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| A Muslim Rohingya woman cleans her pots by her burnt house at a village in Minpyar in Rakhine state on October 28, 2012. |
Press TV
December 28, 2012
An Iranian lawmaker says non-binding resolutions adopted by the UN will not help improve the situation of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, urging the UN to take practical measures.
Mehrdad Baouj-Lahouti on Friday dismissed non-binding resolutions as ineffective in resolving the problems of Rohingyas, saying that the UN must deal with human rights violations across the globe without double-standard behaviors.
On December 24, the UN General Assembly expressed serious concern over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address human rights abuses.
The General Assembly also approved by consensus a non-binding resolution.
The unanimously adopted UN resolution expresses "particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the (Myanmar) government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality."
The resolution was identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly's Third Committee, which focuses on human rights.
Rohingya Muslims have faced torture, neglect and repression in Myanmar since it achieved independence in 1948. Hundreds have been killed and thousands displaced in attacks by Buddhist extremists.
Buddhist extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and set fire to their homes in several villages in the troubled region. Myanmar’s government has been blamed for failing to protect the Muslim minority.
Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.
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| (Photo - AFP) |
IRIN
December 27, 2012
COX'S BAZAR: More than two months after Rohingya refugee Mohammad Shafique fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, the 32-year-old wonders whether he will be able to return.
Under Burmese law, the Rohingya are de jure stateless and have long faced persecution and discrimination in Myanmar, human rights groups say. Meanwhile, Bangladesh, already home to more than 250,000, mostly undocumented Rohingya refugees, insists it is in no position to accept any more. Shafique told IRIN his story:
"There had always been trouble between Rohingya and Rakhine people, but never anything like this. So much violence and suffering. I felt I had no choice but to leave in October.
"However, life here in Bangladesh is not easy and there are restrictions on us here as well. We can't go where we want and cannot legally work. Although I would like to return to Myanmar, I just don't know when I can.
"Here in Bangladesh life is difficult. I only wish I could work so that I might help my family back in Myanmar.
"But that's proving difficult. I am having trouble just supporting myself here, let alone my family. There are no jobs here for Rohingya and people have nothing to do but cut and collect wood for an income.
"Living here is difficult and I try to get by on what little I have.
"For those of us who have just arrived, there is a lot of fear, but also a lot of hope. At least here I am not afraid for my life. At least here I can sleep and get something to eat.
"Here most people don't misbehave towards us. They treat us well. Sometimes they give us some food.
"Life in Myanmar for the Rohingya remains a struggle, and people do what they have to do to get by, while those with nothing have to borrow or beg to survive.
"If we can live in Myanmar with the freedom with which people of Bangladesh live then I would return to Myanmar. I came alone, my family's back there. If there's peace, I want to go back."
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| (Photo - Reuters) |
Andrew R.C. Marshall
Reuters
December 28, 2012
Pyinyananda was chanting with dozens of fellow Buddhist monks when an object landed in the folds of his orange robes and blew up.
The canister contained tear gas, the police later said, but the explosion flayed so much skin from his arms and legs that he remains in hospital weeks later.
"The police gave no warning before they fired," said Pyinyananda, 19, nursing his bandaged arms.
He was one of at least 67 monks and six other people injured on November 29, when riot police raided camps set up by villagers protesting against a $1 billion expansion of the Myanmar Wanbao copper mine in northern Myanmar.
The raids sparked nationwide outrage that dented the reformist credentials of President Thein Sein, a former general whose quasi-civilian government replaced a decades-old dictatorship in 2011. They also underscored how, after a year of often breathtaking change, the bad old Myanmar still looms over the new.
"Our leaders haven't kicked their dictatorial habits," said former monk Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, who was jailed for his role in 2007 pro-democracy protests. "We're no longer an absolute dictatorship, but we're not yet a genuine democracy."
Few ordinary Burmese have felt the impact of reform, but most have high expectations and feel emboldened to speak out. The mine dispute suggests that while 2012 was Myanmar's year of hope and change, 2013 has the potential to be a year of protests and crackdowns.
INTERSECTION OF GRIEVANCES
The copper mine sits at a crowded intersection of grievances and interests - local, national and international; political, economic and religious.
Myanmar Wanbao is a unit of China North Industries Corp, a Chinese weapons manufacturer. It operates the mine - the country's largest - with the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL), a vast holding company belonging to the powerful Myanmar military.
Villagers say the expansion at Letpadaung, a set of low hills on the west bank of the Chindwin River, involves the unlawful confiscation of thousands of acres of their land. Monks say it has destroyed or damaged the holy sites of a famous Buddhist teacher who died in 1923.
Their months-long protest ended in a pre-dawn, military-style operation reminiscent of the suppression of monk-led protests in 2007. Back then, Thein Sein, a former general, was the loyal prime minister of retired dictator Than Shwe.
The November crackdown triggered a public-relations nightmare. A government headed by an ex-general and filled with former soldiers had used force to protect the business interests of the Myanmar military and of the giant neighbor that had armed and supported it during decades of Western sanctions: China.
Amid nationwide street protests by monks, Thein Sein cancelled a state visit to Australia and New Zealand to focus on damage control. Police and ministers apologized to the monks, and a commission was established to investigate local grievances about the mine. It is headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Aug San Sul Kyi.
The crackdown came just 10 days after Myanmar basked in a visit from U.S. President Barack Obama. His November 19 appearance in the former pariah state lasted just six hours, but for many Burmese it heralded their re-entry into the world after decades of isolation.
Obama's trip followed news that the U.S. military would invite Myanmar counterparts to observe war games in neighboring Thailand in January 2013. The invitation was a powerful symbolic gesture toward a Myanmar military that has yet to acknowledge its well-documented human rights abuses.
The mine crackdown now has some wondering if the U.S. rapprochement is too hasty. In a paper published December 12, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said the Obama Administration's policy "lacks sufficient protections against Burmese backsliding on reforms." It urged Congress to re-impose major U.S. sanctions if Myanmar's progress was insufficient.
DENTED OPTIMISM
Myanmar's reforms have not stalled. But they have entered a complex and less headline-grabbing phase that could test the nerve of Thein Sein's reformers and the patience of his long-suffering people.
This year the government has held a free and fair by-election, all but scrapped media censorship, reformed Myanmar's antiquated currency, and set in motion a crowded legislative agenda to tackle rural poverty and encourage foreign investment.
But there have been setbacks. A year that began with the release of hundreds of political prisoners ended with activists alleging that the government is arresting dissidents almost as fast as it is freeing them. In the days after their crackdown at the mine, police detained at least eight activists in Yangon.
The government still has the trust of the people, said Aung Min, minister of the president's office and one of Thein Sein's top reformers. "It was not a crackdown. It was crowd control," he said, adding that the government has already apologized for the injuries.
The year also started with a slew of ceasefires with ethnic insurgent armies. Several are now looking shaky, and a 20-month conflict in Kachin State between government troops and Kachin rebels is escalating.
And a relationship once considered essential to the reform process is showing signs of strain. Suu Kyi speaks privately with increasing bitterness of Thein Sein, say diplomats and other visitors to her semi-fortified lakeside home in Yangon. Her spokesman, Ohn Kyaing, denied there is any rift.
The mine protest also capped a year in which Myanmar's monks returned as a major political force - for good and for bad. Monks have been famed for years for their pro-democracy stance. This year, some of them were shown to have an anti-Muslim stance as well.
Monks have held street rallies to oppose the mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. There, two eruptions of sectarian violence this year with Rakhine Buddhists left hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless.
In an October outbreak, monks openly incited Rakhine mobs to attack Muslims. The ethnic cleansing that followed has left Muslims elsewhere in Myanmar fearing for their own safety.
The setbacks should serve as a reality check for foreign investors eyeing business opportunities in one of Asia's last frontier economies, some Myanmar watchers say. The reform process will be lengthy and "very hostage to events," said Sean Turnell, an expert on the Myanmar economy at Macquarie University in Australia. "The mine illustrates the sort of event that could send things off the rails."
"THEY ARE NOT OUR ENEMIES"
You could fit Yankee Stadium into the Myanmar Wanbao copper mine. Twice.
Giant trucks look like toys as they ascend on switchback curves from its depths. The hole is surrounded by towering heaps of copper ore which, with every new truckload, inch their way towards surrounding villages.
The company's compound in Letpadaung is a neat grid of bungalows surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire and security cameras. Outside the gate is a singed and threadbare lawn where the main protest camp once stood. Inside, riot police march back and forth, shouting and banging riot shields with their truncheons.
"Regular training," said Police Lieutenant Colonel Thura Thwin Ko Ko, 49, one of commanders on duty the night of the crackdown. He is a former army major decorated for bravery during bloody jungle campaigns against rebels in Karen State. ("Thura" is a military honorific meaning "brave.")
Thwin Ko Ko said police had been patient with the demonstrators, who had no legal permission to protest. "They are not our enemies," he said. "They are our brothers and sisters. They are not educated and don't understand the law."
But he said this patience wore thin as people from other areas joined the protest, along with "outside groups" whom Thwin Ko Ko didn't identify. "Our country cannot stand it forever," he said. "So we had to take action."
On the evening before the crackdown, "we asked them to go back to their homes and monasteries at least 15 times," he said. "Nobody wanted to make violent action." More warnings were made at 3 a.m. on November 29, before police used water cannon and threw tear-gas canisters.
The order to clear the protest sites, he said, came from "our superiors" in the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees the police, and from the office of the prime minister of Sagaing state, of which Monywa is the capital.
Police were told not to fire rubber bullets or even to use truncheons, said Thwin Ko Ko. "We only used water cannon and tear gas." This action was "in accordance with the law." The president's office issued a statement on the day of the crackdown which used similar language.
BURN INJURIES
The burn injuries of dozens of monks still recuperating at Mandalay General Hospital tell a different story.
According to Western diplomats in Yangon, two types of munitions were found at the protest site. One was a canister bearing the letters "CS" - an abbreviation for the active chemical in tear-gas. The other was a smaller, bullet-like munition with no markings.
The munitions were standard-issue police weapons for dispersing crowds, said Twin Ko Ko. If the police had known what kind of impact the munitions would have, they would never have deployed them, he said. "We were really surprised what kind of smoke bomb it is."
Why did tear-gas canisters explode like incendiary grenades? That's one mystery opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's commission investigating the incident hopes to solve by the end of December. "When we can find enough evidence, then we will announce who is guilty and why," she said at a December 6 news conference.
At her request, four children with mental disabilities aged from one to 16 years were sent to Yangon Children's Hospital, after locals claimed they had been poisoned by emissions from a sulphuric acid factory in the area that's owned by UMEHL.
Doctors found "no symptoms of exposing to acid," said a government news release printed on the front page of the state-run New Light of Myanmar on December 14.
BURMESE BIN LADEN
The state-run media also has been running photos of Thein Sein making offerings at Buddhist temples. With the monk-led Saffron Revolution of 2007 so recent a memory, the president seems at pains to persuade his people that the mine crackdown was an aberration.
The monkhood has about 400,000 members and remains a powerful force in Myanmar. CDs with sermons by celebrated monks take pride of place on street stalls that also sell pirated Hollywood movies.
A key monk in the mine protest was Wirathu (his holy name), a short, shaven-headed abbot at New Massoyein in Mandalay, a vast monastic complex housing almost 3,000 monks.
Wirathu, 44, lives in a monastery whose walls are decorated with larger-than-life photos of himself. In an interview, he said he dispatched 170 monks to Monywa - not to demonstrate, he stressed, but to safeguard the protesters. The police crackdown enraged him, he said.
"Honestly, I felt I wanted to fight weapons with weapons," he said.
Wirathu is also one of the most prominent articulators of Burmese resentment against the country's Muslims, whom he refers to by the pejorative "kalar."
He blames Muslim Rohingyas for recent sectarian violence in Rakhine State, despite evidence, first documented by Reuters, of ethnic cleansing by Buddhist Rakhines in October. He alleged that Muslims deliberately razed their own houses to win a place at refugee camps run by aid agencies. Wirathu said his militancy is vital to counter aggressive expansion by Muslims, who he says marry and forcibly convert Buddhist women.
"I am a Burmese bin Laden," he grinned.
Valerie Amos, the United Nations humanitarian chief, visited the refugee camps in December and described conditions as among the worst she had ever seen. Thousands of Rohingya men, women and children are cramming onto ramshackle fishing boats and setting sail for other Southeast Asian countries.
Former political prisoner and monk Gambira said monks are less anti-Muslim than Wirathu's views suggest. In a nation where a third of all people live below the poverty line, the monkhood will inevitably reflect the beliefs of an ill-educated populace, he said. Gambira also noted that Buddhist monks in Yangon recently held an interfaith meeting with Muslim, Christian and Hindu religious figures.
ANTI-CHINESE SENTIMENT
The copper mine is not the first Chinese project to become the target of popular anger. Thein Sein stunned Beijing after suspending the $3.6 billion Chinese-built Myitsone dam in Sep. 2011 after fierce public opposition to its construction.
In the aftermath of the mine crackdown, the fear now is that simmering resentment could spark protests over Myanmar's largest project, also Chinese-built: a twin oil and gas pipeline being built across the country into China's energy-hungry Yunnan province.
In most of Myanmar, Chinese populations are long-established and well-integrated. Not so in Mandalay and the north, where the copper mine lies. Here, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants have settled in the past 20 years, often with citizenship papers obtained illegally.
Their access to credit and business networks in China gives them an advantage over existing native-run businesses, which has raised tensions with locals, reported the Brussels-based think tank Crisis Group in November. "There is clearly a risk of intercommunal violence, something that the Chinese government has long been concerned about," it said.
Suu Kyi's investigation of the mine crackdown will likely be highly critical of the Myanmar police. But it's unclear how far she will risk antagonizing either of the mine partners, Myanmar Wanbao (meaning China) or the military-run UMEHL. Both Beijing and the military are powerful supporters of Thein Sein.
"There will never be an answer with which everyone will be satisfied," she said at a December 6 press conference in Yangon. "But our commission's only mission is to reveal the truth."
POLITICAL PRISONERS
Still, Suu Kyi feels that Thein Sein reneged on promises to release all political prisoners, said activists who have spoken with her recently. Fifty-one dissidents were released on November 19, just as Obama arrived on the first visit to Myanmar by a serving U.S. president. But at least 200 remain behind bars, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Burmese human-rights group.
Obama spoke at Yangon University of "a future where a single prisoner of conscience is one too many." Listening from the front row was the former monk Gambira, a lantern-jawed 33-year-old with thick-rimmed glasses.
He had been sentenced to 68 years in prison for his leading role in the 2007 Saffron Revolution protests by monks. He was freed in January 2012 with many other prominent political prisoners. He says he suffers from poor mental health due to torture and abuse while in custody.
On December 1, less than two weeks after Obama's speech, Gambira was arrested for an act of civil disobedience. Soon after his January release, Gambira broke the padlocks on monasteries shut down by the former junta, so that monks could occupy them again.
He was charged with trespassing and vandalism, then released on bail after spending 10 days in the notorious Insein Jail.
Gambira believes he was arrested to prevent him from organizing anti-mine protests. He admits to meeting with "angry" Mandalay monks just after the crackdown. "The monks won't budge until the whole (mining) project is cancelled," he said.
The opponents of the copper mine seem unfazed by the government's tactics. As of two weeks ago, half a dozen monks and about 60 lay people, mostly from surrounding villages, had set up a new protest encampment east of the mine's Letpadaung expansion.
"Every crackdown creates a new generation of activists," Gambira said.
(Reporting by Andrew Marshall; Editing by Michael Williams and Bill Tarrant)
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| Aung Sang Suu Kyi embodies the hope that you can lead and use the power to bring about positive change in the lives of the ones most vulnerable. (Photo: Stan Honda, AFP) |
Salil Tripathi
Live Mint
December 26, 2012
I was not the only one to think that the sight I was about to see in Yangon on 10 December, Human Rights Day, was so unreal that it bordered on the surreal. Aung Min, the minister in charge of peace negotiations with rebel armed groups from Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, said in public what most of us were thinking in private: a year ago if you told me I’d be standing beside Aung San Suu Kyiand talking about human rights at a public event, I would not have believed it, he said.
I was not the only one to think that the sight I was about to see in Yangon on 10 December, Human Rights Day, was so unreal that it bordered on the surreal. Aung Min, the minister in charge of peace negotiations with rebel armed groups from Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, said in public what most of us were thinking in private: a year ago if you told me I’d be standing beside Aung San Suu Kyiand talking about human rights at a public event, I would not have believed it, he said.
And yet, there he was, and soon after him, there she was, once the country’s most famous political prisoner and now the embodiment of hope for a peaceful and democratic future, speaking after him, stressing the importance of people’s right to speak, but also to listen, to communicate, to understand, and respect the dignity of each individual.
Those were simple words, but they had a profound implication on the way the country, once known as Burma, was governed. We were in the ballroom of a hotel on Inya Lake, Yangon’s largest, with its green ribbon-like shore along which stand hundreds of trees, at one end of which is a shining golden pagoda, and, at its other end, the house by the water in which Suu Kyi remained imprisoned for close to two decades.
A few years ago, in a bizarre incident, an American man called John Yettaw swam across the lake and entered her home, uninvited, telling her that her life was in danger. By that senseless act, he gave the government the excuse to extend her prison term, preventing her from being able to express her views on a new constitution and ensuring that her party, the National League of Democracy, would go unrepresented in the new parliament. The walls along her house had kept her away from her people; the lake in front of her house, which would have offered her the spot to contemplate and reflect, instead became the harbinger of trouble. It was as if she’d need to build a wall there, to keep people like Yettaw away, so that she could be free.
And then, in April, I am in Bahan township, in front of her office, seeing hundreds of supporters wearing red T-shirts with the golden peacock, swaying to the tune of Myanmar pop, celebrating the National League of Democracy sweeping the by-elections. I wasn’t the only one with tears in my eyes.
And now she is free—she can go to that hotel across the lake and speak about human rights. She can travel around the world, receiving prizes she could not accept in person earlier. Her eyes brighten when I mention to her that Romila Thapar remembers her; she asks about Vikram Seth and joins me in reciting his poem, All you who sleep tonight, in full. Now she can travel within the country, not in defiance of the generals, but to uphold national unity— as a parliamentarian, as the chair of a committee set up to establish the rule of law and tranquillity.
It has been a stressful year for Suu Kyi. Her measured responses to the Rohingya crisis, which has seen an upsurge in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the Rakhine province bordering Bangladesh, has disheartened many of her supporters internationally. Her call to establish the rule of law, and unwillingness to get drawn into the question of the legal status of the Rohingyas, has made many of her liberal supporters realize that as a politician, her response would be different from what it would have been if she were a prisoner.
Politics is all about compromise, about settling for deals that may not be perfect, agreeing to positions that go against deeply held convictions. In reminding everyone that she is a politician and not an icon, Suu Kyi may have come down from a pedestal. But she didn’t choose to be a prisoner, and she didn’t choose to be an icon either. Both conditions were thrust upon her; the real challenge was always how she would use the power that had eluded her.
And Suu Kyi, through her persistence, her forbearance, and her unwavering commitment to non-violence, has shown that another way is possible. In a world where leaders shout at one another, bulldoze the homes of the vulnerable, imprison those whose thoughts they don’t like, massacre those who want a different kind of governance, arrogate to themselves powers that the rules forbid and then try to force change in the rules so that the power grab appears legal, or fail to act against spiralling corruption, the idea of someone like Suu Kyi, so close to power, is reassuring. It does not mean she will make a great leader, or even one with great power. But she embodies the hope that you can lead and use the power to bring about positive change in the lives of the ones most vulnerable.
As we drive away from the hotel, recalling her quiet voice, her mildly shaking head as she speaks, and the tiara of flowers encircling her hair, I feel oddly optimistic, and privileged, at being able to witness history.
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Chutima Sidasathian & Alan Morison
Phuket Wan
December 27, 2012
PHUKET: A total of 127 Rohingya have been arrested in southern Thailand and trucked back to the Thailand-Burma border.
Those held were in five minivans in a convoy bound for the Malaysian border crossing at Padang Besar in Songkhla province.
On December 24 a police-Army checkpoint in Satun province pulled over two of the vans, which each contained 22 men and boys.
The drivers of another three minivans fled after dropping off their passengers, who totalled 83.
The youngest of those arrested was a boy aged 10. Most of the captured Rohingya were teenagers or young men.
Hundreds are fleeing the Burmese state of Rakhine where thousands of homes have been torched since June in a simmering racial conflict between local residents and the Muslim Rohingya.
About 170 are reported to have been killed in the conflict, which has left thousands of Rohingya confined in displaced persons camps.
Many prefer to take their chances by paying people smugglers and fleeing by sea, with Malaysia as the target for most.
How the Rohingya arrested on December 24 got to Songkhla province in southern Thailand is not known. Part of their journey was probably made by sea.
Brokers on the Thai-Malaysia border are known to systematically transfer Rohingya south from camps hidden in plantations in Thailand with the connivance of officials in both countries.
The arrest of the 127 may have come because the officers at the checkpoint are not part of the system or rival brokers have perhaps fallen out.
The arrests were made by officers from Khuankalong police station in Satun, where Lieutenant Sompong Meechoo said local police were not part of any smuggling group.
''The Rohingya will be trucked straight back to Ranong,'' he said, referring to the Thai-Burma border port hundreds of kilometres to the north where the arrested men and boys could possibly have stopped off on their journey.
Because the arrested Rohingya are inevitably all men and boys, some reports speculate that they could be heading to join the insurgency in Thailand's south.
Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command has checked out these reports over several years but never found evidence to justify them.
Isoc tallies 2817 Rohingya arrested or ''helped on'' in Thailand in October and November.
Other experts in the deep south conflict say there has never been an instance where a single Rohingya has been killed or injured in incriminating circumstances in eight years of conflict.
Chris Lewa, director of the advocacy group Arakan Project, said: ''Rohingya only transit through Thailand on their way to Malaysia, helped on by Thai authorities.
''There has never been any evidence of Rohingya involvement in the deep South insurgency.
''Why should countries in the region repeatedly make these kinds of assumptions just because they are Muslims?''
The Rohingya are protective of their womenfolk, who seldom venture far from home. However, having a boy of 10 among the latest batch of arrests indicates some are becoming more desperate to flee Burma.
Hundreds of Rohingya are believed to be voyaging past the Andaman coast and the holiday island of Phuket this relatively tranquil October-April ''sailing season.''
Those apprehended on land north of Phuket are usually trucked quickly back to Ranong, often described as Burmese to reduce complications.
As stateless non-citizens, the Rohingya are not wanted back in Burma so they are usually delivered to people smugglers.
The smugglers demand extra payments and those who cannot meet the terms are usually put to work in fish factories or indentured to trawlers.
Earlier this month, Singapore refused to allow a Vietnamese cargo ship to dock with 40 Rohingya who survived a sinking in which 200 are thought to have drowned.
All of Burma's Asean neighbors continue to turn a blind eye to the tacit ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya now underway in Burma.
On 24 December 2012 the United Nations General Assembly expressed serious concern over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Burma (Myanmar) and called upon the Government to address reports of human rights abuses by the authorities.
The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Burma said last month contained a “litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified.”
The UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution “expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality.”
The Burmese Government continues to refuse to recognize the Rohingya in breach of international law. The Government stated: “There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Burma Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land.”
By continuing to persecute the Rohingya community in Burma and by refusing to afford basic rights to the Rohingya community the Burmese Government has demonstrated a refusal to adhere to international norms.
BROUK President Tun Khin said: “We welcome the resolution that seeks to address the outbreak of violence on members of the Rohingya community in Burma and consider that this must be the first step in ensuring justice and accountability in Burma. But it has been more than 6 months thus far, there is no safety or security and the Rohingya continue to face the blocking of aid resulting in the spread of illness and disease. We urgently seek the deployment of UN Peacekeeping Forces and International Observers in Arakan to protect the Rohingya. Furthermore, we urge Member States of the United Nations Human Rights Council to place Burma on the agenda during the March session in Geneva with a view to adopting a resolution to establish an Independent Commission of Inquiry as a matter of priority.”
Despite international outcries the Burmese government is seeking to use the oppressive legislation in the form of The Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 on the homeless Rohingya people whilst most of their documentation was destroyed during a spate of violence in the region. This serves as further intention of the Government to deceive the international community.
BROUK calls upon the organs of the United Nations, following the adoption of the resolution, to bring an end to the campaign of ethnic cleansing on the ethnic Rohingyas and Kaman Muslim community in Arakan.
BROUK calls upon the Office of the High Commissioner to recognize that the ongoing persecution of members of the Rohingya community is part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population as part of a State or Organizational Policy and therefore constitutes a crime against humanity as defined under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
For more information please contact Tun Khin +44 7888 714 866
BDNews24
December 26, 2012
Kolkata - Myanmar's democracy icon Aung Sang Suu Kyi has told a British minister that she is willing to facilitate the process of reconciliation between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingyas in the troubled Rakhine state (former Arakans), the 'Guardian' reports.
The Guardian quotes Hugo Swire, a minister of state in the British Foreign office as saying that Suu Kyi, if invited by the Myanmar government, is willing to help.This after Swire met Suu Kyi briefly during his recent visit to Myanmar.
"Suu Kyi has been very clear about this-she is extremely busy. She can't do everything in this country," Swire told the 'Guardian'. "If she is formally invited to get involved, she has indicated to me that she would be very willing to do that."
Swire, who traveled to Myanmar leading a trade delegation, also visited several displaced persons camps in the Rakhine state, accompanied by the British ambassador Andrew Heyn. The 'Guardian' journalist Kate Hodal also joined them.
The 'Guardian' quotes Swire as saying that the 'conditions in the Rakhine state remains extremely worrying' and that unless urgent action is taken, 'the tragedy will continue to deepen for all concerned'.
The 'Guardian' says that until now, 'Aung Sang Suu Kyi' who is considered internationally as Burma's most unifying politicial figure and who has previously stressed the significance of ethnic rights - has been largely absent from debates on this issue (Rohingyas) and it is unclear why she has not played a greater role.
Life for the Rohingya
Since the ethnic fighting broke out in June, much of the Rohingya population have fled their homes, fearing more attacks.
The Sydney Morning Herald
December 25, 2012
They scavenge for grass and plants to eat and live in makeshift camps and town slums surrounded by barbed-wire checkpoints, refugee prisoners in their own country.
December 25, 2012
They scavenge for grass and plants to eat and live in makeshift camps and town slums surrounded by barbed-wire checkpoints, refugee prisoners in their own country.
Sitting among filth and garbage in a bamboo hut Ali Hassan, a 24-year-old former brick worker, pleads for the lives of his newborn twins.
''My babies are starving in front of my eyes. I cannot buy anything now I have no money,'' he says.
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| Dire … Haleema Ahmed, above, scavenges for plants among the weeds and grass to supplement her family's food intake. Photo: Steve Sandford
There is an abundance of fish in the sea and rivers of Burma's western Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh.
There are also coconuts in the trees and rice in the fields.
But the United Nations's most senior humanitarian official, Valerie Amos, describes conditions in camps where more than 115,000 people displaced by ethnic violence are struggling to survive as ''dire''.
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| Displaced Rohingya children at the edge of Camp Coconut. Photo: Steve Sandford |
''I have seen many camps during my time but the conditions in these camps rank among the worst,'' she says.
The camp occupants are Rohingyas, members of a Muslim minority who are denied Burmese citizenship even though their families have lived in the country for centuries. The UN says they are among the world's most persecuted people.
Following an outbreak of ethnic violence in June and again in October and a subsequent clampdown by Burma's security forces, tens of thousands of Rohingya are prohibited by soldiers from leaving designated areas to work, forage for food or seek medical treatment.
Heartbreaking images emerging from Rakhine, also known as Arakan, point to ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Rohingya, who are seen by the Burmese government and many of the country's Buddhists as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Video taken for Fairfax Media in a slum Muslim area of the Rakhine capital, Sittwe, shows a mother of seven, Haleema Ahmed, scavenging for grass and plants to help feed her family, reviving memories of images of starving villagers eating grass in North Korea.
''The food that is being donated to us is not enough to eat. We have to help ourselves to find our own food,'' she says. ''I have to collect grass and plants to sell and eat to fill my empty stomach.''
Zaleena Hatwa, 33, a mother of two boys and three girls, is living in a one-room hut at ''Camp Coconut'', where beachside coconut trees mark a boundary the Rohingya may not cross. ''I fled my house only with the clothes I was wearing … they beat and killed many of us,'' she says.
Zaleena Hatwa says before the violence she had a house and money. ''Now I am forced to live like a crazy street person,'' she says.
There are few Rohingya leaders to speak up internationally for their people, who are referred to by the Burmese Buddhist majority as ''Bengalis'' or the pejorative term for foreigner, ''kalar''.
Abdul Hakim, a cleric at a small Muslim mosque in the Aung Min Glar district of Sittwe, called for the United Nations to intervene to save his people.
''The Rohingya have been living here for 800 years but now the Buddhist want to drive the Rohingya all out of Arakan … they don't want to live together with the Muslim,'' he said. ''We want equal rights and we want the rule of law. We want peace and justice. The UN has the power, if they want to do something, they can.''
Baroness Amos, who visited eight refugee camps recently, called on the Burmese government to promote reconciliation in Rakhine, where she said tensions ''between communities is running very high''.
Her remarks underscored concerns about Burma's stability as it emerges from 50 years of repressive military rule under the reformist government of the President, Thein Sein.
The government and Rakhine community groups have placed extreme restrictions on humanitarian agencies working in Rohingya camps and Muslim areas.
People seen to be working with the Rohingya are often threatened.
Aid workers report seeing starving babies and toddlers so weakened by hunger they sit limply in their parents' arms.
The UN estimates there are 2900 babies and toddlers with acute malnutrition in the camps who may already be beyond help.
Satellite imagery shows extensive destruction of homes and property in Muslim areas following a rapid escalation of violence since June that led to at least 170 deaths.
One 14-hectare coastal area shows almost 1000 razed buildings, houseboats and floating barges. Reports have emerged of mass graves, and human rights organisations cite executions, torture, rapes, beatings, mass arrests and burnings by security forces, mainly against Rohingya.
The violence erupted after reports circulated that on May 28 a Rakhine Buddhist woman had been raped and killed. Retaliation was swift after details were circulated in an incendiary pamphlet.
On June 3, a large group of Rakhine Buddhists stopped a bus and killed 10 Muslims on board. Violence between Rohingya and Rakhine then swept through Sittwe and surrounding areas.
Since October more than 4000 Rohingya have paid smugglers to get on typically leaking and unsafe boats to make the perilous voyage to Muslim-majority Malaysia, where their presence is mostly tolerated. Several hundred have drowned in at least four boat sinkings.
At least one boat a day now leaves the region, its passengers mostly Rohingya men and teenage boys seeking a new life. Many others have fled to Bangladesh, where 400,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps. Bangladesh also considers them illegal immigrants.
In Rakhine state, authorities have begun a process of verifying the nationality of all Muslims, but there are widespread calls for those deemed ''illegal'' to be deported. The goal of the survey is unclear.
A 1982 law enshrines the citizenship of Burma's officially-recognised ethnic groups but the Rohingya were excluded despite their claims to have met the criteria of having ancestors in the country before 1823, the date of the first Anglo-Burmese war. Rohingyas say they can trace their ancestry back to an eighth-century shipwreck on an Arakan island.
Observers say widespread hostility towards the Rohingya throughout Burma is likely to inhibit their naturalisation.
''We have no plan to accept as an ethnic group those who are stateless, or any new tribes who are not officially recognised, like the Rohingya,'' said Zaw Htay, a high-ranking government official.
The opposition leader and democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi has disappointed international supporters by failing to speak up strongly for the Rohingya, prompting speculation she has her eye on 2015 elections.
In a squalid camp near Sittwe, Rashid Ahmad, 63, tells how security forces watched as a Rakhine mob attacked Rohingya residents in his village.
''They started beating and killing people, so my family and my niece's family ran away from the village to the seashore to take a boat,'' Rashid Ahmad said.
''My niece had already got on a boat but a mob of Rakhine people pulled her off the boat with her two children.
''One was a boy and the other a girl. They killed the boy with a long knife and spears … my niece was raped and then killed by the Rakhine mob.''
Rashid Ahmad said his people had lived in Burma for a long time and have a proud history as Muslims ''but have never felt law and justice from the government''.
''We are helpless unless we get help from another country,'' he said.
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| Maung Than Soe (aka) Mohammed Khan |
RB News
December 25, 2012
(Translated into English by M.S. Anwar)
A Letter from a Bleeding Heart to RB News
I, Daw Kyaut Khin at my 41, daughter of U Hla Kyaw, a widow and mother of three children, was born and brought up at the quarter of MyoThuGyi in Sittwe (Akyab), a place where we have been living for generations. On 10th June 2012, when Rakhine terrorists were killing and annihilating Muslims in our quarter, I was struggling to escape the horrific scenes with my two children (my eldest son was away from home on his trip) to save our lives. Meanwhile, my second son, Maung Than Soe @ Mohammed Khan (Son of U Maung Oo Shwe), was arrested and abducted by the two Police officers, Win Tun Oo and Than Shwe, from Police Station No.1.
My Son was trying to escape from the hands of the two Police officers and run away as he was too frightened, he was hacked with sword by the waiting Rakhine (Buddhist) terrorists and consequently got severe injuries on his head and right arm. I could not help and do anything as Police dragged away my son with such injuries. As I was attempting to run for life with my four-year-old child with a broken and bleeding heart, we were beaten and hacked by the Rakhine terrorists. As a result, I had to get my head stitched nine times and my four-year-old daughter also got injuries on her hand.
As I was getting treatment in hospital for the severe injuries I was given, I got a chance to see my son, Maung Than Soe, from a distance, ailing from the critical injuries.
The lawmakers and authority of this country, feel it being in my shoes what and how I would be feeling going through such pains! I can’t explain!
On 19th December 2012, to make my heart bleed more, only the dead of my son, Maung Than Soe, was delivered to me from the above mentioned Police Station No.1. His dead body was full of injuries resulted from the tortures by the inhumane police.
My son was arrested 6-7 months ago and I was never given a chance to see him in the prison. I was never given a chance to provide him with foods and medicines. Which country on earth will have such lawmakers who arrest innocent people alive and return their mere dead bodies!!!
Feel it, how much pain we, weak and vulnerable people, are going through! My father is also a pure Rakhine and my mother is Kaman.
What fault have we done?
Is our fault that we are Muslims?
Concerning the arrest of my son, Police had never given me any notice or any other documents.
Is it that anybody here can be killed, hacked or chopped on mere reason that he/she is Muslim??
Daw Kyaut Khin
Sittwe
BDNews24
December 25, 2012
The UN General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.
The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said last month contained a "litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified."
Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised "maximum restraint" to quell the violence.
The unanimously adopted UN resolution "expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality."
At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine State along the western coast of Myanmar, also known as Burma. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.
The resolution adopted on Monday is identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly's Third Committee, which focuses on human rights. After that vote, Myanmar's mission to the United Nations said that it accepted the resolution but objected to the Rohingyas being referred to as a minority.
"There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar," a representative of Myanmar said at the time. "Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land."
G. Surach
KLANG: In a move to equip the Rohinya community with the necessary knowledge and self-belief, non-governmental organization (NGO), Future Global Network Foundation (FGN) recently recently established the Rohingya Education Centre (REC), in Batu Belah, here.
The school which is the second in the country following a similar centre Permatang Pauh, Penang, was initiated by the United Nations High Commissioner Refugees (UNHCR) which funds the program, FGN as the project manager and daily operations is handled by NGO, Wadah Percerdasan Umat Malaysia (WADAH).
FGN chairman, Ahmad Azam Ab Rahman, said the centre which began operations on July 15, currently accommodates over 100 Rohingya students aged between five to 17 years from its community throughout the district.
"We came up with the initiative as we felt that the community as a whole had been going through this stigma of being inferior among other communities in Malaysia.
"Our aim is to instill confidence in their children through basic education, so that they will be able to survive and hold their heads up high when they are equipped to look for a living in the country," he said when met after the launching ceremony, here, today.
Ahmad said that the centre which currently has seven staff including a head master and six teachers, conduct five classes and teach subjects such as Bahasa Melayu, English, Mathematics, Science, Moral Education and Arts to its students.
"The centre operates from 8.30am to 1.30pm from Monday to Friday and after the session ends, the children then attend Islamic religious studies classes at nearby madrasahs.
"Most of the students especially the older ones at first do not even know how to read, write or count in the beginning, but now they are able to speak Bahasa Melayu and read English proficiently following classes" he said.
He said following the success of the first centre, he hoped that this current centre will enable the students one day if Myanmar accepts them as citizens to blend in easily with the society there without fear or prejudice.
He added that in the future, students who excel well in their studies will be sponsored to pursue their secondary education at private schools.
The United Nations has reported that the Rohingya community who hail from the Rakhine state of western Myanmar is one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
Many Rohingya have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh and the Thai- Myanmar border following ethnic unrest for the past 35 years.
There at least 24,000 Rohingyas refugees in Malaysia.
 |
| Protesters in Malaysia are asking the Myanmar government to end the violence in Western Myanmar and the atrocities committed against Rohingya people. (Photo - Mohd Fazrul Hasnor @ Demotix) |
Rebecca Henschke
Asia Calling
December 15, 2012
When 28-year-old Khairul Bashar took to sea for the first time, he left behind all that he had ever known. He is a Rohingya, born in Burma from the Maung Saw Township but he has never been given citizenship.
After suffering years of discrimination things go worse in June. The rape and murder of a Buddhist woman triggered a wave of violence against the Rohingya.
After seeing members of his community being killed Khairul fled to Malaysia.
Rebecca Henschke spoke with him in an apartment block in Kuala Lumpur where many Rohingya are now sheltering in.
“To save my own life I had to leave my own native land.”
Q. Can you tell me what happened? What happened to you and your family?
“With out saying anything they attacked.”
Q. What did they do?
“They killed.”
Q. You saw that with your own eyes?
“I saw 50 people with knifes come and attack and killed 5 members. Two are a little young and one is old over 60 years.”
Q. You saw these people being killed. Did you know the killers? Were they your neighbors?
“See. Everyday they are not far from our village. Their village is beside our village. We are from Kayin, Maung Saw Township. Continously they attack. So killing for two days and then they start arresting people who are educated and a little wealthy. After they are arrested we don’t where they go.”
Q. Educated wealthy Rohingya started to be arrested?
“Only our Rohingya not Rakine. They explain to us that they are concerned about that problem so we need to arrest you.”
Khairul has a degree in sociology. His family feared that he would be arrested next, so he left...
First to Bangladesh, where he has relatives living in refugee camps. He crossed the border by swimming across a river.
“We collected 75 members we gathered some money and we buy one boat which is suitable for 75 members. It’s an old boat not new. They had no driver. I drive. I have some experience about diesel engine.”
Q. Was it dangerous with the waves?
“So dangerous! After 19 days we are in Thailand.”
Q. How did you cross the border from Thailand into Malaysia illegal?
“There is forest. So we come through the forest. We walked 11 hours and then take a car.”
Q. Do you free safe now?
“What kind of safe! I am illegal here. I can not work. If I am arrest by the police what can I say to them? So i can not work.”
So we have climbed up the stairs of an apartment building not far from the centre of Kuala Lumpur.
If you look out from the apartment building you can see the Twin Towers. Here many of the Rohingya refugees are now living because this is where the community head lives.
We have just been told that someone arrived yesterday from the Rakhine state so we are going to met them....
Q. Are there many Rohingya families here?
“Around six or seven.”
We enter an empty two-bedroom apartment. Around eight people are sitting on the floor.
Khin Tun greets us. He arrived with his family of four yesterday by plane from Rangoon where he used to run an art gallery. He and his family have Burmese citizenship.
His wife’s family is from the Kyaukphyu township. In October the entire Muslim quarter—more than 300 houses belonging to the Rohingya community was burned to the ground in communal violence.
Khin’s family now lives in a refugee camp. But he described to me how they called him when their houses were on fire in October.
“All my family is there. Everyday they call crying...crying..”
“Hour by hour they call me what is happening now.”
Q. What did they say?
“I hear lots of sounds that I had never heard in my life. Some are crying. So are calling the God Allah, some say the water...lots of things. It was very noisey. I cry all the time. I am listening on the phone and I say Run!.. so they run. Especially the women and children are crying.”
“She fears that the same conflict that is happening in Rakhine will come to Yangoon. Now they are sending all the people to the camps. What is the meaning of the camps? Why do these people have to be refugees? These people have their own lives, they have their own homes and business they are human beings now they are in the camp. I think the next person will be me. Eventhough I live in Rangoon, they will come and pick me up.”
Q. Where you getting any phone call or messages to tell you that you would be taken to the camps?
“I have friends working in the government, they are my university friends they told me that I should leave before you have to go to the camps so that’s why I decided to leave.”
Q. Did you imagine that this kind of violence would happen against your people? Did you think it would get this bad?
“No I never thought. I never thought they would kill and try and wipe us all out. Then they say we are the immigrants...immigrant from 300-400 years! What do they want from us?”
Q. What do you want to do now? What are your plans for the future now that you have arrived in Malaysia?
“Right now I am on a passport for Malaysia but after two months it will expire and after that I will have to run illegally. Right now I am trying to get in contact with the UN and trying to get in contact with lots of people in the whole world because two years ago I was working in an American company in Afghanistan so I have lots of friends world wide...So I sent an email to them and they cry. We cannot live in Malaysia; this is their country not ours. We need to go home. No one can get your home back for you we need to get our home back!”
Khin Tun, a Rohingya Burmese who recently arrived in Malaysia with his family of four seeking asylum. He was speaking with Rebecca Henschke.
Correction: Maung Saw = Maung Daw (RB News)
 |
| A Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh near the border of Myanmar. (Photo Auniket @ Demotix (10/15/2012) |
Mong Palatino
Global Voices
December 23, 2012
After being adrift at sea for more than 30 hours, 40 Rohingya refugees were rescued by a Vietnamese ship, MV Nosco Victory, on December 5, 2012. A few days after, the ship reached Singapore but the government refused entry to the Rohingya survivors. Singapore netizens and human rights groups reacted strongly to the decision of authorities to send away the refugees.
Maruah reminds the government to treat distressed people humanely:
Government ministers have touched on values emerging as a major strand in the Our Singapore Conversation; what then is the value being espoused by the Singapore Government, when it implicitly advocates that the Rohingya should have been left at sea? How would we want ships to treat Singaporeans stranded at sea?
Singaporeans have clearly articulated a desire for Singapore to become a more humane and compassionate society. The way that we treat distressed people fleeing genocide seems a good place to start.
The Singapore Democratic Partythinks the right decision was to give temporary shelter to the Rohingya:
It was wrong to turn them away as they were in need of food and medical help. The right thing to do would be to afford them temporary shelter and to ensure their physical safety. The refugees can then be repatriated at a later time.
Singaporeans are a compassionate people and the Government representing us should not be cold and cruel, one that calculates everything in material terms.
Where Bears Roam Free accuses the government of being ‘heartless’:
For all the effort S'pore has made to gain first world status, this incident shames Singapore to the core. We have a heartless govt. Just 40 people and we can't shelter them temporarily? Forget about the argument “more will come”. That argument means that you are willing to allow 40 to die because you are not confident you can take more.
Limpeh debunks the government arguments for rejecting the Rohingya:
…when you are fleeing genocide or war, you just run and go wherever you can get to, it's not the same as economic migrants shopping around for a nice place to work. Even if it means simply allowing desperate refugees temporary shelter whilst waiting for transit to a third country willing to take refugees, that means simply offering them shelter for a few weeks or months - is that too much to ask?
There is a long and heated exchange of opinion on Facebook about the issue:
Eng Patrick my heart will weep with joy seeing their happiness knowing somebody cares. i feel singapore can house them for a period of time while they seek a permanent home elsewhere. sad to see them turned away.
Cedric Koh They are a persecuted minority in their homeland.If we don't help them, their entire race, their culture,their ways of life, will be extinct, and what we are doing equates to sending them to their own deaths.
D-jin Toh By not helping them we are not saying we are condoning anything. By not helping them, we are saying we will not help them, nothing more. There are millions of refugees worldwide, by not helping them, does that mean that for all these years we have condoned war, slavery, violence, genocide etc.?
One last thing, I am not against helping these people, but I am against letting them in. Give them some food and water, then sending them on their way to another country would be the better choice in my opinion.
Frankie Png There many countries which are huge with own resources cannot even accept them. We have no resources and land, how can we open our doors. Giving them food and medicines which is already a generosity for a small island with 8 million people. This is so hard to please, humanity or sustainability?
Desparatebeep is disappointed with the politicians who sent away the refugees:
Perhaps the politicians are seeing something that I don’t see here but who we show compassion to seem grossly wrong. When Westerners who have been screwed out of their homes decide to turn on the bankers who screwed them, we rush to show compassion to the bankers. When people flee being imminent slaughter, we decide that they’re not worthy of our compassion. Not sure where the logic in that comes from.
A Singapore twitter user is also saddened by the decision of the government:
@chotemiya3 If the reports of Singapore turning away the ship carrying Rohingya refugees are true, then i am truly ashamed to call myself a Singaporean.
Rohingya is an ethnic group which is struggling for recognition in Myanmar. But the government of Myanmar continues to refuse to grant citizenship rights to Rohingya residents. Local conflicts erupted this year involving Rakhine and Rohingya villagers in Western Myanmar. The government has denied that the Rohingyas are victims of genocide and religious persecution.
Fortunately, Malaysia agreed to give shelter to the 40 Rohingya refugees.
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