but nationalists like Wirathu are pushing the idea that the faith puts Buddhism, and the very essence of Myanmar, in jeopardy. He claims the 1 million Rohingya Muslims living in precarious conditions in his country – described by human rights agencies as the most persecuted people on Earth – “don’t exist”.

“It only takes one terrorist to be amongst them,” he says. “Look at what has happened in the west. I do not want that to happen in my country. All I am doing is warning people to beware.” 

Wirathu adds that if Donald Trump or Nigel Farage need some advice he will happily share his ideas. These include infiltrating the Facebook pages of Muslim groups, getting all Islamic schools to record their lessons, and government surveillance of internet activity, including emails. Wirathu claims he has his own army of individuals screening the net in Myanmar.

On the well-documented situation of the Rohingya in Rakhine state – where people have been left without access to medicines, aid, and basic human necessities such as clean water, sanitation and food – Wirathu is dismissive. The Rohingya have been mostly couped up in camps since the 2012 violence, and the silence of Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy on their plight has attracted growing criticism.

Wirathu rejects the stateless Rohingya as illegal immigrants, a view echoed by the government. He will only discuss them if the description “Bangladeshis” is used, and even then Wirashu says the situation is not as it is portrayed. 

“If it is true what [outsiders say], then I would offer help but I have visited the camps on many occasions. The aid agencies are refused access because they are using the refugees to fill their own pockets. Bangladeshis are posing for the media. They are not starving. They have so much food that they are selling it on in their shops – stealing even from their own.”

On the allegations that women have been abused and raped by the military, he laughed: “Impossible. Their bodies are too disgusting.”

There have been calls outside Myanmar for Aung San Suu Kyi to return her Nobel peace prize for her failure to tackle the situation with the refugees, which has broken her own promises on human rights.

Wirathu points to four soldiers marching through the compound, joking that they are there to arrest him, again. In 2003, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his anti-islamic sermons, but was released nine years later. In the event, the soldiers are there simply to make donations to his cause. 

Wirathu is confident that the power of Ma Ba Tha is far from dwindling; that the organisation represents Myanmar Buddhism and its influence over the government is entrenched. 

As a passing mosquito wins his empathy, he switches from his anti-Muslim rhetoric to explain: “I can teach you how to be a better Buddhist and not kill the mosquito. First, you must have compassion for the mosquito, imagine it to need you as it has no family to feed it. Second, you must try to put yourself in its place.”

By Emanuel Stoakes

The Guardian

May 13, 2017

Shocking photographic evidence showing children among the injured adds weight to claims that military committed atrocities against Rohingya people

Photographs have emerged that show Rohingya refugees, some of them children, bearing bullet wounds and burn scars apparently sustained during a Myanmar army crackdown.

The new evidence, documented by humanitarian agencies and rights organisations, adds credence to claims that Myanmar’s military committed atrocities against ethnic Rohingya communities during a counterinsurgency campaign that ended this year.

The material surfaced after Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader, told journalists during a visit to the EU last week she did not support a fact-finding mission into alleged abuses against the Rohingya. The UN human rights council mandated an inquiry in a March resolution.

Government and military officials have repeatedly rebutted allegations of widespread abuse.

Violence flared up in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state in October last year after coordinated armed attacks on three border guard posts by a previously unknown Rohingya militant movement. Nine security personnel were killed in the unrest. 

Myanmar’s military and parts of the police force subsequently undertook “clearance operations” against the rebels in an area north of Maungdaw, a town close to the border with Bangladesh.

Amnesty International and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN’s human rights watchdog, allege that these military sweeps involved widespread and systematic abuse of Rohingya communities, including gang rape, torture and murder. The campaign prompted more than 75,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh and displaced tens of thousands within Myanmar.

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, have both claimed Myanmar’s security forces are probably responsible for “crimes against humanity”. Officials from the UN agencies believe more than a thousand Rohingya could have been killed during the crackdown.

Photographs of wounded Rohingya seen by the Guardian appear to strengthen claims that serious abuses occurred. The images support allegations made in a UN report (pdf) that included interviews with hundreds of Rohingya refugees who recently fled Myanmar for Bangladesh.

The report’s authors said that “the army deliberately set fire to houses with families inside” and “in other cases pushed Rohingya into already burning houses”.

The photos were obtained by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation of the UK, a London-based advocacy group, for a forthcoming report.

One image showed a seven-year-old boy with severe blistering on both thighs. The boy and his mother claim the military were responsible for his injuries, which are consistent with burn wounds. 

“When the military burnt my house,” said the boy’s mother, “I could not prevent my son from being burnt.”

Another image appeared to show a bullet wound in the leg of a seven-year-old boy. He claims he was injured when the Myanmar military conducted a raid on his village: “I saw the military, and was shot as I fled.”

Other children with serious wounds include a five-year-old girl with a “deep burn” on the skin around her fingers, an injury she received when she had been pushed into fires by the military, according to her mother. Her life was saved by the intervention of a bystander.

“Someone pulled my child from the flames. She was unconscious for three days afterwards,” said the girl’s mother.

Four other organisations claim to have seen similar scarring on the bodies of Rohingya refugees who arrived in Bangladesh during the violence.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh said: “It is known to our staff that there were people with such reported injuries as gunshot wounds and burns among those who were seeking assistance from the registered refugees inside the camps. They were generally adults and teenagers. They were referred as quickly as possible for medical attention through NGOs and local hospitals.”

The photographs have prompted renewed calls for Myanmar to cooperate with the UN’s fact-finding mission.

The OHCHR said: “Given the compelling nature of the testimonies collected by various credible groups, if the area remains closed off to investigators it will add to suspicions that the authorities would prefer to let impunity reign than to achieve meaningful accountability.”

The government of Myanmar has not yet responded to requests for comment.

By Dr Habib Siddiqui

Asian Tribune

April 18, 2017

How long our world must witness the ethnic cleansing of vulnerable minorities? In Myanmar, it is a routine thing, against the minority Rohingyas who mostly live in the northern Arakan state, close to Bangladesh. They are the most persecuted people in our planet. They were persecuted for nearly half a century by the military governments that preceded the current civilian government.

There was much hope in the air that conditions inside the country would improve dramatically once a democratic government comes to power. Well, there is a democratic government now after a general election in which all but Muslims participated [the latter were barred from participating in the election on the grounds of their race/ethnicity and religion]. The Myanmar government is run by Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party. 

Remember her? Suu Kyi was the poster lady of democracy, a figure who was prematurely awarded a Nobel Prize for peace to pressure the repressive military government to pave the path of democracy. She was presumed to make things better for everyone. Even the persecuted Muslims had high aspirations about her despite her criminal silence when the Rohingya and other minority Muslims were slaughtered all over Myanmar by Buddhists in 2012 genocidal campaigns. It did not matter that in the general election that followed her party did not field a single Muslim candidate even in the Rohingya majority territories of the northern Arakan state. 

Her hypocrisy shocked everyone. Many pundits tried to find excuses for her saying that her decision not to field a single Muslim candidate was part of a calculated election strategy to position herself as a die-hard, serious Buddhist nationalist who is not sympathetic to the ‘despised’ Rohingya and other Muslim minorities living inside the den of intolerance called Myanmar. As expected, she won big, formed the civilian government and self-appointed herself to be its chief counsellor, a CEO-like figure overlooking the government. 

Rather than integrating the minority Muslims and easing their pains and sufferings, in recent months Suu Kyi’s government unleashed one of the worst ethnic cleansing drives in the northern Rakhine state to further marginalize the already marginalized Rohingya community. Scores of Rohingya villages were torched by her security forces leading to forced exodus of tens of thousands to Bangladesh, let alone the internal displacement of even a larger number. Thousands disappeared, many were killed. Hundreds of Muslim females – even teenage girls – were raped as part of an ethnic cleansing drive that many imagined would never see in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar.

Knowing the enormity of the war crimes committed by her security forces, Suu Kyi would not let any fact-finding mission to investigate. In a BBC interview, she lied and denied such gruesome abuses of human rights. 

But can truth be hidden? She ought to know better. 

Suu Kyi says that Rohingyas returning to Myanmar are welcome. Reliable sources in Maungdaw say that the government has planned to return only one third of their original lands to the returnees and internally displaced Rohingyas, and that they are kept in a small slum-like quarter as per one ‘Household Registration List’, regardless of the numbers of the families within that ‘household registration list.’

“The Myanmar military burnt down our homes last year and we became displaced. They are returning us only one-third of our original village and building a small IDP Camps-like quarter. None of us wants to accept this. Worse, they are demolishing mosques, cemeteries, roads and other historical evidences in order to destroying evidences of the human habitats/societies in the village”, said an internally displaced person at ‘Wapeik’ village in Maungdaw.

Rohingya youths are targets of intimidation, harassment and persecution by the Myanmar authorities. The Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) from the Camp 12 based at the village of ‘YweNyoTaung’ has recently issued the warrants considered as arbitrary by the human rights observers for the following number of youths from the following villages:

1) 105 from the village of ‘Ye Khae Chaung KhwaSone’ locally known as ‘Bor Gozi Bil.’

2) 69 from the village of ‘Ye Dwin Chaung’ locally known as ‘Raimma Bil’, and

3) 59 from the village of ‘Kyar Gaung Taung’ locally known as ‘Rabailla’. 

U Aye Myint, a human rights observer based in Maungdaw while speaking to Rohingya Vision, said “this is a list of targeted arbitrary warrants issued aiming to reduce the numbers of the Rohingya youths including underage teenagers in the Arakan state. As a result, many youths in the region have been living in their hideouts for past few days in fear of arbitrary arrests.”

According to the local Rohingyas, since 2012 the Myanmar authorities systematically forced hundreds of Rohingya youths in Maungdaw and Buthidaung to flee from the country by issuing arbitrary arrest warrants against them after accusing them of involving in the June-2012 violence. [Rohingya Vision TV] 

Suu Kyi has proven herself to be a devil with a smiling face; an utterly sly lady to whom veracity and morality have lost their worth. It’s a sad commentary on a personality – once much revered and now deservingly maligned – that could have made things better for all those who call Myanmar their home – Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. 

Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar religious minorities won’t have any rights. Thus, the destruction of Muslim shrines, mosques and cemeteries has become part of a sinister strategy to ethnically cleanse them. And yet like a pathological liar she chose to deny practicing such crimes. 

What a joke Buddhism has become in the hands of its extremist zealots inside Myanmar! 

In nearby Bangladesh, if any Buddhist temple is attacked by an angry mob that is reacting to unfathomed crimes of the Myanmar government and its extremist Buddhists, the government of Bangladesh takes extra effort to refurbish it better showing its unmolested reverence and respect for other religions and their symbols. Expecting any reciprocity of gesture from Buddhist Myanmar is simply foolish; it’s not even a beautiful dream, only an illusion!

Unalienable rights are those which God gave to man at the Creation, once and for all. By definition, since God granted such rights, governments could not take them away. In the USA, this fundamental truth is recognized and enshrined in its nation's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence: "[A]ll men are created equal...[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) recognizes the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, stating such to be the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The Government of Myanmar is in serious breach of the UDHR and its Article 3, which states: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. As I have noted many times, Myanmar government is guilty of refusing to grant any of the 30 Articles enshrined in the UDHR to the Rohingya people. They don’t have any right in Myanmar – neither before nor now in Suu Kyi’s apartheid regime. 

Unwanted and brutally persecuted in Buddhist Myanmar, Rohingyas have been fleeing their ancestral homes in Arakan state after Burma (now Myanmar) won its independence from the Great Britain. More Rohingyas now live outside Myanmar than inside. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf statelets, Malaysia and India have sizeable community of Rohingya refugees. 

The life of a refugee is terrible. It is unsafe, insecure and dehumanizing. 

Nearly 5000 Rohingyas have been putting up in the Jammu city, mainly on its outskirts, in the Indian Occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir, well until recently. Now with a fascist Hindutvadi party (BJP) ruling the country in the center and many other states, Hindu fascists are making it difficult for anyone to live peacefully in this country unless the person is a Hindu, preferably from the upper caste. Of course, when it comes to outsiders like the Rohingya, who are refugees who don't share Hindu religion, they are easy targets of harassment and persecution these days. 

Last week, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Jammu, Rakesh Gupta had issued a statement calling for identification and killing of Rohingyas. As the latest report shows, seven Jhuggis (shacks) of Rohingya Muslims were torched by Hindu miscreants in Bhagwati Nagar area of Jammu early Friday, just days after a Rohingya family was thrashed and threatened to leave the state.

The Rohingyas putting up in Bhagwati Nagar said some families living in the adjacent plot were forced to move out after some people threatened them. “I don’t know why it happened. I had come here because of the problem in our country (Burma). We will return once things limp back to normal there. It would be good if the Modi government gives us space and time to stay here for some time, till we return,” said Fatima Khatoon.

High Court Bar Association Srinagar has condemned the torching of seven shacks of Rohingya Muslims by certain communal elements in Bhagwati Area of Jammu, on Friday. It described the statement of certain police officials that it was a case of short circuit as false and an attempt on their part to protect those criminals, who had committed the distressing and horrifying crime.

The Bar Association once again requests the international community including Amnesty International, Asia Watch and other human rights organizations of the World to take notice of the gruesome events, which are taking place in Kashmir and intervene effectively, to bring an end to such gross human rights violations in Kashmir.

My heart bleeds to see so much suffering in our world! Who knows if the persecuted Rohingya will one day see the end of their long sufferings, much like many other lucky ones in this unfortunate planet of ours.

By Sajeeb Wazed

The Diplomat

April 7, 2017

But the government needs international support to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

The plight of the Rohingya – the stateless Muslim people fleeing persecution and violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar – has become well known. The Rakhine state borders the Bay of Bengal and the southeastern tip of Bangladesh. Recurrent violence and torture has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar. Owing to its proximity, more than 300,000 displaced Rohingya have entered Bangladesh in recent years and nearly 70,000 more since late last year.

Having faced its own humanitarian and refugee situation during its war of liberation against Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh is sensitive to people seeking protection from torture and exclusion. That is why Bangladesh, which only two years ago climbed into lower-middle-income status in the World Bank rankings, has been expending significant government resources to help the displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh strongly supports the recommendations of a June 2016 report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Rohingya situation in Myanmar, which include: an abolition of discriminatory local orders against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, the lifting of restrictive bureaucratic requirements for emergency medical referrals and the establishment of guidelines that will eventually eliminate all freedom-of-movement restrictions on the Rohingya.

Bangladesh has successfully repatriated more than 236,500 Myanmar refugees through an agreement negotiated between the two nations in 1991-92 – until the process was halted by Myanmar in 2005. The remaining Myanmar refugees, numbering more than 33,000 now, are living in two camps in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal district near the border of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. But the Rohingya, having been denied citizenship in Myanmar, were forced to leave their homeland. Over the last decade, nearly 300,000 have entered Bangladesh and taken shelter in makeshift settlements in and around Cox’s Bazar.

The Cox’s Bazar settlements are not an ideal or tenable solution. Although the Bangladesh government has done its best, the sheer number of Rohingya living there has posed socio-economic, demographic, environmental, political, humanitarian and security challenges. It’s difficult for the government and NGOs to distribute assistance to the Rohingya in the settlement camps.

The Rohingya population is extremely vulnerable and its size is well beyond the capacity of the local administration to manage. Criminal networks have emerged that are engaging in narcotics smuggling and human trafficking. Adding more settlements to the Cox’s Bazar area, loading more onto an already over-strained system, is not feasible.

As an alternative, the government of Bangladesh has crafted a plan that would relocate the Rohingya population to Thengar Char, an island in the northern Bay of Bengal at the mouth of the Meghna River, north of Cox’s Bazar and south of the capital of Dhaka.

Conditions in this new settlement will be far better than what the Rohingya have in Cox’s Bazar. The government will build housing, schools, hospitals and health centers, mosques and roads.

Some news reports have falsely claimed that Thengar Char is completely submerged for part of the year, a baseless allegation that subjected the government to unwarranted criticism. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina dispatched a team of researchers to Thengar Char to closely examine its condition. The truth is that, as in any tidal region, waters rise and fall daily. As a result, a small percentage of Thengar Char – the coastline – is under water half of each day, at high tide, then exposed again at low tide. The vast majority of Thengar Char is never submerged.

The Bangladesh government will not build Rohingya settlement facilities in those areas of Thengar Char that are subject to tidal fluctuations. It is also doing its best to handle the influx of Rohingya people in the most humanitarian way.

During a recent hearing of the Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives, Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights, who has visited the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, said he is sympathetic with the challenges the Bangladesh government faces from the crush of refugees.

Another witness at the hearing, Andrea Gittleman, program manager of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, also recently visited Rohingya population living in Bangladesh and said that the Bangladesh government believes that the root of the Rohingya crisis must be solved in Myanmar.

Correct. The solution to the Rohingya crisis must be based in Myanmar and it will take many international hands. Bangladesh asks its international friends for help in developing Thengar Char and transporting the refugees there. It also seeks support for the sustainable return of the Rohingya to their homeland in Myanmar, in safety, security and dignity. 

Sajeeb Wazed is the information technology adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

By Carlos Sardina Galache

South East Asia Globe

April 4, 2017

At the heart of the Rohingya’s decades-long struggle in Myanmar lies a question of identity, along with a desire for citizenship and the basic rights that come with it. But even for those Muslims that can now call themselves Myanmar citizens, life remains a daily struggle

Mahla refuses to recall how her house was destroyed in October 2012. Just mentioning that episode brings tears to her eyes. Moreover, she suffers from a heart condition, and the doctor has advised her “not to think about bad things”. That month, a wave of sectarian violence between the Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya and Kaman communities swept through several townships in Rakhine State. The Muslims bore the brunt of the violence.

Ever since, this 52-year-old mother of five has lived in a ramshackle hut in the Taung Paw Camp, where 2,916 Muslims are confined near the outskirts of Myebon, a small, isolated town in which the Buddhist and Muslim communities had lived peacefully for generations.

Most Rohingya in Rakhine lack legal recognition by the Myanmar state, but Mahla is one of the very few who has attained citizenship in recent years. As part of a pilot programme launched in her township in September 2014, she was given a ‘pink card’, the document that signals she is a full citizen.

The Rohingya are almost universally reviled by the country’s Buddhist majority population and have been oppressed by the government since the late 1970s. The Rohingya ethnicity is not included in the list of 135 officially recognised “national races” adopted in the late 1980s. Instead, they are labelled as ‘Bengalis’, implying that they are trespassers from the territory that is now Bangladesh.

The controversial Citizenship Law passed in 1982 makes belonging to one of the “national races” the primary criterion of citizenship, but not the only one, and it was not its application that rendered stateless most of the Rohingya.

“Although the 1982 Citizenship Law was clearly regressive, it did not render any group of people stateless on paper,” explained Nick Cheesman, a fellow at the Australian National University and expert on rule of law in Myanmar. “Actually, it recognized as citizens those who were already recorded as such… regardless of how they were identified racially or religiously. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the government launched a process of re-registration, taking old ID cards to re-issue new ones, Muslims in Rakhine State were not issued with new cards even when they were legally entitled to them.

“The problem in contemporary Burma is that the notion of national races surpasses that of citizenship, both legally and ideologically. The 1982 Citizenship Law may recognise that members of non-national races who held citizenship previously would keep it, but it set as the gold standard for citizenship to be a member of one of the national races,” he added.

Mahla, meanwhile, was sitting in the ramshackle hut she shares with her husband and five children when she explained to Southeast Asia Globe how and why she got citizenship. “We call ourselves Rohingya, but the government doesn’t allow us to use our name. During the verification process [for the 2014 pilot programme], the authorities told us that we would have more opportunities if we accepted [being labelled] ‘Bengali’ and got citizenship,” she said.

The designation ‘Bengali’ was also applied to some Kaman, a Muslim group in Rakhine that does feature in the list of 135 “national races”. Maung Zaw, a 45-year-old father of three also confined in the Taung Paw Camp, showed us the pink card he was given three years ago. On the card he is listed as Bengali, but he also produced, with puzzlement, his family book stating that both of his parents were Kaman.

In another hut in Taung Paw Camp, Gulban’s wrinkles and shattered demeanour reveal a life of suffering and make her look much older than her 53 years. She does not speak Burmese, only the Bengali dialect of the Rohingya, but for years she had carefully looked after the documents that prove her family has lived in Rakhine for at least three generations – and was able to produce them when the pilot programme was launched. Now she is a Myanmar citizen, at least on paper.

“I heard the word Rohingya from my parents when I was a child, but it’s not accepted by the immigration department. They laughed at me and told me to go when I pronounced it once in their office. Bengali means we are from Bangladesh, and I am from Burma, but I’m willing to accept it if I can get citizenship and rights,” she explained.

“But nothing has changed for me since I got citizenship,” said Gulban, echoing a sentiment expressed by all the recently recognised citizens Southeast Asia Globe interviewed in the camp. Regardless of their status, they share the same restrictions on movement imposed on all Muslims in Rakhine, the same difficulties accessing education or healthcare, and the same sense of hopelessness.

Tin Shwe, the general administrator of Myebon township, was in charge of the pilot programme in 2014. “Virtually all Muslims applied for citizenship, and none of them used the word ‘Rohingya’. They don’t use that word here. We eventually gave full citizenship to 97 people and naturalised citizenship to 969 of them,” he said.

“We gave them citizenship according to the 1982 Citizenship Law, even though they are not naturally citizens,” he added. When asked what distinguished them from ‘natural citizens’, he replied: “They don’t belong to any of our indigenous races.”

“They can move whenever they want, they can go to Sittwe [the state capital], or from there to Yangon, but to go to Yangon they need to inform the immigration authorities,” he explained. However, several of the Muslim citizens interviewed by Southeast Asia Globe asserted that travel permits are difficult to get and necessitate exorbitant bribes to the police.

Gulban said that she did not wish to travel outside of Myebon: “I’m poor, and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go, but I don’t want to be confined in this camp.”

Mahla, however, was anxious for her children. “They can only receive primary and middle education here; I’m very worried about their future,” she explained. “They can’t get educated properly, and they will languish if they can’t get out of here.”

An ethnic Bamar from central Myanmar, Tin Shwe blamed the local Buddhist Rakhine population for the restrictions of movement imposed on Muslims. “When the programme was implemented it was met with strong protests from the indigenous community. I tried to explain the law to them, but it’s difficult for the government, because we found ourselves between both communities. Local people don’t allow [the Rohingya] to go to the hospital, so we send doctors to the camp – both government doctors and members of international NGOs,” he said.

The main mobiliser of the Rakhine community in Myebon is Khin Thein, the local chair of the Rakhine Women’s Network. “The Kalar [a derogatory term used in Myanmar for people of South Asian descent] don’t belong here. With the previous military government, they used to come from Bangladesh and bribe the local officials to get legal documents because they had a lot of money. That’s why we cannot accept most of them and we protested,” she explained at the jewellery shop she owns in downtown Myebon.

She claimed that people from Bangladesh are still trying to settle in Myanmar – despite the fact that conditions for Muslims in Rakhine worsened dramatically after 2012. When asked for evidence, her reply invoked a powerful force in fuelling inter-communal conflict in the state: “I don’t have concrete evidence, but I have heard rumours.”

Bananda Phyabawga, the 60-year-old abbot of Pyanabakeman, a local Buddhist monastery, expressed similar ideas about Islam. “If you look at history, countries like Indonesia and Afghanistan used to be Buddhist, but they became Muslim. They try to impose their religion on others, so we need to handle this threat,” he said in front of a hall full of novice monks and other youngsters listening intently to his words.

The abbot’s discourse echoed that of Myanmar’s extremist Buddhist organisations, such as MaBaTha or 969, that have emerged in recent years. However, Rakhine nationalists are at least as resentful of the domination by the largely ethnic Burman government as they are of the perceived Muslim invasion of their land.

“Our biggest enemy is the Myanmar government. I support the Arakan Army [an armed group which has been occasionally active in recent years in the state] and I want the Fatherland of Rakhine to be independent,” Khin Thein said.

But beyond the divergences between Rakhine nationalists such as Khin Thein and government officials such as Tin Shwe, all of them seem to agree that the Rohingya are not ‘natural citizens’ of Myanmar. And they all offered the same recipe to solve the inter-communal conflict plaguing Rakhine State: time.

“It is impossible to live together now, but it may be possible within five or ten years,” said Phyabawga. Beyond that, nobody seemed able to suggest any concrete strategy to restore the coexistence that was in place before 2012.

Back in Taung Paw camp, after five years of confinement in which even citizenship has not improved the lot of those fortunate enough to attain it, the passing of time only adds to the desperation. And the goals of its inmates seem to be far more modest than many in Myanmar believe. “I don’t know what human rights are,” said Gulban. “I just know I would like to have food at my table, freedom of movement, education for my children, access to healthcare and for my family to live without fear.”

By Shashank Bengali

Los Angeles Times

March 25, 2017

U Ko Ni had just stepped off a plane and was standing curbside at the airport in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar. The tall, gray-haired lawyer cradled his 3-year-old grandson while passengers around him spoke on their phones or climbed into taxis.

No one seemed to notice as a man in shorts and sandals sidled up behind Ko Ni, drew a 9-millimeter pistol inches from his head and pulled the trigger.

The fatal shooting not only silenced one of Myanmar’s most prominent legal experts, it exposed the dangers lurking below the surface of this former military dictatorship’s fitful transition to democracy.

In the old Myanmar — previously known as Burma and ruled by a junta for a half-century — political activists routinely disappeared into prisons or died in murky circumstances. Then in 2010, the military began ceding authority to civilians.

Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a parliamentary majority in 2015 elections, and last October the Obama administration lifted economic sanctions, formalizing Myanmar’s reentry into the global community.

But the military establishment still wields immense clout in this Southeast Asian nation of 53 million, authority enshrined in the constitution it passed in 2008 shortly before initiating reforms.

Ko Ni had spent the last several years drafting a new constitution that would have unwound many of the army’s powers, and his killing in January has shaken civil society leaders who see it as a warning to reformers.

“Those who did this did not tolerate progress,” said Myo Win, a Muslim activist who heads the Smile Education and Development Foundation, a nonprofit group in Yangon. “Of course, the rest of us are worried.”

Authorities say the assassination was a plot by three former military officers who hired an ex-convict to carry it out. The gunman and two other suspects have been arrested while the third, a retired army lieutenant colonel, remains at large.

Ko Ni’s grandson survived the shooting, but the gunman also killed a taxi driver who pursued him.

The home affairs minister, Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe, said the suspects were motivated by “extreme patriotism” and angered by posts Ko Ni had written on social media. He did not specify the writings. But few figures represented a greater challenge to Myanmar’s establishment than the 63-year-old Ko Ni.

Besides advising Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy party and defending the rights of his fellow Muslims in a Buddhist-dominated country, he was, behind the scenes, pushing a bold gambit to abolish the army-written constitution.

The document gives the army control of the entire civil service, and Ko Ni had told friends that as long as that provision remained in place, “the military is basically still running the country,” said Bertil Lintner, an author and commentator who has worked on Myanmar since the 1980s.

The army effectively holds veto power over any constitutional changes because a three-quarters majority in parliament is required to pass amendments, and one-quarter of seats are reserved for the military. Ko Ni thought he had found an opening: Scrap the constitution with a simply majority vote in parliament.

“There is nothing in the 2008 constitution that says it can’t be abolished with a single vote,” said Lintner, a longtime friend. “He was a constitutional expert, and very good at finding loopholes."

He had already devised the strategy that allowed Suu Kyi — the country’s most popular political figure — to lead the government after the 2015 elections. Sidestepping a constitutional provision that barred her from becoming president because her late husband had foreign citizenship, Ko Ni’s solution was to create the powerful post of state counselor, which sits above the president.

But Suu Kyi thought Ko Ni’s plan to do away with the constitution was “too provocative,” Lintner said. Although party officials said they remained committed to constitutional reform, many experts believe Ko Ni was uniquely qualified to lead the effort.

“With the loss of its chief technician and advocate, the constitutional reform process will almost certainly be stalled,” said Richard Weir, a fellow with the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

Ko Ni often discussed his ideas in public forums and with journalists, including foreign reporters with whom he spoke in English. Last September, he confided in activist Myo Win that he felt threatened.

“Someone close to the military came and told him that he was their second-biggest enemy after Shwe Mann,” Myo Win said, referring to the former head of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party who was ousted in 2015 for pushing constitutional reforms.

The following month, when Ko Ni spoke at a conference in the northeast city of Lashio, the audience of 200 or so attendees was joined by about 10 plainclothes officers from military intelligence.

“They always knew where he was,” Myo Win said.

But Ko Ni kept his fears from his family. His son Thant Zin Oo, a 29-year-old software engineer in Singapore, noticed the abuses hurled at him on social media sites but thought they were harmless.

“He did not mention anything that could cause us any concern, although there was online harassment constantly,” his son said.

Some of the vitriol he faced derived from Ko Ni’s faith. Muslims, who account for fewer than 5% of Myanmar’s population, have often been targeted by a surging Buddhist nationalism — particularly in western Rakhine state, where members of the Rohingya ethnic group are denied citizenship and have been systematically persecuted.

Ko Ni was not Rohingya but spoke out about the injustices faced by the group. He also criticized his own party for failing to field any Muslim candidates in the 2015 elections, an apparent effort to placate Buddhist extremists.

“I can think of many Muslim lawyers in Myanmar who very deliberately keep a much lower profile,” said Melissa Crouch, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales law school in Sydney, Australia, and an expert on Myanmar’s constitution. “He stood out.”

But over the last year, Crouch said, Ko Ni had come to believe that space for free speech was narrowing. Last November, when she invited him to speak in Yangon on a panel about constitutional issues — the type of event he usually welcomed — he refused.

“In Myanmar there are invisible lines and you never quite know when you’re going to step on them,” Crouch said. “And now that message has been very clearly understood.”

The day he was killed, he was returning from Indonesia, where he had traveled as part of a government delegation to share experiences of political reconciliation. Mya Aye, a Muslim activist who was part of the delegation, said Ko Ni had openly discussed the need for political reforms.

Both men had been targets of extremists before. In 2014, the National League of Democracy party had to cancel a public event after Buddhist monks protested the inclusion of the two men because they were Muslim.

“It’s never been safe for political activists in Myanmar,” Mya Aye said, “and now it is getting worse.”

Suu Kyi’s government has offered a mixed response to the assassination. The morning after his death, which made headlines worldwide, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper ran the story on its inside pages. Suu Kyi waited one month before making a public statement, calling Ko Ni’s death a “deep loss” but stopping short of a full-throated appeal for justice.

Allies said she has been careful to avoid antagonizing military generals to maintain a working relationship — and because she might fear for her own safety.

“It seems she can’t do much,” Mya Aye said. “She might be thinking that to be vocal would cause unnecessary problems. But she needs to speak out for justice.”

Whether a plot to kill Ko Ni reached higher into the military establishment may never be known. Activists have already criticized the conduct of the investigation.

The police and army, which are running the probe together, waited three weeks to hold their first news conference. The home minister, Kyaw Swe, also raised eyebrows when he suggested without elaborating that Ko Ni’s “community” — a veiled reference to Muslims — might have killed him.

Ko Ni’s relatives say they won’t judge the investigation until it is over. Asked whether those responsible for his father’s killing would see justice, Thant Zin Oo said, “We have hope.”

THE plight of the Rohingya was brutally summed up by UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee when she told of horrific allegations from the community of children being thrown into fires, people tied up indoors while their homes were set ablaze and last but not least, the violent raping of local women.

At the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, Lee also accused Burma of using bureaucratic means to “expel” the Rohingya minority from the country altogether.

The accusation of such unabashed brutality is the latest in a long line of accusations that reflect badly on Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has led Burma since her party’s resounding election victory back in 2015.

Suu Kyi’s government rejected Lee’s bid to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the abuses and insisted its own national probe could uncover the facts in Rakhine, leading critics to believe not enough is being done to combat the problem.

As allegations of abuse in Rakhine state and ethnic clashes in Burma’s northern states mount, Suu Kyi is coming under growing international pressure to take action. But these calls have been for naught, as they are often met with silence and denial.

Regarded for years as a beacon of hope in a country torn apart by the struggle against oppression, could Suu Kyi, the once golden child of democracy, be losing her shine?

Early “golden” years

As the darling of the West, Suu Kyi courted almost unanimously positive press from the western media at the beginning of her political career.

Her powerful, unrelenting resolve along with her undeniable allure and storybook-like post-colonial upbringing made her revered around the globe. Hundreds of thousands attended her rallies at home and her collections of writing became bestsellers abroad, drawing mass global attention to her message.

Amnesty International made her a prisoner of conscience and Vanity Fair dubbed her ‘Burma’s Saint Joan’, labels repeated countless times in news reports and speeches across the world.

In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in honour of her “unflagging efforts” and her resolve to strive for “ethnic conciliation by peaceful means”.

Then India’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru award for international understanding was given the following year.

Politicians lauded her with praise and she was often mentioned in the same context as fellow freedom fighters such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.

While under military-enforced house arrest in Rangoon, reporters took great risks to speak to her, to hear her courageous story of resistance.

Portraits of her were seen all over the world, and celebrities clambered to jump on the Suu Kyi bandwagon.

It seemed there was no limit to her global popularity.

But there has been a notable shift in opinion of late amid mounting reports of rights abuses coming out of Burma, putting her status as exemplar of democratic values under threat.

Turning tides

Since the military launched a crackdown back in October following the death of nine policemen in Rakhine state, it is believed that 75,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the border to neighbouring Bangladesh with another 20,000 being displaced within Rakhine state, the UN reported. Claims of rape and murder, and accusations of ethnic cleansing, at the hands of the armed forces have been rife.

Rather than end this cycle of persecution and violence, Suu Kyi is being accused of pandering to Burma’s Buddhist majority in an attempt to court votes rather than assert her principles. She is also yet to visit the area, which has been sealed off under a military directive designed to keep out foreign aid workers and journalists.

While Suu Kyi has taken steps to set up several commissions to review the situation in the Rakhine state, their impartiality have been questioned.

UN rapporteur Lee has stated that she does not believe that they have discharged their investigative obligations and questioned to what extent the investigations will be prompt, thorough, independent and impartial. She has also accused them of not having a “robust methodology or policies in place to address key issues such as witness protection or documentation of evidence.”

Progress in northern Kachin and Shan states, which have seen rebel fighting for decades, has also been almost non-existent despite promises from the National League for Democracy (NLD) to make it a priority following their election victory, with the aim of achieving a nationwide ceasefire by February 2017.

Following the NLD’s peace conference in late August, the military ramped up attacks in Kachin, intensified operations in neighbouring Shan state and began a hunt for a rebel splinter group in southern Karen state, an area that had seen little fighting for years.

Thousands of civilians were displaced and reports emerged of torture, extrajudicial killings and indiscriminate shelling of villages, for which the army has long been notorious.

Suu Kyi’s muted responses to the allegations of killings and abuse have largely consisted of defending or denying the actions of the military.

“Show me a country without human rights issues,” she said in October, as reported by New York Times.

“Every country has human rights abuses.”

A few weeks later during a visit to Tokyo, she said, “We have been very careful not to blame anyone until we have complete evidence about who has been responsible.”

In response to the Kachin problem, Suu Kyi’s office issued a statement claiming that the “information is absolutely not true.”

Suu Kyi has repeatedly tried to downplay the accusations and the scale of the military operations in both regions, drawing condemnation from rights groups and leaders alike.

Amid the escalating human rights abuses, she is also cultivating a reputation for being above public scrutiny and highly anti-media.

And gone are the days of courting international journalists; Suu Kyi now rarely gives interviews to the Burmese press and carefully handpicks her encounters with international media. There is no regular questioning from MPs in Parliament and there has not been a proper press conference since just before the election 14 months ago.

Her government has also taken full advantage of the controversial Telecommunications Law that polices online defamation of the regime, jailing 38 people since her election victory in 2015.

Toeing the line?

Suu Kyi’s almost steadfast refusal to criticise the military now that she is in power, after being a vocal critic whilst in opposition, has raised the question – is she toeing the line or does she believe what she says?

As the civilian leader of the government, Suu Kyi shares power with the military. The army controls the vital cabinets of defence, home affairs and border affairs. Notably, these are the ministries that are running the anti-insurgency operation in Rakhine State.

Suu Kyi has in the past vowed to change this but so far no clear intent towards that has been displayed.

Given the military’s pervasive power, Suu Kyi is forced to work with the men in uniform, rather than against them. The relationship remains tenuous and there continues to be a substantial sources of friction, however, it is a relationship born out of necessity, said Larry Jagan, a former BBC World Service journalist.

“They are working closely together on the peace process, and understand they need each other for this,” he said.

This has led many to believe that Suu Kyi may be biding her time until she is able to curtail the military’s power and shift the balance of power in her direction.

Some believe, however, that Suu Kyi may believe what she says due to the source of her information.

Most of the information she receives on the Rohingya and northern states come from military leaders, leading to some analysts in Burma to believe the army may have convinced her that Rohingya in Rakhine are terrorists.

Her government advisers are also mostly former military officers, or veteran civil servants with firm beliefs about the superiority of Buddhist values over all others, they say.

This theory is supported by comments from U Zaw Htay, spokesman for Suu Kyi, saying she was “standing” with the military.

“She knows everything,” he said, “The military has been briefing her on every important issue.”

What now?

Once the lionised freedom fighter, Suu Kyi now finds herself leader of a country responsible for the most persecuted minority in the world.

“Aung San Suu Kyi was held as this Joan of Arc figure and was such a beacon of hope for the Myanmar people that, in any other country, she was almost bound to fail,” argued Andrew Jaggard of consulting firm Mekong Economics.

Many who admired her resolve throughout the years of house arrest, and those Burmese that believed she was the symbol of hope, remain disillusioned in her failure to act in the face of wrongdoing.

Perhaps Suu Kyi is laying the groundwork and biding her time until an opportunity shows itself to make real change. Or perhaps she is a cynical politician who is willing to put votes ahead of principles.

But as Harvard Law Professor Tyler Gianni told the New York Times:

“She says she is a politician [but] you can have politics and you can have protection of the civilian population at the same time.”

By Eleanor Ross

Newsweek

February 13, 2017

A recent shipment of aid from Malaysian Muslim groups arrived to protests in Yangon.

When a ship crammed with 2,200 tons of rice, emergency supplies and aid-workers tried to dock at Yangon port on 10 February, it arrived to protests by hard-line Buddhists. The aid was from Malaysia, and part of it was meant to deliver relief to the Rohingya Muslims experiencing a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Maungdaw states. The ship successfully docked in Bangladesh on 13 February.

Initially the boat was banned from entering Burmese waters, but was later allowed through by Port Authorities, though expressly forbidden to enter a river north to Sittwe, capital of the Rakhine region. It was permitted to dock just outside Yangon, where it began to unload 500 tons of produce. The rest was destined for southern Bangladesh where up to 70,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled since the military crackdown in October and are living in atrocious conditions in official and unofficial refugee camps.

They are displaced citizens, seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in Myanmar, and illegal immigrants from Myanmar in Bangladesh. The government has reportedly returned thousands of Rohingya to Myanmar according to Amnesty International; the organization says it is a violation of international law, which states you cannot forcibly return people to a country where they are at risk of human rights violations.

A group in Muslim-majority Malaysia, frustrated by reports of inaction and persecution in Rakhine, put an aid ship together to support the refugees. Unusually for Southeast Asian stability, Malaysia has been openly critical of Myanmar’s actions.

When the boat arrived, a group of Buddhists, including monks, held up signs saying “No Rohingya,” One of the most vocal groups present was a faction of Buddhist monks belonging to the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, a nationalist group.

Recent reports by the U.N. and its workers have said the death toll of Rohingya Muslims could number in the thousands and that the situation has worrying similarities to ethnic cleansing. Refugees from the group are not always welcome in Bangladesh either, where Amnesty International has reported “callous” actions against the minority.

“Their desperate need for food, water and medical care is not being addressed,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director in a November report.

Here, Newsweek reviews the events that have led to Burmese Buddhists attempting to deny the distribution of aid to a needy minority, and the role both countries have played so far.

Who are the Rohingya?

Described by the U.N. as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities in 2013, there are around 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar, out of a population of 50 million. The majority live in Rakhine State, and speak Bengali, rather than Burmese. Many (approx 140,000 Rohingya) live in camps in Rakhine that they cannot leave without government permission.

Why did Malaysia send aid?

The Malaysian boat carried 1,000 tons of rice, 1,200 packets of instant noodles, hygiene kits, chapati flour, and a legion of aid workers. The aid has not come directly from the government, but was instead organized through the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisations, and a number of local NGOs, including 1 Putera Club.

As residents of one of the wealthiest Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia, many Muslims want to help their northern neighbors.

In January Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak warned Myanmar could be a target for the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) if the Rohingya crisis is not resolved, and stressed that the potential exodus of refugees could cause the region to be “destabilized.”

"This must happen now…The government of Myanmar disputes the terms 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing,' but whatever the terminology, the Rohingya Muslims cannot wait," Razak said, according to Al Jazeera.

Indonesia has also offered to act as a facilitator to ease the crisis in Myanmar, after Razak described Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya as a “stain” on the ASEAN bloc, and called on other countries to help.

Why are people protesting against the aid shipments?

For external observers, the presence of people protesting against the aid shipment might seem strange. For ordinary people, it could be considered a boon for a country to receive free aid in any context, but especially for people it does not see as citizens.

However, monks believe they have a responsibility to defend and protect Buddhism, explains Matthew Walton, Aung San Suu Kyi senior research fellow in modern Burmese studies at St Antony's College, Oxford.

“It can be difficult to say whether the people who are going to rallies or sharing their Facebook posts actually support [the monks’] specific aims or whether it’s just social pressure to support monks, especially when those monks present their activities as being done in defense of Buddhism,” he says.

Why do some people deny the Rohingya exist?

Some of the protesters meeting the aid shipment made claims there are no Rohingya in Myanmar. Despite the government having established a commission to look into Rohingya abuse, the government of Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as official citizens.

The stance stems a concern over what could happen if the Rohingya were recognized as an official ethnic group.

Walton says that the 2008 constitution allows for special representation for minority groups within regional and state parliaments and the former military government created several semi-autonomous zones for different ethnic groups. “The fear that some people, particularly Rakhine Buddhists, but Buddhists across the country, have is that if the Rohingya were recognized as such, their population numbers would make them eligible to demand certain special treatment and would also allow them to contest for parliamentary seats in the Rakhine State Parliament, challenging the near-monopoly that Buddhists have there… [thus] upsetting the balance of power in Rakhine State.”

Is Bangladesh helping the situation?

Not according to reports from rights organizations. Around 1,700 tons of the aid from the Malaysian ship is destined for the 70,000 Rohingya living around Cox’s Bazaar in southern Bangladesh, but proved difficult to deliver due to resistance from the government. On 3 February, the Bangladeshi government denied the ship access to Teknaf Port, but after a meeting between officials, it was agreed the ship could dock just outside Teknaf, an area where many Rohingya live in subsistence conditions according to Amnesty.

Bangladesh sees the Rohingya as ethnically from Myanmar and the government has said it can’t afford to support more refugees. Authorities estimate between 300,000 and 500,000 unregistered Rohingya currently live in Bangladesh and the U.N. has asked Bangladesh to keep its border open to allow anyone fleeing violence to escape.