Sunday, May 8, 2011

Myanmar is one of the neighboring countries of Bangladesh. There exists a close tie of export-import liaison between these two countries. Of late, the Rohingya issue has been creating a crack in the diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Thousands of Rohingyas (Myanmar's aboriginals) have been crossing into Bangladesh for a long time. Because of their illegal entrance, our local inhabitants are suffering much. Rohingyas are now causing serious social and economic disturbances. They are now creating violence in our land. Most importantly, many blacklisted criminals use the Rohingya-cover to disguise themselves from police. Moreover, they are sometimes used as the human and drug trafficking agents! So, it is very important for both the Myanmar and Bangladesh govt. to come forward and settle the matter.

Link : :http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=184650

A petition with 5,323 signatures calling for a UN Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity in Burma and organized by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and Partners Relief and Development, was delivered to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) today.

The Head of the South-East Asia and Pacific Department at the FCO received the petition from a delegation including representatives from CSW, Partners Relief and Development, Burma’s National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA), and ethnic nationalities including Bwa Bwa Phan of the Karen Community Association UK, Van Biak Thang of the Chin Human Rights Organisation, Ring Du Lachyung of the Kachin National Organisation UK and Maung Tun Khin of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK.

Questions asked by Baroness Goudie at the House of Lords on 5th of April 2011
o ask Her Majesty’s Government what meetings United Kingdom government officials have had with representatives of the Rohingya ethnic minority in Burma.[HL8101]
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford): The Government are deeply concerned about the situation facing the Rohingya people. Foreign and Commonwealth officials in London often meet with the Burmese Rohingya Organisation and the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation-most recently on 10 March 2011. Our embassy in Rangoon meets on a regular basis with a wide range of ethnic groups. The Government remain committed to advocating fundamental freedoms and greater respect for human rights for all ethnic groups in Burma including the Rohingya.

Asked by Baroness Goudie

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the United Nations Department of Political Affairs to ensure that United Nations envoys to Burma meet and consult with ethnic Rohingya representatives.[HL8102]

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – As World Press Freedom Day is marked around the world, journalists claim Burma’s new government has not ushered in freedom of the press but superficial change is in the air.

media-freedom1In 1991, the United Nations declared May 3 as World Press Freedom Day to raise awareness about press freedom and remind all governments about the need for a free press.

Over the decades, Burma has suffered from strict censorship. But under the new government of President Thein Sein, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) under the Information Ministry recently lifted censorship of some journals and eased their tight control over media coverage of certain subjects.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US lawmakers called Tuesday on President Barack Obama to show greater urgency in setting up a UN probe into alleged war crimes in Myanmar, saying that widespread abuses were going unpunished.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in August last year that the United States would support a UN commission of inquiry, which could lead to charges against the military-backed regime in the country also known as Burma.

 Written by: Tanvi Pate

Only just in mid April, Thailand announced that it would close down nine refugee camps on its 1400 kilometres long eastern border with Myanmar. It’s important to consider as to why Thailand wants to end its twenty years humanitarian policy of assisting refugees? What kind of prospects might be faced by the refugees once they are back in Myanmar? What are the views of the Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) and what other options are in pipeline for the refugees that might enable them to escape this bleak scenario? This article considers these various questions and suggests some policy options for Thailand at the end.

Before moving forward onto other analysis it’s necessary to ponder upon the history and nature of the Burmese refugee problem that forced several hundred thousand Burmese into the Thai sanctuaries. 

 Syful Islam(Financial Express)

The government has turned down a US$33 million United Nations (UN) project aimed at reducing poverty in Cox's Bazar after it alleged that the scheme mainly targeted at the rehabilitation of Rohingya refugees in the country.

Four United Nations agencies - United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) - initiated the project to cut poverty of the people living in Cox's Bazar's southern most sub-districts of Ukhia and Teknaf.

The sub-districts are home to more than 26,000 recognised and another 200,000 unrecognised Muslim Rohingya refugees who took shelter after fleeing decades-long persecution in northern Rakhine state of Myanmar.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Tired, poor, huddled people seeking jobs in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, America and Europe have died on the high seas, suffocated in vehicles, toiled in sweatshops, and been expelled to countries where dictators lock them up.

Human traffickers eagerly profit from migrant workers' poverty, ignorance and desperation, including many unemployed men and women who beg to be smuggled abroad despite knowing the risks.

Kaladan Press News
Maungdaw, Arakan State: Aung Zaw Win, the Upper House parliament member (MP) from Maungdaw Township, accompanied by three other State level MPs of Maundaw Township, visited Maungdaw on April 25 after the parliamentary meetings at Nay Pyi Taw and Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, said a participant of the meeting who asked not to be named.

“It is the first time the MPs visited Maungdaw after the parliamentary meetings at Nay Pyi Taw and state level Hluttaw representative meetings to explain among the local people what they had done for the people, and the future plans and programs of the new democratic government.”

Upper House MP Aung Zaw Win, accompanied by the state level MPs U Mra Aung, U Tha Khin, U Janheingir (a) Aung Myo Myin, and an electrical engineer named U Tin Maung Win from Rangoon, visited Maungdaw Township.

4/29/2011  နိရဥၥရာ သတင္း

တာကလူး
 
ၾကံ႕ဖြံ႕ ပါတီသည္ ေပးထားေသာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကတိကို မတည္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားက စြပ္စြဲ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

အဆိုုပါ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္ကုိ ယမန္ေန႕က ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕နယ္ အလယ္သံေက်ာ္တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ အျပီးတြင္ ေဒသခံ မြတ္ဆလင္မ်ားက ေျပာဆိုလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“ သူတို႕က ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ကို လြတ္လပ္စြာ ခရီးသြားခြင့္ေတြ ရေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသား စိစစ္ေရး ကဒ္ေတြ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ပလီေတြကို ျပင္ခြင့္ရေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးမယ္။ ျခေသၤ့ (ခ်ိန္ေဟာ)ကို ေရႊးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ မဲေပးၾကပါဆိုျပီး သူတို႕က ေျပာသြားတယ္။ မေန႕က လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာေတာ့ ဒီကိစၥေတြကို ဘာမွ ေျပာမသြားဘူး” ဟု လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲသို႕ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သူ တစ္ဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ၾက႕ံဖြံ႕ပါတီသည္ ယမန္ေန႕က လူထု ရွင္းလင္းပြဲကို အလယ္သံေက်ာ္ ေက်းရြာတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ျပီး လူေပါင္း ၂၀၀၀ ခန္႕တက္ေရာက္နားေထာင္ခဲ့သည္ဟု သိရသည္။

Only just in mid April, Thailand announced that it would close down nine refugee camps on its 1400 kilometres long eastern border with Myanmar. It’s important to consider as to why Thailand wants to end its twenty years humanitarian policy of assisting refugees? What kind of prospects might be faced by the refugees once they are back in Myanmar? What are the views of the Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) and what other options are in pipeline for the refugees that might enable them to escape this bleak scenario? This article considers these various questions and suggests some policy options for Thailand at the end.

Four United Nations agencies - United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) - initiated the project to cut poverty of the people living in Cox's Bazar's southern most sub-districts of Ukhia and Teknaf.

ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္က ျမန္မာဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို ထိုင္းအာဏာပိုင္ေတြအေနနဲ႔ အခုခ်ိန္မွာ ျပန္ပို႔မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလို႔ မိမိတို႔ ယုံႀကည္ေၾကာင္း လူဦးေရ ၊ ဒုကၡသည္နဲ႔ ေ႐ႊ႕ေျပာင္း အေျခခ်သူမ်ားအေရး ဆိုင္ရာ အေမရိကန္ လက္ေထာက္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီး Mr. Eric Schwartz က ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ပါတယ္။

RFA နဲ႔ သီးသန္႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံေမးျမန္းစဥ္ ဧၿပီ ၂၅ ရက္ တနလၤာေန႔က အခုလိုေျပာတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ 

Chittagong, Bangladesh: In April, the regular meeting of Burmese ethnic groups living in the UK was hosted by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, or BROUK, on April 23, according to Mr. Tun Khin, the president of BROUK.

“The Kachin, Chin, Karen, and Rohingya ethnic groups attended the regular meeting, and it was held at No 10 Station Road, Walmthamstow, London.”

"We must disclose who provided the Bangladesh passports to Burmese citizens and which travel agents are involved in the incident," he said.

In another incident, Bangladesh border security forces arrested 45 Burmese Muslims on Sunday in the border area of Teknaf as they were entering Bangladesh through border points along the Naff River, which demarcates the border between the two countries. 

The 45 Burmese citizens were handed over to Bangladesh police after their arrest by Border Guards Bangladesh. 

Link : http://www.narinjara.com/details.asp?id=2931

Dr. Habib Siddiqui

[Author’s note: This paper is based on author’s speech at the PENN HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM on “The Rohingyas of Burma and Bangladesh” on Friday, March 31, 2006 in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. The material in this paper came from author’s personal contacts with the Rohingya Diaspora community and information that is available in the reports of various human rights groups, notably the Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group.]

Part 1: Nightmare, fiction or a living reality?

Imagine this. You are living in a country that does not recognize you as a citizen in spite of the fact that your forefathers lived there for centuries. If that were not enough of a traumatic experience, consider that other ethnic groups who are fighting the regime for self-determination and human rights consider you as outsiders. It must be your worst kind of nightmare when you realize that half of your people have been forced to take asylum or refuge outside, and you may be the next in line to seek a way out of this living hell.

Meet the most influential people in the world. They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry. Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution. Welcome to this year's TIME 100
One of the world's most celebrated advocates of democracy is facing prison time after a bizarre visit by an American who swam to her home. Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest and moved to prison after John Yettaw was caught swimming away from her lakeside compound on May 5. Suu Kyi, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years after clashing with the country's brutal ruling junta. The charges against Suu Kyi, who is 63 and reportedly in poor health, come just weeks before the scheduled end of her detention and carry a sentence of up to five years. Yettaw, 53, reportedly stayed for two nights in her central Rangoon compound after arriving unexpectedly from the lake complaining of cramps and exhaustion. He also faces prison time. A lawyer for Suu Kyi called Yettaw a "nutty fellow" and says she pleaded with him to leave. Some observers say the military is seizing on the incident to prolong Suu Kyi's detention and discourage pro-democracy forces ahead of next year's elections. (See pictures of Burma after Cyclone Nargis.) 

BANGKOK (TrustLaw) – Tens of thousands of stateless Muslim Rohingya women and girls who fled persecution in Myanmar for safety in Bangladesh are facing abuse and sexual violence at the hands of Bangladeshis and members of their own refugee communities with little chance of redress, a human rights group said in its latest report.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has made some improvements in its treatment of refugees, according to a report by the Washington based Refugees International (RI).

The report, which has a specific focus on Burmese refugees, said Malaysian authorities in the past year made no attempt to deport refugees and showed that they had increased their respect for identity cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It noted that since 2009, the number of registered refugees in Malaysia had increased from 45,000 to more than 80,000.

About 90% of them are from Burma, where ethnic minorities like the Chin, Rohingya and Karen are said to be subject to systematic human abuses.

 Reuters

BANGKOK/DELHI (AlertNet) – Tens of thousands of stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh face abuse, starvation and detention in a "silent crisis" that could lead to a humanitarian emergency if the authorities do not do more to protect them, a report by Refugees International (RI) said.

Washington, DC – Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled repression in Burma  have no protection from abuse , starvation, and detention in Bangladesh because of a lack of documentation, Refugees International highlighted in a report released today. In the report, Bangladesh: The Silent Crisis, Refugees International is urging the international community to work with the Bangladeshi government to register undocumented refugees and improve protection for all vulnerable Rohingyas.