Latest Highlight

RB Channel

A man salvages items in the courtyard of a partially-destroyed mosque after sectarian violence spread through central Myanmar, in Gyobingauk. (Photo: Ye Aung Thu/AFP)
Eric Randolph
The National
March 29, 2013

BANGKOK // He emanates the soft-spoken calm expected of a Buddhist monk, but the venom that Sayadaw Wirathu directs at Myanmar's Muslim population has led many to see him as one of the chief instigators of the violence that has convulsed the country in the past two weeks.

Wirathu, a monk based in the northern city of Mandalay, has described himself as "the Burmese Bin Laden", even though he is stridently and noxiously anti-Muslim.

The misnomer notwithstanding, Wirathu has become a key figure in a growing movement of extremist Buddhists who have taken advantage of increased freedom in Myanmar to foment communal tensions.

A video that circulated on the internet this week shows Wirathu addressing a crowd and declaring, "We Buddhists let them freely practise their religion, but once these evil Muslims have control and authority over us they will not let us practise our religion.

"These Islamists have been buying land and buildings all over the country. They use that money to get our young Buddhist women."

His inflammatory speeches are seen as one of the sparks for the violence that erupted last week in the town of Meikhtila, where Buddhists and Muslims have coexisted peacefully for generations. Mobs of armed Buddhists, some led by monks, rampaged through Muslim areas for two days, destroying homes, shops and mosques. At least 40 people have been confirmed dead and 12,000 others have been forced to flee their homes to temporary camps.

The government of President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency last Friday and sent the army to the town in a bid to restore calm. But further anti-Muslim attacks were reported in three nearby towns over the weekend and spread into several towns in Bago township on Monday and Tuesday. Curfews were imposed on three more townships north of Yangon on Wednesday following further reports of violence.

At first, the attacks were said to have begun with an argument between locals in a Muslim-owned gold shop in Meikhtila, but many believe they were deliberately orchestrated.

After visiting the devastated town over the weekend, the UN's top adviser in Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, told reporters: "There is no doubt much of this violence was planned. It seemed to have been done, in a sense, in almost a kind of brutal efficiency."

Released in 2012 after serving a nine-year prison sentence for inciting anti-Muslim violence, Wirathu has been at the forefront of a new campaign calling for a boycott of Muslim businesses, with stickers appearing on shops and vehicles across the country. The campaign takes the name 969, a reference to the nine qualities of the Buddha - six of his teachings and nine of the monkhood.

The campaign's use of religious terminology obscures its fiercely nationalist heart, which is fueled by unsubstantiated fears that Muslims are out-breeding the ethnic Burmese and infiltrating political parties, including the opposition National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

"NLD offices in most towns are now run by the bearded Muslims," Wirathu said in his February speech. "As NLD becomes powerful … they approach Aung San Suu Kyi. When she came back from United States or Europe that Muslim guy always picked her up with his fancy car, always. Even coming to Mandalay she used same guy and same car. They've got her. They've surrounded her."

Wirathu began to draw wider attention last year for his diatribes against the stateless Rohingya Muslims in the south-west of the country, who bore the brunt of communal clashes that left at least 180 dead and 120,000 displaced. In his interpretation, the Rohingya burned down their own houses to earn a place in internationally-funded aid camps.

Myanmar's burgeoning communal tensions threaten to undermine its transformation from an international pariah to the new darling of the world's business and diplomatic community.

The easing of repression and censorship has given extremist groups more political space to operate and promote their causes, analysts say.

"The democratic opening has allowed groups with grievances the opportunity to advance their interests. This is not unique to Myanmar," said Aung Naing Oo, of the Myanmar Peace Centre in Yangon.

He said the situation was complicated further by increased attention on security forces. In the past, Myanmar's police would likely have responded with brutal heavy-handedness to control the unrest.

But the Mandalay division government, which oversees Meikhtila, was heavily criticised after a brutal response to environmental protests against a copper mine in nearby Letpadaung in November, when police were accused of using white phosphorus grenades against protesting monks and civilians.

"The tactics against copper mine protesters backfired, and I have heard the Mandalay government did not want to use force this time around," Aung Naing Oo said.
Mosques and houses belonging to Muslims have been destroyed in the violence
BBC News
March 28, 2013

Burmese President Thein Sein has warned that he will if necessary use force to stop "political opportunists and religious extremists" from fomenting hatred between faiths. 

It was his first public comment on the violence, which began last week. 

At least 40 people have been killed as a result of discord between Buddhists and Muslims since 20 March. 

On Tuesday curfews were imposed on three towns as attacks on Muslim communities got closer to Rangoon. 

"I would like to warn all political opportunists and religious extremists who try to exploit the noble teachings of these religions and have tried to plant hatred among people of different faiths for their own self-interest. Their efforts will not be tolerated," the president said in a national televised address. 

'Last resort' 

"In general, I do not endorse the use of force to solve problems. However, I will not hesitate to use force as a last resort to protect the lives and safeguard the property of the general public," he said. 

"All perpetrators of violence will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." 

The president said that "conflicts and difficulties" would inevitably arise during Burma's transition to a democracy. 

He called on police to "perform their duties decisively, bravely and within the constraints of the constitution and by-laws". 

Correspondents say that police in the central town of Meiktila in Mandalay region - where the communal violence began last week - have been criticised for failing to act quickly enough to stop the rioting, in which houses, shops and mosques were burned down. The trouble broke out after a reported argument at a gold shop. 

Violence last week also broke out in the Bago region north of Rangoon, with Muslim religious buildings, shops and houses being damaged. 

At least 12,000 Muslims are thought to have fled their homes because of the unrest. 

In similar violence in Rakhine state last year, nearly 200 people were killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes. 

The conflict that erupted in Rakhine involved Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who are not recognised as Burmese citizens and have complained of frequent persecution.
A mosque in Nattalin, Bago was destroyed by Buddhist mobs (Photo: Irrawaddy)
Jethro Mullen
CNN
March 28, 2013

Riots broke out in central Myanmar on Wednesday, authorities said, as police struggled to stop groups of Buddhists from setting fire to mosques and Muslims' homes.

The violence comes after a state of emergency was declared last week in the area where clashes between the two communities first broke out, leaving at least 40 people dead.

In Natalin township, rioters destroyed eight houses, 12 shops and one mosque, police said.

In nearby Zigon township, 40 houses and one mosque were destroyed, they said.

Police said they fired rubber bullets at rioters there. Some people were injured and admitted the hospital.

The riots prompted new restrictions.

Officials put dusk-to-dawn curfews in place in Natalin and Zigon, state-run TV reported late Wednesday, raising the total number of townships where a curfew is now imposed to nine.

Officials on Tuesday put curfews in place in the townships of Gyobingauk, Okpo and Minhla, the New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper, said.

Police had reported arson attacks on Muslim properties in those three townships in recent days.

U.S. authorities have issued a warning to U.S. citizens in Myanmar amid the unrest that began last week in the city of Meiktila, in the central Mandalay region, and spread to other towns.

The situation has fueled fears in the commercial capital, Yangon, prompting stores to close in a popular shopping district Monday.

The U.S. Embassy told U.S. citizens to avoid the Mingalar Market and Yuzana Plaza part of Yangon, the same area where the stores were shuttered.

A state of emergency

During the clashes in Meiktila, which were reportedly set off by a dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and two Buddhist sellers, rioters set fire to houses, schools and mosques, prompting thousands of residents to flee their homes.

The government declared a state of emergency in the city Friday, allowing the military to help reinstate order. But as the situation there appeared to calm, authorities reported arson attacks by groups of Buddhists in other towns in the region over the weekend.

The unrest highlights the fragility of ethnic relations in Myanmar, also known as Burma, as it emerges from decades of military repression. Authorities have released thousands of political prisoners and pursued peace talks with rebel groups in the past two years.

President Thein Sein, who has overseen the country's initial moves toward democracy, vowed Monday "to take action against those who led the violence and got involved in it and to expose those who flamed the conflict under the pretext of religion," the New Light of Myanmar reported.

The U.N. humanitarian agency says that the Myanmar government estimates that more than 12,000 people have been displaced by the unrest.

"They're barricaded in schools and in a monastery," said Ashok Nigam, the U.N. resident coordinator in Myanmar. "They're currently receiving humanitarian assistance provided by the government."

A Buddhist monk was reported to be among those killed when the violence initially erupted in Meiktila last week. But Win Htein, an opposition lawmaker for the area, has said that he believes the majority of the victims were Muslims.

"Most of the Muslims' houses were destroyed and burnt down," he said Tuesday. "Very few are left."

Authorities have found dozens of bodies amid the wreckage left by the riots.

Police confiscated weapons such as swords and machetes from groups of Buddhists -- some of them monks -- who were roaming the streets last week, officials said.

Win Htein said Tuesday that the situation was improving in Meiktila, but that he was concerned that some young Buddhists were "organizing their own security" despite government warnings not to carry weapons.

Growing insecurity

Unsubstantiated rumors of unrest in other parts of the country such as Yangon are spreading via text messages and social media, stoking fears among residents.

"People are feeling totally insecure, totally not safe," said Aye Chan Naing, the founder of Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent news website based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, less than 200 kilometers from the border with Myanmar.

In one example, Si Thu, a Buddhist employee of the United Nations who lives in a mainly Muslim neighborhood of Yangon, said Tuesday he was moving his family to stay at a relative's home elsewhere in the city.

"I can't think of any political or religious aspects now," he said. "I only know about how to protect my family."

The New Light of Myanmar suggested that such rumors are being "circulated by those with ill will who want to harm peace and stability."

The clashes in Meiktila and elsewhere have drawn expressions of concern from U.N. and U.S. officials.

The sudden boiling over of tensions between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar follows sectarian troubles that killed scores of people in the west of the country last year.

Those clashes, in Rakhine state, took place between the Buddhist majority and the Rohingya, a stateless ethnic Muslim group.

Most of the victims in that unrest were Rohingya. Tens of thousands more were left living in makeshift camps, and many of them have since joined those who attempt each year to flee to Thailand and Malaysia in flimsy boats.

CNN's Kocha Olarn, Dana Ford and Elizabeth Joseph contributed to this report. Journalist Pho Wai Lin also contributed.
Children at an unregistered Rohingya refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh. Photo by no_direction_home
Heather Marsh
VICE
March 28, 2013

Last Sunday, the internet was temporarily shaken up by a campaign designed to highlight the plight of the Rohingya people of Burma. On Twitter, the hashtag #RohingyaNOW was a worldwide trend for more than two hours, peaking at the top spot. Two in-person demonstrations were held (and live-streamed), one for several hours in front of the CNN building in LA. Plus, an article about the campaign made the front page of Reddit. 

Most dismissed it all as a cute trick, a one-day initiative amplified by Anonymous, Occupy collectives, and human rights activists around the world wanting to raise awareness. Instead, it was a milestone in a campaign that has been running for many months, an idea we have had for years and an introduction to our next phase. 

Since the second Rohingya massacre in October, the Burmese people have watched the world ignore or misrepresent what many experts are calling a genocide. President Thien Sein has been on a world tour, where he has been met with open arms, receiving a 21-gun salute in Australia and getting $5.9 billion of international debt canceled. Canada has opened its first-ever Burmese embassy, and multinational resource corporations are queuing for contracts. No one is in the mood to bring up genocide, even when a third massacre was openly planned for this month. 

The difference social media can make in public awareness was highlighted last fall, as the violence in Gaza was covered in great detail, but violence in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma almost not at all. The activists behind the latest campaign believe in grassroots journalism where everyone can speak their own story. If a population of 800,000 people are in refugee camps and villages that look like concentration camps and are completely cut off from communication, what then? They die silently? Not if the internet can help it. 

On March 10, we started a crowd-sourced campaign to help boost grassroots journalism in Burma. We have used crowd-sourced funding to purchase airfare for two established independent journalists familiar with the Rohingya story. They flew there, and we are now working to get as many long-distance interviews with locals set up as possible. In the last week, the campaign for Rohingya has expanded against violence in the rest of Burma as well. 

I spoke with journalist Assed Baig about why we felt it was necessary for him to go to Burma in person and what he has seen. 

“As a 'westerner,' I have certain privilege and protection,” says Baig. “I am working with local journos. Using their expertise and crediting them without landing them in jail. We need to report in context, socially, historically, and take in the balance of power. We shouldn't wait for death to take place before we report, we should shine a light on shit that is going to go down. Call power to account. Be the voice of the voiceless. Sounds cheesy, but it is true.” 

Baig says he is “of Kashmiri origin, working-class background, had to work damn hard to get where I am today. My mum still doesn't speak English!” And he has experienced media bias. It is important to give people their own voices. “They report themselves, and we listen. They are not 'poor brown people,' these are real people, with names, lives, feelings, and they have a right to be heard.” 

Baig is referring to Meiktila refugees who fled to Mandalay to escape the violence. He was given pictures of the massacre in Meiktila by people who were there, from their own cameras. “There are pictures of charred remains. People driving and walking past. Their family members have fled so there is no one to bury them or even identify them.” Baig also spoke to a fourteen-year-old who saw people beaten to death and then burnt, as he and others hid in some houses and watched the slaughter. 

A 17-year-old student told him about running for his life in Meiktila. He told him, “We saw the younger children falling over, the older kids had to help them. “I’m not sure where some of my other friends are.” Baig showed him the pictures he had from a local journalist. Some were teenagers. Two had massive gashes on the back of the neck, as if hit by a machete. They all had been lying out for three days before someone took the picture. The boy touched the screen and struggled to speak. “That’s my friend,” he said, “and this one, those are Osama and Karimullah.” The rest of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. 

These are the stories we set out to tell, but Baig has found others. A convoy led by monks has set out from Yangon and is en route to Meiktila. On board are students and others, Muslims and Buddhists together, bringing food, water and good will to the displaced people still camped in the Meiktila stadium and elsewhere. Buddhists and student groups from Mandalay city launched a rescue operation saving hundreds of lives in Meiktila when the violence started. People who have lived peacefully side-by-side for years are helping each other and standing up against extremism and intolerance. 

Rights organizations and witnesses have accused the military of complicity or participation in the last two massacres. Many sources in Burma have worried the violence is being incited to justify a return to military rule, a specter that reared its head this week with martial law surrounding Meiktila. Baig quotes a Muslim in Yangon who said, “The military want to assert their power, and want to prove they are the ones that can restore order. They are using us as to prove their point.” 

Heather Marsh is an activist working within the #RohingyaNOW movement. 

Follow Heather on Twitter: @GeorgieBC

Follow Assed Baig on Twitter: @AssedBaig


The Economist
March 28, 2013

Sectarian violence was not supposed to be part of Myanmar’s bright new direction

WHEN Myanmar’s newly installed president and former soldier, Thein Sein, kick-started the country’s political transition two years ago, he hoped to usher in a clean and steady advance towards some sort of orderly democracy. Now, however, things are starting to turn out rather differently.

Unwittingly, it seems, in relaxing decades of tight army control over the country, Mr Thein Sein and his reforming ministers have breathed life into some of the uglier forces in Myanmar society that authoritarian rule kept suppressed, notably sectarian violence. (In the past, when such violence took place, it was the prerogative of the armed forces to conduct it.)


On March 20th, provoked by a small argument in a gold shop, a Buddhist mob rampaged through the central Burmese town of Meiktila, killing over 30 people and injuring about another 70. The Buddhists burned mosques and Muslim homes before marching many of the terrified survivors out of town. The intercommunal violence has so far displaced over 12,000 people.

Meiktila, between Mandalay and the new capital of Naypyidaw, was put under a curfew, together with three nearby townships. But the violence quickly spread to other areas, creeping always closer to Yangon, the old capital and commercial centre. On March 25th mosques and houses in Okpho and Gyonbingauk townships were attacked, just 125 miles (200km) north. In Yangon itself rumours of imminent and co-ordinated attacks by Buddhist youths have swept through Muslim districts for weeks. People have been stockpiling rice and other food, anticipating a prolonged siege. So far, only sporadic attacks have taken place. But Yangon is on edge, and Muslim shopkeepers lock up at the first hint of trouble.


This violence in the Burmese heartland follows on from, and is clearly inspired by, the massacres of Rohingya Muslims around Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, that happened last year. About 180 were killed and over 100,000 Rohingyas made homeless in two bouts of ethnic cleansing. Those Rohingyas now live in squalid refugee camps, under curfew and prevented from travelling into Sittwe, let alone to anywhere else in Myanmar. Cut off from their sources of income and livelihoods, many attempt each day to flee to neighbouring countries in rickety fishing boats. Some make it, but others drown. Still more fall victim to traffickers.

In Sittwe recently, mobs of Buddhist bigots and extreme Rakhine nationalists exercised their newly gained freedoms by marching through town past the charred remains of Rohingya houses and mosques. They screamed hatred at Muslims and denounced countries such as Turkey that want to aid the helpless refugees. Buddhist monks, heroes of the 2007 “saffron revolution” that tried to unseat the old military regime, egg on the crowds and help organise the protests. This is the looking-glass world of the new Myanmar. Now it is only the once-reviled army that stands between minority Muslims and the bloodlust of Buddhist chauvinists.

In Rakhine animosity towards Muslims goes back a long way, and now that central political control is loosening, old scores are being settled. Local Rakhines regard all Rohingyas, who are denied citizenship, as illegal “Bengali” immigrants, even though Rohingyas were in Rakhine not only before the British came, but even before Burmese rule.

Elsewhere in Myanmar ethnic Burman Buddhists have always resented the descendants of Indian Muslims who arrived on the coat-tails of the British in the 19th century to take all the best jobs and, to their mind, swamp the local cultures. In the early 20th century over half of the population of the booming commercial hub of Yangon were South Asian. A British administrator, J.S. Furnivell, coined the term “plural society” to describe the extraordinary diversity of races and religions in Burma’s cities under British rule: Bengali Muslims jostled alongside Iraqi Jews and Armenian Christians.

The indigenous Buddhists, however, lost out, so the first thing the generals did when they seized power in 1962 was to exact revenge by nationalising businesses and forcing hundreds of thousands of Indians back to India or what then was East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The 2.5m people of Indian origin who remain are stigmatised and vulnerable; most have no citizenship. In this sense the Buddhist mobs are finishing off what the Burman chauvinist generals started in the 1960s. Piled on top of ancient resentments, more recent prejudices circulate via the internet and social media and feed into the ideologies of Buddhist-chauvinist groups, some of which are implicated in the Meiktila violence. So much for a plural society.

Immersed in their reform agenda, the country’s politicians, including Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy, have been taken by surprise. But even a correct response to the violence carries risks. A government commission into last year’s brutalities in Rakhine state is due to be published soon. If, as is expected, it recommends some sort of legal security for the Rohingyas, though just short of citizenship, that could spark another round of anti-Muslim rioting across the country. Mr Thein Sein and Miss Suu Kyi will need to show moral leadership in the face of Buddhist chauvinism. The alternative could be ugly.



Azhar Vadi 
Cii News
March 27, 2013

“There are reports of many people dead. It’s very difficult to give an exact number,” said Mabrur Ahmed from the Restless Beings organisation looking into human rights issues and violations in Myanmar (Burma). “But I can give you an example of one such massacre that took place. A mob of Buddhists extremists came inside a madrasah (Islamic school). They killed 8 Moulanas (Islamic scholars) and along with that they killed and burnt 28 madrasah students, young boys, as well. “ 

Attacks against Muslims in the country have in the recent past been directed at ethnic Rohingyas, a community that the Burmese government does not recognise as legal citizens. Last year, 5000 were killed by rampaging Buddhist gangs, drawing worldwide attention to their desperate situation. So serious and gruesome were the mass killings that the United Nations labeled the Rohingya as the most oppressed people in the world. 

But this week’s attacks in the town of Meikhtila have shown a worrying new development. “These Muslims who were killed in Meikhtila were Burmese citizens. They have been established in Burma for hundreds of years if not thousands of years. So these are not foreigners, these are their own people,” explained Ahmed. 

The violence has now taken on a dangerous, general anti-Muslim sentiment and has no longer been confined to just a Rohingya issue. “The monks are leading with this. And specifically there is a particular monk who is an ex-prisoner, he has an army background. He is called Wirathu and he is openly and aggressively anti-Muslim. He has accused Muslims of having mixed motivations for being part of the greater society in Burma and has incensed a lot of this violence,” said Ahmed 

In the last week 18 000 people have been displaced. While Ahmed said that Muslims have tried to defend themselves and have refused to give up their lives without a fight, they have in no way provoked the Buddhists. 

“The reason why this attacked happened is almost unknown. We have been trying to trace the reason as to why this has happened. The best explanation we can come up with, was that there a disagreement between a Muslim gold shop seller and a Buddhist customer who went and reported this to his monastery and it somehow managed to spiral,” he said. 

Using the apartheid South African example, Ahmed described the situation in Burma as something much worst. “We are talking about Nazi Germany where people were indiscriminately killed because they did not fit the bill of Aryan Germans. That’s what we are talking about in Burma.” 

The government has shown total apathy to the crimes carried out by the Buddhists citizens. There are reports that security authorities stood by and watched the unfolding violence and only acted after two days following an order from central authorities. 

Narrowing it down to the Rohingya again, Ahmed said. “The president of Burma, Thein Sein said the only solution is that the Rohingya are shipped out to third countries. Now that’s not ‘like’ ethnic cleansing. That is ethnic cleansing. The head of the state is saying you people are not welcome so throw you out to another country. And the history of these people shows that they have been in that country for 1200 year. To put that into context, the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was living 1400 years ago.”
A soldier patrols through a neighbourhood that was burnt during recent violence in Sittwe on June 14, 2012.
© 2012 Reuters
Human Rights Watch
March 26, 2013

Fears of Long-Term Segregation of Displaced Population

(Bangkok) – The Burmese government is systematically restricting humanitarian aid and imposing discriminatory policies on Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State. The government should permit unfettered access to humanitarian agencies to provide assistance to Muslim populations, end segregated areas, and put forward a plan for those displaced to return to their homes. 

“Burmese government restrictions on aid to Rohingya Muslims are creating a humanitarian crisis that will become a disaster when the rainy season arrives,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of addressing the problem, Burma’s leaders seem intent on keeping the Rohingya segregated in camps rather than planning for them to return to their homes.” 

An ethnic Arakanese campaign of violence and abuses since June 2012 facilitated by and at times involving state security forces and government officials has displaced more than 125,000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims in western Burma’s Arakan State. Tens of thousands of Rohingya still lack adequate humanitarian aid – leading to an unknown number of preventable deaths – in isolated, squalid displacement camps. Government security forces guarding the camps do not permit the residents to leave the camps, which has a devastating effect on their livelihoods, Human Rights Watch said. 

Human Rights Watch has visited every major internally displaced person (IDP) camp in Sittwe Township in Arakan State, as well as pockets of unregistered displaced people in coastal and intra-coastal waterway areas, and in Mrauk-U Township, where many displaced Rohingya currently remain. Displaced Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State are located in 13 townships throughout the state; the 15 largest IDP camps are in the area of the state capital, Sittwe. 

Several camps housing Rohingya are located in paddy fields and lowland areas that face heavy flooding during the rainy season, which will begin in May, yet the authorities have not taken serious steps to move them to higher ground. Humanitarian organizations in Arakan State are concerned that heavy rains will overflow already inadequate and overused latrines, spreading otherwise preventable waterborne diseases throughout the displaced population, whose health has already been weakened by inadequate food and medical care. In some sites visited by Human Rights Watch, a handful of latrines were being shared by several thousand displaced Rohingya. 

“The government seems untroubled by the dire humanitarian conditions in the camps in Arakan State but it will be responsible for the lives unnecessarily lost,” Robertson said. “Concerned donor governments should be demanding that the Burmese government produce an action plan to resolve the crisis because continued inaction will only make the crisis worse.” 

The Burmese government has obstructed the allocation of adequate land for relocation sites for displaced Rohingya and Kaman Muslims despite repeated appeals by humanitarian agencies. On March 18, the European Commission warned the situation would turn into a “humanitarian disaster” if the internally displaced people living on paddy fields and sand banks were not relocated to safer sites within weeks. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) likewise warned of a “potentially devastating” effect on displaced Rohingya when the rains start. 

On March 20, President Thein Sein’s spokesman, Ye Htut, rejected warnings about the severe humanitarian conditions for displaced Rohingya, telling Australia Network’s Newswire, “they have enough shelter and food supply for the rainy season.” 

None of the displaced Rohingya interviewed by Human Rights Watch were consulted about where their shelters would be constructed. The government has refused to make a commitment to ensure their right to return home, or set out plans to ensure security for both the Muslim and Buddhist populations in the state. Human Rights Watch urged the Burmese government to treat displaced people in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. 

Among the displaced population are tens of thousands of “unregistered” Rohingya – those who were displaced between June and November 2012 but who have not been formally recorded by the Burmese authorities, even though they live in areas where the security forces deny them freedom of movement and their presence is known to the aid community. 

Unregistered Rohingya told Human Rights Watch they lack food, shelter, medicine, potable water, clothing, and other necessities. The government has not authorized providing them with humanitarian aid. 

Rather than providing assistance, state government officials have made excuses for denying the Rohingya aid, Human Rights Watch said. In February, Win Myaing, spokesman for the Arakan State government, told the Democratic Voice of Burma that Rohingya are deliberately inflating the numbers of those displaced to receive more aid. “Now, when we are making a list in the camp over here, then people from [another camp] will come,” he said. “Frankly, [the Rohingya] are just attempting to make the list bigger so that they can get more aid.” 

The government’s failure to put forward plans or make efforts to return displaced Rohingya and other Muslims to their original towns and villages heightens concerns of a long-term intent to segregate this population, Human Rights Watch said. In the city of Sittwe, the Muslim population is now completely segregated. The neighborhood of Aung Mingalar, which is the last remaining Muslim neighborhood in Sittwe, is surrounded by barbed wire and Burmese army soldiers. 

The Muslims remaining in the neighborhood are not permitted to leave the area, and humanitarian agencies are not permitted to deliver aid to the neighborhood because the residents are technically not displaced. Rohingya in the neighborhood told Human Rights Watch the state government has not replied to their requests to purchase rice. 

A Muslim man in Aung Mingalar told Human Rights Watch that UN agencies have not been able to deliver any aid since June, saying, “We only want permission to bring food from outside to Aung Mingalar.” 

In some areas, such as Myebon Township, the government and humanitarian agencies are constructing shelter on stilts over ground that will flood, rather than permitting the Rohingya to rebuild on land in their home village nearby. The authorities have told the UN and diplomatic community that the camps throughout the state are not envisioned as long-term “solutions,” but the government has failed to put forward plans for displaced people to return home, and also has not rejected demands by Arakanese communities to keep Rohingya segregated in remote areas. 

“Donor governments should be pressing Burma’s government to allow humanitarian agencies to provide assistance to all those in need,” Robertson said. “But donors also need to make clear that government policies intended to segregate the Muslim population will be publicly opposed.” 

The Burmese government has long prevented Rohingya from accessing health care in Arakan State, and restrictions have tightened since violence began in June. Human Rights Watch visited Arakan State’s largest government-operated hospital in Sittwe in late October, at a time of widespread violence against Muslims throughout the state, and there were no Muslim patients in the hospital. 

A displaced Rohingya man in Sittwe told Human Rights Watch at the time: “After our houses were burned down here we couldn’t go to the government hospital. We cannot go to government hospitals.” A hospital employee confirmed that: “There have been no Bengali [Rohingya] patients in the hospital. If some Bengali [Rohingya] patients were sent to the hospital there would be many problems. I think there is a separate hospital by the military, in the refugee [IDP] camp. This is a government hospital.” 

A discriminatory Citizenship Law passed in 1982 effectively denied Burmese citizenship to Rohingya, who are estimated to number between 800,000 and 1 million people in Burma. The government does not allow Rohingya to travel between townships without special permission or paying substantial bribes to state security forces. Internally displaced Rohingya are not permitted to travel outside of displacement sites, severely restricting their ability to earn a livelihood. There are also severe restrictions on marriage and the number of children Rohingya can have – and the multiagency border guard force Nasaka typically demands sizable payments from Rohingya seeking to marry or preparing to give birth. 

Arakan State’s Rohingya population also faces widespread hostility from the majority Burmese Buddhist society. The violence in Arakan State in June between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims was followed by planned attacks on Rohingya and Kaman Muslim communities in various townships in the state in October. 

More recently, disputes between Buddhists and Muslims resulted in violence in the central Burma town of Meikhtila on March 20 to 22, which has spread to other parts of the country. During the violence, at least five mosques were burned down and an unknown number of people died as mobs and Buddhist monks attacked Muslim residents and set fire to Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship. The violence in Meikhtila has displaced 12,000 Muslims, according to OCHA. 

“The unfortunate lesson from the violence in Arakan State is that so far the government does little to hold accountable those who violate the rights of Muslims in Burma,” Robertson said. “By failing to stop violence and prosecute those who incite it, the country’s leaders are failing the test of reform.”
Several of the victims of the violence in Meiktila, Burma, were killed and burnt in the street, as happened here. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun) 
Chris Woolf
The World
March 27, 2013


President Obama last year hailed the reforms taking place in the Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma. 

After six decades of dictatorship, the military junta released dissidents and allowed basic freedoms. 

But the reform has a dark side. 

The new freedom has allowed old tensions to come to the surface, and the most intense is a violent anti-muslim sentiment.

Over the past week, anti-muslim riots in and around the central city of Meiktila have left dozens dead, and thousands more sheltering in sports stadiums under army protection. 

The violence follows an orchestrated campaign last year against a Muslim community known as the Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine.

Burmese Muslim activist, Tun Khin, in  our London studio.  (Photo: Leo Hornak)
“(An) eyewitness, a friend of friend, was telling me that while they were running for their lives, they have seen some children and old people – they could not run fast – and the Buddhist extremist thugs just kill them,” says Burmese Muslim activist, Tun Khin. 

Tun Khin is president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization in the UK. 

They were killed with “knives and swords,” he said. 

Tun Khin stressed that local Buddhists helped some Muslims, and that the perpetrators were from outside the town. 

“These are hardliners who want to stop reform in Burma,” he added. 
The Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union (ARU), Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, addressed the audience in the inauguration ceremony of launching of the Global Rohingya Center at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Dignitaries from the diplomatic communities, OIC officials, Saudi Government officials, and prominent individuals from Saudi Arabia and international community, and a number of ARU members attended the inauguration event. 

The GRC was launched under the patronage of OIC Secretary General, Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who expressed deep concern at the spreading violence against Muslims in Myanmar at the hands of extremist Buddhists. The Center was formed to advance the cause of Rohingya people to reclaim their political and human rights and to find solution for improvement of their lives where they reside. 

The formation of GRC was initiated with Media, Legal, and Humanitarian Departments in Istanbul, Turkey, in October of 2012, after a MoU was signed by Rohingya leaders from ARU and Saudi Arabia, OIC Muslim Minority and Community Department, and the International Islamic Lawyers Organization. The GRC will be operated under the supervision of the Director General of ARU, Dr. Wakar Uddin. 

The Media Department will provide crucial knowledge and information delivery with regards to situation on the ground in Arakan state and some other parts of Burma. The legal and Humanitarian Departments will also follow the same suit with their respective activities related to legal matters and humanitarian aid for Rohingya and Muslim victims in Burma. The Center will assist international organizations in developing plans to deliver assistance to alleviate the horrendous situation that the Rohingya people are facing. OIC Secretary General said, in his speech, the violence in Arakan state since last June did not truly stop, and now it has spread to other cities, particularly the city of Meikhtila in Mandalay region. Hundreds of Muslims have been killed and their homes and properties along with several mosques and a number of schools were destroyed. Hundreds of families have been forced to flee the ethnic violence. “Such violence cannot continue. It is unacceptable and provides a clear indication of the negative approach the Myanmar government is adopting in addressing the ethnic tensions,” he said in his speech. The Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, also echoed a similar concern in his speech at the inauguration. “This community (the Rohingya) is facing a dire humanitarian crisis. It suffers from denial of basic human rights and dignity,” said Ihsanoglu. From ARU, Dr. Wakar Uddin said he was very enthusiastic about the formation of GRC and the opportunity of having the Media, Legal, and Humanitarian Departments as major resources of Arakan Rohingya Union that is truly a major breakthrough in international arena.

BBC News
March 26, 2013

The death toll from communal violence in central Burma has risen to 40, state media say, amid reports of more unrest. 

Soldiers clearing debris from buildings torched by angry mobs retrieved eight more bodies in Meiktila town, says the New Light of Myanmar newspaper. 

This comes amid reports of attacks on a mosque and Muslim shops in Bago region, north of the city of Rangoon. 

The US has warned its citizens to avoid travel to parts of Burma due to the violence, which began a week ago. 

An argument at a gold shop reportedly sparked riots between Buddhists and Muslims in Meiktila in Mandalay region last Wednesday, displacing at least 9,000 residents. 

The government has sent security forces to the area and on Monday issued a renewed call to end "religious extremism". 

In a statement on Monday, the US embassy in Rangoon advised US citizens "to avoid travel to the Mandalay region because of escalating violence in that area". 

Reports of other attacks on mosques and houses were reported on Monday in towns near Meiktila - Oh the Kone, Tatkone and Yamenthin. 

It was not immediately clear who was behind the violence. Details of any casualties in these areas were also unclear. 

The conflict is the worst since violence in Rakhine state last year, where nearly 200 people were killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes. 

The conflict that erupted in Rakhine involved Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who are not recognised as Burmese citizens. Scores of Rohingyas have fled what they say is persecution in Burma in recent months.

BRCNL strongly condemns the grisly killing Muslims in Myanmar

Statement by BRCNL


IINA News
March 26, 2013

The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu strongly condemned the recent spreading of the violence against Muslims in Myanmar at the hands of extremist Buddhists. 

Violence in Arakan in the West of the country continues uninterrupted since last June and has spread to other cities and areas, particularly in the Miektila city in the Mandalay region in the middle of the country, according to an OIC statement. As a result of this violence, scores of Muslims were killed and their homes and properties burnt, in addition to the burning of eight mosques and a number of schools. Hundreds of families fled their homes. 

Expressing concern over the Myanmar government’s failure to protect the lives of its innocent civilians, the secretary general urged that such violence should not continue. It is the responsibility of the authorities to address the root causes of the issue and safeguard the lives and property of all the peoples of Myanmar. The OIC chief recalled resolutions passed by the summits of OIC in Makkah in August 2012 and Cairo in February 2013 as well as the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) in Djibouti in November 2012 seeking an end to repression against the Muslim Minority in Myanmar with particular reference to the right of citizenship for Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan Region. He added that the recent outbreak of violence highlighted the urgency for evolving a comprehensive approach to address the root causes of the issue. 

The secretary general shared the deepening concern of the international community on the situation of human rights in Myanmar as reflected in the recent Resolution adopted by Human Rights Council in Geneva. 

He called upon the government of Myanmar to address the concerns of the international community as reflected in the relevant UN and OIC Resolutions in particular the restoration of the citizenship of the Rohingya Muslim minority as well as the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. 

The secretary general clearly indicated that the situation of Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar was a priority item on the OIC agenda and that he was consistently in touch with the international political fora as well as the OIC Groups in Geneva and New York with a view to ensuring all possible assistance by the Organization towards alleviating their sufferings. He reiterated OIC’S willingness to provide humanitarian assistance, without discrimination, to the affected Arakan Region and called on the Myanmar authorities to remove obstacles hindering the delivery of the urgent humanitarian assistance. He added that OIC was willing to cooperate and coordinate for humanitarian assistance with the Aid Agencies, NGOs and other national and international organizations working in the region.
Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng. Photo: Rick Bajornas
UN News Centre
March 25, 2013

The United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide today voiced deep concern at reports of increased violence between Muslim and Buddhist communities in Myanmar, and called on leaders to promote respect for diversity and peaceful coexistence.

Last week President Thein Sein reportedly declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law in four central townships after several days of unrest between Buddhists and Muslims, including in Meiktila where at least 30 people were killed.

“The recent episode of violence in Meiktila in central Myanmar raises concerns that sectarian violence is spreading to other parts of the country,” stated Special Adviser Adama Dieng. “In the context of last year’s violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, there is a considerable risk of further violence if measures are not put in place to prevent this escalation.” 

Mr. Dieng said these measures must address not only the immediate consequences of the current violence but also the root causes of the problem. “Failing to do so can have serious future consequences which the international community has solemnly promised to prevent,” he stated.

“The Government of Myanmar must clearly demonstrate that it is serious about holding accountable those responsible for the past and present violence, regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliations,” he urged. “The Government must also take measures to protect populations still at risk.” 

Noting that the State has the primary responsibility to protect its population, the Special Adviser called on the Government of Myanmar to address this situation as a matter of urgency, develop a comprehensive national strategy that upholds international human rights standards and promotes reconciliation and tolerance among Buddhist and Muslim communities in the country. 

“I call upon all religious leaders, local leaders and the communities themselves, to promote a culture of respect for diversity and peaceful coexistence that is fundamental in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society such as the one in Myanmar,” stated Mr. Dieng 

“As a country that has positively surprised the international community with its recent transformation towards democracy, Myanmar needs to demonstrate that the rule of law will prevail and that all those living within its borders are and will be protected from violence and discrimination, particularly on the basis of religion or ethnicity.”
Phuket Immigration is asking for donations for the Rohingya refugees they are detaining. Photo: Kritsada Mueanhawong
Kritsada Mueanhawong
Phuket Gazette
March 26, 2013

PHUKET: Phuket Immigration is calling for donations of essentials for the 67 Rohingya currently under detention.

“We are requesting donations of food, toiletries and clothes for the Rohingya because we do not know how long they will be detained here, as other shelters are full,” said Capt Angkarn Yasanop of the Immigration office on Phuket Road.

Two groups of Rohingya have been apprehended in the past few days – 91 on Koh Lone on Friday and another 11 on Cape Panwa on Saturday (story here).

Capt Angkarn told the Gazette that “35 men have been transferred to Ranong Immigration. The rest are being detained in Phuket, with women and children now at a shelter in Koh Sireh.”

“We had to transfer some of them because Phuket Immigration was built to accommodate only 50 people,” he said.

The group of 39 Rohingya arrested in Phang Nga on Saturday. Photo: Kritsada Mueanhawong
Another group of 39 Rohingya were arrested by 20 Takuapa Police at Tab Tawan beach in Phang Nga on Saturday.

“Police received a report from fishermen that they had spotted a 'suspicious' boat at sea. At first we saw only an empty boat moored at Tab Tawan beach in Ban Tab Tawan,” Takuapa Police Superintendent Khemarin Hatsiri said.

“Police looked around the area and found the refugees in a sea gypsy village,” Col Khemarin said.

“We arrested 37 men and two women who told us they left Rakhine state in a fishing boat on March 6. They intended to reach either Thailand or Malaysia to look for work,” Col Kemarin explained.

“They said they were very exhausted and hungry from the journey. They survived on water and uncooked rice,” he explained.

“They looked so exhausted, some of them cried out loud when they saw us,” he added.

“We offered them food and water, then brought them all to Takuapa police station to be processed. We intended to transfer them to Phang Nga Immigration,” he said, “but Phang Nga Immigration has no room for them; they are already at maximum capacity with Rohingya arrested previously,” he explained.

“We do not have a place to detain them while they wait to be deported,” he stated.

“I would like to ask the government to resolve the problem of Rohingya as soon as possible,” he added.
Nicholas Goroff
Progressive Press
March 26, 2013

Human rights advocates throughout the globe are working overtime today to draw attention to the increasingly dire state of affairs in Myanmar. In recent decades, the centuries old ethnic tensions between the majority Buddhist population and the minority Muslim population (known as the “Rohingya,”) have led to increasingly bloody clashes between the two communities. 

This month alone over thirty people have died in waves of violence carried out against the Rohingya villages and neighborhoods by Buddhist mobs. 

Some reports claim that many of the mobs were led by area monks, who have allegedly been publishing anti-Muslim propaganda and inciting acts of arson and other violent attacks against the Rohingya. One monk in particular, hailing from the Meikhtila area, has been especially concerning to observers, as tensions escalate. 

The self described “Bin Laden of Buddhism,” monk Wirathu, has remained a central figure in the conflict for over a decade, having been admittedly responsible for wide scale anti-Muslim propagandizing which in February resulted in a mob of 300 Buddhists descending on and destroying a school reported to be in the process of converting to a mosque.

In a press release by the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation on Saturday, the call was let out to end what they call “the systematic killing of Muslims in Burma.” It continued, claiming that since Wednesday, at least 14 mosques and hundreds of Muslim homes had been destroyed and that upwards of 20,000 ethnic Rohingya had been displaced. 

On Saturday, 106 Rohingya people were found, starving and dehydrated, in a small boat floating adrift off the coast of Phuket. 

Though unclear if these 106 are specifically part of the estimated 20,000 displaced from the past week’s violence, a total of 402 Rohingya refugees have been found at sea by Thai authorities alone, since the beginning of this year. Similar and at times greater numbers of refugees and expatriated Rohingya have also been reported throughout the region, with Malaysian authorities struggling to deal with increasing numbers of these desperate and displaced people. 

Official state responses to the violence have been muted at best. Over the last two weeks, several hundred police and security forces have been dispatched to the troubled areas such as the state of Arakan, where violence and ethnic clashes have been a regular occurrence for decades. However despite their presence, as recently as last night, fifteen more Muslim homes were burned and destroyed, and as many as seven people were killed. 

Concerns over state complicity and potentially even participation in the anti-Muslim violence are very real throughout the both human rights circles as well as area Rohingyas. According to a 2004 report by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR,) regular violence and forced displacement of Rohingyas by Burmese/Myanmar military and security forces were common during 1990s and early 2000s, with hundreds of thousands being forced from their homes, murdered or otherwise disappeared. 

Though historically the conflict has been considered an ethnic/religious one between the Buddhists and the Muslim minority, new concerns regarding economic interests have watchdogs ratcheting up their calls for international attention and possible intervention. The newly developed Shwe pipeline, which is set to open later this year, has caused worries that further forced displacement and violence is impending. 

With major Western economic and banking interests such as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS, owner of the U.S. “Citizens Bank” corporation,) as well as British finance giant Barclays backing the development of the pipeline, numerous calls for divestment throughout the human right advocacy community have been made, dovetailing concerns over further violence. 

UK based human rights advocate and founder of “Save the Rohingya,” Jamila Hanan said of the coming developments, in a statement to energy industry watchdog “Priceofoil.org”: 
“We are anticipating a third massacre of the Rohingya on the same scale which took place in Rwanda. We have been informed that this will take place sometime between now and mid-April.” 
As outrage over both the atrocities taking place in Myanmar, as well as Western media’s relative silence on the matter continues to rise, the “hacktivist” group Anonymous has launched its own initiative to draw attention to the crisis. 

Dubbed “OpRohingya,” Anonymous in collaboration with online and grassroots partners, has planned matching “Twitterstorm” and “Paperstorm” actions, aimed at pressuring officials and media outlets throughout the globe and Myanmar specifically, to speak up and condemn the violence which continues to plague the Rohingya. 

During a tour of the affected areas in Myanmar on Friday, UN special adviser Vijay Nambiar expressed “deep sorrow” over the violence and destruction and called on religious and community leaders to “abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace”. However, between the long standing, deep rooted nature of the conflict, as well as the Myanmar government expressing little more than lip-service concern over the violence, of which they’ve directly taken part in previously, there is little expectation that any effective Burmese domestic solutions are on the horizon.

Gianluca Mezzofiore
International Business Times
March 26, 2013

Buddhist Monk Saydaw Wirathu, the self-styled "Burmese bin Laden", has called for a national boycott of Muslim businesses in Myanmar in a controversial video that emerged on YouTube. 

Wirathu, who has led numerous vocal campaigns against Muslims in Burma and was arrested in 2003 for distributing anti-Muslim literature, urges Burmese people "to join the 969 Buddhist nationalist campaign" and "do business or interact with only our kind: same race and same faith". 

"Your purchases spent in 'their' (Muslim) shops will benefit the Enemy," says Wirathu. "So, do business with only shops with 969 signs on their facets". 

The numerology of 969 is derived from the Buddhist tradition in which 9 stands for the special attributes of Buddha; 6 for the special attributes of his teaching or Dhamma and 9 for the special attributes of the Sangha or Buddhist order. 

In the footage filmed from Mandalay's Ma-soe-yein teaching monastery, Wirathu accuses Muslims of entertaining ties with the military junta that ruled Myanmar for five decades. The apartheid-like speech stirred shocked reaction on Twitter, with users calling the monk a "neo-Nazi" inciting anti-Muslim pogroms in Burma. 

Wirathu played an active role in stirring tensions in a Rangoon suburb in February, by spreading unfounded rumours that a local school was being developed into a mosque, according to the Democratic voice of Burma. An angry mob of about 300 Buddhists assaulted the school and Muslim-owned businesses and shops in Rangoon. The monk said that his militancy "is vital to counter aggressive expansion by Muslims". He has also been implicated in religious clashes in Mandalay, where a dozen people died, in several local reports. 

Sectarian clashes erupted this week in the central Myanmar city of Meikhtila, where mobs of Buddhists, some led by monks, have attacked a Muslim neighbourhood leaving at least 20 people dead. 

"Buddhist monasteries have been distributing leaflets that were critical of Muslims on various things, and that has been going on for months" said Burma Campaign UK's director Mark Farmaner. He maintains there were individual reports, around 10, of monasteries around Rangoon and in the Rakhine state distributing anti-Muslim leaflets. 

Muslims in Myanmar represent the 4 percent of a total population of 60 million, according to government census. However, according to the U.S. State Department's 2006 international religious freedom report, the country's non-Buddhist populations were underestimated in the census. Muslim leaders estimate that as much as 20 percent of the population may be Muslim.

To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: g.mezzofiore@ibtimes.co.uk
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk

Buddhist Monk Saydaw Wirathu (Facebook)
A Rohingya woman and young child. Photo by Greg Constantine.

Australian National University
March 26, 2013

A new ANU photographic exhibition is helping people see the world through the eyes of Burma’s persecuted Rohingya, writes OLIVIA CABLE.

Homeless, helpless and forgotten, an unwanted woman clutches her child in her frail arms as she sits forlornly on the road. She is one of many Rohingya, who due to religious and political persecution have had to flee Burma. Unfortunately this image is not so uncommon.

Now, a new photographic exhibition hosted by the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific is bringing Australians face-to-face with the plight of some of Burma’s most persecuted minorities.

The exhibition, Exiled to Nowhere, features the work of award-winning photographer Greg Constantine and forms part of the 2013 Myanmar/Burma Update. The photos focus on the everyday experiences of Rohingya – a Muslim minority from the Rakhine State in Myanmar’s southwest. 

It does not paint a pretty picture.

The black and white images are nothing short of harrowing. Some images show those who have fled, like the group of 20 Rohingya who, exhausted from their journey, are detained as their boat crosses a river from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

Others show the malnourished, gaunt and almost dead, those desperately needing medical attention, and the heart broken – their spirits so shattered that it’s hard to see how tomorrow offers any hope.

Desperate to escape Burma, thousands of Rohingya pay brokers to be smuggled by boat to Malaysia. Another photo shows just what can go wrong, depicting a group of refugees, who after being intercepted by the Thai military, have been pushed back to an uncertain fate with no engine, and little food and water. Their faces are drawn, their eyes are empty.

Photographer Greg Constantine says that the inspiration for the exhibition stems from a project he has been working on since 2005, ‘Nowhere People’, which documents minority groups from around the world who have had their citizenship stripped or denied.

“When I started the project back in 2005, I focused specifically on stateless groups in Asia. The Rohingya are probably one of, if not, the most extreme cases of statelessness in the world today. To me, including the Rohingya in this project was essential,” says Constantine.

“I started my work on the Rohingya in early 2006 and it became immediately apparent to me that this story had many levels to it. It was extremely complex, and amazingly almost no one was exploring or documenting it.

“Because the situation for the Rohingya has changed almost every year since 2006, and not for the better, I felt compelled to keep going back. Since 2006, I’ve been to southern Bangladesh (a site where many Rohingya now live in limbo) eight times. Since the ethnic violence in Rakhine last summer, I’ve been to the Sittwe area in Burma twice.”

Almost resigned to their predicament, Constantine concedes that a lot more needs to be done to open the world’s eyes to the Rohingya’s situation.

“I think my main motivation for continuing this project on the Rohingya has been to do everything I can to chronicle their ongoing plight, and use my work to humanise who they are and the challenges they face.”

Granted few social, economic and civil rights, subjected to forced labor, arbitrary land seizure and religious persecution, over the past 40 years some one million Rohingya have been stripped or denied citizenship by the Burmese government. 

Around 20 Rohingya from the Burmese Rohingya Community in Australia (BRCA) attended this year’s Myanmar/Burma update. Mohammad Anwar, President of the BRCA says the Rohingya face more and more challenges informing the rest of the world about their suffering.

“We came to the conference to tell the truth of Rohingya history in the Rakhine state. The Burmese RNDP (Rakine Nationalities Development Party) General Secretary will try to deceive the international community and scholars with wrong information about Rohingya history.

“We have seen the Burmese Government, Rakhine historians and the RNDP lie for years, as recently done at a conference in Bangkok. We do not want the Australian community to be deceived by the RNDP and Burmese government.”

With mixed emotions, Anwar expresses his appreciation for the effort Constantine has put into the project. 

“On the one hand, we were amazed with the artwork shown at the exhibition. On the other hand, our hearts cry seeing our people suffering in that way. It’s hard to explain our feelings and we are highly appreciative of Greg’s effort to show the Rohingya’s suffering, and their real life in refugee camps.” 

Exiled to Nowhere will be on display in the Hedley Bull Centre at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific until May 2013.

    • Rohingya Exodus