ေဌးလြင္ဦး
ကၽြႏ္ုပ္သည္ ၁၉၈၈ ခု ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေတာင္းဆိုဆႏၵျပမႈတြင္ ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ ဦးေဆာင္ေဆာ္ၾသ လႈပ္ရွားခဲ့သူ တစ္ဦးျဖစ္သည္။ ေက်ာင္းသားတပ္မေတာ္ (ABSDF) ၏ ရဲေဘာ္ေဟာင္းတစ္ဦး ျဖစ္သည္၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အယူအဆ ေၾကာင့္ ဖမ္းဆီးခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ ခံခဲ့ရသူ တစ္ဦး ျဖစ္သည္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရးဘ၀က်င္လည္မႈ၊ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးဘ၀ က်က္စားမႈမ်ား အေလွ်ာက္ တိုင္းရင္းသားတို႔၏ ဆႏၵႏွင့္ သေဘာ သဘာ၀တို႔အား တစ္စံုတစ္ရာ ကၽြမ္း၀င္သူဟု မိမိကိုယ္မိမိယံုၾကည္သည္။ လက္ႏွက္ကိုင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးတြင္ တစ္စံုတစ္ရာ ပတ္သက္ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္-၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၏ ႏိုင္ငံေရးႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအေရးမ်ားကို လက္ႏွက္ကိုင္ ေျဖရွင္းေန၍ မရဟု ခံစားမိလာသျဖင့္- လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအစား ႏွစ္ဦးႏွစ္ဘက္ ေတြ႔ဆံု ညိႇဳႏိႈင္း အေျဖရွာေရးဘက္ကို အားသန္လာခဲ့သည္။ သို႔ျဖင့္ ကၽြႏု္ပ္၏ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသယ္ပိုး၀န္ေဆာင္ျခင္းမ်ား၌ ရည္ရြယ္ ခ်က္တို႔အား ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္မွ စတင္၍ လမ္းစဥ္ေျပာင္းလဲခဲ့သည္။
သို႔ျဖစ္၍ ကၽြႏု္ပ္အား သေဘာထားေျပာင္းသူ၊ စစ္အစိုးရဘက္သို႔ တိမ္းၫြတ္သူ စသည္ျဖင့္ ေျပာဆိုခံရမႈ မ်ားလည္း မ်ားစြာ ႀကံဳေတြ႔ခဲ့ရသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ သူတို႔၏ ေျပာဆိုမႈမ်ားထက္ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္၏ အမိေျမ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ ႀကီး ၿပိဳကြဲသြားမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္စိတ္က အႀကီးအက်ယ္ လႊမ္းမိုးေနသျဖင့္- မည္သူ၏ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္မ်ားကမွ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္အား မထိေရာက္ခဲ့ေခ်။
ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ ျဖစ္ေနရျခင္းသည္ စစ္စားရိတ္မ်ားကုန္က်ျခင္း၊ ေသေက်ပ်က္စီးရျခင္း၊ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ပ်က္ စီးျခင္း၊ ရန္လိုမုန္တီးမႈ တိုးပြားျခင္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ညိႇမရႏိုင္ေသာ ျပသနာမ်ား ဆက္လက္ခိုင္မာေနျခင္းမ်ား အစဥ္ အရွိန္ အဟုန္ျဖင့္ တုိးလွ်က္သာ ရွိသည္။ ျပည္သူအမ်ား၏ စား၀တ္ေနေရးမွာ က်ဆင္းသည္ထက္ က်ဆင္းလာ ရျခင္းသာ အဖတ္တင္ေပသည္။ လူမ်ိဳးႏြယ္တိုင္းမွ တိုင္းရင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ မိမိ၏ လူမ်ိဳးကို အမွန္တစ္ကယ္ ခ်စ္လွ်င္၊ တန္ဘိုးထားလွ်င္ - မိမိ၏ လူမ်ိဳးအား ပညာမဲ့ေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္၊ စီးပြားပ်က္ေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္၊ က်ီးလန္႔စာစား ေနေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္- တုိင္းတစ္ပါးသို႔ ထြက္ေျပးလွ်က္ ျပည့္တန္ဆာလုပ္စားေနရသည့္ အျဖစ္မ်ားမွ အျမန္ဆံုးကယ္တင္ရန္ စဥ္းစားရေပမည္။
သို႔ေသာ္ အင္အားႀကီးေသာ အုပ္စုမ်ားမွလည္း ႀကီးႏိုင္ငယ္ညႇင္း ျပဳလုပ္ေနသည္မ်ားကို ရပ္ဆိုင္းရေပမည္။ မိမိ က မိမိႏိုင္ငံဟု သတ္မွတ္ထားသည့္ နယ္နိမိတ္အတြင္းမွ တုိင္းရင္းသားအားလံုး၊ လူမ်ိဳးအားလံုး၊ လူသားအား လံုးအေပၚ တစ္ဦးတစ္ေယာက္ခ်င္းစီ၏ အေပၚ၌ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကို ေပးတတ္ရမည္။ လူမ်ဳိးႏြယ္တို႔၏ ယဥ္ေက်း မႈ ဓေလ့ထံုးတမ္းမ်ားအား နားလည္ေပးတတ္ရမည္။ မ်က္ႏွာလိုက္မႈ ကင္းရွင္းသည့္ ဥပေဒစိုးမိုးမႈအား က်ယ္ ျပန္႔ထိေရာက္စြာ ျဖန္႔က်က္ႏိုင္ရေပမည္။ သို႔အတြက္ လူမ်ားစု ျဖစ္ေသာ ျမန္မာမ်ားတြင္ ပိုမို၍ တာ၀န္ရွိေနေပ သည္။ မတရားသျဖင့္ ဖိႏွိပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ျခင္း၊ ဥပေဒ၏ ခြဲျခားမႈမ်ားကို ခံရျခင္း၊ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအေပၚ မေတာ္ မတရား အတင္းအဓမၼေသြးေႏွာသည့္ ေပၚလစီမ်ား၊ အတင္းအဓမၼသာသနာျပဳသည့္ ေပၚလစီမ်ား၊ ဘာသာေရး လူမ်ိဳးေရး စိတ္၀မ္းကြဲေစရန္ ဖန္တီးေပးသည့္ ေပၚလစီမ်ားကို လံုး၀ ေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ပစ္ရေပမည္။ ထိုသို႔ျပဳလုပ္စီမံ ေပးႏိုင္ေသာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ ျပဳလုပ္စီမံလိုေသာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးထဲမွာ ေပၚထြန္းလာရန္ အေရးႀကီးေပသည္။
ထိုသို႔ ျပည္နယ္ ျပည္မ ႏွစ္ဦးႏွစ္ဘက္ ေပၚထြန္းလာေသာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေကာင္းမ်ား အခ်င္းခ်င္း ညိႇႏိႈင္းလွ်က္ စည္းလံုးခိုင္မာေသာ မၿပိဳကြဲႏိုင္ေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စု တစ္ရပ္အား ထူေထာင္ရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ႏိုင္ငံနယ္နမိတ္ တစ္ခုအတြင္း အခ်င္း တိုက္ခိုက္သတ္ျဖတ္ေနရေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စုသည္ ႏူရာ၀ဲစြဲ ျပည္ေထာင္စုသာ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္၍၊ ေဘးဘယာကင္းရွင္းသည့္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ဟူသည့္ အခ်က္ကို ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၏ ႏွလံုးသားတြင္ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရန္ အေရးႀကီးေပသည္။
တိက်ေသခ်ာေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စုတြင္- နယ္နမိတ္သတ္မွတ္မႈအေလွ်ာက္၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္ အေရးႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားကို မ်က္ႏွာလိုက္မႈ ကင္းရွင္းစြာ စနစ္တက် သတ္မွတ္ရန္ လိုအပ္ေပ သည္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးဟု သတ္မွတ္ထားေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမွ အပ က်န္တိုင္းရင္းသားတိုင္းမွာ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ သံုးႏိုင္ငံ၊ ေလးႏိုင္ငံ ေန လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။ ဥပမာ- မြန္လူမ်ိဳးသည္- ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ တည္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံလႊတ္ေတာ္တြင္ မြန္လူမ်ိဳး အမတ္မ်ားရွိသည္။ မြန္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားကို Native လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားဟု အသိအမွတ္ျပဳသည္။ မြန္ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ား ဘန္ေကာက္ထဲတြင္ပင္ ရွိေနသည္။
အလားတူ ကရင္လူမ်ိဳးသည္- ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ရွမ္းလူမ်ိဳးသည္ ထိုင္း ႏိုင္ငံ၊ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ကခ်င္လူမ်ိဳးသည္ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ခ်င္းလူမ်ိဳးသည္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးႏွင့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးတို႔သည္ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။
ထိုသို႔ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ သံုးႏိုင္ငံ တြင္ တည္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားအား- သက္ဆုိင္ရာ ႏိုင္ငံတိုင္းမွ ႏိုင္ငံ နယ္နမိတ္ သတ္ မွတ္သည့္အခါ မိမိႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းပါ၀င္လာေသာ လူသားမ်ားအား တိုင္းျပည္၏ တိုင္းရင္းသား အျဖစ္ အသိအမွတ္ ျပဳေပးခဲ့သည္။ ထို၀တၱရားအား ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုတည္းသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားႏွင့္ စပ္လွ်ဥ္း၍ ၀တၱရား ပ်က္ကြက္ေနပါသည္။
အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္မ်ားမွာ ယုတၱိမတန္လွေပ။
(၁) ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔အား အမွီသဟဲျပဳ၍ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္မွ ဘဂၤလီမ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို စုိးရိမ္ေသာေၾကာင့္ဟု အေၾကာင္းျပသည္။ သို႔ျဖစ္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာရခိုင္မ်ားကို အမွီသဟဲျပဳ၍ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္မွ ရခိုင္မ်ား ဒလေဟာ ၀င္ေနသည္ကို အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ မျမင္ခ်င္ဟန္ ေဆာင္ေနၾကသနည္း ဟူသည္ကို စဥ္းစားရေပမည္။ ထို႔ျပင္ မြန္မ်ားကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ မြန္မ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို မစိုးရိမ္ သေလာ၊ ရွမ္းမ်ားကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္းတစ္ခုလံုးမွ လူဦးေရသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ၀င္လာမည္ ကို မစိုးရိမ္သေလာ၊ တရုတ္ျပည္မွ ရွမ္းမ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို မစိုးရိမ္သေလာ- စသည္ျဖင့္ ေမးခြန္းေမးရေပေတာ့ မည္။
(၂) ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဟူသည့္ ေ၀ါဟာရႏွင့္ စပ္လွ်ဥ္း၍ အေၾကာင္းျပျပန္သည္။ သူတို႔သည္ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္ဟု ခံယူစဥ္ကလည္း ျမန္မာရခိုင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာမ်ားက မလိုလားခဲ့။ (ထိုကိစၥအား လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးစ ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေက်ာင္းသား သမဂၢ၌ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဟု ခံယူခ်င္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္ဟု ခံယူခ်င္သူမ်ား အေခ်အတင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရသည္။) မည္သို႔ဆိုေစ- သူတို႔သည္လည္း အျခားတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားကဲ့သို႔ တန္းတူရွိသည့္ တုိင္းရင္းသား ျဖစ္ကို ျဖစ္ရေပမည္။
မိမိ၏ ႏိုင္ငံနယ္နိမိတ္ထဲတြင္ တည္ရွိေသာ လူမ်ိဳးအားလံုးအား တရားသျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ႏုိင္ငံသား အခြင့္ အေရးမ်ား ေပးရမည္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး။ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးေနာက္ ၀င္ေရာက္လာေသာ လူမ်ားကို မည္သည့္ တုိင္း ရင္းသားႏွင့္ လူမ်ိဳးတူသည္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ မတူသည္ ျဖစ္ေစ- သီးျခားဥပေဒတစ္ရပ္ ရွိေနရေပမည္။ ဆိုလိုသည္မွာ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးေနာက္မွ ၀င္လာေသာ ရခိုင္ဗုဒၶဘာသာမ်ား၊ တရုတ္မ်ား၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ (စစ္တေကာင္းမ်ား) မြန္ မ်ား၊ ရွမ္းမ်ား၊ ကခ်င္မ်ား၊ အိႏၵိယမ်ိဳးႏြယ္မ်ားအား သီးျခား သတ္မွတ္ရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ လူမ်ိဳးတစ္မ်ိဳးအား သူ၏ ကိုးကြယ္ယံုၾကည္မႈေၾကာင့္၊ သူ၏ မ်ိဳးႏြယ္ေၾကာင့္ဟူသည့္ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ မတရားသျဖင့္ ဥပေဒ ေသာ္ လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေပၚလစီေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း စီမံခ်မွတ္မႈမ်ားကို လံုး၀ မက်ဴးလြန္သင့္ေပ။ မတရားမႈအား ခံုမင္ ေနေသာ လူသားစုသည္ မည္သည့္လူ႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္း၊ မည္သည့္တိုင္းျပည္အတြက္မဆို ဆူပူ အံုႂကြမႈအတြက္ မီးစာမ်ား၊ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္အတြက္ ေသာ့ခ်က္မ်ားသာ ျဖစ္ေပသည္။
တိုင္းျပည္ကုိ ခ်စ္ေသာ၊ တိုင္းျပည္တိုးတက္ေရးကို လိုလားေသာ၊ မိမိလူမ်ိဳး ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးေနရသည္ကို မၾကည့္ ရက္ေသာ မည္သည့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားသည္ မဆို ဆူပူအံုႂကြရျခင္းအတြက္ စတည္ေစသည့္ စိတ္ဓါတ္မ်ားကို ျပဳျပင္ရေပမည္။ လူယုတ္မာတို႔၏ လႈ႔ံေဆာ္မႈတို႔သည္ “ငါတို႔ တိုင္းျပည္ ငါတို႔လူမ်ိဳးကို ဖ်က္ဆီးေနျခင္း”ဟု သိျမင္ႏိုင္ရန္ ႀကိဳးစားရေပမည္။ အခ်င္းခ်င္း သတိေပးရေပမည္။ လူယုတ္မာတို႔အား ရြံမုန္းမုန္းပစ္ရေပမည္။ တုိင္းျပည္ေကာင္းစားေရးႏွင့္ အမွန္တရားအတြက္ အမုန္းခံ၍ ေျပာရဲရေပမည္။
ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္အေရး- ဆက္လက္တင္ျပပါမည္။
ေဌးလြင္ဦး (ABSDF ရဲေဘာ္ေဟာင္း)
တိက်ေသခ်ာေသာ ျပည္ေထာင္စုတြင္- နယ္နမိတ္သတ္မွတ္မႈအေလွ်ာက္၊ တိုင္းရင္းသား၊ တုိင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္ အေရးႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားကို မ်က္ႏွာလိုက္မႈ ကင္းရွင္းစြာ စနစ္တက် သတ္မွတ္ရန္ လိုအပ္ေပ သည္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးဟု သတ္မွတ္ထားေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမွ အပ က်န္တိုင္းရင္းသားတိုင္းမွာ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ သံုးႏိုင္ငံ၊ ေလးႏိုင္ငံ ေန လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။ ဥပမာ- မြန္လူမ်ိဳးသည္- ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ တည္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံလႊတ္ေတာ္တြင္ မြန္လူမ်ိဳး အမတ္မ်ားရွိသည္။ မြန္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားကို Native လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားဟု အသိအမွတ္ျပဳသည္။ မြန္ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ား ဘန္ေကာက္ထဲတြင္ပင္ ရွိေနသည္။
အလားတူ ကရင္လူမ်ိဳးသည္- ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ရွမ္းလူမ်ိဳးသည္ ထိုင္း ႏိုင္ငံ၊ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ကခ်င္လူမ်ိဳးသည္ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ခ်င္းလူမ်ိဳးသည္ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သည္။ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးႏွင့္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူမ်ိဳးတို႔သည္ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။
ထိုသို႔ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ သံုးႏိုင္ငံ တြင္ တည္ရွိေနေသာ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားအား- သက္ဆုိင္ရာ ႏိုင္ငံတိုင္းမွ ႏိုင္ငံ နယ္နမိတ္ သတ္ မွတ္သည့္အခါ မိမိႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းပါ၀င္လာေသာ လူသားမ်ားအား တိုင္းျပည္၏ တိုင္းရင္းသား အျဖစ္ အသိအမွတ္ ျပဳေပးခဲ့သည္။ ထို၀တၱရားအား ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုတည္းသာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားႏွင့္ စပ္လွ်ဥ္း၍ ၀တၱရား ပ်က္ကြက္ေနပါသည္။
အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္မ်ားမွာ ယုတၱိမတန္လွေပ။
(၁) ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာတို႔အား အမွီသဟဲျပဳ၍ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္မွ ဘဂၤလီမ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို စုိးရိမ္ေသာေၾကာင့္ဟု အေၾကာင္းျပသည္။ သို႔ျဖစ္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာရခိုင္မ်ားကို အမွီသဟဲျပဳ၍ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္မွ ရခိုင္မ်ား ဒလေဟာ ၀င္ေနသည္ကို အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ မျမင္ခ်င္ဟန္ ေဆာင္ေနၾကသနည္း ဟူသည္ကို စဥ္းစားရေပမည္။ ထို႔ျပင္ မြန္မ်ားကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ မြန္မ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို မစိုးရိမ္ သေလာ၊ ရွမ္းမ်ားကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္းတစ္ခုလံုးမွ လူဦးေရသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ၀င္လာမည္ ကို မစိုးရိမ္သေလာ၊ တရုတ္ျပည္မွ ရွမ္းမ်ား ၀င္လာမည္ကို မစိုးရိမ္သေလာ- စသည္ျဖင့္ ေမးခြန္းေမးရေပေတာ့ မည္။
(၂) ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဟူသည့္ ေ၀ါဟာရႏွင့္ စပ္လွ်ဥ္း၍ အေၾကာင္းျပျပန္သည္။ သူတို႔သည္ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္ဟု ခံယူစဥ္ကလည္း ျမန္မာရခိုင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာမ်ားက မလိုလားခဲ့။ (ထိုကိစၥအား လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးစ ရန္ကုန္ တကၠသိုလ္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေက်ာင္းသား သမဂၢ၌ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဟု ခံယူခ်င္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္ဟု ခံယူခ်င္သူမ်ား အေခ်အတင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရသည္။) မည္သို႔ဆိုေစ- သူတို႔သည္လည္း အျခားတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားကဲ့သို႔ တန္းတူရွိသည့္ တုိင္းရင္းသား ျဖစ္ကို ျဖစ္ရေပမည္။
မိမိ၏ ႏိုင္ငံနယ္နိမိတ္ထဲတြင္ တည္ရွိေသာ လူမ်ိဳးအားလံုးအား တရားသျဖင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ႏုိင္ငံသား အခြင့္ အေရးမ်ား ေပးရမည္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး။ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးေနာက္ ၀င္ေရာက္လာေသာ လူမ်ားကို မည္သည့္ တုိင္း ရင္းသားႏွင့္ လူမ်ိဳးတူသည္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ မတူသည္ ျဖစ္ေစ- သီးျခားဥပေဒတစ္ရပ္ ရွိေနရေပမည္။ ဆိုလိုသည္မွာ လြတ္လပ္ေရး ရၿပီးေနာက္မွ ၀င္လာေသာ ရခိုင္ဗုဒၶဘာသာမ်ား၊ တရုတ္မ်ား၊ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ (စစ္တေကာင္းမ်ား) မြန္ မ်ား၊ ရွမ္းမ်ား၊ ကခ်င္မ်ား၊ အိႏၵိယမ်ိဳးႏြယ္မ်ားအား သီးျခား သတ္မွတ္ရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ လူမ်ိဳးတစ္မ်ိဳးအား သူ၏ ကိုးကြယ္ယံုၾကည္မႈေၾကာင့္၊ သူ၏ မ်ိဳးႏြယ္ေၾကာင့္ဟူသည့္ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ မတရားသျဖင့္ ဥပေဒ ေသာ္ လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေပၚလစီေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း စီမံခ်မွတ္မႈမ်ားကို လံုး၀ မက်ဴးလြန္သင့္ေပ။ မတရားမႈအား ခံုမင္ ေနေသာ လူသားစုသည္ မည္သည့္လူ႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္း၊ မည္သည့္တိုင္းျပည္အတြက္မဆို ဆူပူ အံုႂကြမႈအတြက္ မီးစာမ်ား၊ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္အတြက္ ေသာ့ခ်က္မ်ားသာ ျဖစ္ေပသည္။
တိုင္းျပည္ကုိ ခ်စ္ေသာ၊ တိုင္းျပည္တိုးတက္ေရးကို လိုလားေသာ၊ မိမိလူမ်ိဳး ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးေနရသည္ကို မၾကည့္ ရက္ေသာ မည္သည့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားသည္ မဆို ဆူပူအံုႂကြရျခင္းအတြက္ စတည္ေစသည့္ စိတ္ဓါတ္မ်ားကို ျပဳျပင္ရေပမည္။ လူယုတ္မာတို႔၏ လႈ႔ံေဆာ္မႈတို႔သည္ “ငါတို႔ တိုင္းျပည္ ငါတို႔လူမ်ိဳးကို ဖ်က္ဆီးေနျခင္း”ဟု သိျမင္ႏိုင္ရန္ ႀကိဳးစားရေပမည္။ အခ်င္းခ်င္း သတိေပးရေပမည္။ လူယုတ္မာတို႔အား ရြံမုန္းမုန္းပစ္ရေပမည္။ တုိင္းျပည္ေကာင္းစားေရးႏွင့္ အမွန္တရားအတြက္ အမုန္းခံ၍ ေျပာရဲရေပမည္။
ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ တုိင္းရင္းသား အခြင့္အေရး- ဆက္လက္တင္ျပပါမည္။
ေဌးလြင္ဦး (ABSDF ရဲေဘာ္ေဟာင္း)
DR. WAKAR UDDIN, DIRECTRO GENERAL OF ARAKAN ROHINGYA UNION, ADDRESSES CANADIAN PARLIAMENT AND TESTIFIES BEFORE THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
The Canadian Parliament conducted a hearing on Rohingya human rights and political rights, and the current violence in Arakan State , Burma (Myanmar), on June 19, 2012. Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, the Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, addressed the Canadian Parliament on Rohingya human rights and political situation in Burma (Myanmar), and testified in a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, presided by Hon. Scott Reid (Conservative Party), Chairman of the International Human Rights sub-committee. In his address, Dr. Uddin brought a wide range of issues that Rohingya ethnic minority is facing in Arakan State, Burma, to the attention of the committee.
Dr. Uddin outlined the Rohingya issues through an audio-visual presentation, beginning with demographic background information on Rohingya, some highlights of the roles of Rohingya in the multi-ethnic political process during the post-colonial periods of Burma, how the military dictatorship have systematically revoked the citizenship of Rohingya, the persistent human rights violations and persecution of Rohingya by the Burmese government forces, coordinated ethnic cleansing in Rohingya areas in Arakan, the ultra-nationalist and racist ideology of Rakhine as a confounding factor, implication of Burmanization schemes in ethnic minority areas in Burma, and the current ongoing violence against Rohingya in Arakan.
During the hearing, a closed-door session, the parliamentarian asked specific questions on various issues that Dr. Uddin had articulated during his address earlier in the parliament. Those specific questions and answers to the questions currently remain classified; therefore, they could not be made public. However, in summary, the committee members from all parties (Conservative Party, Liberal Party, and New Democratic Party), were stunned to hear the magnitude and intensity of the persecution that the Rohingya people are facing. The response from the committee to the Rohingya issue was extraordinary and unanimous. The unequivocal support for the cause of Rohingya political and human rights echoed throughout the room during the hearing in the parliament.
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| Dr. Wakar Uddin with some members of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Canadian Parliament |
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| Dr. Wakar Uddin greeted by the Chair, Scott Reid, at the Canadian Parliament |
2012-06-27
ျဗိတိန္ႏိုင္ငံ လန္ဒန္အေျခစိုက္ BROUK ေခၚ Burmese Rohingya Orgnization အဖြဲ႕ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးထြန္းခင္ဟာ မေန႔က ျဗိတိသွ် ပါလီမန္ အစည္းအေ၀းတစ္ရပ္မွာ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္းက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရဲ႕ အေျခအေနေတြကို တင္ျပခဲ့တယ္လို႔ အဲဒီအဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ ေၾကညာခ်က္မွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။
အဲသလိုတင္ျပခဲ့ရာမွာ လတ္တေလာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္တြင္း ပဋိပကၡေတြဟာ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕တြင္းက ျမန္မာျပည္အေျပာင္းအလဲကို မလိုလားတဲ့ သေဘာထားတင္းမာသူေတြနဲ႔ ရခိုင္အမ်ိဳးသား တိုးတက္ေရးပါတီ (RNDP) တို႔ရဲ႕ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ျပင္ဆင္စီမံခဲ့တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ေတြျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ လပိုင္းေတြအတြင္း ရန္ကုန္နဲ႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ RNDP က ကမကထျပဳ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့တဲ့ အစည္းအေ၀းပြဲေတြ အပါအ၀င္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြ တိုးတက္ မ်ားျပားလာခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ေျပာသြားပါတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ ဦးထြန္းခင္က - ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ပဋိပကၡအတြင္း ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အနည္းဆံုး (၆၅၀) ေသဆံုးခဲ့ျပီး၊ အနည္းဆံုး (၁၂၀၀) ေလာက္ ေပ်ာက္ဆံုးေနေၾကာင္း၊ ရြာ (၂၂) ရြာနဲ႕ ဗလီ (၁၄) ခု မီးရိွဴ႕ ဖ်က္ဆီးခံခဲ့ရျပီး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ရွစ္ေထာင္ေက်ာ္ ေနရာေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ ခံရေၾကာင္း၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြေၾကာင့္ ထြက္ေျပးလာတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေလွ အနည္းဆံုး (၁၆) စင္းကို ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္က လက္မခံဘဲ ျပန္ႏွင္ထုတ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ သမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ညမထြက္ရ ကာဖ်ဴးအမိန္႔ဟာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ အေပၚမွာသာ သက္ေရာက္ေနေၾကာင္း ျဗိတိသွ် ပါလီမန္ အမတ္ေတြကို ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ အခုအခါ အဓိကရုဏ္းေတြ မရွိေတာ့ေပမဲ့ တခ်ိဳ႕ေနရာေတြမွာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအိမ္ေတြ မီးရိွဳ႕ခံေနရဆဲမို႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ကုလသမဂၢ ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေလ့လာသူေတြ ထားရွိဖို႔ လိုအပ္ေနေၾကာင္း၊ လုယက္မႈေတြ၊ အဓမၼ ျပဳက်င့္ခံရမႈေတြ ရွိေနေသးေၾကာင္း၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္က အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြ ရပ္တန္႔ေအာင္ ျဗိတိသွ်အစိုးရနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းအေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအေပၚ ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ ဖိအားေပးဖို႔ တိုက္တြန္းလိုေၾကာင္း Burmese Rohingya Orgnization uk အဖြဲ႕ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးထြန္းခင္က ေျပာဆိုခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ေၾကညာခ်က္မွာ ပါရွိတယ္။
အဲဒီအစည္းအေ၀းမွာ ကမာၻ႔ခရစ္ယာန္ ေသြးစည္းညီညြတ္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ အေရွ႕အာရွအဖြဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ Benedict Rogers နဲ႔ Arakan Project ညွိႏိႈင္းေရးမွဴး Chris Lewa တို႔က ဦးထြန္းခင္နဲ႔အတူ သက္ေသခံ ခဲ့ၾကတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
source :RFA
By Francis Wade
June 27, 2012
Much has been made of the recent sectarian unrest in western Burma and its ramifications for the country’s fragile reform process. It’s important to note that the violence and subsequent outpouring of anti-Rohingya anger is not a niche issue confined to a specific locale – instead it should be viewed as something more pervasive among many Burman and Arakanese, both inside Burma and abroad, that threatens to contaminate the wider discourse on how to move the country forward.
Among the key catalysts of anti-Rohingya sentiment are, surprisingly, prominent members of Burma’s pro-democracy movement. The hypocrisy of their attempts to vilify an entire ethnic group – labelling them variously as “terrorists”, “illegal immigrants”, “not worthy of citizenship”, and so on – appears lost on them.
Tin Maung Htoo, director of Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB), was forced by the organisation’s Board to retract a statement in early June in which he said the Rohingya were the remnants of a Mujahideen movement in western Burma that had tried to gain citizenship after their “Jihad” failed (like all the country’s ethnic minorities, there is no fixed date for their arrival, though one study done of dialects in Arakan State back in 1799 references “Rooinga”).
That, and other inflammatory comments posted on the internet, are merely the tip of the iceberg for many of Burma’s “democrats”, whose rhetoric implicitly encourages the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC), based in the UK, states on its website that a special battalion of Burmese troops should be deployed to northern Arakan state “to protect the lives of the minority Buddhist Burmese Araknese who are living in the middle of barbaric so-called Rohingya Bengali Muslims”, whom it claims have massacred “tens of thousands of Burmese Buddhist Arakanese in the past”.
The founders of BDC and CFOB were themselves forced into exile after the Burmese military was given free rein to put down the 1988 student uprising in the name of “protecting the nation”. The fact that these same people have also felt most painfully the scourge of state-sanctioned abuse and statelessness likewise gets lost in the fury.
Calls for the Rohingya to be expelled from Burma on the grounds that they are not citizens have been made by the very same people who were allowed to remain in their countries of asylum for years before citizenship was finally awarded – they assert however that this gesture should not be extended to the Rohingya.
 |
| Ko Ko Gyi, a former leader of Burma's prominent 88 Generation Students Group, pictured in Yangon earlier this month. (Photo: AP) |
Tin Maung Htoo has lauded prominent activist Ko Ko Gyi’s proclamation that the Rohingya are not an ethnic nationality of Burma; but nor is he one of Canada. He and others seem to have a hard time explaining the rationale behind their comments.
What the “anti-Rohingya but pro-democracy lobby” also seem to misunderstand is that they have become effective lackeys of a regime that they have dedicated their lives to reforming or doing away with. A key policy of successive Burmese juntas is the divide and rule of ethnic groups, which has allowed the government to foment unrest, justify heavy-handed control and which has historically provided the excuse for why the country is not ready for democracy.
It is of great irony and great sadness that the country’s civilians, both at home and abroad, have finally lent their hand to this, only months into the transition process and after decades of resisting state propaganda. As far afield as London, the front door of Tun Khin, who heads the Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, has been kicked in, while anti-Rohingya protests have been targeted against Burma Campaign UK and the BBC, often by veterans of Burma’s pro-democracy movement who, exiled from their homeland, have gained citizenship in the UK.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s reaction to the unrest was to call for rule of law to be the decider of the status of Rohingya – a deliberately non-committal and vague standpoint. As Sai Latt notes in Asia Sentinel, “The Rohingya case provides a very clear example why the law itself can be a source of problems. Statelessness, ill treatment, and discrimination against the Rohingyas are not simply the results of a lack of the rule of law. Quite contrary, they are legally produced.”
The hypocrisy underpinning the Rohingya crisis calls into question the notion of equal rights, and indeed democracy, espoused by Burma’s pro-democracy movement; indeed that the gestures accorded to them should not be extended to those of different origin, religion, skin colour, or whatever it is that makes the Rohingya such vile creatures in the eyes of those engaged in their persecution. The inability of many to see the double standards being deployed is perhaps a sign that the mindset of the regime, a master of psychological warfare, lurks within those who have spent years rallying against it, and becomes yet another factor in the sobering realisation that Burma’s transition will be a long and painful process.
The President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), Tun Khin together with Benedict Rogers (East Asia Team Leader, Christian Solidarity Worldwide) and Chris Lewa (Co-ordinator for Arakan Project) presented evidence of the persecution of Rohingyas in Arakan State at a meeting in the British Parliament today. The meeting was chaired by Baroness Kinnock, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma, and focused on the current crisis in Arakan State, Burma.
Tun Khin told the parliamentary meeting that the current crisis was well planned and organized by hardliners within the regime, who do not want to see reforms in Burma, and the Rakhine National Development Party (RNDP). In recent months, there have been an increasing number of anti-Rohingya activities, including seminars in Rangoon and in Arakan State organized by RNDP, and anti-Rohingya demonstrations.
According to Tun Khin, at least 650 Rohingyas have been killed by Rakhine and government forces, and at least 1200 are missing. More than 80,000 Rohingyas are displaced, 22 villages have been burned down and 14 mosques destroyed. Bangladesh has refused entry to Rohingyas trying to flee the violence, and has pushed back at least 16 boats from Sittwe. The curfew imposed by President Thein Sein has only been applied to Rohingyas and not Rakhine..During curfew time Rohingyas stayed in their homes, while Rakhine and government authorities burned down Rohingya villages and looted Rohingya shops in Sittwe and Maungdaw.
Tun Khin said: “We really need UN observers in Arakan State. Even though the riot was stopped some Rohingya houses are still being burned down by Rakhines, and in the last few days Rakhine police officers and Paramilitary Forces joined together and have been arresting Rohingya men, looting and raping Rohingya girls. We urge the British government to put effective pressure on the Burmese regime to stop the killings and violence against the Muslim Rohingyas in Arakan and to restore peace and security in the region, to allow the international community and NGOs to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to all the victims regardless of race or religion. We call for pressure on the regime to ensure that displaced Rohingya people can return to their original villages safely and freely. We call on the international community to urge the Bangladesh government to keep its border open to Rohingyas fleeing persecution and violence in Arakan. We also urge the Burmese government to restore our citizenship and ethnic rights, to stop anti-Muslim activities and racism in burma. There should be laws on racism if the regime want to see durable peace in Burma. There is a solution if the regime is willing to negotiate between the two communities.”
For more information, please contact Tun Khin Tel; +447888714866
10 Station Road,on Road, Walthamstow, London E17 8AA
Tel: +44 2082 571 143, E-mail: brorg_uk@yahoo.co.uk,
web : www.bro-uk.org
MMSY News
ယခုလို ႏွစ္ဘက္ အျပန္အလွန္ျဖစ္ပြားသည့္ ပဋိပကၡတြင္ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္မ်ား ပို္င္ဆိုင္သည့္ ဆိုင္ခန္းမ်ားအား အဓမၼသိမ္းယူျခင္းမွာ တရားဥပေဒမဲ့ျပဳလုပ္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္တို႔၏ ပို္င္ဆို္င္မႈမ်ားအား ဓါးျပတိုက္သည့္ အသြင္ေဆာင္ေၾကာင္း ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕အုပ္ခ်ဴပ္ေရး အာဏာပိုင္တို႔၏ တရားဥေပေဒမ့ဲ လုပ္ရပ္အား အျမန္ဆံုး တရားမွ်တစြာ အေရးယူေျဖရွင္းေပးေစဖို႔ အဆိုပါ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕ခံ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္တစ္ဦးမွ ဆက္လက္ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါသည္။
နာဇီရြာ မီးေလာင္ပ်က္စီးသြားၿပီးေနာက္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာမွ ေျမတူးစက္ ဘူဒိုဇာမ်ားျဖင့္ အပ်က္အစီးမ်ား ရွင္းလင္းေနသည္ကို ေတြ႕ရစဥ္။
Photo-CJMyanmar
Photo-CJMyanmar
၄င္းက ဆက္ျပီးေတာ့ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာေတြ ရြာလံုးကၽြတ္ေနတဲ့ နာဇီရပ္ကြက္ဆိုရင္ ယခု ကြင္းျပင္သာရိွေတာ့ေၾကာင္း၊ နာဇီေစ်းဆုိလွ်င္လဲ မီးရိႈ႕ခံရျပီး မီးၾကြင္းမီးက်န္ ပစၥညး္မ်ားကို ပင္ ဘူဒိုဇာျဖင့္ထုိးျပီး အားလံုး အစေဖ်ာက္ပစ္ေၾကာင္းေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။
ေအာင္မဂၤလာ(အင္ပါလာ) ရပ္ကြက္မွ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္မ်ားကို ဇြန္ ၂၂ရက္ နံနက္က စစ္ကားမ်ားျဖင့္ ၿမိဳ႕ျပင္ေက်းရြာမ်ားသို႔ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းေနစဥ္ ဓာတ္ပံု- ဥကၠာကိုကို
ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမ်ားတြင္ေရာက္ရွိေနသည့္ မြတ္စလင္မ္ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားမွာ အဆမတန္မ်ားျပားေနျပီး စားနပ္ရိကၡာအခက္အခဲေၾကာင့္ အစာေရစာျပတ္လပ္မႈႏွင့္ ေဆးဝါးအေထာက္အပံ့ မရရိွမႈေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးမႈမ်ားရိွေနေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား စခန္းမ်ားသို႔ ရိကၡာအကူညီႏွင့္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား သြားေရာက္မႈကို ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားမွ ကန္႔သတ္ထားစဲျဖစ္သည္။
Source : MMSY
Arakan Riot News Update : June 27, 2012
Buthidaung Township:
Yesterday night, 4-Rohingya man was arrested by army personnel of Military Operation Command (MOC) No.15 of Buthidaung Township over the allegation that they have been involved in political matter. After arrest, they were brought to unknown place. The arrestees are: two sons of Master Abu Tayub, Imam Hussain, and Abin Chay. They all belong to Ward No.7 of Buthidaung Town. This is the first time arresting occurred in Buthidaung Township, after the sectarian riots have been broken out in Arakan State, said a villager from Buthidaung Township.
Heavy downpours at Buthidaung Township yesterday, the following villages such as—U Hla Pay, longa Daung, Sindaung and Alay Chaung— went under water and villagers have been facing many difficulties. There is no report about death, but the water is still remaining. While the monsoon shower kept many villagers stranded at home throughout the day since early morning.
Maungdaw Township:
Today, Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) is seizing family lists of villagers of Myothu Gyi under the Maungdaw Township, reason is unknown, according to villagers.
Maungdaw north and south were flooded by heavy rain yesterday. Many villagers have been inundated and are facing many difficulties. Mean while, the army chased the villagers to arrest, so the villagers have to flee their villages to avoid arbitrary arrest leaving their women and daughters in the homes.
Yesterday, army accompanied by a group of Rakhines went to Oo Daung village – of Maungdaw south in the evening and arrested five villagers and the villagers fled from the village. They looted rice, gold, clothes and money etc.
Army and Natalia villagers went to Khorja Bill two days ago and an arrested 40 villagers (already released by Kaladan Press) and brought them to the mosque of the village and tortured them severely. In front of the arrestees, the army ransacked the mosque and tear of the Holy Quran. After that, they were put in a truck and covered it with a plastic sheet to avoid from public. Nobody knows their whereabouts. They also tortured the females in the village as their husbands were not present. At present, the women and girls are staying in the village in a panic-stricken position. They also looted goods from the village.
Yesterday, in the evening, the army arbitrary fired to the villagers of Khonsara and Whycha villages of Maungdaw south, as a result, villagers ran away where they think to be saved, but some villagers jumped into the river. Meanwhile, the water current was very strong as the rain fell very heavily, so the villagers who jumped into river were washed away. Today, the villagers found 10 dead bodies in the river that are floating.
Rakhines are backed by police, Hluntin, and Nasaka, but Rohingyas are only defenders while their houses were torched by Rakhine mobs in front of the security forces. Seeing the burning their houses, Rohingya villagers came forward to extinguish the burning houses, but the security forces fired to the villagers, so the villagers are unable to put out the fire and were killed and wounded by the firing of security forces. So, it is not a sectarian riots between Rakhines and Rohingyas, it is a preplanned action against the Rohingya community by government.
A village elder said,” The fake sectarian violence is still going on in Arakan State. It is really happened between government and unarmed Rohingya community. We are innocent, but the authorities give us pressure. ”
Source; by KPN
Written by Dr. Abdullah Ahsan
Posted: 27 June 2012 08:17
The Rohingyas in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, have again been subjected to a major massacre. The Rohingyas happen to be a Muslim minority living in the Buddhist majority country. They have been victims of discrimination for many decades, particularly under the military junta, which ruled the country on the motto of nationalism. Interestingly, one should point out here, that Muslims of Arakan known as Mujahidin, constituted one of the three major forces that fought for the country’s independence in the 1940s.
This is not the first time that Rohingyas have been targeted. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, approximately 200,000 Rohingyas were expelled to neighboring Bangladesh in 1978, but almost all of them were forcibly repatriated back: about 10,000 died in the process and another 10,000 remained in Bangladesh. In 1982 Myanmar passed a law declaring most Rohingyas non-citizens. In 1991, again about 250,000 were pushed to Bangladesh. In September 1992 the government of Bangladesh closed down registration of new refugees, and immediately resorted to another round of repatriation. However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and a number of other international humanitarian bodies strongly protested against the measure. Since then the UNHCR has negotiated with the government of Myanmar to repatriate back the refugees but it has succeeded only partially. Occasionally many of the repatriated refugees would return to Bangladesh. During this period many Rohingyas also migrated to a number of Southeast Asian and West Asian and North African (WANA) countries. But generally speaking, Rohingyas remain stateless people and according to one UN report they are “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.”
The current influx of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh began when a rumor was spread that a Buddhist Rakhine woman was raped and murdered by three Rohingyas and a number of Rakhines attacked a bus carrying Muslim passengers in early June. Violence spread rapidly and hundreds and thousands of Rohingyas began to flee. Rakhine thugs seem to enjoy the tacit support of the law enforcement agencies. The Myanmar government has banned the media in the area. Neighboring Bangladesh also took a stubborn stand by not only preventing the refugees from entering the country, but also by not allowing the media to interview the refugees. The upshot of it all is a humanitarian disaster.
According to one analysis the origin of the current conflict may lie much deeper in the geo-politics of the area. China reportedly has invested heavily in the area and enemies of China are trying to destabilize the situation in order to weaken the country’s economic role in Myanmar. This is part of a larger agenda to thwart China’s economic ascendancy. (see landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-front-myanmers-role-in-geopolitics.html)
What is shocking in this whole episode is the stand taken by the country’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. She doesn’t seem to have been moved at all by this unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Another shocking phenomenon is the statement by the US Charge d’ Affairs in Myanmar who praised the government’s role in the crisis. Has the international community lost its conscience?
What should be done to overcome the crisis? Violence should stop immediately. The state government in Rakhine and the central government under Thein Sein have a big role to play in this. The law should be applied without bias and wrongdoers should be punished, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. At the same time, Thein Sein should initiate measures to grant citizenship to the Rohingyas.
Myanmar’s fellow ASEAN states should quietly encourage Thein Sein to move in this direction.
Dr. Abdullah Ahsan,
Vice-President,
International Movement for Just World (JUST).
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
source here
Rohingya refugees trying to make it to Bangladesh.
By Tony Iltis
There are wildly divergent estimates of the death toll from ethnic and religious violence in the Burmese state of Arakan.
Mainstream media reports and the Burmese government are claiming that fewer than 100 people have been killed in violence they describe as clashes between the Buddhist Rakhine majority and Muslim Rohingya minority communities.
There are wildly divergent estimates of the death toll from ethnic and religious violence in the Burmese state of Arakan.
Mainstream media reports and the Burmese government are claiming that fewer than 100 people have been killed in violence they describe as clashes between the Buddhist Rakhine majority and Muslim Rohingya minority communities.
However, Rohingya sources estimate thousands of deaths from a planned campaign of violent ethnic cleansing by Burmese government forces. Rohingya sources say the regime has been instigating Rakhine mob violence as part of their campaign.
France 24 said on June 22: “More than 80 people have been killed and thousands displaced in a wave of violence between Muslims and Buddhists in west Burma.”
On June 21, the Burmese government put the death toll at 62, Associated Press reported.
But the National Democratic Party for Human Rights (NDPHR), a Rohingya political party that won four seats in the democratic 1990 Burmese elections, said on June 19: “The information from Arakan confirmed that the death toll of Rohingya has exceeded 10,000 from Sittwe city alone, and a few thousand from Maungdaw, Rathedaung and Kyauktaw townships.
“Most of them were shot dead, brutally beaten to death, burnt alive and the rest were those taken away by security forces into hidden areas.”
Reports on social media from Rohingya sources inside Arakan, such as the NDPHR, have been published in English on Malaysian-based website The Sail and the site of the Ethnic Rohingya Committee of Arakan in Malaysia.
These reports make a grim catalogue: along with mass killings, alleged atrocities include burning of villages, mass rape, mass arrests, torture, looting and extortion.
Rakhine mobs and armed Rakhine elements have been responsible for much of the violence, but the main perpetrators have been the military and paramilitary forces of the Burmese government: the police, the army, the navy and in particular the Nasaka border security forces.
There are also reports of clashes between Rohingya and Rakhine rioters and clashes between government forces and armed Rakhine groups.
The violence started on June 3 in Taungup township when 10 Rohingya bus passengers were beaten to death by a 300-strong lynch mob. For the preceding week, Buddhist extremist hate groups ― assisted by the local media in Arakan ― had been blaming Muslims for the May 28 rape and murder of a Rakhine woman in the village of Thabyaychaung.
This was used as a pretext to whip up violent anti-Rohingya sentiment.
The NDPHR said activists from the Wanthanu Rakheta Association were distributing anti-Muslim leaflets in Taungup on the morning of June 3 immediately before the lynching.
On June 18, three Rohingya men were sentenced to death for the May 28 rape and murder, Democratic Voice of Burma reported. One of the three, “accused of masterminding” the crime, had already died in custody (officially suicide), but death sentences can be given retrospectively under Burmese law.
Phil Robertson, head of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch (FRW), told DVB: “We condemn the imposition of the death penalty in all cases as cruel and inhumane treatment. But we’ve also had no access to information about this case, so there is no way to say whether the three men on trial are in fact guilty.”
Chris Lewa, Director of the Arakan Project, told DVB: “My concern would be whether there was any kind of proper judicial system. This was quite quick.”
More than a third of Burma’s population belongs to oppressed nationalities and dozens of national liberation struggles have been ongoing since Burma won independence in 1948. In the past, both Rakhine and Rohinhya armed groups have fought the Burmese government in Arakan, and sometimes each other.
No Rohingya groups have been involved in armed struggle for 10 years. The main Rakhine rebel group, the Arakan Liberation Party, entered peace talks with the government this year.
Successive US governments have had a strained relationship with Burma’s military rulers. The US even provides not-so-covert support to some of the insurgent groups.
However, a confidential October 10, 2002, cable from the US embassy in Rangoon ― published by WikiLeaks on August 30 last year ― repeats in good faith spurious allegations by Burmese military intelligence linking the Rohingya national movement with Osama bin Laden.
The same cable expresses scepticism at Burmese government charges of terrorism against other armed national movements.
The Burmese government has used the anti-Islam bias in the “war on terror” narrative, which the West now uses to justify its wars, to delegitimise Rohingya self-determination to Western policy makers.
Reporting the current violence in Arakan, the Western media have generally repeated claims by the Burmese regime and Rakhine chauvinists that the Rohingya are not indigenous to Arakan, but are immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.
In reality, the Rohingya can trace their existence in Arakan as far back as the Rakhine can. There are records of Islamic political entities in Arakan more than a millennium ago.
Antipathy between different ethnic and religious groups was fostered by the British during the colonial period. In World War II, just before Burma won independence, Arakan was the site of some of the biggest clashes between the British and Japanese empires.
Intersecting with this conflict was Burma’s struggle for independence and many local conflicts. This resulted in large-scale violence between Japanese-armed Rakhine and British-armed Rohingya militias.
Both sides committed massacres of civilians, but the Rohingya bore the brunt of them. There was a large flow of Rohingya refugees to the nearest British territory: what is today Bangladesh.
Since independence in 1948, there have been anti-Rohingya pogroms in 1949, 1967-8, 1978 and 1991, sending more refugees to Bangladesh.
Encouraging Buddhist chauvinism and anti-Rohingya prejudice is the Burmese state’s political response to Rakhine nationalism. For its part, Bangladesh sees the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Burma.
Sources Here:
France 24 said on June 22: “More than 80 people have been killed and thousands displaced in a wave of violence between Muslims and Buddhists in west Burma.”
On June 21, the Burmese government put the death toll at 62, Associated Press reported.
But the National Democratic Party for Human Rights (NDPHR), a Rohingya political party that won four seats in the democratic 1990 Burmese elections, said on June 19: “The information from Arakan confirmed that the death toll of Rohingya has exceeded 10,000 from Sittwe city alone, and a few thousand from Maungdaw, Rathedaung and Kyauktaw townships.
“Most of them were shot dead, brutally beaten to death, burnt alive and the rest were those taken away by security forces into hidden areas.”
Reports on social media from Rohingya sources inside Arakan, such as the NDPHR, have been published in English on Malaysian-based website The Sail and the site of the Ethnic Rohingya Committee of Arakan in Malaysia.
These reports make a grim catalogue: along with mass killings, alleged atrocities include burning of villages, mass rape, mass arrests, torture, looting and extortion.
Rakhine mobs and armed Rakhine elements have been responsible for much of the violence, but the main perpetrators have been the military and paramilitary forces of the Burmese government: the police, the army, the navy and in particular the Nasaka border security forces.
There are also reports of clashes between Rohingya and Rakhine rioters and clashes between government forces and armed Rakhine groups.
The violence started on June 3 in Taungup township when 10 Rohingya bus passengers were beaten to death by a 300-strong lynch mob. For the preceding week, Buddhist extremist hate groups ― assisted by the local media in Arakan ― had been blaming Muslims for the May 28 rape and murder of a Rakhine woman in the village of Thabyaychaung.
This was used as a pretext to whip up violent anti-Rohingya sentiment.
The NDPHR said activists from the Wanthanu Rakheta Association were distributing anti-Muslim leaflets in Taungup on the morning of June 3 immediately before the lynching.
On June 18, three Rohingya men were sentenced to death for the May 28 rape and murder, Democratic Voice of Burma reported. One of the three, “accused of masterminding” the crime, had already died in custody (officially suicide), but death sentences can be given retrospectively under Burmese law.
Phil Robertson, head of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch (FRW), told DVB: “We condemn the imposition of the death penalty in all cases as cruel and inhumane treatment. But we’ve also had no access to information about this case, so there is no way to say whether the three men on trial are in fact guilty.”
Chris Lewa, Director of the Arakan Project, told DVB: “My concern would be whether there was any kind of proper judicial system. This was quite quick.”
More than a third of Burma’s population belongs to oppressed nationalities and dozens of national liberation struggles have been ongoing since Burma won independence in 1948. In the past, both Rakhine and Rohinhya armed groups have fought the Burmese government in Arakan, and sometimes each other.
No Rohingya groups have been involved in armed struggle for 10 years. The main Rakhine rebel group, the Arakan Liberation Party, entered peace talks with the government this year.
Successive US governments have had a strained relationship with Burma’s military rulers. The US even provides not-so-covert support to some of the insurgent groups.
However, a confidential October 10, 2002, cable from the US embassy in Rangoon ― published by WikiLeaks on August 30 last year ― repeats in good faith spurious allegations by Burmese military intelligence linking the Rohingya national movement with Osama bin Laden.
The same cable expresses scepticism at Burmese government charges of terrorism against other armed national movements.
The Burmese government has used the anti-Islam bias in the “war on terror” narrative, which the West now uses to justify its wars, to delegitimise Rohingya self-determination to Western policy makers.
Reporting the current violence in Arakan, the Western media have generally repeated claims by the Burmese regime and Rakhine chauvinists that the Rohingya are not indigenous to Arakan, but are immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.
In reality, the Rohingya can trace their existence in Arakan as far back as the Rakhine can. There are records of Islamic political entities in Arakan more than a millennium ago.
Antipathy between different ethnic and religious groups was fostered by the British during the colonial period. In World War II, just before Burma won independence, Arakan was the site of some of the biggest clashes between the British and Japanese empires.
Intersecting with this conflict was Burma’s struggle for independence and many local conflicts. This resulted in large-scale violence between Japanese-armed Rakhine and British-armed Rohingya militias.
Both sides committed massacres of civilians, but the Rohingya bore the brunt of them. There was a large flow of Rohingya refugees to the nearest British territory: what is today Bangladesh.
Since independence in 1948, there have been anti-Rohingya pogroms in 1949, 1967-8, 1978 and 1991, sending more refugees to Bangladesh.
Encouraging Buddhist chauvinism and anti-Rohingya prejudice is the Burmese state’s political response to Rakhine nationalism. For its part, Bangladesh sees the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Burma.
Sources Here:
By Sai Latt
Asia Sentinel
June 26, 2012
Asia Sentinel
June 26, 2012
 |
| Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't know what to do about them either |
What if the Rohingya problem is 'legally produced'?
(Sai Latt is a Burmese PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada.)
Aung San Suu Kyi’s 17-day European trip, which started on 13 June, could be called the “Rule of Law Tour.” She has been promoting the concept of the rule of law as a problem-solving tool in every single talk and press conference in Europe.
Yet her account runs the risk of being an empty promise if she continues to leave the content of the laws unchallenged.
Rule of law particularly is Aung San Suu Kyi’s default answer to the questions regarding the oppressed Rohingya minority group from western Burma who have been denied citizenship by the state, and are unwanted and openly demonized by the public at large.
The tremendous public opposition against the Rohingyas, most significantly reflected during the conflict in Arakan state early this month, demonstrates that any political leader supporting them can be accused of being a traitor.
This puts Aung San Suu Kyi in a risky position. On the one hand, any implicit or explicit support for the Rohingya is likely to entail a backlash from her Burmese supporters who are in a state of political hangover regarding the Arakan conflict. The conflict has resulted in numerous deaths and displaced many hundreds from both ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya sides. Her supporters are also in a state of denial for equal rights and citizenship to ethnic Rohingyas.
Conversely, saying anything to comfort her supporters’ anxiety regarding the loss of sovereignty to the Rohingyas endangers her international reputation as an icon of freedom and democracy. In short, expressing a sentiment beyond the reassurance of rule of law’s significance is her political suicide.
Aung San Suu Kyi, of course, is smart enough to avoid this dilemma by sticking to the ideals of rule of law. However, her strategy appears to be problematic because she only takes the laws for granted and implies that rule of law means implementing the laws properly.
For instance, when a participant at the Oslo Forum asked whether or not Rohingyas are citizens of Burma, she responded that, “We are not certain exactly what the requirements of citizenship law are…, If we were very clear as to who are the citizens of the country under the citizenship law and who qualify, then there wouldn’t be this problem… We have to have rule of law, and we have to know what the law is. We have to make sure that it is properly implemented”.
However, implementing the laws alone is not adequate. Unjust laws and their contents need to be challenged so that the laws and their ‘proper implementation ensures justice, which Aung San Suu Kyi has not seriously addressed so far.
The Rohingya case provides a very clear example why the law itself can be a source of problems. Statelessness, ill treatment, and discrimination against the Rohingyas are not simply the results of a lack of the rule of law. Quite contrary, they are legally produced. In particular, they are the results of the 1982 Citizenship Act that effectively deprived the Rohingyas of citizenship status.
Whether one agrees with the controversial ethnic label ‘Rohingya’ or not, this Muslim population has lived in the Burma-Bangladesh borderland, known today as Arakan state on the Burma side, for centuries. As in every other borderland, the inhabitants move about in the territory. They are connected by people on both sides of the border through cross-border networks of family ties, labor processes, trade relations, etc., just like ethnic Rakhines in Arakan state.
Throughout the dictator Ne Win era, deadly military operations and arbitrary categorizations of ‘national races’ undermined the Rohingyas’ historical existence in that borderland. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, they lost their indigenous status to that very specific borderland.
When the 1982 Citizenship Act was introduced, they were effectively disqualified for citizenship since the new act recognizes only the decedents of the so-called national races who had lived in the state territory prior to 1824. Rendered a non-indigenous or non-national race unlike other groups such as the Karan, Kachin, Shan etc., the Muslim population from that borderland, who called themselves Rohingyas, ‘became’ non-nationals and non-citizens, and worse, illegal immigrants.
Today’s ill treatment and discrimination against Rohingyas, as well as the popular mis-perception about their status as ‘illegal’ are all predicated on the 1982 Citizenship Act. As such, their statelessness and illegal status are not natural and automatic, but a man-made phenomenon, facilitated and fortified by the 1982 act.
To borrow a phrase from Professor Nicholas de Genova from Columbia University, the Rohingyas’ situation should be understood as the legal production of Rohingya illegality. It is the law that places this Muslim population outside the national citizenship regime; it is the law that institutionalizes their exclusion and renders them ‘illegal.’ As such, talking about the rule of law without being serious about the need to challenge unjust laws and their contents will only perpetuate the problems. Aung San Suu Kyi’s choice not to go further into challenging the laws might be her strategic choice for now, but she will have to address it sooner or later.
(Sai Latt is a Burmese PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada.)
At least 90,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict in Western Burma.
Photographer captures plight of Burmese Rohingya (Credit: ABC)
And with the monsoon season getting underway, a refugee crisis is looming, with the World Food Program saying it's provided food to more than 65,000 people and estimating a further 25,000 are in need of help.
Those refugees are mostly Muslim Rohingyas who flee to neighbouring Bangladesh - which already has a population of stateless Rohingya refugees.
Bangkok-based photographer Greg Constantine has been photographing those refugees for a number of years and he's releasing a book of those photographs in a collection called "Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya".
Presenter: Wayne Shields
Speaker: Greg Constantine, photographer
CONSTANTINE: I've been photographing the Rohingya in Bangladesh since 2006, so the photographs in the book, "Exiled to Nowhere", were taken over the course of eight different trips to southern Bangladesh from 2006 until the very beginning of this year. The last trip that I made was in February 2012.
SHIELDS: Ok Greg so maybe a little bit of background prior to this current conflict in western Burma, which has led to a lot of Rohingya moving to Bangladesh. But the people that you were taking these photos of, how did they mainly end up there?
CONSTANTINE: Over the past 40 years there's been really a history and a legacy of persecution of the Rohingya minority group, particularly in north Rakhine state, which is a series of townships in Rakhine where the recent violence has been taking place. And over the past 40 years there's been several different waves of persecution of the Rohingya in Burma, and that has openly ended up forcing a lot of people outside of their home country and fleeing to Bangladesh. And over the course of the years the last big wave was 1991-92, and since then several hundred if not thousands of Rohingya trickle over the Burmese-Bangladesh border every single year, pretty much seeking sanctuary from the various forms of abuse that they face at the hands of the Burmese government.
SHIELDS: So how many Rohingya do you think are now in Bangladesh?
CONSTANTINE: I don't think anybody particularly knows all the strict figure of how many people live there. But the estimates range anywhere from 200 to 300-thousand people from this particular group Rohingya live in southern Bangladesh, pretty much clandestinely, there is probably 29 to 30-thousand officially recognised Rohingya refugees who live in two UNHCR monitored and administered refugee camps. But the other 200, 250-thousand are people who are not recognised by the Bangladesh government as being refugees, and they basically eke away a hand-to-mouth existence in southern Bangladesh.
SHIELDS: Late last year the new government of Burma agreed to take back registered Rohingya refugees, and since then as we've mentioned the mood has changed and more Rohingya want to leave Burma. You've been there on the ground, what do these people go through when they decide to set off for Bangladesh?
CONSTANTINE: Well one thing to make clear is that the area where most of the Rohingya live in Burma, in north Rakhine, is completely closed off to pretty much everyone, for the exception of some larger international organisations. North Rakhine is completely isolated and closed off to the press, to the media, to tourists, I mean it really is a locked down area of Burma. And so getting into north Rakhine and being able to photograph and tell the story of the Rohingya there is pretty much impossible. So my method has been to try to spend as much time in southern Bangladesh over the years to get the stories of people who have been coming out of Burma. And the problems that Rohingya face in Burma are numerous from forced labour to arbitrary land seizure to extortion and heavy taxes to even heavy restrictions on the right to get married, is probably one of the most extreme cases in the sense that Rohingya who want to get married in north Rakhine actually have to obtain formal permission from the local authorities, which is called an Nasaka. And a lot of these administrative kind of procedures that the Burmese government has put in place over the past 20 years or so really make life for the Rohingya miserable. And miserable enough to make the hard decision, do I stay here in Burma or for me to move forward with my life whether it be to be able to provide food for my family, because Rohingya cannot travel freely even from one village to the next in north Rakhine? Do I go to Bangladesh and live as an unrecognised person there and try to provide for my family there?
SHIELDS: Ok so you've mentioned it's a fairly miserable existence in Burma. How would you describe the condition of the people you found in Bangladesh?
CONSTANTINE: Well in my first trip in 2006 when I saw the conditions in which the Rohingya were living in the first question that came to my head, and I'm sure it's the first question that comes at least when I talk with other journalists who've spent time in southern Bangladesh, the first question that came to their mind was when you look at the conditions that they're living in in Bangladesh you wonder this is really, really horrible, how much worse could it actually be in Burma for them to make the conscious decision to actually leave and place themselves in this desperate situation in Bangladesh? So if that's any indication, the situation on both sides of the border really is quite desperate.
SHIELDS: Of the people that manage to find work, what type of work are they generally doing?
CONSTANTINE: Well they do manual labour jobs, and I think kind of the precarious part of all this is that the Rohingya, there are so many Rohingya in southern Bangladesh that they really have become an essential source of labour for a number of different businesses in economic sectors in southern Bangladesh, anywhere from 70 to 80 per cent of rickshaw drivers in a lot of towns in southern Bangladesh, in the Teknaf Cox's Bazar area are all Rohingya. The salt fields, the back-breaking work in many of the salt fields in southern Bangladesh are done by Rohingya. The fishing industry is basically incredibly reliant on the manual labour of Rohingya. You can look at pretty much any sector of the Bangladesh economy in southern Bangladesh, particularly in the Teknaf and Cox's Bazar area, and local Bangladeshi business owners are saving a lot of money by hiring Rohingya for rock bottom prices.
SHIELDS: Given that your focus was very much documenting how difficult life is for these people. How were you greeted or accepted by the Rohingya that you've taken photos of for your book?
CONSTANTINE: Well I think most of my trips are quite long and I've built relationships over the past six years with a number of different Rohingya in the community. I think that for myself there's always an element they have absolutely no reason to trust who I am as a foreigner or trust anyone for that matter, because I think that a lot of people from western governments to bodies in the UN have really failed this particular community. So they have every reason not to trust me. But I think that I spend a lot of time talking with people before I start taking pictures, and I think in general that a lot of the Rohingya that I talk to, they want their stories to be heard because they have so little voice in the international community. There's not a very substantial Rohingya exiles kind of organised exiled community out there right now, it's growing. But I think that the Rohingya want people to know their story and I just happen to be one of the people helping to share that story with other people out there.
SHIELDS: Greg there doesn't appear to be any joy in the photographs that I've looked at, no pictures of children smiling or laughing, that's obviously a conscious decision that you've made. But there must have been some joy?
CONSTANTINE: Well yeah, I mean I think the fact is that kids are kids, and I think that children in a lot of ways, specifically little children, they don't particularly understand the gravity of the situation in which they're existing in. So there's always moments that you're going to find a kid flying a kite, or find kids just being kids. But the reality of it is that there is an equal amount of situations in which I've met children who are Rohingya who didn't have smiles on their faces. And I think that when you see kids who don't have smiles on their faces and aren't being kids, then you really realise how serious the situation is, because the weight of a community's situation and desperation has now been kind of transferred over on to the shoulders of the child, and that to me is a pretty dramatic thing. I think it's a really good indicator of how desperate a situation is, and hence the reason why the particular photographs that I've chosen appear in my book.
SHIELDS: They say that every picture tells a story, is there a particular personal story that touched you that you could share with us?
CONSTANTINE: Well I think there's a number of stories that have left an impact on me over the years. I wouldn't particularly want to share one in particular, but I think that one of the big things for me has been talking to youth, people anywhere from the age of 25 to 18 who are Rohingya, and I think that as of right now or over the recent years, one of the probably the primary reason why Rohingya youth end up fleeing from Burma into Bangladesh is not so much because of violence, and not so much because of forced labour, but it's really because I would hear these stories over and over and over and over again, is the restrictions on marriage, and basically how young Rohingya who want to lead a normal life, get married, start families, are prevented from doing so because of this web of administrative restrictions that are put specifically on the Rohingya community, which makes them end up really realising if I want to move forward with my life, there's no way that I can do it here in my homeland, because the Burmese government is now allowing me to do things that normal human beings are able to do, which is get married and start a family. And because of that, they end up, that's the primary reason why people, why youth I think end up leaving north Rakhine and going to Bangladesh to seek sanctuary. Those are the kinds of stories I think that have really left a profound imprint on my mind, many of them are quite personal, but these are the kind of stories that people would share with me. And that I'm trying to share with people in this book through the voices of the Rohingya that are in this book as well.
SHIELDS: Alright Greg you're launching it this week, if people want to know more give us some website and social media details so they can have a closer look?
CONSTANTINE: Yeah a website was just launched of the project, it's www.exiledtonowhere.com. People can get a lot of information about the Rohingya, about the book on the website. There's links on there as well about how to purchase the book. My Rohingya work is only a chapter of a larger project that I've been working on for six years called Nowhere People, which basically documents the consequences that the denial of citizenship and statelessness have on ethnic minority groups all around the world. And the Rohingya is probably one of the more extreme examples of the consequences that statelessness has on a community. So people can also visit, www.nowherepeople.org to also find out not only more about the Rohingya, but about the global phenomenon of statelessness, which it really is becoming a global crisis in the sense that over 12-million people, according to the UN worldwide are without a nationality or denied citizenship and really belong to no country in the world.
Source here
Monday 25 June 2012
John Sparks
Asia Correspondent
As Burma's rulers claim the country is embracing democracy, Asia correspondent John Sparks reports on the perilous attempts of native Rohingya people to seek refuge in Bangladesh.
At the end of a jetty in the town of Teknaf in Bangladesh, the sound of misery rose up above the wind and the waves. 140 men and boys were caught by the coastguard at first light, and a camera team filmed as they pleaded and prayed for their lives.
After weeks of violence in north west Burma, members of that country's Muslim minority, also known as the "Rohingya", are trying to flee. But no one wants them. We filmed as members of the Bangladesh coastguard handed out water and packs or rice and bread rolls before ordering them back onto their boats.
They were a sorry-looking group, many of whom were crying uncontrollably. Their boats were leaky and badly overloaded, but it wasn't the voyage they men fear most - they are petrified of returning to Burma.
"They'll kill me," said one man who had to be dragged on a boat. Our camera team heard the reply from a member of the coast guard: "Allah will save you. Now go back."
In Burma's Rakhine state, the fires have been burning for several weeks now. Homes have been raised and lives taken by hate filled mobs. Ethnic Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya blame each other for the violence, but hard facts are difficult to come by.
International NGOs have pulled their staff out - too dangerous they say - while Burma's government refuses to let independent observers in. The result is an information vacuum - no-one knows what the death toll or how many have escaped the violence.
The United Nations says 90,000 people have been displaced by the violence but they have little more than guesswork to rely on. The head of the UNHCR in Bangladesh, Craig Saunders told us: "It is very, very difficult to get an accurate picture of what is actually going on."
Information is scarce, but our camera team found people willing to talk. They spoke to Rohingya refugees who'd made the crossing to Bangladesh. Some have hidden in farmers' shacks. Others have been taken in by sympathetic locals - and most were seemed deeply traumatised.
One illegal entrant, called Shahara, said: "My sisters, brothers and other relatives were burnt alive. They burnt my own children. We couldn't bear it any more so we came to Bangladesh. The coastguard turned us back three times - and we floated at sea for four days and four nights. Then we managed to sneak in. Three of our children were burnt to death in Burma. Another two died in the boat getting here."
Her husband Mohammad told us that local policemen and members of the military in Burma had sided with the ethnic Buddhists - participating in attacks on Muslims. He said he saw a Burmese helicopter attack boats packed with refugees: "There were three boats together when we set off - and another three followed us. The three boats that lagged behind where attacked by a helicopter and caught fire."
He thinks almost 50 people were killed, adding: "We saw something reddish fall on the boats and instantly they exploded into flames."
A regional official in Burma today denied this allegation, pointing out that there was "only one" helicopter in Rakhine state which is "unarmed".
We don't know what happened to the men and the boys we filmed on the jetty in Teknaf.
A local contact said five of the boats, pushed back into the sea, had disappeared by the next morning - but like much of the tesitmony we've heard, we have been unable to verify this.
Still, events in Burma are a catastrophe for the Rohingya, a little-known group of people who nobody seems to want. Only dialogue and generosity and human decency will prevent further loss of life.
Source here
By Jacob Zenn
The recent inter-ethnic riots between Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Myanmar highlight some of the major human security issues the country must face as it embarks on democratization and peace-building processes.
While there are no questions asked about the citizenship of 135 officially recognized ethnic groups across Myanmar, the majority of which straddle the country's borderlands with India, Bangladesh, China and Thailand, the Rohingya are viewed by the state as outsiders.
The Rohingya have lived in the border region between Bangladesh and Myanmar for generations, but as the aftermath of the riots shows, Myanmar citizens - elites and commoners alike - hold little sympathy for their stateless plight.
A typical post-colonial "indigene-settler" dispute exists in Rakhine state. The Buddhist Rakhines consider themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and perceive the Muslim Rohingya as "Bengali settlers". The Rohingya make conflicting historical claims to their rights as Myanmar citizens.
The recent tensions between the two communities escalated after the horrific rape and killing of a Rakhine girl in Kyat Ni Maw on May 28. Photos of her brutalized corpse were disseminated on the Internet, shortly after which news stations reported that three Rohingya were detained as suspects in her murder.
This prompted hundreds of Rakhines to rally against the crime in front of a police station and the local administrative agency of Rakhine state. Days later, on June 3, a group of Rakhines turned to vigilante justice when they reportedly killed nine Rohingya in a revenge attack on bus passengers in Taung Kote, Rakhine state.
Angered by the local media's slanted reporting of the murder and its provocative references to the Rohingya as kala, Rohingya in Yangon staged their own protests.
Although the word kala derives from the Pali word meaning "noble", it also means "black" in the Hindi language.The term is associated with racist connotations in the Burmese language, and is often used to refer to outsiders from the subcontinent, including Bangladeshis, Indians, Nepalis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.
To Rohingya, being called kala is to deny their historical connection to Rakhine state. The word "Rohingya" derives from the word "Rakhine", evidence of their connection to the land, Rohingya claim.
The Rohingya's protest over kala references also reflects their frustration over their official exclusion from Myanmar society. As the country's democratic reforms move ahead, many disfranchised Rohingya hope to gain citizenship rights, but so far there are no indications this is in the cards.
Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law established that the Rohingya, along with several other communities such as the Gurkhas (an ethnic community with historical links to Nepal), were not among the 135 officially recognized ethnic groups in Myanmar entitled to citizenship.
Myanmar's next census is scheduled for 2013, but no changes in the Rohingya's status are likely given that even the country's most respected leaders are approaching the issue with caution in the wake of the recent riots. Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said recently that "the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law", presumably the already standing Citizenship Law.
Ko Ko Gyi, an icon from the 1988 pro-democracy protests brutally suppressed by the military and until recently a prominent political prisoner, has openly opposed the Rohingya gaining citizenship. He also implied that sympathetic foreigners should stay out of the issue, in line with the military's long-held view on the matter.
"Now it is time that we announce our view on the Rohingya clearly. The Rohingya are not one of the ethnic groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riots happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw of [Rakhine] state are because of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh called Rohingya and the mischievous provocations of some international communities," Ko Ko Gyi said.
"Therefore, such interfering efforts by some powerful nations on this issue without fully understanding the ethnic groups and other situations of Burma will be viewed as offending the sovereignty of our nation."
Empowered by Myanmar's recent lifting of restrictions on the Internet, citizens now freely communicate on social-media networks such as Facebook. Many have used racially charged language about the Rohingya that previously would have been banned or censored.
Their online postings have highlighted grassroots perceptions among Burmans that the Rohingya should not be considered citizens of Myanmar. Not only are the Rohingya referred to askala on these posts, but they are also being viewed as "terrorists".
One representative post, for example, read: "We have a right of self-defense. I hope DASSK [Daw Aung San Suu Kyi] would understand that this is not bullying the minority. They are not a minority anyway. This is a sovereignty issue and this is just terrorism and they are evil enemies of freedom."
By mid-June, the government had declared martial law and imposed a curfew in several districts of Rakhine state. More than 80 have been killed and thousands of homes torched since the clashes first erupted. Sporadic violence has continued since the imposition of emergency rule over the area.
More than 800,000 Rohingya reside in Myanmar, but the violence is pushing a new wave of refugees into Bangladesh. The United Nations estimated there were already 300,000 Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, many of whom fled earlier rounds of state suppression against their communities in Myanmar.
Myanmar and Bangladesh will hold talks about the Rohingya situation in early July - Myanmar's President Thein Sein is due to start a three-day visit to Bangladesh on July 15. Some hope the persecuted minority will be granted some sort of quasi-citizenship after the talks. If this should fail, then the Rohingya will remain in a legal and physical limbo hoping for refugee status somewhere abroad.
Jacob Zenn is an international-affairs analyst based in Washington, DC, who formerly worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia.
The recent inter-ethnic riots between Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Myanmar highlight some of the major human security issues the country must face as it embarks on democratization and peace-building processes.
While there are no questions asked about the citizenship of 135 officially recognized ethnic groups across Myanmar, the majority of which straddle the country's borderlands with India, Bangladesh, China and Thailand, the Rohingya are viewed by the state as outsiders.
The Rohingya have lived in the border region between Bangladesh and Myanmar for generations, but as the aftermath of the riots shows, Myanmar citizens - elites and commoners alike - hold little sympathy for their stateless plight.
A typical post-colonial "indigene-settler" dispute exists in Rakhine state. The Buddhist Rakhines consider themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and perceive the Muslim Rohingya as "Bengali settlers". The Rohingya make conflicting historical claims to their rights as Myanmar citizens.
The recent tensions between the two communities escalated after the horrific rape and killing of a Rakhine girl in Kyat Ni Maw on May 28. Photos of her brutalized corpse were disseminated on the Internet, shortly after which news stations reported that three Rohingya were detained as suspects in her murder.
This prompted hundreds of Rakhines to rally against the crime in front of a police station and the local administrative agency of Rakhine state. Days later, on June 3, a group of Rakhines turned to vigilante justice when they reportedly killed nine Rohingya in a revenge attack on bus passengers in Taung Kote, Rakhine state.
Angered by the local media's slanted reporting of the murder and its provocative references to the Rohingya as kala, Rohingya in Yangon staged their own protests.
Although the word kala derives from the Pali word meaning "noble", it also means "black" in the Hindi language.The term is associated with racist connotations in the Burmese language, and is often used to refer to outsiders from the subcontinent, including Bangladeshis, Indians, Nepalis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.
To Rohingya, being called kala is to deny their historical connection to Rakhine state. The word "Rohingya" derives from the word "Rakhine", evidence of their connection to the land, Rohingya claim.
The Rohingya's protest over kala references also reflects their frustration over their official exclusion from Myanmar society. As the country's democratic reforms move ahead, many disfranchised Rohingya hope to gain citizenship rights, but so far there are no indications this is in the cards.
Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law established that the Rohingya, along with several other communities such as the Gurkhas (an ethnic community with historical links to Nepal), were not among the 135 officially recognized ethnic groups in Myanmar entitled to citizenship.
Myanmar's next census is scheduled for 2013, but no changes in the Rohingya's status are likely given that even the country's most respected leaders are approaching the issue with caution in the wake of the recent riots. Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said recently that "the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law", presumably the already standing Citizenship Law.
Ko Ko Gyi, an icon from the 1988 pro-democracy protests brutally suppressed by the military and until recently a prominent political prisoner, has openly opposed the Rohingya gaining citizenship. He also implied that sympathetic foreigners should stay out of the issue, in line with the military's long-held view on the matter.
"Now it is time that we announce our view on the Rohingya clearly. The Rohingya are not one of the ethnic groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riots happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw of [Rakhine] state are because of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh called Rohingya and the mischievous provocations of some international communities," Ko Ko Gyi said.
"Therefore, such interfering efforts by some powerful nations on this issue without fully understanding the ethnic groups and other situations of Burma will be viewed as offending the sovereignty of our nation."
Empowered by Myanmar's recent lifting of restrictions on the Internet, citizens now freely communicate on social-media networks such as Facebook. Many have used racially charged language about the Rohingya that previously would have been banned or censored.
Their online postings have highlighted grassroots perceptions among Burmans that the Rohingya should not be considered citizens of Myanmar. Not only are the Rohingya referred to askala on these posts, but they are also being viewed as "terrorists".
One representative post, for example, read: "We have a right of self-defense. I hope DASSK [Daw Aung San Suu Kyi] would understand that this is not bullying the minority. They are not a minority anyway. This is a sovereignty issue and this is just terrorism and they are evil enemies of freedom."
By mid-June, the government had declared martial law and imposed a curfew in several districts of Rakhine state. More than 80 have been killed and thousands of homes torched since the clashes first erupted. Sporadic violence has continued since the imposition of emergency rule over the area.
More than 800,000 Rohingya reside in Myanmar, but the violence is pushing a new wave of refugees into Bangladesh. The United Nations estimated there were already 300,000 Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, many of whom fled earlier rounds of state suppression against their communities in Myanmar.
Myanmar and Bangladesh will hold talks about the Rohingya situation in early July - Myanmar's President Thein Sein is due to start a three-day visit to Bangladesh on July 15. Some hope the persecuted minority will be granted some sort of quasi-citizenship after the talks. If this should fail, then the Rohingya will remain in a legal and physical limbo hoping for refugee status somewhere abroad.
Jacob Zenn is an international-affairs analyst based in Washington, DC, who formerly worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia.
Source here
ေဒါက္တာ ဟာဘိ စီဒီကီ
မူရင္းေဆာင္းပါး –Asiantribune.com
ခ်စ္ခင္ေလးစားရပါေသာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ခင္ဗ်ား
ဆယ္စုႏွစ္တစ္ခုမက လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအရာ လံႈ႕ေဆာ္ၾကိဳးပမ္းသူတစ္ဦးအေနျဖင့္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ရန္ႏွင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရးအတြက္ ပူးတြဲလုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အစိုးရသစ္ဟာ တိုင္းျပည္ေကာင္းစားဖို႕နဲ႕ မွန္ကန္တဲ့ သီလအတြက္ ခိုင္မာစြာ ရပ္တည္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္အတူ အျခားမ်ားစြာေသာ အျပစ္မဲ့တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားကို အနာဂတ္ ေရရွည္အက်ိဳးအျမင္ျဖင့္ လြတ္လပ္မႈေပး၊ လြတ္ေျမာက္ ခြင့္ေပးခဲ့တာျဖင့္ အလြန္ကိုေကာင္းမြန္ေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဧျပီလ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ NLD ပါတီ ဝင္ေရာက္ျပိဳင္ဆိုင္ခြင့္ရခဲ့ျပီး အမတ္ ၄၂-ေနရာ ေအာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တာ အလြန္ဝမ္းသာစရာပါ။ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ အလြန္ၾကီးမားတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈပါ။
ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းမွာ ထိုကဲ့သို႕ေသာ ေျပာင္းလဲတိုးတက္ မႈမ်ားနဲ႕အညီ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ့ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေတြ ဟာလည္း ျမင့္တက္လာပါတယ္။ ေအာက္လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ရဲ့ အသံ၊ ဩဇာတကၠိမနဲ႕ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္မ်ားစြာ သူတို႕ ခံစားေတြ႕ၾကံဳေနရတဲ့ အတိဒုကၡေတြက လြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သစ္မွာ မည္သူမဆို အေရာင္အေသြး၊ ဘာသာလူမ်ိဳး၊ ကိုးကြယ္ယုံၾကည္မႈ ကြဲျပားေနပါေစ ေဒၚစုၾကည္္ဟာ တရားမွ်တမႈ၊ ေက်ာသားရင္သားမခြဲျခားမႈ၊ တရားဥပေဒ စိုးမိုးမႈ ေတြကို ေဆာင္ၾကဥ္းေပးလာႏိုင္မယ္လို႕ ယုံၾကည္ထားၾကပါတယ္။ ...
ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ အစိုးရဟာ လူနည္းစုအေပၚ ျပင္းထန္စြာ ခြဲျခားဖိႏွိပ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေဒၚစုၾကည္သိမယ္ ထင္တဲ့အတိုင္း လူမ်ိဳး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခား ႏွိမ့္ခ်ဆက္ဆံမႈ၊ မုန္းတီး အစြန္းေရာက္မႈ အမ်ားျပား အျပင္းထန္ဆုံး ႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ လုံးဝ မရွိသင့္ေတာ့တဲ့ အျပင္ လုံးဝ ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႕လိုပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အေနာက္ဘက္ေဒသရွိ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ လူနည္းစု အေပၚ မၾကာေသးမီက ျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့တဲ့ တိုက္ခိုက္မႈဟာ လူမ်ိဳးေရးနဲ႕ ဘာသာေရးကို အေျခခံတဲ့ ျပသနာ တစ္ေၾကာ့ျပန္ပါ။ ရခိုင္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးငယ္တစ္ဦးကို မတရားက်င့္၊ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ရာဇဝတ္ေကာင္ ၃-ေယာက္ကို အေၾကာင္းျပျပီး ျမန္မာျပည္ အျခားေဒသမွ တရားစခန္းဝင္ ျပန္လာတဲ့ မြတ္စလင္ ၁၀-ဦးကို ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ကုတ္ျမိဳ႕မွာ ၃၀၀-ခန္႕ေသာ အၾကမ္းဖက္လူအုပ္ၾကီးက ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ ႐ိုက္ႏွက္သတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ့ၾကတာ ၾကားရတဲ့အခါ လြန္စြာတုန္လႈပ္ေျခာက္ျခားမိခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
ရာဇဝတ္သားတစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ရဲ့ အျပစ္က်ဴးလြန္မႈကို ဤကဲ့သို႕လူနည္းစု အေပၚ မေယာင္ရာ ဆီလူး ဥပေဒေဘာင္မဲ့ လက္စားေခ်တံု႕ျပန္ျခင္းသာ သမ႐ိုးက်ျဖစ္ေနခဲ့ပါက ဒီေလာကဝယ္ လူသားဆိုတာ အဘယ္မွာ က်န္ရွိပါေတာ့မလဲ။ သို႕ပါေသာ္လည္း ရခိုင္အၾကီးအကဲေခါင္းေဆာင္တို႕ဟာ ဤပုံဤနည္း မွန္ကန္စြာ စဥ္းစားၾကပုံမေပၚပဲ အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ လူနည္:စုအေပၚ အျပစ္ပုံအမုန္းပြါး အဓိကရုန္းျဖစ္ေစခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။
ေဒၚစုၾကည္ဟာ ပါလီမန္အတြင္း အတိုက္အခံေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးအေနနဲ႕ အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ားစြာအတြက္ ကတိကဝတ္ျပဳထားတဲ့ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရသစ္နဲ႕လက္တြဲျပီး အတိတ္ရဲ့အမိုက္ေမွာင္ေတြထဲက ရုန္းထြက္ခြဲခြါကာ အရွိန္အဟုန္ျဖင့္ တိုင္းျပည္သစ္တည္ေဆာက္မယ္လို႕ ထင္ထားခဲ့မိတာ သိပ္မ်ားေစာသြား ေလသလား။ မွားမ်ား သြားခဲ့ျပီလား။
ရခိုင္အၾကီးအကဲေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ လုံထိန္း၊ နစက အစရွိသူတို႕ဟာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူနည္းစုကို အျမစ္ျပတ္ရွင္းလင္းျပစ္ဖို႕ အကြက္က်က် စီမံခဲ့က်ပါတယ္။ ဇြန္လ ၃-ရက္ကျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေၾကာက္မက္ဖြယ္ လူသတ္ပြဲၾကီးကို တားဆီးႏိုင္ပါလ်က္ မသိက်ိဳးကြၽံျပဳခဲ့က်တဲ့အျပင္ ဇြန္လ ၈-ရက္ ေသာၾကာေန႕ ဝတ္ျပဳျပီးျပန္လာၾကတဲ့ လက္နက္မဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအား တိုက္ခိုက္ ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ၾကတာဟာျဖင့္ အလြန္ေကာက္က်စ္တဲ့ စီမံကိန္းရဲ့အစိတ္အပိုင္းတစ္ခုဆိုတာ အေသအခ်ာပါပဲ။
ဘုန္းၾကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ားအတြင္းမွ ရခိုင္အစြန္းေရာက္ အၾကမ္းဖက္သမားမ်ား လွ်ိဳ႕ဝွက္သိမ္းဆီးထားတဲ့ ဒုတ္၊ဓား၊လွံ၊လက္နက္မ်ား ဖမ္းမိခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာလည္း အေထာက္အထားမ်ားအရ သိရွိရပါတယ္။ ဤစာေရးသားေနစဥ္ ကာလအတြင္းမွာဘဲ မြတ္စလင္အိုးအိမ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ မီး႐ိႈ႕ခံေနရပါတယ္။ လူမ်ိဳးတုန္းသတ္ျဖတ္မႈေၾကာင့္ လူရာေပါင္းမ်ားစြာရဲ့ အသက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ေသေက်ပ်က္စီးေနပါတယ္။ ဒီလို ရက္စက္ၾကမ္းၾကဳပ္မႈမ်ားကို ၾကားသိရတာ အလြန္ပဲတုန္လႈပ္ေျခာက္ျခားရပါတယ္။
ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ မြတ္စလင္ေတြအားလုံးကို ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရး အျပည့္အဝေပးမယ္လို႕ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္းဆန္း ကိုယ္တိုင္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရျပီး ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ပထမဆုံးသမၼတ စဝ္ေရႊသိုက္ကလည္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ရွိ မြတ္စလင္မ်ားအားလုံးဟာ ျမန္မာတိုင္းရင္းသားေတြပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ သူတို႕တိုင္ရင္းသား မဟုတ္ရင္ ငါတို႕ရွမ္းလဲ တိုင္းရင္းသားမဟုတ္ဘူးလို႕ေတာင္ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အာဏာရွင္ဦးေနဝင္းအစိုးရ မတက္ခင္က တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစု ၁၄၄-ခု သတ္မွတ္ခဲ့၊ ရွိခဲ့တာပါ။ ၁၉၇၄-ခုႏွစ္ ဦးေနဝင္းရဲ့ ဗမာ့ဆိုရွယ္လစ္လမ္းစဥ္ပါတီ တက္လာျပီးမွ ၁၃၅-ခုဆိုျပီး ျပင္ဆင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ပ႐ႉးမြတ္စလင္၊ ရခိုင္မြတ္စလင္(ေနာင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ) အပါအဝင္ တိုင္းရင္းသား ၉-မ်ိဳး ပယ္ဖ်က္ပစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ပသီ၊ ေျမဒူး၊ ပန္းေသး၊ ျမန္မာ-အိႏၵိယ အစသျဖင့္ပါ။
၁၉၈၂-ခုႏွစ္ ႏိုင္ငံသားဥပေဒဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဥပေဒ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းမ်ားရဲ့ အေျခခံမ်ားကိုပင္ ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ထားပါတယ္။ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ ပဋိဥာဥ္နဲ႕လည္း ဆန္႕က်င္ေနပါတယ္။
ဒီဥပေဒေၾကာင့္ ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာေသာသူတို႕ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံသားျဖစ္ခြင့္ဆုံးရွုံးခဲ့ရျပီး အျခားအေျမာက္အမ်ားဟာလည္း အေျခခံ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အေရးမ်ား ဆုံးရွုံးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဤသို႕ ႏွိမ့္ခ် ခြဲျခားမႈမ်ား၊ ဥပေဒေဘာင္မဲ့ က်ဴးလြန္မႈမ်ားဟာ ကုလသမဂၢရဲ့ ထုံးနဲ႕ လုံးဝမညီညြတ္ပါ။ ျမန္မာအစိုးရဟာ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ ပဠိညာဥ္ရဲ့ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ေပါင္း ၃၀ ကို ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ေနပါတယ္။ အဖြဲ႕ဝင္တိုင္း လိုက္နာရမဲ့ စည္းမ်ဥ္းဥပေဒသမ်ားပါ။
ေဒၚစုၾကည္ ခင္ဗ်ား၊ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ႔ႈဆိုတာ လူအမ်ားမၾကိဳက္သည့္တိုင္ ခက္ခဲတဲ့ ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္မ်ား ခ်ရေလ့ရွိပါတယ္။ တိုင္းျပည္အနာဂတ္ေကာင္း ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေရးမွာ မိမိပါတီအတြင္းသာမက တစ္တိုင္းျပည္လုံးအတြင္းမွာပါ ဤအစြန္းေရာက္မႈ၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ၊ ခြဲျခားႏွိပ့္ခ်မႈမ်ားကို ႐ံႈ႕ခ်ရပါမယ္၊ တားဆီးရပါမယ္။
ျမန္မာ့လူ႕ေဘာင္အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအတြင္း ယခင္အစမွ တည္ရွိခဲ့ေသာ လူမ်ိဳးေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခားႏွိပ့္ခ်မႈေလာက္ ဝမ္းနည္းဖြယ္ရာမွာ အျခားမရွိေတာ့ပါ။ လူမ်ားစုဗမာ၏ မဟာဗမာလူမ်ိဳးၾကီး ဝါဒသာလွ်င္မက ကရင္က ဗမာကိုမုန္း၊ ဗမာက ရွမ္းကိုမခ်စ္၊ ရွမ္းက ဝကိုမလိုလား၊ မြန္က ဗမာကိုအလိုမရွိ၊ ရခိုင္က ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာကို ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္မုန္းတီး၊ ဗမာက တရုတ္ဆို ၾကည့္မရ၊ ခရစ္ယာန္က ဗုဒၶဘာသာကိုမၾကိဳက္၊ ျပီးေတာ့ အားလုံးေပါင္းျပီး မြတ္စလင္ကို ဝိုင္းမုန္း စသည္ျဖင့္ ဒီသံသရာက ဘယ္လိုမွမလြတ္ေျမာက္ေတာ့ပါ။ ျမန္မာျပည္သစ္မွာ ဒီလူမ်ိဳးေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး ခြဲျခားမႈ၊ မုန္းတီးမႈေရာပြမ္းေနတဲ့ ညစ္ညမ္းႏိုင္ငံေရး လုံးဝအဆုံး နိဂုံးခ်ဳပ္သင့္ပါျပီ။
ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္အစိုးရဟာ ‘မ်ိဳးေပ်ာက္မွာ စိုးေၾကာက္စရာ’၊ ‘ေျမျမိဳ၍ လူမ်ိဳးမေပ်ာက္၊ လူမ်ိဳးျမိဳမွ လူမ်ိဳးေပ်ာက္မည္’ အစရွိသည္မ်ားအပါအဝင္ ‘မ်က္ကန္းမ်ိဳးခ်စ္’ အယူအဆမ်ား ျပင္းထန္စြာဝါဒျဖန္႕ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ‘တပ္မေတာ္အင္အားရွိမွ တိုင္းျပည္အင္အားရွိမည္’၊ ‘တပ္မေတာ္သည္သာအမိ၊ တပ္မေတာ္သည္သာအဖ’ စသည္ျဖင့္လည္း ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကီးအဓြန္႕ရွည္ရန္ စစ္တပ္ရွိမွျဖစ္မည့္ဟန္ ဖန္တီး၍ တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား၊ လူနည္းစုမ်ားကို ညွင္းပန္းဖိႏွိပ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အစိုးရသစ္လက္ထက္ဝယ္ အခ်ိဳ႕ေသာအရာမ်ား လြပ္လပ္ပြင့္လင္းလာေသာ္လည္း လူနည္းစုအေပၚ ခြဲျခားမႈမ်ား၊ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ား အမ်ားအျပားရွိေနဆဲပါ။ ရခိုင္၊ ရွမ္း၊ ကခ်င္၊ ကရင္ စေသာ ျပည္နယ္မ်ား၌ အေျပာင္းအလဲရဲ့ သက္ေရာက္မႈဟာ မရွိသေလာက္ပါ။ တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကိုင္တပ္ဖြဲ႕မ်ားနဲ႕ ဗမာ့တပ္မေတာ္တို႕ဟာလည္း တိုက္ပြဲေတြ ျပင္းထန္ေနဆဲပါ။ ဒီတစ္ႏွစ္အတြင္း ဗမာ့တပ္မေတာ္က တိုင္းရင္းသားလူနည္းစုမ်ားအေပၚ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈ အၾကိမ္ေပါင္း ၇၅၀ ခန္႕ရွိတယ္လို႕လဲ သိရပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာ လႊတ္ေပးဖို႕ရာ က်န္ရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီလမ္းစဥ္ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေနျခင္းႏွင့္အညီ အသိရွိထားဖို႕ရာ ဖယ္ဒရယ္မူမဟုတ္တဲ့ ဗဟိုထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မႈအေျချပဳ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ဟာ ဒီျပသနာေတြကို ကာကြယ္ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး ဆိုတာပါပဲ။ လူမ်ိဳးဘာသာေရးခြဲျခားမႈ ရွိေနျခင္းကို ပထမဆုံးအေနနဲ႕ ဝန္ခံျပီး ဘယ္ေလာက္အတိုင္းအတာထိ နက္႐ိႈင္းတည္ရွိေနတယ္ဆိုတာကိုလည္း အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရပါမယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့တဲ့ ‘ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ိဳးျဖဳတ္ရွင္းလင္းေရး’ အဓိကရုန္းဟာ ရခိုင္လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားရဲ့ ေသးသိမ္က်ဥ္းေျမာင္းတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးေရးအတၱစြဲကို လွစ္ဟျပေနပါတယ္။
ေခါင္းေဆာင္ၾကီးခင္ဗ်ား၊ ‘အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ား၊ ႏိုင့္ထက္စီးနင္းမႈမ်ား၊ အစြန္းေရာက္မႈမ်ား’ကို ေဒၚစုၾကည္အေနနဲ႕ အႂကြင္းမဲ့ ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္ ႐ံႈ႕ခ်သင့္ပါတယ္။ အကယ္၍သာ ေဒၚစုၾကည္ႏွင့္တကြ အျခားေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ဤသို႕ရပ္တည္ျခင္းမရွိပါက ေနာင္ ၂၀၁၅-ခု မည္သည့္အစိုးရသစ္ တက္ေရာက္လာသည္ျဖစ္ေစ ျမန္မာျပည္ဟာ ဒီႏြံထဲက ရုန္းထြက္ႏိုင္မွာ မဟုတ္ေတာ့ပါ။
၁၉၈၂-ႏိုင္ငံသားဥပေဒဟာ (လုံးဝ) တရားမဝင္ပါ။ အားလုံးရဲ့ ရပ္တည္မႈ ခဲေလသမွ် သဲေရက်အျဖစ္မ်ိဳးပါ။ ေက်းဇူးျပဳျပီး ဒီအမုန္းမီးပြါး၊ လူမ်ိဳးဘာသာခြဲျခားမႈ တံတိုင္းၾကီးကို ျဖိဳခ်ေပးပါ။ တိုင္းရင္းသား အစၥလာမ္ဘာသာဝင္ မြတ္စလင္လူနည္းစုတို႕ရဲ့ သာတူညီမွ် ႏိုင္ငံသား အခြင့္အေရးေတာင္းဆိုမႈဟာ တရားမွ်တမႈအျပည့္ရွိ၊ ေလ်ာ္ကန္သင့္ျမတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါမွသာလွ်င္ ဖယ္ဒရယ္မူႏွင့္အညီ တိုင္းရင္းသား၊ လူမ်ိဳးေပါင္းစုံ၊ ဘာသာမေရြး လက္တြဲညီညြတ္စြာ အတူယွဥ္တြဲေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာယာတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္သစ္ၾကီး အျမန္ဆုံး ေပၚထြန္းလာႏိုင္မွာပါ။
ရိုေသေလးစားစြာျဖင့္၊အေမရိကႏိုင္ငံမွ ဆုမြန္ေကာင္းေတာင္းလ်က္
ေဒါက္တာ ဟာဘိ စီဒီကီ
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ျမန္မာမႈျပဳတင္ျပသူ – လင္းယုန္နက္ (ျခေသၤ့ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္)
credit: www.myanmarmuslim.net
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| Photo:AP |
Yangon – The Arakan conflict in western Burma might have taken many more lives than the official report of 50 plus deaths. According to sources from Arakan state, more Rohingyas have been killed, but an exact number of deaths and displaced people is difficult to obtain as the government has barred journalists and relief organizations from visiting various places.
According to a letter submitted to a Member of Parliament U Shwe Maung by a Muslim community representative from the town of Sittwe, 159 Rohingyas were killed and 1,240 people are missing. The list that accounts for the Sittwe area from June 9 to 18 shows that 800 people have been injured (bullet and knife wounds). The list also shows that 94,613 Rohingya minority people have been displaced.
An email exchange between Rohingya activists in Thailand and Europe indicates, however, that the actual numbers are much higher.
A freelance reporter, who remains to be anonymous, predicts that Rohingya people in places where journalists are denied access to might be facing severe treatments including extra judicial killings and forced relocation.
Information shows that Border Administration Force (or Na Sa Ka) and security police have been raiding the homes of the Rohingyas, randomly shooting people, and secretly disposing bodies.
A Rohingya youth in Germany told MMSY News that he lost three relatives in Sittwe and that one is still missing. He added that Muslims’ homes are being bulldozed in the town of Sittwe.
Mg Win, a Rohingya migrant worker in Bangkok whose family lives in Sittwe, said, “People have been taken away, but they were not told where they have been taken to”.
The Burmese media, especially the domestic Burmese language journals, including Weekly Eleven, the Voice, and 7Days News have been reporting that Rohingyas are burning down their own homes.
Mg Win complaints, however, that the media reports are not accurate as houses are being burnt down by ethnic Rakhines and authorities.
Win Than, a migrant woman in Bangkok, agrees with Mg Win. She said her house in Sittwe was burnt down, and her family has been living in her grandparents’ village. She added that Na Sa Ka and security police are forcing Rohingyas to sign that they burnt down their own homes.
Although the scene in Sittwe seems calm presently, widespread but silent killing and house burning are still happening in various places. Rohingyas are specifically targeted by the authorities. “Even in Sittwe, Muslims (not just ethnic Rohingyas) are being forced out of their homes,” said Win Than.
Families who lost their family registration papers due to fire are being arrested. Burmese authorities are charging them with illegal entry without carefully examining whether they are residents or illegal immigrants.
Rohingya women have been targeted for rape as well. On June 15th, Na Sa Ka and security police located in the Maungdaw township raped five women between the ages of 14 and 35.
During the climax of the conflict, entire Rohingya villages were burnt down by Na Sa Ka. People were killed in their own homes; they could not leave due to Curfew. The bodies were transported by military trucks.
When sources were asked why the Rohingya side is still not able to provide photos or evidence of killing and burning experienced by the Rohingya, the sources said that it is difficult for Rohingyas to get photos. Many are still hiding in their houses as they have been shot as soon as they step outside their homes. Taking photos of the incidents and/or communicating information to outside world is virtually impossible.
Meanwhile, journalists and relief organizations are not allowed to freely collect information in Arakan state. The actual extent of killing, displacement, and injuries (estimated to be at a higher rate than previously disclosed) will continue to be unknown to the public.
On June 22nd, the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned the public that the Arakan state could face “severe humanitarian crisis” due to the conflict.
Credit: MMSY
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ရက္စြဲ – ေမ ၂၉ ၊ ၂၀၁၂ သို ့ အယ္ဒီတာ၊ နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာန နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာနမွ ေမလ ၂၉ ရက္ေန ့ ထုတ္ျပန္သည့္ ရမ္းျဗဲတြင္ အသက္ ၁၆ ႏွ...
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Amartya Sen: Burma's "slow genocide" of Rohingyas
Watch Professor Amartya Sen speak on what he calls Burma's 'slow genocide' of Rohingya, Harvard, 4 Nov 2014
