By Francis Wade

Foreign Policy 

July 5, 2014

How Burma’s pro-democracy movement betrayed its own ideals and rehabilitated the military

Sectarian rioting in western Burma has pitted the majority Buddhist population against a small Muslim minority group. Dozens of people on both sides have been killed, and countless homes destroyed. Thousands of refugees have taken flight.

This ethnic conflict has also had other, less conspicuous effects. Most importantly, it has triggered a dramatic realignment of political allegiances in the country. In a spectacular volte-face, a number of prominent members of Burma's pro-democracy opposition have begun calling for collaboration between civilians and the military in a bid to drive out what they claim are illegal Muslim immigrants who threaten the delicate fabric of Burmese society.

This recasting of the armed forces as protectors of the nation amounts to something of a coup for the quasi-military government that came to power a little over a year ago. Numbers of parliamentarians and exiled activists consider the Rohingya, an 800,000-strong Muslim group of South Asian descent who inhabit a pocket of Arakan state, to be a greater threat to the overall health of the country than a reinvigorated military. Yet this is the very same military that has spent decades persecuting the political opposition, forcing tens of thousands into prison or exile. It also happens to be one of the few institutions in Burma not touched by the reform program, as demonstrated by the army's continuing war against some of the country's restive ethnic minorities.

The government will see the flood of nationalist sentiment as a gift. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that officials may have had a role in whipping it up, as they did prior to the anti-Chinese riots of 1967 and the bouts of communal unrest involving Rohingya in 1978 and 1992. According to a Human Rights Watch report, security forces are actively persecuting ethnic Rohingya during this most recent bout of violence. The current riots serve to distract from ongoing ethnic conflicts in the north, public anger at rising electricity prices, and industrial workers' strikes in Rangoon, all of which have threatened the government's standing in recent months. The conflict also puts Aung San Suu Kyi in an awkward position, forcing her to choose between the morally unassailable but politically unpalatable high ground (since defending the Rohingya likely entails losing a large number of votes), or a more populist stand that yields to widespread bigotry. In the event, she has chosen to split the difference, speaking vaguely of a need to reform Burma's citizenship law as a way of resolving the conflict.

Currently leading the anti-Rohingya charge is the Rakhine [Arakan] Nationalities Development Party, which came in second in the province in the last general election of November 2010. They released a statement last week warning that the population of the Rohingya -- whom they label "Bengali immigrants" -- has reached "very alarming" levels, and called for swift action to segregate them from Arakanese and eventually resettle them overseas. Party Head Dr. Aye Maung, who had welcomed Suu Kyi's win in parliamentary by-elections in April "as a great chance for all of us to change Burma to a democratic country," recently called for Burma "to be like Israel" -- apparently a reference to the oppressive controls placed on Palestinians to ‘protect' Israelis. He urged civilians to work with the government to craft a policy to "defend this region" against the Rohingya, who "will be repeatedly trespassing on our territory."

Aye Maung is not alone. Religious figures and veterans of the pro-democracy movement have played a firm hand in stirring tensions, using language reminiscent of that which accompanied the Nazi pogroms. Ko Ko Gyi, a dissident who spent years behind bars for his leading role in the 1988 student uprising against military rule, has referred to the Rohingya as terrorists, and asserted that they are not an ethnic Burmese group but rather "[infringe] on our sovereignty." Such comments provide succor to the likes of Htay Oo, the powerful agriculture minister and a leading political hardliner. He has mooted the re-launch of Operation Dragon King, which was deployed under the guise of an anti-mujahideen campaign in the late 1970s to round up, arrest, and torture thousands of Rohingya, eventually forcing more than 200,000 into Bangladesh.

Playing the "terrorism" card conveniently separates the Rohingya, whose armed struggle ended a decade ago, from the ethnic "freedom fighters" elsewhere in the country. Few have asked how this distinction was reached, although unsubstantiated claims that Rohingya had been recruited by Al Qaeda gathered steam in the wake of 9/11, helping to cast the group as a malevolent force without needing to showcase evidence.

So what explains this apparent breakdown in the moral logic of Burma's internationally vaunted opposition force? There may be an issue with our perceptions of the pro-democracy movement. We have to ask ourselves whether we may have over-romanticized its battles against the junta as a broader quest to bring pure, universal human rights to Burma, when in fact we had little evidence of a wholesale commitment to the principle of tolerance. "Once the Burmese opposition no longer was confined to simply opposing (saying the right things), and actually had to suggest policies, what occurred was a sort of ‘return of the real,'" Elliott Prasse-Freeman, of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, wrote in an email. "It became clear that ‘Human Rights' were just demands against power, and they didn't mean anything in terms of the kind of politics the opposition actually stood for."

What does the opposition then stand for? The picture has become somewhat clouded. To be sure, it is not the entire opposition that has taken this stance -- though many of its members, includingAung San Suu Kyi herself, have assumed positions of ambivalence about whether the Rohingya should be granted equal rights.

But for those wanting heavy-handed treatment of the Rohingya, the traditional notions of equality and universal human rights have already been discarded, and replaced by a demagogic brand of democracy contaminated by xenophobia. This fear of "the other" within Burmese society, a fear that has reared its head sporadically in the anti-Chinese and anti-Indian riots of the past century, has largely been overlooked in black-and-white depictions of the past 50 years as a struggle between military and civilian forces.

At the far end of the spectrum, many so-called democrats have moved to vilify an entire minority group, employ apartheid-like segregationist measures, and forge reactionary ties with their traditional enemy, the Burmese military. This stance presumes that the Rohingya are a threat to the entire country without really explaining why. In fact, most Rohingya are essentially held in an open prison in northern Arakan state, subject to a system of travel permits that tightly controls their movements, and which leaves them little opportunity to mobilize should they have any intention of doing so. But such considerations appear to matter little.

It seems that the Burmese have combined a longstanding fear of outsiders -- aided by decades of isolation -- with an internalization of the regime's propaganda, which casts the Rohingya as jihadists, uncivilized, proselytizing, and of detestable appearance. In a now-infamous letter to heads of foreign missions in Hong Kong, Burma's former consul-general, Ye Myint Aung, described the minority group as "ugly as ogres" in comparison with the "fair and soft" complexion of the Burman majority.

Their statehood will always be debated. Opponents of the minority cite the 1960s as the date of their arrival in Burma, while Rohingya leaders claim a millennia-old lineage dating from the time Muslim traders arrived in Arakan. This discussion, however, is somewhat extraneous to the key issue, which is why they should have earned such brutal treatment by both the government and civil society. Even if one accepts the argument that the Rohingya are comparatively recent migrants, this hardly justifies subjecting them to the same sort of persecution that the "democrats" have been resisting for years when it was imposed on them by the government.

There are clear double standards at play here. Rohingya are not accorded the same rights as others living in Burma, including the country's Chinese population, most of whom came more recently (even if one accepts the most conservative estimates for the Rohingya's arrival), and whose population dwarfs the Rohingya in size. Is this Muslim minority more of a "threat" than the Chinese immigrants? We can't answer until someone can properly articulate what this "threat" actually consists of. Groups like the UK-based Burma Democratic Concern, however, have resorted to wild fear-mongering, alleging that the Rohingya have massacred "tens of thousands of Burmese Buddhist Arakanese in the past," while others argue that Burma cannot support a "refugee" population.

Burma's first dictator, Ne Win, engineered citizenship laws to justify the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya -- a policy he proposed in the wake of the mass expulsion of Indians in the 1960s and a ban on Muslims joining the army and government. This was an ideological crusade led by a notorious xenophobe who orchestrated Burma's retreat into isolation and economic ruin. That the pro-democracy forces now call for similar measures against the Rohingya has merely helped to rekindle his legacy.

These are sobering times indeed. Burma's opposition movement has won international admiration for its stoicism, and rightly so: After all, thousands have died or endured long prison terms in order to bring about a transition to democracy. The prospect of this delicate process being unraveled by the hypocrisy of those who fought for it is deeply saddening.

လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားမွရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိအစုလုိက္အျပဳံလုိက္ဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းထားျခင္းအေပၚေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္ၿပီးဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းလုိက္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္ကုလသမဂၢ၏လူသားခ်င္းစာနာေထာက္ထားမႈဆုိင္ရာ၀န္ထမ္းမ်ားကုိ ေမးျမန္းရန္ဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းထားျခင္းကုိ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအစုိးရထံစုံစမ္းေမးျမန္းျခင္းကုိ တစုံတရာအေၾကာင္းျပန္ၾကားျခင္း မရွိဟုေရးသားထားသည္။ 

ရခုိင္ႏွင့္ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာတုိ႔အၾကားျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ ဇြန္လအတြင္းအဓိကရုဏ္း၌အသက္ေပါင္း ၈၀ ေက်ာ္ဆုံးရွဳံးခဲ့ၿပီး၊ ေထာင္ေပါင္း မ်ားစြာအုိးမဲ့အိမ္မဲ့ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရသည္ဟုအဆုိပါေအအက္ဖ္ပီသတင္းတြင္ေရးသားထားသည္။ 

“အခုအခ်ိန္မွာ ကုလသမဂၢႏွင့္ႏုိင္ငံတကာအစုိးရမဟုတ္ေသာအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားက၀န္ထမ္းဆယ္ဦးကုိ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္အစုိးရ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားမွ စုံစမ္းေမးျမန္းရန္အေၾကာင္းျပ၍ဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းထားသည္” ဟုကုလသမဂၢလူသားခ်င္းစာနာေထာက္ပံ့ ေရးေအဂ်င္စီတစ္ခုျဖစ္ေသာ OCHA ၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ တြင္ေရးသားေၾကာင္းေဖာ္ျပထားပါသည္။ 

ကုလသမဂၢမွဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းခံေနရေသာ၀န္ထမ္းတစ္ဦးခ်င္းစီ၏အခ်က္အလက္မ်ားေပးရန္ေတာင္းဆုိထားေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။ ဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းခံရသူမ်ားအနက္ေျခာက္ဦးမွာ Medicines San Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) မွျဖစ္သည္ဟု MSF မွေအအက္ဖ္ပီသုိ႔ယေန႔အတည္ျပဳေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ MSF မွဆက္လက္ေျပာၾကားရာတြင္မည္သည့္ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ဖမ္းဆီးထားသည္ကုိမသိရေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ MSF ၏လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကုိလြန္ခဲ့သည့္အဓိကရုဏ္းျဖစ္ပြားခ်ိန္ မွစ၍ရပ္ဆုိင္းခဲ့ၿပီး ၀န္ထမ္းမ်ားေလွ်ာ့ခ်ခဲ့ေၾကာင္းေျပာၾကားသည္။ 

အစုိးရလုံၿခဳံေရး၀န္ထမ္းမ်ားမွအဓိကရုဏ္းပုိမုိျဖစ္ပြားရန္ပံ့ပုိးေပးေသာေၾကာင့္ ေထာင္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားမွာ အစုိးရမွဖြင့္လွစ္ထားေသာစခန္းမ်ား၌ခုိလႈံလ်က္ရွိရာ ကုလသမဂၢစားနပ္ရိကၡာအစီအစဥ္မွ လူေပါင္းတစ္သိန္းခန္႔အထိ စားနပ္ရိကၡာလုိအပ္ေနသည္ဟုသိရွိရသည္။ 

ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသမီးတဦးအားမုဒိန္းက်င့္သတ္ျဖတ္ၿပီးေနာက္ ဇြန္လ (၃) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ မြတ္စလင္ဆယ္ဦးအားအၾကမ္းဖက္ သမားမ်ားမွသတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ့သည္။ ရခုိင္ႏွင့္ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာတုိ႔သည္ျဖစ္ စဥ္မ်ားကုိအခ်င္းခ်င္းအျပစ္တင္လ်က္ရွိသည္။ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္၏ အေရးေပၚေၾကညာခ်က္သည္ ယခုထိ  တည္ရွိလ်က္ရွိၿပီး လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရးအဖြဲ႕မွ အစုိးရလုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႕မ်ားမွ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိအစုလုိက္အၿပဳံလုိက္ဖမ္းဆီးေနသည့္ကိစၥႏွင့္လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္ညွင္းပန္းႏွိပ္စက္ျခင္းတုိ႔ကုိယေန႔ ေျပာၾကားလုိက္သည္။ 

ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္မ်ားတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားအမ်ားအျပားရွိေနသည့္ၾကားမွ လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖဲြ႕မ်ားမွ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားအေပၚ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ဳိးေဖာက္၍ညွင္းပန္းႏွိပ္စက္မႈမ်ားကုိ ယခုရက္သတၱပတ္မ်ား အတြင္း အမ်ားအျပားျပဳလုပ္ေနသည္ - ဟု လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ မွေအ အက္ပီသုိ႔ေျပာၾကားေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။ ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံ၍ အစုလုိက္အျပဳံလုိက္ ဖမ္း ဆီးျ ခင္း မ်ား ရွိေနေၾကာင္း၊ ၿမဳိ႕နယ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဖြဲ႔မ်ားမွအမွန္တကယ္ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ားကုိစုံစမ္းေဖာ္ထုတ္အေရး ယူဟန္မရွိဟု - ထပ္ေလာင္းေျပာၾကားသည္။ 

ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံေနျခင္းမွာဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာၾကာျမင့္ေနၿပီး၊ ကုလသမဂၢမွကမာၻေပၚတြင္ ဒုကၡအေရာက္ ဆုံးလူမ်ဳိးဟုသတ္မွတ္ထားေၾကာင္းကုိ ယေန႔ထုတ္ေအအက္ပီ သတင္းကုိး ကား၍ေဖာ္ျပ လုိက္ပါသည္။ 

RB News Desk

အဆုိပါေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားအားလုံးမွ ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ေရးပါတီ၏ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမြတ္စလင္မ်ားအေပၚ လူမ်ဳိးေရး ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံမႈ ရွင္သန္လာေ စ ရန္ေၾကညာ လာ သည္ ကုိ ရွဳံ႕ခ်လုိက္သည္။ 

ဇြန္လ (၂၆) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ေရးပါတီမွေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္၍ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ တုိင္းရင္းသား မ်ားကုိ တရားမ၀င္ က်ဴးေက်ာ္အေျခခ်ေသာ ဘဂၤလီမ်ား ဟုေခါင္းစဥ္တပ္ၿပီး ျမန္မာ အစုိး ရႏွင့္ျပည္သူမ်ားက ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ကုိဗုဒၶဘာသာရခုိင္လူမ်ဳိးမ်ားႏွင့္ေ၀းလံေသာၿမဳိ႕၊ရြာမ်ားတြင္သီးျခားျပန္လည္ေနရာခ်ထားေပးရန္ေတာင္းဆုိသည္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္တရားမ၀င္က်ဴးေက်ာ္အေျခခ်ေနေသာဘဂၤလီမ်ားကုိ ကုလသမဂၢ၊ႏုိင္ငံတကာႏွင့္ပူးေပါင္း၍ အခ်ိန္တုိအတြင္း တတိယ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ားသုိ႔ပုိ႔ရန္လည္းေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့သည္။ 

ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာအၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ၌ ရခုိင္အစြန္းေရာက္မ်ားသည္ စစ္တပ္၊လုံထိန္း၊နစက၊ လက္နက္ကုိင္ရခုိင္စစ္ေသြးႂကြမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္း၍ ရာေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိသတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ့သည္။ ရာေပါင္းမ်ားစြာျပင္းထန္စြာဒဏ္ရာရရွိခဲ့သည္။ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ား ေနထုိင္ေသာရြာမ်ား၊ အိမ္ေျခမ်ား၊ ၀တ္ျပဳေသာဗလီမ်ား မီးရွဳိ႕ဖ်က္ဆီးခံခဲ့ရသည္။ ထုိ႔မ်ွမက ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာအမ်ဳိးသား၊ အမ်ဳိးသမီး၊ ကေလးမ်ားေဘးလႊတ္ရာသုိ႔ ထြက္ေျပးရန္ ႀကဳိးစားေနဆဲအခ်ိန္တြင္လည္း တုိက္ခုိက္ လုယက္ျခင္းမ်ားခံခဲ့ ရသည္။ နတ္ျမစ္ႏွင့္ဘဂၤလားပင္လယ္ေအာ္ကုိျဖတ္၍ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏုိင္ငံ၌ ေခတၱခုိလႈံရန္ ႀကဳိးစားေသာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏုိင္ငံမွ၀င္ခြင့္မျပဳသည္ကုိ ႏုိင္ငံတကာမွကန္႔ကြက္ေသာ္ျငားလည္း ၀င္ေရာက္ခုိလႈံခြင့္ပိတ္ပင္ခဲ့သည္။ 

၁၉၄၂ ခုႏွစ္မွစ၍ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ တသန္းခြဲခန္႔သည္ မိမိတုိ႔၏ဌာေနျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံမွ ႏုိင္ငံအသီးသီးသုိ႔မိမိတုိ႔၏ အသက္လုံၿခဳံေရး အတြက္ထြက္ေျပးခဲ့ရသည္။ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္နိုင္ငံမွေထာင္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာရခုိင္လူမ်ဳိး (သုိ႔မဟုတ္) ေမာဂ္လူမ်ဳိးမ်ားသည္ ဦးေန၀င္း၏ ျမန္မာ့ ဆုိရွယ္လစ္လမ္းစဥ္ပါတီအစီအစဥ္အရ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္သုိ႔၀င္ေရာက္၍အေျခခ်ခြင့္ရခဲ့သည္။ ထုိသုိ႔၀င္ေရာက္လာေသာ ဘဂၤလီေမာဂ္မ်ားသည္ ျပည္နယ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး၏ ပဲ့ကုိင္မ်ားျဖစ္လာခဲ့သည္။ ဘဂၤလီမ်ား တရားမ၀င္ ၀င္ေရာက္ အေျခခ်ခဲ့သည္ ဆုိသည္မွာ စြတ္စြဲခ်က္သာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ၿပီး အစၥလာမ္ဆန္႔က်င္ေရးကုိ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအရ စိတ္စဲြလမ္းမႈျဖစ္ေစရန္ တက္တက္ ႂကြႂကြလႈံ႔ေဆာ္ ခဲ့သည္။ လူမ်ဳိးေရးခြဲျခားမႈ၊ သူစိမ္းမ်ား ေျခာက္လွန္႔ ျခင္းမ်ားကုိေရွ႕တန္းတင္၍ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိ ဒဏ္ခံေစကာ၊ ဘဂၤလီ ေမာဂ္မ်ားစိမ့္၀င္လာမႈ႔ကုိ မသိက်ဳိးကၽြံျပဳေနခဲ့သည္။ ရခုိင္လူမ်ဳိးမ်ား၏ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္သည္ လြတ္လပ္ေသာရခုိင္ျပည္ ထူေထာင္ရန္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားသည္ ၄င္းတို့အတြက္အတားအဆီးျဖစ္ေနသည္။ 

ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ေရးပါတီႏွင့္ႀကံရာပါမ်ားသည္ ျပည္တြင္းႏွင့္ျပည္ပတြင္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအား မုန္းတီးေစရန္၀ါဒျဖန္႔ လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားကုိ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနရာမွ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈႀကီး ရုတ္တ ရက္ေပၚေပါက္ခဲ့သည္။ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈႀကီးကုိ ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိး သား တုိးတက္ေရးပါတီမွ ႀကဳိး ကုိင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့သည္မွာသိသာထင္ရွားလာေသာ္လည္းက်ဥ္းေၿမာင္းေသာအယူဝါဒရွိသည့္ရခုိင္ပညာရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ စစ္ဘက္ဆုိင္ရာ သေဘာထားတင္းမာသူမ်ားမွ မသိက်ဳိးကၽြံ မ်က္ႏွာလႊဲေနၾကသည္။ ရခိုင္အမ်ဳိးသား တုိးတက္ေရးပါတီ၏ မူ၀ါဒျဖစ္ေသာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအားအတင္းအဓမၼေနရာေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ျခင္း၊ အတင္းအဓမၼ ႏုိင္ငံမွႏွင္ထုတ္ျခင္းတုိ႔သည္ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္ဗုဒၶဘာသာရခုိင္မ်ားသာႀကီးစုိးခ်ယ္လွယ္ရန္ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီး ထုိမူ၀ါဒသည္ လူသားျဖစ္တည္မႈအား ဆန္႔က်င္ေသာျပစ္မႈႀကီးျဖစ္သည့္အျပင္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအား အျမစ္ျဖတ္သုတ္သင္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ ေရးပါတီ၏ေၾကညာခ်က္ပါ အခ်က္မ်ားအားလုံးသည္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆုိင္ရာ အခ်က္မ်ားႏွင့္ ဆန္႔က်င္ေနၿပီး၊ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ားအားလုံး၏ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္သူအေနႏွင့္ တာ၀န္ယူရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းတုိ႔၏ လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏ ဒီမုိကေရစီက်င့္စဥ္ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေနမႈကုိ ဟန႔္တားရုံမက၊ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအခန္းက႑မ်ားေဖာ္ေဆာင္မႈကုိ လည္းထိခုိက္ေစမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ 

ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္၏ ၿမဳိ႕ေတာ္ျဖစ္ေသာ စစ္ေတြၿမဳိ႕တြင္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ပုိင္ဆုိင္ေသာ ဆုိင္မ်ားသိမ္းဆည္းခံခဲ့ရသည္။ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ားကုိ အတင္းအဓမၼမုဒိန္းက်င့္ျခင္း၊ ပညာတတ္ အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ားကုိ ဖမ္းဆီး၍ အက်ဥ္းခ်ျခင္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံသားသက္ေသခံအေထာက္အထားမ်ား၊ စာရြက္စာတမ္းမ်ားကုိ သိမ္းဆည္းျခင္း၊ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္၍ ေငြညွစ္ျခင္း၊ ပုိင္ဆုိင္ေသာပစၥည္းမ်ား လုယက္ျခင္း စေသာထူးျခားေသာျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ား ရခုိင္ျပည္ေျမာက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားလ်က္ရွိသည္။ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာမႈကင္းမဲ့မွဳမ်ားျပားလာၿပီး အစားေရစာငတ္ျပတ္ျခင္း၊ ေဆး၀ါးကုသမႈမရရွိျခင္းတုိ႔ေၾကာင့္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားေသဆုံးမႈပုိမုိမ်ားျပားလာသည္။ 

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအစုိးရသုိ႔ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားမွ ---- 

→ ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ေရးပါတီကုိ ပိတ္ပင္၍ ရခုိင္ျပည္တြင္းအၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ ျဖစ္ေပၚေအာင္ႀကဳိး ကုိင္လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့ သူမ်ား ကုိ တရားဥပေဒႏွင့္အညီဆုံးျဖတ္ရန္၊ 

→ ရခုိင္အမ်ဳိးသားတုိးတက္ေရး ပါတီႏွင့္အျခားေသာရခုိင္မ်ား၏ အလြန္ဆုိးရြားေသာ လုပ္ရပ္မ်ားကုိ ရပ္တန္႔ခိုင္းရန္၊ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိျပည္တြင္း၌လုံေလာက္ ေသာကာကြယ္မႈမ်ားေပးရန္၊ 

→ စစ္တပ္၊ လုံထိန္း၊ နစက၊ ရခုိင္စစ္ေသြးႂကြႏွင့္ရဲမ်ားမွ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအေပၚက်ဳးလြန္ေနေသာမုဒိန္းက်င့္ျခင္း ထင္တုိင္းၾကဲဖမ္းဆီးျခင္း ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္၍ေငြညွစ္ျခင္း ဖမ္းဆီးထားသူမ်ားကုိ ေငြေပး၍ေရြးခုိင္းျခင္း ခုိးယူျခင္း တုိက္ခုိက္၍လုယက္ျခင္းတုိ႔ကုိရပ္တန္႔ခုိင္းရန္၊ 

→လုပ္ဇတ္ခင္းရန္ဖမ္းဆီးထားေသာရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိခ်က္ခ်င္းလြတ္ေပးရန္ 

→ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားမွသိမ္းယူလုိက္ေသာဆုိင္မ်ား၊ ပစၥည္းမ်ား၊ စာရြက္စာတမ္းအေထာက္အထားမ်ားကုိ သက္ဆုိင္သူမ်ားသုိ႔အျမန္ဆုံးျပန္ေပးရန္၊ 

→ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားကုိ ရခုိင္မ်ားအတြက္အိမ္ေဆာက္ရန္အတင္းအဓမၼခုိင္းေစျခင္းမ်ားရပ္တန္႔ရန္ 

→ ၿပီးျပည့္စုံေသာလြတ္လပ္စြာေနထုိင္ခြင့္ရေရး၊ ေသာၾကာေန႔ စုေ၀း၀တ္ျပဳျခင္း မ်ား ကုိေသခ်ာ ၿပန္ လည္ ရရွိေစရန္ -- 

တုိ႔ကုိေတာင္းဆုိလုိက္သည္။ 

ထုိ႔အျပင္ကုလသမဂၢႏွင့္ႏုိင္ငံတကာအသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္းသုိ႔ေတာင္းဆုိရာ၌ 

→ကုလသမဂၢ၊ႏုိင္ငံတကာအသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္း၊ အုိအုိင္စီ၊ ဥေရာပသမဂၢ၊ အာဆီယံ၊ အေမရိကန္၊ ၿဗိတိန္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံႏွင့္အိမ္နီးခ်င္းမ်ားမွ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ျဖစ္ေပၚေနေသာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားအားလူမ်ဳိးေရး ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံမႈမူ၀ါဒကုိဖယ္ရွားေပးရန္ 

→ လြတ္လပ္ေသာႏုိင္ငံတကာသတင္းဌာနမ်ားကုိ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္၏ အမွန္ တကယ္ျဖစ္ေပၚေ နေသာ အေျခ အေန မ်ားကုိ ေလ့လာေစာင့္ၾကည့္ခြင့္ေပးရန္ 

→ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္းအၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ႔အား ဘက္မလုိက္ေသာ လြတ္လပ္ေသာ စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆး မႈမ်ားျပဳ လုပ္ေပးရန္ 

→အုိးမဲ့အိမ္မဲ့ျဖစ္သြားေသာဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကုိ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာေသာအေထာက္အပံ့မ်ားေပးရန္ -- တုိ႔ပါ၀င္သည္။ 

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္းျဖစ္ပြားေနေသာအၾကမ္းဖက္မႈရန္ကုိေရွာင္ရွားရန္ထြက္ေျပးလာေသာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡ သည္ မ်ားကုိ လူသား ခ်င္းစာနာ၍ ေခတၱခုိလႈံခြင့္ေပးရန္ႏွင့္ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာျပႆနာအတြက္ အုိအုိင္စီ၊ႏုိင္ငံတကာ အသုိင္းအ၀ုိင္းတုိ႔ႏွင့္ပူးေပါင္း၍ အေကာင္းဆုံးနည္းရွာေဖြရန္ -- တုိ႔ကုိ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏုိင္ငံ အစုိးရ ထံေတာင္း ဆုိလုိက္သည္။ 

By : RB News Desk 

Arakan is the Western most province of Burma. Historically, it has developed two major solitudes, Rakhine and the Rohingya. However, not known to the outside world that most Rakhines are a religiously motivated race conscious people. This is evident in their chosen word 'Rakhine' or 'Rakskhine' understood to have originated from the Pali word Rakhapura meaning the land of the people of Rakshasa (Rakshasa >demon) > Rakkha > Rakkhaing>Rakhaing> Rakhine).” Different from this, Rakhines however were known in history as the Arakanese or the Moghs. But from the 30's they have adopted the present ethnocentric name meant to “the preservation of their national heritage (a myo) and ethics (sila).” This whole idea in this ultra nationalist argument is about saving the land from the supposed “intruders.” This is repeatedly explained by the xenophobic Rakhine leaders to their fellow Rakhines using a symbolic demon like figure of an imaginary assassin man sitting in a tongi (theachet quarter almost hiding) with a knife to kill somebody, the "foreigner". This somebody is the non Rakhine, non Buddhist person in Arakan. This “intruder” “enemy” is no other person than the Rohingya living next door. With this understanding, Rakhine leader Aye Kyaw (on record confessed) successfully motivated the Burmese military leader Ne win to deprive Rohingyas their Burmese citizenship. This was done by a constitutional Act in 1982.

Aye Kyaw (now deceased), Aye Chan and Ashin Nayaka (a monk) evidently are self contradictory leaders but are master manipulators. While they deny Rohingya's birth rights but all three of them have become the naturalized citizens of Western countries. There have been anti Rohingya propaganda going on led by them for years. Largely due to their influence, Rohingyas lost their rights, now were not allowed to marry, were not allowed to move from one village to another. International community knowing this ongoing trend very well have tolerated this ongoing oppression. Aye Chan in a book several years ago even identified the Rohingyas as “Influx Viruses.” His and his colleague’s reactions to dehumanize the Rohingyas no doubt were the early signs of present genocide. 

For a while this intolerance using religious symbols was brewing genuine hatred between the two communities led to mass exodus of Rohingyas to Bangladesh in 1978 and 1991. Gradullay, to escape oppression, about a million Rohingyas left Arakan. There are about a million Rohingyas still live in Arakan. Like the previous massacres, the recent 2012 June machete massacres have all the marks of a religiously motivated racism. This time the xenophobes have also successfully hijacked the Buman group largely through the Rakhine monks in mobilizing the majority Buddhist opinion. Information available to us shows, this attack on the Rohingyas no doubt was centrally planned by Rakhine leaders, evident in the Rakhine distribution of anti Rohingya pamphlet in last May. In addition, see the Rakhine protest signs against Rohingyas, and comments against BBC report, and the online protests by the Rakhines demanding the complete elimination of the Rohingyas people from Arakan. At the same time, check the stab marks on the Rohingya victims, men, women and even children; they all have the mark of religious "Rakhasha knife"; Rakhasha believed to be guarding the land for the Rakhine Mogh people only. No doubt, this is a case of religiously motivated racism now continues with help of security forces, nasaka, and leading up to genocide.

If Burmese government and the international community wish to bring genuine democratic reforms and peace in Arakan, the first step for them would be to denounce Rakhine racism in Arakan in clear terms, at the same time return the Rohingyas their legitimate citizenship rights. It is evident in history that Rohingya are not the “foreigners” in Burma. Their citizenship rights were recognized by Aung San, the founding father of Burma and the first democratically elected leader UNu. Rohingya existence in Burma was recorded in history repeatedly and even found by Francis Buchanon as late as in 1799. Rohingyas didn't settle in Burma after 1824. They are the people of a multiethnic Burma. It is 2012, the matched massacres have widely exposed Burma's internal bleedings into open wounds. It is about time to stop racism and genocide in Arakan, NOW!!!!!!

ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ က စစ္ေတြ၊ ဘူးသီးေတာင္၊ ေမာင္ေတာ နဲ့ ရေသ့ေတာင္ ျမို့ ေတြ က အေျခအေန ေတြ ကို ဇြန္လ လကုန္ပိုင္း ေလာက္မွာ သြားေရာက္ ေလ့လာခဲ့တဲ့ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ အမို်းသား လူ့အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ဉီးစစ္ျမိုင္ က သူတို့ ရခိုင္တိုင္းရင္းသား ဖက္ ေကာ၊ ဘဂၤါလီ ေတြ ဖက္ေကာ ေမးျမန္းမႈ စံုစမ္းမႈ ေတြ လုပ္ခဲ့ေျကာင္း နဲ့ ဘယ္ဘက္ ကမွ အခုလို လံုျခံုေရး တပ္ဖဲြ့ဝင္ေတြက နိွပ္ကြပ္မႈ ေတြ လုပ္ေနေျကာင္း မေျပာျကေျကာင္း တုန့္ျပန္ ပါတယ္။ေမာင္ေတာ ဘက္မွာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ အျကမ္းဖက္မႈ ေတြ အတြင္း ရခိုင္တိုင္းရင္းသား ေတြ ေသေျကတာပိုမ်ား သလို စစ္ေတြဘက္က အျကမ္းဖက္ မႈ ေတြ မွာေတာ့ ဘဂၤါလီ ေတြ ပိုေသေျက ျကတယ္ လို့ လည္း သူ က ေျပာ ပါတယ္။လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ နိုင္ငံတကာ အဖဲြ့ေတြ၊ နိုင္ငံတကာ မီဒီယာ ေတြ အဲဒီ ေဒသ ကို သြားေရာက္ စံုစမ္း ေလ့လာခြင့္ နဲ့ ပတ္သက္လို့ ေမးျမန္း ရာမွာ ေတာ့ အခုအခိ်န္မွာ ၂ ဘက္ အေနနဲ့ စိတ္ခံစားခ်က္ ေတြ ျမင့္မားေနတာ၊ မေက်နပ္ခ်က္ ေတြ ျမင့္မား ေနတာ ေျကာင့္ အေျခအေန က မတည္ျငိမ္ေသးတဲ့ အတြက္ သြားေရာက္ဖို့ မသင့္ ေသးဖူးလို့ သူ ယူဆ ေျကာင္း ေျပာပါတယ္၊ သြားခြင့္ ပိတ္တာ မဟုတ္ ေျကာင္းလည္း သူ က ေျပာပါတယ္။

Source :ဘီဘီစီၿမန္မာပိုင္း

ၾကံ့ခိုင္ဖြံ႔ျဖိဳးေရးပါတီ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ဦးေဌးဦး

ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ နဲ႔ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ခ်္ ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ေဒသေတြမွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ အျငင္းပြားဖြယ္ အေျခအေနေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ႀကံ့ခုိင္ဖြံ႔ၿဖဳိးေရးပါတီရဲ႕ သေဘာထားအျမင္ေတြကို သိႏိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ ပါတီရဲ႕ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉး ဦးေဌးဦးကို RFA အဖြဲ႔သား ကုိဥာဏ္ဝင္းေအာင္က ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။

Source :RFA

ႏုိင္ငံေပါင္း ၅၇ႏိုင္ငံျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားေသာ အစၥလာမ္ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္း OIC အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴ အကၠမိလဒၵင္း အဲဟ္ဆန္ႏုိဂ္လူ က ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ လူနည္းစု မြတ္စလင္ မ်ားအေပၚ က်ဴးလြန္ေနမႈမ်ား ရပ္တန္႔ေအာင္ ကူညီေပးရန္ ျမန္မာဒီမုိကေရစီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား စာေရးသားေတာင္းဆိုလုိက္ပါသည္။

ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ႏုိဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္တဦးအေနႏွင့္ ကမာၻ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း ျပႆနာမ်ား ေျဖရွင္းရာကေန စတင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ လိမ့္မယ္ဟု ကြ်ႏ္ုပ္တို႔ ယံုၾကည္ေၾကာင္း ေရးသား ေဖၚျပထားသည္။

ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း မြတ္စလင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္မ်ားအၾကားျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ အဓိကရုဏ္းႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ျပီး ႏုိင္ငံတကာ စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရး အဖြဲ႔အား လက္ခံရန္ ၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာမီဒီယာမ်ား လူသားခ်င္းစာနာေထာက္ထားမႈ အကူအညီမ်ားကို လြတ္လပ္စြာ ၀င္ေရာက္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္ ေရြးေကာက္တင္ေျမာက္ခံ ဥပေဒျပဳအမတ္မ်ားကို OIC က ေတာင္းဆိုထားသည္။

၄င္းစာတြင္ အစၥလာမ္ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္း OIC ရံုးခ်ဳပ္ရွိရာ ေဆာ္ဒီအာေရးဘီယားႏိုင္ငံ ဂ်စ္ဒါျမိဳ႕သို႔ လာေရာက္လည္ ပတ္ရန္ ျမန္မာဒီမိုကေရ စီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား ဖိတ္ေခၚထားသည္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ၈သိန္းခန္႔ ေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိၾကျပီး ကမာၻ႕အဖိႏွိပ္ခံရဆံုးလူနည္းစု အျဖစ္ ကမာၻ႕ကုလသမဂၢအဖြဲ႔ၾကီးက သတ္မွတ္ထားသည္။

Source here

မၾကာမီကျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာစစ္ေတြၿမဳိ႕အဓိကရုဏ္း၌ အိမ္ေျခေပါင္း ၆၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ႏွင့္ ဗလီ (၃၅) လုံးဖ်က္ဆီး ခံခဲ့ရပါသည္။ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္အစုိးရမွ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ အိမ္ေျခ ၂၅၂၈ လုံးသာေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ၿပီး အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာ၀င္မ်ား၏ အိမ္ေျခ ၁၃၃၆ လုံးဟုေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း အမွန္တကယ္မွာ ၆၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ရွိသည္ဟု ျပည္တြင္းမွသတင္းေပးပုိ႔သည္။ အဆုိပါ သတင္းစာရွင္း လင္းပြဲတြင္အစၥလာမ္ ဘာသာ ၀င္မ်ား၏ ဗလီ (၇) လုံးသာအဖ်က္ဆီးခံခဲ့ရသည္ဟု အစုိးရတာ၀န္ရွိသူ မ်ားမွာေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ အမွန္အားျဖင့္ ဗလီ (၃၅) လုံးႏွင့္ သခၤ်ဳိင္း တစ္ခုဖ်က္ဆီး ခံခဲ့ရသည္။ 

ဖ်က္ဆီးခံရသည့္ရြာမ်ားမွာအိမ္ေျခမ်ားစာရင္း - 

· နာဇီရြာ - အိမ္ေျခ ၃၆၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ေအာင္ဘာလာရြာ - အိမ္ေျခ ၁၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ေစ်းေဟာင္းေမာလိပ္ - အိမ္ေျခ ၆၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ပလုပ္ေတာင္ - အိမ္ေျခ ၂၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· မက်ည္းၿမဳိင္ - အိမ္ေျခ ၈၀ ခန္႔ 

· စံျပရပ္ကြက္ - အိမ္ေျခ ၃၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ပုိက္သည္ရြာ - အိမ္ေျခ ၉၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· သံေတာ္လီ - အိမ္ေျခ ၃၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ဘုေမရြာ - အိမ္ေျခ ၁၀၀ ခန္႔ 

· ေက်ာင္းႀကီးလမ္း - အိမ္ေျခ ၁၅၀ ခန္႔ 

ဖ်က္ဆီးခံရသည့္ဗလီမ်ားစာရင္း - 

· နာဇီရြာ - ၁၆ လုံး 

· ေအာင္ဘာလာရြာ - ၂ လုံး 

· ေစ်းေဟာင္းေမာလိပ္ - ၁ လုံး 

· ပလုပ္ေတာင္ - ၁ လုံး 

· မက်ည္းၿမဳိင္ - ၁ လုံး 

· စံျပရပ္ကြက္ - ၃ လုံး 

· ပုိက္သည္ရြာ - ၅ လုံး 

· သံေတာ္လီ - ၂ လုံး 

· ဘုေမရြာ - ၃ လုံး 

· ေက်ာင္းႀကီးလမ္း - ၁ လုံး 

1. နာဇီအကြက္ (၈) - ဗလီ + မဒၵရာဆာ 

2. ၀ါးတန္းဗလီ 

3. မာရ္ကာဇ္ဗလီ 

4. သခၤ်ဳိင္းဗလီ + မဒၵရာဆာ 

5. ခ်န္ေဒၚရီရြာဗလီ 

6. မက်ည္းၿမဳိင္ဗလီ 

7. ကမန္ရြာဗလီ + မဒၵရာဆာ 

8. ခါနာအီႏုစ္ရြာဗလီ 

9. နယာဖာရာဗလီ 

10. သာလ္ဂခ်ားဖာရာဗလီ 

11. သခၤ်ဳိင္းရြာဗလီ 

12. ကမန္ရြာ(တြင္း) ဗလီ 

13. သခၤ်ဳိင္းရြာအ၀င္ဗလီ 

14. ဒရမ္ဖာရာဗလီ 

15. ကုန္းတန္းဗလီ + မဒၵရာဆာႀကီး 

16. ေက်ာက္ေတာ္၊ မနီဂါးရြာဗလီေဟာင္းႀကီး 

Rohingya Blogger News Desk 

Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director


(New York) – Burmese security forces have responded to sectarian violence in northern Arakan State with mass arrests and unlawful force against the Rohingya Muslim population, Human Rights Watch said today. Local police, the military, and a border security force known as Nasaka have committed numerous abuses in predominantly Muslim townships while combating the violence between the Rohingya and ethnic Arakan, who are predominantly Buddhist, that broke out in early June 2012.

Human Rights Watch urged the Burmese government to end arbitrary and incommunicado detention, and redeploy and hold accountable security forces implicated in serious abuses. Burmese authorities should ensure safe access to the area by the United Nations (UN), independent humanitarian organizations, and the media.

“The Burmese government needs to put an immediate end to the abusive sweeps by the security forces against Rohingya communities,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Anyone being held should be promptly charged or released, and their relatives given access.”

Burmese security forces have been implicated in killings and other abuses since the sectarian violence in northern Arakan State began, Human Rights Watch said. For instance, on June 23, in a village near the town of Maungdaw, security forces pursued and opened fire on two dozen Rohingya villagers who had been hiding from the violence in fields and forest areas. The total killed or wounded is unknown, but one survivor told Human Rights Watch that out of a group of eight young men who were fleeing, only two managed to escape unharmed after the security forces fired on them.

“Everybody was so scared,” he told Human Rights Watch. “We saw them entering and we left, trying to get out of the village. There was a canal, but some people could not cross it and the army shot at them and killed them.”

The recent sectarian violence began after an ethnic Arakan woman was allegedly raped and killed by three Muslim men on Ramri island in southern Arakan State in late May, which was followed by the June 3 killing of 10 Muslims by an Arakan mob in Toungop. On June 8, thousands of Rohingya rioted in the town of Maungdaw, destroying Arakan property and causing an unknown number of deaths. Groups of Rohingya subsequently committed killings and other violence elsewhere in the state, burning down Arakan homes and villages. Arakan groups, in some cases with the collusion of local authorities and police, committed violence against Rohingya communities, including killings and beatings, and burning down Muslim homes and villages.

On June 10, President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in northern Arakan State, which permits the armed forces to carry out arrests and detain people without fundamental due process protections. While the Burmese army has largely contained the sectarian violence, abuses by security forces against Rohingya communities appear to be on the upsurge in recent weeks, Human Rights Watch said.

Local police and the Nasaka, claiming to be searching for Rohingya criminal suspects involved in the sectarian strife, have conducted mass round-ups of Rohingya. On July 1, the state-run New Light of Myanmar reported that 30 Arakan suspects were arrested for the June 3 killings. Nevertheless, the mass arrests ongoing in northern Arakan State seem to be discriminatory, as the authorities in these townships do not appear to be investigating or apprehending Arakan suspected of criminal offenses, Human Rights Watch said. The total number of people arrested, their names, and any charges against them have not been reported.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that state security forces violently raided predominately Rohingya villages in Maungdaw township, firing on villagers and looting homes and businesses. In several villages, police and Nasaka dragged Rohingya from their homes and violently beat them. Witnesses in villages outside of Maungdaw said dozens of people, including women and children, were taken away in mid-June in Nasaka trucks to unknown locations, and have not been heard from since. Mass arrests of Rohingya have also taken place in Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships. Witnesses in Maungdaw township described several instances in which Arakan men wielding sticks and swords accompanied the security forces in raids on Rohingya villages. A 27-year-old Rohingya man told Human Rights Watch, “Twenty-five of my relatives have been arrested.… I saw with my own eyes, two of my nephews were taken by the military and Nasaka. They tried to hide themselves in the large embankments in the paddy fields, but some Arakan found them and stabbed them with long knives. They stabbed them and took them to the jail.”

Human Rights Watch documented the destruction of Buddhist temples, mosques, and thousands of Arakan and Rohingya houses that were burned to the ground during the sectarian violence, leaving an estimated 90,000 people displaced and taking segregated refuge in temporary camps and community sites. Hundreds of Rohingya fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, where many were forced back by Bangladeshi border guards.

“The violence in Arakan State has devastated both the Rohingya and Arakan communities, but government efforts to identify and arrest those responsible should not result in further abuses,” Pearson said. “The sectarian violence and state of emergency provides no excuse for the security forces to continue their past record of abuses and discrimination against the Rohingya community.”

The Burmese government restricts international access to northern Arakan State – an area comprising the predominantly Muslim townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung – and severely curtails freedom of movement for Rohingya residents. The Nasaka’s long history of arbitrary detentions, torture, and other ill-treatment of Rohingya detainees heightens concerns about the recent mass arrests, Human Rights Watch said.

The government has not allowed independent investigations in the affected areas since the violence began. On June 6, Thein Sein ordered a high-level government committee to investigate the causes of the violence, identify the perpetrators, and issue recommendations. The committee is scheduled to present its findings by August 30. However, there are concerns about the independence and objectivity of the investigation committee, given that it includes local security forces and Arakan State officials, Human Rights Watch said.

The government should invite the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Quintana, to Arakan State to conduct an urgent visit to investigate the violence and conduct of the security forces, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should immediately disclose the location of all detention centers, provide the names of all detainees, bring them promptly before a judge, and allow independent humanitarian agencies access to all facilities.

Human Rights Watch urged the United States, European Union, ASEAN, Australia, Japan, and other countries concerned about human rights in Burma to press the government to allow an independent and thorough investigation of the violence, and to ensure that the basic rights of those detained are respected. They should also call upon the Bangladesh authorities not to return or push back those fleeing violence and to provide them temporary protection.

“The Burmese government should demonstrate that the political changes taking place in the country extend to the ethnic areas, and that abuses by local authorities will not be tolerated,” Pearson said. “This means stopping the violations, holding abusive officials to account, and promptly permitting an independent investigation.”

Source : HRW NewYork

Although it is poor practice as a member of the international community and detrimental for the global image to send away refugees, governments often claim that it is imperative for state security and for the protection of citizens. In this kind of security architecture, borders are strictly controlled and identity differences are accentuated and securitized.

Burma’s fractured narrative

A state that had gone through more than 60 years of conflict, during which more than 30 insurgent, non-state armed groups have actively fought against the Burmese government is bound to have multi-layered internal divisions and security anxieties.

The intense militarisation processes penetrated Burma’s everyday discourses including its social, economic, cultural and political systems, norms and priorities. The Tatmadaw’s strategies in the guise of modernisation, articulated as ‘Burmanisation’, was in effect a process of ‘homogenisation’ forcing out people whose appearance, religious belief, language and everyday practices reproduced their identity as the ‘other’ and, I would argue, the enemy within.

By deceptively producing the Muslims as the internal threat, the military regime sought to portray itself as the protector of its citizens. Ironically, while some of the other undemocratic and authoritarian practices of the Tatmadaw have been challenged, the regime had largely succeeded in wiping out the idea of including Rohingyas in a multiethnic, heterogeneous national consciousness. Through state-sponsored exclusion policies, Rohingyas were made aliens in their own land.

“The regime had largely succeeded in wiping out the idea of including Rohingyas in a multiethnic, heterogeneous national consciousness”

Key exclusion policies and strategies were implemented after the military coup resulting in the restriction of free movement in 1962; the promulgation of the Emergency Immigration Act designed to prevent people entering from India, China and Bangladesh in 1974; the census program, Nagamin, to check identification cards and take action against illegal aliens in 1977; and the 1982 Citizenship Law following the 1978 exodus when many Rohingyas returned or attempted to return to Burma.

The State Peace and Development Council repeatedly invoked its moral authority through the lens of national security and state sovereignty in dealing with Rohingyas. There is of course a historical context to it, which could perhaps be explained through the ‘good’ citizens model. A key source of anxiety had been the perceived disloyalty to the idea of a Burmese statehood by Rohingyas, such as when the political elite sought to be an independent state and made deals with the outgoing British Raj; when the community was divided in its support of the local and national political shifts; and when the armed resistance began.

Rohingyas taking up arms have generated a different source of anxiety under the pretext of the ‘war on terror’, unlike the other non-state armed groups such as the Karen National Liberation Army, which has roughly 3,000 to 4,000 troops, or the Shan State Army-South, which has between 6,000 and 7,000 troops.

The divided system in various ethnic states such as in Karen state, Shan state and Mon state in effect gives the control to the Tatmadaw and those insurgency factions, which have entered into recent agreements with the Burmese state. All these non-state armed actors claim to be the champions of their groups’ rights and hold the view that it is necessary to take up arms against Burma.

Similar to these groups, the Rohingya militant movement also claims to be the sole protector of the Muslim Arakanese/Rohingyas. Unlike the other armed groups, the sharp reactions to their claims also come from various democratic platforms of Burma.

One of the leading groups, the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) agreed to ban the use of anti-personnel mines and victim activated explosive devices and signed the Geneva Call Deed of Commitment for Adherence to a Total Ban on anti-personnel Mines and for Cooperation in Mine Action (DoC) on 5 December 2003.

A document that was leaked in early 2012 from 10 October 2002 claimed the ARNO had links with various terrorist networks. The ARNO was operating from Chittagong in Bangladesh and allegedly had contacts with groups on the Thai-Burma border. The document noted that the government of Bangladesh instructed the ARNO in May 2002 to move its bases from southeastern Bangladesh, which resulted in 195 Arakan Army members turning themselves in to the Burmese.

Over the last decade, the ARNO has significantly weakened in numbers and leaned towards moderate politics unlike some of the other splinter groups that attracted the more radical, extremist factions in the country.

For example, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation that broke away from the Rohingya Patriotic Front in 1980s, and primarily operated across the border in Bangladesh, attracted a number of radical and militant Rohingya activists. RSO’s links with extremist groups in Bangladesh and associations with the international terrorist networks have been reported in media, which fuelled prejudice against all the Rohingyas.

According to reports, the Bangladesh Army in a few major operations almost disbanded the RSO as early as 2005. There are also a few small groups such as the Central Rohingya Jammatul Ulama, the Ittehadul Mujahiddial, the Rohingya Islamic Liberation Organisation and the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front. These groups joined the Democratic Alliance of Burma in May 1992, which is virtually inactive now.

The Burmese and Bangladeshi authorities in reality take advantage of the global climate of fear and anxiety that have securitised the discourse concerning refugees, in particular Muslim refugees. This ‘refugees as threat’ perception matters when it comes to the Rohingyas because the discourse actually drives policies and public support of specific policies. Those who remained in camps in Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable, since the barbed wire camps had their unique violent everyday narratives while the host communities from outside perceived the camps as breeding grounds for militancy.

The misleading and prejudicial information fed by the hostile state and non-state actors and the media in both Burma and Bangladesh created an image of Rohingya militancy as a massive security threat which in reality is simply not accurate.

The massive presence of the security sector in the North Arakan state has seen an increase in sexual and gender-based violence. In particular, the Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye (NaSaKa), established in 1992, has systematically targeted the Rohingyas.

NaSaKa members and soldiers have targeted Rohingya girls and women and many of their attacks have been racially motivated. Various human rights reports also noted how race was one of the major instigators of sexual violence against Rohingya women and children.

The strict licensing system to restrict movements, deportation and forced labour, land grabbing and torture have made the living conditions harsh for Rohingyas in their own homeland. Racial hatred had been a huge factor in the human rights abuses perpetrated against Rohingyas.

During personal interviews taken over the span of the last few years, Rohingya refugees have talked about the use of derogatory and humiliating words by the security forces. The more refined officials use newly accepted terms concealed beneath other politically correct categories accentuating difference such as culture, ethnicity and religion.
A recent report states that in 2009, in an open letter to other diplomats Burma’s consul general in Hong Kong, who is now a UN ambassador, described the Rohingya as ‘ugly as ogres’ and compared their ‘dark brown skin to that of the fair and soft ethnic Burmese majority’.

What is really demoralising for human rights activism is that members of ethnic communities, who have been oppressed for decades by the military regimes, also despise the Rohingya.

Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner who was released in January, has said that the Rohingya should not be mistreated but stressed that they were not an ethnic group of Burma.

There are numerous political/human rights/women’s groups and activists who firmly believe that Rohingyas do not belong to their Burma. Burmese women’s networks, for example, which are champions of human rights and gender sensitive strategies often deliberately exclude Rohingya women’s rights activists following obstructions made by particular Arakanese women’s rights groups.

When I questioned activists on the Thai-Burma border why Rohingya activists were not included in their programs, one of the most common responses that I heard was that the Arakanese and Rohingya leadership needed to resolve internal issues first. The lack of political will for a variety of reasons and also to some extent the capacity of other ethnic groups to intervene had also compounded the problem.

All these events took place just when Aung San Suu Kyi was about to leave the country for her European tour on 13 June. Some criticised her for leaving Burma during such a sensitive period. Suu Kyi, during her trip in Thailand and in Europe, has stressed that the rule of law is necessary to bring stability in Burma.

Responding to a question on the citizenship issue of Rohingyas at the Oslo Forum, Suu Kyi pointed out: “We are not certain exactly what the requirements of citizenship law are…, If we were very clear as to who are the citizens of the country under the citizenship law and who qualify, then there wouldn’t be this problem… We have to have rule of law, and we have to know what the law is. We have to make sure that it is properly implemented”.

The citizenship question remains at the core of Rohingyas’ persecution, statelessness and insecurity. Sadly, the winds of change in Burma do not automatically signal a change in the question of legality and illegality for Rohingyas. Their lack of bargaining power and the deep resentment and racist attitude of various key stakeholders towards Rohingyas indicate that this is not going to be resolved on a priority basis in the near future by Burma’s leaders either.

While six boats carrying the distraught and traumatised refugees from Sittwe were stranded on the Naf River, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Dipu Moni stated in a parliamentary session that this was an internal issue of Burma, which was not persecuting the Rohingya and that Bangladesh had no obligation to provide humanitarian assistance because it was not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. She further stated that Bangladesh had to protect its national security.

Similar internal displacement was caused after communal violence erupted in Burma in 1942 that also spilled over into the whole of Arakan. The Buddhist Arakanese and the Muslim Rohingya were engaged in a bitter battle after which the Arakanese moved to the south and the Rohingyas to the north – including 22,000 who crossed the border to Bengal. The second wave of migration occurred following a nationwide census project, Nagamin, during which more than 200,000 fled across the border in Bangladesh.

From 1991 to 1992, more than 270,000 Rohingya refugees crossed the border from Burma. With them they brought their experiences of horrific violence, forced labour, rape, executions and torture.

Bangladesh initially welcomed the persecuted refugees. The country’s leadership viewed the issue as a short-term problem and wanted to resolve it through bilateral negotiations with Burma. The Bangladeshi government saw it as a moral boost to be offering assistance for once and not seeking it. Initially, the country welcomed the UNHCR, the Red Cross and various other international agencies to assist the refugees.

But soon, the strain on localities where the camps were constructed started to worry the ruling regimes. Over the last two decades, public support in Bangladesh has significantly decreased and subsequent governments have been less sympathetic to the refugees.

The recent anti-Rohingya xenophobic attitude displayed by Bangladeshis is primarily coming from the ultra-nationalistic front, which claims that the Rohingyas are being supported and armed by Jamaa’t-i-Islami, the party that questioned and violently opposed the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. Those who hold this view believe that the Rohingyas would also be used as a vote bank for the next election. Burmese propaganda also implied that the fleeing people were mostly Islamic insurgents added to the anxiety of the Bangladesh government.

This accusation took the consideration away from the inhumane condition of the Rohingya living into various camps, by making them a national security concern. The UNHCR viewed repatriation as the most logical response and in many instances resorted to involuntary repatriation of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.


“The Burmese and the Bangladeshi government have strategically employed misperceptions, fears and prejudice to portray all Rohingyas as terrorists”

Currently, there are 26,311 Rohingya recognised refugees living in various camps in border areas. Although the UNHCR is providing support to 21,716 of the Rohingya refugees living in camps, the Bangladeshi government has repeatedly denied UNHCR requests to set up self-reliance activities both inside and outside the camps. According to the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC), there are about 200,000 undocumented refugees.

Further, the increase in numbers of undocumented Rohingyas settled in Chittagong, particularly in the hills, have angered local communities.

Meghna Guhathakurta, a researcher studying the Rohingyas, noted in a personal conversation: “Rohingyas have come in (Bangladesh) anyway over the years and have (now) settled in Bandarban only because they have been chased away from the [plains]. The construction boom in Cox’s Bazar is one of the main attractions, so they would naturally want to settle in the [plains], but [after] meeting hostility in the host community they therefore are driven to the woods and hills.”

The Chittagong Hill Tracts, which is home to indigenous Bangladeshis, has yet to recover from its own experience of a protracted conflict that formally ended with signing of an accord in 1997. Continual human rights abuses, major displacements of indigenous communities and land grabbing by illegal Bengali settlers from the plains have produced multi-layered insecurities for its indigenous population.

Rohingya migration to the CHT adds to these insecurities as reports spread concerning the Rohingya’s involvement in illegal logging, drug trafficking and various unlawful activities. However, it is actually the security sector and the Bengali settlers who run these activities and take advantage of Rohingya labour in the CHT.

With regard to the legality argument, Bangladesh needs to adhere to international norms and laws. The Partition of India displaced millions from West Bengal and Bihar who took refuge in East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh. An estimated 10 million people were forcibly displaced to India during its independence in 1971. A large number returned when it became independent. Since breaking away from Pakistan, it was the home of 300,000 Biharis who became stateless and were interned in 66 camps within the country, at least until 2007.

It has a large indigenous population, which were displaced during development projects and/or during the conflict in the CHT. Also, every year, thousands of people are internally displaced in Bangladesh due to floods and waterlogging. Thus, one could argue that its population has a variety of experiences of displacement and the nation-state had been built by refugees and a history of wars.

Yet, it doesn’t have any legal regime that could protect people who are refugees, internally displaced or stateless. As mentioned above, Bangladesh is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol. However, it is party to a number of international human rights instruments, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and International Conventions.

Bangladesh is bound to offer protection to the refugees by Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Article 22 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child; Articles 2, 3 (this is paralleled to non-refoulement of the 1951 Convention) and 6 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; Article 44 and 45 of the fourth Geneva Conventions. Most importantly, Bangladesh’s Constitution in its Preamble pledges to protect fundamental human rights of all.

Both the Burmese and the Bangladeshi government have strategically employed misperceptions, fears and prejudice to portray all Rohingyas as terrorists. Neither the states nor in many cases, the human rights and political activists from these states, separate armed groups activities from the plight of the civilian Rohingyas.

Following the forced migration in 1991 and 1992, both the states and, to some extent the UNHCR, provided inadequate information and suggested that it would make more sense to send the refugees back ‘home’.

Bangladesh ignored their stateless status in Burma and the UNHCR stated that refugees wouldn’t be any worse in Burma. As repeated events of desperate attempts by Rohingya refugees demonstrate, power inequalities, repatriation politics and the discourse of national security not only made the Rohingya community more vulnerable but also denied them the ‘right to have rights’.

- Dr Bina D’Costa, Fellow, Politics and International Affairs, School of Culture, History and Language, the Australian National University. She is currently working on a manuscript focusing on the edifice of political violence in refugee communities in South Asia.

Source here

During the raid by a joint group of Police, Lun-Htain (Security Forces), Sa-Ra-Pha (State Affairs Security) and local Rakhine extremists in Maung Ni village yesterday (04.07.2012), seven Rohingya men were mercilessly killed and approximately 40 Rohingya men were tortured almost to death and taken away to unknown locations. It was reported that all along the way, blood were falling like rains from the trucks loaded with Rohingyas. According to people in Arakan, the authorities have plans to do more such barbaric killings in other villages too. 

This morning, NaSaKa arrested almost 30 terrified Rohingya men who were trying to escape the massacres and flee to Bangladesh with three small boats, while Bangladesh Border Security Guards arrested almost 10 Rohingya men with a boat in Bangladesh. It is said that NaSaKa kept these Rohingya men along the Naf river not allowing them to go back to their homes. More news on this situation are being followed. (Rahim reporting from Maung Ni village, a victim who escaped the terrible incident on a close shave) 

Immigration department and NaSaKa of southern Maungdaw has started checking the census and counting the number of people in every family in every village. So far, three people were arrested in suspicion in Gojjondiya village of Pading. Some are afraid of going to NaSaKa for the check. Subsequently, NaSaKa are cancelling their names from the census list accusing that they ran away to Bangladesh. Worse still, it has been known that authorities have been arresting Rohingya men in each and every village and those who were taken away never came back. Therefore, during the NaSaKa check, they (NaSaKa) force the remaining members of their families to say that they left the country. When the people say they were arrested by the authorities, NaSaKa and police torture them. 

During the raid at a part of Baggona village on 04.07.2012, several men were arrested and tortured both men and women in inhumane ways. A Rohingya man from Baggonna village reported that the way they are being tortured by the Burmese authorities is worse than the way Jews were done by Hitler's Nazis. He further mentioned that Nazis used to kill the Jews on the spot. But Burmese authorities are torturing Rohingyas by using different means until their ends. (Reported by A. Fais from Baggona village on 05.07.2012) 

On 1st July 2012, a joint force of NaSaKa and Military raided Nurullah Village and arrested 40 Rohingya men. And these people have not come back yet. During the raid, almost 100 houses were looted and several women were raped. However, it is too difficult for one to know the exact number of women being raped as Rohingyas try to cover up such cases in fear of losing dignity and respect in the society. Besides, it is reported that Rohingyas are being hunted like animals by the the Military and Nasaka. (Reported by a Rohingya on condition of anonymity) 

It is also reported that this plot to wipe out all Rohingyas from Arakan is supported by the Rakhine leaders in the country and abroad. They (the leaders of Rakhines) are saying "let's wipe out all these people. If International Court of Justice punish us for these killings, we (a few leaders of Rakhines) will plead guilty and take the punishments on behalf all Rakhine people. By no means, they (International Court of Justice) can punish all the Rakhines for the killings of these people." So, by this statement, it is very obvious that they have genocidal tendency and malicious propaganda against Rohingyas, who want to extinguish all Rohingyas from Arakan. 

Therefore, this is the high time for international communities to a stand to either take any possible actions to save Rohingyas from being extinguished or help Burmese authorities and Rakhine mass murderers to wipe out all Rohingyas as quickly as possible because Rohingyas are no longer able to bear up the inhumane tortures at the hands of these evils in human forms. 

Reports compiled by M.S. Anwar (RB Correspondent) 

Ihsanoglu asks Aung San Suu Kyi to play a role in ending the violence in Arakan The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu reached out to Aung San Suu Kyi, Chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Myanmar, Nobel Peace Laureate to play a positive role in bringing an end to the violence that has afflicted Arakan State.

OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the 57-member group of Muslim nations, has sought help of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Laureate and chairperson of the National League for Democracy in Burma, towards seeking an end to violence against the Rohingya Muslims in that country’s Arakan region.
The OIC secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has in order to reach out to the popular Burmese politician written her a letter requesting to play a positive role in bringing an end to the violence that has afflicted Arakan State. “As a Nobel Peace Laureate, we are confident that the first step of your journey towards ensuring peace in the world would start from your own doorstep and that you would play a positive role in bringing an end to the violence that has afflicted Arakan State,” it said.
The official suggested she could make the government in Naypyidaw agree to an international inquiry into the recent violence, granting free access to humanitarian aid groups and international media in Arakan as well as expediting the return of the victims to their respective properties. He expressed concern over the “unabated and continuous violation of Rohingya rights in Burma where thousands of Rohingyas were killed, injured and displaced both internally and externally.”

***
SC to hear plea against BSF
New Delhi, July 4: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea for probe into the alleged extra-judicial killings by the Border Security Force in the West Bengal border area.
A bench of justices B S Chauhan and Swata-nter Kumar deferred the hearing for Monday when the matter would be taken up along with a similar petition raising the issue of extra-judicial killings.
Petitioner Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha, a Kolkata NGO alleged that there are more than 200 cases where the BSF personnel indulged in extra-judicial killings, torture in the border area and those cases were never probed by the state police.
“The present case will show, the procedure followed by the West Bengal Police makes a mockery of the rule of law. This petition pertains to the cases of torture or torture followed by extra-judicial executions of more than 200 Indian nationals by the Border Security Force between 2005 and 2011,” said petitioner’s counsel Colin Gonsalves.
“In over 100 cases, there are eye witnesses to the BSF taking into custody the person concerned and there are eye witnesses to the torture in custody of the person concerned leading to his death,” he further said. — PTI

Source here

 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.