Six months of sectarian violence has driven more than 100,000 people from their homes in western Burma. 

Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim communities that have lived separately for generations are now forcibly segregated. 

Barriers have been erected across roads in the state capital and thousands of Rakhine have had their homes destroyed. 

But its the Rohingya who endure the worst conditions. Rejected as citizens by both Bangladesh and Burma, they continue to be victimised in the camps where they sought shelter.

On Myebon peninsula, south of the Rakhine state capital Sittwe, the double standards are clear. 

Once the site of a daring amphibious raid by Allied troops in the Second World War, the peninsula is now home to two very different refugee camps. 

Just a mile or so apart, they are populated entirely on ethnic lines - one for displaced Buddhists and the other for the Rohingyas. 

Near the centre of town is the smaller of the camps. 

On lush grass thirty five tents bearing the logo of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stand in ordered rows. This is Kan Thar Htwat Wa, home to 400 Buddhists who have been here since clashes in late October. 

Phu Ma Gyi 's home was burnt down and, with her two daughters, she now shares a tent with three other families. 

"The government is looking after us here," she says. "We have food, medicine and what we need." 

Not far away the Burmese and UN officials who I am travelling with are being shown a table full of medical supplies and bags of rice. It is clear there are no shortages here. 

Blocked deliveries 

A short drive in the back of a truck takes us to the Rohingya camp. On the way we pass by what was the Muslim neighbourhood. 

Now it is completely flattened, with just the outlines of houses still visible on the ground.

Six weeks ago, one of those outlines was the primary school where Khin La May was headmistress. 

"The Rakhine community came with knives and threw stones and sticks," she said. 

So she fled, along with 4,000 other Rohingya to a small mound just outside town. That mound became what is now Taung Paw Camp. 

It is a squalid muddy mess with raw sewage running through its open drains. The tents are ramshackle and the people inside hungry and desperate. 

Aid workers told me this is one of the worst camps in Asia, if not the world. 

Deliveries to both camps on Myebon have to be made by boat, and attempts to get proper sanitation and supplies into Taung Paw have so far been blocked. 

Rakhine Buddhists control the jetty and are refusing to allow aid agencies regular access to the Rohingya camp, thwarting attempts to improve conditions.

It is a scene repeated in other locations in Rakhine. One major aid agency told me obstruction by the Buddhist community was preventing them from doing 90% of their work. 

Given the local objections only the Burmese military could force the aid through. But they have so far refused to do so. 

Instead they stand guard at Taung Paw, stopping the Rohingya leaving to tend their crops (the Rakhine have in their absence taken the fields over). 

Burma's Border Affairs Minister Thein Htay visited both the Myebon camps with us and said that military were keeping the Rohingya inside for their own security. 

The stark difference in conditions was due to the camps being different sizes, he said.

"There is some disturbance by the local people," he said. "In your country does the military always intervene? The Burmese military is not the ruling man. There is the government." 

Better relations 

In Rakhine's urban centres the situation is better. Relations between the authorities and international aid agencies have improved and many of those displaced in June are being moved into better conditions.

As she travelled to both Buddhist and Rohingya camps, the United Nations' top humanitarian official Valerie Amos repeatedly urged reconciliation. 

For now with tensions high that appears a distant goal. 

More money is needed to fund the Rakhine aid operation, Ms Amos said, but it is now up to the Burmese authorities to take a strong stand. 

"The donors have a responsibility because we need more money to really be effective but the government also has a responsibility," she said. 

"They have to take the lead. They have to show the leadership they have to work to bring the communities together. And that work has to start now."

David Stout

Democratic Voice of Burma

December 12, 2012

The filmmaker behind Al Jazeera’s ‘Hidden Genocide’ has refuted accusations of fabrication made by the Rakhine Nationalities and Development Party (RNDP) chairman. 

The documentary provides testimony from both Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese concerning the rioting in early June in Arakan state that killed more than 100 people and displaced tens of thousands according to government figures. 

In the film, several of the individuals interviewed claim that government paramilitary forces massacred the Rohingya Muslims, who were later buried in mass graves. 

Earlier in the week, during an interview with DVB, RNDP chairman Dr Aye Maung alleged that one of the film’s central characters, Jannat Ara, who had been raped by Burmese paramilitary members and later died from complications caused by her injuries in Bangladesh, was fictitious. 

“They also have this made-up character – a woman who was raped and hospitalised and she travelled to Bangladesh from Arakan for a medical treatment,” Aye Maung told DVB earlier this week. 

The RNDP party boss went onto say the documentary was ‘biased’ and looked ‘like it was created in a studio’. 

“It is amazing how Dr Aye Maung thinks we (international journalists, NGOs and so on) ‘make things up’,” said filmmaker Phil Rees during an email exchange with DVB. 

The filmmaker had met with Jannat Ara on two separate occasions during the production of the film. 

“I saw medical records from a hospital in Chittagong that confirmed that trauma to her genital area and anus was ‘consistent with being raped by more than 20 men’,” said Rees. 

Jannat Ara had a drip permanently inserted in her neck to provide regular dialysis she needed for a kidney problem she contracted from the rape. 

According to Rees, the medical care was costing hundreds of dollars a month, which she was unable to afford. 

“I said in the film on several occasions that Rakhine [Arakanese] were victims of rioting in Maungdaw and many were made homeless. The overwhelming percentage of victims are, of course, Rohingya,” said Rees. 

“But the central problem is the ideology that fails to allow people who were born and brought up in the state to become part of the society there.” 

The RNDP has a history of antagonising residents in Arakan state and playing off nationalist sentiments. 

In July, security forces briefly detained two RNDP members in Arakan state’s Mrauk-U township after the duo went around town urging Arakanese nationals who owned rice mills to only sell their goods to Arakanese Buddhists. 

The RNDP members were later bailed out after being warned by the region’s tactical operations commander not to act in ways that could incite riots and were forced to sign a pledge to avoid such behaviour. 

Last week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought to preemptively discredit the Al Jazeera documentary in both editions of the New Light of Myanmar claiming the film had exaggerated and fabricated incidents that had occurred in Arakan state.

Lindsay Murdoch

The Sydney Morning Herald 

December 12, 2012

An al-Jazeera English documentary on violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Burma’s western province of Rakhine has earned a formal, public rebuke from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar strongly opposes and rejects the attempt made by Al Jazeera to broadcast the documentary by exaggerating and fabricating the incidents in Rakhine State,” a seven-point statement concludes.

The 50-minute program documents the persecution of Burma’s ethnic Rohingya minority, who are Muslim. Most Burmese are Buddhist. In June, violence spiraled out of control after several Muslims were lynched in retaliation for the rape of a Buddhist woman. The state of Burma, also known as Myanmar, has at times suggested that the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are not actually Burmese, but illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though that country does not want them either.

The Rohingya issue, including the minority’s uncertain future, seems to be getting worse as Burma embarks on an otherwise promising agenda of reforms. The topic is extremely sensitive for the government, and in some ways, in Rakhine, it’s still the old Burma, a police state. From an AP story on the aftermath of the recent fighting:

Few issues in Myanmar are as sensitive as this.

The conflict has galvanized an almost nationalistic furor against the Rohingya, who majority Buddhists believe are trying to steal scarce land and forcibly spread the Islamic faith. Myanmar’s recent transition to democratic rule has opened the way for monks to stage anti-Rohingya protests as an exercise in freedom of expression, and for vicious anti-Rohingya rants to swamp Internet forums.

In the nearby town of Pauktaw, where all that remains of a once-significant Muslim community are the ashes of charred homes and blackened palm trees, the hatred is clear. Graffiti scrawled inside a destroyed mosque ominously warns that the “Rakhine will drink Kalar blood.” Kalar is a derogatory epithet commonly used to refer to Muslims here.

Myanmar’s reformist leader, President Thein Sein, had set a harsh tone over the summer, saying that “it is impossible to accept those Rohingya who are not our ethnic nationals.” 

The al-Jazeera program seems to have so upset the Burmese government in part for its suggestion that the violence could be part of “a deliberate attempt to end the Rohingya as a people,” an enormous assertion that the program never quite proves. Still, it’s a useful and dramatic telling of the crisis and what it means for the country and its people.

BROUK ADDRESSES ETHNIC CLEANSING ON ROHINGYA AT BRITISH PARLIAMENT

December 10, 2012

The President of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK), Tun Khin, presented evidence of the ethnic cleansing committed against Rohingyas in Arakan State at a meeting in the British Parliament today. The meeting was chaired by Baroness Kinnock, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma, and focused on the current crisis in Arakan State, Burma. Baroness Uddin, Lord Nazir Ahmed, Friends of Burma, British NGOs and other activists attended at the Parliament

At the meeting Melanie Teff from Refugees International, Mabrur Ahmed from Restless Beings highlighted the issues facing by Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the 1982 Burmese citizenship law and the role that international actors should play to defend the human rights of the Rohingya. Phil Rees, Reporter and TV-producer – former foreign correspondent and senior producer at the BBC explained and shown” documentary “Hidden Genocide”.

Tun Khin told the parliamentary meeting that ethnic cleansing against Rohingyas is well planned by State government and Central government to eliminate Rohingyas of Arakan. Despite international outcries the Burmese government is trying to use the discriminatory “Burma Citizenship Law of 1982” to give the impression that they will provide citizenship to the Rohingya, but in fact they are putting in place requirements that the Rohingya people cannot meet, since most of their documents were burned in the recent violence. Tun Khin also highlighted Security Forces and Rakhines poured poison in many lakes of Buthidaung and Maungdaw. More than 10 Rohingyas were sentenced to jail 10 yrs and Government authorities not allowing to hire Lawyers for arrested Rohingyas.

BROUK received information from the ground that more than 300,000 Rohingya are trapped in their homes and villages, unable to go to clinic, school or buy food because of ongoing attacks and threats against them. BROUK is already receiving reports of babies dying from malnutrition. The Burmese Government is implementing her own ethnic cleansing policy, using starvation instead of bullets to kill Rohingya men, women and children. There is no safety and security for Rohingyas in Arakan. Rohingyas in Arakan are still in danger and anytime could face attacks from security forces and Rakhine.

President Thein Sein’s government is failing to protect its Rohingya population the “responsibility to protect” them or the duty to prevent and halt mass atrocities, now lies with the international community. President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK Tun Khin urged UK government and international community to do the following;

1. Put pressure on the Burmese government to stop all violence and intimidation against the Rohingya and to resettle Rohingya IDPs to their origin.

2. Support sending a UN Peacekeeping Force and international observers to Arakan State.

3. Ensure unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims.

4. Support the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry in order to establish the true facts and bring those responsible to justice.

5. Put pressure on the government of Burma to repeal and replace the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law with a law in line with international law standards and human rights principles.

For more information, please contact Tun Khin +44 7888 714 866.

PHUKET: Three boats laden with Rohingya men and boys have been apprehended off the Andaman coast of Thailand today, according to reports.

Two of the boats came ashore at Ko Chang, an island near Thailand's border with Burma that bears the same name as a tourist destination in the Gulf of Thailand. 

The third boat landed at Ko Sinhi, an island 18 kilometres from Ranong, a large Thai border port.

The first boat at Ko Chang landed at 7am with 170 people - an unusually high number - on board.

A second boat landed at 9.40am and the third vessel reached Ko Sinhi at 11am.

It's not known how many people were on board the second and third vessels. 

All three groups were apprehended by the Royal Thai Navy, usually reliable sources have told Phuketwan.

The current whereabouts of the people on the boats in not known. 

Boats have been leaving ports in Bangladesh or Rakhine state in Burma (Myanmar), scene of deadly clashes since June, at the rate of at least one a day since late October. 

Why the boats have landed in Thailand so far north of Malaysia, the usual destination for the Muslim-minority boatpeople, is not known. 

Thailand has been employing a ''help on'' policy, intercepting Rohingya vessels if they come too close to the Thai coast and supplying food and water on condition that the passengers sail on, past Thailand.

Deadly battles between Rohingya and Rakhine locals have killed at least 170 people and razed thousands of homes since a rape and murder lit simmering animosity in May. 

With thousands of Rohingya forced to live in displaced persons camps where conditions are primitive and where children are said to be malnourished, many are trying to flee by water. 

A boatload of 112 men and boys was apprehended when they came ashore at Thai Muang, a short drive north of Phuket, on November 10. 

The passengers included included 56 teenagers - the youngest aged just 14. Another 46 people on board were under 26.

Officials in Thailand described them as ''Burmese'' to stifle any suggestion that as Rohingya, they could be categoriesed as refugees. 

Phuketwan obtained a list of the names of the men and was able to confirm that they were Rohingya. 

All of them were trucked north from Thai Muang the same day, probably to be delivered in Ranong to people smugglers. Because they are stateless non-citizens, Burma does not take them back. 

The increased flow of boats leaving Burma is likely to continue until the ''sailing season'' ends with the arrival of the monsoon in April.

BROUK president Tun Khin attended 14th EU- NGO Forum on human rights 6-7 December 2012 at Brussels, Belgium. During the conference Forum BROUK President raised Rohingya issue with Mr Stavros Lammbrinidis, European Representative for Human rights, Ms Navanethem Pillay United Nations High Commissioner for Human rights. 

During the workshop Racism and Xenophobia Tun Khin discussed how Anti-Rohingya and Anti-Muslim campaign is growing and in Burma and also recent violence in Arakan where thousands of Rohingyas were killed by government security forces and Rakhine in June and October. 

1. To put pressure on President Thein Sein to stop violence and crimes against the Rohingya and to protect the lives of helpless Muslims in Arakan. 
2. To support UN peace-keeping forces being sent to Arakan for the purpose of preventing further death, killing, rape and destruction of the Muslims. 
3. To support a UN Commission of Inquiry and to send independent international observers to the ground. 
4. To put pressure on President Thein Sein government (i) to allow unhindered humanitarian aid to the Rohingya victims in all parts of Arakan; (ii) to stop its segregation scheme and replace it with a proactive policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’; and (iii) to repeal or amend the Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 To in order to conform it with international law standards.

PHUKET: Rohingya fleeing ethnic cleansing and starvation in Burma are driving a surge in business for people traffickers on the Thai border with Malaysia.

The would-be refugees, who arrive by boat, are imprisoned in primitive conditions until someone pays for their passage across the border into Malaysia.

Recently, the people smugglers' fees have risen to the equivalent of 50,000 baht or even 60,000 baht per person. Brokers have been chasing ''investors'' in a widening circle, even on Phuket or in Bangkok.

If the fee is not met, Rohingya are usually indentured to work on fishing trawlers for up to 12 months to pay off their broker bond the hard way. 

Virtually all authorities on both sides of the Thailand-Malaysia border take a cut from the fee. The broker usually only pockets 10,000 baht per person as profit. 

A rapidly increasing number of Muslim-minority Rohingya are fleeing Rakhine state, where so-called community violence since June has led to at least 170 deaths and the torching of thousands of houses. 

Dispossessed Rohingya are being penned in rough camps, where conditions have shocked United Nations visitors and where many young children are reported to be on the verge of starvation.

At least one boat a day now leaves the region, its passengers consisting of men and teenage boys hoping for sanctuary and a fresh start in Muslim-majority Malaysia. 

The tacitly-sanctioned ethnic cleansing has brought a dramatic increase in the number of departures. But the penning of the Rohinya in tens of thousands in Burma means they have been unable to make even an impoverished living for months. 

So when the telephone call inevitably comes from a trafficker asking for the fee to facilitate the final step of an illegal passage to Malaysia, more families are these days unable to raise the money. 

Hundreds of Rohingya are reported to spend time in captivity in the Thai province of Satun, awaiting the chance to make a crossing to Malaysia once the broker's fee is delivered. 

However, with fewer people able to pay up, more Rohingya are believed to be forced to work on trawlers in conditions that amount to slavery at sea. 

Survivors have told of being kept at work on the Andaman Ocean for as long as 12 months without a break, with supply tenders replenishing food and taking off loads of fish. 

''People who arrive in Satun expecting to have to pay a fee are usually only kept under armed guard for a night or two,'' an informed contact told Phuketwan. 

''They then cross the border, either by boat or simply walking through jungle trails, depending on where they are being kept prisoner. Most of the taffickers operate from plantations.

''Once in Malaysia, the Rohingya will usually be picked up by car and deposited at the door of relatives, whether in Kuala Lumpur or some other place.

''But those who can't raise the entrance money have a problem.''

With increasing numbers taking to boats and with cash short among Rakhine Rohingya, more teenagers and young men are thought to now be forced into slavery at sea. Others become guards or act as agents for the traffickers.

As a result of the boom in supply and the lack of money, brokers have been hastening to clear the bottleneck.

''We have been contacted,'' a Rohingya source on Phuket told Phuketwan last week. ''We don't have any relatives involved.

''But the traffickers are determined to find the money any way they can to make room for the next boatload.''

In the past, non-Rohingya Muslim groups on Phuket have raised money to free young men who otherwise would have been sent to sea.

Although the system is iniquitous, Rohingya and NGOs accept it as better than the alternative: a hopeless future for many in Rakhine state, where the message of race-hate against the despised Rohingya is now openly reinforced by officials at every level. 

All the Asean countries bordering the Andaman Sea along with India are part of a conspiracy to keep their sordid part in the Rohingya tragedy low-key. 

Burma's neighbors no longer openly report the arrival of Rohingya. 

At least seven boatloads are said to have arrived on the Malaysian holiday island of Langkawi in recent weeks, with others likely to have landed north and south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket. 

Those who land far enough south of Phuket are reported to be transported to Satun and delivered to people smugglers. 

Those who are captured north of Phuket are returned to Ranong, a port on the border with Burma, where they too are transferred to traffickers. 

As stateless people without citizenship and unwanted in Burma, the Rohingya are seldom transported back to Rakhine. 

Most often, those apprehended in Thailand north of Phuket are recorded as ''Burmese'' to prevent alarming NGOs or the media. 

The surge of Rohingya in the border bottleneck is expected to grow between now and April when the monsoon season makes the perilous voyage - which can be deadly at any time - too dangerous even for desperate people.

This is the story of a people fleeing the land where they were born - the Muslim Rohingya of Myanmar. 

Earlier this year a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered in western Myanmar. The authorities charged three Muslim men. 

A week later, 10 Muslims were murdered in a revenge attack. What happened next was hidden from the outside world.

Bloodshed pitted Buddhists against minority Rohingya Muslims. Many Rohingya fled their homes, which were burned down in what they said was a deliberate attempt by the predominantly Buddhist government to drive them out of the country.

"They were shooting and we were also fighting. The fields were filled with bodies and soaked with blood," says Mohammed Islam, who fled with his family to Bangladesh. 

There are 400,000 Rohingya languishing in Bangladesh. For more than three decades, waves of refugees have fled Myanmar. But the government of Bangladesh considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants, as does the government of Myanmar. They have no legal rights and nowhere to go.

This is a story of a people fleeing the land where they were born, of a people deprived of citizenship in their homeland. It is the story of the Rohingya of western Myanmar, whose very existence as a people is denied.

Professor William Schabas, the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, says: "When you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of the people, hoping to see that they really are eventually, that they no longer exist; denying their history, denying the legitimacy of their right to live where they live, these are all warning signs that mean it's not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide."

Watch here: THE HIDDEN GENOCIDE

Editor’s note: Sarnata Reynolds is the Statelessness Program Manager at Refugees International. Her most recent report is entitled ‘Rohingya in Burma: Spotlight on Current Crisis Offers Opportunity for Progress.’ The views expressed are her own.

Last week, CNN’s Dan Rivers reported that he “wasn't prepared to see children starving to death” when he went to camps for internally-displaced Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Though no one can (or should) ever get used to such horrors, the prevalence of starvation in this region should not come as a surprise.

In early July, a United Nations “joint rapid nutrition assessment” found that 2,000 children in these camps were at a high risk of mortality. A further 9,000 children needed supplementary feeding of some kind, and 2,500 were at risk of acute malnourishment if their nutrition needs were not met. Three months later, 2,900 children were estimated to be at a high risk of death, and 14,000 children aged 6 months to 59 months needed supplementary feeding.

In his heartbreaking piece, Rivers said that perhaps he was “naïve or idealistic” to think that this tragedy could have been easily avoided. But there is nothing naïve about assuming that the Rohingya communities along the Bay of Bengal should have enough food to eat. This region is not experiencing a famine: there are fish aplenty in the seas off Myanmar’s western shore, and there are rice paddies and coconut plantations. The problem is that the Myanmar government is not allowing the Rohingya to access any of those resources. Since the outbreak of violence in Rakhine State in June, the government has not permitted the Rohingya to move freely at all. Confined to their camps, tens of thousands of Rohingya – among them thousands of children – are going hungry.

More from CNN: Landmark trip includes Myanmar visit

In most other food crises, humanitarian aid workers would be able to move in quickly with lifesaving interventions. But not in Myanmar. Extreme restrictions have been placed on humanitarian agencies – either directly by the government, or indirectly by members of the Rakhine community, who threaten anyone seen to be working with the Rohingya. As a result, thousands of Rohingya children are going hungry. The central government’s refusal to intervene on behalf of the Rohingya community is a disgrace and, whether intentionally or not, it is resulting in the starvation of children.

I traveled to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, in September as part of a team from Refugees International. During that time, I visited almost every nearby Rohingya IDP camp. In these squalid settlements, there were babies and toddlers so weakened by hunger that they sat limply on their parents’ arms. In one camp, a crowd of people formed around us, and a man in the back raised his baby in the air so that I would see how emaciated and malnourished he was. I can’t imagine the pain and desperation that father must have felt as he raised his child above the crowd, showing us the devastation this crisis has wrought.

The sad fact is that once a child reaches a certain level of malnutrition, he may die even if he is fed. Right now, roughly 2,900 babies and toddlers in the Rohingya camps may be beyond help. But there is no reason that even one more child should be added to that awful tally. If experienced medical staff were given immediate access, nearly all of the 14,000 Rohingya children in need of supplementary feeding could be brought back from the brink. Skilled practitioners could be called in at a moment’s notice, but that would require a change in the government’s position. Unless the Burmese authorities commit to broad access and assistance to the Rohingya in these camps, more children will wither away. And right now, there is not the political will in Naypyidaw for such a commitment.

At the same time that President Thein Sein and the rest of the Myanmar government are being applauded for their movement toward democracy, marginalized and stateless Rohingya children are starving. No doubt this crisis muddies the narrative of positive change in Myanmar, but that is no reason to dismiss it. If anything, this human tragedy clarifies that all is not well in Myanmar, and it demands that the international community call Myanmar’s authorities to account for continuing atrocities.

To Our Brother and Sister Buddhists in Myanmar,

---

Responding to the preemptive Myanmar foreign affairs ministry press release criticising Al Jazeera’s film about the violence in the country this year, the network encouraged viewers to watch the film this weekend and make up their own mind.

The filmmaker Phil Rees will take questions online after the programme - the exact time will be confirmed on the Al Jazeera website.

Phil Rees said that the strong evidence in the documentary was gathered despite the challenges in getting access to refugee camps and areas cut off from the outside world:

“We made this film because the events that took place needed a forensic unpicking. We made sure that we took first hand testimony from people affected rather than relying on hearsay. I hope viewers find it informative.”

The exchange between Al Jazeera and the Myanmar government comes as UN humanitarian coordinator Valerie Amos is in the country describing the situation in the refugee camps as “dire”.

A press release and trailer for the film can be found here. 

December 7, 2012

The Burmese government is strongly opposed to the airing of a documentary by Al Jazeera which exaggerates and distorts the events in western Rakhine State, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

“It is learnt that Qatar-based Al Jazeera Television will be airing a documentary relating to so-called ‘Rohingyas’ from December 8 to 12 in Arabic and from December 9 to 13 in English languages. It is also mentioned that the documentary will include accusations of genocide against the so-called ‘Rohingyas’,” said The New Light of Myanmar quoting a statement from the ministry.

“The Government of Myanmar has been handling this matter with full transparency when the violence between Bangalis and the ethnic Rakhine people broke out in May and June, and also in October 2012,” it said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the government’s position, saying that it had allowed international agencies into the restive area to observe the situation and provide aid.

It said that the Burmese authorities had provided shelter, food and other supplies “in a non-discriminatory manner for both affected communities.”

Furthermore, it said that the government had formed a committee to investigate the violence, and rejected accusations that Burmese security forces and local authorities were involved in the sectarian clashes.

Al Jazeera has not made public the details of its documentary. However, it published a report in August titled “Mass Graves for Myanmar’s Rohingya” and stated that it had conducted an exclusive report into the situation in the region. 

Maungdaw: On 3rd of December 2012, a 10 years old girl named Salima daughter of Noor Zafar and Zainab Bibi from Nwar Yong Taung village tract, Yan Mya Taung (Kwan Sharabil) village, Maungdaw went missing while she was grazing her family cattle on nearby pasture. The pasture is not very far from Zin Paing Nyar village tract, Thay Chaung (Fote Khali) hamlet’s Na-Sa-Ka camp. As she didn’t come back home in that evening, parents and local Rohingyas were worried and searched for her in the surrounding areas. Later the parents were informed by an eyewitness that she was taken into the Na-Sa-Ka camp at around 5:30pm. The parents didn’t dare to go and ask at the Na-Sa-Ka camp as the security personnel always harass local Rohingyas. The next morning, the girl’s dead body was found in the nearby paddy field. The post-mortem revealed that she was inhumanly raped. 

Minbya: Lives of Rohingyas from Minbya Township, Rakhine States are under constant fear not only from the local racist Rakhines but also from the security personnel (Na-Sa-Ka). 

Minbya is a township that located 178 kilometer east of Sittwe, the capital of violence torn Rakhine State, western Burma. About 50 Rohingya families have been living there in Fowtti Fara (Laydaung Nayra), their ancestral village. They are living as fishermen supplying fish to the village tract’s population. On 5th of December the commander of the battalion No. 371, Captain Han Zaw came to the village early in the morning and seized all the fishing tools, nets and all the instruments from houses. The fishing boats were also seized. The villagers were taken to the battalion camp and severely tortured the whole day. Later in that evening, they were allowed to go back home except 5 persons who received additional harsh punishment due to their outspokenness and released them in late night. The captain warned the Rohingyas not to engage in any agricultural and fishing activities and even not to go out from their homes. He further threatened them that they will be shot dead if they don’t obey his order. This is eventually paralyzing the livelihood of the villagers and their freedom of movement. 

The Rohingyas’ lives were seriously traumatized by the violence that took place in early June in Rakhine State. In October in this small Minbya fishing village alone, many Rohingya houses were burnt down and 5 Rohingya were brutally killed by Rakhine mob. 

In addition to that the current restrictions on livelihood, freedom of movement and lack of daily life security, the Rohingyas are forced to live under the increasing threat of arbitrary arrest, torture, starvation, malnutrition, lack of medical aids and etc. The place is isolated from other townships and due to the poor transportation; their cries are not reached to the international media. The poor villagers have no other choice, just simply counting their last days in fear.

And the only way you could remove that many people is either by ethnic cleansing or genocide and we are seeing the preparation and indeed we have seen the consequences of those acts of genocide and cleansing and until the international community wakes up and admits what is going on they are not going to be able to address the issue and the problem.