John Sparks

Channel 4 News

August 8, 2013

Beaten, imprisoned and sold into slavery - Channel 4 News reveals the fate of Burma's Muslim Rohingya refugees, who flee conflict only to end up in the clutches of brutal human traffickers.

It seems like a lot of people in Thailand are frightened of Tarutao Island, writes Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent John Sparks. 

When we asked locals whether they would take us there by boat, they were quick to say no – and that seemed very odd indeed. 

It was strange, because Tarutao Island is an absolutely spectacular Thai national park. 

Situated 30km from the mainland in the sparkly blue waters of the Andaman Sea, the mountains of Tarutao dominate the surrounding area. It is cloaked in a rich layer of jungle and its beaches are white and hotel-free. It’s the sort of isolated spot that many people dream of spending time on. 

Except Tarutao Island is also the stuff of nightmares. It took us weeks to find out why people were so frightened, but in the end it made perfect sense. 

Local people and senior police officers, speaking off the record, told us the southern section of this beautiful island is gangster territory – the hood of human traffickers, who run a number of secret prisons from the jungle floor. 

It is here that desperate migrants from neighbouring Burma are incarcerated, beaten and extorted – and risk being sold as slave labour to fishing fleets. 

Rohingya exodus 

Our story begins 2000 kilometres to the north however, a few miles off the shore of another island called St Martin’s. It straddles the border between Burma and Bangladesh and it is here that ocean-going ships anchor while awaiting their desperate human cargo. 

The passengers are largely Rohingya – a Muslim minority now fleeing a vicious ethnic conflict in north-west Burma. Their situation is dire – civil rights group Human Rights Watch says they are victims of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. 

In fact, tens of thousands of Rohingya are now participating in a general exodus – an evacuation that is facilitated according to UN experts and NGO workers, by a sophisticated network of brokers, smugglers and human traffickers. 

The numbers involved in this exodus are staggering – according to NGO Arakan Project, more than 35,000 have attempted to flee Burma in the last 12 months. 

It constitutes the biggest movement of people by boat since the Vietnam War according to Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch, who warns it may be just the beginning: “In the face of severe deprivation in Burma, the Rohingya have lost hope of staying in their homeland and it is not surprising that they are fleeing in droves. This is going to be a multi-year boat people crisis, and Burma's neighbouring governments are not ready for it." 

Brokers and agents promise Rohingya passage to Malaysia – a country where they are generally permitted to stay. The would-be passengers are then gathered in secret locations near the Burmese or Bangladesh coast and hand over the equivalent of £200 for their journey. 

When the ocean-going ships are ready, the brokers ferry them out in smaller boats, in a long-winded process that can take 3 or 4 days. Each passenger must wear a coloured wrist band, designating "ownership" by a particular group of traffickers.

Held in cages

The conditions on board these ships are brutal. The Channel 4 News team filmed several vessels used by human traffickers and we recorded interviews with those who travelled inside them.

You can see more in our exclusive report, but we were told that women and children are held in cages just below main deck - while the men squeeze into false decks like large wooden shelves, built into the hull.

One of our interviewees, a nineteen year old called Mohammad, spent 11 days in one of these vessels.

He told us: "We were kept on one of three or four floors in the hold – like wooden shelves. We had to squeeze in next to each other. We couldn’t move and we weren’t allowed to stand up."

Mohammad says he was one of 650 passengers on the boat – although Channel 4 News understands that some vessels set sail with well over 1,000 people on board. The situation inside was described by our interviewees as "intolerable".

It was so bad, said Mohammed, that one man decided to take his own life: "This old man crawled by me and said he felt terrible. I think he was depressed. He'd said he was going to the toilet but he jumped off the ship. They didn't go back to look for him."

Our interviewees then outlined another unpleasant surprise. They thought they were being taken to Malaysia, but the ships didn't sail that far.

Secret jungle prisons

Instead, the vessels stopped and disgorged their passengers in remote locations on the Thai coast. They were about to become prisoners in a number of secret jails - and there was only one way to earn their release - their relatives were required to pay a ransom of around £1,500.

The business model is crude and effective. After several days, the captives are told to call their loved ones in Malaysia or Thailand with mobile phones provided by the traffickers.

If friends and relatives are unwilling - or unable to pay, Rohingya are beaten – often with their relatives listening on the line. Rafeeq told us about his experience in floods of tears: "They lined us up and gave us the phone and told us to call them. They demand the money and beat us up. They beat us continually until they get the cash."

Mohammad said he witnessed beatings every single day he was held prisoner: "They hit people in a way that doesn’t make them bleed but injures them inside instead. After that, they give them pain killers to make them feel better because if a prisoner dies, the brokers can't get the money out of them."

Mohammed told us that prisoners who can't pay the ransom are sold as slave labour to Thai fishing boats. "The brokers also warn you about it," he said. "If your relatives don't have money, we'll sell you. That's what they say."

Both Mohammad and Rafeeq say there were held captive for weeks on Tarutao Island – but there was something that did not seem to make sense to us.

Tarutao is also a popular national park in Thailand, with rangers stationed on the island and a major shipping channel running past its western coastline – and that begged an important question. Could a criminal network moving hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Rohingya through the island really operate without the knowledge of the local authorities?

After several weeks, we found people who were willing to talk about what goes on there. The most revealing interview perhaps was with a man called Bo.

Police 'paid off'

He told us he was a member of a trafficking operation with personal responsibility for "security at Tarutao" - and he told me his group had paid off 10 police and military units in the last four months.

"It is like, when we give money to this group, the next group comes along, and it goes on and on. It never ends," he said, with evident frustration. Bo told me one way to avoid paying bribes was to move the Rohingya into different locations every ten days or so: "If the authorities can’t find them, they can’t ask."

I took this description of working practices at Tarutao Island to Somkuan Khampeera, the Police Major-General of regional Satun provincial police. He denied his officers take bribes. "I am strict – myself. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here."

However, he was frank when I asked whether he knew about the use of Taruato and other islands as hotbeds for trafficking. "I know, but we don’t have the resources we need to keep an eye on them all the time. The provincial police don’t have a boat for example."

There was one more person we wanted to speak to – the director of Tarutao National Park, Chaichana Wichaidit. Several days earlier, I had had the chance to question several park rangers about the underground prisons.

"Surely," I said, "you know what is going on". Their response surprised us. For the first time in the park’s history, one ranger told me, the southern half of the island had been made out-of-bounds both to the public and park staff. The director of the national park had even closed down two ranger stations located on the southern shore I was told.

Yet, in a long and at times tense conversation, Mr Wichaidit denied that any restrictions had been placed on the public or staff in terms of where they could visit.

"I don’t know where you get the information from," he told me. If park rangers had been prevented from entering the southern section of the park, then outside influences were to blame.

"Maybe people from outside came and threatened them. If you go there, you might see those people and this behaviour."

Police raid

Well, it turned out the authorities did take a trip to Tarutao. As we conducted our investigation, marine police officers launched a raid on one of Tarutao’s southern bays and they uncovered several jungle prisons – with tents, topped in black plastic and a guard tower at a major entrance.

These camps were occupied by hundreds of Rohingya – with some Bangladeshis and a small number of Pakistanis as well. They told us they had been there for weeks and complained of being treated "like dogs".

Some told me they had been promised a ship to Australia - but that seems a fanciful prospect. A more likely scenario, said one senior officer, was the extortion of their relatives in order to secure their release from the island.

In the end, 176 people were plucked from the forest and they now find themselves ensconced in Thai detention centres. No country is prepared to take them - at least officially – so it seems they will languish there for months - or even years.

More Rohingya will follow however. The great exodus is well underway and there is money to be made from their misery.

Omar Al Muqdad

Morocco World News

August 8, 2013

Burma, officially referred to as Myanmar, currently represents a positive story that is reflected in the Western media as one of political opening, of a military dictatorship emerging into an era of democracy, human rights, development and hope for the future. This narrative might be true for much of the country, but it significantly leaves out the struggles of the Rohingya.

The mobs that took place that early morning in March were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. Yet the victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it – students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Myanmar.

In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged cowering, hands atop their heads, they only had to make it to four police trucks waiting on the road above.

It wasn’t far to go – just one hill.

What happened along the way is the story of one of Myanmar’s darkest days since this Southeast Asian country’s post-junta leaders promised the dawn of a new, democratic era two years ago – a day on which 36 Muslims, most teenagers, were slaughtered in front of police and local officials who did almost nothing to stop it.

And what has happened since shows just how hollow the promise of change has been for a neglected religious minority that has received neither protection nor justice.

The president of this predominantly Buddhist nation never came to “Meikhtila” to mourn the dead or comfort the living. Police investigators never roped this place off or collected the evidence of carnage left behind on these slopes. And despite video clips online that show mobs clubbing students to death and cheering as flames leap from corpses, not a single suspect has been convicted.

But not only are the” Rohingya” a disenfranchised people, they are dark-skinned Muslims with little relevance, representation and significance to anyone. The much-vaunted Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has not adequately handled this issue, and the western world also tiptoes around it. Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence is evidently an attempt to placate her constituency ahead of general elections in 2015, and to criticize her now would be like admonishing Nelson Mandela in the run-up to the 1994 election in South Africa. However unlike South Africa in the 1990s, Burma is not on the verge of some tremendous political shakeup; while the” Rohingya” are being sacrificed as collateral damage in the greater project of the democratization in Burma, “Aung San Suu Kyi” is missing an extraordinary opportunity to live up to her reputation as a human rights activist.

A massacre took place shortly after reports began to circulate about the alleged rape and murder of an Arakanese woman by three” Rohingya” Muslims in late May 2012. A large Buddhist mob surrounded a bus filled with non-Rohingya Muslim pilgrims, who were leaving Taungup for Rangoon, dragging off several passengers and beating them to death with clubs and sticks.

One suspect reportedly escaped, while the others are being detained in Sandoway awaiting charges.

According to a report published by Human Rights Watch in August 2012, “local police and soldiers stood by and watched the killings without intervening.”

An initial probe into the massacre reportedly floundered after investigators were unable to find a witness who was willing to testify against the killers.

Five days later riots kicked off in Maungdaw town in northern Arakan, pitting Buddhists against the stateless Muslim Rohingya, who are widely despised and considered illegal Bengali immigrants by most locals. It resulted in four days of rioting that spread throughout the coastal state, killing dozens of people and leaving more than 100,000 people displaced.

Nevertheless, in a bid to solve the disagreement between Muslims and Buddhists, the Myanmar government follows an exclusionary policy regarding the six million Rohingya Muslims. The president proposed expulsion or the collective gathering of minority Muslims in refugee camps as the only solutions for the Muslim minority in this country.

Wirathu, the extremist monk behind the hateful 969 movement in Burma, which has been fueling hatred against Muslims, calls himself the “Burmese Bin Laden,” according to a report by The Guardian.

Edited by Anna Jacobs

Bill O'Toole

Lawyer and activist U Kyaw Hla Aung faced a closed court in Rakhine State on July 31, the first time he has left prison since being arrested on July 15.

U Kyaw Hla Aung, who identifies as Rohingya, is accused of inciting a protest in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) earlier this year. His supporters, both inside and outside Myanmar say the charges are false and a pretence to silence the prominent Sittwe-based activist.

“He's a human rights defender peacefully trying to help his community,” said Jim Lougren of the Frontline Defenders organisation, which works to protect activists in oppressed nations and communities. “It's effectively a case of arbitrary detention...we would argue that this case is without merit.”

Since being arrested U Kyaw Hla Aung has not had access to a lawyer or been able to contact his family. He has been charged with rioting armed with a deadly weapon, encouraging persons to take part in an unlawful assembly and voluntarily causing grievous hurt to deter a public servant from his duty.

The charges against him stems from an incident on April 26 when a group of Rohingya youth in the Boduba IDP camp refused to fill out a census form that identified them as “Bengali”. The situation escalated until the youths attacked several immigration police.

U Kyaw Hla Aung is accused of making phone calls instructing the youths to attack officials but his family says the only calls he made to Bodupa were to try and calm the angry mob.

U Win Myaing, a spokesperson for the Rakhine government, said he was not familiar with the details of U Kyaw Hla Aung’s case but said police would not target activists for their beliefs alone.

“I don't think that happens,” he said.

The timing of U Kyaw Hla Aung's arrest is especially significant as it came on the same day that President U Thein Sein announced during his visit to Europe that the government would release all political prisoners by the end of the year. The President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

“[This trial] ties into the larger issue of the environment in which human rights defenders can carry out their work,” Mr Loughren said. “In many countries there is a gap between rhetoric and the truth on the ground. The credibility of [U Thein Sein's] commitment depends on who the system actually works.”

While he has no access to legal representation, Frontline Defenders has people in Rakhine State assisting U Kyaw Hla Aung and his family during the trial. Mr Loughren said the group is also lobbying leaders in Europe on U Kyaw Hla Aung’s behalf.

Amnesty International has taken up U Kyaw Hla Aung's cause, publishing information about the case and encouraging people to lobby for his release, proper treatment in custody, as well as access to adequate legal representation. Amnesty also highlighted the 74-year-old's health concerns which include hypertension and gastric problems, requiring frequent medical treatment.

This is far from U Kyaw Hla Aung's first brush with the justice system. Before becoming a lawyer he was a clerk at the Sittwe High Court.

His children say he was first arrested in 1986 after he wrote an appeal on behalf of local farmers whose land had been confiscated.

After being released in 1988, he assisted Rohingya political parties that were preparing for the upcoming election.In what sources describe as a “large crackdown” on Rohingya activists in 1990, U Kyaw Hla Aung was again arrested and spent the next 10 years in prison.“At that time we had difficult lives,” said his eldest son, who is 35 and works as a human rights activist in Bangkok.

In June 2012, a Rakhine news website, Freedom News Group, posted a story on June 10 alleging that two boxes of firearms had been seen being delivered to U Kyaw Hla Aung’s home in Sittwe. He and his colleagues were detained by the police, who also said they had a letter linking U Kyaw Hla Aung to Al Qaeda.

The next day, U Kyaw Hla Aung's home was burned down while he waited in prison. His family – wife, son and three daughters – are staying in a rented home near an IDP camp in Sittwe. They declined to be interviewed for this article, citing safety concerns.

When asked if he wished his father would stop his activism, his eldest son said, “No ... we have to work. It is our duty, we have to protect innocent people, that is what I believe.

“[My father] works for many people. When he was in Sittwe prison [from 1990 until 2000] he helped write appeal letters for other inmates. Both Muslims and Rakhine,” he said.

U Kyaw Hla Aung's is next due to appear in court on August 15.

UA: 213/13 Index: ASA 16/003/2013 Myanmar

Amnesty International

Date: 6 August 2013

URGENT ACTION

MYANMAR ACTIVIST ARBITRARILY DETAINED

74-year-old human rights defender Kyaw Hla Aung has been arbitrarily detained in Myanmar since 15 July. He is in poor health and may not be receiving the medical treatment he requires. He is on trial, facing charges related to his peaceful activities.

Kyaw Hla Aung has been in arbitrary detention in Sittwe Police Station No. 1 in Myanmar’s Rakhine state since 15 July 2013. He suffers from hypertension (high blood pressure) and gastric problems and requires regular treatment with medicine. There is concern that he may not have access to appropriate medical treatment or a lawyer of his choosing and that the conditions of detention fail to meet international human rights standards.

Kyaw Hla Aung had been in hiding and in fear of arrest after the Myanmar authorities arrested several Muslim leaders following community protests against a government-led population registration exercise conducted in Rakhine state in April 2013. Tensions arose when members of the Rohingya community refused to identify themselves as “Bengali”, which is viewed by many as a divisive term used to deny recognition to the Rohingya community in Myanmar and imply that all Rohingya are actually migrants from Bangladesh. Protests forced the authorities to suspend the registration exercise. Kyaw Hla Aung was not present during the protests. Instead, he tried to contact other Muslim leaders in an attempt to stop the protests from becoming violent. He has likely been targeted as he is an influential Rohingya human rights defender with connections to the international community.

On 15 July 2013, a police officer and two plainclothes officials took Kyaw Hla Aung from his temporary shelter in Sittwe and brought him to the Sittwe police station for questioning. The police did not inform him of the charges against him at the time. He was reportedly brought before the Sittwe District Court on 31 July 2013, and has been charged under Articles 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon), 150 (hiring or conniving at hiring of persons to join an unlawful assembly), and 333 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt to a public servant to deter him from his duty) of the Myanmar Penal Code. Court sessions are reportedly due to continue on 14 August 2013. He remains detained in the Sittwe police station. According to credible sources, he has not been seen by a doctor in detention, and the authorities are not providing him the medicines he requires. He does not have access to clean drinking water or water for bathing, and family members have not been allowed to visit him in detention.

Please write immediately in English or your own language, urging the authorities to:

• Immediately and unconditionally release Kyaw Hla Aung and drop all charges against him;
• Ensure that Kyaw Hla Aung is not tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention, and that he has access to medical treatment, lawyers of his choosing and visits from family members; and
• Ensure that prison conditions, conditions in detention facilities, and the treatment of prisoners meet standards provided for in the UN Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 17 SEPTEMBER 2013 TO:

Attorney General

Dr. Tun Shin

Office of the Attorney General Office

No. 25, Nay Pyi Taw

Republic of the Union of Myanmar

Fax: +9567 404 146

Salutation: Dear Dr. Tun Shin

Director General, Myanmar Police Force

Brig-General Zaw Win

Ministry of Home Affairs

Office No. 10, Nay Pyi Taw

Republic of the Union of Myanmar

Fax: +951 549 663 / 549 208

Salutation: Dear Director General

And copies to:

Minister for Home Affairs

Lt. Gen. Ko Ko

Ministry of Home Affairs

Office No. 10

Nay Pyi Taw

Republic of the Union of Myanmar

Fax: +9567 412 439

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.

Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.

URGENT ACTION

MYANMAR ACTIVIST ARBITRARILY DETAINED

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Kyaw Hla Aung is a prominent Rohingya lawyer and former staff of a humanitarian non-governmental organization. He has spent more than 16 years in prison in Myanmar due to his involvement in peaceful activities, and continues to be monitored and harassed by the authorities. Most recently, he was arbitrarily arrested and detained in June 2012 along with several Rohingya aid workers following violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state. He was later released in August 2012.

Peaceful activists and human rights defenders continue to face arbitrary arrest, detention and harassment in Myanmar. Amnesty International highlighted recent arrests in a public statement on 4 July 2013 (see:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA16/002/2013/en/db943ba1-a638-443a-8189-1be22fc70cfe/asa160022013en.html).

Under Article 2 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, each state has a duty to create the conditions necessary to defend human rights within their jurisdictions. However, human rights defenders in Myanmar continue to be arrested, detained and imprisoned simply for their involvement in peaceful activities. Human rights defenders in Myanmar also face intimidation and harassment. Amnesty International calls on the Government of Myanmar to ensure an environment in which it is possible to defend human rights without fear of reprisal or intimidation.

Prisoners of conscience and other detainees in Myanmar are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment and many are held in poor conditions which do not meet the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Article 24 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners states that a medical officer should see and examine all prisoners as soon as possible after their admission, and Article 25 states that the medical officer should daily see all sick prisoners. Further, Article 20 states that all prisoners should be provided with “food of nutritional value adequate to health and strength” and that “drinking water should be available to every prisoner when he needs it”. In addition, Article 15 states that prisoners should “be provided with water and with such toilet articles as are necessary for health and cleanliness”.

The Rohingya have faced discrimination for decades in Myanmar. They are not recognized as an official ethnic group and continue to be denied equal access to citizenship rights. Their rights to study, work, travel, marry, practise their religion, and receive health services are restricted to various degrees.

Name: Kyaw Hla Aung

Gender m/f: M

ICRtoP
August 6, 2013

On 3 June 2012, the killing and reported rape of a Buddhist woman followed by the massacre of ten Muslims traveling in Rakhine state marked the beginning of a series of violent attacks against the Rohingya communities, their townships and residents in Myanmar/Burma causing widespread destruction of Muslim neighborhoods, mosques and villages and massive displacement. Human Rights Watch‘s (HRW) report “All You Can Do is Pray“, documents a number of violent incidences against the Rohingya, a minority Muslim population that has long been discriminated against in Myanmar/Burma and the region, since the attacks; including government backed “crimes against humanity” committed against them during a campaign of “ethnic cleansing”. Despite the government appointed Rakhine Commission’s attempt to provide recommendations for improving the ethnic tensions between the Rohingya and the Buddhist populations in Myanmar/Burma, the report failed to effectively tackle the discrimination against the Rohingya. Instead, authorities continue to reinforcethe segregation of this population through discriminatory laws and practices that underpin their lack of citizenship and their mistreatment, while also ignoring the violent attacks on Muslim neighborhoods that have continued.

Civil society and UN actors point to the government’s involvement

Under the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), it is the primary responsibility of the state to protect all populations from crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, genocide and war crimes, but in Myanmar/Burma, the government is not assuming this role. To alleviate this tension between the Rohingya minority and the Buddhist population, the Rahkine Commission, a 27 member body which was appointed in August 2012 to examine the causes of the violence between the groups, called for a doubling of security forces in Rakhine State. This is concerning given the number of reports pointing to the involvement of those tasked to restore order – the government, local security forces (including police, inter-agency border control and the army) – in the victimization of the Rohingya. At the United Nations (UN) level, UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights situation in Burma, Mr. Tomás Ojea Quintana has said Muslims were clearly targeted with brutal efficiency during attacks on property and the killing of a several Rohingyas. He went on to confirm he received reports of “state involvement in some acts of violence”, including military and police standing by while atrocities are committed as well as evidence of direct involvement of supporting well organized Buddhist gangs in their attacks. One of Burma Campaign UK‘s, latest reports concluded that the targeting of the Rohingya – which includes attacks based solely on identity and the implementation of a number of discriminatory laws, such as the 1982 Citizenship Law denying the population citizenship – violates at least eight international human rights laws and treaty obligations. The UN and a number of civil society organizations, including Amnesty International (AI) and Burma Campaign UK, have expressed concern over the lack of recommendations of the Commission to address issues related to impunity, and the discriminatory laws, as well as the state’s failure to stop “incitement of hatred and violence against Muslims.” The government has failed to address the root causes of the clashes between the groups and implement effective policies to tackle intolerance and promote religious and societal harmony, which, as the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) declares, shows that the government, is “failing their duty of the Responsibility to Protect.”

Quelling ethnic tension: Beyond the Commission’s recommendations

Civil society organizations have been at the forefront of demanding action and issuing recommendations to quell ethnic tensions, which vary from calling for the implementation of comprehensive reconciliation plans, urging the international community to pressure the government to reverse discriminatory policies, establishing an in-country office UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and addressing the humanitarian situation with unrestrictive access for aid delivery. The most debated issues are how to end impunity and resolve the statelessness of the Rohingya population caused by the 1982 Citizenship Law, which does not recognize Rohingyas as one of the 135 legally recognized ethnic groups in Myanmar/Burma.

Calls for ensuring justice and putting an end to impunity

According to ALTSEAN-Burma, and Minority Rights Group International (MRG), the Commission has failed to hold accountable those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. Echoing this, Mr. Quintana stresses that “holding to account those responsible will also be an integral part of restoring relations of trust and harmony between different ethnic and religious communities.” Group such as AI and GCR2P have recommended impartial investigations to tackle the culture of impunity while HRW has more controversially called for “an independent international commission to investigate crimes against humanity.” At the government level, the United Kingdom is a little apprehensive to undertake such bold action, stopping short of proposing to set up an independent international investigation, but rather asking for the Myanmar/Burma government to conduct an“independent investigative work” to assess “whether ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been committed” - a step Burma Campaign UK believes is useless unless it is an “international” investigation. Mr. Quintana, concerned about how accountability will be ensured going forward, supports AI‘s suggestions that in addition to ending impunity a “comprehensive reform of the security forces, including the establishment of robust accountability mechanisms, adequate vetting systems and training on relevant international standards, is also essential.”

Deciding on what it means to be Burmese

While accountability for past crimes is vital, preventing further tensions requires addressing the root causes of the problem as well. At the heart of the issue is the government’s 1982 Citizenship Act, which denies the Rohingya population national citizenship. Under international human rights standards no person can be left stateless and therefore this denied access is a form of discrimination that needs to be urgently addressed. As if statelessness was not enough, there are a number of other restrictive laws and tight regulations, including restrictions on travel, birth, death, immigration, migration, marriage and land ownership, that target the Rohingya and deny them basic rights guaranteed in international law. Civil society organizations, such MRG, were hoping the Commission would call for a review of the 1982 Citizenship Law; however, the government made it clear it has no intention to do so. In fact, the authorities seem adamant to continue the policies reinforcing the Two-Child Policy that controls the growth of the Rohingya population, an action that HRW declares “could amount to crimes against humanity” and as such must be publicly revoked immediately. Burma Campaign UK‘s approach is different, believing that a cultural change is just as important as the reversal of the discriminatory laws. According to the organization, the society needs to decide what it means to be Burmese and “there needs to be an acceptance that Burma is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country and people from different ethnic groups can live side by side.”

The Responsibility to Assist

RtoP outlines that it is also the responsibility of the international community to assist in building the capacity of states to ensure the protection of populations against any of the four crimes and violations. For the Asia-Pacific Center for the Responsibility to Protect, this should be in the way of building the capacity of Myanmar’s/Burma’s authorities to manage ethnic relations and inter-faith communal dialogue. Others, like the GCR2P, are calling for the international community to pressure the government to prioritize the development of a comprehensive reconciliation plan to engage ethnic minorities. Targeting the European Union, Burma Campaign UK, and MRG have urged the body not to lift sanctions against the government and have encouraged that diplomatic relations with Myanmar/Burma must remain limited. Meanwhile, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the persecution and violence of the Rohingyas, and requesting the revocation of the discriminatory polices. Regardless of the action that has been taken or called for, as Burma Campaign UK points out, the international community must remind the government of their international commitment to the responsibility to protect, and to put pressure where needed to demand action to protect populations.

Going forward: Protection free of discrimination

While RtoP outlines the obligations of all governments and the international community to to protect populations from atrocities, in the case of Myanmar/Burma, amounting evidence suggests more needs to be done to ensure such protection. As UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, said in his March 25 statement on the crisis, “there is a considerable risk of further violence if measures are not put in place to prevent this escalation.” As many civil society groups have said, both the international community and the Myanmar/Burma authorities need to come together and implement measures to prevent future crimes and address the underlying issues that foster the continued discrimination against the Rohingya; however, exactly how this is to be done remains unclear and debated. As AI declares, what is certain is that “the Myanmar authorities are responsible for ensuring protection of people, their homes and livelihoods. While doing so, they must ensure protection of all communities without discrimination.”

August 2013

Human Rights Watch

August 6, 2013

The 1988 protests and crackdown were a watershed moment in Burma. From March to September 1988, the suppression of mass pro-democracy demonstrations throughout Burma resulted in thousands of deaths at the hands of the military and other security forces.

“The mass killings 25 years ago in Burma are an unaddressed open wound that challenges the government’s rhetoric of reform,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should shed itself of 50 years of denial about military abuses by showing that it stands with the Burmese people and not with the killers of the past.”

On August 8, 1988, a nationwide strike involving thousands of students, Buddhist monks, civil servants, and ordinary citizens led to simultaneous protests in cities and towns across Burma, calling for a transition to democracy and an end to military rule. The size and scale of these protests surprised the government, which then ordered troops to suppress the protests with force. Troops fired on peaceful protesters, killing and wounding hundreds. While many fled, some protesters fought back with Molotov cocktails, swords, poisoned darts, and sharpened bicycle spokes, killing some policemen and other officials.

On August 10, soldiers deliberately fired on and killed doctors and nurses treating wounded civilians at Rangoon General Hospital. On August 12, Sein Lwin, who had replaced long-time dictator Ne Win as president, resigned after 17 days in power. Soldiers largely withdrew to the barracks, and an interim government, headed by civilian Dr. Maung Maung, was appointed on August 19. On August 26, an estimated one million people demonstrated at the Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon’s central landmark. Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who in 1991 would win the Nobel Peace Prize, was one of the day’s many speakers who defied the military government and called for an end to authoritarian rule. Daily protests continued through August and September, with demonstrators organizing local administration committees with Buddhist monks, students, and community leaders to maintain peace and order. 

The military launched a coup on September 18 that established the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), chaired by Gen. Saw Maung. On September 18 and 19, 1988, soldiers returned to the streets and fired live ammunition at peaceful protesters, killing thousands. Thousands of activists were arrested and thousands more fled to neighboring countries. Student leaders, who served as the vanguard of the protests, and other activists were imprisoned for years and subjected to torture and other abuses in prison. No government officials were ever held accountable for abuses committed during the crackdown.

On the 25th anniversary of the crackdown, Human Rights Watch reiterated its call to the Burmese government to immediately release all remaining political prisoners and repeal laws used since then to prevent or curtail peaceful protests. The government should create a genuinely independent body with a broad membership to investigate the major government crackdowns since 1988 and to make recommendations for prosecutions. In addition the government should encourage a broad based truth-telling of the 1988 events and government repression since that time.

“If the government recognizes past atrocities and commits to accountability, the anniversary of 8.8.88 could be a pivotal moment in addressing decades of repressive rule,” Adams said. “It could even be the start of a new era if the military and government move from denial to admission and from impunity to justice.”

In the past few weeks, the Thein Sein government has permitted a number of unprecedented public commemorative 25th anniversary events such as concerts and art shows. A three-day commemorative event organized by former political prisoners is scheduled for the commercial capital, Rangoon, where some of the worst bloodshed occurred. Events are also being permitted in rural towns in other parts of Burma by original organizers of anti-government movements, some of whom have been allowed to return after having spent the past 25 years in exile. Previously banned books documenting the events of 1988, including Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner’s groundbreaking Outrage, are now openly sold in the country in Burmese and English.

Human Rights Watch also urged the government to establish independent inquiries into the violent suppression of peaceful protests over the past 25 years, including the student demonstrations in Rangoon in December 1996 and the Buddhist monk-led demonstrations in September 2007. Other incidents, such as the attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters in the Upper Burma town of Depayin in May 2003 that left scores dead, have never been independently investigated.

“It is important that Thein Sein’s government has permitted civil society to stage commemorative events, but the government should go further and admit military culpability and commit to ending the military’s role in all aspects of governance,” Adams said. “The brutality of the 1988 crackdown was a key factor in the past 25 years of fear that fuelled continued military rule. Addressing these abuses is absolutely necessary for Burmese society to move forward.”

RB News 

August 6, 2013 

Maungdaw, Arakan – Former Translator of the now disbanded Nasaka, was arrested by Lieutenant Colonel Zaw Lin Oo. Translator Abdullah, from Myint Hlut (Merullah) village, in the Maungdaw Township of Arakan State, was arrested by the Commandant of No. 353 Battalion. According to villagers, the Commandant is demanding 10 million kyat for his release. 

Abdullah, son of Fawzol Ahmed worked as a translator for the office of Nasaka area 8, based in Myint Hlut village over the past 15 years. The Commandant of No. 353 Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Zaw Lin Oo, arrested him while he was sitting at a shop in Myint Hlut market at about 4 pm on July 30, 2013. 

The Commandant brought him to Kyauk Pando village where the battalion is based. Abdullah's family followed them to the village for his release. One villager told RB News Abdullah's family offered 5 million kyat to the Commandant. However, Commandant Lt. Col Zaw Lin Oo refused the offer of the family. He told them that he will transfer Abdullah to Buthidaung prison if they fail to fulfill his demand of the full 10 million Kyat. 

Until now, the negotiation with the Commandant remains unresolved. 

Reportedly, Commandant Lt. Col Zaw Lin Oo has been confiscating paddy fields belonging to Rohingyas in Kyauk Pando village. And he also forced the villagers to work as forced labourers in those paddy fields.

RB News
August 6, 2013

Maungdaw, Arakan – Police based in Aley Than Kyaw, in the Maungdaw Township of Arakan State, fixed a monthly extortion amount from Rohingya boat owners. This is the result of a meeting that took place at the old office of Nasaka on August 2, 2013 at 12 pm. 

There are three types of boats in Aley Than Kyaw and most of them belong to Rohingyas. There are fishing boats, fish buying boats and ordinary boats without engines. 

There are 108 Fishing boats in the region. The owners now need to pay 2 gallons of petrol or 10,000 kyat monthly and 500 kyat daily. The owners of the 54 fish buying boats are a charged a bit more, at 5 gallons petrol or 25,000 kyat monthly and 500 kyat daily. There are about 300 ordinary boats without engines. The fixed amount for these owners are 5,000 kyat monthly and 500 kyat daily. All boat owners must pay the above amounts to the police officer without failure. 

Although there are 4 fishing boats owned by Rakhines, the police officer said in the meeting that they do not need to pay. 

Such extortion is illegal according to the existing laws in Myanmar, but as laws do not protect the Rohingyas in Arakan, the boat owners must pay to run their business to survive. A villager told RB News that they have no choice but to pay whatever amount demanded by the authorities.

August 5, 2013

Robin McDowell

Associated Press

August 5, 2013

RANGOON — Punk rockers draw double-takes as they dart through traffic, but it’s not just the pink hair, leather jackets or skull tattoos that make these 20-somethings rebels: It’s their willingness to speak out against Buddhist monks instigating violence against Muslims while others in Burma are silent.

“If they were real monks, I’d be quiet, but they aren’t,” says Kyaw Kyaw, lead singer of Rebel Riot, as his drummer knocks out the beat for a new song slamming religious hypocrisy and an anti-Muslim movement known as “969.” ‘‘They are nationalists, fascists. No one wants to hear it, but it’s true.”

Radical monks are at the forefront of a bloody campaign against Muslims, and few in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million people are willing to speak against them. For many, being Buddhist is an important part of being Burmese, and monks, the most venerable members of society, are beyond reproach. Others are simply in denial, or buy into claims the Muslim “outsiders” pose a threat to their culture and traditions.

The silence is as dangerous as the mobs razing mosques and cheering as Muslims are hunted down and beaten to death with chains and metal pipes, says Michael Salberg, director of international affairs at the US-based Anti-Defamation League.

“It’s not perpetrators that are the problem here,” he says, pointing to conditions that paved the way for the Holocaust in Germany and the genocide in Rwanda. “It’s the bystanders.”

After half-century of harsh military rule, a quasi-civilian government installed two years ago has implemented sweeping reforms, releasing pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, relaxing restrictions against peaceful assembly, opening up the media and throwing away the censor’s pen.

The same freedoms have also given voice to monks like Wirathu, a charismatic speaker and supporter of 969. His following is growing as he crisscrosses the country calling for boycotts of Muslim-owned shops and a ban on marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim men, and warning that a higher birthrate could one day bring Muslims from 4 percent of the population to a majority.

“All I can really say is, people should look at the teachings of Buddha and ask themselves, is this what he meant?” says Ye Ngwe Soe, the 27-year-old frontman of No U Turn, the country’s most popular punk rock band. He wrote the song “Human Wars” after violence against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State started spilling into other regions. “When I go to some urban areas, I hear talking about 969, hating Muslims, being violent. It shouldn’t be this way.”

Hate speech experts say the best way to counter people like Wirathu is to seek the voice of moderate Buddhists.

But outside of a handful of monks and civil activists who have gotten together for interfaith dialogues, few are stepping up. Westerners working in Burma are often surprised when their otherwise progressive Burmese subordinates softly defend the monks or say nothing when discussions turn to religious violence.

“I’m sure a lot of them think this is total madness, but they don’t dare to say that openly,” says Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist who has written several books about Burma. “If they do they will be attacked by these new nationalists, religious bigots, accused of being friends with Muslims. … It’s a very difficult situation.”

Arker Kyaw, a 20-year-old graffiti artist bursting with an electric creativity, has several friends—mostly musicians and DJs—who are Muslims and was very upset about the violence that has wracked their communities in the last year.

He and others of varying religious backgrounds put together a music video expressing solidarity, saying basically, “Don’t worry, at least between us, everything will be OK.”

But when asked if he isn’t tempted to answer to 969 when he sees their stickers and signs on the walls of Rangoon, he says: “No. It’s very complicated. On this one, I think it’s better to be the audience, not the show.”

President Thein Sein, embraced by the United States and others for his reform-minded agenda, banned an issue of Time magazine that splashed Wirathu on the cover and called him “the face of Buddhist terror,” and issued a statement saying he supports 969 and considers the extremist monk a “son of Lord Buddha.”

With national elections scheduled for 2015, opposition leader Suu Kyi has said nothing, worried, analysts say, there will be a backlash at the polls if she is perceived as anti-Buddhist.

That leaves the punk rockers, who know what it’s like to be outsiders.

During military rule, the tiny punk community practiced and performed in secret, often in abandoned buildings, by the railroad tracks or in private, before a small group of close friends. While others were cowed by the constant threat of arrest and imprisonment, they screamed out about abuses at the hands of the army and asked why politically connected businessmen were getting rich while everyone else suffered.

Today they have a new battleground, religious intolerance. And they aren’t about to shy away.

Kyaw Kyaw of Rebel Riot likes to say that while he can’t change the world, or Burma, or even Rangoon, he can at least influence those around him.

“They can arrest us, we don’t care,” says this 26-year-old son of a police officer. “Or we can be attacked by certain groups. We don’t care, we’ve prepared ourselves for this mentally. But we want to speak our minds.”

By RSIS

August 5, 2013

The controversial Buddhist monk Wirathu, putative leader of the Buddhist fundamentalist 969 movement in Myanmar, has fuelled Buddhist-Muslim violence in the past year. Liberal responses to let the marketplace of ideas drown his extremist rhetoric are unlikely to suffice.

By Kumar Ramakrishna

THE CONTROVERSIAL monk Ashin Wirathu, putative leader of the Buddhist fundamentalist 969 movement in Myanmar, has drawn world attention in recent weeks with his extremist rhetoric. Wirathu has graced the cover of Time magazine and even been called the Burmese bin Laden because his sermons have been blamed for fuelling the anti-Muslim violence that has rocked Myanmar the past year.

Between June and October last year, 200 people, mainly Muslims, were killed in Buddhist-Muslim riots in the western Rakhine region of Myanmar, and 110,000 villagers, mostly Muslim Rohingya, displaced. Periodic episodes of Buddhist-Muslim violence have continued in 2013 and communal relations remain tense.

The non-violent extremist: A vexing problem

Wirathu’s role in fomenting Buddhist-Muslim tensions should not be overplayed. However he seems to have skillfully tapped into widespread Buddhist anxieties about Muslims, who form only about four percent of the total population. Myanmar’s Muslims – save for the disenfranchised Rohingya in Rakhine – are economically well off in general. Ordinary Buddhists, influenced by the incendiary sermons of Wirathu and his ilk, fear that one day Islam and not Buddhism, will dominate the country.

The case of Wirathu highlights the vexing nexus between non-violent extremist rhetoric and real-world violence. Whether the subject is Wirathu, or Anjem Choudary – the non-violent extremist leader of the Islam4UK movement fingered for indirectly inspiring the murder of an off-duty British soldier in London in May this year – or Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the jailed virulently extremist Indonesian Islamist leader, the same pressing question remains: should such individuals who spout non-violent but clearly extremist rhetoric be ignored, because ultimately they are not the ones actually carrying out violent acts? Ba’asyir once told a journalist: “I am only a craftsman selling knives. I am not responsible for how those knives are used.”

How should societies respond to such assertions? In conventional liberal legal discourse, two positions have been staked out. First it is held that inciting hatred against members of another religious or ethnic group should not be considered a crime, unless it can be demonstrated clearly that such speech led directly to a violent, criminal act. The second position is that in any case, rather than throwing the book at extremist individuals it is better to allow the marketplace of ideas to drown out and demolish extremist ideas.

Is non-violent extremist speech harmless?

Examining the effects of non-violent but extremist speech requires closer scrutiny of religious fundamentalism in general, and as an illustration, Buddhist fundamentalism in Myanmar in particular.

Religious fundamentalism refers essentially to the form religion takes when it is threatened and on the defensive. Fundamentalists are not necessarily violent, but the record shows that there are latent violent potentials in fundamentalist religion. There are three reasons for this embryonic potential for out-group violence.

First, fundamentalists are very sensitive about at minimum, the relative standing of, and at maximum, the very survival of their religious in-group. Fundamentalists are particularly paranoid about ensuring that their religious in-group dominates out-groups for fear of being dominated by them. The self-identity of fundamentalists is profoundly intertwined with the pecking order status of their religious in-group, and as such, any perceived slight to the latter can provoke violent reactions.

Wirathu clearly evinces this paranoid concern for the status of Buddhism and for that matter the very survival of the faith in Myanmar. He has warned publicly that Muslims have long been “despicable and dangerous destroyers of our Buddhism and Buddhist symbols,” and have a “100-year plan” to take over Myanmar’s “sovereignty through inter-faith marriages of Buddhists.” Such rhetoric can incite violence, not directly but indirectly, by playing on Buddhist fundamentalist fears of religious extinction.

Second, words are not neutral. Social psychologists have long warned that linguistic dehumanisation of religious or ethnic out-groups can ultimately pave the way for acts of violence against them, by rendering them as sub-human and beastly. In Rwanda, for instance, Hutu death squads were driven to mass killing of Tutsis by among other things incessant radio propaganda comparing the latter to inyenzi or insects that needed to be squashed.

It is thus significant that Wirathu and his followers engage in linguistic dehumanisation of Myanmar and Rohingya Muslims, calling them “leeches”, “bloodsuckers” – and even “African carp,” an “invasive species” that “breed quickly,” are “very violent” and “eat each other and destroy nature.”

Third, non-violent but viscerally extremist rhetoric can indirectly incite out-group violence in another way: by amplifying the profound fundamentalist obsession with religious purity and by implication, fear of contamination. In many fundamentalist religious traditions believers are expressly warned never to intermarry with people who worship a different deity because they are considered unclean. Moreover, genocide scholars warn that when extremist fundamentalist sages decry out-group members as “pigs, rats, maggots, cockroaches, and other vermin,” a relation between “disgust and genocide” is established.

Wirathu is clearly headed down this path of marrying disgust with genocide. He calls for official bans on marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim “mad dogs” and “cannibals.” He has even urged Buddhist mobs to “cut off the d*cks” of Muslim men “to make an example of Muslim men who marry our women.”

When the marketplace fails

As noted, liberals would hold that the best way to deal with the vitriol of the likes of fundamentalist extremists such as Wirathu is to allow the free marketplace of ideas to take its course. This way moderate Buddhist voices may emerge that would eventually censure and drown him out. The problem arises when the marketplace is skewed. This seems to be the case in Myanmar.

Burgeoning democratic freedoms have produced a jingoistic media landscape that is anti-Muslim. Observers have commented that since the outbreak of the anti-Rohingya Muslim violence in June last year, the media has framed the conflict as an attack on the nation by “Bengali” foreigners, fostering the stark, radicalised us-and-them mindset that Wirathu and his 969 movement have promoted.

In sum, stock liberal responses to non-violent extremism have their limits. The Myanmar authorities must recognise that to regard Wirathu merely as a craftsman selling knives would be a mistake. His non-violent but stridently extremist version of Buddhist fundamentalism represents a clear and present danger. Unless suitable corrective action is taken, the prospect of a major Buddhist-Muslim conflagration in Myanmar – with its ensuing regional spillover effects – will remain all too real.

Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

This article originally published here.