Authorities sealed off villages for months in Myanmar's only Muslim-majority region and in some cases beat and arrested people who refused to register with immigration officials, residents and activists say, in what may be the most aggressive effort yet to compel Rohingya to identify themselves as migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Immigration officials, border guards and members of the illegal-alien task force in the northern tip of Rakhine state — home to 90 percent of the country's 1.3 million Rohingya — said they were simply updating family lists, as they have in the past. But this year, in addition to questions about marriages, deaths and births, people were classified by ethnicity.

The government denies the existence of Rohingya in the country, saying those who claim the ethnicity are actually Bengalis. Residents said those who refused to take part suffered the consequences.

"We are trapped," Khin Maung Win said last week. He said authorities started setting up police checkpoints outside his village, Kyee Kan Pyin, in mid-September, preventing people from leaving even to shop for food in local markets, work in surrounding paddies or bring children to school.

"If we don't have letters and paperwork showing we took part — that we are Bengali — we can't leave," he said.

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which has been advocating on behalf of the Rohingya for more than a decade, said residents reported incidents of violence and abuse in at least 30 village tracts from June to late September. While blockades have since been lifted, arrests continue, with dozens of Rohingya men being rounded up for alleged ties to Islamic militants in the last week.

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation, surprised the world in 2011 when a half-century of military rule ended and President Thein Sein, a former general, started steering the country toward democracy. Critics, however, say reforms have stalled. Peaceful protesters are again being thrown in jail; journalists increasingly face intimidation, or even imprisonment with hard labor.

Most worrying to many, the government has largely stood by as Buddhist extremists have targeted Rohingya, sometimes with machetes and bamboo clubs, saying they pose a threat to the country's culture and traditions.

Denied citizenship by national law, even though many of their families arrived in Myanmar from Bangladesh generations ago, members of the religious minority are effectively stateless, wanted by neither country. They feel they are being systematically erased.

Almost all Rohingya were excluded from a U.N.-funded nationwide census earlier this year, the first in three decades, because they did not want to register as Bengalis. And Thein Sein is considering a "Rakhine Action Plan" that would make people who identify themselves as Rohingya not only ineligible for citizenship but candidates for detainment and possible deportation.

Most Rohingya have lived under apartheid-like conditions in northern Rakhine for decades, with limited access to adequate health care, education and jobs, as well as restrictions on travel and the right to practice their faith.

In 2012, Buddhist extremists killed up to 280 people and displaced tens of thousands of others. About 140,000 people of those forced from their homes continue to languish in crowded displacement camps further south, outside Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital.

By Kyle Lawrence Mullin

Asian Correspondent

October 7, 2014

While The World Bank Group (WBG) has aided swaths of struggling economies across the globe, activists in Burma say such assistance for the beleaguered South East Asian nation should come with strict conditions.

“The World Bank has an important role to play in advancing access to education, health, and electricity in Burma [also known as Myanmar],” wrote Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher at activist NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a press release issued this morning, before adding: “But for The WBG to really advance development, it needs to have its eyes wide open to Burma’s ongoing rights problems and actively work to address them.”

Chief among those issues is the government’s controversial new Rakhine State Action Plan. Critics say the plan will push Burma’s Rohingya Muslims to adopt a new ethnicity and falsely admit to being illegal immigrants (despite having resided within the nation’s borders for centuries). In the press release, Evans added that it is crucial for these human rights issues to be addressed by WBG president Jim Kim during his slated meeting with Burmese finance officials at the annual International Monetary Fund summit on October 10-12 in in Washington, DC.

But Evans is concerned that the WBG (who did not respond to interview requests for this story) will fail to make such stipulations, and instead find Burma’s development with no strings attached. In a later interview with Asian Correspondent, she pointed to a recent HRW case study on the organization’s work in Ethiopia as a troubling example. The case study found, among other troubling revelations, that World Bank funding intended for development of the African nation’s rural infrastructure was misappropriated for its infamous “villagization” practices, in which over a million marginalized minorities were forcibly, and violently, relocated.

Evans added that, as the largest and most famous development bank in the world, the WBG’s initial steps will set a hefty precedence in Burma.

“The World Bank has an opportunity to set a tone that takes fully into account the many challenges facing Burma and actively work to address them, rather than drawing invisible lines around issues that it considers too thorny,” Evans told Asian Correspondent, adding: “In doing this, it will also influence other donors.”

But even if such stipulations come to pass, the Burmese government (which did not respond to interview requests) may prove more than reluctant to embrace them. In an earlier interview, Phil Robertson (deputy director of HRW’s Asia division) told us that the aforementioned Rakhine State Action Plan “… continues the blatantly discriminatory policies against the Rohingya that we sadly come to expect from the Burma government.”

For human rights activists like Robertson, that unsettling trend can be traced back to 2012 when mobs of Burma’s Buddhist majority torched thousands of Rohingya homes and killed dozens of the minority Muslims with machetes. From there, over 100,000 displaced Rohingya were housed in new dwellings that activist groups liken to internment camps. The recently unveiled state action plan will relocate the Rohingya to a new, undisclosed location. The plan will offer them citizenship, but only if they admit to being of the “Bengali” ethnicity, implying that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, which may leave them subject to confinement in detention centers.

Those measures seem reasonable to much of Rakhine state’s Buddhists population, according to Matthew Smith, executive director of another prominent activist NGO, Fortify Rights.

“The state and national-level authorities regard the Rohingya as invaders from Bangladesh, and the average Rakhine Buddhist is fearful that any recognition of Rohingya ethnicity would embolden Muslims to gain more economic and political power,” Smith said in an interview with Asian Correspondent, before adding that sentiment is also driven by far deeper, and more ruthless motives. “If you can deny a population their citizenship, burn them out of their villages, and drive them from the country, it’s much easier to confiscate their property and relative wealth, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing. These proposed policies are further to a well documented campaign of ethnic cleansing.”

Robertson said that Rakhine’s circumstances have not always been so dire, adding that it’s state capital Sittwe was almost evenly divided between Rohingya and Buddhists a mere two years ago, before the surge in ethnic unrest.

“Under this plan, that will never happen again,” he said. “The idea of reconciliation has been thrown aside in this plan, and replaced with so-called ‘peaceful co-existence’ – which will mean permanent segregation of the two communities, with the separation enforced by the might of the Burma Army and police, who have a long record of human rights abuses.”

The government has deemed the current and future camps to be a necessary safe zone for the Rohingya who fell prey to the 2012 attacks. Smith concedes this point is true, but only to an extent: “It’s sadly accurate that Rohingya would be attacked if they walked through downtown Sittwe tomorrow. But if the authorities were genuinely concerned about protection they’d facilitate lifesaving humanitarian aid and stop fueling the flames of anti-Rohingya sentiment. The authorities have given displaced Rohingya two options: try to survive in squalid ill-equipped camps or flee the country by sea.”

Smith added that a June 2014 Fortify Rights investigation (that included confiscated classified documents and interviews with hundreds of fleeing Rohingya) revealed a systemic exodus of the Muslim minority by sea. The report highlighted how that journey is fraught with dangers and how the Burmese government is perpetuating the participants’ departure (the report can be viewed here).

Evans said the WBG will have a unique opportunity to address those issues at its Oct. 10 meeting with Burmese officials. She added: “The World Bank Group should also make a firm commitment to ensure that human rights will be respected in all of its investments, both in the public and private sectors, thereby setting an example of rights-respecting development for donors and companies alike.”

Smith said a successful honoring of Burma’s human rights would include amending its dated 1982 citizenship law, granting the Rohingya equal access to full citizenship, providing them basic protection from future attacks, and allowing the displaced to return home.

“None of that is happening now,” he said, adding that another shortcoming has not only proven to be an injustice for the Rohingya, but also those who have been vilified in depictions of the Muslim minority’s struggle.

“There should also be accountability for abuses by the state against Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims,” he said. “The absence of accountability only lays the groundwork for future abuses. Both communities have suffered human rights violations in one way or another.”

Smith added that the WBG has “downplayed the situation in Rakhine State, and it’s unclear whose interests they serve by doing so… Very little is known about what the bank is planning to do in Rakhine State. The international community should not only avoid complicity… but should actively work against the ethnic and religious discrimination and entrenched segregation we’re seeing. The bank has some decisions to make, and we hope they take the right course.”

By Saudi Gazette Editorial

October 7, 2014

The latest insidious move by the Burmese government against its 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims is arguably the most sinister yet. Having ignored this not insignificant part of its population in the just completed census, it is now seeking to marginalize the community further with a Catch22 offer of citizenship.

Every Rohingya is being required to register in what at first sight looks like a belated attempt to include them in the census. In response to international outrage at their exclusion, officials are saying that the only way that the Burmese citizenship, which is currently denied to all Rohingya, can be obtained is by registering as “Bengalis”. This, however, is the term that Burmese governments have long used to identify the Rohingya as non-Burmese. It is the official claim that the community is made up of unauthorized immigrants from Bengal. This entirely ignores the historical truth that a Rohingya community has existed in Burma for many generations. 

The government is saying that once a Rohingya has registered, he or she “may” be “considered” for Burmese citizenship. This, even though the very act of accepting the identity of “Bengali” has effectively disqualified someone from obtaining the Burmese identity that has been so long denied this beleaguered community. 

This, however, is not the end of the menacing maneuver that the Burmese president Thein Sein is undertaking. 

Those who do not register will be obliged to go into special camps for “aliens”. Now there are already some 140,000 luckless Rohingya who have been incarcerated in compounds following the murderous rampage of Buddhist bigots two years ago. What had originally appeared to their frightened inhabitants as places of shelter have turned out to be prisons closely guarded by soldiers. Given that both the police and army largely stood by and did nothing during the 2012 riots, if they did not indeed actually join in the butchery, the harsh management of the existing camps should be no surprise.

Now the Thein Sein regime, with its no-win trick offer, is proposing to lock up the entire Rohingya population. There is no longer any pretense that this will be done for the community’s own protection. This outrageous change is nothing more than the creation of concentration camps designed to exterminate the identity of the Rohingya, if not the people themselves. All the community’s settlements, farms and businesses would be emptied, no doubt to be taken over by Buddhists. The ultimate goal would be the enforced “repatriation” of those of the concentration camp occupants who survived their imprisonment, to Bangladesh or Indian Bengal.

The Rohingya are a people without a voice. Those who seek to protest, most recently like 75-year-old human rights activist Kyaw Hla Aung, are being sentenced to jail. 

It is high time that Washington and Brussels drew the line on the warm welcome they have accorded Burma. The rehabilitation of the country must be put into reverse unless and until the reprehensible treatment of a helpless Muslim minority comes to an end and the Rohingya are awarded the status of full citizens in a country which they have always called their home. The international community can no longer collude in something which is so clearly a crime against humanity.

By Human Rights Watch

October 7, 2014

Washington, DC – The World Bank Group should act to overcome Burma’s major human rights problems in its new strategy for the country, Human Rights Watch said in a submission to the bank released today. Key issues include rights violations against ethnic minorities, widespread land grabs, and systematic corruption.

Despite significant human rights improvements in Burma, the reform process remains tenuous, and serious problems remain, particularly as the 2015 elections approach. The World Bank Group cautiously re-engaged with the Burmese government in 2012 and is developing a more comprehensive partnership framework for the next five years. The World Bank Group consists of four organizations tasked with reducing global poverty and achieving sustainable development, and an arbitration body.

“The World Bank should be taking stock of the human rights situation in Burma as the 2015 elections approach,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The elections could be a milestone in Burma’s reform efforts or a major setback, and the bank will need to set the best path for engagement.”

World Bank Group President Jim Kim should highlight ongoing problems of discrimination and abuses against ethnic minorities, land and labor rights, access to justice, and corruption when he meets with Burmese finance officials during the World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington, DC, on October 10-12, 2014.

Before it re-engaged with Burma in 2012, the World Bank had not provided financial aid to the country since 1987, when it was ruled by an abusive military junta. While there has been an increase in development aid in the past two years, Burma remains one of the poorest countries in the region.

The World Bank Group is piloting a new process for country engagement in Burma, first identifying major challenges to sustainable, inclusive development. The next step is to work with the government on a strategy to address the challenges. For this new process to be meaningful, the bank should not ignore controversial issues such as human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch urged the World Bank to fully analyze Burma’s positive developments and the myriad issues that remain, and work with the government to address these issues, in close consultation with independent groups.

The decades-long government repression of the Rohingya Muslim minority continues on a massive scale. Since sectarian violence flared in June 2012, an estimated 140,000 mostly Rohingya displaced people have been relocated into camps around Burma’s western Arakan State.

Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law effectively prevents Rohingya, many of whom have lived in the country for generations, from obtaining citizenship. This has left Rohingya stateless, facilitating human rights abuses against them and posing serious obstacles to ending the sectarian violence in Arakan State. The citizenship issue has also played a role in pushing Rohingya into increased poverty and is a barrier to realizing their social and economic rights. A draft of the long-awaited Rakhine (Arakan) Action Plan obtained by Human Rights Watch outlines plans to resettle over 130,000 displaced Rohingya into long-term settlements and stage a nationality verification process. A subsequent citizenship process will be inherently discriminatory because it is based on the 1982 law.

In its 2012 Burma strategy, the World Bank dismissed this entrenched discrimination as “localized instances of communal violence … that indicate the need to address continuing societal fault lines.” The attacks on the Rohingya, which amounted to crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and the impact on their social and economic rights have heightened since then, but the bank has remained silent.

Since 2012 there has also been a serious rise in anti-Muslim violence and incitement throughout Burma. Attacks took place in a number of towns in central Burma in 2013 and in Mandalay in June 2014.

“World Bank Group President Jim Kim has highlighted the cost of discrimination not only on society, but on the economy,” Evans said. “Kim should emphasize these costs with Burma’s government and urge them to dismantle entrenched discrimination and take the necessary measures to end the violence against the Rohingya and other Muslim communities.”

The World Bank Group should also do more to ensure that local communities can participate in identifying and shaping development priorities, Human Rights Watch said. The bank should publish country documents and project documents in relevant ethnic languages in addition to Burmese and English; consult with local people who will be directly affected by proposed projects; and ensure that all consultations are accessible for all marginalized groups. It should also address ongoing governmental restrictions on independent groups and the media, both in its diagnostic effort and its high-level dialogue with the government, emphasizing the importance of participation and social accountability for development.

The World Bank Group should assess and address the possible adverse impacts on human rights in all of its projects in Burma, particularly discrimination against minorities, land rights violations, and labor rights violations. In light of the high-risk environment, the International Finance Corporation, the bank’s private-sector lending arm, should require businesses to undertake human rights due diligence. This would involve taking the necessary measures to identify potential human rights problems, mitigate them, and provide an appropriate remedy for any abuses that occur despite the preventive steps taken.

All institutions of the World Bank Group should examine the rights records of government and private sector partners to ensure that they are not implicated in rights abuses or corruption, Human Rights Watch said. And all should rigorously monitor and supervise implementation of projects they fund to ensure that human rights are respected throughout.

“The World Bank has an important role to play in advancing access to education, health, and electricity in Burma,” Evans said. “But for it to really advance development, it needs to have its eyes wide open to Burma’s ongoing rights problems and actively work to address them.”

RB News

October 5, 2014

New York -- The OIC Ministerial Contact Group convened at the 69th United Nations General Assembly in New York. Important issues on Rohingya ethnic minority and strategies to find a permanent and lasting solution were discussed in the meeting. Delegations from several countries have expressed their concerns on the lack of progress on Rohingya issues in Arakan. They discussed strategies on engagement with the Government of Burma not only by OIC perspective, but also from the ASEAN perspectives as bilateral relations with Burma that many countries maintain. Among all the Ministerial delegations, they agreed that efforts in dialogue for ethnic and communal reconciliation in Arakan must be stepped up, but there are also needs for more serious and urgent approach for short-term solutions that could set the stage for long-term dialogue and reconciliation efforts. 

The Special Envoy of the OIC to Myanmar, Tan Sri Dr. Syed Hamid Albar, also attended the Ministerial Meeting. The special envoy presented a strong case on what he perceives the Rohingya issue based on his personal experience in Arakan and Naypyitaw as well as the Southeast Asian diplomacy. He made it very clear that the Rohingya and Muslim issue in Burma is rather complex, and dialogue and understanding among the ethnic groups in Arakan is the foundation to solving the problem. He stressed that there may be some challenges in brining the communities together to the table but he also expressed his optimism based on his personal interactions with Burmese and Rakhine officials and the leadership. Contrary to what some Burmese and Rakhine media has earlier reported or alluded to, Ambassador Albar was reportedly well received by the union and state officials in Burma followed by frank and objective discussions on Rohingya issues. Ambassador Albar also expressed high optimism in solving the Rohingya and Myanmar/Pathi Muslim issues that clearly is not what Buddhist Rakhine and some Burmese media had reported earlier. It is obvious that some unprofessional and violence-loving media in Burma are continuously serving as destructive elements not only against Rohingya ethnic minority but also towards the peace in Arakan during the so-called “transition to democracy” that the Government of Burma is claiming.

During the meeting, Dr. Wakar Uddin, the Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, was given the floor, where he provided the Ministerial delegation the true picture on the ground in Arakan and realistic approach to finding a solution to Rohingya issue. Dr. Uddin unequivocally stated that the Government of Burma must adhere to standards of international law and ethics in all of its conducts. The Government must be consistent in what its senior officials tell the international community and how they drive the policy on the ground in Arakan. Among other things, Dr. Uddin highlighted four major points: 1) the relentless campaign by the radical elements in the Government of Burma to eliminate the very ethnic name and identity of Rohingya; 2) the verification/nationality scrutiny process mired with controversy, hate, and violence by the Burmese and Buddhist Rakhine forces; 3) the unrelenting human right violations and ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya people by the Burmese officials; and 4) the dire situation in Rohingya IDP camps, and the needs for speedy return and operation of NGOs to their full capacity for increased humanitarian assistance to the IDPs. Dr. Uddin also submitted the exhibits of forced “Bengalization” of Rohingya and Kamen Muslims in Arakan through violence by Burmese and Buddhist Rakhine police against Rohingya and Kamen Muslims. He showed the recently issued highly controversial Nationality Scrutiny cards (Green and Pink Cards), in Myabon Township by the Government of Burma. “Your Excellency, the word “Bengali” in the Lu Myo (Race) column is written by the Burmese officials in the Green cards forcefully issued to Rohingya, and the word “Bengali Kamen” is written in the Red cards issued to Kamen Muslims, that were actually one of 135 ethnic groups recognized by the Military Regime earlier – if it is not ethnic cleansing, then what is?” Dr. Uddin stated. “These radicals in the Government are completely consumed with the word “Bengali”, they are poised to eliminate the very identity of Rohingya, and they have evidently initiated the re-characterization of the Kamen also as Bengali, similar to what they are doing to Rohingya - this is very alarming” Dr. Uddin concluded.

By C.R. Abrar

The Daily Star

October 5, 2014

QUITE predictably, the 2014 national census of Myanmar has come back to haunt the ethnic Rohingyas. Media reports inform that the Myanmarese government has devised a new plan under which members of the Rohingya community would be given the thorny choice: accept ethnic reclassification and the prospect of citizenship or be detained. Under the new arrangement the community members would be required to identify themselves as 'Bengalis' (and not as 'Rohingyas') or face detention. Plans are underway to “construct temporary camps in required numbers for those who refuse to be registered and those without adequate documents.”

The new decree is being proposed at a time when most of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya population, particularly those in western Arakan, has been living in what has been described as “apartheid-like” condition. In 2012, the community experienced serious clashes with the Rakhine Buddhists that led to death of 280 people and displacement of 140,000. It is only in early September this year that the two-year old curfew was lifted.

In most likelihood the plan has been mooted to offset international pressure “to promote peaceful co-existence and prevent sectarian tension and conflict” and to address the situation of statelessness through a citizenship verification programme and promote economic development. But these lofty goals do not appear to have takers in the Rohingya community nor among the rights activists. They feel that it could place thousands of Rohingyas, including those living in long-settled villages, at risk of “indefinite detention.”

Although the bait of citizenship has been tagged with the offer of reclassification as Bengalis, the Rakhine state officials are already on record clarifying that restriction on many of their freedoms, including that on movement, would persist. There is widespread apprehension that registration “as Bengali” would make them vulnerable should the Myamarese authorities decide to send them to Bangladesh as being illegal immigrants.

During the last census most of the community members refused to register as “Bengalis” as the term was synonymous with illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. International agencies such as the UNFPA and bilateral donors provided support in conducting the 2014 census. Despite prior warnings from various quarters that incorporation of ethnic and religious issues in the exercise was likely to exacerbate existing communal tensions, the agencies went ahead with the census as they were convinced of the need for such information.

The census based the counting of population on 135 officially recognised ethnic groups that has been deemed by critics as “outdated and inaccurate.” The Rohingya community, dubbed by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities of the world, was not included in the list. The government promised the international sponsors that everyone would be allowed to self-identify their ethnicity. But only a day before the census, not surprisingly, the Myanmarese government prohibited respondents from identifying themselves as Rohingyas. Those who did were excluded from the count.

The situation warranted the UN to issue a statement. The statement noted that “in its agreement with the United Nations … the (Myanmarese) government made a commitment to conduct the exercise in accordance with international census standards and human rights principles… It explicitly agreed with the condition that each person would be able to declare what ethnicity they belong to. …Those not identifying with one of the listed ethnic categories would be able to declare their ethnicity and have their response recorded by enumerators.” In a rare move, the UN agency expressed its concern about the government reneging on its pledge, saying it could heighten tensions in Arakan state and undermine the credibility of the data collected.

The Myanmarese government's latest plan needs to be viewed in the situation now prevailing in Arakan. The Rakhine Social Network (RSN), a coalition of Rakhine activist organisations and the newly formed Arakan National Party (ANP), are currently engaged in a virulent anti-Rohingya campaign. Implicit in their agenda is “to isolate the Rohingya population and drive them out from what the Rakhines regard as their homeland.” Even moderate Rakhine leaders endorse the “apartheid-like conditions” that the Rohingyas have been subjected to and the “continuation of abuses” that, according to Arakan watchers, “amount to crimes against humanity.” While independent monitors and UN officials have raised alarm about the treatment meted out to the Rohingyas, the Myanmarese and the Rakhine state governments claim that the displaced Rohingyas live more comfortable lives in the camps than before the violence. 

The Rakhine chauvinist leaders are on record that they favour giving citizenship rights to about 200,000 Rohingyas (less than 20% of the current Rohingya population in Arakan) and forcibly removing the rest to the proposed “detention camps” where they would be held in perpetuity pending settlement in third countries. The goal of such an exercise is to check the “demographic invasion” of the Rohingyas in Arakan, they reason.

In a situation where the state has abdicated its responsibility to protect the ethnic Rohingyas it is the international NGOs (INGO) such as the Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland (MSF-H) who are playing a critical role in providing basic services to the members of the community in Arakan. These INGOs have also been targeted by the Rakhine organisations. Since last year the aid workers began receiving anonymous death threats and landlords began turning away humanitarian agencies. In February 2013, the MSF-H office was closed down in view of mass protests for being biased against the Rakhines. In reality, the organisation was penalised for treating those who were wounded during the communal riots in January, an event that the government denied ever occurred.

In March that year another organisation Malteser International's office premises and UN warehouses in the state capital Sittwe were attacked and ransacked over a rumour that a Buddhist flag was desecrated. The situation forced aid workers to evacuate the region. It resulted in denial of access to crucial health care services to more than half a million Rohingyas in camps and villages in the vicinity. 

In March 2014 a new body, the Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC), was created to oversee the work of the foreign aid agencies. Members of the RSN dominate the committee. The Rakhine leaders who agitated against the foreign aid agencies in the aftermath of the March 2012 violence have now been given the responsibility to monitor the work of INGOs so that they did not favour the Rohingyas. The level of Rakhine contempt against the aid agencies is reflected in the following statement by Than Tun, a state ECC member and RSN patron: “Speaking as a Rakhine, if I were to put bluntly, if all UN agencies and international NGOs were to leave Rakhine, it would go half way to resolving the conflict in Rakhine state” (Reuters: June 18, 2014). According to UNHCR, 86,000 Rohingyas have fled Burma since 2012 to escape persecution.

Thus, one may conclude that while western countries and corporations are competing with China and each other in carving out their own niches in the vast reservoir of Myanmarese resources and when Myanmar is being embraced in the comity of nations for its incremental advances in restoration of democracy, the Myanmarese state has remained on course to cleanse the Rohingyas from Arakan. This move of the Myanmarese authorities is not only an abdication of their responsibility to protect, but constitutes crime against humanity. History will not absolve the perpetrators and the abettors of this heinous crime. 

The writer teaches International Relations and co-ordinates the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) at the University of Dhaka.

By Louis Charbonneau

Reuters

October 5, 2014

UNITED NATIONS — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s latest report on Burma raises serious concerns about ethnic and religious tensions that have led to violence against Rohingya Muslims, though he praises the government’s attempts to press ahead with democratic reforms.

The situation is especially worrying in Arakan State, Ban said, where deep rifts between the Buddhist and Muslim communities have widened and the conditions at camps for internally displaced persons have deteriorated.

“The deep-seated inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions that have re-emerged around the country have given rise to further violence, loss of life, displacement of populations and destruction of property,” the UN chief said in his annual report to the General Assembly’s Third Committee.

The Third Committee, which focuses on human rights, will be discussing Ban’s report on Burma in the weeks ahead. It is also expected to adopt a resolution about its concerns—an annual ritual to which Iran, North Korea and Syria are also subjected.

“The situation in Rakhine [Arakan] State continues to cause widespread concern and alarm both domestically and internationally,” Ban said.

Most of Burma’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in Apartheid-like conditions in Arakan State on the western coast of the predominantly Buddhist country. Almost 140,000 Rohingya remain displaced after deadly clashes with ethnic Arakanese Buddhists in 2012.

Condemnations from Burma’s leaders have not improved the situation, Ban said.

“While the government of Myanmar has repeatedly made strong statements of actions to be taken against perpetrators of violence, these have not been conveyed with sufficient firmness to the local level,” the report said.

He also praised the administration of President Thein Sein for the progress it has made on democratization, national reconciliation and economic development over the past three years.

Ban suggested he was concerned about the 2015 general election, in which Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent nearly two decades under house arrest for her efforts to promote democracy, is barred from running for president.

“Addressing the legitimate concerns of various political parties about the restrictions and conditionalities imposed by the [Union] Election Commission will be important,” the report said.

Next year’s parliamentary elections will be the first since Thein Sein embarked on landmark reforms in 2011, dismantling the control of the military, which had ruled since seizing power in a 1962 coup.

The annual scrutiny to which Burma is subjected at the Third Committee and at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has long annoyed Burma’s leaders. They have insisted they be dropped from the bodies’ agendas, a demand Burma’s foreign minister reiterated last week in his address to the UN General Assembly.

“All major concerns related to human rights have been addressed to a larger extent in the new Myanmar,” Wunna Maung Lwin said. “Therefore we are now fully convinced that Myanmar should no longer remain on the agendas of the Human Rights Council and the Third Committee of the General Assembly.”

Western diplomats say their governments and delegations from over 50 Muslim countries agree that Burma should remain under UN scrutiny for the foreseeable future.

By Yen Snaing

The Irrawaddy

October 5, 2014

RANGOON — President Thein Sein this week signed into law an amendment to Burma’s Political Parties Registration Law, removing the right of temporary citizenship cardholders to form political parties or serve as their members.

The change to the law appears targeted at the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, many of whom hold the so-called “white cards” that grant them status as temporary citizens.

Previously, the law allowed any “citizen, associate citizen, naturalized citizen or temporary certificate holder” to form and join political parties, but the amended legislation restricts that right only to individuals holding full citizenship status.

Hla Maung Cho, deputy director of the Union Election Commission (UEC), said the electoral body would draw up a by-law to accompany the amended legislation, including a determination on how long parties would have to comply with the new restriction.

Political parties will be responsible for vetting their memberships, with the UEC serving as an oversight body to ensure compliance. Asked how many party cadres might be affected by the change to the law, Hla Maung Cho said the UEC did not have an estimate, but had begun the process of scrutinizing party lists.

If a party is competing at the national level, it can be disbanded by the UEC if it fails to achieve a membership of 1,000 people within 90 days of registering as a political party, and a minimum membership of 500 people is required within the same period if it is a regional party.

Khin Maung Myint of the National Democrat Party for Development, one of at least three registered political parties that looks likely to be affected by the amended law, said his party was not worried about coming up short of the membership requirement.

“We will evaluate this. It’s quite early to say whether this is targeting only an ethnic group or a religion,” said Khin Maung Myint, joint general secretary of the party, who identifies himself as Rohingya and holds a so-called “Citizenship Scrutiny Card” conferring full citizenship.

The amendment will reduce the rights of the Rohingya minority in Arakan State, many of whom only hold such cards. There are three parties that claim to speak for Rohingya constituencies: the Union Nationals Development Party (UNDP), the National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD) and the Democracy and Human Rights Party (DHRP).

Burma’s former military government issued white cards to many of the Rohingya population in northern Arakan State’s Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships. The cards were issued to the Muslim group so that they could vote in support of a constitutional referendum in 2008, as well as for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in the national elections in 2010. Despite this, the government maintains that the approximately one million-strong minority are not Burmese citizens and officially refers to them as “Bengalis,” suggesting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Recent reports in local media quoted a parliamentary committee as saying that there are some 850,000 white cardholders in Burma.

The law’s change could also pose a problem for political dissidents who lack citizenship cards because they lived abroad for decades under the former military regime and have since returned to Burma as the country has undergone democratic reforms.

Aye Maung, chairman of the Arakan National Party, welcomed the restrictive amendment, saying that allowing non-citizens to participate in party politics was “concerned with sovereignty.”

The amendment to the law comes as human rights groups condemn a plan that would effectively require Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State to identify as Bengali or risk detention.

About 140,000 Rohingya in Arakan State already live in temporary camps after anti-Muslim violence displaced them from their homes in 2012.

“The long-awaited Rakhine [Arakan] State Action Plan both expands and solidifies the discriminatory and abusive Burmese government policies that underpin the decades-long persecution of the Rohingya,” Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director, said in a statement on Friday. “It is nothing less than a blueprint for permanent segregation and statelessness that appears designed to strip the Rohingya of hope and force them to flee the country.”

By Jack Healey

Huffington Post

October 5, 2014

The news out of Hong Kong for the past few days has had many of us watching the reports and videos that are coming out of the Occupy Central movement with admiration and anxiety. We have seen this before, with students and citizens standing up to demand access to the political process they were promised and which they deserve, taking places in nonviolent protest to draw a line for Beijing to not cross. There are no tanks yet, in spite of six armored personnel carriers having entered Hong Kong and heading toward Central from Shenzhen not long after protests began. But nobody can shake the memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and be worried about the fate of those participating in what has been dubbed the Umbrella Revolution. We support the desires and rights of those protesting and hope for the best. But we also remember the massacre that predated the one in Beijing, when Yangon streets ran deep with blood as the Burmese regime murdered thousands of its citizens in a day of fury that steeled subsequent citizens to wait to try for more access to their rights.

In 2010 elections were held for a new nominally civilian national government to be seated in the newly constructed capital of Naypyidaw. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest finally (though her National League for Democracy, or NLD, boycotted the election). Censorship was relaxed tremendously. Foreign journalists, scholars, and researchers were admitted on visas and removed from lists proscribing their entry. Political prisoners began to be released and there was great hope. Smaller by-elections were held in April 2012 and were swept by the NLD and other opposition groups almost completely. Aung San Suu Kyi, held in house arrest for the majority of previous quarter century, became a member of parliament and the world watched with joy as the nation finally seemed to be making strides toward freedom and real respect for human rights.

Everything changed with a new explosion of violence against the Rohingya, who were already perhaps the most oppressed people in the world. In early June of 2012, a group of Rakhine Buddhists sought revenge after the alleged rape and murder of a Rakhine Buddhist woman by Muslim men a few days before on May 28. They stopped a bus of Muslim laborers and murdered all 10c of them, thinking them Rohingya and responsible (they were neither). In the convulsions of riots that followed between the two communities over a hundred people died, over 2,000 were injured, and fourteen thousand were displaced. The vast majority of violence saw mobs of Rakhine Buddhists energetically targeting the Rohingya and the vast majority of death, injury, and displacement were suffered by the Rohingya. Lackluster or simply indifferent security force protections left the Rohingya communities (and later other Muslim communities throughout the country) open to repeated attacks and aggressions by Buddhists who claimed to be "defending" Burmese Buddhism against a plot of fundamentalist Islamists to overthrow the Dhamma and the replace Suttas with the Koran. Subsequently there were protests by robed monks calling for violence against Muslims, attempts to prevent even aid and medical shipments from reaching the camps (too primitive and lacking basic precautions to be official refugee camps) where most Rohingya had been corraled for what seemed to be detention without end. Even in the largest city (and, until recently with the construction of Naypyidaw out of thin air, capital) Yangon, people of South Asian descent from foreign aid workers to members of the Indo-Burmese Hindu community, have said that they are newly afraid at times if they fear they might be identified as (mistakenly or not) as Muslim. Longtime expats and native-born Burmans have said that they find the climate comparable to Berlin before the rise of the Nazis.

In the background of all this, sat the sermons of a Theravada monk called Wirathu (who does not deserve and will not receive the honorific normally preceding a robedbhikku) who sold recordings of sermons urging listeners to "defend" Buddhism and to push out the "Bengalis" (which is the name they falsely use on the Rohingya, along with the slur "kalar" and other terms intended to mislead or slur their targets). The thing is that the Rohingya aren't Bengali. They are Burmese. They were present in Rakhine State as far back as the eighth century and, while some came during the British Colonial Era from what is now Bangladesh (the Rohingya language is related to Chittagonian, but is not the same) but most were already there. Indeed, before 1982 the Rohingya were officially Burmese too, along with the other ethnic groups evaluated and approved or denied citizenship and identity status by the central government, always under disproportionate control by the Bamar or Burman ethnic group, the largest in the country. In 1982, under the wizard dictator Ne Win, the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship and were subject to rigorous restrictions controlling their right to marry, travel, work, or reproduce, rules that were placed on no other group in the nation.

The (formerly military) real powers in the government seemed to be less interested than they'd claimed in moving forward. And after decades of playing from the British divide-and-rule book of governance, the message of Rohingya difference (coupled with the surge in Islamophobia after 9/11 in the United States was watched around the globe) sunk in as plausible with many other groups in Burmese society and the Rohingya found themselves with few voices to speak up for them. Even Aung San Suu Kyi herself gave a noncommittal statement saying only that citizenship should be decided according to legal means and that everything that happened in Burma should always be legal. So much for using one's liberty to protect others, it seemed. The frenzy for a new market has meant business doesn't much care about the human rights situation and the desire for another ally as a counterweight to China's influence in the region has meant that foreign policy cares less about abuses on the ground.

The voice for the Rohingya fell largely to the international community to advocate for their basic human rights and to encourage the provision of citizenship. It has been incomplete at best and largely a failure. The highest source of moral authority and advice for daily living hasn't, at least in the eyes of the peoples of Burma, been politicians for a long time. The political world may need obedience and is likely to be feared, but the voice of moral authority for average people is that which is spoken by the monks and nuns of Burma (and monks more than nuns). So we return to the dangerous attention paid to deceitful Wirathu and his ilk. Being the central and loudest firebrand advocating extreme measures to be taken against the Rohingya to "defend" Buddhism and to expel them from the country by force if necessary, further outbursts of violence have seen monk-led blockades of medicine/food and have involved monks associated with the burning of a school with children inside of it with "good Buddhist defenders" from the village outside ready to hack down escapees energetically. All this comes from a monk who has called himself a "Burmese bin Laden," though somewhat surprisingly after his transparently false claims of a real danger coming from Rohingya Islamists when there is none.

Wirathu is associated with the 969 Movement in Burma, an organization that promotes a Burman Buddhist-centered supremacy and the total avoidance of any and all businesses or interactions with Muslims as a minimal goal. Affiliating to a previously unknown degree with similarly hateful monks in Sri Lanka (who have been advocates for heavy-handed tactics at least and horrific human rights violations often) from the Bodu Bala Sena, a group of Sinhalese-supremacists who discriminate against all Others in that country. Tamils felt the bulk of their wrath as the Sri Lankan military conducted a campaign of total warfare to wipe out the Tamil Tigers and shut down their armed insurgency, but active discrimination continues against them and no credible investigations, much less reparations, have been made. There have been attacks against Christian churches and Mosques as well. Now, these two mad monks have signed a formal agreement to share resources to "protect" Buddhism and to specifically target others and to be prepared to use whatever means necessary to avoid the takeover of Buddhism by Islam (or, presumably, Christianity or Judaism). It would be comical, except for the trail of dead that these monks' followers leave behind. A formal alliance to "defend global Buddhism" between these these traitors of both Buddhism and human rights can only be read with concern and not support, for it can only be read as an attempt to retrench for further attempts to create violence.

What can be done? What can you do right now?

Speak out for the Rohingya. They need affirmation and policy changes that will hold Burma accountable for rendering a million people stateless and without recourse to any life of security or safety. The Rohingya have been left in a situation desperate enough that their kids knowingly set out to sea in incredibly insufficient boats prone to sink in the open water or they volunteer to be smuggled by human traffickers into Thailand to work years of unpaid slave labor on fishing boats to repay their smugglers. They need your voice. Demand that 969 monks in Burma and Bodu Bala Sena monks in Sri Lanka take off their monastic robes. From within the body of monastic discipline and traditions that govern the robed monks in Theravada Buddhism, Wirathu and his ilk have already forfeited the monkhood for themselves and have slandered the very thing (Burmese Buddhism) they falsely claim to defend when calling for more violence against Muslims in general and the Rohingya in particular. The prohibition against monks either committing or inciting murder is severe enough that it is one of only four conditions that mandate a departure from the monkhood. In fact, it is said that any bhikku guilty of such an infraction of monastic discipline is not a monk anymore the moment the offense occurs. Neither 969 nor Bodu Bala Sena followers are allowed to wear a robe, according to the patimokkha itself. These so-called monks, and all who advocate violence as a solution, can be considered to be neither monks nor Buddhist.

In Burma, the movement to create violence against the Rohingya is an attempt to influence the elections in 2015. The bulk of the current government is leftover legacy from the military regime and those with the most to lose with a real democratic transition. Attempting to draw Daw Aung San Suu Kyi into having to issue more direct support statements for the Rohingya, the dubious Thein Sein and his allies are trying to tap into pre-existing prejudice by the Burman/Bamar majority against non-Buddhist/non-Burman Burmese (particularly against the Rohingya) to turn the tide against the NLD. They are also attempting to draw attention away from the failure to address real and extreme deficits in basic infrastructure, education, healthcare, or other fundamentals of governmental responsibility. It can not be emphasized enough that this tactics are an affront to basic human rights and to any hope of continuing a real transition towards democracy or the protection of human rights.

Oppose violence on the basis of religion and ethnicity and support the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi in the 2015 elections in November or December of next year. All of these things can be passed on to all appropriate channels ranging from your friends, social media, your religious community as part of supporting religious freedom for all, and to your Representatives and Senators in the United States who can be asked to do so.

Contact your Representatives and Senators right now (click here for details on how) and ask them directly to speak out for religious freedoms and protections of all ethnic nationalities in Burma, especially the Rohingya. Ask them to work to support the NLD through the elections of 2015, and to support the subsequent government and all of its members to continue to speak up for the basic human rights for all peoples. Ask them too to push hard for the government in Sri Lanka to be held accountable for its violations of the human rights of the Tamil, Muslim, and Christian communities there with an independent inquiry by the United Nations and for neither Burma nor Sri Lanka to be allowed to sweep these concerns under the rug as they would like.

Buddhism is practiced by the vast majority of Burma's people, and likely always will be. But Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Jainism, Sikhism, and many traditional religions have been present as a substantial part of Burma's history as well. Burma is not a nation of only Burman/Bamar people and diversity is the rule as much as it is and should be in the United States and other freedom-loving democracies. All peoples are entitled to religious freedom, and the freedoms associated throughout the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Politicians in Burma don't get much respect for the work they might do in government. But as this newly installed and ostensibly civilian government settles in, everyone, from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to Thein Sein and the entirety of Parliament should be speaking up for the Rohingya and all of the peoples of Burma. Conflicts are returning or never stopped against the Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Shan and not just the Rohingya. Human rights are for all, and Burma's freedoms have been long fought for both inside the country and internationally that sought to increase freedoms and not to merely switch roles in a game of oppression. Let us move forward for human rights for all and to realizing the dream of the UDHR.

By Human Rights Watch

October 5, 2014

Forced Resettlement, Discriminatory Citizenship Creates Dangers

New York – A draft government plan would entrench discriminatory policies that deprive Rohingya Muslims in Burma of citizenship and lead to the forced resettlement of over 130,000 displaced Rohingya into closed camps, Human Rights Watch said today. Burma’s international donors, the United Nations, and other influential actors should press the government to substantively revise or rescind its “Rakhine State Action Plan.”

The plan follows the April 2013 recommendations of the Rakhine Investigative Commission, established by President Thein Sein after widespread killings and violence against Rohingya in 2012 in the state. The plan, a copy of which was obtained by Human Rights Watch, does not recognize the term Rohingya, referring throughout to “Bengalis,” an inaccurate and derogatory term commonly used by Burmese officials and nationalist Buddhists. Muslims are only mentioned in the plan with reference to religious schools.

“The long-awaited Rakhine State Action Plan both expands and solidifies the discriminatory and abusive Burmese government policies that underpin the decades-long persecution of the Rohingya,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “It is nothing less than a blueprint for permanent segregation and statelessness that appears designed to strip the Rohingya of hope and force them to flee the country.”

The plan is supposed to serve as the general blueprint for development and post-conflict reconstruction in the state. The draft is in six sections with detailed bullet points: Security, Stability, and Rule of Law; Rehabilitation and Reconstruction; Permanent Resettlement; Citizenship Assessment of Bengalis; Socio-Economic Development; and Peaceful Coexistence. The section on “Permanent Resettlement” sets out steps for the relocation and encampment of 133,023 Rohingya people from existing internally displaced persons camps around the state capital, Sittwe, and other townships to as yet unspecified sites in the state.

The plan does not discuss the possibility that Rohingya displaced by the violence of 2012 will be permitted to return to their original homes and dispels hopes that Rohingya would be permitted to reintegrate into areas also inhabited by the local Buddhist population.

The plan has scheduled the resettlement of the entire displaced Rohingya population for April and May 2015, just ahead of Burma’s annual monsoon season. In preparation, residences, schools, community facilities, and necessary road, electrical, and water and sanitation infrastructure would be constructed by next April.

Since sectarian violence erupted in June 2012 and again in October 2012, an estimated 140,000 mostly Rohingya displaced people have been living in camps around Arakan State, where they are wholly dependent on international humanitarian assistance. Another 40,000 Rohingya live in isolated non-camp communities receiving little outside assistance. The government has failed to arrest or prosecute those responsible for the violence against the Rohingya, particularly the coordinated “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya communities in October 2012 that Human Rights Watch found rose to the level of crimes against humanity.

Rohingya, who have effectively been denied Burmese citizenship, were excluded from the March-April 2014 nationwide census and face tight restrictions on freedom of movement, employment, livelihoods, access to health care, and freedom of religion. Conditions in the displaced person camps are desperate and have evolved into long-term internment in which Rohingya are not permitted outside of camp zones. The permanent resettlement zones envisioned in the draft plan will deepen the isolation and marginalization of the Rohingya in violation of their freedom of movement and other rights.

“The Burmese government’s plan proposes segregation measures that have been advocated by extremists,” Robertson said. “Moving the Rohingya further from urban areas to isolated rural camps will violate their basic rights, make them dependent on outside assistance, and formalize the land grab of Rohingya property.”

Part IV of the draft plan outlines steps for citizenship assessment of the Rohingya, using as its guide the discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law, which has been used to deny Rohingya citizenship for decades. The plan includes a nationality verification process that started in August and is supposed to register all “Bengalis” by March. The recorded population will then be divided into three categories: “those previously recorded [or] registered; those not recorded previously but willing to go through the assessment process according to Myanmar [Burma] existing laws; and those who reject definition in the existing laws.” Any Rohingya refusing the pejorative label “Bengali” would be placed in the third category and denied the right to be considered for citizenship.

For people in the first two categories, the determination of eligibility for citizenship will take place between January 2015 and October 2016. For any Rohingya failing to meet the criteria for citizenship, the authorities will “construct temporary camps in required numbers for those who refuse to be registered and those without adequate documents” and sequester them in closed camps in what amounts to arbitrary, indefinite detention with the possibility of deportation.

Burmese authorities conducted a pilot phase of the verification process in Myebon. Out of the 1,094 Muslims who took part, 209 were found eligible for citizenship, including: ethnic Kaman Muslims – listed as an ethnic group under the 1982 Citizenship Law; those who self-identified as Bengali; and an unspecified number who were accepted as Rohingya. The total number of Rohingya in Arakan State has been estimated at over one million according to the estimate of uncounted persons in the 2014 March-April Nationwide Census, and most are concentrated in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships along the border with Bangladesh. Although not directly included in the draft plan, Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships will be directly affected by provisions calling for strengthened border security and operations to stem illegal immigration.

“International donors and concerned governments should not delude themselves that this plan will lead to the Rohingya’s integration with citizenship into Arakan State,” Robertson said. “Those concerned about human rights in Burma should stand firm and demand changes to the citizenship law to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Rohingya.”

All international donors should reject the plan in its current form. Donors should urge the Burmese government to develop a citizenship plan based on the principle of non-discrimination, and that upholds the right of displaced people to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country.

In an address on September 29 to the United Nations General Assembly, the Burmese foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, stated that the plan was “being finalized and will soon be launched” and called on the UN to provide assistance. Several UN agencies work in Rakhine (also known as Arakan) State. They have slowly been increasing their activities since they were suspended following attacks against aid workers in March ahead of Burma’s controversial nationwide census, which discriminated against the Rohingya population.

“It is shocking that a government that claims to be reform-minded has proposed bigoted policies,” said Robertson. “It would be even more shocking if UN agencies and others play along instead of denouncing a plan that would entrench ethnic cleansing and put in place permanent segregation. International donors should reject this plan with one voice and insist the government come up with solutions that protect the rights of some of the world’s most persecuted people.”

October 5, 2014