David Stout

Democratic Voice of Burma

February 21, 2013

Burma’s Deputy Immigration and Population Minister Kyaw Kyaw Win denied the existence of the Rohingya ethnic group in Burma during a parliamentary session on Tuesday. 

According to a back page report in today’s The New Light of Myanmar, Kyaw Kyaw Win made the statement twice in response to questions from MPs Maung Nyo of Sittwe and Daw Khin Saw Wai of Yathedaung, who also used the opportunity to unleash their own anti-Rohingya comments in front of the lower house. 

Hours later, President’s Office Director Zaw Htay, under the name Hmuu Zaw, tweeted, “In today[‘s] Parliament, Deputy Minister for Immigration said there is no [Rohingya] ethnic in Myanmar” on the popular social networking site Twitter. 

Zaw Htay has come under fire in the past for publishing anti-Rohingya comments on his Facebook page along with inflammatory pictures when sectarian violence rocked Arakan state last year. 

“When government ministers deny Rohingya exist, and it is repeated by the office of the President, this encourages more prejudice and violence against Rohingya and all Muslims,” said Mark Farmaner, director at Burma Campaign UK. 

“The international community can’t keep turning a blind eye to the fact that with statements like this President Thein Sein’s government is encouraging violence against the Rohingya.” 

Ethno-religious riots exploded in June and October in the restive western state resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands of residents and left a disproportionate amount of Muslim villages razed to the ground. 

Aid groups have struggled to deliver relief to the thousands of displaced Rohingya who are denied humanitarian assistance and not registered as internally displaced persons. 

“The government has denied the Rohingya as an ethnic identity for decades, branding nearly all Muslims in Arakan State as illegal immigrants as a matter of discriminatory state policy,” said Matthew Smith, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. 

Thein Sein’s government was heavily criticised last July after the president told a visiting delegation from the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees that the government would not recognise the Rohingya and suggested resettling the population to a third country. 

The deputy minister’s statement came as two Nobel laureates, former East Timor Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta and former Managing Director of Grameen Bank Muhammad Yunus, published a story in the Huffington Post yesterday calling for an end to the discrimination against the Rohingya minority. 

“The charge that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants to Myanmar is false,” wrote the Nobel laureates. 

“We ask the world to not look away, but to raise its collective voice in support of the Rohingya.”

David Stout

Democratic Voice of Burma

December 12, 2012

The filmmaker behind Al Jazeera’s ‘Hidden Genocide’ has refuted accusations of fabrication made by the Rakhine Nationalities and Development Party (RNDP) chairman. 

The documentary provides testimony from both Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese concerning the rioting in early June in Arakan state that killed more than 100 people and displaced tens of thousands according to government figures. 

In the film, several of the individuals interviewed claim that government paramilitary forces massacred the Rohingya Muslims, who were later buried in mass graves. 

Earlier in the week, during an interview with DVB, RNDP chairman Dr Aye Maung alleged that one of the film’s central characters, Jannat Ara, who had been raped by Burmese paramilitary members and later died from complications caused by her injuries in Bangladesh, was fictitious. 

“They also have this made-up character – a woman who was raped and hospitalised and she travelled to Bangladesh from Arakan for a medical treatment,” Aye Maung told DVB earlier this week. 

The RNDP party boss went onto say the documentary was ‘biased’ and looked ‘like it was created in a studio’. 

“It is amazing how Dr Aye Maung thinks we (international journalists, NGOs and so on) ‘make things up’,” said filmmaker Phil Rees during an email exchange with DVB. 

The filmmaker had met with Jannat Ara on two separate occasions during the production of the film. 

“I saw medical records from a hospital in Chittagong that confirmed that trauma to her genital area and anus was ‘consistent with being raped by more than 20 men’,” said Rees. 

Jannat Ara had a drip permanently inserted in her neck to provide regular dialysis she needed for a kidney problem she contracted from the rape. 

According to Rees, the medical care was costing hundreds of dollars a month, which she was unable to afford. 

“I said in the film on several occasions that Rakhine [Arakanese] were victims of rioting in Maungdaw and many were made homeless. The overwhelming percentage of victims are, of course, Rohingya,” said Rees. 

“But the central problem is the ideology that fails to allow people who were born and brought up in the state to become part of the society there.” 

The RNDP has a history of antagonising residents in Arakan state and playing off nationalist sentiments. 

In July, security forces briefly detained two RNDP members in Arakan state’s Mrauk-U township after the duo went around town urging Arakanese nationals who owned rice mills to only sell their goods to Arakanese Buddhists. 

The RNDP members were later bailed out after being warned by the region’s tactical operations commander not to act in ways that could incite riots and were forced to sign a pledge to avoid such behaviour. 

Last week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought to preemptively discredit the Al Jazeera documentary in both editions of the New Light of Myanmar claiming the film had exaggerated and fabricated incidents that had occurred in Arakan state.