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Arakan Rohingya Union Director General Appeals to President Thein Sein for Full Enforcement of the State of Emergency in Arakan


"The segment of the Rohingya issue in this report starts at 41th minute"


Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin has urgently called on the Burmese President U Thein Sein to ensure that the imposition of state of emergency law is implemented in Arakan State to the fullest of its letter and spirit. During the interview on BBC World Service in London, Dr. Wakar Uddin has appealed to President U Thein Sein not to allow the local police and Lon Htein forces in Northern Rakhine State operate above the law, but to show full regards to the law by those forces.

 Dr. Uddin was referring to the daily looting of Rohingya shops and houses by Rakhine mobs under the cover from the police and Lon Htein forces in broad daylight. Additionally, he expressed his serious concerns on police shootings and killings of Rohingya civilians, and the partiality in enforcement of the state of emergency law. He was referring to the movement of Rakhine mobs on the street during the curfew at night and Rohingya civilians getting fired upon when anyone tries to peak out from their property looking for food and water even during the daylight. When the BBC moderator asked Dr. Uddin whether he was sure about the police shooting and guarding of Rakhine property and the Rakhine mob, he offered documentation (photographs) as the evidence in addition to the reliable reports. He has also indicated that the ethnic cleansing to eliminate the indigenous Rohingya population of Arakan has been systematically turned into religious violence by Rakhine extremist elements (to seek broader supports from their fellow Buddhist elsewhere in the country). 

In response to the question of whether the newly emerging democratic reforms is being threatened by the violence and the military rule in Arakan, he responded that there is a real risk of return of the military administration in other areas in Burma. "This is because the government may have to impose such conditions in other parts of the country, if the violence spills over to other cities in Burma beyond Arakan. So, there is a risk" he added.


GOLAR PARA, Bangladesh (Reuters) - At first, the boat bobbing in the water in the middle of the night appeared to be empty. But when Bangladeshi villagers took a closer look, they found a baby too weak to cry, a refugee from marauding mobs in Myanmar apparently abandoned by her family.

The cleft-lipped infant, just weeks old, is among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who fled this month's sectarian violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, packing themselves into rough wooden boats and heading for the shores of neighboring Bangladesh.

No one knows how many made it ashore. Bangladesh has ordered its border guards to push the boats back, determined that - with at least quarter of a million "illegal migrants" already here - there must be no more.

The baby, named Fatima by the family that has taken her in, is out of the danger that she and her family faced in Myanmar, but she joins a throng of stateless people in southeast Bangladesh who - for the most part - lead desperate lives of squalor, deprivation and discrimination.

Among them is Mohammad Kamal, a young religious leader from Rakhine's Maungdaw district, where ferocious violence erupted on June 9 between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and spread across the state. He escaped to Bangladesh in 2006 after his brother and others were jailed in a crackdown on Muslim clerics.

Kamal, now 28, settled in a makeshift "unregistered" camp, where - along with some 20,000 others - he is not recognized as a refugee and where even international aid agencies have to work under the radar because Bangladesh has not granted them legal status.

"I went out for a walk one day last year and was arrested because I had no documents," said Kamal, pulling up a trouser leg to show a line of angry sores that broke out during the following nine months he spent in jail.

Behind him, naked children play in a muddy pool and the rickety dwellings of an overcrowded shanty town - his camp - rise up, lashed by monsoon rains.

In 2010, the authorities forcibly evicted thousands from a makeshift camp. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres recounted at the time that some Rohingyas had been thrown into the Naf River and told to swim the 3 km (2 miles) back to Myanmar, and the organization said it had treated many for beatings, machete wounds and even rape.

"A DESPERATE LIFE"

Craig Sanders, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' representative in Dhaka, said that although Bangladesh has disowned the Rohingyas - dubbing them illegal economic migrants - it has shown "tremendous generosity over many years"

Rohingyas first came in large numbers to the South Asian nation in 1973, and over the years gained a reputation for drug-smuggling, gun-running and human trafficking.

A sudden flood of more than quarter of a million arrived in 1991-92 after a spasm of repression by the security forces in military-ruled Myanmar. Those that remain from that wave, now numbering some 30,000, live in two official camps where the U.N. provides everything from shelter and water supply to healthcare and schooling.

But at least 200,000 others - probably many more - have settled on the Bangladesh side of the 200-km (125-mile) border, mingling with the population where they struggle to find employment or squeezing into unofficial camps.

It is these "unregistered" Rohingyas who are most vulnerable.

"It's an extremely desperate life for these people," said one worker for a humanitarian group that provides assistance illegally at one camp, asking not to be named. "They have been here for such a long time and there is no prospect of change."

UNHCR's Sanders has crossed swords with the government in recent days over its decision to turn back the boatloads of traumatized Rohingyas.

"Bangladesh, one more time, is being urged to step forward to deal with a situation that is not of their making," he said. "We are not trying to push them into a corner on this issue, but there is a question of fair and right treatment here."

BANGLADESH SAYS "NO MORE"
 
Sources Here



KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (ABIM) has raised concerns over Bangladesh closing its borders to the Muslim minority Rohingyas fleeing ethnic violence in Myanmar.

ABIM secretary-general Mohamad Raimi Ab Rahim said the Rohingyas should be given protection in line with Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights on equal rights for all and Article 33(1) of the 1951 Convention on the status of refugees.

"A memorandum of protest will be sent to the Bangladesh High Commissioner to urge the government to open its borders and provide them protection," he said at the ABIM office, here Friday.

Ethnic Rohingyas and Rakhines in the western state of Rakhine, Myanmar have been experiencing ongoing conflicts. Another spate of violence against the Rohingya community reportedly erupted several days ago.

The Rohingya Ulama Council president Jaber Mohd Subahan, who was present at the press conference, alleged that on June 8 the Buddhist, Rakhine community supported by the police and army attacked the minority Rohingyas in Maungdaw and Sittwe towns.

Jaber appealed to the United Nations, European Union and Asean to urgently deal with the ethnic conflict and violence.

-- BERNAMA
လႊတ္ေတာ္အစည္းအေ၀းမ်ား ကို လာမည့္ဇူလိုင္ ၄ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျပန္လည္က်င္းပရန္ ေခၚယူလိုက္ သည္။ ပထမအႀကိမ္ ျပည္ေထာင္ စုလႊတ္ေတာ္၏ စတုတၳပံုမွန္ အစည္းအေ၀းကို ဇူလိုင္ ၄ ရက္ ေန႔ ေန႔လယ္ ၁ နာရီ ေခၚယူ ထားၿပီး ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသားလႊတ္ေတာ္အစည္းအေ၀း မ်ားကို မနက္ ၁၀ နာရီ အသီးသီး က်င္းပမည့္အေၾကာင္း လႊတ္ ေတာ္အႀကီးအကဲေတြက ဇြန္ ၁၂ ရက္ေန႔ ရက္စြဲႏွင့္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾက ညာလိုက္သည္။
ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ႏွင့္ အမ်ဳိးသားလႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စား လွယ္မ်ားအေနႏွင့္ လိုအပ္ေသာ ျပင္ဆင္ မႈမ်ားကို ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ရန္ ဇူလိုင္လ ၂ ရက္ထက္ မေစာ၊ ၃ ရက္ေန႔ထက္ ေနာက္မ က်ဘဲ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ လႊတ္ေတာ္႐ံုးကို ဆက္သြယ္ၾကရန္ကိုလည္း အသိ ေပးထား သည္။ ယခုက်င္းပမည့္ လႊတ္ေတာ္အစည္း အေ၀းမွာ လက္ရွိတိုင္းျပည္၏ ျဖစ္ေပၚ ေနေသာ ကိစၥမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ေဆြးေႏြး မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရပါ သည္။
ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ စီးပြား ေရးႏွင့္ ကုန္သြယ္မႈလုပ္ငန္း ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳး တိုးတက္ေရး ေကာ္မတီ အတြင္း ေရးမွဴး ဦးခင္ေမာင္ဦးမွ ““ပညာ ေရးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး တိုးတက္ ေအာင္ေပါ့။ ဒါေတြ စီစဥ္ထား တယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခုက စြမ္းအင္၊ လွ်ပ္စစ္ကိစၥေတြေပါ့။ ဒါေတြက လည္း တကယ္အာမခံႏိုင္တဲ့ အဆင့္အတန္းရွိမွ။ ေနာက္တစ္ခု ကလည္း အလုပ္သမားကိစၥေပါ့။ အားလံုးလည္း ဒါစိတ္၀င္စား စရာ ျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ လုပ္ၾကပါလိမ့္ မယ္။ အဲ့ဒီအခ်က္ေတြကလည္း သိုင္း၀ိုင္းၿပီး လုပ္ၾကရမွာပါပဲ။ ဗဟို မွာ ေပါင္း ၿပီးေတာ့ ေကာ္မတီ အေနနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးမွာပါ။ ပါတီမွာ လည္း ေဆြးေႏြးမွာပါ။ ပါတီမွာ လည္း ရွိၿပီးသားပါ””ဟု ဆိုသည္။
သကၤန္းကၽြန္းၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ဦးသိန္းၫႊန္႔က ““အခုေပၚေပါက္ ေနတဲ့ အေျခအေနတခ်ဳိ႕နဲ႔ ဆက္ စပ္တဲ့ ေမးခြန္းေတြ အဆိုေတြ တခ်ဳိ႕ေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္လည္း ေပးပို႔ထားပါတယ္။ အေသးစိတ္ ေတာ့ လႊတ္ေတာ္ဥပေဒအရ ကၽြန္ေတာ္အခုခ်ိန္မွာ ေဖာ္ျပခြင့္ မရွိဘူး။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေျပာလို႔ရတဲ့ အခ်က္ကေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္လည္း လႊတ္ေတာ္အစည္းအေ၀းက တစ္ႀကိမ္ၿပီးတစ္ႀကိမ္၊ ေနာက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ခိုင္မာမႈေပါ့၊ အား ေကာင္းမႈေပါ့။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ႏိုင္ငံေရး ရဲ႔ ျမင့္မားလာမႈေတြကေတာ့ တစ္ ႀကိမ္ၿပီးတစ္ႀကိမ္ တိုးတက္လာ တယ္။ အားရစရာ ေကာင္းတယ္ လို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေျပာပါရေစ””ဟု ဆို ပါသည္။
ယင္းလႊတ္ေတာ္အစည္းအေ၀း မွာပဲ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွ ေရြးခ်ယ္တင္ေျမႇာက္ခံခဲ့ရေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ မွ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စား လွယ္ေတြ အားလံုးလည္း လႊတ္ ေတာ္အစည္းအေ၀းတက္ေရာက္ဖို႔ ရွိေနတယ္ဟု အန္အယ္လ္ဒီရဲ႕ ေျပာေရးဆိုခြင့္ရွိသူ ဦးၪာဏ္၀င္း က ေျပာပါသည္။
ၿပီးခဲ့ေသာ လႊတ္ေတာ္ အစည္းအေ၀းတုန္းက က်မ္းသစၥာ က်ိန္ဆိုဖို႔ က်န္ေနေသးတဲ့ ကိုယ္စား လွယ္ေတြလည္း က်ိန္ဆို ၾကမယ္လို႔ လွည္းကူးၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ျပည္သူ႔ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စား လွယ္ ဦးၿဖိဳးမင္း သိန္း က ဆိုပါ သည္။
““၄ ရက္ေန႔ လႊတ္ေတာ္က ၂ ရက္ေန႔ သတင္းပို႔ရမယ္။ ၄ ရက္ေန႔ကို လႊတ္ေတာ္တက္ရမယ္ဆို ၿပီး ထုတ္ျပန္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါ တယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္တက္မွာပါ။ ပထမဆံုးအႀကိမ္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ တက္မွာျဖစ္တယ္။ က်မ္းသစၥာ က်ိန္ဆိုဖို႔လည္း အခုမွ လုပ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီတစ္ႀကိမ္မွသာ လႊတ္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ အေျခအေနေတြ၊ လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ လုပ္ထံုးလုပ္နည္းေတြကို ေသေသ ခ်ာခ်ာ ေလ့လာၿပီးမွ ဘာေတြ တင္ျပမယ္။ ဘာေတြေဆာင္ရြက္ မယ္ဆိုတာကို ျပင္ဆင္မွာပါ””ဟု ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။
Mizzima


နိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္း အေနနဲ႕ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံက လူမ်ိဳးေရး ပဋိပကၡေတြ ခ်ဳပ္ျငိမ္း သြားေအာင္ အာရံုစိုက္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းႀကဖို႕ လိုအပ္ေႀကာင္း ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွ နုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ၀န္ႀကီး Dipu Moni က ဒီကေန႕ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွ ပါလီမန္ အစည္းအေ၀းမွာ ေျပာလိုက္ပါတယ္။

နုိင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းက ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံက ထြက္ေျပးလာႀကတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကို လက္ခံေပးဖို႕ ဖိအားေပးေနတဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွအစိုုးရရဲ႕ သေဘာထားကို ပါလီမန္ အစည္းအေ၀းကေန တ ဆင့္ ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။

လက္ရိွ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံက ပဋိပကၡေတြကို ေျဖရွင္းလိုတယ္ဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံတြင္းက ပဋိပက ၡေတြ ကို  ေျဖရွင္းေပးဖို႕ ျမန္မာ  အစိုးရကိုသာ ေတာင္းဆိုသင့္ေႀကာင္း ကုလသမဂၢ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာ မဟာ မင္း ႀကီးရံုး UNHCR အပါအ၀င္ နုိင္ငံတကာ တိုင္းျပည္ေတြကို ေျပာလိုက္တာပါ။

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွ နုိင္ငံဟာ သူတို႔ လက္ခံထားျပီး ျဖစ္တဲ့ လက္ရိွရိွေနျပီးသား ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ေလးသိန္းနဲ႕တင္ အေတာ္ ၀န္ပိေနတာ ျဖစ္ျပီး ေနာက္ထပ္ လက္ခံဖို႔ဆိုတာ မျဖစ္နုိင္ေတာ့ေႀကာင္းလည္း ေျပာပါတယ္။

UNHCR နဲ႕ နုိင္ငံတကာက ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွ အစိုးရ အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံက ေနာက္ထပ္ ထြက္ေျပးလာသူ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကို လက္ခံေပးဖို႔ ေတာင္းဆိုေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရ္ွ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ေတြ အေနနဲ႔လည္း ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံဖက္က ထြက္ေျပးလာတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ ဂ်ာေတြကို ျပန္ပို႔ေနတယ္ ဆိုေပမယ့္ အစာေရစာ ေဆး၀ါး စတာေတြကို အကူ အညီေပးျပီး မွ ျပန္ပို႕တာ ျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းလည္း နုိင္ငံျခားေရး ၀န္ႀကီးက ေျပာလိုက္ပါတယ္။
RFA Burmese
ယေန႔ ဇြန္လ ၁၆ ရက္ေန႔ နံနက္ ၂း၁၅ အခ်ိန္တြင္ ကုကၠိဳင္းလမ္းဆံု အနီး ပုလဲကြန္ဒိုမ်က္ေစာင္းထိုး ကမၻာေအး ဘုရားလမး္ေပၚ ရွိ အစၥလာမ္ ဘာသာ၀င္ ပလီ အေရွ႕တြင္ ကားတစ္စီး ျဖင့္ တိုက္ခိုက္ေရးတြင္ အထူးေလ့က်င့္ထား သည္ဟုယူဆရေသာ

အရြယ္တူသန္မာ ျဖတ္လတ္ေသာ သူ လူ ၅၀ ခန္႔အား ခ်ျပီး အခ်ိန္ကိုက္ျပန္လာေခၚသြားေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါ သည္။ အဆိုပါ အၾကမး္ဖက္ သမားမ်ား သည္ ပလီ၏ ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ႏွင့္ မ်က္ႏွာစာ အုတ္နံရံ အခ်ိဳ႕ အားဖ်က္စီးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း

ပလီပတ္၀န္းက်င္ရွိ ေရွးေဟာင္းပစၥည္းေရာင္းေသာ ဆိုင္တစ္ဆိုင္ အပါအ၀င္ ဆိုင္ ၃ ဆိုင္အား ၀င္ေရာက္ ဖ်က္ စီးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိပါသည္။
 
''အဲဒီလာဖ်က္စီးတဲ့သူေတြက သာမာန္ အရပ္သားေတြနဲ႕ မတူဘူး အေတာ္ေလးကို စနစ္တ က် ေလ့က်င့္ထားတဲ့သူေတြနဲ႕တူတယ္ အမိန္႔တစ္ခုေအာက္မွာ ၀ုန္းကနဲ႕ေရာက္လာျပီး ဖ်က္ၾကတယ္ျ   ပီးေတာ့ ခ်က္ျ ခင္း အခ်ိန္ကိုက္လာေခၚတဲ့ကားေပၚကိုတက္ေျပးသြားၾကတယ္ဟု အရပ္အေမာင္းေတြ က ေကာင္း တယ္ တညီတည္းပဲ ေတာ္ေတာ္စနစ္တက် လာဖ်က္သြားတာ'' ဟု ပလီပတ္၀န္း က်င္တြင္ေနထုိင္သူ မ်က္ျမင္သက္ေသမ်ားမွ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါသည္။
 
အခင္းျဖစ္ပြားခ်ိန္အျပီး ျမိဳ႔နယ္ရဲမူးက ေဒသခံျပည္သူ အနည္းငယ္ကို အမူမဖြင့္ပါနဲ႔ မီဒီယာကို မေခၚပါ နဲ႕ဟုေျပာသြားေၾကာင္းသိရွိရပါသည္။
အဆိုပါ အခင္းျဖစ္ပြား ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး အတြင္းပါ၀င္ခဲ့ေသာ ဆရာေတာ္တခ်ိဳ႕က ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ႕အား ပုဒ္မ ၁၄၄ ထုတ္ေစခ်င္သျဖင့္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ျပဳလုပ္ျခင္းျဖစ္ဟန္တူသည္ဟု ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရွိ ရပါ သည္။
ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္ခမ္းမ တြင္ ရန္ကုန္တိုင္း ၀န္ၾကီးႏွင့္ လံုထိမ္းအဖြဲ႕ အပါ အ၀င္ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာေရးအဖြဲ႕ ၾကီး ၅ ဖြဲ႕မွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား မွ ၂၄ နာရီ အေျခအေနအား ေစာင့္ၾကည့္လ်က္ရွိေသာ္လည္း အဆိုပါ ဖ်က္စီး ခံရမူႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ျပီး ယခုအခ်ိန္အထိ တစ္စံုတစ္ရာ အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္းမ်ား မေတြ႔ ရေသးေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။






Breaking News : June 16 evening Security personnel start arresting Rohingya in Maungdaw
Security personnel – Police, Hluntin and Nasaka – start arresting Rohingya community in Maungdaw today (June 16, 2012). The police and Hluntin are still using Rakhine when they went to the Rohingya villages in Maungdaw.

Arrested person are:-
  1.  Younous , Chairman of Regional Development Association (RDA) with two other , name not know yet from Maungdaw Town.
  2. Kaseim son of Rahim Ullah,  Berahaman son of Hussein, Molana Islam, Anis Ullah son of Molana Rashid, Ahmed Rafique son of Syed Islam,  one from Ward number 4  and another one is from Padaung , arrested by Nasaka  and Police while they are fishing in the stream near the Sawmawna para as they have no foods to feed their family.
  3. Dildar son of Ano Meah, Salim Islam son of Abdul Goni, Nurul Islam, Nur Mohamed son of Amin Ullah were arrested by Nasaka from Thayai Gonetan ( Knonena para) village
  4. Jamil son of Musawddin  and Mohamed Ali from Maungdaw Town
Burned down house and looting
The Security personnel burned down the following houses in Thayai Gonetan ( Knonena para) village today. The security personnel had loot their ( Rohingya) property before burned down.
  1. Yousuf son of Hasson, Mohamed son of Habib Ullah, Abul Hussein son of Hasson, Master Fazal, Ferose son of  Yousuf, Shamshu son of Kaseim, Anwer son of Abu Taher and  Salim Ullah son of Abdul Goni.
  2. New Settlers (Natala) and Rakhines together toke away cow from grassing field of Sammawna para, Myothu Gyi  and Nyaung Chaung villages.
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Breaking News: Friday evening ( June 15, 2012) Stranded Rohingya boats in Naf River disappeared

Stranded Rohingya 15 boats in Naf River are disappearing with more than 2000 Rohingyas since early morning today who fleeing to Bangladesh because of violence by police, Hluntin and Rakhines.

The Rohingya who were drifting in the Naf River as the authority of Bangladesh didn’t allow to enter its land, hit heavy rain and windy since Wednesday night.

The stranded Rohingya boats are not seen in the Naf River today evening and no body know where the boat gone, according to local from Shapuri Dip.

People believe that those boats are missing in the heavy rain and windy with 35 fishing boats in the sea. The Bangladesh –Baurma border areas are under water for heavy rain and windy which started since Wednesday night.

Rape

4 Burma border security force (Nasaka) personnel from three mile check post raped a Rohingya woman – Kala Banu (not real name), (30) from Sammawna para near Myothu Gyi village today evening where the Nasaka personnel took all her goods. In this village, no men are living in the village only female are staying in their home to protect from looting. But, noe the Nasaka are going to rape the female as there are no men in the village.

KNP
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Some of Rohingya refugees land on Bangladesh soil

Teknaf, Bangladesh: Some of Rohingya refugees entered the Bangladesh without knowledge of Bangladesh authorities who have been floating since last Monday after fleeing from Akyab (Sittwe) of Burma.

More than 2,000 Rohingya refugees carrying by 13 boats and have been floating in the Naff River where to take refuge in Bangladesh to escape sectarian riots. Rohingyas are fleeing to Bangladesh from Akyab because of violence in Arakan State where Rohingya villages were burnt down and many innocent Rohingyas were killed by police, Hluntin and Rakhines.

According to Nazim Uddin, upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO), some Burmese nationals (Rohingyas) had secretly entered into the territory of Bangladesh escaping strict vigilance.”

According to different sources, 39 victims of Rohingyas including women and children entered the Saint-Martin Island on June 12 and more than 200 entered into Shapuri Dip yesterday night.

Among them, some Rohingya refugees have been suffering from crisis of rations. There are some wounded persons and taking shelter in the local areas where they have been facing many difficulties.

A local source said on condition of anonymity that five Rohingya young girls have been missing from the groups who reached at Shapuri Dip yesterday night. They were kidnapped by a group of local youths and some local youths also tried to attempt to sexual assault to the women including girls. Some other Rohingya refugees are floating in the Naff River in the bad weather.

The local also said, most of the children are now suffering from diarrhea, phenomena, fever and cough who reached at the Bangladesh soil. It is very important to provide proper treatment and adequate food immediately by International Community and Bangladesh authorities because of heavy rain in the border.

According to an aide of BGB, despite several light signals the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB men), who were out there to prevent Rohingya influx, could see no human movement or hails in the boat. It was quite difficult for them to get close to the boat as it was moving irregularly. When they managed to get close they found no one in the trawler.

He also said that he was surprised, as one of the BGB men went for a look in the dark engine room, he suddenly noticed movement of tiny hands and legs.

“It was a newborn baby,” Maj Saiful Wadud, the operation officer of BGB said that they had a tough time getting on to the unsteady boat and brought the baby out. It took them two and a half hours to execute the rescue.

Maj Saiful said, the baby was in a terrible condition and did not have the strength to even cry. The Major also said they had already informed the higher authorities of the matter and necessary steps would be taken.

BGB suspects that the trawler, in which the baby was, might have been attacked by robbers and the passengers abandoned the boat leaving the newborn behind.

BGB and locals provided the refugees with food, water and saline yesterday as the intruders had to be kept waiting in Bangladesh due to bad weather. They were finally escorted out of the territory around 5:00pm.

A Rohingya in tears pleads with BGB and Coast Guard personnel to be let ashore with his family on the Naf River near Teknaf yesterday. The border guards gave them water, food and fuel and sent them on their way back home from which they had run away, according to Daily Star.

On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said at a news conference in Dhaka that it was “not in our best interest that new refugees come from Myanmar”.

Similarly, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called on the Bangladesh government on Tuesday to let the Myanmar refugees enter the country who are fleeing sectarian violence in their country.

KNP
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12-Rakhine with arms arrested in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Twelve Rakhines with arms were arrested by army yesterday midnight while climbing up to Pruma river bank nearby Khain Paran (Rakhine) village from a small boat, said a village elder from the locality.

Yesterday, at 12:00 pm (midnight) 12-Rakhine with eight automatic rifles and eight long swords were arrested by patrol (army) at Ngakura village of Maungdaw north while climbing up from the Puma river bank from a small row boat,. They went to Khain Paran Para (Rakhine village) of Maungdaw from Myitna (Chowdary para), a Rkhine village of Nilla under the Teknaf police station, Cox’s Bazar district.

They are ex-armed members of Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) of Abakan, which recently made ceasefire agreement with Burmese government in Akyab (Sitwee), the capital of Arakan State, said another villager.

They pretended to be Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) of Nagkura Nasaka camp, but when the army confirmed whether they were Nasaka or not by contacting with the Nasaka camp, the Nasaka officer asked the patrol army, they were not Nasaka of the camp and then they were arrested by the patrol army.

On June 13, in the early morning, the arrested Rakhines carders were sent to Nasaka headquarters of Kawar Bill (Kyi Gan Pyin) of Maundaw Township, said a villager who saw the event.

But, after the incident broken out between Rohingyas and Rakhine at Maungdaw, inside and outside of Burmese with Rakhine people inside and outside of Arakan State told in printing and electronic media that the armed carders of Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) entered north Arakan from Bangladesh which was given reference to a Facebook of Burma President office director and saying attacked the Rakhine villagers, killing Rakhines.

In reality, a group of Rakhines with the help of police and Hluntin attack the Rohingya villagers in Maungdaw and Sittwe (Akyab) by setting on fire of Rohingya houses, killing villagers, looting properties of Rohingya community. But, this incident is doctored that Rohingyas are killing Rakhine people, set on fire of Rakhine villages. Most of the media in Burma propagate that Rohingyas attacked Rakhine villagers, according to Rohingyas inside Arakan.

Some of the Rakhine ultra-nationalist group leaders are Hla Myint, Ni Maung Shwe, son of U Ni Maung, hailed from Ward No. 3, Maung Aye, son of U Aung Tun Sein of Ward No. 1, Than Kay, hailed from Ward No. 4, Kyaw Aye, Ward No.3, Paung Mee, the owner of the united rest house and Khin Maung, Ward No. 3 of Maungdaw town. They have been looting goods, killing many Rohingyas, therefore it is not a riot, but it is premeditated genocide against the Rohingyas, said a trader from Maungdaw.

“We have never heard of this kind of state emergency which is means only for one party, the other party is free whatever they want to do, they can. If the government has a political will, it can be controlled with an hour by sending army, said a politician inside Arakan.

Instead of neutral role of army, Rakhines are protected, the security of Rohingyas are kept at the mercy of police, Hluntin and Rakhine. This means to kill incentive to the Rakhines. It is to be noted that the emergency declared on Sunday is strictly enforced to the Rohingyas only, not to the other community (Rakhines).

The dead bodies of Akyab were sent to unknown places and took photographs after covering the dead bodies with robes of monks to dupe the people across the world, that Rohingyas killed the Buddhist monks, a villager from Akyab said.

KNP.
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Breaking News : June 14 evening

10-Rohingya girls raped today in Maungdaw

Ms. Hamida (18), daughter of Rahim Ullah, Rahena (19), daughter of Ms. Momina and other six Rohingya girls from Baggona village and Hasina (18), daughter of Abdul Haque, Hamida (16), daughter of Baser and Nur Kaida (17), daughter of Habi Rahaman from Nurullah para were raped by army today.

In addition, army also looted properties of Rohingya villagers especially money, gold and silver from the villagers.

On the other side, army forced Rohingya villagers in Maungdaw south, with a marketing list which cost around 50,000kyat. The army threatened to kill the villagers, if not follow the ordered.

One Natala villager named Saw Maung (Rakhine) guided the operation against the Rohingyas at Nurullah Para.

Rohingya dead bodies’ bags seen in Maungdaw

12 bags of Rohingya’s dead bodies were seen under the bridge which connects ward number 5 and ward number 3 in Maungdaw. The legs of dead bodies are seen on the water. When the Rohingya from Ward number 5 tried to take out from the water, but, police arrived at the spot and surround. No one was allowed to go to the spot.

Robbery committed by army in Maungdaw

Army robbed the Rohingya villagers – Shamsu (40), Md. Johar (35), Foruk Ahmed (40) and Ismail (80) of Baggona under the Maungdaw Township today at about 2:00 pm, where Md. Johar was tortured seriously.

Army looted money and gold from the said villagers.

KNP.
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Breaking News : The latest News in June 14

Maungdaw, Arakan State: : A Rohingya religious student –Mammon Rashid ,son of Abu Siddque- 18, was shot by army while running away to the religious school when he saw the army and he was wounded at his leg.

Army arrested 12 armed Rakhines -ex members of Arakan Liberation Party (ALP)- with 8 automatic Rifles and 8 long swords yesterday mid night at Ngakura village of Maungdaw northern while they were climbing towards the bank of Purma river near by Khine pin (Rakhine ) village. They went there by a rowing boat from Chowdary ( Mritna Yawa) para under Teknaf Upazila, Bangladesh . After arrest, they were sent to Burma border security force (Nasaka) Headquarters today morning.

Rarkhine killed about 700 men, women and children and burned down the whole village of Zofran, Ahhnawkpin, Tharakpin, Pinchaung, Kwedi Chaung, Thaoopin, Moezindeya and Nirambawkara villages of Rathidaung Township last night. Most of the people fled to Bawsara village of Rathidaung after crossing the mountain pass today early in the morning. But, they were pushed back to their original village by a group of Nasaka . But, their faith is unknown.

KNP
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 ေမာင္ေတာ(ကုလားတန္) ။ ။ ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕၊ ႏုရ္ရုလ္လာ ရြာတြင္ စစ္တပ္ကုိျမင္၍ ဘာသာေရး ေက်ာင္း ဘက္သုိ႕ လွန္႕ေျပးေနေသာ အသက္ ၁၈ အရြယ္ ေက်ာင္းသားတဦး ( မာမုန္ ေရာ္ရွိတ္ (ဘ) အဘူ ဆီဒိက္ ) အား ယေန႕ ေနလည္ အခ်ိန္တြင္ စစ္တပ္မွ ေသနတ္ျဖင့္ ပစ္သျဖင့္ ေျခေထာက္တြင္ ဒဏ္ရာ ရရွိ ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ေမာင္ေတာျမိဳ႕ခုိင္ျပင္ေက်းရြာ အနီး ျဖဴးမေခ်ာင္းမွ တက္လာေသာ ရခုိင္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးပါတီ အဖြဲ႕ ဝင္ေဟာင္း ၁၂ ဦးကုိ ေအာက္တုိမီတိခ္ ရုိင္းဖယ္ ၈ လက္ ႏွင့္ ဓါးရွည္ ၈ လက္တုိ႕ ႏွင့္အတူ စစ္တပ္မွ မေန႕ညတြင္ ဖမ္းဆီးမိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။၎တုိသည္ ဘဂၤါလာေဒရွ္ႏုိင္ငံ၊ တဲခ္နာဖ္ျမိဳ႕အပုိင္ ျမစ္နားရြာ ( ေခ်ာ္ဒါရီ ဖါရာ) မွ ေလွတစီးျဖင့္ ေမာင္ေတာသုိ႕ဝင္လာစဥ္ ဖမ္းဆီးေၾကာင္းျဖစ္သည္။၎တုိ႕ ၁၂ ဦးအား စစ္တပ္မွ နစက ဌာနခ်ဳပ္သုိ႕ ယေန႕ နံနက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ေပးပုိ႕ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ရေသ့ေတာင္ျမိဳ႕နယ္ ဇူးျပင္၊ အေနာက္ျပင္၊ သရက္ျပင္၊ ျပိဳင္ေခ်ာင္း၊ သအုိးျပင္၊မုိဇင္ဒီယာ ႏွင့္ နီရာမ္ေဘာ္ ခါရာ ေက်းရြာမ်ားကုိ မေန႕ညအခ်ိန္တြင္ ရခုိင္မ်ားမွ ရြာလုံးကၽြတ္ မီးရွဴး တုိက္္ ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ႏွင့္လူၾကီး ႏွင့္ ခေလး စုစုေပါင္း ၇၀၀ ကုိ သတ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။ က်န္ရြာသားမ်ားသည္ ေတာင္ၾကားလမ္း မွ ေက်ာ္ျပီး ေဘာ္ေဆာ္ရာေက်းရြာသုိ႕ ယေန႕နံနက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ေရာက္ရွိခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း နစက မွ ႏွင္ထုတ္သျဖင့္ ၎တုိကမွ ၄င္းရြာမွ ေတာင္ၾကားဘက္သုိ႕ သြားေသာ္လည္း မည့္သည္ေန ရာသုိ႔ေရာက္သြားသည့္ကုိ မသိရေၾကာင္း၊ ၎တုိ႕၏ ကံၾကမၼာမည့္သုိ႕ျဖစ္မည္ကုိ မသိရေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

KNP

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 ယေန႔ ေနာ္ေဝႏိုင္ငံ ေအာ္စလိုျမိဳ႕ကို ေရာက္ရွိလာတဲ့ ၁၉၉၁ ခုႏွစ္ ႏိုဘယ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ဆုရွင္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူလူထု ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား ႏို္ဘယ္ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရး ဆုေရြး ခ်ယ္ေရး ေကာ္ မတီ ဥကၠ႒ Thorbjoern Jagland (ညာဘက္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္)နဲ႔ ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ ဖြံျဖိဳးေရးအမ်ိဳးသမီး ဝန္ၾကီးတို႔မွ ေအာ္စလို ေလဆိပ္မွာ လာေရာက္ ၾကိဳဆိုၾကပါတယ္..။
 လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္  အစိုးရ ဧည့္ေဂဟာမွာ ေနာ္ေဝ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္Jens Stoltenbergနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုဖို႔ ေရာက္ရွိလာစဥ္..
AP, Reuters
နယူးေဒလီ (မဇၥ်ိမ) ။ ။ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း လတ္တေလာ ျဖစ္ပြားေနသည့္ အၾကမ္းဖက္ တိုက္ခိုက္ ဖ်က္ဆီးမႈ မ်ားေၾကာင့္ အိုးအိမ္မဲ့ ျဖစ္သြားရသည့္ ဒုကၡသည္ ေထာင္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြားအား ကုလသမဂၢမွ ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့ေပးသြား မည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

“အစိုးရ ညႊန္ျပတာကေတာ့ အစားအစာ၊ ေနစရာနဲ႔ ေဆးဝါးအကူအညီေတြ အေရးေပၚ လိုေနတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ UN နဲ႔ မိတ္ဖက္အဖြဲ႔ေတြအေနနဲ႔ ဝန္ထမ္းလံုျခံဳေရး အာမခံႏိုင္သေရြ႔ အကူအညီေပးဖို႔ အဆင္သင့္ပါပဲ” ဟု ကုလသမဂၢ ဌာေန ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ႏွင့္ လူသားခ်င္းေထာက္ထားသည့္ ကူညီမႈေပးေရးအရာရွိ Ashok Nigam က ေျပာသည္။

ဇြန္လအတြင္း ျဖစ္ပ်က္ခဲ့သည့္ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္ လူေပါင္း ၃၀ ခန္႔ ေသဆံုးခဲ့ရကာ အိုးအိမ္မဲ့ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္း ခိုလံႈသူမ်ားအျဖစ္ လူေပါင္း ၂၃,၀၀၀ ခန္႔မွာ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္း ၃၇ ခုတြင္ ခိုလံႈေနထိုင္ၾကရသည္ဟု အစိုးရ တရားဝင္ သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္မ်ားအရ သိရသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ အေျခအေနမွာ အကဲဆတ္လွဆဲ ျဖစ္၍ ဆံုးရံႈးမႈ စာရင္း အတိအက် ေကာက္ခံရရွိရန္မွာ ခက္ခဲေၾကာင္း အကူအညီေပးေရး အဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ဆိုသည္။

ဇြန္လ ၁၃ ႏွင့္ ၁၄ ရက္ေန႔မ်ားတြင္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ေတာၿမိဳ႕သို႔ Ashok Nigam ႏွင့္အတူ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့သည့္ ကုလ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္၏ အႀကံေပးအရာရွိ မစၥတာ ဗီေဂ်း နမ္ဘီးယားကလည္း “ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္း အေရးေပၚ လိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ အကူအညီေတြ ရရွိေစဖို႔အတြက္ UN အေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္းက ဝန္ထမ္းအဖြဲ႔တဖြဲ႔ကို လက္ရွိ ဝန္ထမ္းေတြနဲ႔ တြဲလုပ္ဖို႔ ျဖန္႔က်က္ေစလႊတ္လိုပါတယ္” ဟု ဇြန္လ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔က ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္သည္။

လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ရက္အတြင္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ ကုလသမဂၢမွ ဆန္အိတ္ေပါင္း ၄၀၀ ေက်ာ္ေထာက္ပံ့ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
Sources Here

CHIEF DEPUTY WHIP JOSEPH CROWLEY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15, 2012 courtney.gidner@mail.house.gov

Congressman Crowley on Violence in Burma’s Arakan State

(Queens, N.Y.) – Today, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), a leader in the House on Burma, released the following statement in response to increased violence in Burma’s Arakan State and the Government of Bangladesh’s refusal of refugees from the violence. Communal tensions, long simmering in Arakan State, have erupted this month into violence marked by the burning of homes, killings, and other physical attacks. Both Buddhists and Muslims have been the victims of this recent violence. Some Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority group that has long been persecuted in both Burma and Bangladesh, have fled the violence in Burma to seek safety in Bangladesh. The Government of Bangladesh has openly refused to offer sanctuary, even to the wounded, and has reportedly sent many individuals back to Burma.

“I strongly urge the Government of Bangladesh to adhere to its international obligations not to turn away those trying to escape attacks in Burma and allow those individuals to have access to essential services. I also urge the Government of Burma to protect human rights throughout the country, and respond to this outbreak of violence in a manner that respects the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. The attacks highlight the challenges facing Burma’s government; its country’s leaders should protect the rights of all ethnic minorities, promote dialogue among ethnic groups, and hold perpetrators of crimes accountable under a fair and transparent legal system. The government should follow the calls of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and firmly establish the rule of law in order to bring an end to strife.”

Congressman Crowley is the seven-term representative from the 7th Congressional District of New York, which includes sections of Queens and the Bronx. He is a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and serves as a Chief Deputy Whip in the House of Representatives.


Source here

ေနာ္ေဝးၿမိဳ႕ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပဲြအတြင္း ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ ေနာ္ေဝးဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ Jens Stoltenberg (ဂၽြန္လ ၁၅ ရက္၊ ၂၀၁၂။)

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး ရင္ဆုိင္ရမယ့္ အခက္အခဲေတြကို အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္ သင့္ျမတ္ေရး စိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႔ ညႇိႏႈိင္းျဖတ္ေက်ာ္သြားမယ္လုိ႔ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း စုၾကည္က မေန႔က ေနာ္ေ၀းႏုိင္ငံကို ေရာက္ေရာက္ခ်င္း ေနာ္ေ၀း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ Jens Stoltenberg နဲ႔ ပူးတြဲ က်င္းပတဲ့ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာ ေျပာဆိုသြားပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈေတြဟာ လမ္းဆုံးမွာ မေရာက္ေသးသလို ေျဖာင့္ေျဖာင့္ျဖဴးျဖဴး လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပၚမွာ ရွိခ်င္မွရွိလိမ့္အုံးမယ္လို႔လည္း သတိေပးေျပာဆုိပါတယ္။ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ အေၾကာင္း ကိုသိန္းထိုက္ဦးက ဆက္ၿပီး တင္ျပပါလိမ့္မယ္။

လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့အႏွစ္ ၂၀ ေက်ာ္ ႏုိဗယ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဆုနဲ႔ Rufto လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆုေတြ ခ်ီးျမႇင့္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ ကတည္းက ေနာ္ေ၀းျပည္သူေတြဟာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကိုယ္တုိင္ ေရာက္လာမယ့္အခ်ိန္ကို ေစာင့္ဆုိင္းခဲ့ၾကတာပါဆုိၿပီး ေနာ္ေ၀ႏုိင္ငံ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ Jens Stoltenberg က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ႀကိဳဆုိပါတယ္။ အခု ကိုယ္တုိင္ေရာက္လာ တာဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕ ဒီမုိကေရစီနဲ႔ တရားမွ်တမႈအတြက္ ႏွစ္ရွည္လမ်ား ႐ုန္းကန္ႀကိဳးစား ခဲ့တဲ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ အားထုတ္မႈေတြ အရာထင္လာၿပီဆုိတာကို ျပသလိုက္တာလို႔ သူက ဆုိပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအေျပာင္းအလဲေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔လည္း သူက အခုလုိ ေျပာပါတယ္။

“ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ အရွိန္အဟုန္နဲ႔ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ ေပၚလာေနၿပီဆိုေပမယ့္လည္း လုပ္ေဆာင္စရာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး က်န္ရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ တည္ရွိခဲ့တဲ့ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္နဲ႔ လက္နက္ကိုင္ ပဋိပကၡေတြကို အတိတ္မွာခ်န္ထားႏုိင္ခဲ့ဘို႔ဆုိတာ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ အခ်ိန္ယူရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အေနနဲ႔ ပကတိအေနအထားကို သိျမင္ဖို႔လိုပါတယ္။ ရရွိၿပီးသား တုိးတက္လာတဲ့ ျဖစ္ စဥ္ေတြ ေနာက္ေၾကာင္းျပန္ မလွည့္ဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။”

ဒီလိုအေျခအေနေတြ ေနာက္ေၾကာင္းျပန္လွည့္မသြားဖို႔အတြက္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းအေနနဲ႔ အေျပာင္း အလဲေတြ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြကို အားေပးေထာက္ခံၿပီး တက္တက္ႂကြႂကြ ထိေတြ႔ဆက္ဆံဖို႔ လုိမယ္ လို႔ ေနာ္ေ၀း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္က ေျပာပါတယ္။ ေနာ္ေ၀ဂ်ီယံ စီးပြားေရး ကုမၼဏီေတြကို ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွာ ကုန္သြယ္ေရးနဲ႔ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံၾကဖို႔ ေနာ္ေ၀း ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္က ေျပာ ဆုိပါ တယ္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က အခုလို ေျပာပါတယ္။

ေနာ္ေ၀း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ေျပာတဲ့အတိုင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရး ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈေတြဟာ လမ္းဆုံးမွာ မေရာက္ေသး သ   လို ေျဖာင့္ေျဖာင့္ျဖဴးျဖဴး လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပၚမွာ ရွိခ်င္မွ ရွိလိမ့္အုံးမယ္ဆိုတာကို ေျပာဆုိၿပီး အခက္ အခဲေတြ ကို ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး စိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႔ ညႇိညႇိႏႈိင္းႏႈိင္း ေဆာင္ ရြက္သြားမယ္လုိ႔ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ေနာ္ေ၀းစီးပြားေရး ကုမၼဏီေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔-

“လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီေရးအတြက္ အေထာက္အကူျပဳေစမယ့္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈေတြကို က်မတို႔ လိုခ်င္ပါ တယ္။ ဘယ္လုိ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈ မ်ဳိးပဲလုပ္လုပ္ ပြင့္လင္းျမင္သာၿပီး တာ၀န္ယူမႈရွိတဲ့ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမ်ဳိး ျဖစ္ရပါ လိမ့္မယ္။ အစိုးရက ဘာလုပ္မယ္ မလုပ္ဘူးဆုိတာေတြကို ႏွစ္ဘက္ ရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္း စာခ်ဳပ္စာတမ္းမွာ ထည့္သြင္းရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈေတြဟာ အစိုးရက စီးပြားေရး ထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္မႈကို ပိုၿပီး အားျဖည့္တာ မ်ဳိးထက္ ပုဂၢလိက စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြကို ပိုၿပီးအားေကာင္းေအာင္ ေျမေတာင္ေျမႇာက္ေပးႏုိင္မယ့္ လုပ္ငန္းေတြျဖစ္ဖို႔ လိုအပ္ပါတယ္။”

ႏိုဗယ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဆုကို လက္ခံယူဖို႔ ျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ မိန္႔ခြန္းဟာ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ အႏွစ္ ၂၀ သူျဖတ္သန္းခဲ့တဲ့ ဘ၀ ကို ထင္ဟပ္တဲ့ မိန္႔ခြန္းတခု ျဖစ္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ေျပာပါတယ္။ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္း ႏုိင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ လက္ခံႀကိဳဆို အားေပးေထာက္ခံမႈေတြ ေၾကာင့္ လက္ရွိသမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အပါအ၀င္ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြနဲ႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အၾကား ဆက္ဆံေရးမွာ လာၿပီး ထိခုိက္ႏုိင္မယ္ ထင္ပါသလားလို႔ သတင္းေထာက္ေတြက ေမးခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

“က်မ ႏုိင္ငံျခားကို ခရီးထြက္တာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ကန္႔ကြက္သင့္တဲ့ ခုိင္လုံတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ရွိမယ္လုိ႔ က်မမျမင္ မိပါဘူး။ လက္ခံတဲ့ႏုိင္ငံေတြ ဘယ္လုိ ႀကိဳဆုိၾကတယ္ဆုိတာကလည္း သက္ဆုိင္ရာႏုိင္ငံေတြအေပၚမွာ မူတည္ ပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီကို က်မတို႔ ယုံတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတခုခ်င္း စီရဲ႕ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာကို က်မတို႔ယုံတယ္။ သက္ဆုိင္ ရာႏုိင္ငံေတြက သူတုိ႔မွန္တယ္ထင္တဲ့ပုံစံနဲ႔ က်မကို ႀကိဳဆိုမွာပါ။ ဒါသူတို႔ သေဘာပါ။ ဒါကို သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အေနနဲ႔ေရာ၊ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ စစ္တပ္အေနနဲ႔ပါ ကန္႔ကြက္စရာရွိမယ္လို႔ က်မ လုံး၀ မျမင္မိပါဘူး။ တျခားႏုိင္ငံေတြ က က်မနဲ႔ က်မပါတီအေပၚ သေဘာထားနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ သူတို႔အေနနဲ႔ စိုးရိမ္စရာလည္း မရွိပါဘူး။ က်မတို႔အေနနဲ႔ အမ်ဳိးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး အတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်င္တယ္ ဆုိတာ ေျပာထားၿပီးသားပါ။”

သတင္းေထာက္တေယာက္က သူ႔ရဲ႕အေမးမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ စစ္တပ္ကို ဆန္႔က်င္တဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ ဆိုၿပီး သုံးႏႈန္းသြားတာကို သူက ျငင္းဆုိသြားပါတယ္။ သူနဲ႔ NLD ဟာ စစ္တပ္ကို ဂုဏ္သိကၡာ ရွိရွိ၊ ျပည္ သူေတြ ခ်စ္ခင္ေလးစားတဲ့ တပ္မေတာ္သားေကာင္းေတြ ပီပီ ရပ္တည္တာကို ေတြ႔လိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း၊ ဒီလို ရပ္တည္ တာဟာ ဒီမုိကေရစီ လူ႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္းအတြက္ အေကာင္းဆုံးျဖစ္တယ္ဆုိတာကို တုိင္းျပည္မွာရွိတဲ့ လူငယ္ေတြ လည္း လက္ခံယုံၾကည္ထားတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း ေျပာဆုိသြားပါတယ္။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အေနနဲ႔ တေန႔ေန႔တခ်ိန္ခ်ိန္ ေနာ္ေ၀းကို အခုလုိ ေရာက္လာမယ္ဆုိတာ တကယ္ပဲ ယုံၾကည္ခဲ့ပါသလားလို႔ သတင္းေထာက္တေယာက္က ေမးပါတယ္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ဒါကို အၿမဲ တေစ ယုံၾကည္ခဲ့တဲ့အေၾကာင္း၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္း ေနာ္ေ၀း ႏုိင္ငံကို ပထဆုံးသြားခ်င္တယ္လုိ႔ သူေျပာခဲ့တဲ့ အေၾကာင္း ျပန္ေျဖသြားပါတယ္။ က်မေတာ့ ဘယ္တုန္းကမွ သံသယမရွိခဲ့ဘူး။ ရွင္ေရာ မယုံမၾကည္ျဖစ္ ခဲ့မိလား။ ရွင္က မယုံခဲ့လို႔လားဆုိၿပီး သတင္းေထာက္ကို ျပန္ေမးခြန္းထုတ္သြားပါတယ္။

By ကိုသိန္းထိုက္ဦး (ဗီြအုိေအ ျမန္မာပိုင္း)
Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne 'deeply concerned' by ongoing violence
Following reports of further civil unrest in Rakhine State in western Burma today, Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said:

"I am deeply concerned by the ongoing violence in Rakhine State. We call on all parties to act with restraint, and urge the authorities and community leaders to open discussions to end the violence and to protect all members of the local population. The UK and international community will continue to monitor the situation very closely. We have welcomed the reforms led by President Thein Sein and Daw ASSK in Burma in recent months and hope that they will work with the local authorities and community to resolve the situation rapidly in a peaceful and constructive manner."

In light of the ongoing violence, Mr Browne this evening announced that the FCO had updated its travel advice to advise 'against all but essential travel to Rakhine State in western Burma' including the state capital, Sittwe. He said:

"The safety of British Nationals is our priority. We have carefully reviewed our advice and now advise against all but essential travel to Rakhine State due to ongoing civil unrest in several locations and the risk that the situation could worsen. This does not affect other parts of Burma including the capital, Rangoon.

"The Burmese Government this afternoon announced a State of Emergency and a curfew across much of Rakhine State, including Sittwe. The current curfew times are 6pm to 6am Burma time, but this may change. We advise any British Nationals in Rakhine state to check the timings of the curfew locally and follow any instructions.

"The Embassy in Rangoon stands ready to provide consular assistance. British nationals working for NGOs and other companies should keep in close contact with those organisations. British tourists in the area should stay in close touch with their tour operator if they have one"

Further information

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Associated Press


BANGKOK – They have been called ogres and animals, terrorists and much worse — when their existence is even acknowledged.

Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.

In Burma, shaken this week by a bloody spasm of violence involving Rohingyas that left dozens of civilians dead, they are almost universally despised. The military junta whose half-century of rule ended only last year cast the group as foreigners for decades — fueling a profound resentment now reflected in waves of vitriolic hatred that are being posted online.

"People feel it very acceptable to say that 'we will work on wiping out all the Rohingyas,'" said Debbie Stothard, an activist with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, referring to hyperbolic Internet comments she called "disturbing."

The Burma government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact many of their families have lived in Burma for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

"This is the tragedy of being stateless," said Chris Lewa, who runs a non-governmental organization called the Arakan Project that advocates for the Rohingya cause worldwide.

"In Burma they're told they're illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they're told they're Burmese who should go back home," Lewa said. "Unfortunately, they're just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it's only getting worse."

That fact was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the latest violence in Burma's Rakhine state. Rohingyas have clashed with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and each side blames the other for the violence.

The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh has defied international calls to let them in, saying the impoverished country's resources are already too strained.

A few have slipped through, however, including a month-old baby found Wednesday abandoned in a boat after its occupants fled border guards. Three other Rohingyas have been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the Bangladeshi town of Chittagong, including one who died.

The unrest, which has seen more than 1,500 homes charred and thousands of people displaced along Burma's western coast, erupted after a mob dragged 10 Muslims off a bus and killed them in apparent retaliation for the rape and murder last month of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman, allegedly by Muslims.

On Thursday, Rakhine state was reportedly calm. But Rohingyas living there "very much feel like they're trapped in a box," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "They're surrounded by enemies, and there is an extremely high level of frustration."

The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Burma has roots in a complex web of issues: the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.

Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians — not the government — are more tolerant. But even there, the Rohingya are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.

Burma's government has the largest Rohingya population in the world: 800,000, according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around other parts of the world, primarily the Middle East.

Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas are routinely discriminated against. In Burma, they are regularly subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Rakhine who inhabit the same area, Lewa said.

The Rohingya must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and even to marry. Apparently concerned about their numbers growing, authorities have also barred them from having more than two children.

In 1978, Burma's army drove more than 200,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, according to rights groups and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Some 10,000 died in squalid conditions, and the rest returned to Burma. The campaign was repeated in 1991-1992, and again a majority returned.

The Rohingya last garnered world headlines in 2009, when five boatloads of haggard migrants fleeing Burma were intercepted by Thai authorities. Rights groups allege they were detained and beaten, then forced back to sea, emaciated and bloodied, in vessels with no engines and little food or water. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.

The same year, Burma's consul general in Hong Kong — now a U.N. ambassador — described the Rohingya as "ugly as ogres" in an open letter to diplomats in which he compared their "dark brown" skin to that of the "fair and soft" ethnic Burmese majority.

The latest unrest has focused fresh attention on the Rohingyas' plight, but it has also galvanized a virulent new strain of resentment.

Many Burmese have taken to the Internet to denounce the Rohingya as foreign invaders, with some comparing them to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

While vitriol has come from both sides, what makes the latest unrest unique is that virtually "the entire population is openly and completely against" them, said Sai Latt, a writer and Burma analyst studying at Canada's Simon Fraser University.

"We have heard of scholars, journalists, writers, celebrities, even the so-called democracy fighters openly making comments against Rohingyas," Sai Latt said.

One Burmese actress posted "I hate them 100%" on her Facebook wall on Monday as the fires burned. By Thursday, her comment had nearly 250 "likes."

Prominent Burmese language journals have reported "only the Rakhine side," Sai Latt said. And many people have lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of getting the story wrong.

Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner released in January, has said Rohingyas should not be mistreated but added they "are not an ethnic group in Burma at all." He blamed the recent violence on illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

The Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect similar to one spoken by residents of southern Bangladesh. And physically, they are almost indistinguishable from their Bangladeshi counterparts, said Lewa, of the Arakan Project.

But their history — specifically the amount of time they've lived in Burma, and who among them qualifies as a legitimate resident — is bitterly disputed.

Some say the Rohingya are descended from Arab settlers in the 7th century, and that their state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Later waves arrived from British-run colonial India in the 1800s, but like the colonists themselves, they were regarded as foreigners.

That view persisted through half a century of military rule, which finally ended last year. Burma's post-junta government does not recognize them as one of the country's 135 indigenous national ethnic groups. And many people stridently believe they are not even a real ethnic group — rather, they are only illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

President Thein Sein, who has instituted a state of emergency and sent in troops to contain the violence, has warned any escalation could jeopardize the nation's fragile democratic reforms.

The International Crisis Group said that ironically, the nation's newfound freedoms may have helped contribute to the unrest.

"The loosening of authoritarian constraints may well have enabled this current crisis to take on a virulent intensity," the group said. "It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast.

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Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A fire truck arrived at the site of a house fire in Sittwe, capital of the western state of Rakhine on June 15.
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: June 15, 2012

BANGKOK — Over the past year, Myanmar’s government has ended its heavy censorship, allowing citizens unfettered access to a wide variety of Web sites that had been banned during military rule. When the government first began dismantling its Internet controls in August, visits to sites like YouTube soared.

But as the poverty-stricken country of 55 million makes a delicate transition to democracy, hateful comments are also flourishing online about a Muslim ethnic group, the Rohingya, that is embroiled in sectarian clashes in western Myanmar that have left more than two dozen people dead.

“The lid of authoritarianism has come off, and people finally have the freedom to express themselves,” said U Aung Naing Oo, the author of “Dialogue,” a book about conflict resolution in Myanmar’s fractious society. “All these grievances have come out,” and “the voices of reason are on the sidelines for now.”

When the discovery of a “Rohingya body” was announced Thursday on the Facebook page of the Eleven Media Group, one of the largest private media organizations in Myanmar, one reader, Pyaephyo Aung, wrote that he had been “waiting for this kind of news for a long time.” Another reader, Ko Nyi, used a racial slur and said, “It’s not even enough that he is dead.”

In online forums, Rohingya are referred to as dogs, thieves, terrorists and various expletives. Commenters urge the government to “make them disappear” and seem particularly enraged that Western countries and the United Nations are highlighting their plight.

The violence in Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh, has left 29 people dead and more than 2,500 houses burned during the past week, according to officials quoted in the Burmese news media. About 30,000 people have been displaced by the violence, according to the United Nations.

Harder to measure has been damage to Myanmar’s complex multiethnic fabric as the government of President Thein Sein tries to steer the country toward reconciliation between the military and the people, and between the Bamar majority and the dozens of smaller ethnic groups.

So far, the violence has been limited to Rakhine, which is relatively isolated from the rest of the country by a mountain range. But many among those who have posted angry comments on Internet sites have equated the Rohingya with other Muslims scattered around Myanmar. In Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, worshipers at mosques reported that prayer services left out traditional Friday sermons as a precaution against widening the sectarian conflict.

The issue of the Rohingya is so delicate that even Myanmar’s leading defender of human rights and democracy, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been oblique and evasive about the situation. Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar should be given citizenship, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was equivocal. “We have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them,” she said in Geneva, which she was visiting as part of a European tour. “All those who are entitled to citizenship should be treated as full citizens deserving all the rights that must be given to them.”

Defending the Rohingya, who are stateless and are described by the United Nations as one of the most oppressed minorities in Asia, is politically risky for both Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and Mr. Thein Sein.

Mr. Thein Sein’s government is trying to rein in the news media to limit violence against the Rohingya. A popular publication called Hlyat Ta Pyet was banned this week for an indefinite period after it published what the government judged to be inflammatory coverage of the violence in Rakhine, said U Maung Myint, president of the Burma Media Association, which advocates media freedom.

The government has also ordered that all Rakhine-related news go through the censorship board, a rollback to the procedures during military rule. “This is the worst moment for media since the ‘civilian’ government assumed power,” Mr. Maung Myint said.

The Internet, however, has remained unfettered — and heavily tilted against the Rohingya. On Facebook and on news sites, there appeared to be very few comments this week defending the Rohingya or calling for reconciliation.

A United Nations report published in December described the Rohingya as “virtually friendless” among other ethnic groups in Myanmar. That is a polite assessment.

The source of the hatred toward the Rohingya is complex but appears to turn on religion, language, colonial resentment, nationalism and skin color.

In 2009, a Burmese diplomat who was then consul general in Hong Kong sent a letter to local newspapers and other diplomatic missions calling the Rohingya “ugly as ogres.” The diplomat, U Ye Myint Aung, compared the “dark brown” complexion of Rohingyas with the “fair and soft” skin of the majority of people in Myanmar.

The Rohingya are often called “Bengali” by their opponents in Myanmar, a term that suggests that they belong in India or Bangladesh.

Although they have been denied citizenship and are subjected to “forced labor, extortion, restriction on freedom of movement, the absence of residence rights, inequitable marriage regulations and land confiscation,” according to the United Nations, the government has allowed many of them to vote, including in the country’s first elections after military rule, in 2010.

Like the Roma of Europe, they are not wanted in either Myanmar or neighboring Bangladesh. United Nations officials in Geneva said Friday that Bangladeshi border guards were pushing back boatloads of people trying to flee. The boats, laden with women, children and others wounded in the violence, have been left drifting in the broad Naf River delta between the two countries, short of food and water, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The provenance of the Rohingya is as difficult to trace as that of many of Myanmar’s other ethnic groups: they appear to be a mixture of Arabs, Moors, Turks, Persians, Moguls and Pathans, according to the United Nations. Myanmar’s government counts more than 130 ethnicities in the country. The Rohingya are not on that list.

Many online commentators in Myanmar have called for the expulsion of the Rohingya — or worse. When the Eleven Media Group reported Thursday that a woman’s corpse was spotted floating in a river, but did not disclose the ethnicity of the victim, one reader said he was confused. “I don’t know if I should be happy or sad,” he said, “because I don’t know what nationality she is.”

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Bangkok, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva.

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Protesters rally against violence in Burma

Protesters have gathered outside Parliament House in Canberra over this week's violence in western Burma. [ABC]

Up to 100 Burmese protesters have rallied outside Parliament House in the Australian capital Canberra over this week's violence in western Burma.

They are calling on the Australian Government and the United Nations to protect one of Burma's ethnic groups.

The protesters say they are angry at the discrimination and ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims by the Burmese Government.

A state of emergency was declared this week in western Burma where there have been deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims.

The protesters say hundreds of Rohingya have been killed and thousands displaced in government-sponsored violence in the country, and say they will take their rally to the Burmese Embassy on Thursday.

Rohingya are a stateless people unrecognised by the Burmese Government.
An old wound in the body politic of Myanmar was reopened last week. In western Myanmar, in the state of Rakhine next to Bangladesh, a group of Muslims riding a bus were killed by a mob of Buddhists. According to news reports the killers displayed a degree of cruelty that is the usual hallmark of Myanmar's security forces. The incident was allegedly in response to the rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by three Muslim men, a few days before. The ten Muslims killed that day were beaten to death before the bus was set on fire. It did not matter to the killers that the men accused of the rape had already been arrested and were in jail.

Reactions inside Myanmar of the killing was even more startling. Comments circulated in the internet said that 'killing of the kalas is good'. The term 'kala' refers pejoratively to the dark skinned Muslims of South Asian descent known in Myanmar as the Rohingyas. It reflected their general resentment towards these Muslims.

But who exactly are these Rohingyas? Why are they the target of xenophobic elements in Myanmar society ?

Myanmar's frontier areas are inhabited by many ethnic groups. Most of such groups are recognised as citizens of that country. But there are exceptions. One of the notable one is the Rohingyas. They live along the Myanmar border with Bangladesh. These people have deep historical roots in north Rakhine (also called Arakan). Their name comes from the word 'Rohans' which was the earlier name of the Arakan. They are an ethnic mix of Bengalis, Persians, Moghuls, Turks and Pathans. Their language is part Bengali ( as spoken in Chittagong in Bangladesh) with sprinklings of Urdu, Hindi and Arabic words. The tall Arakan Yoma mountains cuts off their area from the rest of Myanmar. So for centuries they have been living isolated from the mainland. It has been so since the 7th century when they first settled there.

Indeed upto 1784, Arakan was an independent Muslim kingdom. In that year it was colonised by a Buddhist Burmese king called Bodawphaya. From that time two distinct communities started living in this 22,000 square mile territory . They were the Muslim Rohingyas and the Buddhist Maghs. When the British came in 1824 and started ruling all of Burma, they recorded that Arakan had one lakh population of which 30% were Muslims. This percentage of Muslims however increased over the years. However the British at one stage of their stay profiled the various races living in Burma. They identified a total of 135 distinct races in that country. But they had left out the Rohingyas as a separate ethnic group. This mistake made by the British is being paid ever since by the hapless Rohingyas .

After Burma got its independence from Britain in 1948, a number of Rohingyas were elected to Burma's post colonial parliament. Under their 1948 Citizenship Law, they were also made bonafide citizens of the country. It was well known that from 1961 to 1965, the Burmese Broadcasting Service also had a Rohingya language programme.

But all this began to change under the rule of General Ne Win who overturned the democratic government in a military coup in 1962. Ne Win's argument was that the ruling political party before his takeover , recognised Rohingyas as an ethnic group merely to get their votes. He therefore took away their Burmese citizenship and made them stateless. They were considered as immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).

The army then subjected them to forced labour, expropriated their property and did extra judicial killing. They denied Rohingyas employment, access to education and trade, and also restricted their movement. Even their right to marry and to form families was subject to permission which had to be bought with high bribes from the authorities. In effect the world began to see a 'slow genocide' taking place against these people. Many of the Rohingyas in the face of persecution left their land and escaped by boats to Bangladesh. In 1978 and then again in 1991 major exodus took place.

In 1992, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution No. 47/144 recognising the suffering of the Rohingyas in the hand of the Burmese army. About 200,000 Rohingyas had by then fled to Bangladesh. But the military government there did not take steps to bring them back to their homeland. About 28,000 of them who are registered with UNCHR are still housed in two big camps in the Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh, after the rest left for various destinations within Bangladesh or in other countries of the region. The Myanmar (then Burmese) government has not responded to the pleas of the Bangladesh Government or the international community to take them back.

Now that there are fresh attacks on the Rohingyas across the border a new exodus is likely. Already we have seen some of these people taking small boats and crossing the Bay to reach safe haven in Bangladesh. This time our Government is discouraging their entry into Bangladesh. Our Border Guards and the Coast Guards have been alerted and under their supervision these small groups are being temporarily fed, given emergency medical treatment and sent back.

For our Government a serious moral and ethical issue is involved here. In 1971 when we were subjected to torture by the then military Government of Pakistan, we left for safe havens in neighbouring India. We were received and housed there for nine months. But in these months many of us fought a war of liberation and returned as soon we got our independence. Many people seem uncomfortable with our government dissuading the persecuted Rohingyas to go back to their homes. Even some of our international friends have been putting pressure to accept Rohingya refugees. But there is more to this than that.

In more than 21 years we have been requesting the Myanmar government to solve the Rohingya question so that these hapless people feel secure and can go back. But they have been dragging their feet. They obviously think that Bangladesh cannot but give refuge to Muslims. But the political scenario within Myanmar has changed dramatically in the past couple of years. Today under the leadership of President Thein Sein , Myanmar is moving towards a democratic system of governance. Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from house arrest and she and her party has returned to parliament there. In this new dispensation the Rohingyas may see some positive changes .

But the timing of the riots against the Rohingyas is quite worrying. Many see this as a ploy by the entrenched military to keep Suu Kyi under political pressure. She cannot overtly support the Rohingyas for then she may lose support of Buddhists there. But she cannot at the same time afford to ignore the human rights violations of the Rohingyas. This will bring condemnation from the international community. She has therefore to find a solution to this question with the authorities there soon.

A possible way out for the Myanmar government is to repeal or amend the 1982 Burmese Citizenship Law. Translated it means that the Rohingyas should have their citizenship rights restored. Once they are recognised as citizens then they will have their basic rights.

Next month the president of Myanmar is expected to visit Dhaka. If the visit take place we must do our homework now and build international pressure on Myanmar to resolve the Rohingya question. We must insist that it would be to the mutual benefit of our two countries to have a peaceful border. But if Myanmar wants to keep this wound in their body politic festering , then we may caution them that it may take some time before a democratic Myanmar can join the comity of other democratic nations in the region if not in the world. They must resolve this sectarian issue first which has potential to spill over their borders, before they can display any democratic credentials.
The writer is a former Ambassador and is a regular commentator on contemporary issues.

E-Mail: ashfaque303@gmail.com
Rohingya refugees from Myanmar sit on a boat as they try to get into Bangladesh in Teknaf June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists were in need of food, water and shelter in northwestern Myanmar on Thursday after fleeing the country's worst sectarian clashes in years.

Houses were burnt down late on Wednesday in two villages near the Bangladesh border, but there were no reports of further deaths. Scores of people are feared to have been killed in the rioting that broke out in Rakhine state on June 8.

Places that were flashpoints earlier in the week, including the state capital Sittwe, were quiet as violence started to subside after days of arson attacks and killings that have presented reformist President Thein Sein with one of his biggest challenges since taking office last year.

The violence had killed 29 people as of Thursday and displaced more than 30,000, said Htein Lin, secretary of the Ministry for Border Affairs. Around 2,500 houses have been burnt down.

"Tensions between the two groups have eased. There are around 20,000 refugees in Sittwe. Most of them are from the villages where people fled in fear of the violence," Aung Myat Kyaw, a senator for Rakhine state, told Reuters.

"They are in need of food and, because of the heavy rain, there are concerns about the refugees' health and whether they have enough shelter," he added.

The army has taken hundreds of Rohingyas to Muslim villages outside Sittwe to ensure their safety.

"They are worried for their lives. The army is there so their life is secure," said Shwe Maung, a Muslim member of parliament for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party. "There are still so many Rohingyas in downtown Sittwe and they are afraid of being attacked."

The United Nations and a medical aid group said this week they were pulling staff out of the area because of the violence. U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, travelled to the area on Wednesday.

DELICATE SITUATION

Speaking at an International Labour Organization conference in Geneva, the first stop on a five-nation European tour, Myanmar Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed concern about the unrest and said laws needed to be enforced to prevent such conflicts from taking place.

"Without the rule of law, such communal strife will only continue," she told a news conference.

"The present situation will have to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity and we need the cooperation of all people concerned to rebuild the peace that we want for our country."

Food shortages could last three to four days as poor roads and infrastructure delayed supplies from aid organizations, said Htun Myit Thein of the Wan Latt Foundation, which is managing three camps that together hold about 12,000 people in Sittwe.

"The camps aren't clean enough and some of the men are getting ill," he said. "So far there is no support from the government or international groups."

It is unclear what sparked the rioting. Relations between the two communities have been uneasy for generations and tension flared last month after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims.

That led to the killing of 10 Muslims in reprisal on June 3, when a Buddhist mob stopped a bus they were travelling on. The passengers had no connection to the murdered woman. State media said three Muslims are on trial for the woman's death.

The violence follows a year of dramatic political change after nearly 50 years of repressive military rule, which includes the release of hundreds of political prisoners and truces with ethnic minority rebels.

The government has also allowed trade unions and promised to get rid of forced labour. Recognizing this progress, the International Labour Organization lifted restrictions on Myanmar on Wednesday.

The communal violence in Rakhine state and the international reaction may prompt further change: the Rohingyas are not included among the officially recognized ethnic groups of Myanmar but Thein Sein may be forced to improve their plight.

Up to 800,000 Rohingyas live along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh in abject conditions. Neither country recognizes them as citizens and the Bangladeshi authorities have turned away boats of Rohingyas fleeing the violence this week.

(Reporting by Reuters staff reporters; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Martin Petty, Robert Birsel and Roger Atwood)
Sources:



On 13 June 2012, at 1200 to 130 hours, Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK) staged a demonstration as a part of “Peaceful Protest to Stop the Mass Massacre in Arakan, Burma.” in front of Burmese embassy, London, United Kingdom, demanding must give the immediate access to international media and humanitarian organizations access to the Northern Arakan to provide food and shelter to prevent starvation and disease outbreak in current monsoon season. Currently there are dire needs of food, water, and medicine.


The government must stop the Rakhine mobs, guarded by the Lon Htein and police forces, from looting the Rohingya shops and properties.

The Rohingya community also calls on the Burmese media in Myanmar and the Burmese language programs in the international media to strictly adhere to their own Codes of Ethnics and serve as the shields to protect lives and the platforms to facilitate bringing justice and peace to Arakan that guarantees safety and security for all people of Arakan.















    • Rohingya Exodus