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Mohammed Abdul (45), s/o Oli Ahmed was killed by the Myanmar Police in Sittwe

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

The Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingyas

Venues: The Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen

Oslo, Norway

26-28 May 2015 

Refugees International (RI), Justice for All (USA), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Harvard Global Equality Initiative (HGEI), and International State Crime Initiative Queen Mary University of London (ISCI) and Den norske Burmakomité will be holding a 3-day international conference to discuss the plight of over 1-million Rohingyas of Myanmar (Burma) and explore concrete ways to end their decades-long persecution.

George Soros who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary sees a parallel between his experience of life under the Nazis in 1944 and the human conditions for the Rohingyas in Western Myanmar, which he witnessed first-hand during a recent visit to the country.

At the conference, iconic leaders from diverse backgrounds including Soros, Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire, Desmond Tutu, and Jose Rose-Jorta, and the former prime ministers of Malaysia and Norway - namely Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad and Kjell Magne Bondevik - will join hands with the representatives of the two generations of Rohingya refugees and activists as well as international human rights researchers and scholars of genocides and mass atrocities. They will push for the end to Myanmar’s policies of discrimination, persecution and oppression. 

Tomas Ojea Quinta and Yanghee Lee, former and present UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar respectively, will also share their expertise with the audiences and other participants. 

The first day of the Oslo Conference is open to the public and will be webcast LIVE. 

Click here for the Conference Program (Draft).
https://www.facebook.com/OsloConferenceOnRohingyas/posts/960561500643487

To register, please RSVP by sending an email to OsloConference@yahoo.com. Be sure to include your full name, organizational affiliation (if any), and country of residence.

A 3-day Conference

26 May 2015: The first day of the conference – open to the public - will be held at the Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen conference center on 26 May 2015. 

27 May 2015: The second day of the conference – by invitation-only – will be devoted to exploring concrete ideas and proposals to help push for the restoration of basic human rights, nationality, and citizenship to the Rohingyas. 

28 May 2015: On the third and final day, the conference will host a Burma Forum in central Oslo, a public roundtable with select group of Rohingya leaders, other religious leaders and human rights experts to discuss Myanmar’s rising anti-Muslim hate campaign as well as other contemporary issues of relevance. For more information about the Burma Forum email Norwegian Burma Committee at info@burma.no

Backgrounder to the Oslo Conference

Rakhine Action Plan 

In July 2014, Myanmar government floated a comprehensive plan, known as the “Rakhine Action Plan”, to erase both Rohingya identity and the group’s legal residency in their own ancestral land and sent a 3-member advocacy team – made up of President’s adviser and former academic Dr Kyaw Yin Hlaing, Immigration Minister and ex-Brigadier Khin Yi, and Rakhine Chief Minister and ex-Major General Maung Maung Ohn - to lobby western governments and relevant international organizations to accept Myanmar’s official plan to solve “the Rohingya problem”. 

Thein Sein’s government in Myanmar is currently implementing the Rakhine Action Plan. This is evidenced from the further illegalization and disenfranchisement of the vast majority of ethnic Rohingya since March this year, by forcibly confiscating their White Cards, the only documentation that Rohingyas had of their legal, permanent residency. Meanwhile, the international community’s attention is diverted to the fighting along the country’s Sino-Burmese borders between Myanmar army and Kokant Chinese armed resistance organization and its allies, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi’s attempts to push for changes in the military’s 2008 Constitution in time for this year’s planned elections

Myanmar’s Policy of Official Denial and Persecution of the Rohingyas

Following the large scale violence against the Rohingyas in June 2012, Myanmar’s “reformist” government officially proposed two solutions to the Rohingya issue to the visiting head of the United Nations Refugee Agency or UNHCR António Guterres - either the “resettlement” of the Rohingyas to third countries, or placing Rohingya in UN-financed camps on their own ancestral soil in Western Myanmar. In his widely reported address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (or Chatham House), in London, UK on 17 July 2013, Myanmar President Thein Sein officially denied the existence of Rohingyas as either legal residents or an ethnic group while his government has made consistent attempts to pressure INGOs, foreign missions and the United Nations agencies and officials – including the UN Special Rapporteurs on the human rights situation in Myanmar - to stop recognizing the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group of Myanmar. 

Such statements and policies have been met with stiff opposition from the international community, including the highest level of leaderships such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and US President Barack Obama. In sharp contrast to the international recognition of the Rohingya as an ethnic group, deserving non-discrimination, equal rights, dignity, and the same basic respect as any other indigenous peoples of Myanmar, the country’s Bama or Myanmar Buddhist majority and Rakhine nationalists label the Rohingyas as “illegal Muslim migrants” from the impoverished Bangladesh. As such, Rohingya have popularly been dehumanized and referred to by terms such as “viruses”, “leeches”, (ugly) “ogres”, “dogs” etc. 

Sadly, Myanmar’s pro-democracy opposition leaders and human rights organizations including Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy and other iconic human rights the leaders of the 88 Generation Group also share this anti-Rohingya sentiment. The Myanmar government has, misleadingly, portrayed the plight of Rohingyas as the result of a communal conflict between the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya and a supposedly inevitable consequence of the “transition” from dictatorship. Periodically, unsubstantiated claims are made by Myanmar President’s Office attempting to link the Rohingya community to global “Islamic fundamentalism”, and worse still, “terrorism”. 

The Worsening Plight of the Rohingyas

The plight of the Rohingyas in Myanmar has worsened since the two bouts of organized attacks on the Rohingya in June and October 2012. In her 9-March-2015 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Professor Yanghee Lee stated that Rohingya refugees inside Internally Displaced Persons (or IDP) camps feel they have two (equally risky) options: “to stay and die (in Myanmar) or leave by boat”. According to the UN High Commissioner for the Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 53,000 Rohingyas, including women and children, left Myanmar (and Bangladesh) by boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia in the 11-month period between January and November 2014. International visitors to Rakhine state have described the human conditions for the Rohingyas, both inside and outside IDP camps, as “deplorable”. Even by Myanmar’s official report of Myanmar President’s Rakhine Inquiry Commission, doctor-patient ratios among the Rohingyas in the two majority Rohingya towns in Western Myanmar are 1: 76,000 and 1:83,000 (vis-à-vis 1: 1,000 for the national average). Some local Rakhine groups routinely threaten international humanitarian organizations and attempt to disrupt and stop the delivery of basic humanitarian aid to the Rohingyas. 

International Responses

Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have assessed Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingyas as ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’. UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar including Tomas Quintana Ojea and Yanghee Lee have highlighted the official nature of discrimination and persecution of the Rohingyas that a condones popular racism and violence against Myanmar’s Muslims. The Pacific Rim Law and Policy Association has published a 3-year academic study entitled “The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya” in its peer-reviewed journal “Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal” (Spring, 2014).

Renowned academics, for instance, Harvard’s Amartya Sen have characterized Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingyas as a “slow genocide”. Likewise, at the conference on the Rohingyas at the London School of Economics held in April 2014 the then outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Tomas Oeja Quintana observed reportedly “genocidal acts” in the case of Rohingyas. 

At this Oslo Conference, global leaders including George Soros and Desmond Tutu will call on the international community, both international investors, European Union and governments with close ties to Myanmar, to help end Myanmar’s Rohingya persecution. They will also call for the restoration of basic human rights, nationality and citizenship to one of the world’s most vulnerable and oppressed peoples who, as a group, do have the fundamental right to self-identity under international human rights law. 

(Reuters) - A committee of the U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence in Myanmar between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists and called upon the government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.

The 193-nation General Assembly's Third Committee, which focuses on rights issues, approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said contained a "litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified."

Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised "maximum restraint" to quell the violence.

The U.N. resolution "expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality."

At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingya live in Rakhine State along the coast of western Myanmar. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.

The Myanmar mission to the United Nations told the Third Committee that while it accepted the resolution, it objected to the Rohingya being referred to as a minority.

"There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar," a representative of Myanmar's U.N. mission said. "Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land."

NOT PERSECUTION

A Reuters investigation into the wave of sectarian assaults painted a picture of organized attacks against the Muslim community. [ID:nL3E8M7ADZ] During an historic visit to Myanmar last week, U.S. President Barack Obama called for an end to incitement and violence. [ID:nL5E8MJ00Y]

"Violence in Rakhine state was just a violent communal clash affecting both sides of the community. It is not an issue of religious persecution," the Myanmar representative told the Third Committee.

During the past year, Myanmar has introduced the most sweeping reforms in the former British colony since a 1962 military coup. A semi-civilian government stacked with former generals has allowed elections, eased rules on protests and freed dissidents.

"Any shortcomings in the human rights field are being addressed through legal reform processes and legal reform mechanisms, including the national human rights commission," said the Myanmar representative.

The U.N. resolution also "urges the government to accelerate its efforts to address discrimination, human rights violations, violence, displacement and economic deprivation affecting various ethnic minorities" and expresses deep concern about an armed conflict in Kachin state.

Myanmar President Thein Sein has ordered troops in Kachin State not to attack the rebels, but has allowed them to defend themselves. The conflict there resurfaced in June 2011, scuttling a 16-year truce and displacing an estimated 50,000 people.

The Third Committee, which includes all members of the General Assembly, is also scheduled to debate resolutions on Iran, Syria and North Korea. A special General Assembly session next month is expected to formally adopt all recently approved committee resolutions.

Written by Michelle Nichols and Edited by Paul Simao.

Source: Reuters

Isaac Fadoyebo was forever grateful to those strangers who had risked their lives to save his

More than 450,000 Africans served in the British army during the second world war. Among the few who wrote at length of their experience was Isaac Fadoyebo, who has died aged 86.

Born in Emure-Ile, now in Ondo state, southern Nigeria, Isaac enlisted in the Royal West African Frontier Force in January 1942. He trained as a medical orderly before being sent to Burma the following year. While moving by raft along the Kaladan valley, Isaac's platoon was ambushed and he was severely wounded.

Although in great pain, he and another injured soldier, David Kagbo from Sierra Leone, dragged themselves into the forest. They were found by the Muslim Rohingya people, who provided food, water and medical care, and sheltered them in their village from Japanese patrols. After nine months hiding behind enemy lines, Isaac and Kagbo were rescued by Gurkha troops and eventually flown to safety.

Isaac later left the army with a disability pension and joined the civil service. He set about writing an account of his wartime adventures, which he called A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck. Forty-five years later, the BBC Africa service broadcast a series of programmes, produced by Martin Plaut, commemorating the role of African soldiers in the war. A number of listeners responded, including Isaac, who sent Plaut his 30,000-word manuscript.

The significance of his personal account was recognised immediately, not only for the description of enlistment, training and service in Asia by an African soldier, but also as a remarkable story of endurance against great odds.

I never met Isaac but corresponded with him after I read his memoir, recognised its historical value and subsequently arranged for its publication by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999.

In 2011, the broadcaster Barnaby Phillips produced a film for al-Jazeera about Isaac's wartime experiences, entitled Burma Boy. Through tenacious research in Burma, Phillips found and filmed the children of the family who had given shelter to Isaac. Burma Boy was screened as part of the recent Film Africa 2012 festival in London. Isaac died the following day.

He was a gentle and gracious man, humorous, forgiving, and forever grateful to those strangers who had risked their lives to save his.

Isaac, who married on his return from Burma, had several children.

Al Jazeera Correspondent: The Burma Boy Film.

Sources :

“At first, the bride and the bridegroom have to go to the local Nasaka camp to get “Form” of marriage application where they have to pay Kyat 2,000.”

“Taking the application ‘Form’ from the Nasaka camp, they ( couple) have to go again to the local administration officer, formerly called Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC) Chairman to take signature which certifies that the applicants are the native of the village where they have to pay Kyat 5,000.”

After acquiring the signature of the local administrator or Chairman, the couple has to go again to the local Nasaka camp where the couple has to give an agreement to the Nasaka officer. In the agreement, they have to agree the following points. These are: don’t take more than two children, don’t divorce each other, the bridegroom should be clean shaved, if divorced each other, they will be able to get married three years later, said a newly married couple from Maungdaw.

“The next day, the couple will get photos from the local Nasaka camp. They have to submit marriage application “Form” (one pair) with photos to the Nasaka Headquarters (Kawar Bill or Kyikan Pyin) of Maungdaw Township. After checking, the “Form” by the Director of Nasaka, the “Form” will be sent again to the local Nasaka camp. This process will take time at least three to six months.”

After along time, the couple was summoned to the local Nasaka camp again to receive marriage permission where they have to pay Kyat 60,000 for the Lt Col Aung Gyi, the Nasaka director of Kawar Bill of Maungdaw Township, said a schoolteacher from the locality who preferred not to be named.

However, the new government has legalized by saying that population growing rate is very high in Rohingya community, so the government is compelled to control the growing rate. But, the actual policy of the government is quite difference. It wants to depopulate the Rohingya and to extort money from Rohingyas after imposing marriage restriction policy.

As a result, the sons and daughters of poor parents are not able to bear the expense of marriage so that there can be many unmarried girls. Hence, the parents of the girls are upset for the future of their daughters, said one of the parents from Buthidaung.

According to an un-reliable source, there are about 70,000 women in northern Arakan living without their husbands who were going to abroad or jails or died in the sea while going to Malaysia or Thailrand.

The source also said that there is 9-Nasaka area in Maundaw district including Maundaw and Buthidaung Townships, but the administration of each area is some differences to another one. It only depends on Nasaka commander. Some Nasaka area commanders demand Kyat 150,000 from couple for marriage permission.

Forced labour continues to be widely and systematically practiced in northern Arakan State in Burma and little has changed for the Rohingya population, said a report by the Arakan Project titled “Forced Labour Still Prevails: Overview of forced labour practices in North Arakan” released on Friday.

The Arakan Project report can be accessed at: here

Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin meets with Ambassador Derek Mitchell at the State Department.

Ambassador Derek Mitchell, Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, and BRANA Information Secretary Nay San Oo at the State Department.

Listen Here

Now denied citizenship, they can't travel without special permits and are frequently stripped of their homes and land. They are forbidden from having more than two children and any who marry without permission face long jail terms. The Today programme's Mike Thomson reports from Burma.

Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK today welcomed the European Parliament resolution of 20th April 2012 calling on Burmese regime for changes to the 1982 law on citizenship to ensure due recognition of the right to citizenship of the Rohingya ethnic minority. The resolution also urges the Burmese Government to introduce amendments to the 2008 constitution, prior to the 2015 elections that would remove the military's role in civilian politics, notably its seats in both houses of parliament.

I was born in Arakan state of Myanmar. My parents were also born there. My forefathers were also.

There are many ethnic groups in Myanmar. They all are non-Muslims .Majority are Buddhists. And some of them are Christians. However, they all have been recognized as the citizens of Myanmar. These Christians are also facing various kinds of racism in Myanmar as you all know it but less than Rohingya Muslims of Arakan state. It is because they are not Buddhists.


There are so many Chinese peoples in Myanmar who migrated from China today they are the citizens of Myanmar. There are so many Bangladeshi Rakhine in Myanmar, especially, in Arakan state who have got Myanmar nationality. There are so many Hindus in Myanmar who migrated from India and Nepal. They all have been given nationalities because they are not Muslims.


There are no any historical proofs that there were Chinese and Hindus people in Myanmar. Now, where have they come with Myanmar citizenship from? As I said earlier, there is thousands of Bangladeshi Rakhine in Arakan state who migrated from Bangladesh now with Myanmar citizenship.


According to some racists, Rohingya are from Bangladesh because their language is similar to Bangladeshi language though there are many historical proofs and evidences that Rohingya are from Myanmar not from Bangladesh. I want to ask those racists here are. What is the difference of Rakhine language and Burmese language? Isn’t similar? Rakhine language is more than 80% to Burmese language. Does it mean that Rakhine are descendents of Burmese people or Burmese people come from Rakhine?


Some racists say that Rohingya's religion and culture is unlike us, how can they be given citizenship of Myanmar? This is very illogical excuse. As we all know that there are Muslims in almost every countries of the world with different religions and cultures. And there are also non-Muslims in Muslims countries. For example, there are Rakhine Buddhists in Bangladesh with Bangladeshi nationalities. Is their religions and cultures are same?


Can a language be a judgment factor in whether a community is a citizen of a country or not?

According to some racists, Muslims in Arakan state cannot be nationals of Myanmar simply because they can’t speak Burmese. One would be wrong to say so because the educated Muslims in Arakan state can speak Burmese fluently. More than 90% of the Rakhine in Arakan state can’t speak Burmese fluently either but they speak Rakhine language. Besides, some of Kachins, Chins, Mons, and Shans etc. can’t speak Burmese. Are not they citizens of Myanmar? These facts cannot be a judgment factor in deciding the nationality of the people in Myanmar.



As far as I am concerned, many Muslims in Arakan can’t speak Burmese because these people are locked mostly in northern Arakan state and there are no proximity and close relationships between Burmese and these people. Many of them cannot find a single Burmese to speak with. So, how can they speak Burmese? We have to think logically rather than on arbitrary basis. But those (Muslims) people who have close relationships with local Rakhine can speak Rakhine fluently. The worse thing is that even many high school students in Maung Daw and Buthidaung cannot speak Burmese fluently because they are, in their schools, taught in local Rakhine dialect even though the books are in Burmese language.

Moreover, in India, Ethnic Tamil, Telugu etc. don't even know the official Hindi language let alone speaking it. Are not they citizens of India? In China, official Language is Mandarin and there are millions of people who can't speak the language. Are not they citizens of China? In Thailand, people who live southern part can't speak Thai properly. Are not they considered as citizens of Thailand? In Bangladesh, there millions of people who can't speak Shudda Basha (spelling...). Are not they citizens of Bangladesh? These are few examples. The open-minded, logical and peace-loving people will understand this.

Here, I'd like to ask those people who criticize Rohingya Muslims for not being able to speak Burmese fluently that how they can be able to speak it fluently under the circumstances that they were born in Arakan state and are locked up in cage like birds. So, to be qualified as an ethnic group, they don't necessarily be able to speak the language of dominant or majority people.



Therefore, I think my only fault is that I am a Muslim.



Kefyeth Noor (BA.LLB)

ျမန္မာျပည္ အေျပာင္းအလဲ နဲ႔ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိး အခြင့္အေရး
 ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးရာ ေဆြးေႏြးခန္းမွာ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေန ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲ တိုးတက္လာမႈေၾကာင့္ အေမရိကန္အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ပိတ္ဆို႔ထားတဲ့ စီးပြားေရးဒဏ္ခတ္မႈမ်ားကို ဖယ္ရွားဖုိ႔ ျပင္ဆင္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာျပည္အေနာက္ဖက္အျခမ္းမွာ ရွိေနတဲ့ မူဆလင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားရဲ ႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး၊ တရားဝင္ေနထိုင္ခြင့္မ်ား ရရွိေရးအေရးကိစၥမ်ားကိုလည္း အေမရိကန္အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ဝိုင္းဝန္းကူညီေျဖရွင္းေပးဖို႔ ေတာင္းဆိုေနတဲ့ အေမရိကန္အေျခစိုက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအသင္းရဲ ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးျဖစ္သူ Dr. Wakar Uddin ကို ဗီြအိုေအ ျမန္မာသတင္းဌာနမွဴး ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္းက ေတြ႔ဆံုေမးျမန္း ေဆြးေႏြးသံုးသပ္တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္ေပၚ ေျပာင္းလဲတုိးတက္မႈေတြေၾကာင့္ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြကို ရုတ္သိမ္းေရး၊ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ အတိုင္းအတာေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေရး အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုက စဥ္းစားမယ္ဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနာက္ဖက္ျခမ္းက မူဆလင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရဲ ႔ အေရးကိုလည္း ထည့္သြင္းစဥ္စားသင့္တယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုမွာ ရွိေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအသင္းရဲ ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ Dr. Wakar Uddin က အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနကို ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္ပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနမွာ လက္ေထာက္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီး Daniel Bell နဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့တဲ့ Pennsylvania ျပည္နယ္ တကၠသိုလ္၊ အဏုဇိဝေဗဒဌာန ပါေမာကၡ Dr. Wakar Uddin ကို ဗီြအုိေအ က ေတြ႔ဆံုေမးျမန္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။

Dr. Wakar Uddin ။ ။ က်ေနာ္ကို အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနက Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Bell က ေခၚပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ meeting မွာ သူက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးေတြရဲ ႔ အေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဓိကေတာ့ relaxation of sanction အတြက္ စဥ္းစားေနေတာ့ အေမရိကန္အစုိးရက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာရဲ ႔ ေရွ ႔ေရးနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္စိုးရိမ္ေနတယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ အဲဒါနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ sanction ကို relax လုပ္တဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအေၾကာင္း၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရနဲ႔ စကားေျပာဖို႔ ျပင္ဆင္ေနပါတယ္။


ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ဟုတ္ကဲ့။ က်ေနာ္ နားလည္းသေလာက္ကေတာ့ အေမရိကန္အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေနေတြအရ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို လက္ရွိထားရွိတဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔အေရးယူမႈေတြကို တျဖည္းျဖည္းေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေပးဖို႔ စဥ္းစားေနတယ္။ တကယ္လို႔ ဒီအေျခအေနမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အေနာက္ဖက္ေဒသမွာရွိေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးေတြရဲ ႔ အေျခအေနနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔လည္း ထည့္သြင္းစဥ္းစားသင့္တယ္လို႔ Dr. Wakar တို႔က ယူဆတဲ့အတြက္ ဒီျပႆနာကို လာေရာက္တင္ျပေဆြးေႏြးတဲ့ သေဘာေပါ့။

Dr. Wakar Uddin ။ ။ ဟုတ္ကဲ့။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ဒီေနရာမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနာက္ဖက္ျခမ္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ေဒသမွာရွိေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရဲ ႔ ျပႆနာေတြဟာ ဘာေတြလည္းဆိုတာကို က်ေနာ္ကို ရွင္းျပပါလား။

Dr. Wakar Uddin ။ ။ ရခိုင္ျပည္မွာရွိတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးရဲ ႔ အေျခအေနက ေတာ္ေတာ္ဆိုးပါတယ္။ ျပႆနာက တခုမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ျပႆနာက အမ်ားႀကီးရွိပါတယ္။ အဓိကျပႆနာကေတာ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားေၾကာင့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြက၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးေတြဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ ႔ တုိင္းရင္းသားအစစ္ျဖစ္ေပမယ့္ သူတုိ႔လက္ထဲမွာ အခု တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္မွတ္ မရွိပါဘူး။ တုိင္းရင္းသားမျဖစ္လို႔ လက္မွတ္မရွိလို႔ သူတုိ႔သြားလာခြင့္၊ ရန္ကုန္သြားခြင့္၊ စစ္ေတြသြားဖို႔အတြက္ သြားလာခြင့္ မရွိပါဘူး။ အခုေတာ့ နည္းနည္းပါးပါး သြားခြင့္ျပဳေနတယ္လို႔ ၾကားသိရပါတယ္။ အမ်ဳိးသား၊ အမ်ဳိးသမီးတို႔ လက္ထပ္လို႔ မရပါဘူး။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ေက်ာင္းေတြပါေတြသြားတာ ပညာေရးတို႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔မရဘူး။ အခက္အခဲရွိပါတယ္။ ေကာလိပ္တုိ႔ဘာတို႔သြားဖို႔လည္း အခက္အခဲ ရွိပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ လယ္ေျမပိုင္ဆိုင္မႈတို႔အတြက္လည္း ျပႆနာျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ အဓိကအေၾကာင္းကေတာ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားေၾကာင့္ -

 Rohingya with other – Chin, Kachin, Shan, Kayah and Mon - ethnic groups’ representatives met British Prime Minister  at the residence of the British ambassador in Rangoon today at evening, according to a source from Rangoon.

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Rohingya travel hundreds of nautical miles thus to escape economic and civil oppre3ssion.

by Marque A. Rome

Thai governments — whether of yellow or red stripe — have in recent years suffered mounting international criticism owing to treatment of Rohingya refugees, who dare journey in flimsy open boats, typically with insufficient supplies, across the Indian Ocean in hope of finding somewhere a livelihood and home.

Many come ashore along Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast. The Thais, however, among whom xenophobia forms a cultural trait, do not welcome stateless immigrants, especially not economic refugees adhering to the Muslim faith.

Thai law is quite clear on the point, the gist of which is, Thailand is for Thai people; visitors are welcome, but legal immigration is sharply restricted. A number of small ethnic groups around the country has suffered under these strictures, notably the northern hilltribes and Sea Gypsies here in the south. Formerly, though native for generations past, they were perceived as unwanted outsiders and denied citizenship.


Rohingya have lived in refugee camps in Bangladesh for decades.

That has gradually changed.

Sea Gypsies, for example, who appear to be the Andaman coast’s aboriginal inhabitants, now have full rights of citizenship and royally bestowed surnames.

But still no legal apparatus is in place for dealing with immigrants in an orderly way. Unwanted visitors are deported. But what can be done with those unwanted in their home countries, where officials deny them repatriation?

That is the unfortunate case of the Rohingya, whose home is on the Arakan coast of Burma: the Burmese don’t want them there and will not accept them back.


Their enervation may be forgiven after days at sea without shelter.

So the Thais are placed in the invidious position either of accepting entry by an alien and impoverished group or…pushing them back whence they came — back into the sea. This has sometimes been done, prompting criticism from abroad. Thus the government is now creating a permanent plan for dealing with the Rohingya boat people.

What that will encompass remains to be seen, but the question naturally arises, “Who are the Rohingya and why have they no home?”

Their origins are vague but not because lost in the shrouds of antiquity; they appear, as an ethnic group, only recently. Burmese historian Khin Maung Saw asserts that the term ‘Rohingya’ does not appear before the 1950s. Another historian, Dr. Maung Maung, noted no ‘Rohingya’ are mentioned in the British 1824 census survey.

Aye Chan, of Kanda University of International Studies, has written that ‘Rohingya’ was adopted as a name by Bengalis in the 1950s whose forbears had migrated to Arakan during the British Raj. Many came at the behest of British employers but found themselves no longer wanted, and, indeed, stateless, after Burma’s independence in 1947. Aye Chan also argues that no record exists of ‘Rohingya’ in any language before the ’50s.

Arakan, in western Burma, borders East Bengal, now the nation of Bangladesh, so it seems reasonable to accept that the group’s origins are there, especially as they are Muslim, and the Burmese — for whom Buddhism is regarded as a defining national trait — do not accept them as native. They also speak a language related to Chittagonian, a Bengal dialect common in the south along Bangladesh’s border with Burma.


A 500-year-old coin the Rohingya think indicates their antiquity as a nation.

The Rohingya themselves derive their origin from a fanciful story: the 8th Century shipwreck of an Arab trading vessel whose crew begged — and received — mercy from Arakan’s local raja when he ordered them killed. The Rohingya said they were allowed to stay and have been in Arakan since.

However the case may be, relations between the Rohingya and the Burmese long have been uneasy. A 1939 study carried out under the auspices of British authorities, anxious that animosity might flare into violence between the Arakanese majority and Muslim migrants, concluded that migration from Bengal should be greatly reduced.

That British fears of violence were not misplaced became evident after the Japanese conquest of Burma in 1942: On 28th March of that year, perhaps 5,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Arakanese nationalists and Karens. The animosity was not all on one side, Muslims in northern Arakan massacred some 20,000 Arakanese.


"One law for both the Lion and the Ox," wrote Blake, "Opression." It has certainly been that of the Rohingya since long before most were born.

By no means all Burmese Muslims are Rohingya, but during World War II Muslim Bengali immigrants largely supported the British against the Japanese, who invaded the country in the guise of liberators. Support for the British was equated as opposition to Burmese nationalism — and so left the Rohingya with few friends after independence.

During the war, Rohingya support for the British manifested itself in active collaboration. They provided intelligence to British commanders fighting the Japanese, who reciprocated with brutal reprisals of a type similar in kind to the notorious Rape of Nanking: massacre, rape, murder, torture, extortion and forced labour. Tens of thousands fled into Bengal.

Since the war, various military governments in Burma have, for domestic political reasons, regularly incited violence against the Rohingya and other minorities. The former are an easy target, being strongly religious and — with their mosques and madrasa schools — plainly opposed to integration with the Buddhist majority, leading to further displacement of the community.

Amnesty International has noted that:

“Rohingyas’ freedom of movement is severely restricted, the vast majority are effectively denied Burmese citizenship. They are subjected to various forms of extortion and arbitrary taxation; land confiscation; forced eviction and house destruction; and financial restrictions on marriage. Rohingyas are used as forced labourers on roads and military camps….”

In 1961, the democratic government of U Nu granted local autonomy to Rohingya and established the Mayu Frontier Administration, a special frontier district ruled directly by the central government. But in 1964, Gen Ne Win — after toppling U Nu — abolished it. Thereafter his government’s policy towards the Rohingya has been described as one of ethnic cleansing, the goal being “a Rohingya-less Arakan.”

“In 1978 over 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh,” Amnesty International reported, “following the Burmese army’s ‘Nagamin’ (‘Dragon King’) operation. Officially this campaign aimed at ‘scrutinising each individual living in the state, designating citizens and foreigners in accordance with the law and taking actions against foreigners who have filtered into the country illegally.’ It directly targeted civilians, and resulted in widespread killings, rape, destruction of mosques and religious persecution.”

From 1988 till the recent change in regimes, the government permitted three marriages per year per village in the principal Rohingya population centres of northern Arakan State. This edict was later extended to other townships in Arakan.

“During 1991-92, over a quarter-million Rohingya fled to Bangladesh,” wrote Amnesty International. “They reported widespread forced labour, summary executions, torture, and rape. Rohingya were forced to work without pay by the Burmese army on infrastructure and economic projects, often under harsh conditions. Many other human rights violations by security forces occurred….”

Worse still for the Rohingya, the Bengalis are no longer amenable to accepting them: the government no longer provides support for refugee camps in which the overwhelming majority live and actually prevents international agencies from improving facilities for fear that, as a 2006 Refugees International report explained: “a humane camp environment will attract more Rohingya to their country.”


Conditions at a typical camp in Bangladesh.

Malnutrition rates therein are described as “very high”, with acute malnutrition prevalent in 16.8 per cent of children aged younger than five years, and 2.8 per cent severe cases. “Chronic malnutrition was present in 51.9% of the children. The underlying causes include poor water and sanitation, lack of access to complementary food and non-food items, and the poor socio-economic conditions of the refugees.”

So, displaced from their homeland or treated as aliens, failing to find sympathy for their plight in co-religionist Bangladesh, they take to the sea. But their treatment after coming ashore in other countries is far from certain. In Indonesia and Malaysia they are treated with a modicum of human dignity.

In Thailand they have been treated as pests.


Rohingya being towed: sometimes the overloaded derelict vessels succumb to the stress and...their passengers then present a problem to no one any longer.

In February, 2009, scandal erupted. A boatload of 190 Rohingya refugees was towed to sea and the story raised international headlines. A group rescued by Indonesian authorities that month told stories of being captured and beaten by Thai authorities, then abandoned in the ocean. Another group of five boats was towed to sea where four sank.

Thailand’s prime minister at the time, the Democrat Apisit Vejjajiva, admitted “some instances” in which Rohingya were abandoned at sea. He said they were allowed to “drift to other shores” but that policy was to supply “enough food and water” to ensure their arrival, and vowed he would bring to account officers guilty of human rights violations.

In the event, none were found guilty.

Although the new government of Burma agreed late last year to repatriate “registered Rohingya refugees” it is by no means clear how many can prove they are ‘registered’ — too many having been displaced during a period covering now seven decades.

The United Nations estimates the total population of Rohingya at 729,00 scattered throughout various Indian Ocean nations: Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and, of course, Burma.

Other figures suggest this wildly underestimates the population: In a briefing paper dated 26th March 2009, the Brussels-based Euro-Burma Office estimated the number at 800,000 in Arakan alone.

In addition: “It is estimated 500,000 Rohingya live in Saudi Arabia, 200,000 in Pakistan, 200,000 in Bangladesh, 50,000 in the United Arab Emirates and 25,000 in Malaysia.”

That makes about 1.8 million. Rohingya nationalists, however, dispute even this figure as greatly under-estimating their number, which they think is closer to 3.5 million, of which two million live in Burma and the rest in exile.


The Rohingya flag.

A Rohingya Patriotic Front has pressed for recognition of Rohingya status internationally. The group has a national flag — its green field emblematic of Islam; the central motif taken from a coin minted by Shams al-din Muhammad Ghazi, sultan of Bengal and dating from 1554 (the latter to support the group’s claim to an origin far earlier than the 1950s).

Thus the Rohingya are seen tenaciously holding onto their identity. Though scattered, like the Zionist Jews previous to Israel’s founding in 1947, they are eager to carve out a homeland.


Rohingya lined up awaiting deportation in February, 2009.

Born of this earth, yet with no land acknowledging them its children, the Rohingya necessarily wander — and even in that find themselves pursued and oppressed.