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Calling for donations to save cattle, a roadside poster in the Ayeyarwady Delta town of Kyaungon depicts an image of a cow and a verse glorifying the animal's mythical role as "mother" to mankind. (Photo: Myanmar Now)

By Swe Win
September 17, 2015

ATHOKE, Irrawaddy Division — Last year a Muslim businessman called Lwin Tun set up a factory in Labutta, a town in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta. He spent $330,000 on buildings and cooling systems, but couldn’t buy the product his factory was meant to process: meat.

That’s because Labutta’s seven cattle slaughterhouses, also Muslim-owned, had suddenly gone out of business. In January 2014 they had tried to renew their licenses, but local authorities had already sold them to an association led by members of the radical Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha.

The Muslim slaughterhouses went bust—and so, after just three months, did Lwin Tun’s meat-processing factory.

Burma’s Muslim minority make up about 5 percent of the country’s predominantly Buddhist population and Muslims living in the delta rely heavily on the slaughterhouse business and the beef trade.

Religious tensions simmered in Burma for almost half a century of military rule, boiling over in 2012, just a year after a semi-civilian government took power.

Now Muslim businesses have become the target of anti-Islamic sentiment propagated by radical Buddhists who have found a powerful voice in Burma’s more open political landscape.

Since late 2013, a campaign supported by Ma Ba Tha has forced dozens of Muslim-owned slaughterhouses and beef-processing facilities across the Irrawaddy Division to shut down, with thousands of cows seized from their Muslim owners, a Myanmar Now investigation has found.

Other Muslims whose businesses have survived have watched their incomes plummet.

Government documents obtained by Myanmar Now and interviews with officials show that Irrawaddy Division’s top officials supported the campaign against Muslim slaughterhouses.

Radical Buddhist activists also received government permission to transport hundreds of seized cows to Arakan State in western Burma, the scene of violence between Arakanese Buddhists and mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims.

There, they donated the animals to Buddhists who have resettled from eastern Bangladesh.

Lwin Tun, 49, also has interests in construction, real estate and hotels in the delta and in the commercial capital Rangoon. But thanks to Ma Ba Tha, he said, his business prospects in Labutta look bleak.

“Campaign activities calling for a boycott of Muslim-owned businesses have been going on in the town,” he said. “Pamphlets are being handed out. Police know about it, but they don’t take action.”

Religious Freedom

The campaign against the slaughterhouses and beef trade threatens both livelihoods and religious freedoms, Muslims told Myanmar Now. The shortage of cattle and tightening of government restrictions prevented Muslim communities in the delta from celebrating last year’s Eid al-Adha festival, where cows are slaughtered in accordance with Islamic tradition.

“This activity constitutes a direct violation of our fundamental religious rights,” said Al Haji Aye Lwin, chief convener of Rangoon’s Islamic Centre. “I estimate (Muslim) businesses in general are losing about 30 percent of their profits.”

Kyaw Sein Win, a spokesman for Ma Ba Tha at its Rangoon headquarters, said saving lives was central to Buddhist philosophy.

“We are not deliberately targeting (Muslim) businesses. They would kill animals as they believe this is how they gain merit. That’s the main difference between us and them,” he told Myanmar Now in a phone interview.

Burma has seen a rise in sectarian tension and anti-Muslim rhetoricled by nationalist Buddhist movements since 2011, when the military handed power to a nominally civilian government made up of former generals. The country’s faltering democratic transition will take its next step with elections on Nov. 8, the first in decades to be contested by all main opposition parties.

Ma Ba Tha, also known as the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, has gained prominence in Burma’s nascent democracy. It was founded in June 2013, following outbreaks of violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.

The group says Burma and Buddhism are under threat from Islam and has managed to get four so-called “Race and Religion” bills—seemingly designed to discriminate against Muslims—supported by Union Parliament. On September 14, the group began a series of celebrations in Rangoon and a number of towns to mark the success of their campaign.

At the closing of its second convention in June, which the group said was attended by 6,800 monks and laymen, Ma Ba Tha released a statement saying it would call on the government to ban Muslims from slaughtering animals during religious events.

Critics of Ma Ba Tha say their activities are not representative of all Buddhist clergy in Burma, which is 250,000 strong according to government data. Within the monks’ order, known as the Sangha, concern has been raised that Ma Ba Tha’s policies do not reflect the essence of Buddhism.

‘Practising to Cut Our Throats’

Supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi say the nationalist campaign is being used by the military-linked elite to attack her and her National League for Democracy party during a crucial election year. Monks associated with Ma Ba Tha have publicly accused the NLD of failing to protect Buddhism.

While calls for a boycott of Muslim-owned businesses have been less effective in big cities, the anti-slaughtering campaign, drawing on a traditional Buddhist abhorrence of killing cows, has resonated with Buddhists in the Irrawaddy Delta.

Here, among an expanse of paddies and waterways where most of Burma’s rice is grown, tens of thousands of Muslims, mostly town-based traders, live among some six million rice farmers—most of them Buddhists.

Burmese farmers traditionally keep cows and bullocks as draft animals and only sell them to slaughterhouses to raise quick cash to pay for a wedding or medical treatment. The Ma Ba Tha-backed campaign has not called on farmers to stop selling their cattle, but instead has taken over slaughterhouse licenses.

In 2014, Ma Ba Tha monks in the Irrawaddy delta formed Jivitadana Thetkal (“Save and Rescue Lives”), appealing to monasteries in Irrawaddy Division to each raise about $100 from their congregation and donate it to buying up licenses.

Ma Ba Tha’s spokesman Kyaw Sein Win said: “We support this campaign by Jivitadana Thetkal… Most of the monks in the Jivitadana Thetkal campaign are members of Ma Ba Tha but we don’t give any direct instructions from the headquarters.”

Radical Buddhist monks have delivered fiery sermons in delta villages to spread the idea that cattle-slaughtering was an affront to Buddhism and part of an Islamic plot to exterminate cattle.

“It’s time to be alert,” warn the lyrics of a song played at such events. “Buddhist monks and lay people, be no longer passive. If you are, our race and religion will cease to exist.”

Pyinyeinda, 65, is one of dozens of abbots in Irrawaddy Division who has come out in support of the campaign.

“Our region is faced with the risk of losing all its cattle. The kalars have killed thousands of them,” said Pyinyeinda, a monk in Athoke, using a derogatory term for people of Indian heritage. “Do you know why? They are practising how to cut our throats.”

Government Cooperation

Ma Ba Tha representatives said they have raised enough funds to buy up licenses across all 26 townships in Irrawaddy Division, and they sometimes received government support for their plan.

Sitting at a desk piled with books for teaching children about Ma Ba Tha, Irrawaddy Division Chief Minister Thein Aung told Myanmar Now he had approved a 50 percent discount on licenses sold to the group, and supported their raids.

“As a Buddhist, I don’t approve of cattle slaughtering. Therefore, I complied with the requests of the monks leading this campaign. I have favoured them to get the slaughter licenses,” said the former general who was appointed as chief minister by President Thein Sein in 2011.

He said his office sends “special teams” to make arrests if campaigners provide tip-offs about supposed violations of slaughterhouse licenses by business owners.

In several delta townships, such as in Labutta, Ma Ba Tha members said they managed to buy up all licenses and put local Muslim-owned slaughterhouses out of business.

In Pantanaw Township, campaigners raised about $15,000 in donations to obtain all four slaughter licenses in 2013 at a 50 percent discount, according to Kumara, a high-profile nationalist monk from Pantanaw who is a Ma Ba Tha central committee member.

Kumara said some 80 cows were saved as a result. He said his group continued to receive discounts—this time 30 percent—for their successful bids on licenses in 2014 and 2015.

A government document obtained by Myanmar Now, marked “secret” and signed by Irrawaddy Division Secretary Aye Kyaw on behalf of Thein Aung in November 2014, mentions that Ma Ba Tha successfully “bid on slaughter licenses in 15 townships.”

In other areas, Ma Ba Tha members began to monitor and raid Muslim-owned slaughterhouses and cattle transport, claiming violations of license terms that limit how many animals can be killed.

The 2014 government document instructs administrative officials in all 26 townships to cooperate with Ma Ba Tha members who monitor slaughterhouses. The letter urges monks to refrain from getting directly involved in these activities.

Night Raids

In small towns and villages dotted around the Irrawaddy delta, few people venture out when darkness falls over the vast expanse of paddy fields and zigzagging waterways. But in Kyonpyaw Township, some 150 kilometers west of Rangoon, Win Shwe, a local Ma Ba Tha secretary, and a group of monks and laymen have been active at night.

In 2014, the group raised about $25,000 through public donations to buy up six slaughter licenses, but the most expensive license in the town remained out of their reach. So they decided to establish that the slaughterhouse was violating its license conditions.

“That slaughter house was allowed to butcher only a single cow a day. If we saw some suspicious signs such as more cows being dragged inside, then we would run into the building from our hiding place and check what was going on,” he said during an interview at a local cafe.

“In our first two raids we found that more cows than legally permitted were being killed. So we pressured the municipal department to blacklist the Muslim owner. He was finally blacklisted and ordered to close down his slaughterhouse,” Win Shwe said proudly.

Campaigners such as Win Shwe appeared motivated by a mix of Buddhist beliefs, traditional veneration of cows, prejudice against Muslims, and a desire to fight government corruption.

The vigilante raids highlight the complex relationship between Burmese authorities and Buddhist nationalist groups, which sometimes appear to have support from the government, while at other times are at odds with it.

Protecting the ‘Western Gate’

Win Shwe and his colleagues claimed that more than 4,000 live cattle had been seized in the delta since early 2014. Many were subsequently donated as draft animals to poor Irrawaddy Division farmers on condition they would not be killed or sold.

But in mid-2014, according to documents obtained by Myanmar Now, campaigners received government approval for a new plan that involved sending cattle seized in the delta to Buddhist communities in Maungdaw Township, around 500km away.

Impoverished Maungdaw, the westernmost town of Burma, is situated on the Burma-Bangladesh border in northern Arakan State, where Muslims outnumber Buddhist Arakanese.

The border, which Ma Ba Tha likes to call the country’s ‘Western Gate’, has been under strict government control.

In the past couple of years, hundreds of ethnic Arakanese who were living in eastern Bangladesh have resettled on the Burmese side of the border, according to media reports. Meanwhile, the authorities use the term Bengali to refer to the Rohingya, implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Authorities have sent these Buddhists to live in “model villages” in Maungdaw, in what appears to be an attempt to increase the Buddhist population.

In a letter dated Aug. 26, 2014, Irrawaddy Division authorities notified various townships that they had approved a request by the Young Men’s Buddhist Association in Rangoon to gather 100 bovines and ship them from the delta’s Maubin port to Maungdaw.

Win Shwe said this was “to protect the Western Gate against the influx of Muslims”.

He provided Myanmar Now with photos and a video recording of a Sept. 4 ceremony where monks, Arakan State officials and senior military officers attended an event to donate the cattle to Buddhist villagers in Maungdaw.

Sein Aung, who said he is a Buddhist Arakanese and a former military intelligence officer, heads the Shwepyithar Township branch office of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association in Rangoon.

He said he helped to ship cattle seized by Win Shwe’s Ma Ba Tha branch to Maungdaw using Thuriya Sandar Win shipping company in Rangoon, adding that he had coordinated the plan with Arakan State authorities and Zaw Aye Maung, the Rangoon Division Minister for Arakanese ethnic affairs. In a phone interview, Zaw Aye Maung confirmed this.

“If we don’t have the Western Gate the mainland will be flooded with Bengalis [Muslims from Bangladesh],” said Sein Aung, sitting in an office lavishly decorated with nationalist materials, including flags bearing Buddhist swastikas.

Reputation

Sean Turnell, an economics professor at Sydney’s Macquarie University, said the Ma Ba Tha boycott affecting Muslim businesses harmed Burma’s international image among potential investors who are concerned about political instability.

“On a smaller scale, it seems all sorts of businesses are being impacted, from small shops, transport operators, to moneylenders,” he said.

A Muslim restaurant owner in the delta town of Kyaunggon said his income had dropped from about $100 to $20 per day following the boycott, and a Muslim neighbour had closed his restaurant and left.

The man, who asked not to be named, said he could no longer supply halal beef to his customers.

“You can’t buy beef in the whole Irrawaddy Division. If you want to eat halal beef you have to ask someone to bring it down from Rangoon,” he said in a whisper.

In front of his restaurant hung ahuge poster with an image of a cow and a verse glorifying the animal’s mythical role as “mother” to mankind, presumably put there by Ma Ba Tha sympathisers.

Most Muslims living in the Irrawaddy delta dare not speak out against the campaign for fear of provoking Ma Ba Tha’s ire. Some said the Muslim community can only lie low, hoping the current wave of fervent Buddhist nationalism subsides.

“We have no other country to flee to,” said Khin Maung, the leader of a mosque in Kyaunggon. “We are all born and raised here.”

By Andy Brown
September 5, 2015

Rakhine State is one of the poorest and most isolated parts of Myanmar, and suffers from complex humanitarian needs and unaddressed development needs. Already marked by a high rate of poverty, the socioeconomic situation in Rakhine further deteriorated in 2012 following the outbreak of violence between majority Buddhist and minority Muslim communities, which displaced many Muslim communities, who were relocated in controlled camps.

The floods that hit Myanmar in July and August this year have exacerbated these problems, with no regard for the lines that have divided these communities for so long. Children from both communities – in camps and not in camps – have felt the impact on their education. 

SITTWE, Myanmar – Thu Zar Moe, 12, lives with her father and four siblings at Thea Chaung displacement camp, near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state. In 2012, her family fled their home in Ahnauk San Pya village.

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
Thu Zar Moe (right) studies with a friend in a classroom at Thea Chaung displacement camp.

They left behind a successful business and ended up dependent on food aid from the World Food Programme (WFP). Thu Zar was one of the brightest girls in her class, but she could no longer go to school. Without access to health care, her mother passed away.

Thu Zar sits with her father, Hla Kyaw, on the porch of their small house, built with wood, bamboo and part of an old tent from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. It is one of many such homes, tightly packed together. It’s raining, and the ground between the houses is wet and muddy.

“I preferred living in the village,” Thu Zar says. “We lived close to school, and I could go every day. My father owned a mechanic workshop and made a good living. My mother was still alive. Our life was much better then.”

“I still do some mechanic work here,” her father adds. “I earn 3,000 to 4,000 Kyats a day [US $2 to $3]. But it’s not enough to live on or pay for health care. We get handouts of rice, beans and oil from WFP. We’re safe here, but we cannot travel beyond the market. I don’t think we will ever be able to go back home.”

Luckily for Thu Zar, there is a way for her to continue her studies. She attends non-formal primary education at a temporary learning centre in the camp, supported by UNICEF and run by the Lutherian World Federation.

Despite the heavy rain falling outside, the children concentrate on their studies. Girls sit on one side of the classroom and boys on the other. A teacher writes Myanmar language on a blackboard, and Thu Zar and the other girls read it out: “The man is building a hut. He wants a string to tie. Please watch out for leeches,” they chant, raising their voices above the hammering of rain on the roof.

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
Hlaing Hlaing Oo (left) studies in Grade 6 at Mingan School, not far from the displacement camp.

There are 115 children living in the camp who study at the learning centre. Last year, the top students got a chance to go to a new government-run middle school near the camp. Thu Zar’s teacher says that she is also likely to go.

“She learns very well,” he says. “I’ve seen her improve since coming here. She can already speak Rakhine in addition to her mother tongue, and is now learning Myanmar and English.”

Thu Zar rarely misses an opportunity to learn. “I go to the learning centre in the morning, and in the afternoon I read my books and help with the housework,” she says. “I like learning languages. If I can speak and write English well, it will be very useful in life.”

Although she has ambitions for her future, Thu Zar also assumes that she will still be living in the camp.

“When I grow up I would like to work for WFP, because they give food to other people,” she says.

Back to school

In a village not far from the camp, 11-year-old Hlaing Hlaing Oo’s family struggles with poverty. Conditions in their community are poor, and many children and families have some of their basic needs unmet, with limited opportunities to earn a living.

A few years ago, Hlaing’s parents left Myanmar to work in neighbouring Thailand as migrant labourers. They left Hlaing, and her younger brother with relatives in Yangon. When the family returned to Sittwe, they did not have the right paperwork to get Hlaing into the local school.

“In Thailand, I worked as an electrician, and my wife painted transformer boxes,” her father Kyaw Naing Soe says. “We earned more money there, but we wanted to return to Sittwe and be with our children. Now I work as a motorcycle taxi driver. I earn around 10,000 Kyats a day in the dry season [$8], and around 5,000 [$4] in the rainy season.”

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
Thu Zar (right) with her family at home in Thea Chaung camp

Unable to attend regular classes, Hlaing joined a non-formal primary education scheme at Mingan School, supported by UNICEF and run by Myanmar Literacy Resource Centres. Classes are held every day in the evenings for out-of-school children, including those who work during the day to support their families or stay at home to take care of younger siblings.

Hlaing completed the programme, and this term she entered formal school as a Grade 6 student.

On the first week of term, the school is full of noisy, excited children in white and green uniforms. Most wear the traditional Burmese longyi skirt. Between lessons, boys run around a grassy field and girls play skipping games in groups, taking advantage of a break in the rain.

The lessons resume, and in Hlaing’s classroom, a teacher instructs the class in Myanmar geography. The children read from the board in unison, just like the children in the displacement camp.

“I’m very happy to be back at school,” Hlaing says. “My favourite subject is Myanmar studies. I prefer coming during the day with the other children. My friend Sen Sen is in the same class as me. When I grow up, I want to be an engineer and construct new buildings.”

Sharing hopes and dreams

Although they belong to two different communities and live in different circumstances, both Thu Zar and Hlaing have similar hopes and dreams, and both see the value of education for their future. Education has the power to build on these shared dreams, to bring children together to build a joint future for Rakhine State.

UNICEF, with support from Australia, Denmark, the European Union, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, is working to ensure that all children in Rakhine State can develop to their full potential. To do this, we are working to tackle child poverty, promote development and child rights, and meet the humanitarian needs of people displaced by violence. In order to build a peaceful society, all children and families from all communities, need to be able to access services and live with dignity and equal opportunity, regardless of where they live.

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
A student waves from a balcony at Mingan School.

As well as the non-formal education provided to Thu Zar and Hlaing, UNICEF also supports life skills education for adolescents, provides school backpacks to all Grade 1 students in eight townships in Rakhine State, and stationery for Grades 1 to 5. This year, we are starting a school improvement plan and training in child-friendly teaching methods.

“UNICEF has worked in Myanmar for 60 years,” says UNICEF Myanmar’s Chief of Education Cliff Meyers. “We’re now working with the Government and civil society to ensure that all children in Rakhine State can access education, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or legal status.”

The future of Rakhine lies in Thu Zar and Hlaing’s common dreams, as well as the aspirations of their supportive fathers.

Thu Zar’s father is pleased that she is continuing her education. “I really want my daughter to be educated,” he says. “She’s so smart. I’m very proud of her.”

Hlaing’s father echoes the same sentiment. “My main hope for my daughter’s future is that she gets a good education,” he says.

By Mariana Palavra
August 22, 2015

Children and families in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are still recovering from the sectarian violence that erupted in 2012. Many live in camps, where they are vulnerable to both water shortages and floods. UNICEF is currently helping flood-affected families access clean water, but when we visited in early June, before heavy monsoon rains and a tropical cyclone caused extensive flooding, they faced the opposite problem – water shortages caused by a prolonged drought.

SITTWE, Myanmar, 21 August 2015 – A boat journey of less than an hour separates Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state, from Ah Nauk Ye village, where more than 1,000 Muslim families were relocated after the 2012 intercommunal violence in Rakhine State. Although the camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) was set up a few steps away from the waterfront, it faces serious water shortages every dry season.

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
Nour Hartu, 25, with her younger daughter, Tosmin Ara, 9, in Ah Nauk Ye village, Rakhine state, Myanmar.

Nour Hartu, 25, arrived at this camp with her youngest daughter, after fleeing the Muslim-majority Paukio Taw Town. Her husband migrated to Malaysia more than a decade ago, and a few years later her parents-in-law followed in his steps.

“They secretly took my eldest daughter to Malaysia,” Nour Hartu reveals. “Every hour of every day, I miss my village. I had a big, strong house and a small business. All my memories of my oldest child are there.”

Sometimes, Nour Hartu receives a phone call from her daughter, who is studying and living in Malaysia with her grandparents. But she hasn’t received a single word or help from her husband.

She is not sure exactly how old her daughters are. She calculates that the eldest, Yasmin Ara, is over 10 years old, and Tosmin Ara is over 9 years old, although she looks younger. Tosmin, who never had the chance to meet her father, is now attending second grade at the camp’s temporary learning centre. 

Living on rations 

With no freedom of movement and no job, Nour Hartu depends on food aid to survive. Whatever she saves from her ration, she exchanges for fish or other essential goods. She also receives a ration of 10 litres of drinking water each day. This year, the water shortages were worse than ever before, provoking disputes between camp residents and the nearby host community, where villagers didn’t want to share the water from their ponds. 

UNICEF and Solidarités International are working closely with the Rakhine state government to address the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) problems faced by families living in the camp. Together, they have distributed water to fill seven ponds, supported the treatment process, and made sure that every person has five litres of safe drinking water per day. 

“Now I feel safe because the water is treated. With the rainy season coming, the water problem should ease, as the ponds are filled up with rainwater,” Nour Hartu says.

Migration village

Ponnek Yun was one of the few townships in Rakhine not affected by the 2012 violence. But it has not been spared of water shortages. Most villagers rely on rain for drinking water, but this year it hasn’t been enough. For most of the year, what little water they have has been rationed.

© UNICEF Myanmar/2015/Thame
Nan New Oo (right), 14, with her mother and sister, Ponnek Yun Township, Rakhine state.

Nan New Oo, 14, knows the problem well. When she is not at school, she fetches water from one of the ponds. “I can carry two jars at a time,” she says. “This water is only good for cooking. If we need to drink, we fetch water from the margins of the pond, let it settle for 24 hours and filter it through a piece of cloth.”

Nan New Oo learned this trick from her 34-year-old mother, Ma Hla Sein, who also uses ahla (a type of aluminium) to purify the water. “This is the village’s traditional water purification method,” she says. 

Ma Hla Sein takes care of her children on her own, because her husband migrated to Thailand for work – as did the majority of the men in the village. “My husband used to make one dollar a day working in the fields,” she says. “Sometimes, I would do construction work to make up to three dollars a day. Now, my husband is making three times more cutting wood in Thailand.”

Ma Hla Sein has recently been attending safe water and hygiene awareness sessions, provided by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), with support from UNICEF. UNICEF has also distributed purified water and water purification tablets, and six ponds have been built or renovated in the township.

Dignity and equal opportunity

UNICEF aims to ensure that all children in Rakhine State can develop to their full potential. To do this, it works to tackle child poverty, promote development and child rights, and meet the humanitarian needs of people displaced by violence.

Rakhine is one of the poorest states in Myanmar, and families are less likely to access basic services than in other parts of the country. UNICEF is working with the state government and partners to ensure that every family in Rakhine has access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or legal status.

“Every child has a right to safe water, although the way UNICEF supports families might differ, depending on the situation they live in, such as camps, communities or remote areas,” explains UNICEF WASH specialist Bishnu Pokhrel. “In order to build a peaceful society, we need to ensure that all families can access services and live with dignity and equal opportunity.”

These two families have found a solution to access drinking water, but for both of them someone is still missing: “I don’t want another husband or family,” says Nour Hartu. “I only have one dream: to have my eldest child with me again, so the three of us can live together.”

While her 11 year-old brother wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and migrate to Thailand, Nan New Oo wishes it was the other way around. “I miss my father,” she says. “I want him to come back… with money.”

By Emanuel Stoakes Chris Kelly and Annie Kelly
July 20, 2015

Guardian investigation uncovers extensive role of authorities, fishermen and traffickers in enslaving thousands of Rohingya, who were held in deadly jungle camps



Thai fishing industry turns to trafficking: ‘We witnessed girls being raped again and again’ – video


Rohingya migrants trafficked through deadly jungle camps have been sold to Thai fishing vessels as slaves to produce seafood sold across the world, the Guardian has established.

So profitable is the trade in slaves that some local fishermen in Thailand have been converting their boats to carry Rohingya migrants instead of fish.

A Guardian investigation into Thailand’s export-orientated seafood business and the vast transnational trafficking syndicates that had, until recently, been holding thousands of Rohingya migrants captive in jungle camps, has exposed strong and lucrative links between the two.

Testimony from survivors, brokers and human rights groups indicate that hundreds of Rohingya men were sold from the network of trafficking camps recently discovered in southern Thailand.

According to those sold from the camps on to the boats, this was frequently done with the knowledge and complicity of some Thai state officials. In some cases, Rohingya migrants held in immigration detention centres in Thailand were taken by staff to brokers and then sold on to Thai fishing boats.

Other Rohingya migrants say Thai officials collected them from human traffickers when they arrived on the country’s shores and transported them to jungle camps where they were held to ransom or sold to fishing boats as slave labour.

Thailand’s seafood industry is worth an estimated $7.3bn a year. The vast majority of its produce is exported. Last year, another Guardian investigationtracked the supply chain of prawns produced with slave labour to British and American supermarket chains.

Though the Guardian has not irrefutably linked individual Thai ships using Rohingya slaves to specific seafood supermarket produce, the likelihood is that some seafood produced using this labour will have ended up on western shelves.

The scale of the profitable and sophisticated human trafficking networks making money from the desperation of hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya “boat people” has been emerging over the past weeks.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya fled state-sponsored ethnic cleansing in Burma in the first three months of this year. Stateless and unwanted, their only option was to take to the seas in their desperate attempt to reach the relative safety of Malaysia.

In March, the special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, told the UN Human Rights Council that Rohingya people in camps for internally displaced people had only two options: “stay and die” or “leave by boat”.

The plight of the victims recently attracted international attention following the discovery of several abandoned vessels containing hundreds of starving Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya refugees, which Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia all initially refused to allow ashore.

In May, officials in Thailand and Malaysia also discovered a number of jungle prisons and mass graves used as holding pens for the traffickers’ operations.

These jungle camps were used as open-air prisons in which the inmates were held captive while they were ransomed to their relatives for sums often exceeding a thousand pounds. Many of those held in the camps were raped, tortured or beaten to death. 

Camp survivors and brokers, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that those who could not raise the money demanded by their captors would be sold into slavery in return for a fee paid by the boat captains. Their testimonies corroborate the accounts of rights groups investigating Rohingya trafficking.

A young Rohingya migrant described how he was sold by traffickers from the jungle camps on to a boat carrying the Thai national flag in Songkhla, southern Thailand, before escaping at the end of last year.

“We were taken [from the camps] by boats and cars, we arrived in Songkhla and were put on to the fishing ship,” he says. “We were forced to work there. We had to work on the sea for about four years. During this time the ship never came back to shore.”

Matthew Smith, executive director of Bangkok-based Fortify Rights, said the link between the camps and the fishing industry was well-established and had a long history. “When men or boys [held in traffickers’ camps] are unable to pay … to secure their freedom they are often sold to fishing boats for use in slave labour. This has been happening for decades. It’s a situation in the Thai fishing sector that’s been going on since the 90s, at least as far as we can tell,” he said.

A broker interviewed in Bangkok acknowledged the use of Rohingya slaves in the fishing trade, recounting how he had sold around 100 people from the jungle camps over the past year, some as recently as early this year, making around 30,000 Thai baht ($900) per sale.

Unloading trashfish at Ranong port, Thailand. Photograph: Chris Kelly

“They [the migrants] were bought by the Thai boat captains,” he said, adding, “they could never leave the boats because they might run away, and then [the captains] would lose their labour. I’ve heard that if they can’t work [the captains] throw them into the sea.” In addition to Rohingya, he sold Laotian, Burmese and Cambodian migrants as slave labour to the ships.

Despite a crackdown on the use of slave labour by the Thai government, evidence suggests that the sale of Rohingya kept in jungle camps was happening as recently as early this year.

Thailand is facing unprecedented pressure to tackle human trafficking and clean up its fishing industry. This April the EU gave Thailand six months to crack down on illegal fishing and labour abuses or face a trade ban, which could see Thailand lose up to €1bn a year in seafood exports.

In recent months, Thailand has claimed to have taken decisive action, shutting down all active Rohingya trafficking camps and pushing through a series of hasty reforms in its seafood sector, including requiring boat owners to register migrant workers and undergo new licensing and registration of all boats and equipment to try and stave off the EU ban.

“The government does not mean to hurt anyone. But we have to adjust the country’s fishing system,” said Minister Peetipong Phuengbun, agriculture and cooperatives minister, last week.

Seafood prices are reported to be rising across the country and according to the Thai Overseas Fisheries Association, about 3,000 fishing ships will not go to sea because of fears of fines imposed for not complying with the new regulations. In the first week in July this year, fishermen in 22 provinces across Thailand went on strike, protesting about the hastily imposed reforms,which they say are costing the industry $444m a month.

Fishermen in Ranong say that that these reforms, coupled with decades of overfishing and ecological destruction that has pushed fish stocks to the brink, mean they are increasingly unable to make a living. Instead, they are increasingly turning to another line of business: people trafficking.

“Right now ... it’s really hard to find fish in the Gulf of Thailand. When this kind of job comes along it can make me money,” said one boat owner. “The more people I bring, the more money I make … and to be honest, I want to make money. We can transport 300 to 400 people, because we have a big boat.”

Another local boat owner told the Guardian that he knew of 10 boats operating from the same port, carrying 12,000 Rohingya migrants a month. These migrants could be worth around $24m in ransom money.

“I earned 30,000 baht ($900) [through fishing], but if they [transport people] they earn 100,000 baht ($3,000),” the boat owner said.

Thailand will be hoping that its public effort to tackle its trafficking problems will earn it an upgrade in this year’s US State Department Trafficking in Persons report(TiP), which evaluates countries based on their success in combating the activities of traffickers in their jurisdiction, which is due to be published this week . In 2014, as the Guardian revealed Asian slave labour was producing prawns for supermarkets in the US and UK, Thailand was relegated to tier three, the lowest possible ranking.

Since last year’s Trafficking in Persons report demotion, Thailand has announced tougher legislation, but there has been little evidence of improvement … Ranong port and fish market. Photograph: Chris Kelly

Anti-trafficking groups say the changes made by the Thai authorities are insufficient to make any real difference. “Since last year’s TiP demotion, Thailand has announced tougher legislation to address trafficking, but we have seen little or no evidence of real improvement,” says Melysa Sperber, director of theAlliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, a coalition of anti-trafficking organisations.

“Our partners on the ground report that these changes are mainly cosmetic, and we shouldn’t assume that any changes made are anything more than propaganda. We continue to hear reports from our members of debt bondage, slavery and violence in Thailand’s export-orientated fishing activities.”

The Guardian made multiple attempts to contact the Thai government but received no reply.

Opening of the 29th regular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. UN Photo/Pierre Albouy

 A​dopted without a vote (by consensus). Myanmar rejects the resolution in its entirety. 

India, Russia, and China distanced themselves from the resolution.

India which officially and unsuccessfully pushed for ending annual human rights resolutions on Myanmar gave Myanmar regime's genocidal point man - ex-Major General Maung Maung Ohn, (now Chief Minister of Rakhine) who headed the military's Army Psychological Warfare Directorate and counter-intelligence division - a free mic. 



Human Rights Council
Twenty-ninth session
Agenda item 2

Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the 
High Commissioner and the Secretary-General

Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation): draft resolution

29/… Situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar

The Human Rights Council,

Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,

Reaffirming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

Recalling President’s statement PRST 23/1 of 14 June 2015,

Noting all relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, the latest being Council resolution 28/23 of 27 March 2015,

Stressing that States have the primary responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights,

Condemning all violations and abuses of human rights in Myanmar, in particular against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities, resulting in their socioeconomic exploitation, including forced displacement,

Noting with concern the irregular migration in the Andaman Sea of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and their exploitation by criminal rings, and welcoming the commitments by Governments in the region to provide temporary shelter and protection to them,

Acknowledging that the denial of citizenship status and related rights to Rohingya Muslims and others, including voting rights, is a serious human rights concern,

Reaffirming the importance of cooperation with the Government of Myanmar in taking all necessary measures to promote and protect human rights in its territory without any discrimination, including against Rohingya Muslims and members of other communities in Myanmar,

Condemns the systematic gross violations of human rights and abuses committed in Rakhine State, in particular against Rohingya Muslims;

2. Calls upon the Government of Myanmar to ensure the protection of human rights of all persons in Myanmar, including of Rohingya Muslims;

3. Also calls upon the Government of Myanmar to take the necessary measures to address the spread of discrimination and prejudice against Muslims and members of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities across the country, and to put an end to the incitement of hatred against Muslims by publicly condemning such acts;

4. Calls upon political and religious leaders in the country to work for a peaceful resolution through dialogue towards national unity;

5. Calls upon the Government of Myanmar to take all necessary measures to ensure accountability and to end impunity for all violations of human rights, including in particular against Muslims, by undertaking a full, transparent and independent investigation into reports of all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law;

6. Urges the Government of Myanmar to take all necessary measures to prevent the discrimination and exploitation, including through trafficking, of Rohingya Muslims and others by addressing the root causes compelling them to be more vulnerable and exposed to such acts;

7. Also urges the Government of Myanmar to protect places of worship belonging to all religions;

8. Calls upon the Government of Myanmar, in conjunction with the international community and in accordance with international law, to ensure the return of all refugees and persons displaced from their homes, including Muslims;

9. Urges the Government of Myanmar to grant full citizenship rights, in keeping within a transparent due process, to Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, including by reviewing the 1982 Citizenship Law;

10. Calls upon the Government of Myanmar to ensure full cooperation with all parties and to allow full access of humanitarian assistance to affected persons and communities, and in this regard urges the Government to implement the various cooperation agreements not yet implemented made between the authorities of Myanmar and the international community for the distribution of humanitarian aid to all affected areas, including Rakhine State, without any discrimination;

11. Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to present an oral update to the Human Rights Council at its thirtieth session and a report at its thirty-second session, on the human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar, particularly the recent incidents of trafficking and forced displacement of Rohingya Muslims.




—Courtesy of Paula Bronstein Getty Images Reportage for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

May 3, 2015

“THEY WANT US ALL TO GO AWAY”

Early Warning Signs of Genocide in Burma

In March 2015, staff from the Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide traveled to Burma to investigate threats facing the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority that has been the target of rampant hate speech, the denial of citizenship, and restrictions on the freedom of movement. These and a host of other human rights violations have put this population at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide.

In Burma, we visited internment camps and spoke with Rohingya who have been violently displaced from their homes. We also met with Rohingya who are living in cordoned-off ghettos, separated from their Buddhist neighbors, most of whom belong to the Rakhine ethnic group.

We saw firsthand the Rohingya’s physical segregation, which has resulted in a modern form of apartheid, and the devastating impact that official policies of persecution are having on them. When asked what the Burmese government wants to do with them, one Rohingya advocate replied, “They want us all to go away.”

We left Burma deeply concerned that so many preconditions for genocide are already in place. But there is still an opportunity to prevent this devastating outcome. Our report (PDF) sounds the alarm about the need for urgent action to address these warning signs and to prevent future atrocities, including genocide, from occurring.






FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 6, 2014 | USCIRF

WASHINGTON, DC – On the eve of President Obama’s November 12-14 trip to Burma, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today released a new report, “Burma: Religious Freedom and Related Human Rights Violations are Hindering Broader Reforms.” The report and its recommendations reflect a USCIRF Commissioner-level visit to Burma in August 2014 by Commissioners M. Zuhdi Jasser and Eric P. Schwartz and two USCIRF staff. 

USCIRF focused on four key issues in its mission: discrimination and horrible abuses against Rohingya Muslims; broader patterns of intolerance against Muslims driven by bigotry and chauvinism among religious and political figures that also impact all other minority religious communities in Burma; laws, policies and proposed legislation that entrench multiple forms of discrimination; and deprivation of citizenship to Rohingya Muslims and prejudicial practices in the issuance of identification documents to all Muslims. 

In the report, USCIRF urges the U.S. government to press Burma’s political leaders to permit humanitarian access to Rohingya Muslims who are displaced in Rakhine State and have been denied freedom of movement, and revise the Rakhine State Action Plan to ensure that Rohingya who have been in Burma for generations and know no other home will not be denied citizenship. USCIRF also urges the U.S. government to press for the basic rights of all minority religious communities; encourage tolerance and reconciliation; and support international efforts to promote religious freedom and human rights, including a forthcoming UN resolution that will focus on human rights in Burma. USCIRF also urges U.S. officials to use the term “Rohingya” in recognition of that community’s right to self-identify. Additional recommendations can be found in the report. 

USCIRF’s visit to Burma underscores the appropriateness of Burma’s designation as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act. For more than a decade, Burma has been designated by the State Department as a CPC due to systematic, egregious and ongoing religious freedom violations. In its report, USCIRF recommends specific ways the U.S. government could take advantage of this CPC designation to encourage reform and respect for religious freedom and related human rights.





    • Rohingya Exodus