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Cox’s Bazar, July 2 (UNB) - The government on Thursday banned the activities of three international NGOs for encouraging the Rohingya refuges crossing the border from Myanmar.

The government has asked France's Doctors without Borders (MSF), Action Against Hunger (ACF) and Britain's Muslim Aid UK to suspended their activities on charge of alluring the refugees of relief materials and thus encouraging their influx into Bangladesh.

Contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Cox’s Bazar Joynul Bari confirmed the government decision and said the three organisations were providing aid to the illegal Rohingya refugees without permission of the NGO Affairs Bureau.

“They were providing negative information to the international media about Bangladesh tarnishing the image of the country,” he said.

Denying the allegations, Muslim Aid Teknaf area officer Sarwar Alam told UNB that they have suspended their activities as per the order of the district administration but it will take at least two weeks to fully stop their activities in Teknaf.

He said, “If we suspend our activities here it’ll create tension in the Rohingya camps and the border area.”

Meanwhile, Upazila Nirbahi Officer ANM Nazimuddin said, “We’ve preparations to face the situation if any crisis is created due to the suspension of the activities of the three NGOs.”

Around 300,000 Rohingya Muslims are living in the country, the vast majority in Cox's Bazar, after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. About 30,000 are registered refugees who live in two camps run by the United Nations.

Recently, Bangladesh has turned away boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya fleeing the violence in Myanmar despite pressure from the United States and rights groups to grant them refuge.
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Bangladesh Orders Aid Groups to Suspend Services to Rohingya Refugees

Bangladesh is ordering international humanitarian groups to stop providing aid to ethnic Rohingya refugees who have fled deadly communal violence in neighboring Burma.

Diderik Van Halsema, a spokesperson for Doctor's Without Borders, (MSF) tells VOA his organization is one of three groups that have reportedly been ordered to suspend their services to the Rohingya along the border with Burma.

“At MSF we do confirm that we have received a letter from the Bangladeshi authorities requesting us to stop our activities at our project in Cox's Bazaar district in Bangladesh. We are currently discussing this matter with the Bangladeshi authorities, so obviously we don't want to influence those conversations and we await the outcome of that.”

Another group, Muslim Aid UK, told the French news agency that officials ordered them to stop their so-called “illegal” services in the same area because they were supposedly “encouraging an influx of Rohingya refugees” from Burma.

Sectarian violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Burma's western Rakhine state has left dozens dead since June. Rights groups say Burmese security forces have also carried out a campaign of killings and mass arrests against the Rohingya population.

The Rohingya are considered by most Burmese to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and most are denied citizenship there. But they are also denied citizenship in Bangladesh, which argues the group has been living in Burma for centuries.

Despite pressure from the United States and rights groups, Bangladesh has turned away boats carrying scores of Rohingyas who are trying to escape the violence in Burma.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a report saying that Burmese security forces have committed killings, rape, and mass arrests against Rohingya in the aftermath of the communal violence.

Burma's government, which has a long history of violence against ethnic minorities, has denied that security forces have committed abuses against the Rohingya, saying they exercised “maximum restraint” in dealing with the conflict.

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Bangladesh bans foreign charities helping Rohingya
(AFP) 

DHAKA — Bangladesh has ordered three international charities to stop providing aid to Rohingya refugees who cross the border to flee persecution and violence in Myanmar, an official said Thursday.

France's Doctors without Borders (MSF) and Action Against Hunger (ACF) as well as Britain's Muslim Aid UK have been told to suspend their services in the Cox's Bazaar district bordering Myanmar, local administrator Joynul Bari said.

"The charities have been providing aid to tens of thousands of undocumented Rohingya refugees illegally. We asked them to stop all their projects in Cox's Bazaar following directive from the NGO Affairs Bureau," he told AFP.

Bari said the charities "were encouraging an influx of Rohingya refugees" from across the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state in the wake of recent sectarian violence that left at least 80 people killed.

The charities have provided healthcare, training, emergency food and drinking water to the refugees living in Cox's Bazaar since the early 1990s.

MSF runs a clinic near one of the Rohingya camp which provides services to 100,000 people.

Speaking a Bengali dialect similar to one in southeast Bangladesh, the Rohingyas are Muslims seen as illegal immigrants by the Buddhist-majority Myanmar government and many Burmese.

They are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

Golam Sarwar, a senior official of Muslim Aid UK in Bangladesh, confirmed to AFP that his group had stopped its Rohingya project following the order.

The government says some 300,000 Rohingya Muslims are living in the country, the vast majority in Cox's Bazaar, after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. About 30,000 are registered refugees who live in two camps run by the United Nations.

In recent weeks, Bangladesh has turned away boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya fleeing the violence in Myanmar despite pressure from the United States and rights groups to grant them refuge.

Myanmar security forces opened fire on Rohingya Muslims, committed rape and stood by as rival mobs attacked each other during the recent wave of sectarian violence, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The authorities failed to protect both Muslims and Buddhists and then "unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya", the group said in a report.

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In Myanmar, government forces stood by while Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists were slain in devastating rounds of violence and retribution, then joined in by killing, raping and rounding up the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on the devastating sectarian attacks.

As the long-isolated country takes steps toward reform and gains increasing acceptance abroad, human rights activists and analysts have warned that ethnic tensions are one of its most stubborn problems and must be addressed before the country can forge a sustainable peace.

Violence exploded in June after a Buddhist woman was reportedly raped by Muslim men, sparking a deadly cycle of attacks and reprisals as mobs from both Rakhine and Rohingya communities ransacked villages and killed their people. Witnesses on both sides told the group that security forces had failed to protect them in the early days of the attacks.

“The government could have stopped this,” two men -- – one Rakhine, the other Rohingya -- told Human Rights Watch.

The attacks killed 78 people, according to Myanmar officials, but human rights groups believe the death toll was much higher. As the carnage and chaos wore on, security forces joined in against the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch found.

While Rakhine mobs burned thousands of homes in the city of Sittwe, police and paramilitary forces opened fire on Rohingya, the report found. In another area, border guards and soldiers shot at Rohingya villagers as they tried to flee and looted food and valuables from their emptied homes.

Meanwhile, the world has been cheering reform in Myanmar, which has led to the lifting of sanctions and opening up of investment, the human rights group lamented. Just after the report was released, the World Bank announced it would resume assistance to the country, ushering in up to $85 million in grants. The United States began allowing new investments in Myanmar last month.

“The international community appears to be blinded by a romantic narrative of sweeping change in Burma, signing new trade deals and lifting sanctions even while the abuses continue,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

In the aftermath of the attacks, President Thein Sein reportedly said the only solution to the strife was to expel the Rohingya or send them to refugee camps. The government has clamped down on access to the conflict zones, especially Rohingya areas, hindering humanitarian aid, and hundreds of Rohingya men and boys have been detained, the report said.

Myanmar has rejected accusations that its forces carried out abuses and said the violence was not linked to religious or ethnic persecution, “as the victims of violence are both from Buddhist and Muslim communities.”

“The government has exercised maximum restraint in order to restore law and order in those particular places” affected by violence, the Foreign Affairs ministry said in a statement Monday.

The country also argued against "attempts by some quarters to politicize and internationalize this situation as a religious issue," an apparent reference to outrage in many Muslim countries over the assaults on Rohingya.

The damning report comes as United Nations human rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana is visiting western Myanmar to investigate the violence. More than 800 people are reportedly still in detention over the unrest, including several U.N. and other international workers accused of taking part in the clashes.

As it edges toward reform, Myanmar has halted hostilities with some ethnic rebels, but the Rohingya are in effect excluded from citizenship and remain victims of systemic discrimination. The United Nations estimates that 80,000 people are still displaced around the towns of Sittwe and Maungdaw. Some Muslims have told the U.N. refugee agency they fear to go home.
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BROUK has received reliable information that the Burmese authorities have tried to deceive UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Mr Tomas Ojea Quintana during his visit to Arakan State.

This morning BROUK received the following information from the ground:

The Maungdaw authorities dressed some Hindu youths as Rohingya religious students with Islamic Molvi dress to meet the delegations where they explained about the situation of Rohingya life, in line with the authorities’ wishes. All the Hindu youths are from Shwezarr village tract, Maungdaw. 

At least 500 people have been arrested since the violence. Government authorities moved those arrested Rohingyas from Buthidaung Jail to an unknown location just prior to Quintana visit to the Jail. The relatives of the prisoners do not know where those people were taken after Buthidaung jail. 

Many people are living in an open area without any shelter, but sometimes they were brought to designated places and had their pictures taken to show that they were in safe places. 

Farmers have been forced to go to the paddy fields in Maungdaw because of the UN envoy’s visit, not because they wanted to do it. 
Students and their parents were threatened by the Government authorities to send their children to school during Quintana visit. 

BROUK President Tun Khin said “I hope UN Rapporteur Thomas Quintana will find out the real facts and see through the authorities’ fabrications. I would encourage Quintana to visit again to investigate independently the Arakan violence. It is very important that the UN Rapporteur should recommend that a UN Commission of Inquiry is established into the silent killing fields of Arakan.” 

Tun Khin said, “ASEAN should play a key role to protect Rohingyas. EU, UN and UK governments have kept silent where Rohingyas are dying day by day as there is no food and water for them. The government is not only blocking aid, but the authorities are also restricting people trading and buying food and water. We would like to recommend that the UN Special Rapporteur supports UN humanitarian intervention in Arakan.”

For more information please contact Tun Khin +447888714866
Myanmar security forces have killed, raped or carried out mass arrests of Rohingya Muslims after deadly sectarian riots in the northeast in June, a rights group has said, adding the authorities had done little to prevent the initial unrest.

Aid workers were blocked and in some cases arrested in a government crackdown on the largest group of stateless people in Southeast Asia, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report on Wednesday.

The report comes after a week of arson and machete attack by both ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingyas in Rakhine state.

Based on 57 interviews with Rakhines and Rohingyas, the report seeks to shed light on a conflict that exposed deep-rooted communal animosity and put the spotlight on promises by the civilian government in office since 2011 to protect human rights after decades of brutal army rule.

"Burmese security forces failed to protect the Arakan [Rakhine] and Rohingya from each other and then unleashed a campaign of violence and mass round-ups against the Rohingya," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"The government claims it is committed to ending ethnic strife and abuse, but recent events in Arakan State demonstrate that state-sponsored persecution and discrimination persist."

Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin said on Monday the authorities had exercised "maximum restraint" in restoring law and order and that the rioting was not fuelled by religious persecution.

He rejected what he said were attempts to "politicise and internationalise the situation as a religious issue", adding that the government was eager to promote "racial harmony among different nationalities".

In veiled criticism of the United States and European Union, which praised the government for its handling of the unrest, Adams said the international community had been "blinded by a romantic narrative of sweeping change" in Myanmar.

Forced resettlement

The country formerly called Burma has a diverse ethnic and religious make-up, but the Rohingya Muslims are not included by the government.

There are at least 800,000 Rohingyas in the country but they are not recognised as one of its ethnic groups.

Neighbouring Bangladesh does not accept them and pushed boatloads back out to sea when they tried to flee the unrest.

Myanmar President Thein Sein said in June the government was only responsible for third-generation Rohingyas whose families had arrived before independence in 1948 and that it was impossible to accept those who had "illegally entered" Myanmar.

He recommended that the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR take care of them in camps or "resettle them" in third countries.

UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres replied it could only resettle refugees that fled from one country to another.

'Virulent hatred'

The riots followed two brutal incidents in Rakhine state: the May 28 rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by three Rohingya males, who were sentenced to death, and the June 3 lynching in response of 10 non-Rohingya Muslims travelling on a bus.

Human Rights Watch said police and troops did not intervene to stop the mobs from beating the Muslims to death. During the riots that followed, it said some Rohingyas who tried to flee or put out fires at their homes were shot at by paramilitaries.

It called for the government to end abuses, grant full humanitarian access and invite in international monitors. Access to the area remains restricted.

Michael Vatikiotis, the Asian director for the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, said that while the primary factor in the recent violence is "the virulent hatred of the Rohingya people by the Rakhinese", this is by no means an isolated issue.

"Violence between the two communities is something that has happened in the past. This is compounding an already serious issue that affects not only Myanmar and Bangladesh, but the region as a whole."

Vatikiotis adds that claims of the state of emergency in the country being used as a cover for various abuses are "very easy to make," but says judgment should be reserved until access into the area is once again granted.

"It is very difficult to make an objective assessment because of the lack of access to the region."

Thein Sein is in a tight spot. Concessions toward the Rohingyas could prove unpopular among the general public, but perceived ill-treatment risks angering Western countries that have eased sanctions in response to human rights reforms.

Minister of Border Affairs Thein Htay says 858 people have been detained for involvement in the violence, including five UNHCR staff and a U.N. World Food Programme employee. It was unclear how many of the total were Rohingya or ethnic Rakhine.


The Foreign Ministry has said 77 people died and 109 were injured during the violence, and nearly 5,000 homes burnt down.

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“The Government Could Have Stopped This”

Burma: Violence in Arakan State

Burmese security forces failed to protect the Arakan and Rohingya from each other and then unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya. The government claims it is committed to ending ethnic strife and abuse, but recent events in Arakan State demonstrate that state-sponsored persecution and discrimination persist.
Brad Adams, Asia director


(Bangkok) – Burmese security forces committed killings, rape, and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to protect both them and Arakan Buddhists during deadly sectarian violence in western Burma in June 2012. Government restrictions on humanitarian access to the Rohingya community have left many of the over 100,000 people displaced and in dire need of food, shelter, and medical care.

The 56-page report, “‘The Government Could Have Stopped This’: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State,” describes how the Burmese authorities failed to take adequate measures to stem rising tensions and the outbreak of sectarian violence in Arakan State. Though the army eventually contained the mob violence in the state capital, Sittwe, both Arakan and Rohingya witnesses told Human Rights Watch that government forces stood by while members from each community attacked the other, razing villages and committing an unknown number of killings.

“Burmese security forces failed to protect the Arakan and Rohingya from each other and then unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government claims it is committed to ending ethnic strife and abuse, but recent events in Arakan State demonstrate that state-sponsored persecution and discrimination persist.”

The Burmese government should take urgent measures to end abuses by their forces, ensure humanitarian access, and permit independent international monitors to visit affected areas and investigate abuses, Human Rights Watch said.

The “Government Could Have Stopped This,” is based on 57 interviews conducted in June and July with affected Arakan, Rohingya, and others in Burma and in Bangladesh, where Rohingya have sought refuge from the violence and abuses.

The violence erupted in early June after reports circulated that on May 28 an Arakan Buddhist woman was raped and killed in the town of Ramri by three Muslim men. Details of the crime were circulated locally in an incendiary pamphlet, and on June 3 a large group of Arakan villagers in Toungop stopped a bus and brutally killed 10 Muslims on board. Human Rights Watch confirmed that nearby local police and army stood by and watched but did not intervene. In retaliation, on June 8 thousands of Rohingya rioted in Maungdaw town after Friday prayers, killed an unknown number of Arakan, and destroyed considerable Arakan property. Violence between Rohingya and Arakan then swept through Sittwe and surrounding areas.



Marauding mobs from both Arakan and Rohingya communities stormed unsuspecting villages and neighborhoods, brutally killed residents, and destroyed and burned homes, shops, and houses of worship. With little to no government security present to stop the violence, people armed themselves with swords, spears, sticks, iron rods, knives, and other basic weaponry. Inflammatory anti-Muslim media accounts and local propaganda fanned the violence. Numerous Arakan and Rohingya who spoke to Human Rights Watch reached the conclusion that the authorities could have prevented the violence and the ensuing abuses could have been avoided.

A 29-year-old Arakan man and an older Rohingya man each told Human Rights Watch, separately but in the same words, “The government could have stopped this.”

The Burmese army’s presence in Sittwe eventually stemmed the violence. However, on June 12, Arakan mobs burned down the homes of up to 10,000 Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims in the city’s largest Muslim neighborhood while the police and paramilitary Lon Thein forces opened fire on Rohingya with live ammunition.

A Rohingya man in Sittwe, 36, told Human Rights Watch that an Arakan mob “started torching the houses. When the people tried to put out the fires, the paramilitary shot at us. And the group beat people with big sticks.” Another Rohingya man from the same neighborhood said, “I was just a few feet away. I was on the road. I saw them shoot at least six people – one woman, two children, and three men. The police took their bodies away.”
In Sittwe, where the population was about half Arakan and half Muslim, most Muslims have fled the city or were forcibly relocated, raising questions about whether the government will respect their right to return home. Human Rights Watch found the center of the once diverse capital now largely segregated and devoid of Muslims.

In northern Arakan State, the army, police, Nasaka border guard forces, and Lon Thein paramilitaries have committed killings, mass arrests, and other abuses against Rohingya. They have operated in concert with local Arakan residents to loot food stocks and valuables from Rohingya homes. Nasaka and soldiers have fired upon crowds of Rohingya villagers as they attempted to escape the violence, leaving many dead and wounded.

“If the atrocities in Arakan had happened before the government’s reform process started, the international reaction would have been swift and strong,” said Adams. “But the international community appears to be blinded by a romantic narrative of sweeping change in Burma, signing new trade deals and lifting sanctions even while the abuses continue.”

Since June, the government has detained hundreds of Rohingya men and boys, who remain incommunicado. The authorities in northern Arakan State have a long history of torture and mistreatment of Rohingya detainees, Human Rights Watch said. In the southern coastal town of Moulmein, 82 fleeing Rohingya were reportedly arrested in late June and sentenced to one year in prison for violating immigration laws.

“The Burmese authorities should immediately release details of detained Rohingya, allow access to family members and humanitarian agencies, and release anyone not charged with a crime recognized under international law in which there is credible evidence,” Adams said. “This is a test case of the government’s stated commitment to reform and protecting basic rights.”

Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law effectively denies Burmese citizenship to the Rohingya population, estimated at 800,000 to 1 million people. On July 12, Burmese President Thein Sein said the “only solution” to the sectarian strife was to expel the Rohingya to other countries or to camps overseen by the United Nations refugee agency.

“We will send them away if any third country would accept them,” he said.

Burmese law and policy discriminate against Rohingya, infringing on their rights to freedom of movement, education, and employment. Burmese government officials typically refer to the Rohingya as “Bengali,” “so-called Rohingya,” or the pejorative “Kalar,” and Rohingya face considerable prejudice from Burmese society generally, including from longtime democracy advocates and ethnic minorities who themselves have long faced oppression from the Burmese state.

Burma’s new human rights commission – led by chairman Win Mra, an ethnic Arakan – has not played an effective role in monitoring abuses in Arakan State, Human Rights Watch said. In a July 11 assessment of the sectarian violence, the commission reported on no government abuses, claimed all humanitarian needs were being met, and failed to address Rohingya citizenship and persecution.

“The Burmese government needs to urgently amend its citizenship law to end official discrimination against the Rohingya,” Adams said. “President Thein Sein cannot credibly claim to be promoting human rights while calling for the expulsion of people because of their ethnicity and religion.”

The sectarian violence has created urgent humanitarian needs for both Arakan and Rohingya communities, Human Rights Watch said. Local Arakan organizations, largely supported by domestic contributions, have provided food, clothing, medicine, and shelter to displaced Arakan. By contrast, the Rohingya population’s access to markets, food, and work remains dangerous or blocked, and many have been in hiding for weeks.

The government has restricted access to affected areas, particularly Rohingya areas, crippling the humanitarian response. United Nations and humanitarian aid workers have faced arrest as well as threats and intimidation from the local Arakan population, which perceives the aid agencies as biased toward the Rohingya. Government restrictions have made some areas, such as villages south of Maungdaw, inaccessible to humanitarian agencies.

“The authorities should immediately grant unfettered humanitarian access to all affected populations and begin work to prevent future violence between the communities,” Adams said. “The government should assist both communities with property restitution and ensure all of the displaced can return home and live in safety.”

Since the June violence, thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh where they have faced pushbacks from the Bangladeshi government in violation of international law. Human Rights Watch witnessed Rohingya men, women, and children who arrived onshore and pleaded for mercy from Bangladesh authorities, only to be pushed back to sea in barely seaworthy wooden boats during rough monsoon rains, putting them at grave risk of drowning or starvation at sea or persecution in Burma. It is unknown how many died in these pushbacks. Those who were able to make it into Bangladesh live in hiding, with no access to food, shelter, or protection.

Bangladesh is obligated to open its borders and provide the Rohingya at least temporary refuge until it is safe for them to return, in accordance with international human rights norms. Human Rights Watch called on concerned governments to assist Bangladesh in doing so and press both Burma and Bangladesh to end abuses and ensure the safety of Rohingyas.

“Bangladesh is violating its international legal obligations by callously pushing asylum seekers in rickety boats back into the open sea,” Adams said.

Accounts From “The Government Could Have Stopped This”

“We discussed it and decided to burn down some [Rohingya] villages that all the Muslims used as a headquarters. For example, Narzi and Bhumi. We first started to set fire to Bhumi village, the headquarters of the Muslim people. We burned down the houses and then they burned down ours. In some areas, we did not burn down houses. It would have been foolish in some areas where most houses are near Arakan houses. They would all catch fire. It was a three-day offensive. It started near Bhumi village near Sittwe University because Bhumi is their headquarters.”
– Arakan man, 45, Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012

“The first Muslim people [who arrived] used guns. At that time, we heard the shooting and my husband tried to attack the Muslim people. They killed him right there in the village. His arm was cut off and his head was nearly cut off. He was 35 years old.”
– Arakan mother of five children, 31, Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012

“I fell down and couldn’t breathe I was so scared. I saw all the violence. Around 300 Muslims came to attack our village. They came and burned the houses. I saw them burning the houses.... The police did not come during the violence. When the Muslims came and burned the village, I fled. It was not until I got to Sittwe that I saw any police.”
– Arakan woman, 40, Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012

“In front of my eyes, first the Lon Thein [paramilitaries] came and said they came to protect us, but when the Arakan came and torched the houses, we tried to put out the fires and they started beating us. A lot of people were shot [by the police] at a close distance. I saw people get shot at close range. The whole village witnessed it. They were people from my village. They were 15 or 20 feet away from me.... I saw at least 50 people killed.... When we tried to go put out the fire, we were not allowed to go. First they shot once in the air, and then at the people.”
– Rohingya man, 28, Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012

“The government did not return the dead bodies to our family. They took them and cremated them in the monastery. I did not get the bodies of my two brothers-in-law.... They were killed by the Arakan in front of me. The police were there. It was not far from the police. They were killed in front of me and the police did nothing.”
– Rohingya man, 65, Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012




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Breaking News

Arakan, Burma 
Wednesday, August 1, 2012

"Yesterday, Mr. Quintana could not visit Buthidaung. The Army Intelligence ( Sarapa ) trickfully, took him again to Muangdaw South, Charkumba village near Alethengyaw to show Natala village and meet Buddhist Rakhines and Monks instead of real victims. It was because Mr. Quintana planned to visit Buthidaung Jail yesterday to meet the Rohingyas arrested by the security forces during the riot. Shockingly, last night, all the Rohingyas from Buthidaung Jail were shifted to another place and kept them in a Godown. Today, Mr. Quintana again arrived Buthidaung from Akyab. And we are looking forward to more news. 

Besides, Shahid Ullah ( 28 ) s/o Asharaf, an educated person and NGO worker, from Badurpara of Alethangyaw, got access to talk Mr. Quintana for only 15 minutes. Within 15 minutes and without interpreter, he bravely unveiled and re-counted the tragedy of merciless persecution of Myanmar security forces on Rohingyas during and after the riot . Soon after Mr.Quintana's departure, he suddenly disappeared from the village. The villagers assumed that he went to hide out due to fear of reprisal from the side of army intelligence( Sarapa ). Obviously, the military were on look for him the whole night in his village. His family members, either, do not know where he is about. All are very anxious about his fate. We should express congratulations and gratitude to him for his sacrifice for the community and kindly pray for his safety." informed by A. Faiz from Maung Daw. 


"Meanwhile, a high ranking police officer namely U Hla Sein (tel:0949676422) is taking extraordinary step towards cruelty and tortures in Maung Daw. On 29.07.2012 at 1 pm, this police officer came to the "Three Diamonds Gold Shop" and arrested the shop owner "Anwar." Then he was tortured nearly to death and finally at 11 pm he was released with 5 million kyats. The police officer frequently arrest people who are out for shopping and arbitrarily extorting extra amount of money. He listed some 40 people name from Quarter 5. Then, these people are asked to call his number. When the people contact him, he is always demanding money. When some people reply that they are unable to do so, they are threatened to be killed. In short, he is doing all kinds of brutalities, tortures, arbitrary extortion of money. There are various kinds of brutalities are taking place on the ground without the permission or the consent of Myanmar's higher authorities because the people in the police force and Hluntin (security Guards) are Rakhines themselves. We request to your media to publish this news in an effort to make the news reach to higher authority of Myanmar and International community." a Rohingya victim from Maung Daw reported. 


Compiled by M.S. Anwar 
RB News 






လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရယ္လို႔ ျဖစ္တည္လာမယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံဧရိယာထဲကို ၀င္လာတဲ့ လူသားေတြဟာ အဓိက အားျဖင့္ အာရွအလယ္ပိုင္း တိဘက္ကုန္းျမင့္ဘက္က ျဖစ္ၿပီး- တိဘက္ကုန္းျမင့္ရဲ႔ အေရွ႔ဘက္ မြန္ဂိုႏိုက္အႏြယ္ေတြ ပါ၀င္သလို၊ တိဘက္ကုန္းျမင့္ရဲ႔ အေနာက္ပိုင္း အာရိယာန္အႏြယ္ေတြလည္း ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တယ္။ (တိဘက္ကုန္းျမင့္ ေဒသကိုယ္က အာရိယာန္နဲ႔ မြန္ဂိုအႏြယ္တို႔ ေပါင္းစပ္ရာ ျမစ္ဆံုေဒသလို႔ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အာရိယာန္ နဲ႔ မြန္ဂို ကျပားေတြလည္း ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာျပည္ အေရွ႔ပိုင္းရွိ လူမ်ိဳးႏြယ္ေတြက မြန္ဂိုလီးယား အႏြယ္ရုပ္မ်ိဳးကို ဆင္ၿပီး ျမန္မာျပည္ ေနာက္ပိုင္းအျခမ္း လူမ်ိဳးေတြက အာရိယာန္ မြန္ဂိုကျပား ရုပ္ရည္မ်ိဳးကို ဆင္ေနတာ ေတြ႔ရပါမယ္။ (ဥပမာ ပခုကၠဴေဒသ သားမ်ားနဲ႔ ရွမ္းကုန္းျမင့္ေဒသ သားမ်ား ရုပ္ရည္မ်ားကို ႏိႈင္း ယွဥ္ၾကည့္ပါ။ ရာသီဥတုေၾကာင့္ အသားေရာင္ ကြာျခားလာတာလို႔ ေျပာႏိုင္ေပမယ့္- ႏွာတံသြယ္ပံုခ်င္း ကြာ ျခားမႈဟာ ရာသီဥတု အပူအေအးႏွင့္ မဆိုင္ပါ။)

ၿပီးေတာ့ ျမန္မာျပည္ထဲကို ၀င္လာခဲ့တဲ့ လူေတြဟာ အဓိကအားျဖင့္ ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ စုန္ဆင္းလာခဲ့တာ မ်ားပါတယ္။ သံလႊင္ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ အေျခခံၿပီး စုန္ဆင္းလာတယ္၊ ဧရာ၀တီ ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ အေျခခံၿပီး စုန္ဆင္းလာတယ္၊ ခ်င္းတြင္းျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ အေျခခံၿပီး စုန္ဆင္းလာခဲ့တာမ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

အလားတူပဲ ရခိုင္ေဒသလို႔ ေခၚေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္ အေနာက္ပိုင္း အျခမ္းမွာလည္း လူသားေတြဟာ ေလးမူး ျမစ္ရိုး၊ ကုလားတန္ ျမစ္ရိုးနဲ႔ ေမယုျမစ္ရိုး မ်ားတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ စုန္ဆင္းလာခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေလးမူးျမစ္ရိုးဟာ တိုၿပီး ရခိုင္ရိုးမႀကီးမွာ ဆံုးသြားတယ္၊ ေခ်ာင္းသြယ္ေျမာင္းသြယ္ အျဖစ္ ဆက္စပ္ခဲ့ရင္ေတာင့္ ေက်ာက္ပန္း ေတာင္းကို ဆက္စပ္ႏိုင္တယ္- ဒါေၾကာင့္ အဲ့ဒီ ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ စုန္ဆင္းလာခဲ့ရင္ သူတို႔ဟာ ပ်ဴလူမ်ိဳးႏြယ္ မ်ား ျဖစ္ႏိုင္တယ္။ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ရိုးကေတာ့ အာသံ- မဏိပူရကိုေက်ာ္ၿပီး အခုေခတ္နီေပါလ္နားအထိ ဆိုက္ တယ္- ဒါေၾကာင့္ ကုလားတန္ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ ဆင္းလာသူမ်ားက အာရိယာန္အႏြယ္မ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အလားတူ- ေမယုျမစ္ရိုးဟာ မဏိပူရနယ္အထိ ဆိုက္တယ္- အဲ့ဒီက ဆင္းလာသူမ်ားဟာလည္း အာရိယာန္ အႏြယ္၀င္မ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ (ကုလားတန္ျမစ္၊ ေလးမူးျမစ္၊ ေမယုျမစ္ မ်ား စီးဆင္းပံုကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမပံု၌ ေသခ်ာစြာၾကည့္ပါ။)

သံလႊင္ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ စုန္ဆင္းခဲ့သူ(ကရင္၊ ပအို႔၀္၊ ကရင္နီ၊ ရွမ္း)မ်ားနဲ႔ ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာ္ စုန္ဆင္းခဲ့သူ (ဗမာ)မ်ား ရုပ္ရည္ ကြဲျပားသလို၊ ရခိုင္မွာလည္း ေမယု၊ ကုလားတန္ ျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္စုန္ဆင္းခဲ့ သူမ်ားနဲ႔ ေလးမူးျမစ္ရိုးမွသည္ ရခိုင္ေတာင္ပိုင္းနယ္သား အားလံုးရဲ႔ ရုပ္ရည္ဟာ သီးသန္႔ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။

ကုလားတန္၊ ေလးမူးလူမ်ိဳးႏြယ္မ်ား ေပါင္းစပ္လာၿပီး ရပ္ရြာတည္တံ့လာတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကစ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံငယ္ေလး ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒ႑ာရီလိုလို၊ သေဘာင္လုိလုိ ေျပာစမွတ္အရ ဘီစီ ၃၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကတည္းက မာရယူမင္းက ႏိုင္ငံထူေထာင္ခဲ့တယ္ ဆိုေပမယ့္- ေသခ်ာတဲ့ သမိုင္းမ်ား မေတြ႔ရေသးပါ။ ေအဒီ ၄ ရာစု (ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံ ပုဂံအင္ပါယာထက္ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္ေစာၿပီး) ေလာက္မွာ မဟာစႁႏၵမင္းက ဓည၀တီ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ကို စတင္ထူေထာင္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ဗုဒၶဘာသာကို ကိုးကြယ္ယံုၾကည္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သမိုင္းမ်ား ရွိေနပါတယ္။ အဲ့ဒီ ဗုဒၶသာသ နာဟာ ဗမာမ်ားဆီက ကူးစက္ခဲ့ျခင္း မဟုတ္ပါ။ ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ ဗမာမ်ားကိုယ္တိုင္က ေထရ၀ါဒ ဗုဒၶဘာသာကို လက္မခံေသးပါ။ ဓည၀တီေနျပည္ေတာ္ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ အေနာက္ဘက္ အိႏၵိယအင္ပါယာ (ထုိစဥ္က မာဂဓ အင္ပါယာ)ကို တည္မွီအားကိုးေနရတဲ့ သေဘာမွာ ရွိေနေတာ့ မာဂဓ အင္ပါယာတြင္းမွ ကူးစက္ျပန္႔ႏွ႔ံလာခဲ့ျခင္း သာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဓည၀တီေနျပည္ေတာ္ဟာ ေလးမူးနဲ႔ ကုလားတန္ ျမစ္ရိုးၾကားေဒသမွာ စတည္ခဲ့ေပမယ့္- ႏိုင္ငံက်ယ္ျပန္႔လာ တာနဲ႔ အမွ် အေနာက္ဘက္ အေရွ႔ဘက္ကို နယ္နိမိတ္တိုးခ်ဲ႔လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေတာင္ဘက္မွာ ပင္လယ္ျပင္ ေျမာက္ဘက္မွာ ရခိုင္ ရိုးမႀကီးကာဆီးထားတဲ့ အတြက္ နယ္နမိတ္က တိုးခ်ဲ႔လို႔ မရႏိုင္ပါ။ ေျမပံုကို ၾကည့္ပါ။


ေအဒီ ၄ ရာစုက စတည္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဓည၀တီ၊ ေ၀လာလီ၊ ေလးမူး၊ ေျမာင္းေဟာင္း နယ္ျပည္ေတာ္မ်ားမွာ အေနာက္ဘက္ ေမယုျမစ္၊ နာ့ဖ္ျမစ္ရိုးမ်ားကို ေက်ာ္လြန္ၿပီး ပိုင္ဆိုင္ခဲ့သလို၊ ေတာင္ဘက္ ဒြာယာ၀တီ (သံတြဲ) အထိ နယ္နမိတ္က်ယ္၀န္းလာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေလးမူး ေခတ္ေႏွာင္းပိုင္းမွာ ဗမာအင္ပါယာ (ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ)က အင္ အား ထြားလာၿပီး ေလးမူးေနျပည္ေတာ္ႏိုင္ငံကို ျမန္မာအင္ပါယာအတြင္း သိမ္းသြင္းႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အေရးနိမ့္သြားတဲ့ ရခိုင္နယ္သားမ်ားက အေနာက္ဘက္ ဘေဂၤါနယ္မွာ ခိုလႈံခဲ့ပါတယ္။ (ထိုစဥ္က ဘေဂၤါနယ္- ဆိုတာ နာ့ဖ္ ျမစ္ရဲ႔ အေနာက္ပိုင္းေဒသ မ်ားျဖစ္ၿပီး နာ့ဖ္ျမစ္ရဲ႔ အေရွ႔ပိုင္းေဒသ စစ္တေကာင္းနယ္က ဓည၀တီ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္လိုက္၊ ေ၀သာလီ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္လိုက္၊ ဘေဂၤါက အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္လိုက္နဲ႔ သူသိမ္း၊ ကိုယ္သိမ္း ၾကားခံ ေဒသ ျဖစ္ေနခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဘေဂၤါျပည္ကို အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ထားတဲ့ မြတ္စလင္မြန္ဂိုမင္းရဲ႔ စစ္သားအကူအညီ၊ စစ္ေရးအေထာက္အပံ့အကူအညီမ်ား နဲ႔ မင္းေစာမြန္ဟာ ဗမာမ်ား သိမ္းပိုက္ထားတဲ့ ေလးမူးေနျပည္ေတာ္ကို ျပန္လည္ သိမ္းပိုက္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေျမာက္ဦး အင္ပါယာကို ထူေထာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေျမာက္ဦးအင္ပါယာရဲ႔ အင္အားကို ဗမာဘက္က ၾသဇာတန္ခိုးႀကီးထြား တဲ့ ဘုရင့္ေနာင္ (ေတာင္ငူမင္းဆက္)ေတာင္ မၿဖိဳခြင္းႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါ။ ေျမပံုကို ၾကည့္ပါ။


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toungoo_Empire#First_Toungoo_Empire_.281510.E2.80.931599.29

Restored Toungoo or Nyaungyan Dynasty c. 1650
ေျမာက္ဦး အင္ပါယာဟာ စစ္တေကာင္းနယ္ တစ္ခုလံုးကို ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၃၈၀ ေက်ာ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္စိုးမိုးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စစ္တေကာင္းနယ္က လူမ်ိဳးအားလံုးဟာ ေျမာက္ဦးႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အတြင္းက တရား၀င္ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ျဖစ္ၿပီး မူလဇာတိ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားလည္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေျမာက္ဦးမင္းဆက္ အားလံုးက မြတ္စလင္ဘြဲ႔အမည္မ်ား ခံယူၿပီး ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ အတြက္ စစ္တေကာင္းနယ္က မြတ္စလင္မ်ားကလည္း အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခံရမႈကို ေက်နပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာအင္ပါယာဟာ ကုန္းေဘာင္ေခတ္မွာ ျပန္လည္ ႀကီးထြားလာၿပီး- ၁၇၈၄ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေျမာက္ဦး အင္ပါယာကို ျပန္လည္၀င္ ေရာက္ သိမ္းပိုက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျပင္းထန္တဲ့ စစ္ပြဲၿပီး ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ေလးဆယ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ကာ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးေပါင္း မ်ားစြာ မ်ိဳးျပဳတ္လုနီး သတ္ျဖတ္ခံခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆံုးမွာ ေျမာက္ဦး အင္ပါယာဟာ ဘေဂၤါကို အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ၿပီး ျဖစ္တဲ့ ၿဗိတိသွ်ကို စစ္ကူေတာင္းလိုက္ရပါေတာ့တယ္။

ဆက္လက္တင္ျပပါမည္။-

ေဌးလြင္ဦး



UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Mr. Tomas Ojea Quintana arrived Maung Daw around 1 pm 31st July 2012.

"As expected, authority took him to few affected areas of Rakhines and to some of the burned villages of Rohingyas and portrayed them to him as if those of Rakhines. He was hardly given any chance to freely meet with Rohingyas or visit Rohingyas' villages.

Later, he met some of Rohingya elders from Maung Daw at the district office in Myoma Kayindan. Sadly, Rohingya elders were unable to explain the real situation of Arakan because authority threatened them in advance that they would be arrested or even be killed if they failed to follow government instruction. On seeing the situation, Mr. Quintana replied "I understand your situation."

Mr. Quintana looked around the town of Maung Daw and observed the situation. There, around 60 Rakhines held protest against his visit. They held the postcards with "We don't want UN. Respect the president's decision. Respect the sovereignty. Treat fairly and respect the rights of the citizens." written on them" reported from Maung Daw on the condition of

anonymity. According to martial law declared in Arakan which is still in affect, no one is allowed to held any protest or demonstration. I wonder how the Rakhines could do so unless the government was behind this!!!
"As a rare chance, Mr. Quintan managed to meet three Rohingyas in Alay Than Kyaw. It is not known what they discussed. But soon after his departure, SaRaPha (state security affairs) started the search of the Rohingya who spoke to him (Mr. Quintana) in English. Therefore, the Rohingya has been on the run away from SaRaPha since then. Besides, he is expected to visit Sittwe on 1st August 2012.

Whereas one Rohingya from Shweza Village and three Rohingyas from Bagonna village were arrested on 30th July and 28th July respectively. Moreover, a high ranking Police officer called Than Tun is extorting money from almost all of Rohingyas from MyoThuGyi village threatening that he will arrest and kill them if they fail to give him money." Rahim from Maung Daw reported.

Compiled by M.S. Anwar
ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအေျခအေနကုိအျမဲတေစေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရန္ခန္႔အပ္ျခင္းခံထားရသူ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ဆုိင္ရာအထူးကုိယ္စားလွယ္မစၥတာေသာမတ္စ္ကြန္တားနားသည္ ရခုိင္ျပည္ နယ္ေမာင္းေတာၿမဳိ႕ႏွင့္စစ္ေတြၿမဳိ႕သုိ႔ ယမန္ေန ႔ ဇူလုိင္လ (၃၁) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ အဓိကရုဏ္းႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍သြားေရာက္စုံစမ္းျခင္းျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည္။ 

ကြန္တားနားအားစာနယ္ဇင္းသမားမ်ားမွ ေလ့လာေတြ႕ရွိခ်က္မ်ားအေပၚေမးခြန္းမ်ားေမးခဲ့ရာ ေျဖၾကားရန္ျငင္းပယ္ခဲ့သည္ ဟုေအပီသတင္းဌာနကေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။ 

ေဒသခံမ်ားမွတဆင့္သတင္းမ်ားအရ ဇူလုိင္လ (၃၁) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ေမာင္းေတာၿမဳိ႕သုိ႔ ရဟတ္ယာဥ္ျဖင့္ေရာက္ ရွိလာၿပီး ေမာင္းေတာၿမဳိ႕တြင္ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ဳိး (၅) ဦးမွ မစၥတာကြန္ တား နားႏွင့္ေတြ႔ဆုံခြင့္ရခဲ့ေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။ မစၥတာကြန္တားနားမွ လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ား ၏ညွင္းပန္းႏွိပ္စက္မႈမ်ား၊ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရသူမ်ားစာရင္းအတိအက်ႏွင့္ အဖမ္းခံရသူမ်ားႏွင့္ မုဒိန္းက်င့္ခံရသူမ်ားစာရင္းအတိအက်ကုိေမးျမန္းေသာ္လည္း လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ား ၀န္းရံ ထားေသာေၾကာင့္  ေတြ႕ဆုံသူမ်ားမွာပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္းေျပာခြင့္မရခဲ့ေပ။ ေတြ႕ဆုံရန္အခ်ိန္ကုိလည္း ဆယ္မိနစ္သာ သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ေသာေၾကာင့္ ေသဆုံးသူႏွင့္အဖမ္းဆီးခံရသူမ်ားစာရင္းကုိ အစုိးရထံမွ ရ ယူ ရန္ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ၿပီး၊ မိမိတုိ႔မွာစားနပ္ရိကၡာမလုံေလာက္သည့္ျပႆနာကုိျပင္းျပင္းထန္ ထန္ရင္ ဆုိင္ေနရေၾကာင္းသာေျပာဆုိခဲ့သည္။ 

မစၥတာေသာမတ္စ္ကြန္တားနားေမာင္းေတာၿမဳိ႕သုိ႔ေရာက္သည့္အခ်ိန္တြင္ ရခုိင္လူမ်ဳိး ၂၀၀ ခန္႔မွဆႏၵျပခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ဒီဗြီဘီ သတင္းဌာနကေဖာ္ျပခဲ့သည္။ 

ဇူလုိင္လ (၃၁) ရက္ေန႔ေန႔လည္ပုိင္းတြင္ စစ္ေတြၿမဳိ႕တမ္ဘီေက်းရြာအုပ္စု၌ လယ္ကြင္းကုိျဖတ္၍ သြားေနေသာရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ မိသားစုတစ္စုကုိ လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားမွဖမ္းဆီး၍ ဖခင္ျဖစ္သူ အားသစ္ပင္ တြင္ႀကဳိးတုတ္ထားၿပီး က်န္သည့္မိသားစု၀င္ မ်ားအားေျမေပၚတြင္ လဲေလ်ာင္းခုိင္းထားခဲ့သည္။ အဆုိပါမိသားစုအားအၾကမ္းဖက္သမားမ်ားအားစြပ္စြဲၿပီး ဖခင္ျဖစ္သူ၏ လက္ေမာင္းကုိေသ နတ္ႏွင့္ပစ္ ခတ္ရာ၊ မိသားစု၀င္သုံးဦးမွ၀င္ဆြဲရန္ႀကဳိးစားခဲ့သည္။ ထုိ႔ေနာက္ ဖခင္ျဖစ္သူ၏နဖူးတည့္တည့္ ကုိပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ၿပီး သားအႀကီးကုိျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ရာ ႏွစ္ဦးစလုံး ထုိေနရာတြင္ပြဲ ခ်င္းၿပီးေသ ဆုံးခဲ့သည္။ သားအငယ္ ၏၀မ္းဗုိက္ကုိပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ၿပီး၊ မိခင္ျဖစ္သူ ကုိလည္း ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိ ပါသည္။ က်န္သည့္သားအငယ္ႏွင့္မိခင္ျဖစ္သူ ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ ဆက္လက္စုံ စမ္းလ်က္ရွိပါသည္။ 

RB News Desk




Photo: Restless Beings protest in london olympics


By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
Huffington Post
July 31, 2012

Here's a familiar story -- a minority religious group is persecuted and its members killed for their beliefs, with early records of massacres dating from 1050 AD. Religious intolerance against dietary laws and discrimination, sometimes violent, continued over the centuries until by 1930, riots were common, with great loss of life and shops, houses and religious buildings looted, destroyed and burned.

It sounds like the history of Jews in Europe, but no -- it is the tragic story of Muslims in Burma, or Myanmar. The Burma Muslim minority mostly consists of the Rohingya people who are descendants of Muslim immigrants from India or neighboring Bangladesh. Persecuted by the Buddhist majority for centuries, Burmese Muslims have recently suffered from brutal human rights violations under the Burmese junta and many refugees have fled the violence to Bangladesh and Thailand. The recent news of mass killings of Rohingya Muslims amounts to genocide, in my opinion, and what is almost more appalling is the silence of most of the world's media.

Demonstrations and protests in India have condemned the government of Burma and have asked why the Dalai Lama and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi have remained silent. So far she has not criticized President Thein Sein for endorsing policies that are essentially ethnic cleansing, and critics suggest she also sees the Muslim group as immigrants rather than citizens. The Rohingya have never been granted Burmese citizenship and a 1982 law excluded them from the list of officially recognized minorities.

Amnesty International reports that Muslims in Burma's western state of Arakan have been subjected to attacks and arbitrary arrests in the weeks since communal violence erupted but it is difficult to verify any of the information, as journalists cannot access the area. Western news media should not use that as an excuse to stay silent however and international attention is desperately needed to find out what is really happening in Myanmar. Impartial observers should be allowed in the region immediately, to report on and prevent the government and local extremist groups forcing Rohingya people out of their homes, off their land, and into dangerous refugee camps.

Protesters in India and Pakistan have pleaded with United Nations to take a stand on behalf of the Rohingya, recognized by the UN as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. There has been wide coverage in the Pakistani media and Chairman of the PTI party Imran Khan was reportedJuly 26 as urging the international community to stop the potential genocide.

Since the riots began, the Burmese authorities have ordered all international NGOs out of the region. Dozens of local NGO staff have been arrested, and hundreds remain out of contact. The north of Rhakine state, where it is estimated more than 700,000 Rohingya live, has effectively been turned into a complete blind spot. If Myanmar's democracy activists and human rights defenders cannot immediately address the impending humanitarian crisis and potential devastation of the Rohingya people then hopefully the international Muslim media will be more outspoken.

Unfortunately, the world seems to be preoccupied with the Olympic Games right now. One would hope that the impending humanitarian crisis in Burma would take precedence over stories about the authenticity of athletic shoes. The tragedy of the Rohingya people could be an opportunity for the United Nations to step up its approach to ending all minority persecution everywhere on religious grounds.

In Pakistan and India for example, the majority religions should stop persecuting Christians or minority religions or sects such as the Ahmadis. Sunnis and Shias persecute each other in different countries as well as Catholics and Protestants. The Olympics would be a great forum and opportunity to call for an end to religious persecution internationally, but that is probably wishful thinking in a world that trivializes distant disasters and turns instead to the latest soccer scores. The global community still has a long way to go in its evolution towards compassion, humanity and freedom and dignity for all.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the Executive Chairman of The Scotland Institute and a Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.



အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး ဝန္ႀကီး မာတီ နာတာလီဂါဝါ

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားတဲ့ ရခုိင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္မ်ားနဲ႔ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ မြတ္စလင္ ဘာသာဝင္မ်ားၾကား အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြကို ေဆာ္ဒီအာေရးဗီးယားႏိုင္ငံ မကၠာၿမိဳ ့မွာ ၾသဂုတ္လအတြင္း က်င္းပမဲ့ OIC ေခၚ အစၥလာမ္ ဘာသာဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ား ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ ထိပ္သီး အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေဆြးေႏြး သြားမယ္လို ့အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး ဝန္ႀကီး မာတီ နာတာလီဂါဝါက ေျပာဆုိလုိက္ပါတယ္။

အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏိုင္ငံ အေနနဲ႔ လူမ်ိဳးေရးကိုျဖစ္ေစ၊ ဘာသာေရးကုိျဖစ္ေစ တျခားဘာအေၾကာင္းကုိပဲ ျဖစ္ေစ အေျခခံၿပီး ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံမႈကုိ ဆန္႔က်င္ေၾကာင္း ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြအေပၚ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔လည္း မိမိတို႔ရဲ႕ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ဟာ တစ္သေဘာတည္းရွိေၾကာင္း သူက သတင္းေထာက္ေတြကို ေျပာပါတယ္။

ဒါ့အျပင္ အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံဟာ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတုိ႔ကုိ အထူး သံကုိယ္စားလွယ္ ေစလႊတ္ၿပီး ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ ပဋိပကၡနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို ့ စုံစမ္းေလ့လာခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ မိမိတုိ ့ဟာ ဒီကိစၥနဲ႕ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံနဲ႔ တစ္ႏုိင္ငံခ်င္း အေနနဲ႔လည္းေကာင္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံအမ်ားနဲ႔ ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံဟာ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္က ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ အေရးကိစၥနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ဂရုမစုိက္ဘူး ဆုိတာ မဟုတ္ပါေၾကာင္း စသျဖင့္ အင္ဒုိနီးရွား ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးက ေျပာဆိုတယ္လုိ႔ ဇူလုိင္ ၃၁ ရက္ေန႔စြဲနဲ႔ အင္ဒုိနီးရွားႏုိင္ငံထုတ္ The Jakarta Post သတင္းစာမွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။

source :RFA




UN rights body calls for investigation into Burma's Rakhine state
31 July 2012





In Burma, United Nations human rights envoy Tomás Ojea Quintana is heading to the troubled western state of Rahkine where scores have died and thousands of people made homeless by communal violence.

UN rights body calls for investigation into Burma's Rakhine state (Credit: ABC) 

The UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay says she has received reports that the security forces sent to deal with the violence are targeting Muslims. She also suspects the death toll from the unrest has been under-reported.

But the Burmese government continues to reject accusations of human rights abuses by its troops against the Rohingya community, saying the authorities had exercised "maximum restraint" in bringing an end to the violence.

Reporter: Hélène Hofman

Speaker: Rupert Colville, Spokesman for the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay

COLVILLE: The main violence was last month in June but the sort of undercurrents and tensions of what happened in Rakhine state are continuing and it's also not entirely clear what exactly went on so we're calling for an investigation, I think to get some clarity for everyone and hopefully diffuse the tensions.

HOFMAN: Is there some concern that the issue is being swept under the carpet?

COLVILLE: Well, not necessarily but we do believe there needs to be a very clear, independent investigation. The tensions between the two groups that live together in Rakhine state are very high; its a very long-standing conflict as well and, you know, it's not just a once off event so I think just clamping down security-wise is not a sufficient response. We need to find out what the root causes were and whether there was use of excessive force by the authorities as they tried to calm things down.

HOFMAN: You believe that some of the forces sent in to deal with the violence may have actually been specifically targeting Muslims?

COLVILLE: Well that is a fear and that is an allegation we've heard, but as I said, that's the kind of thing you would want an independent investigation to look into, because obviously that doesn't help matters if one group feels that it was targeted unfairly and the bottom line is a lot of people died. We don't know how many and we believe that at least 78 people died in all, though some estimates are quite a bit higher.

HOFMAN: So what kind of details have you been receiving from your sources on the ground about what's actually happening there that we might not be hearing?

COLVILLE: Well, our information isn't that great either and that's one reason we are calling for more openness. You know, you hear a lot of reports. One particular element, which I think isn't disputed at all, is that a large number of people were detained throughout the violence. Maybe some of them correctly, maybe some of them not, but again (we need) a bit of transparency on who has been detained, why, have they been charged, proper legal processes as well for anyone that's been detained. That's important.

HOFMAN: So how do you think this investigation will help towards that aim?

COLVILLE: Well of course a lot has changed in Myanmar in the past nine, 10 months and I think the mere fact of an independent investigation taking place would itself be a terrific signal of the new Myanmar, that they are prepared to do this. We've been talking to them. In fact, we had a team from our office here in Geneva and also from our regional office in Bangkok who were in Myanmar a few weeks ago, but obviously we'll hopefully continue to talk to them and get some solid responses.

HOFMAN: And the Opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has appealed to parliament to discuss an act to protect the rights of ethnic minorities. Do you see that as a positive move?

COLVILLE: Yes, I think that's very important. I mean obviously its not just Rakhine state where there has been problems in Myanmar. There are other groups, especially in the north, where there have been in some cases conflicts going on for a very long time, so in fact the High Commissioner Navi Pillay, she also called for that.


Source : ABC Australia



RI ready to fight for Rohingya
Margareth S. Aritonang and Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Marty Natalegawa and Aung San Suu Kyi 
In his first official statement regarding the prolonged communal violence in western Myanmar between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said that Indonesia would raise the problem at the Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, scheduled for mid-August.

Marty said that Indonesia would emphasize its opposition to any kind of human rights violations, including the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

“We must highlight, again, that Indonesia has consistently rejected discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, or any other reason. Our stance also applies to the ongoing attacks against the Rohingya in Myanmar,” Marty told reporters at his office.

Marty also insisted that Indonesia would not sit idly by while western Myanmar burns.

He said that Indonesia had sent an envoy to Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2010 to investigate the conflict between the Rohingya and the Rakhine after refugees from the conflict poured in into the country.

“We have always brought the issue into multilateral and bilateral discussions with Myanmar. So it’s not true that we don’t care. Our silence doesn’t mean we don’t care,” Marty said.

Data from the Foreign Ministry said that 394 Rohingya have sought refugee status in Indonesia, 124 of whom were ready to be resettled in third party countries. The remaining 199 displaced persons are sheltered in a number of refugee camps in the country.

“We always open our door for anyone who needs our help,” Marty said.

Separately, presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said that the Indonesian government would not comment on granting political asylum status to the Rohingya who had arrived in the country. 

“I have no statement with regard to that,” Julian said at the Presidential Office on Monday.

Hundreds of the ethnic Muslim have fled Myanmar for several nearby states, including Indonesia. 

The United Nations claims there are about 800,000 Rohingya in Myanmar, and considers them among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

At least 78 people have been killed in communal violence there in the last month.

Reports say the Rohingya are currently stranded in the Riau Islands, with some in other locations around West and East Java. They left Myanmar to seek safety and asylum from the Indonesian government, with some apparently hoping to continue on to Australia for the same purpose. They are reportedly surviving in poor conditions, lacking food and other basic necessities.

When asked what the government would do about the situation, Julian said the administration had taken all possible measures, but for the time being, Indonesia could only use diplomacy. “The government has been trying its best in our diplomatic efforts with Myanmar. Hopefully these efforts will stop the violence,” he said.

“Our position is clear: we will make any possible diplomatic efforts to help our Rohingya brothers,” Julian added. 

Myanmar, meanwhile, has denied the communal conflict was motivated by religion and rejected any effort to bring an international presence into the conflict.

“Peace and stability is indispensable for the on-going democratization and reform process in Myanmar. National solidarity and racial harmony among different nationalities is vital for the perpetuation of the Union. Myanmar is a multi-religious country where Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have been living together in peace and harmony for centuries, hence recent incidents in Rakhine State are neither because of religious oppression nor discrimination,” Myanmar’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

Source here

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံထဲ အစိုးရသစ္ တက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြားေရးျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈ အခ်ိဳ႕ရိွေပ မယ့္ ဘာသာေရးဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြကေတာ့ ရိွေနဆဲျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဒီကေန႔ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တဲ့ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ ႏွစ္စဥ္ ထုတ္ျပန္ေနက် ဒီ အစီရင္ခံစာ မွာ ႏိုင္ငံအရပ္ရပ္က ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္အေျခအေနကို ေဖာ္ျပရာမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံထဲ အထူးသျဖင့္ လူနည္းစု ဘာသာ ၀င္ေတြဟာ ပစ္မွတ္ထား ဖိႏွိပ္မႈခံရေနရဆဲျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အေၾကာင္းစံုကိုေတာ့ ကိုသားညြန္႔ဦးက ေျပာျပမွာပါ။

ဗုဒၶဘာသာ အမ်ားစုရိွတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ဗုဒၶဘာသာကို ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ ဘာသာအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ ထားျခင္းမရိွေပမယ့္ ဘာသာ ယံုၾကည္ ကိုးကြယ္မႈ ဓေလ့စ႐ိုက္ေတြအေပၚမွာ အေျခခံၿပီး လူမႈ အဖဲြ႔အစည္းအတြင္း ခဲြျခားဆက္ဆံမႈေတြ ဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြ ရိွေနတယ္လို႔ အခု အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ဌာနရဲ႕ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ လူမ်ားစုနဲ႔ ခရစ္ယာန္၊ မြတ္ဆလင္ လူနည္းစုေတြအၾကား လူမႈနယ္ပယ္အတြင္း တင္းမာမႈေတြရိွေနတယ္ လို႔ ေထာက္ျပပါတယ္။ အခ်ိန္ အတန္ၾကာကတည္းက ရိွခဲ့တဲ့ ဘာသာေရး တင္းမာမႈေတြေၾကာင့္ ႐ုတ္တရက္ အေၾကာင္းတရားေတြကေန အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြအထိ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရတယ္လို႔ အေမရိ ကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ဆိုင္ရာ သံအမတ္ႀကီး Suzan Johnson Cook က မေန႔က သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပဲြ အတြင္းမွာ ေျပာသြားပါတယ္။

“ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံထဲ အခ်ိန္အေတာ္ၾကာၾကာကတည္းက တအံုေႏြးေႏြးနဲ႕ရိွခဲ့တဲ့ တင္းမာမႈေတြကေန ပစ္ပယ္ခံေနရတဲ့ ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြအေပၚ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြ ႐ုတ္ခ်ည္းဆိုသလို က်ယ္က်ယ္ျပန္႔ျပန္႔ ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။”

အစီရင္ခံစာထဲမွာေတာ့ လူနည္းစု ဘာသာ၀င္ေတြကို ခဲြျခားဆက္ဆံမႈေတြရိွသလို လူနည္းစု လူမ်ိဳးေတြရဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္ကိုးကြယ္မႈေတြ အေပၚမွာလည္း စည္းမ်ဥ္း တင္းၾကပ္မႈေတြ ရိွေနတယ္လို႔ အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ အစိုးရသစ္လက္ထက္မွာ သတင္းမီဒီယာ လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေတြ ရိွလာေပမဲ့ ဘာသာေရးအရ ထုတ္ေ၀မႈေတြကိုေတာ့ သာသနာေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနက ခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္ထား ဆဲျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ေတာ့ ခရစ္ယာန္ဘာသာ၀င္ေတြရဲ႕ Bible က်မ္းစာ၊ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာ၀င္ေတြရဲ႕ Qur’an က်မ္းစာ ထုတ္ေ၀မႈေတြမွာ ကန္႔သတ္မႈေတြ ခံေနရတယ္ လို႔ ေထာက္ျပပါတယ္။ ဒီလို ဘာသာေရး ဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြေၾကာင့္္ပဲ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံကို ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ဆိုင္ရာ Country of Particular Concern (CPC) အထူး စိုးရိမ္ရတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံစာရင္းထဲမွာ ၁၉၉၉ ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းက သတ္မွတ္ထည့္သြင္းထားတယ္လိ္ု႔ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ အခု အစိုးရသစ္ တက္လာၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ စီးပြားေရးအေျပာင္းအလဲေတြ ရိွေနေပမဲ့ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အေျခအေန ကေတာ့ ထူးမျခားနားရိွေနဆဲပဲလို႔ ခ်င္းလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖဲြ႔ အမႈေဆာင္ညြန္ၾကားေရးမႉး ဆလိုင္းေဘြလွ်မ္းက ဗီြအိုေအ ျမန္မာပိုင္းကို ေျပာပါတယ္။

“တေလွ်ာက္လံုးေပါ့ေနာ္။ အဲဒီ မဆလ ေခတ္ကတည္းက က်မ္းစာအုပ္ေတြကို ခ်င္းဘာသာနဲ ႔ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ထုတ္ေဝခြင့္ မရွိခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဒါတင္မကဘူး၊ ခရစ္ယာန္ဘာသာရဲ႕ အေရးႀကီး အဓိက အခန္းက႑မွာပါတဲ့ လက္ဝါးကပ္တုိင္ေပါ့ေနာ္- အဲဒီ လက္ဝါးကပ္တုိင္ေတြကို ဖ်က္ဆီး တာ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလး ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ အစိုးရအသစ္တက္လာၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ပိုင္း ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ေတာင္ ပိုင္း၊ မင္းတပ္မွာလည္း ဖ်က္တယ္။ ကန္ပက္လက္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွာလည္း ဖ်က္တယ္၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ ခ်င္းျပည္ နယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ ဟားခါးမွာလည္း ဖ်က္ဆီးတာေတြ ေတြ႔ရတယ္။

ဆိုေတာ့ အစိုးရသစ္တက္လာၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ပိုင္း ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္နဲ႔ တိုးတက္မႈ မရွိဘူးေပါ့ေနာ္။ စိုးရိမ္စရာေတာင္ ပိုေကာင္းသလားလို႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတြ႔ေနရတဲ့အခ်က္ေတြ ရွိတယ္။”
အခုလိုမ်ဳိး လူနည္းစု ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္နဲ႔ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ အခုလို ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတဲ့ ျပႆနာက အစိုးရထဲမွာ ဒါမွ မဟုတ္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္မွာရွိတဲ့ စံနစ္ေၾကာင့္လုိ႔ပဲ ယူဆသလား၊ လူမႈအဖဲြ႔အစည္းထဲ မွာကိုက ျဖစ္ေနတာလား၊ ဘယ္လိုျမင္ရသလဲခင္ဗ်။

“အေရးႀကီးတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္ထင္တာက ကမၻာမွာၾကည့္လို႔ရွိရင္ ဘာသာေရးအေျခခံ မဟုတ္တဲ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီတုိင္းျပည္ေတြမွာ သာသနာေရး ဝန္ႀကီး ဌာနေတြမွာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ မေတြ႔ရွိဘူးေပါ့ေနာ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာက ထူးထူးျခားျခား သာသနာေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနက အဓိက အခန္း က႑မွာ ပါဝင္ေနတယ္။ ဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လူနည္းစုဘာသာ ခရစ္ယာန္ပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ တျခားဘာသာ အျမင္နဲ႔ပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ေျပာရလို႔ရွိရင္ အဲဒီ သာသာနာေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနဟာ လူနည္းစုေတြကို ဖိႏွိပ္ဖို႔နဲ႔ အမ်ားစု ဘာသာကို ပ့ံပိုး အားေပးၿပီးေတာ့ ေျမႇာက္ပင့္တဲ့ဌာနလို႔ပဲ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေတြ႔ျမင္ေနရပါတယ္။”

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံထဲ အျခားလူနည္းစု ဘာသာ၀င္ေတြတင္ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ လူမ်ားစု ကိုးကြယ္တဲ့ ဗုဒၶဘာသာထဲမွာ မတူကဲြျပားတဲ့ အျမင္ေတြ၊ အယူအဆေတြအေပၚ ခဲြျခားဆက္ဆံမႈ၊ ဖိႏွိပ္မႈေတြ ရိွေနတုန္းပဲလို႔ အခု ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဌာနရဲ႕ ဘာသာေရး အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအရ စိုးရိမ္ခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ ဗုဒၶဘာသာအေပၚမွာလည္း ဖိႏွိပ္္မႈေတြရိွေနတဲ့အေၾကာင္း သံဃာ့တပ္ေပါင္းစု ျပည္ပ တာ၀န္ခံ အရွင္ပညာေဇာတကလည္း မိန္႔ပါတယ္။
“သံဃာေတာ္ေတြကို သကၤန္းေတြ အတင္းဆဲြခၽြတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေထာင္ထဲ အထည့္ခံရတာမ်ဳိးေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ တရားေဟာခြင့္ ပိတ္ပင္တာမ်ဳိးေတြလည္း ရွိပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ သာဓု ေက်ာင္းဆရာေတာ္ကို တရားေဟာခြင့္ ပိတ္တာေတြ ရွိတယ္။ ေနာက္ ဒယ္အိုးဆရာေတာ္ကို တရားေဟာခြင့္ ပိတ္တာမ်ဳိးေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။”

အစိုးရသစ္တက္လာၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္း ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လႊတ္တဲ့အထဲမွာလည္း ရဟန္း၊ သံဃာေတာ္ အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ပါလာတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္ ဘုရား။ အဲဒီေတာ့ အစိုးရသစ္ တက္လာၿပီးတဲ့ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာေရာ- အခုနကလို အလားတူ အေျခအေနက ေျပာင္းလဲလာပါသလား။

“သိပ္ၿပီး ထူးထူးျခားျခား ေျပာင္းလဲတာမ်ဳိး မရွိပါဘူး။ ဥပမာ တခ်ဳိ႕ေက်ာင္းေတြ ဆိုရင္ ေထာင္က လြတ္လာတဲ့ သံဃာေတြကို လက္မခံရဲ ေအာင္၊ လက္မခံႏိုင္ေအာင္ေပါ့။ တိုက္႐ိုက္ႀကီး မဟုတ္ရင္ေတာင္မွ သြယ္ဝုိက္ၿပီး ဖိအားေတြ ေပးတာမ်ဳိးေတြ လုပ္လာတယ္။ ေနာက္တခါ ေထာင္ထဲ မွာလည္း သံဃာေတာ္ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး က်န္ပါေသးတယ္။ အခုဆိုရင္ ေထာင္ထဲမွာ သံဃာေတာ္ေတြ အပါး ၆၀-၇၀ ေလာက္ ရွိေနေသးတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႕သံဃာေတြကို ဘာသာေရး ပုဒ္မေတြနဲ႔၊ သာသနာညႇိဳးႏြမ္း ဆိုၿပီး ဖမ္းၿပီး ဥပေဒေတြ ထုတ္ၿပီး ထည့္ထားတဲ့ သံဃာေတာ္ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။”

အစီရင္ခံစာထဲမွာေတာ့ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္နဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္ တိုးတက္ လာတဲ့အခ်က္ေတြကိုလည္း ထည့္သြင္း ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ စီတန္း လွည့္လည္ဆႏၵျပႏိုင္တဲ့ ဥပေဒကို ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာအတြင္း လြႊတ္ေတာ္ကေန အတည္ျပဳ ျပဌာန္း လိုက္တာကို ခ်ီးက်ဴး ထားပါတယ္။ အရင္တုန္းက ခရစ္ယာန္ဘုရားေက်ာင္းအခ်ိဳ႕ ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရး ပိတ္ပင္ခံရမႈအခ်ဳိ႕ကို သာသနာေရး ၀န္ႀကီးဌာနက ေျဖေလ်ာ့ေပးလာတာေတြရိွသလို ႏိုင္ငံအ၀ွမ္းမွာ မတူညီတဲ့ ဘာသာ အယူအဆေတြအၾကား ဆက္စပ္ေဆြးေႏြးမႈေတြ လုပ္ေပးတာေတြရိွတယ္လို႔ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။

Source : VOA Burmese

________________________________________________________
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor


Suzan Johnson Cook
Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom 
Washington, DCInternational Religious Freedom Report for 2011
Burma

Muslims across the country, as well as ethnic Chinese and Indians, often were required to obtain permission from township authorities to leave their home towns. Authorities often denied Rohingya and other Muslims living in Rakhine State permission to travel for any purpose; however, permission was sometimes obtained through bribery. Muslims in other regions were granted more freedom to travel, but still faced restrictions. For example, Rohingyas living in Rangoon needed permission from immigration authorities to travel into and out of Rakhine State.

Muslims in Rakhine State, particularly those of the Rohingya minority group, continued to experience the severest forms of legal, economic, educational, and social discrimination. There were reports that Buddhist physicians would not provide Muslims the endorsement required by the Ministry of Health that permits Muslims to travel outside Rakhine State to seek advanced medical treatment.

The government denied citizenship status to Rohingyas, claiming that their ancestors did not reside in the country at the start of British colonial rule, as the 1982 citizenship law required. The Rohingyas asserted that their presence in the area predates the British arrival by several centuries. In November 2008 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women urged the government to review its citizenship law. In February 2010 the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar visited the country and noted discrimination against Muslims. Many of the approximately 28,500 Rohingya Muslims registered in two refugee camps in Bangladesh and the estimated 200,000 Rohingya Muslims living outside those camps, also in Bangladesh, refused to return to the country because they feared human rights abuses, including religious persecution.

Essentially treated as illegal foreigners, Rohingyas were not issued Foreigner Registration Cards (FRCs). Since they also were not generally eligible for NRCs, Rohingyas have been commonly referred to as “stateless.” In the run-up to national elections in November 2010, the government issued Temporary Registration Cards (TRCs) to residents in northern Rakhine State; the majority of them are Rohingyas. The issuance of TRCs was primarily done, it appears, to allow Rohingyas participation in the elections. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked with approximately 750,000 residents of Rakhine State who did not hold citizenship in the country. At the end of the reporting period, the UNHCR (quoting government estimates) indicated that 85 percent of eligible residents (637,500 stateless persons) over the age of 10 possessed TRCs. The UNHCR noted that according to information from individuals in northern Rakhine State, many individuals issued TRCs were actually only given a TRC number and no document. The UNHCR also assisted Rohingyas with education, health, infrastructure, water and sanitation, and agriculture.

Without citizenship status Rohingyas did not have access to secondary education in state-run schools. Those Muslim students from Rakhine State who completed high school were not permitted to travel outside the state to attend college or university. Authorities continued to bar Muslim university students who did not possess NRCs from graduating. These students were permitted to attend classes and sit for examinations, but they could not receive diplomas unless they claimed a “foreign” ethnic minority affiliation. Rohingyas also were unable to obtain employment in any civil service positions. Rohingya couples needed also to obtain government permission to marry and faced restrictions on the number of children they could have. Muslim newcomers were not allowed to buy property or reside in Thandwe, Rakhine State, and authorities prevented Muslims from living in the state’s Gwa or Taungup areas.

The government allowed members of all religious groups to establish and maintain links with coreligionists in other countries and to travel abroad for religious purposes. These links were subject to restrictive passport and visa issuance practices, foreign exchange controls, and government monitoring, which extended to all international activities by all citizens regardless of religion. The government sometimes expedited its burdensome passport issuance procedures during the year for Muslims making the Hajj or for Buddhists going on pilgrimage to Bodhgaya, India. Although approximately 500 Muslims from Burma participated in the Hajj during the year, there were allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ expedited process. An estimated 2,000 Buddhists from the country made pilgrimages to Bodhgaya.

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—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—

JAMAICA, New York (July 24, 2012) – The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) issued a press release today calling for an end to the atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim community in Burma.

According to the United Nations, the Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Disowned by the Burmese government, they have been completely stripped of their human rights; most recently, an estimated 90,000 have been displaced and left without “adequate food, water, shelter, [or] medical attention.”

“We are deeply moved by the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, and pained by the massacre of innocents in Burma,” said Dr. Zahid Bukhari, President of ICNA. “Violence against the Rohingyas continues to escalate, with hundreds being indiscriminately tortured and murdered in the past month.”

“ICNA calls on the U.S. and all nations to stand firmly with the Rohingyas and investigate the abuse of human rights and murder of innocent Muslims in Burma. While the U.S. has called for a peaceful resolution, we must assert more pressure on the Burmese government to stop the violence. We further appeal to the Obama administration to provide humanitarian assistance to the Rohingyas.”

“ICNA also urge the United Nations to investigate the massacres, and appeal to the government of Bangladesh to provide a haven for the Rohingya refugees as they flee from Burma. The world must stand together against violence and not let the bloodshed of this community go unnoticed.”

Please contribute to Helping Hand’s Burmese Relief Fund to alleviate the pain and suffering of the Rohingya community. Click here to donate.

The Islamic Circle of North America is a leading American Muslim organization dedicated to the betterment of society through the promotion of Islamic values. Since 1968, ICNA has worked to build relations between communities by devoting itself to education, outreach, social services and relief efforts.

—END—

Press Contact: Naeem Baig
Vice President for Public Affairs
Islamic Circle of North America
E-mail:PR@ICNA .US 
Office: (718) 658-1199 Extension: 102
Cell: (917) 202-2118

Source : ICNA


    • Rohingya Exodus