Last week Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr told Radio Australia that his government would monitor democracy and human rights in Burma. Of course, this is welcome news, but the Australian government needs to be mindful of a new dynamic of human rights violations in Burma. The current peace building initiatives between the government and ethnic armed groups in Burma are not enough anymore; ethno-religious and inter-communal relations must be taken seriously in order not to derail the current political reform. For human rights abuses and violence are committed not only by the state but also by different ethno-religious groups against each other. Racism and racial profiling in the media deserve careful attention, and the transnational nature of fostering ethno-religious intolerance as part of the new dynamic of human rights need to be addressed.

As I was writing this piece, communal riots just broke out in Maungdaw district in Arakan State. Breaking news came quickly, indicating that ‘Bengali’ [the term the media and the public now use for Rohingya minority group] have burned ethnic Rakhine houses in various villages, and have killed at least 6 people. The President’s Office also released information on the event, while a senior official from the President’s Office has been updating his Facebook status. My reading of his status messages is that the country’s national security is in great danger, and that the state is on alert for effective actions.

The mainstream media has been reporting that a mob of many hundred ‘Bengalis’ started the incident, storming houses, burning down villages, and killing people.

Only very rare alternative information have made its way to the public, saying that the Muslims returning from Friday prayer were mistaken by the police to be rioting and therefore were shot. The initial tension was between the Rohingya and the police, and the riot spread from this. Some other alternatives indicate that the state security forces have been the perpetrators against Rohingya. Both sides are giving consistent information of their own, but independent confirmation is unavailable so far. In this contribution to New Mandala, I will illustrate the recent history of the riots.

I have already noted on New Mandala about some Arakan’s [Rakhine’s] racist campaign against Rohingya on social media websites, mostly Facebook. I also noted that it is open and public and that it has a genocidal tendency.

On 3 June 2012, this campaign turned really ugly. A mob of 300 Rakhines, Buddhists from Tounggout Township in Arakan State, stopped a bus and beat to death 11 persons traveling to Yangon. Ten were Muslim travelers, one of whom was a woman who was sexually assaulted before being killed. One other Buddhist was killed as he was mistaken for a Muslim. None of the victims were Rohingyas whom Arakan called ‘illegal’ immigrants from Bangladesh. This incident frustrated the country’s Muslim population that felt even more insulted when the state media referred to the victims as Muslim ‘Kalar’. This is a derogatory term used for Muslims, those of South Asian descent, or “black-skinned, undesirable aliens”, as Dr Maung Zarni has noted.

This massacre was said to be a response to the rape-murder of a 26-year- old Arakan woman on 28 May 2012, allegedly by three Muslim men. But the story is much more complicated.

The ongoing campaign and the media

As I noted in my earlier New Mandala post, the anti-Rohingya campaign began with intensity in November 2011. As the campaign continued, the unclear, confusing and even non-sense ethno-religious categories such as Rohingyas, Burmese Muslims, ‘Kalar’, ‘Muslim race,’ and ‘Islamic race’ became even more blurred. With such confusion, the common target became anything ‘Kalar’: Muslims, Rohingyas, South Asians, Islam.

The campaign also started representing Burmese Muslims [i.e. Muslims in Burma, or Burmese citizens of Islamic faith] as foreigners who came to Burma during colonial times only to take advantage of the country. The spreading discourses of racism increasingly deny and undermine the long political history of Burmese Muslims.

Then came two incidents within two weeks of the byelection in April 2012. A mob led by Buddhist monks and members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League fpr Democracy demolished a mosque in Hpakant, Kachin state. At the same time, another mosque in Magwe Region, central Burma, was demolished by a mob that also destroyed the homes of local Muslims and looted their properties. Initially, this was part of business competition between Win Naing, a Member of the Parliament from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, and Muslim business families (particularly one extended family). The MP, losing previously monopolised ferry business contracts, instigated a religious riot so that he and his colleagues could take back business licenses from the Muslim family (ferry business, taxation and so on). Law enforcement officers were simply watching as the riots took place.

The country’s Muslim population was frustrated since the mainstream media was completely silent on these attacks. Myanmar News Now (MNN), a single person-run website, but a very popular one, published a news report indicating it as a daylight “robbery” by a mob. Unclear reports confused people who thought that about 300 Muslims violently looted and destroyed the properties of local people. Anti-Muslim messages sprung up on Facebook accusing Muslims such as the quote below.

“How come the so-called democratic government is not doing anything when these Kalar came to our country and insulted us like that?”

Myanmar Muslim Students and Youth (MMSY) sent a complaint letter to the media both in Burma and in exile, and the Burmese media started reporting on the incident. Though, it is unclear whether the action of the media has anything to do with the letter. Nonetheless, usage of ‘Kalar‘ by the media (particularly by one media organisation) upset the Muslims.

Being misinformed, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi commented on Radio Free Asia’s Burmese Service telling the people not to fight with each other. This added to Burmese Muslims’ humiliation as they did not fight, but are being attacked and insulted because they are left unprotected. No other pro-democracy activists, human rights advocates, and politicians condemned the attacks.

Transnational campaign: Who is involved?

Hostilities against ethnic Rohingyas and Burmese Muslims are not new. They were rooted in dictator Ne Win’s time since the 1970s. But the current racist campaign is distinct from the past. It is not simply a state-sponsored project anymore. As Chris Lewa from Arakan Project noted on Radio Australia, it is difficult to say that the government is behind the current campaign. 

The campaign now is a public and transnational movement orchestrated openly on social media websites. Thousands of people from the Burmese diaspora in Australia, US, Canada, UK and other European countries have joined this campaign. These participants include some pro-democracy and human rights activists who migrated to these countries as refugees and asylum seekers. Many are now citizens of these countries.

Some comments and self-published articles speak of such murderous language as killing all ‘Kalar’. Some blame dictator Than Shwe for not eradicating all Rohingyas and Muslim populations from the country. Insulting messages using bad languages and sexually sensitive words are quite common. The followings are two examples that are less inappropriate to illustrate the point here.

“Penis Kalar, F!@# Kalar, Dog Kalar, Pig Kalar”

“You Kalar even F!@# your mother and your babies”

The campaign is so severe that such comments and postings have been littered on thousands of Facebook walls and pages. Thousands of Burmese-speaking Facebook users are exposed to them every single day. Many Facebook groups such as “Kalar Beheading Gang” appeared one after another. While it is possible to report abuse to Facebook, there were few Burmese Muslim Facebook users who would report to Facebook. Even when they did successfully, new groups keep appearing frequently. The campaign looks very cheap, but it goes on.

Surprisingly, some of Burma’s famous film directors and celebrities are also involved. Director Cho Tu Zal who is seeking asylum (?) in the US is at the forefront of the campaign. He has 5,000 friends and more than 2,000 subscribers on his Facebook account; many hundreds support and re-distribute his anti-Rohingya and nationalist postings.

Similarly, a top film star named Min Maw Kun referred to Rohingyas, in a recent traditional staged sitcom, as black-skinned, big-belly, and hairy “Kalar” who marry many Burmese women. Maung Myo Min, one of the most popular film directors in Burma, directed the sitcom, which is available on Youtube and shared on Facebook. The star’s portrayal of Rohingyas resembled a comment by Burmese Consul-General to Hong Kong, Ye Myint Aung, who said in 2009 that Rohingyas were “ugly as ogres”.

While Buddhism is known to be a peaceful religion, some relatively junior monks are at the forefront of the campaign. One monk in particular is Ashin Wirathu, who was responsible for 2003 religious riots in Kyautse, central Burma. He is known for preaching extremism in the name of protecting ‘race and religion’, including his call for mandatory Buddhist education in all educational institutions. Without any statistical data, he accused Muslims for committing more rapes than members of other faiths. His extremism led the critics to call him the “Taliban Monk”.

Other junior monks studying Buddhism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere are also spreading made-up stories such as the one in which Muslim men forcefully marry Buddhist men’s wives. Respected and senior monks in the country have been trying to stop the campaign, but it continues. To my knowledge, similar stories [and short Facebook comments] are being written and distributed by so-called right activists based in the US, UK and Canada. These accounts are stirring people’s anger and reinforcing the idea that Kalar are trying to take over the Buddhist nation.

Although there is no single organisation or individual formally leading the campaign, the campaign’s patrons are Arakan nationalists such as Dr. Aye Chan from Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, the late Dr. Aye Kyaw from the United States and historian Khin Maung Saw based in Germany. Dr. Aye Chan’s infamous book about the ethnic Rohingya was titled Influx Viruses: The Illegal Muslims in Arakan.

Muslim responses

Campaigns against Rohingya and Muslims on social media have existed since the Internet became available in Burma in 1999. But these intensified in November 2011 when Cho Tu Zal (allegedly the first person to do so) highlighted BBC’s 2010 article on Rohingya.

While Rohingya activists have been consistently lobbying western governments for support, Burmese Muslims, with few exceptions, have been silent on the racist campaign. Although frustrated and humiliated, they hoped that it would fade away sooner or later as democratic reform proceeds and that the reform would allow them to address the issue through the parliamentary process. The lack of action is partly because the Muslims are politically too weak and immobilized during the past decades.

While Islamophobia is growing in the country partly as a result of state-sponsored campaign against Muslims in the past three or four decades, the Muslim communities have failed to reach out to the Buddhist majority and foster better relations or address the majorities’ concerns. Moreover, the Muslims have not been able to address the issue of confusing South Asian cultural traditions with Islamic religion, which helps sustain the majority’s view of Muslims as aliens. While politico-religious extremism is not an issue, the communities have not been able to address the Muslims’ hypersensitivity to issues such as handling pork or address everyday community relations, in which Muslims appear ill behaved. Emerging youth groups have been trying, but their actions have been ineffective due to the lack of financial and human resources.

Most importantly, perhaps, although Burmese Muslims do not seem to be enthusiastic about supporting Rohingyas’ status as an ethnic group of Burma, they are not able to make visible the distant between themselves and the Rohingya, as they doubt that anti-Rohingya campaign is also an anti-Muslim one. In other words, the idea of Muslim brotherhood is not relevant to the relationship between Rohingyas and Burmese Muslims; they are not completely antagonistic to each other either. Likewise, although religiously motivated terrorism is not a significant issue in Burma, the Muslim communities have been unable to act on some Rohingya groups that have been accused of having connections with Al-Qaida. The Muslims communities are politically too immobilized to do the tasks anyway. This has an important implication on the relationship between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority.

On the part of Rohingya activists, their insistence on the group being an official ethnic group of the country only sustains backlash from Rakhines and majority Burmese. They have not taken on the so-called ‘illegal’ immigration, making the majority Burmese to insist on immigrants and Burma-born Rohingya being the same. In short, the meddling of ethnicity, religion, ‘illegal’ immigration and citizenship has been left unaddressed.

There are politicians, activists, and journalists from Muslim communities who are working within the mainstream. When the mainstream completely ignores them in times of need, the Muslims find themselves too paralyzed: they have no representatives to act on their behalf nor do they have their own leaders, organizations/parties, or media. Realizing that the mainstream political movement is only inattentive to their needs, Burmese Muslims started responding to the racist campaign after the April incidents. Some predicted that sectarian violence would break out soon if the media and mainstream political organizations did not control the racist campaign. Their cry for help, however, only falls on deaf ears: the media and human right activists assumed that the campaign on Facebook was not worth addressing. 

Yet, the campaign has already redefining political spaces, citizenship and inter-communal relations manifested in the 3 June 2012 massacre, which was a strong reaction to a rape-murder case of a 26-year-old woman in Rambre Township.

Triggering public anger

What actually triggered public anger? It may have been racial profiling by the ethnic Arakan news agency, Narinjara, established in 2005. When the rape incident took place, the agency published news identifying the accused with their Islamic faith. In its Burmese language news, the incident was presented as if Muslims [read aliens] were threatening local people, and now they have raped and brutally killed a woman. The words – Muslims, Kalar, Islam – were repeatedly used in its news reports. The news spread and people started talking about it in terms of Kalar and “Lu Myo Char [i.e. different race/people or alien] insulting our woman”.

Interestingly, Naranjara and Facebook users started talking about the accused rapists as Kalars even when the backgrounds of the accused were still unclear. Information from alternative sources shows that the main accused’s father was born into a Buddhist Rakhin family, but a Muslim couple adopted him after his parents abandoned him at birth. However, his father and the couple died. He became a spoiled kid with a criminal record showing multiple violations. Whether he practiced Islam or not, and his ‘Rakhin-ness’ [if so] were not considered. Instead, news reports portrayed the case as an insult by Kalar. I have not noticed The Narinjara or other agencies specifically blaming Rohingya for the crime. (Note: I do not seek any identification of ethnicity with criminal activities. My intention here is only to point out racial profiling).

As the news spread, genocidal comments also appeared one after another such as the one below.

“Bad Kalar. We already allowed them to live in our country. Now they have raped and killed our woman…. If we just watch, we will end soon. Unless we take initiative and plan to end Kalar men and women, Rakhine people will end” [his word choice “Myo Ton Aung” literally means the end of race/ethnic kind].

Ignoring the complaints from Muslim groups and individuals, the agency continued publishing news in similar fashions until 2 June 2012 (a total of five news reports). Initial erratic reporting of the victim’s age as 16-years-old (instead of 26-years-old) contributed to stirring people’s anger dramatically.

On 3 June 2012, the angry mob at Taunggot stopped a bus and killed 11 people [There are reports saying that the culprits were not local residents. Some were holding communication devices that are normally used by security officers]. Surprisingly, although this massacre humiliated many Burmese (Muslims and non-Muslims alike), there are still many who openly justify the violence. Some Facebook users even offer money to those whoever would rape and kill Muslims in Arakan State. It should be noted, though, that it is still unclear to what extent the Facebook campaigns and comments actually fed into the communal riots.

A new issue emerges

As the country tries to address the issue, another problem has been introduced: citizenship. Burmese Muslims are being treated as second-class citizens and the discourses of racism are increasingly portraying them as Lu Myo Char [different race/people]. When the massacre took place on 3 June 2012, the state run media referred to the victims as “Muslim Kalar”. When Muslims in Yangon protested against it, the Information Department corrected its usage to “Members of the Islamic faith who are living in the country”. This raises a question of whether the state recognizes Muslims as citizens. An open letter, submitted to President Thein Sein by Burmese Muslim Associations, raised the concern that the state media’s new usage downplays their citizenship status and that “living in the country” only signifies their “guest” status. [The complicated identity crisis of Burmese Muslims, now Myanmar Muslims, has a long history in Burma. I hope to contribute this topic to NM in the future.]

As these issues pre-occupied the Burmese home and abroad, the government has established an investigation committee for the 3 June 2012 massacre. Five major Islamic organizations in Burma have issued a joint statement, urging Muslims to calm down and not to protest. The Muslims in the country seem calm.

On 8 June 2012, however, riots broke out in Maungdaw district, which is a Rohingya majority area. Previously idle media organisations started distributing breaking news. Weekly Eleven, a Yangon based-agency, for example, that completely silent on anti-Muslim riots in April and the 3 June 2012 massacre has been posting breaking news every minute.

Campaigners started distributing information associating Rohingya with terrorists, and speculating that foreign interventions (including from Bangladesh) are behind the scene. In the evening, leaders of influential 88 Generation Students declared that Rohingya is not an ethnic group of Burma. The government has issued Curfews in Maungdaw and Buthitaung (another Rohingya area) in Arakan State. Some fear that the military government is returning to power in the name of ‘keeping the country together’.

To summarise, the above chronology of the 3 June 2012 massacre illustrates that violence cannot be limited to state abuses. Instead, any attention to human rights issues in Burma needs to be serious about racism, inter-ethnic and religious relations, the role of the media and its code of conduct, transnational racist campaign on social media websites, and finally citizenship issues. The Rohingya problem has already troubled both Burma and its neighbors near and afar.

If the Australian government engages with Burma on human rights issues, the very first step, requiring minimal effort, will be to get Burmese-Australian citizens off the racist campaign who are one way or another fostering racial and religious intolerance in Burma. The next step is to support peace education programs through Australian educational institutions in order to foster critical understanding of issues involving ethnicity/identities, migration, conflict, nation-building, and citizenship. This educational support must be available to the general public, but not be limited to scholarships designed for few of the country’s brightest and most privileged. Finally, the government should initiate and support offices that can effectively monitor human right cases and ensure the prosecution of perpetrators.

Sai Latt is a PhD candidate in Canada.

မေန႔ ၀၈ ၊ ဇြန္ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ ေန႔ပုိင္းတြင္ ေမာင္းေတာျမိဳ ႔ေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအမ်ိဳးသား ေဒါက္တာေနာဂ်ဴေမာ္ဒင္ အသက္ (၆၅ - ၇၀) ေလာက္ရွိသူသည္ စစ္ေသြးၾကြ အၾကမ္းသမားတို႔၏ ရက္စက္စြာ ဓါးခုတ္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရေၾကာင္း ယေန နံနက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ေမာင္းေတာျမိဳ ႔မွ စံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။ တဖန္ မေန႔က
၀၈ ၊ ဇြန္ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ ရက္ ည ၁၀ နာရီေလာက္တြင္ ေဂၚဒုတာရား ေက်းရြာေန ဥကၠဌေဟာင္း
နဳရ္ရုရ္အာမီန္ ဆိုသူကိုလည္း ၎၏ ဆိုင္၌ပင္ လည္ပင္ကို ဓါးျဖင္႔လွီးျဖတ္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရေၾကာင္း ၎ေက်းရြာသား တစ္ဦးမွစံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။ ၀၉ ၊ဇြန္ ၊၂၀၁၂ ယေန႔ နံနက္ပိုင္း ၈ နာရီေလာက္တြင္ ေမာင္းေတာျမိဳ ႔ေတာင္ပိုင္း ၅ မိုင္အကြာအေဝးတြင္ရွိ ဒုရွီရာေတာင္ ေက်းရြာသား လူငယ္
၂ ႏွစ္ဦးကို စစ္တပ္မွ ကားေမာင္းသြားစဥ္ ပစ္သတ္သြားေၾကာင္းသတင္းရရွိသည္။ မေန႔ ည ၌ ျဖစ္ဖ်က္ခဲ႔ေသာ အၾကမ္းဖက္ မီးရိႈ ႔ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈတြင္ ၃ မိုင္ ဒုလာဖါရာရြာတြင္
ဗလီတစ္လံုး မီးရိႈ ႔ခံခဲ႔ရသည္ဟု သိရသည္။


ေမာင္းေတာ ျမိဳ ႔ျပင္က ၃မိုင္ ၄မိုင္ ေက်းရြာမ်ားရွိ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအိမ္ေျခမ်ား ႏွင္႔ အမွတ္ (၅ )ရပ္ကြက္ရွိ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အိမ္ေျခမ်ားစုစုေပါင္း ၁၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္မီးရိႈ ႔ခံခဲ႔ရျပီး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မူစလင္ အေယာက္ (၂၀၀ ) ေလာက္ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရသည္ဟု ေဒသခံ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကဆိုၾကသည္။ ျပင္ပ မီဒီယာမ်ားတြင္ သတင္းလႊင္႔ရာတြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကမီးရိႈ ႔ေနတယ္၊သတ္ေနတယ္ဟူ၍ လုပ္ၾကံသတင္းမ်ားကို ျဖန္႔ေဝကာ ခားတဖက္ကလည္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္းေတာ ေဒသေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားကို ညတြင္းခ်င္း အုပ္စုလိုက္ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈမ်ားကို ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ႔ၾကသည္။ အရပ္သား ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳး ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္မ်ားအားလံုးကို ၎တို႔ ေနထိုင္ရာပတ္ဝန္က်င္၌ ရွိေသာ ဘုန္းၾကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ားတြင္ အေစာင္႔ အၾကပ္မ်ားျဖင္႔ ေကာင္းမြန္စြာ ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင္႔ေရွာက္ ထားျပီး အိမ္တြင္းေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔၏ အိမ္မ်ားကို မီးရိႈ ႔၍ အိမ္ျပင္ထြက္လာသူမ်ားကို ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ သားေကာင္းမ်ားသဖြယ္ ပစ္ခတ္သတ္ျဖတ္ျပီးကားေပၚတင္ သယ္ေဆာင္သြားခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း မနက္မိုးလင္းေတာ႔ လမ္းေပၚတြင္ စြန္းထင္ေနေသာ ေသြးမ်ားကို မီးသတ္ကားမ်ားျဖင္႔ ေဆးေၾကာသန္႔စင္ခဲ႔ေၾကာင္းမ်က္ျမင္သက္ေသ တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ လက္ရွိ U.N အမူထမ္းတစ္ေယာက္ထံမွ စံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။

မေန႔ ညပိုင္းက ျဖစ္ဖ်က္ခဲ႔ေသာ မင္းမဲ႔စရိုက္ အၾကမ္းဖက္သတ္ျဖတ္မႈမ်ားစတင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ႔ပံုမ်ား အေသးစိပ္ စံုစမ္း ေမးျမန္းထားသည္မ်ားကို ေအာက္တြင္ ေဖၚျပေပးထားပါသည္။

ညမထြက္ရ အမိန္႔ ထုတ္ျပန္အျပီး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမူစလင္မ်ားသည္ မိမိတို႔၏ ေနအိမ္အသီးသီးမ်ားသို႔ ျပန္သြားျပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္း ခန္႔မွန္ေျခ ည ၇း၀၀ နာရီေလာက္မွစ၍ေမာင္းေတာ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ေဟာင္း
အနီး အမွတ္(၅)ရပ္ကြက္အတြင္းရွိ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္အနီး ေဘာလံုးကြင္း၌လံုထိန္း၊ ရဲ ၊န.စ.ကႏွင္႔ စစ္သားမ်ားက ေနရာယူ၍ အရပ္သား ဟန္ေဆာင္ထားသူမ်ားက အမွတ္(၅) ရပ္ကြက္ အတြင္းရွိ
ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မူစလင္ အိမ္မ်ားကို ဓါတ္ဆီပုလင္းမ်ားျဖင္႔ စတင္ပစ္ေပါက္ မီးရိႈ ႔မႈေၾကာင္း အိမ္တြင္ေန ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမူစလင္ကေလး လူၾကီး အမ်ိဳးသမီး အမ်ားအျပား မီးေလာင္းေသဆံုးသြားေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။ အိမ္မီးေလာင္း ေနစဥ္း အျပင္ကို ထြက္လာသူ အားလံုးကိုလည္း အိမ္ကို ဝိုင္းရံထားေသာ
ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳး လံုထိန္း၊ န.စ.က ႏွင္႔ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားက ပစ္ခတ္သတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း ၎အမွတ္(၅)ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ေနထိုင္သူ အသက္ေဘးက ထြက္ေျပး လႊတ္ေျမာက္ခဲ႔သူမွ သိရသည္။
၎ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားကို နံနက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ကားေပၚတင္ ေခၚေဆာင္သြားခဲ႔သည္ဟုသိရသည္။

ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားသည္ အမွတ္(၅) ရပ္ကြက္မွ အမ်ားဆံုးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေမာင္းေတာ တစ္ျမိဳ ႔လံုး ျမိဳ ႔ျပင္ အတြင္း ခန္႔မွန္ေျခ စုစုေပါင္း ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မူစလင္အေယာက္ (၂၀၀) ထိရွိနိုင္ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။ ။ ရဲတပ္သား ၃၀၀၀ႏွင္႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္တြင္က အျခားျမိဳ႔ မ်ားက စစ္သား ၅၀၀၀ေထာင္ ကိုလည္း ေမာင္းေတာျမိဳ ႔ေပၚေရာက္ရွိေနေၾကာင္း ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳး န.စ.က ၊ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔ ႏွင္႔ လံုထိန္းအမ်ားအျပားနဲ႔ အတူ အရပ္သား ဟန္ေဆာင္ထားသူ လူ ( ၂၀၀ )ေလာက္က ေရွ႔ဆံုးကေန အိမ္မ်ားကို ဓါတ္ဆီပုလင္းမ်ားျဖင္႔ ပစ္ေပါက္ မီးရိႈ ႔ခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း မီးေလာင္အိမ္အတြင္းမွ ထြက္လာသူ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မူစလင္မ်ားကို ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳး လံုထိန္း၊ ရဲ ႏွင္႔ န.စ.က တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ားက ဝိုင္းဝန္ ပစ္ခတ္သတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း ေသဆံုးသြားေသာ
လူေသအေလာင္းမ်ားကို ကားေပၚတင္ ခ်က္ခ်င္း သယ္ေဆာင္သြားခဲ႔ေၾကာင္းစံုစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။
ျပည္ပ သတင္းဌာနမ်ားႏွင္႔ ျပည္တြင္းက သတင္မ်ားတြင္ ေဖၚျပေနသကဲ႔သို႔ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြက သတ္ေနတယ္ ၊ဘဂၤလာက ဘဂၤါလီေတြဝင္ေရာက္လာျပီး ရခိုင္ကို သတ္ေနတယ္ဆိုတာ လံုးမဟုတ္ပါဘူး အခုကိစၥကို ဘက္မလိုက္ဘဲ သတင္းအမွန္ကို ရယူ ထုတ္လႊင္႔ေပးဖို႔ ျပည္တြင္း ျပည္ပ မီဒီယာမ်ားကို ေမာင္းေတာျမိဳ ႔ခံ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားက ေတာင္းဆိုပါေၾကာင္း သတင္းဌာနမ်ားသို႔ ေမာင္းေတာလူထု ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔က တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါသည္။

စစ္ရဟပ္ယာဥ္ ၂ စင္းျဖင္႔ ေမာင္းေတာ ျမိဳ ႔ေပၚတြင္ ပ်ံသန္း ကင္းလွည္႔ေနေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။

09 june 2012 

Abid Bahar

သူနဲ့ တူပါလာေသာ ေျမးမေလး မိန္နာရာ(ဘ)ဦးအီဆုဗ္ အသက္ ၁၃ ႏွစ္အရြယ္ ကေလးမေလးတုိ့ကုိ ရခုိင္အစြန္းေရာက္သမားမ်ားက သတ္လုိက္ၾကတယ္လုိ့ သတင္ရျပီးခ်င္း စစ္ေတြ ျမိဳ့့ ဘုေမရြာမွ မြတ္စလင္မ္မ်ားထြက္ၾကည့္လာရာ ရခုိင္အစြန္းေရာက္၀ါဒီမ်ားက မြတ္စလင္မ္ေတြနဲ့့ ျပသနာရွာရန္အလုိ့ငွါလူစူလူေ၀မ်ား တစ္ျဖည္းျဖည္းႏွင့္ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ့ ေမယုလမ္းႏွင့္ စက္ရုံစုလမ္းမွ အစြန္းေရာက္၀ါဒျဖန့္ ရခုိင္မ်ား တစ္ျဖည္းျဖည္းစုလာၾကပါသည္။ စုလာေသာရခုိင္အစြန္းေရာက္ သမားဦးေရ မွာ တစ္ျဖည္းျဖည္းမ်ားျပားလားျပီး လူဦးေရ တစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ခန့္ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး ဘုေမဘက္က မက်ဥ္းျမိဳင္အုပ္စုမွ ရြာ ႏွစ္ရြာကုိ မီးရွဳိ့ရန္ၾကိဳးစားေသာ္လည္း မြတ္စလင္မ္မ်ားက ကာကြယ္ရန္အလုိ့ငွါ ေစာင့္ဆုိင္းေနေသာေၾကာင့္ရခုိင္မ်ား ရြာထဲသုိ့ မ၀င္ႏုိင္ခဲ့ပါ။၄င္း ခုိင္၀ါဒျဖန့္အစြန္းေရာက္မ်ားေရာက္လာျပီး စုေ၀းေနခ်ိန္တြင္ စစ္ေတြ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ့ မွ လုံျခံဳေရး လုံထိန္းမ်ား အစုိးရမွ ခ်ေပးထားပါသည္။

Source : စစ္ေတြ မြတ္စလင္မ္ သတင္းေပးသမား

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Many security forces dressed in civil clothes but with arms are firing the Rohingyas.
An estimated 100 Rohingyas were killed. As dead bodies were not handed over to the relatives or villagers. Exact number of death could not be confirmed. Some estimate that the number of death could exceed 200 Rohingyas. 

Hundreds of injured Rohingyas are lack of treatment. Thousands of people were deprived of food and water as Police, military, and Hlon Htin block them. 

 
At about 12: 25 P.M. Deputy Home Minister accompanied by U Aung Zaw Win (USDP- MP) arrived at Maungdaw. They are reportedly discussing with local leaders on the situation. The details of the discussion are still not known.


10th June

00.30am-Tensions increased in Arakan according to some sources.

00:35am - Buthidaung Township (16 mile from Maungdaw) : Half an hour ago two boatloads of Rakhine were brought in to the town of Buthidaung from other places under the programme of the authorities.

01:-00 am- In Sittwe, Rakhine in Islamic attire wearing caps were seen roaming in the streets of Akyab trying to pretend Muslims. The following racist Medias are engaged in anti-Rohingya propaganda.

01:30 am - The Akyab Airport Mosque is being burnt .It has been reported that the riot have been supervised by Aung Myat Kyaw an MP at State Parliament. It is reported that the house of one Mohammed Hussein was killed and his house was burnt down. For this destruction, Aung Myat Kyaw is using Aung Tun Sein (Olympic group) and Pho Sein(Danyawadi group) .Another source reported that a mosque in Magyi Myaing Village (1mile from Sittwe Airport) at quarter8 was also destroyed.

Nur Begum from Myi Gyi Myaing village Sittwe was chopped and packed in a Jute bag at Mayu Road. The dead body was said to have been hidden by the police.

03:00 am- Some Rohingya youths were carried away by NaSaKa Border Security Forces. The number of youths was unknown. At least 70 Rohingyas were killed from Myothugyi village (Kaindapara) alone. A total of about 300 Rohingyas were believed to have been killed in the Maungdaw township. It is very hard to ascertain the exact figures as the dead bodies have not been handed over to their relatives or villagers yet.

Popular Rohingya websites were hacked including www.kaladanpress.org and www.rohingya.org

4:00am- Harzamya village from Sittwe was burnt- 13 Rohingyas were shot dead by Police and Paramilitary Forces. 4 injured. Reliable sources said dead bodies were collected and buried.

9:00am- Government ordered to leave all the NGO from Northern Arakan State (confirmed)

09:15 am- Police Officer Than Htin killed innocent one Rohingya girl (Ramzaan- 12yrs ) Rohingya boy (Name –Abdu Rahaman-10yrs ) and her brother injured. Dead body was taken by Paramilitary Forces.

09:30am- Bu May village (Wayalis) ,Sittwe Township is burning till now.

*Note- Updated till 9:30 am local time

QUESTION: Sure. Just briefly, there’s been some violence in Burma, Myanmar, regarding the Muslim minority. Do you have anything to say about the violence itself or more broadly about the treatment of the Rohingya minority in Burma?

MS. NULAND: We are deeply concerned about the reports that a mob killed 10 individuals, Muslim pilgrims, pulling them from a bus and beating them to death near the border of Rohingya state and Bago division in Burma on June 3rd. We are obviously saddened by this tragic loss of life. I think it speaks to the importance of the government and the minorities redoubling efforts on a peace process that includes ceasefire and real negotiations.

Victoria Nuland
Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
June 8, 2012

ႏုိင္ငံသားေတြက တေယာက္ကုိတေယာက္ အရမ္းမနာလုိျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ တျခားႏုိင္ငံ သားေတြလဲ မနာလုိစိတ္ရွိတာဘဲ၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ဗမာေတြမွာ နဲနဲပုိတယ္လုိ့ ေျပာရမယ္၊ ဒါကလဲ ကုိယ့္ကုိကုိယ္ ယုံၾကယ္မွဳ နည္းလုိ့ျဖစ္တာပါ။ ဒီလုိျဖစ္ေတာ့ ဘယ္သူ့က ကုိယ္ထက္သာ သြားမလဲ ဆုိဒါ အျမဲၾကည့္ေနတယ္။ ကုိယ့္ကုိကုိယ္ ၾကြားေနတဲ့ဲ့ စိတ္ရွိေနတယ္…………စသျဖင့္ ဒီမုိကေရစီ Icon ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း စုၾကည္ ကေျပာသြား ပါတယ္။

2011 ခု၊ ေအာက္တုိဘာ (21) ရက္ေန့က RFA မွ ထုတ္လႊင့္သြားတဲ့ အေမးအေျဖ က႑တခုမွာ ျပည္သူ့ဘက္က ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီး ဦးတင္ဦးက ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ အေၾကာင္း ေျပာလာေတာ့ မိမိတုိ့ႏုိင္ငံသားျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကုိ ဘဂၤါလီလုိ့ စြပ္စြဲလုိက္ျပန္ျပီ၊ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ေတြလဲ ျပည္သူ ျပည္သားေတြပဲ။ ဘာျဖစ္လုိ့ ျပည္သူ ဘက္က ရပ္တည္မေပးတာလဲ။ ဒီမုိကေရစီ ႏုိင္ငံမွာ ျပည္သူေတြကုိ အကာအကြယ္ေပးတဲ့ ျပည္သူ့အစုိးရပါပဲ။ ဒီမုိကေရစီ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ကုိ အာဏာရွင္ စစ္ စစ္နဲ့ ထုေထာင္လုိ့ မရပါ။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ေျပာသလုိ မနာလုိစိတ္ကုိ မ်ိဳသိပ္မထားႏုိင္တာ အံ့ၾသေလာက္ပါရဲ့။ ပါးစပ္က ဒီမုိကေရစီ ဆုိေပမဲ့ ရင္ထဲမွာ ဦးေန၀င္းရဲ့ စစ္အာဏာအၾကြင္းအက်န္က ရွိေနေသးတယ္။ ဒါဟာ အဏာရွင္ ဦးေန၀င္းရဲ့ ျပဳစု ပ်ိဳးေထာင္မွဳ ေအာက္မွာ ၾကီးျပင္းလာတာကုိ စိတ္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ လုံျခဳံမွဳ မေပးနုိင္ဒါ ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ 

ဘာဘဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ ဘဂါၤလီဆုိတဲ့ ႏုတ္ထြက္စကားကုိ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာဆုိျပီး ျပင္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ဘဂၤလီဆုိတာ ဘဂၤလာေဒရွ့္ ႏုိင္ငံသားေတြကုိ ေခၚဒါပါ။ က်မတုိ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ ျမန္မာျပည္ကုိ ခ်စ္တယ္၊ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ အေပၚ သစၥာရွိတယ္၊ ျမန္မာယဥ္ေက်းမႈ ဓေလ့ထုံးစံ၊ ၀တ္စားဆင္ယင္မွဳကုိၾကဳိက္ႏွစ္သက္တယ္။ ျမန္မာျပည္ဖြား ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသား စစ္စစ္ဆုိဒါ ယုံမွား သံသယမရွိေစခ်င္ပါ။ 

ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးဟာ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ေရွးေခတ္ အဆက္ဆက္က ေနထုိင္လာခဲ့ အိစၥလာမ္ ဘာသာ၀င္မ်ားျဖစ္ၾကျပီး၊ ရခုိင္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားနဲ့အတူ ယွဥ္တြဲေနထုိင္လာခဲ့ပါ တယ္။ က်မတုိ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးေတြ ႏုိင္ငံျခားသား အလ်ဥ္းမဟုတ္ပါ။ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း 1000 ေက်ာ္ ကတည္းကေနထုိင္လာခဲ့ရာ၊ 17 ရာစုသုိ့ ေရာက္တဲ့အခါ ရခုိင္ျပည္ရဲ့ နန္းတြင္း နန္းျပင္ မူဆလင္ေတြရဲ့ ၾသဇာ အာဏာတိကမၼ ၾကီးမားေၾကာင္း၊ သမုိင္း အေထာက္အထား ခုိင္လုံစြာရွိပါတယ္။ 1784 ခုႏွစ္၊ မတုိင္မွီကပင္ ရခုိင္ျပည္တြင္ မူရင္းတုိင္းျပည္အျဖစ္ ေနထုိင္လာခဲ့သူမ်ားပီပီ၊ 1947 ခုႏွစ္၊ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒ ပုဒ္မ ၁၁(က)(ခ) နဲ႕ (ဂ)အရ၊ ႏုိင္ငံသားအျဖစ္သုိ့လည္းေကာင္း၊ 1948 ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏုိင္ငံသား အက္ဥပေဒ ၃(၁) အရ၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးတမ်ိဳးတြင္ အက်ဳံး၀င္ျပီး တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ား အျဖစ္မွတ္ယူသူမ်ားျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ထင္ရွားပါတယ္။ 

1954 ခုႏွစ္၊ စကတင္ဘာ(25)ရက္ေန့ ည 8 နာရီအခ်ိန္တြင္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ ဦးႏုသည္ ျမန္မာအသံလႊင့္ဦးစီးဌာနမွ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္ မွီတင္းေနထုိင္တဲ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားဟာ ျမန္မာႏူိင္ငံ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အသံလႊင့္မိန့္ၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ တဖန္ 1959 ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏုိ၀င္ဘာလ 3 ရက္၊ 4 ရက္ေန့၌ ဘူးသီးေတာင္၊ ေမာင္းေတာျမဳိ့မွာက်င္းပခဲ့တဲ့ လူထုအစည္းအေ၀းမွာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားဟာ တျခားတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားနဲ႕ နည္းတူ သစၥာ သမာဓိနဲ႕ ျပည့္စုံတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း မိန္႕ၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူတုိ႕ဟာ တကယ့္ ျမန္မာ ႏုိင္ငံ လြတ္လပ္ေရးအတြက္ အသက္ကုိစေတးခဲ့တဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံလြတ္လပ္ေရး ဖခင္ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းနဲ႕ အတူ စြန္းစြန္းစားစား ပါ၀င္လွဳပ္ရွား လြတ္လပ္ေရး အရယူခဲ့တဲ့ ပုဂၢဳိလ္ေတြခ်ည္းပါ။ ဗမာစစ္စစ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ 

အာဏာရူး မဆလ ဦးေန၀င္းအစုိးရဟာ အဲဒီလုိ တုိင္းရင္းသားအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္လုိက္တဲ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားေတြကုိ တခ်ိဳ႕ေသာ အစြန္းေရာက္၀ါဒီမ်ားရဲ့ မဟုတ္မမွန္ တုိင္ၾကားခ်က္အေပၚ မဆင္ျခင္ ေလ့လာမွဳမရွိပဲ၊ ဦးေန၀င္း အစုိးရဟာ စနစ္တက် စီမံကိန္းခ်မွတ္ကာ 1978 ခုႏွစ္၊ နဂါးမင္းစီမံခ်က္ျဖင့္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ကုိတဖက္ႏုိင္ငံသုိ႕ ေမာင္းထုတ္ ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ေမာင္းထုတ္ရင္လဲ တဖန္ ဦးေန၀င္း အစူိးရက ဟံသၤာစီမံခ်က္ျဖင့္ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကုိ မိမိတုိ႕ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသားအျဖစ္ ျပန္လည္ေခၚယူ လက္ခံေနရာ ခ်ထားခဲ့တာဟာ တကမၻာလုံးအသိပါ။ 

တဖန္ မဆလ အေမႊစားအေမႊခံ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ ဦးသန္းေရႊ လက္ထက္ အာဏာပုိင္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြဟာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးေတြကုိ နည္းေပါင္းစုံနဲ့ ဖိႏွိပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ ရက္စက္ မွဳေၾကာင့္ တျခားနယ္စပ္တုိင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ိဳးေတြလုိ တဖက္ႏုိင္ငံသုိ႕ ခုိလွဳံေနရာမွ စစ္အစုိးရက တဖက္ႏုိင္ငံမွ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳး တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကုိ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသား အေထာက္ အထားခုိင္လွဳံမွဳျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္ ေခၚယူလာျပီး တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္တဖက္ႏုိင္ငံမွာ ႏုိင္ငံမဲ့ဘ၀ေရာက္ေနပါတယ္။ ဒီလုိ ဒုကၡေရာက္ ေနၾကတဲ့ က်မတုိ႕ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကုိ ကုိယ္ခ်င္းစာနာမွဳမရွိၾကေပမဲ့၊ ျမန္မာ မိန္းကေလးေတြကုိ ေမွ်ာ့စာေက်ြးတဲ့ တရုတ္ေတြအေၾကာင္းၾကားရင္ က်မမ်က္ရည္္ က်မိပါတယ္။ ဒီလုိ ရက္စက္သူေတြဟာ မင္းမႈေနပါ တယ္။ ဒုကၡေရာက္တဲ့ လူေတြဟာ ဒုကၡပင္လယ္ေ၀ေနၾကပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ လူလုိအဓိပၸါယ္ရွိၾကတဲ့ လူသားဆန္တဲ့စိတ္ေမႊးၾကရင္ ဒီမုိကေရစီဆုိတဲ့ အႏွစ္သာရကုိခံစားႏုိင္ရန္ အားလုံးစုေပါင္းညီညာ သာယာ၀ေျပာတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ကုိ ထူေထာင္ႏုိင္မယ္ဆုိရင္ အားလုံးသူေတြ ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္ေနႏုိင္ၾကရမွာပါ။ 

လူျဖစ္ျပီး လူျဖစ္ရႈံးေနတာ က်မတုိ႕ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသားေတြမဟုတ္လား၊ အဲဒီလုိ အယူသည္း အမွားေတြ ကုိ စႊန္႕လႊတ္ၿပီး၊ အမွန္ကုိ လက္ခံ ၾကပါ။ လူအခ်င္းခ်င္း အမုန္းတရားကုိ မ်က္ကြယ္ျပဳျပီး ခ်စ္ခင္စြာျပည္သူတရပ္လုံး အတူလက္တြဲ ခ်ီတက္ၾကပါစုိ႕။ 

ေဒၚခင္လွ

ကို၀ိုင္ေကေကသို႔ အြန္လိုင္းေပၚမွ အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာ..........
by မင္းမင္း လတ္

ခင္ရပါေသာ ကို၀ိုင္ေကေကခင္ဗ်ား။ ကို၀ိုင္ေကေကေရးေသာစာထဲတြင္

(ျမန္မာမြတ္စလင္ဟု သံုးဆြဲေစလိုေသာအစၥလမ္ဘာသာဝင္မ်ားကိုေမတၱာရပ္ခံလုိသည္မွာ... သင္တို႔သည္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားျဖစ္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာ့ေျမကို ကာကြယ္ရန္ ႏိုင္ငံသားတစ္ေယာက္၏တာဝန္ရွိပါသည္။) ဆိုေသာစာသားကို ျပန္လည္ေဆြးေႏြးျခင္ပါသည္။

ဘိုးေတာ္ဦး၀ိုင္းလက္ထက္ကတည္းက ရွိခဲ့ေသာ ျမန္မာမြတ္စလင္မ်ားသည္ အသက္ေပးရသည္အထိ တိုင္းျပည္ကို အသက္ေပးရင္း တာ၀န္ေက်ျပြန္ခဲ့သည့္ မွတ္တမ္းမွတ္ရာမ်ားမွ ဦးရာဇတ္ႏွင့္ ရဲေဘာ္ကိုေထြးတို႔ထိရွိသည္ကို ကို၀ိုင္ေကေက ဖတ္ဖူးပါသလားလို႔ က်ေနာ္သိျခင္ပါသည္။ အကယ္၍ အကိုမဖတ္ ဘူးရင္ က်ေနာ္ေပးဖတ္ျခင္လို႔ေမးတာပါ။ တဆက္ထဲ ေမးျခင္တာက ထုိကဲ့သို႔မွတ္တမ္းမ်ားတြင္ တရုတ္အမ်ဳိးသားတို႔ ပါ၀င္ျခင္းမပါ၀င္ျခင္းကို ျပန္လည္ ေျဖၾကား ေပးေစျခင္ပါသည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ တိုင္းက်ဳိးျပည္ျပဳလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာ၀င္မ်ား ပါ၀င္သည္ကိုေရာ ကို၀ိုင္၀ိုင္ေက အေနႏွင့္ ေလ့လာဘူးပါသလား။ မေလ့လာရေသးလွ်င္ ေလ့လာပါဦးလို႔ တိုက္တြန္းျခင္ပါသည္။

ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္က ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ(ဘဂၤလီ) ဟူေသာ အသုံးအႏႈံးကို ကို၀ိုင္၀ိုင္ေကေကအေနႏွင့္ ျပန္လည္ ေတာင္းပန္ရန္ က်ေနာ္ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္သည္။

အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ဆိုေသာ လူမ်ဳိးအေၾကာင္းကို မသိပဲႏွင့္ မကၽြမ္းက်င္ပဲႏွင့္ေရးသားထားသည္မွာ သိသာထင္ရွားပါသည္။

Source : Internal

Source : KPN 

YANGON (Reuters) - Four people were killed when hundreds of Rohingya Muslims rioted in a Buddhist community in Myanmar on Friday, a government official said, as communal tensions boil over in troubled Rakhine state.

A curfew was imposed in the state's Muangdaw township after Rohingyas, who are mostly stateless Muslims of South Asian descent and subjected to tight restrictions by the authorities, went on the rampage following Friday prayers at a mosque.

They hurled rocks and torched houses and buildings, witnesses told Reuters by telephone.

Hmu Zaw, a senior official in President Thein Sein's office, said on his Facebook page four Buddhists, among them a doctor and an elderly man, had died of multiple knife wounds. A Muangdaw hospital official said one was killed and four wounded.

The escalating unrest in Rakhine state, in the west, presents a major challenge to Thein Sein's reformist government, which replaced a military junta last year and says it wants to forge national unity among all ethnicities and religions in Myanmar, one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries.

However, unless it spirals out of control, it is unlikely to deter Western governments who are keen push reforms and improve ties with the country long isolated by international sanctions.

A Rohingya politician and an activist, citing local sources, said the riots erupted after security forces had opened fire on Rohingyas and several of them were killed.

The accounts provided by sources contacted by Reuters could not be immediately verified.

State MRTV made no mention of the unrest in its night-time news bulletin but reported a curfew had been imposed in Maungdaw and Buthidaung in Rakhine state. Both are dominated by Rohingyas.

The riots came five days after 10 Muslims, who were not Rohingyas, were killed by Buddhist vigilantes who intercepted the bus they were travelling on in Rakhine's Taunggoke town, an incident that angered Muslims and led to a rare protest in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon.

The attack followed the distribution of leaflets in Rakhine calling for retribution for the gang rape and killing of a young Buddhist woman several days earlier.

Resentment of Rohingyas runs deep among Myanmar's predominantly Buddhist, ethnic Burman majority. The government and many Burmese refuse to recognise them as "Rohingyas" - how they are known outside Myanmar - instead referring to them as "Bengalis".

MRTV reported three men had gone on trial for the rape and murder of the woman on Friday, referring to them as Bengalis.

SITUATION "CRITICAL"

The U.N. refugee agency estimates members of the minority group number some 800,000 in three districts of Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.

Most Rohingyas are stateless, recognised by neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh, and thousands flee each year on small boats, to work illegally in Thailand and Malaysia.

Abu Tahay, chairman of the National Democratic Party for Development, a Rohingya political party, said Buddhists hurled stones at the mosque in Muangdaw and five Rohingyas were shot dead after an argument with security forces. The details could not be independently confirmed.

He said nearby Buthidaung was braced for trouble. "The situation is now very critical and unstable," he said by phone from Yangon. "Violence hasn't started yet, but it might soon."

What has triggered the unrest in Rakhine state remains a mystery and prior to Friday's riots, some prominent Burmese, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had suggested the violence could have been instigated intentionally, but have not said why, or by whom.

The government on Thursday announced it had appointed a minister and police chief to head an investigation into the "organised lawless and anarchic acts" in Rakhine state.

It took the unusual step of announcing the probe on the front pages of official newspapers on Thursday and quickly removed from news websites references to Muslims as "kalar", a derogatory term for Muslims of South Asian descent in Myanmar.

Prominent Muslims distanced themselves from Friday's unrest.

"We're talking, to work together with the authorities and our national brethren to control the situation," said Soe Myint, a Muslim elder in Yangon, referring to the escalating tensions.

"We're worried that what these Bengalis are doing will make our brethren misunderstand us."

In fiery comments, prominent activist and former political prisoner Ko Ko Gyi blamed the conflict on Rohingyas and said the violence was not being fuelled by religion.

"Rohingyas are not a Myanmar ethnic race," he told reporters. "It has become a national concern infringing on our sovereignty."

(Writing by Martin Petty in Bangkok; Editing by Alison Williams)

 

Sources:

But the Burmese Muslim Association said most of those killed were Muslims visiting a mosque from central Burma.

That account was corroborated by unnamed residents quoted by Reuters news agency, who said those killed were not from the area.

No arrests have been made. A police investigation is under way.

In another, apparently unrelated incident at least 10 people were injured after police fired rubber bullets at a mob who attacked their police station in Sittwe, reports said.

A 13-year-old protester was among those injured, witnesses said.

There were contradictory reports about what triggered the protest, but some accounts suggested anti-Muslim sentiment could have played a part.

Rakhine is home to Burma's largest concentration of Muslims, including much-persecuted Rohingya Muslims, and their presence is often deeply resented by the majority Buddhist population.

In a joint statement quoted by Reuters, eight Rohingya rights groups based outside Burma condemned the attack on the Muslims on the bus, whom they termed "Muslim pilgrims".

Although it appears those on the bus were not Rohingyas, the groups said the attack followed months of anti-Rohingya propaganda stirred up by "extremists and xenophobes".

Source here