By M. Mizanur Rahman and Tasfi Sal-sabil

The Daily Star

October 27, 2014

REFERRING to statements by some residents and an expert, Aljazeera reported on October 25 that a growing sense of despair had caused a mass migration of at least 8,000 Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar in the last two weeks. The number of people who have fled since communal violence broke out two years ago is more than 1,00,000. Usually, the popular destinations of these Rohingya people are Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, Pakistan and India. In the last few decades, thousands of Rohingyas migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar.

The Rohingya are one of the most down-trodden ethnic minorities in modern history, having been denied citizenship and basic human rights by the Myanmar government. For the Rohingyas, security of life, food, accommodation, arbitrary arrest, detention, sexual harassment and means of earning have been major problems even after their migration.

Many of the displaced and helpless Rohingyas have been living in overcrowded camps that lack adequate food, shelter, water and sanitation, and medical care. Currently, there are two refugee camps in Bangladesh sheltering a total population of 2,900, and a further 2,00,000 are living in unofficial camps and Bangladeshi villages located in the southeastern part of Bangladesh along the Myanmarese border.

Almost all the international legal instruments provide protection to the ethnic minorities in their home country and the refugees in the countries they migrated to. The United Nation Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, the convention relating to the status of refugees 1951 and its protocol 1967, the Geneva conventions, etc. ensure the rights of the ethnic minorities and refugees. Though Myanmar has not ratified 73 important conventions, it has ratified a number of treaties and conventions which define almost all the human rights issues. The most important treaty that Burma is a party to is the UN Charter, which is considered a 'super-treaty' because Article 103 of the Charter mandates that “any conflict between Charter obligations and those under any other international agreement be resolved in favour of the Charter” (Global Justice Centre, 2012). Other treaties that the country endorsed include the Genocide Convention, the four Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

But no international legal instrument could protect these people who are actually not recognised as citizens by any state in the world. The Myanmar government does not want to recognise them as citizens and terms them as 'unwanted Bengalis,' and forces them to flee from the country. These people move to the neighbouring countries, especially to Bangladesh which is not in a position to accommodate them for various reasons.

They are also considered a 'burden' for Bangladesh. Support from Bangladesh government to the refugees is inadequate due to limited capacity and resources. Change in the demographic composition in the south-eastern zone, a very strategic one for the country, is always very crucial for Bangladesh. Being downtrodden from their very birth, the Rohingyas are usually unskilled, which is why there is hardly any scope for them to become an asset for any society. They cannot contribute to the human resource pool of Bangladesh, rather they are kept aside from the mainstream socio-economic activities basically for two reasons: Bangladesh has surplus human resources even in the rural labour markets and the Rohingyas do not have minimum skill and education for work. Their inability to achieve economic and social development and failure to have legitimacy often make them feel inferior and dejected. The situation in the other countries they migrate to is almost the same. So their struggle never ends.

In Bangladesh, the Rohingyas are not legally entitled to work and that is why those who are not supported by UNHCR become desperate for work even with low pay and poor work environment and condition, while some take to criminal activities. According to Rahman (2010), the Rohingya labourers are willing to work for far less than the Bangladeshi people, as a result of which a clash of interests causes conflicts. This situation between the native Bengalis and the Rohingyas creates the scope for social exclusion of the latter group, which breeds more severe social problems for both parties. 

Rohingyas are kept out of all the community affairs and in almost every aspect of life, they are facing challenges and living in an inferior condition. Lack of proper health service due to unavailability of medical staff, lack of proper sanitation and scarcity of pure drinking water make their life more miserable. According to the Human Rights Watch (2007), authorities do not allow building of permanent structures in the camps as a way of encouraging refugees to return home. Children are denied access to education. The provision of health services and access to medicines are also limited by the authorities, as are work and livelihood opportunities inside the camp. Moreover, support and assistance from UNHCR are insufficient to meet the demands of the large number of Rohingyas.

In this situation, the Rakhine State Action Plan has added a new dimension to worsen the situation. Human rights groups claim that this plan will force thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims into detention camps indefinitely if they do not qualify for citizenship. Some people see this plan as a new trap of the Myanmar government as it contains a section on a process to determine whether the Rohingya are citizens. They will be required to register their identities as Bengali, but it will imply that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having lived in the area for generations.

But when this agenda was announced by the foreign minister of Myanmar in the United Nation, the global community remained silent; there was no individual or collective protest though this initiative violates many of the international treaties and conventions which the country has ratified. Not even a Muslim country stood up to protest this heinous act. With this background, who will take the responsibility of these 1.5 to 2 million people?

The writers are, respectively, Development Researcher and post graduate student of NOHA Humanitarian Action at Uppsala University Sweden, and a Researcher on social issues.

By AFP

October 27, 2014

Yangon -- A climate of fear in Myanmar's Rakhine state is pushing stateless Rohingya Muslims to flee in "unprecedented" numbers, with almost 10,000 people taking to boats in the region in just two weeks, activists said Monday.

A surge in boats leaving from northern Rakhine, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in isolated communities, has seen around 900 people a day making the perilous journey by sea, according to the Arakan Project, a Rohingya rights group. 

"This is very unprecedented, it’s such a massive number," director Chris Lewa told AFP.

The end of the rainy season usually sees a spike in departures, but arrests and beatings in northern Rakhine combined with worries that authorities were planning to exclude Rohingya from citizenship had lead to this huge rise, Lewa said.

"It seems now that many have decided that there is nothing left for them in Rakhine," she said.

Lewa said some 100,000 people have now fled by sea from western Myanmar since June 2012, when conflict between local Buddhist and Muslim communities spiralled into widespread bloodshed across Rakhine that left 200 dead and 140,000 in displacement camps, mainly Rohingya. 

The boats, many barely seaworthy, head to Thailand, Malaysia and beyond in an increasingly organised smuggling network. 

Myanmar views the Rohingya as immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and denies most of them citizenship, as well as imposing restrictions on travel, livelihood and even marriage.

Lewa said local people have reported arbitrary detentions and spreading fears over citizenship, after a leaked draft "action plan" for the impoverished state suggested those that refused to be identified as "Bengali" could be forced into camps. 

The Rakhine government denied the claims.

"They are spreading misinformation themselves," state spokesman Win Myaing told AFP. "There was no arrest or torture."

The Arakan project is virtually the only organisation monitoring boat departures from Maungdaw in northwestern Rakhine and Bangladesh.

Lewa said the 9,900 people who have left in the last two weeks, mostly from Rakhine, compares to 6,300 in October and 9,100 in November last year. 

Lewa raised concerns that nothing has yet been heard from the wave of boats that left two weeks ago.

Thai officials in mid October said people-smugglers had kidnapped dozens of people -- among them Rohingya refugees -- in Bangladesh and trafficked them to a rubber plantation in southern Thailand.

Rights groups have previously accused Thai authorities of pushing boats back out to sea and holding migrants in overcrowded facilities.

By Zarni Mann

The Irrawaddy

October 27, 2014

RANGOON — Radical monk Ashin Wirathu, known by many for his incendiary online activity, has been something of a digital hermit in the months following deadly inter-communal violence in Burma’s second largest city, Mandalay.

The outspoken Buddhist nationalist and widely revered religious leader claims that his social media accounts are being tampered with; some of his content has disappeared and he has had difficulty accessing his personal accounts.

“I think my Facebook account is being hacked or attacked by someone,” Wirathu told The Irrawaddy last week. “I can’t sign in but I can still see my Facebook page. However, everything I posted in 2014 is gone.”

Facebook has yet to respond to questions regarding whether his account has been suspended or terminated for violating their terms of agreement, but the social media network’s terms—which are publicly available—explicitly state that users will be notified via email should their account be terminated.

The company has also stated that they do not monitor or censor content, but their policy does allow for review and removal of content when appropriate.

Wirathu said that he does not know if Facebook tried to notify him of any changes to his user privileges because he has not checked his email.

In late June, Wirathu shared several Facebook posts with his more than 30,000 friends and followers spreading unsubstantiated accusations against two Muslim teashop owners, claiming that they had raped a Buddhist maid.

A post created on July 1 stated that he had attempted to contact the two men, who are brothers, and demanded that they be held publicly accountable for their alleged crime. Wirathu then shared another entry containing the names, phone numbers and addresses of the accused, which was widely shared by other users.

Several hours later, a quarrel broke out between the two brothers and their Muslim customers when they closed their shop early. Hordes of angry Buddhists joined security forces at the site and violence later ensued between the Buddhist and Muslim residents. Riots continued the following evening, leaving two men dead. A curfew was put in place and access to Facebook was temporarily suspended.

Calm and services later returned to the town, but Wirathu claims that he still cannot access all of the content and features that he could in the past. He suspects that his account is being stalked by “flaggers,” who report inappropriate content to be removed by Facebook. He also believes that hackers have tampered with his account.

The monk claims that he can sign in to his Facebook account, but that he cannot create posts and he is automatically logged out after a few minutes of use. He also said that every post he has created since October 2013 has been removed from his page.

“I wonder why I’m not allowed to write on Facebook,” said Wirathu, “and why people tried to report me. I can post on my new account, but I had to start a blog because I can no longer rely on Facebook.”

Wirathu said he has created a new Facebook account under the name Wirathu Masoeyein, written in Burmese, and he has been able to post content freely. His blog, also under the title Wirathu Masoeyein, now has more than 100,000 followers, the monk claims.

While he and other members of the Buddhist community often use social media to inform their followers of religious ceremonies and news about the monastery, he has also been known to share unverified accusations against Muslims, and has been accused of using “hate speech” that could incite violence.

Attempts to contact Facebook to confirm whether Wirathu’s privileges are being stemmed by the company were unsucessful, but individual users told The Irrawaddy that they have flagged some of his content for removal.

“Since the riots happened, when I see something brutal or hateful on Facebook, I immediately report it because I don’t want to see any more violence,” said Kyaw Kyaw Maung, a Mandalay resident who lives in the riot-hit Chan Aye Tharzan Township. “I have reported some accounts, including U Wirathu and several other extremists.

“I think this is the responsibility of every citizen, to prevent hate speech and promote peaceful living,” he said.

Nay Phone Latt, a well-known blogger who heads a campaign for the elimination of hate speech, agreed that reporting inflammatory content is necessary to prevent the spread of hatred, but urged all citizens to be both responsible and discerning while sharing and reading Internet content.

“Although reporting someone’s post is effective in stopping the spread of hate speech, perpetrators can create new accounts or repost things. If everyone can act responsibly online, there will be peace on Facebook,” said Nay Phone Latt.

By Nic Dunlop

Newsweek

October 27, 2014

Thin Taw Li refugee camp filled me with foreboding. Although I had visited camps where people had fled civil war, this was the first time I had been among a people who face ethnic cleansing. The camp is home to more than three thousand Rohingya who fled sectarian violence in Burma’s Rakhine state.

For decades the Rohingya Muslims have been subjected to systematic persecution by their largely Buddhist countrymen: denied citizenship, suffering forced labour, rape and killings. The United Nations has described them as “the world’s most persecuted minority” and other observers have warned of an impending genocide.

In 2011, after decades of repressive military rule, a radical reform programme began. Elections were held, a new government was formed and Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. Burma, it seemed, was finally moving towards a democratic future. The following year violence erupted in Rakhine state between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya. Almost 140,000 people were displaced and at least 280 killed. Since then, the situation has stagnated and these people remain stuck in ­internal camps and squatting on the outskirts of villages at the mercy of their ­persecutors.

To reach the camps – nine of them located closely together with a population of 75,000 refugees, I had to pass through a single check-point on the outskirts of Sittwe, the state capital. At a railway crossing, armed police with antique rifles sat at a table. After paying a fee, the police waved me through and I entered the Muslim enclave.

A pot-holed road led to open country where the camps are located. Along the road we passed Muslim villages where markets spilled on to the road and crowds milled about. The ­drizzle was unrelenting. We then turned a corner and the blue and green tarpaulin of refugee huts came into view. It was a bleak landscape of flooded paddy fields. The only protection against storms was a single fence of battered palms that lined the Bay of Bengal beyond.

At first glance, Thin Taw Li gave the impression of a sprawling, squalid medieval village. The entrance was a series of muddy paths that led between huts with corrugated iron roofs. The women wore hijabs and some had their faces smeared with thanaka, a traditional Burmese cosmetic made from sandalwood.

Many family dwellings were no larger than a two-person tent. The monsoon only added to the misery of camp life, making it impossible to stay dry. Within minutes I was surrounded by half naked children, some with distended bellies and bleached hair; the tell-tale signs of malnutrition.

The refugees call the monsoon “the season of flu”. Everywhere I was accompanied by the sound of coughing. One Rohingya medic I met, who didn’t want to be identified, said malnutrition posed the largest threat to the refugees. “We’re worse than prisoners because prisoners are fed,” he said. “We’re not. We don’t know when we’ll get the next meal. There are many cases of diarrhoea, as well as numerous skin conditions and tuberculosis.” In this camp alone, at least 20 people have died from treatable conditions. “The clinic is open,” he said, “but we have nothing.”

At first it was easy to believe the people had escaped from violence elsewhere and were out of harm’s way. It was only when I talked with refugees that the full extent of their terror became clear.

I was taken to a shack to meet a woman who had been recently widowed. Sitting on a rattan mat in the darkness was 22-year-old Khie Runnisa. She was surrounded by relatives in her white mourning shawl, weak with grief.

Two days before, she had accompanied her husband, Sham Sul Amam, to an internet café just outside the camp. They were going to call her father-in-law in Malaysia. While they were talking with him, armed police surrounded the café and ordered everyone out. They told them to sit on the road and place their hands of their heads. They said no one would be harmed. Hugging his four-year-old daughter, Sham Sul Amam did the same. The police told him to cover his daughter’s eyes so that she wouldn’t see anything. A policeman then placed the barrel of his rifle on Sham Sul Amam’s head and shot him.

Days later Khie Runnisa was still reeling in shock. At times she had to be propped up by her mother when she talked. “I have no idea why they shot him,” she said. “He had no enemies.”

A young man, 28-year-old Mohammed, said the police routinely terrorise people. “They look for the smallest reason, or ­wrongdoing, and they harass, provoke and shoot above our heads,” he said. “Or they shoot us directly.”

It is the night that the people most fear. At the same time that the police shot Sham Sul Amam, they mounted a raid on Thin Taw Li. Mojuma Begum left her stall near the entrance to warn her son and husband. Fearing they would be next they hid in the fields. She returned to her stall to find the police ransacking it. They threatened to shoot her and took everything.

One Rohingya I spoke to, who didn’t wish to be identified, described Thin Taw Li as a concentration camp. But unlike the concentration camps of Nazi occupied Europe, there were no barbed wire perimeter fences and no watchtowers; people were free to move between the camps. On occasion I saw armed police, but their presence was fleeting. What was happening was more insidious. There was no need for barbed wire.

The Rohingya have been terrorised into collusion as well as submission. And, like Burma under military rule, they are closely monitored. The camp leaders, Rohingya selected by the police to work for them, have been given mobile phones and ordered to spy on the camp populations. “They are like government informers,” a refugee told me.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation on human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, recently presented her findings to the UN General Assembly. After a 10-day visit to the area last July, she described the situation in the camps as “deplorable”. The report, while acknowledging Burma’s reforms, warns of backtracking and lists continuing abuses suffered by the Rohingya including: summary executions, disappearances, torture, forced labour, forced displacements and rape. “The government must meet its obligations,” says the report, to provide “lifesaving assistance” and adequate basic services including “access to livelihoods, food, water, and sanitation, and education”.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says the Burmese government will be pressured into responding substantively. The big question, he said, is whether it “will accept that the Rohingya deserve an equal seat at the table with all the other people in the country”.

The issue of identity runs central to Burma’s on-going crisis. In March this year, the first census in 30 years was completed amid controversy. Despite living in Burma for generations, the Rohingya were excluded unless they agreed to be classified as Bengali Muslims. Both the Rakhine and central government have long maintained the Rohingya are illegal migrants from Bangladesh and the Rohingya fear if they change their status, they will be deported. When the UN Special Rapporteur met government officials, she was repeatedly told not to use the term “Rohingya”. “The rights of minorities to self-identify,” she retorted, “is a central principle of international human rights law.”

The 2012 violence was a defining moment. Like survivors of the Cambodian holocaust who divided their experience between “before Pol Pot’”and “after Pol Pot”, both Rohingya and Rakhine I met talked of “before the violence” and “after the violence”. Although tensions simmered for years, it was the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman, allegedly by three Muslims that set off the initial unrest. It later spread across the state. In ­Sittwe, police opened fire to separate mobs wielding sticks and stones. Some allegedly took part in violence against the Rohingya. “It was the Rakhine community who did this to us,” said Kyi Kyi Aung, who is married to a Rohingya and a convert to Islam. She now lives in one of the huts in Thad Key Pyin camp with her husband and six children. She showed me her arm that had been broken when she tried to escape the violence. It was grossly deformed at the wrist. She had also suffered burns on her leg when she jumped from her flaming house after it was torched by extremists. She only just escaped with her family. “We lost everything.”

As with other minorities in Burma, the government uses a divide and rule strategy. In Rakhine state, the government knows ethnic Rakhine could mobilise large numbers of people against them. By allowing anti-Muslim sentiment to be stirred up, the Rakhine remain distracted with the issue of the Rohingya.

Before the reforms, Burma’s ­dictatorship had near total control and crushed any dissent. In March this year, ­Buddhist mobs went on a rampage in Sittwe, attacking the offices of international aid organisations whom they accuse of favouring the Rohingya.

The rioting began when a staff member of the Malteser International removed a Buddhist flag from their office building. Buddhist flags had been flown across the state capital as a ­symbol of opposition to the Rohingya community. When the mob attacked, the authorities provided protection to the aid workers. It was clear they wanted them out.

On the other side of this divide are Rakhine nationalists who see themselves as the ultimate victims in this crisis. They believe they are being squeezed between the Burmese government on the one hand and, what they claim as the ‘expanding’ Muslim population on the other. It is the Rohingya they see as the greatest threat. But, despite their fears, Muslims makes up only 4% of Burma’s population. There is illegal migration from overpopulated Bangladesh, but nothing on the scale the Rakhine nationalists imagine.

“They are our enemy,” said U Shwe Maung, a spokesman for the right-wing Rakhine National Party. A garrulous man in his sixties, he cited the rise of radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, believing the Rohingya were planning to create an Islamic state. “The Muslims are trying to take over”, he said. “We’re afraid of the extinction of our nation.”

According to him, it is the government’s interest to keep the situation tense. Running from the coast of Rakhine state to China in the north is the Kyaukpyu Shwe gas pipeline. This project includes a deep-sea port, overland oil and gas pipelines to China costing $2.5 billion. Last June, Burma announced revenues of $3.3bn from gas exports in the last fiscal year. “We could be a rich nation,” said U Shwe Maung, “but we haven’t been given the chance to shape our own futures.”

In September, al-Qaida called on Muslims throughout South Asia to rise up and join the jihad, including Burma. This only further fanned the flames of hatred in the state. Since then, there have been reports of arrests, torture and disappearances of Rohingya by the authorities. One man was allegedly tortured to death by police and his wife forced to sign a statement saying he died of natural causes.

Buddhist monks have stirred much of the anti-Muslim sentiment. Many are followers of the 969 Movement, which has instigated anti-Muslim violence in other parts of the country. It is the movement’s brand of xenophobic Buddhism that the more radical identify with.

According to the human rights group, Fortify Rights, persecution of the Rohingya is government policy. In a 72-page report, they documented senior ministers openly discussing policies that amount to crimes against humanity as well as guidelines for security forces that enable the abuse of the Rohingya to continue. Director Matthew Smith wrote by email: “All the preconditions for a genocide are in place.”

Coming to Rakhine state in the era of reform was like returning to Burma under military rule. I found people living in a fear that strained just beneath the surface. But I didn’t expect to be confronted with the very real threat of a genocide. There is a denial among more moderate Rakhine who are afraid to speak their minds, afraid they too may become a target of ultra-nationalists. The day I arrived in Rakhine state, two surviving Khmer Rouge leaders were sentenced in Cambodia for crimes committed 35 years ago. It has been 20 years since the Rwanda genocide, when more than 800,000 were butchered while the world looked. As journalist Thierry Cruvellier wrote, “people never imagine the worst will actually happen, even when all the signs are there”.

For now, the situation is on edge. A tense normality has returned to Sittwe, but there are no Muslims to be seen. They are either in the ghettos sealed by police, or in the camps outside. Nazir quarter where they once lived is now an empty lot, reclaimed by tropical vegetation. But few of the Rohingya I spoke to have any doubt about the ultimate aim of this segregation. “The extremists want to ethnic cleanse,” Mojuma Begum said. “They want to carry out genocide.” A fear confirmed by the chilling words of a young Rakhine refugee. “I want to kill the Muslims,” said Aung Ko Naing. “Many feel like me . . . I want to get rid of them all.”

Burmese Rohingya Organisation in UK (BROUK) president Tun Khin told to Al Jazeera that Myanmar government has proper plan to eliminate the Rohingyas. As the government is arresting the Rohingyas in the name of connecting with rebel group. Tun Khin said the rebel group is not existing in the Burma and Bangladesh border. The Rohingyas are fleeing from the country to escape from the persecution of Myanmar government.

Recently many human rights organizations reported that at least 900 to 1200 Rohingyas are fleeing from Arakan State. 

Evidence of Myanmar's official Rohingya genocide as told by world press clipping from 1978

Rakhine Action Plan by Myanmar Government

RB News 

October 25, 2014 

Maungdaw, Arakan – Myanmar border guard police (BGP) have been arresting Rohingyas since last month, accusing them of communicating with a rebel group. Many Rohingya were arrested and tortured to death by Myanmar border guard police. In some reports by local activists, private parts of men were cut off and other organs were removed. 

On October 23, 2014 at 11pm, Myanmar border guard police and about 30 Rakhine men came into Kyaut Pyin Seik village (Nari Bil) and raided the houses there. The BGP was put into place after the NaSaKa forces were disbanded after international pressure and outcry over their human rights abuses. The BGP have, however, carried on the same human rights abuses as their predecessors in the NaSaKa, and they have arrested and tortured many Rohingya men in the villages, which has caused many of the men to flee from these villages for their own safety. 

Molvi Hussein Ahmed s/o Zahir Ahmed (Age 42), was a religious cleric whom was also running to escape from the torture of BGP police. He was not a villager of Kyaut Pyin Seik village. He resided, rather, in West hamlet of Kyi Gan Pyin village tract. He was visiting his sister’s house at Kyauk Seik Pyin village. 

According to his close family in Kyi Gan Pyin village, he was caught by BGP police and Rakhine men. He was tortured to death and thrown into a stream nearby Amina bazaar. His body was found by the villagers in the stream at 6:30 am on the following day. 

Myanmar BGP police have been committing crimes against humanity since the time they have received authorization from the central government as to replace the NaSaKa. According to the local residents many innocents have been arrested in the name of communicating with the rebel group, Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO). Although the organization has been disbanded and there are no credible reports of armed activities for last two decades the Myanmar government is using the organization’s name to persecute the Rohingyas.

Additional reporting by MYARF and Rohingya Eye. (Photo Courtesy: MYARF)

By Robin McDowell

Associated Press

October 25, 2014

YANGON, Myanmar — A growing sense of desperation is fueling a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar, with the number fleeing by boat since communal violence broke out two years ago now topping 100,000, a leading expert said Saturday.

Chris Lewa, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Arakan Project, said there has been a huge surge since Oct. 15, with an average of 900 people per day piling into cargo ships parked off Rakhine state.

That's nearly 10,000 in less than two weeks, one of the biggest upticks yet.

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 50 million that only recently emerged from half a century of military rule, has an estimated 1.3 million Rohingya. Though many of their families arrived from neighboring Bangladesh generations ago, almost all have been denied citizenship. In the last two years, attacks by Buddhist mobs have left hundreds dead and 140,000 trapped in camps, where they live without access to adequate health care, education or jobs.

Lewa said some Rohingya families have been told new ships have started arriving in neighboring Thailand, where passengers often are brought to jungle camps, facing extortion and beatings until relatives come up with enough money to win their release.

From there they usually travel to Malaysia or other countries, but, still stateless, their futures remain bleak.

In Myanmar, the vast majority live in the northern tip of Rakhine state, where an aggressive campaign by authorities in recent months to register family members and officially categorize them as "Bengalis" — implying they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh — has aggravated their situation.

According to villagers contacted by The Associated Press, some were confined to their villages for weeks at a time for refusing to take part in the "verification" process, while others were beaten or arrested.

More recently, dozens of men were detained for having alleged ties to the militant Rohingya Solidarity Organization, or RSO, said Khin Maung Win, a resident from Maungdaw township, adding that several reportedly were beaten or tortured during their arrests or while in detention.

Lewa said three of the men died.

"Our team is becoming more and more convinced that this campaign of arbitrary arrests is aimed at triggering departures," she said.

Rakhine state spokesman Win Myaing denied any knowledge of arrests or abuse.

"There's nothing happening up there," he said. "There are no arrests of suspects of RSO. I haven't heard anything like that."

Every year, the festival of Eid al-Adha, which was celebrated by Muslims worldwide early this month, marks the beginning of a large exodus of Rohingya, in part due to calmer seas but also because it is a chance to spend time with family and friends.

But there seems to be a growing sense of desperation this year, with numbers nearly double from the same period in 2013.

Lewa said a number of Rohingya also were moving overland to Bangladesh and on to India and Nepal.

The United Nations, which has labeled the Rohingya one of the most persecuted religious minorities in the world, earlier this year confirmed figures provided by Lewa about a massive exodus that began after communal violence broke out in June 2012, targeting mainly Rohingya.

With the latest departures, Lewa estimates the number of fleeing Rohingya to be more than 100,000.

It was not immediately clear where the newest arrivals were landing.

___

Associated Press writer Esther Htusan contributed to this report.

By Harun Yahya

Arab News

October 25, 2014

Despite the atrocities being committed against the Muslims of Arakan, better known as Rohingyas, the international community has so far done nothing to protect these people. The world appears to be sitting on the fence, as these people are being systematically persecuted.

This minority Muslim community in Myanmar — termed the most persecuted people living on the face of earth — has been turned into refugees in their own country. The Rohingyas are a people with no civil rights and from time to time subjected to indiscriminate violence. The world became slightly acquainted with these people following the violent attacks and acts of arson of 2012. 

Last month, the government of Myanmar submitted a plan to the United Nations appeared to be aimed at restoring peace, ensuring justice and creating communal harmony. Several countries welcomed and approved the plan thinking that Myanmar was ready to roll back its policy of discrimination against the Muslim minority.

So, what’s the plan? The Rohingya Muslims have been given two options. The first one is that they should obtain the citizenship of neighboring Bangladesh in the first phase. Then only they would be eligible for the citizenship of Myanmar provided they are in possession of various documents as required under the country’s 1982 citizenship law. In the event of refusal to accept this option, the Rohingyas will have only one option left i.e. to live in camps as detainees under horrendous condition and finally face expulsion from the country of their ancestors.

The first option appeared to have a silver lining making it possible for the Rohingya Muslims to obtain Myanmar nationality. However, that is not the case. The real purpose is to officially declare these Rohingyas migrants, who have already lost all their rights under the 1982 law.

We know that a great many Rohingyas who enjoy alien status in their own lands will be unable to provide the documentation concerning their histories required in order to assume Myanmar citizenship again. All documentation about these people’s pasts, together with everything else they owned, was destroyed in the horrifying uprisings that targeted the Rohingyas in 2012. Therefore, those who cannot provide those documents will be stuck as Bangladeshi citizens in their own country, with migrant status, in other words. The Myanmar government will soon send these people to camps on the pretext that they are “aliens,” or else will expel them from the country. These people will also not be recognized by Bangladesh because they were not born there. This law is not binding on Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, those who refuse to obtain Bangladeshi citizenship will be taken from towns and villages where they live and sent to refugee camps as detainees. Under the new plan, these people will be swiftly expelled from the country, and the Myanmar government may apply to the UN to send these people overseas as refugees. The problem is that the UN does not recognize these oppressed people as refugees. Under the plan, one million Rohingyas will face that terrible end.

Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch, says: “This plan is profoundly troubling because it would strip the Rohingya of their rights, systematically lock them down in closed camps in what amounts to arbitrary, indefinite detention.”

The world’s superpowers and member countries of ASEAN are known to have imposed no sanctions on the Myanmar government and to merely watch matters from afar because of the energy corridors that pass through Myanmar and out of concern that this might harm their commercial relations. It is true that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated across a wide area and in the most barbaric manner. Yet this silence concerning the Muslims of Rohingya, one of the subjects that the countries of the world could easily take measures over and resolve, is inexplicable. The possibility of the deceptive appearance of this proposal by the Myanmar government convincing some countries and the UN will make the situation even more horrifying.

There is a reason why violence, anger and war are spreading in this time when realpolitik has superseded humanity, when politics is perceived as oppression and when countries ally themselves around self-interest rather than love. The reason is that people and countries do not regard love as a solution. The people of a country have for years been living under persecution and facing genocide before the eyes of the world, and the world knows this, but still says nothing. This means the problem is one of conscience, not evidence.

The human drama going on in Myanmar for so long is no secret. Covering it up and seeing nothing wrong in permitting evil will just strengthen the troubles afflicting the world. Countries of the world must therefore prioritize justice and love, rather than self-interest, first in the name of mankind, and then in consideration of this horrifying scenario. The world must therefore extend a hand to the Rohingya Muslims who have been systematically persecuted for so long. It must not be deceived, but must find a solution for this wronged people. It is a fact that countries that hold meetings all over the world that sign oil and natural gas treaties and that buy arms from and sell missiles to one another are also strong enough to protect a handful of victimized people and to convince the Myanmar government on this issue. To that end, countries must turn away from calculations of realpolitik and show that their consciences have not atrophied. Let us see if they are ready to do that!

—

The writer has authored more than 300 books translated in 73 languages on politics, religion and science.

By Matthew Pennington

The Associated Press

October 24, 2014

WASHINGTON — An influential Washington think tank is criticizing Burma’s government for presiding over a “humanitarian catastrophe” in western Arakan State and doing little to track down perpetrators of Buddhist-on-Muslim violence around the country.

Those criticisms come in a very mixed assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies of the situation in Burma, three years after it began a historic transition to democracy from decades of oppressive and ruinous military rule.

The centrist think tank, which has the ear of the Obama administration, visited Burma in August and issued its report on Wednesday. President Barack Obama, who counts US support of the Southeast Asian nation’s reforms as a foreign policy success, will make his second visit to Burma in two years when it hosts a summit of regional leaders in November.

The report points to some hopeful signs in Burma, which is gearing up for elections in late 2015. It cites prospects for a nationwide cease-fire in long-running ethnic conflicts, improvements in a woeful health care system and economic reforms that have spurred rapid growth.

But the report also says power is deeply skewed in favor of the military, and that decision-making on key political reforms has stalled. It says that likely reflects a struggle between “reformists” allied to President Thein Sein — the former general who has overseen the shift to democracy — and establishment interests who fear losing privileges through more change.

“It is not yet clear that the military’s overwhelming dominance will diminish significantly as the current government approaches the end of its formal tenure in April 2016,” the think tank says.

The report says massive human suffering continues in Arakan, where 140,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims have been rounded up into barbed-wire-enclosed camps after sectarian violence erupted in mid-2012 with majority Buddhists. It said for months the Burmese government has “abdicated its leadership responsibilities” as worsening violence drove international humanitarian groups out.

The government’s action plan to address the situation in Arakan State — criticized by human rights groups as discriminatory — puts forward ideas for peaceful coexistence, citizenship and resettlement, but it remains to be seen if the government can defuse the crisis, the report says.

In the past three years, the United States has led the charge as Western nations have re-engaged with Burma and rolled back sanctions, and Wednesday’s report advocates continued American engagement despite congressional concerns over Burma’s “backsliding” on reforms.

The report calls for the US to double health aid to Burma, including in the fight against drug-resistant malaria, and to sustain limited US engagement with the military. It says however, those ties shouldn’t be expanded before it is clear the military hasn’t intervened in the elections.

By Ei Ei Toe Lwin

Myanmar Times

October 24, 2014

Political parties will have a little over two months to ensure they comply with new rules that ban them from accepting non-citizens as members, says Union Election Commission chairman U Tin Aye.

Parties have been told to inform the UEC of any changes to their central executive committee or membership list by January 16, he said, adding that parties found to be in breach of the law could be abolished.

“Only citizens can set up political parties. The [UEC] will give two months for you to check your members. If you have any changes, let us know again,” U Tin Aye said.

After receiving the member list, the commission will have it checked by the Immigration Department.

If the UEC receives a complaint that a party has accepted a non-citizen as a member it will conduct an investigation, U Tin Aye said.

“We already have a 15-member committee to investigate complaints. If a party is found to have non-citizens, we will warn them to remove that member as the first step. If they refuse we will definitely revoke their registration.”

Amendments to the Political Parties Registration Law were signed by President U Thein Sein on September 30, four days after they were approved by parliament.

Under the previous version of the law, all citizens and “temporary certificate holders” are allowed to start or join a political party. The amendment, however, enables only full citizens to be central executive committee members – of which a party must have 15 – and bars temporary citizens from holding party membership.

As The Myanmar Times has previously reported, the change will most affect the three parties formed by politicians who identify as Rohingya. Most hold temporary identification documents – known as white cards – rather than the Citizenship Scrutiny Cards issued to citizens.

The amendments were proposed by the Rakhine National Party. Leader U Aye Maung said last week the RNP wills “definitely be watching” whether other parties comply with the changes.

“We will probably send a complaint to the UEC if we have evidence” that another party has non-citizens as members, he said.

But he also questioned whether the UEC should be taking a more pro-active role in rooting out non-citizens from registered political parties. “The UEC has a duty to check each party's members. It doesn’t make sense that they will only take action when they receive a complaint,” he said.

A spokesperson for the National Development and Peace Party described the amendments as “unfair” but said it would do its best to comply. He said many of those who hold white cards would be eligible for citizenship if the government implemented the 1982 Citizenship Law correctly.

"We have no choice because we are minority,” said Mohammad Salim. “They should not decide whether some has the right to participate in politics based on citizenship alone. We [Muslims holding white cards] are eligible for citizenship according to the law.”

The RNP has submitted amendments to two additional elections laws, one of which will strip white card holders of the right to vote, including more than 1 million people in Rakhine State.

However, it remains unclear whether this law will gain majority support in parliament, particularly given concerns it could dramatically inflame tensions in Rakhine State.

In its latest report, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, released on October 22, the International Crisis Group warned that it “would be a highly controversial move, and in Rakhine State could be incendiary”.

“The Rohingya see their ability to vote as their last remaining connection to politics and means of influence. Without this, there will be no Rohingya representatives in the legislature, and no reason for any party to take account of their views, even peripherally. It would be hard for the Rohingya community to avoid the conclusion that politics had failed them,” it said.

But U Tin Aye said he expected the amendment to pass.

“It is up to the parliament to decide," U Tin Aye said last week. “I think they will change it soon.”

By Carey Lodge

Christian Today

October 24, 2014

Victims of human trafficking are being abducted by force and left to survive on boats anchored in international waters, a new report has found.

An investigation by Reuters found that while in the past most people boarded smuggling boats voluntarily, they are now being kidnapped or tricked even at the first stage of the chain.

Reporters interviewed Bangladeshi and Rohingya survivors, some of whom who had been taken to Thailand where human trafficking gangs run "brutal jungle camps" until relatives pay a ransom.

They told stories of being drugged, tied up and blindfolded before being put on small boats which carried them to larger ships at sea.

Forced to survive on scraps and contaminated seawater, hundreds of people live in these "floating prisons" for weeks. Those who die are thrown into the sea.

One victim, 20-year-old Afsar Miae from Bangladesh, was abducted by a gang who had offered what he thought was legitimate work. He ended up on a ship anchored in the Bay of Bengal, which later set sail for Thailand.

Prisoners "were forced to squat for much of their journey and sometimes had their hands and feet bound with rope or cloth," Reputers reports.

"The guards routinely beat them with sticks or whipped them with rubber fan belts. Food was a handful of rice a day, or nothing at all. What little drinking water they received was contaminated with sea water."

Miae and 80 other men were abandoned on a remote island before they had reached their destination, however. Officials suspect that their captors believed the trafficking chain to have been discovered.

"Their conditions were beyond what a human should have to go through," said Jadsada Thitimuta, an official in Phang Nga involved in the rescue mission. "Some were sick and many were like skeletons. They were eating leaves."

Thailand's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security says more than 130 suspected trafficking victims have been found in Phang Nga since October 11. Most are Bangladeshi, though some are Rohingya Muslim from western Myanmar.

The UNHCR has confirmed that "bigger fishing or cargo vessels" are carrying up to 700 passengers across the Bay of Bengal to Thailand, and October is said to mark the beginning of the busiest time for the trafficking industry as the sailing season sets in.

The Royal Thai Navy has admitted it is aware that people are being held captive on ships off its coast.

"The truth is they use fishing boats to transport people and the bottom of the boat becomes like a room to put the people [in], but it seems like a commercial fishing boat," said Royal Thai Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Kan Deeubol.

Officials working on the Banladeshi coast said it's no easier to stop the operation at their end. "At night they enter our waters, take the people and again cross the boundary. It is very difficult to identify those ships at sea," Lieutenant Commander M. Ashiqe Mahmud explained.

Thai offcials say that a crackdown on trafficking has forced traffickers to become "more sophisticated and cautious". However, human rights groups believe that trafficking has become increasingly lucrative, and high competition between smugglers has therefore led them to begin abducting.

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group said that crime-ring organisers are "desperate" to cash in on the trade.

"There are always five to eight boats waiting in the Bay of Bengal. And the brokers are desperate to fill them," he said.

(Additional reporting by Reuters)

By World Bulletin

October 24, 2014

Record numbers of Muslim Rohingya flee western Myanmar after government launches crackdown.

Unprecedented numbers of Muslim Rohingya have been leaving Myanmar on boats for Thailand and Malaysia following a campaign of arrests, a leading NGO said Friday.

"In one week we have seen 8,000 Rohingya leaving northern Rakhine state -- the amount of people who left the region per month in 2013," Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, told Anadolu Agency.

Last week’s flight is believed to be the largest since violence erupted between the Rohingya minority and Buddhists in western Myanmar two years ago.

"Myanmar police let the boats come to the estuary of the Naf river in daylight and have even stopped asking for money from the Rohingya before they embark," Lewa added, referring to the water frontier between Myanmar and Bangladesh. "It looks as if it is planned."

While the number of Rohingya escaping persecution in Myanmar increases every year as the rainy season comes to an end, there are other factors that explain the unusually large exodus this year, she said.

Citing a recent series of arrests of community and religious leaders by local authorities, Lewa claimed some had died under torture, which had "provoked a sort of panic."

The project believes the government may be using a recent al-Qaeda announcement of a new South Asian branch as a "pretext" for a crackdown on the Rohingya.

In the video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri heralded the development as "good news" for Muslims in Myanmar "where they would be rescued from injustice and oppression."

Since 2012, 200 people -- mostly Rohingya -- have been killed and 140,000 made homeless. Tens of thousands of Muslims have paid large amounts of money to smugglers to flee on cramped boats in the hope of finding work in Thailand, Malaysia or Australia.

In southern Thailand, some fall prey to human traffickers and corrupt local officials.

The latest influx to southern Thailand comes as a shocking video purportedly shows the brutality inflicted on Rohingya refugees in trafficking camps.

The footage, currently being examined by Thai immigration police, appears to show two men raping a Rohingya woman in a jungle camp in the country’s south.

"If the video is authenticated, it may be the first real evidence of the brutal treatment of captives in the secret camps run by human traffickers in the jungles of southern Thailand," the Phuketwan news website reported Thursday.

Lewa, who has interviewed hundreds of Rohingya in southern Thailand, was cautious about the clip but added: "We know that the people who cannot pay the sums asked by the traffickers are the object of violence."

In the past, survivors from traffickers’ camps have shared testimony that violence, rapes and killings were a way of extracting ransom payments from victims’ families.

The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship, claiming they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

By Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

The National

October 23, 2014

In April, I wrote an article for The National on the worsening situation for Muslims in Myanmar. Their condition has not got any better. Instead, the government has adopted new legislation that is likely to have a further devastating impact on its Muslim minority.

Last month, the country’s foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, told envoys at the UN General Assembly that a long-expected strategy for the Rohingya minority would soon be put into effect. According to Mr Lwin, the “action plan” had been devised to guarantee peace and security for everybody in the area. He called on the global community to take part in the implementation of this strategy to provide a “durable solution” in the region.

Not long after Mr Lwin’s address at the UN, mainstream media such as Reuters shed light on what the scheme might practically involve: a set of coercive strategies that endanger the situations of thousands of people, while at the same time recycling legislation that was not in line with international law and was condemned when it was first enacted in 2012.

The suppression of the Rohingya community has been going on for decades. Since 1982, these people have been denied citizenship rights and have been considered illegal immigrants in their own homeland. Consequently, hatred, torture and killings have become a horrific daily reality for them. Over the past two years, Buddhist mobs have reportedly killed hundreds of Rohingya Muslims. The United Nations reported that the atrocities had also displaced almost 29,000 people, and labelled the Rohingya as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that the government has done nothing to stop the continuing atrocities and has, instead, unwittingly contributed to them. At the same time, many in the mainstream media have been silent. The world community knows very little, if anything at all, about the situation.

This new strategy shows that the government of Myanmar has no inclination to put an end to the continuing repression, and is pursuing more coercive initiatives that will probably contribute to further injustice against Rohingya minorities.

According to Emanuel Stoakes of The Diplomat, a draft of this new strategy contains only a slight difference from the old policy. Under the policy, the Muslims of Rohingya, who were retrospectively denied citizenship in legislation enacted by the military leadership 26 years ago, are given the opportunity to attain certain privileges if they are able to comply to a “citizenship verification exercise” in which these people must identify themselves as Bengalis – indicating that they came from Bangladesh.

Refusing to identify as Bengali, or being unable to provide the necessary documents to prove their existence in Myanmar for generations, would give them no option but to be incarcerated in camps. After that, the policy envisages that they be relocated abroad by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Given that many people have said they are prepared to reject the verification programme and many others would be unable to find their official family records, it is likely that a very large number of Rohingya will have no option but to be displaced to camps. In such a scenario, the likelihood of violence and destabilisation would rise significantly.

Under its rules, the UNHCR may not be able to resettle the Rohinyga because they do not meet the definition of a refugee as someone who has “fled persecution and conflict across international borders”. This would mean that those Rohingyas who are denied citizenship could be forced to stay in camps indefinitely.

The unspeakable suppression against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar must end soon. It is more than clear that these people are in dire need of genuine and serious efforts by both the Myanmar government and the international community to mitigate their worsening situation.

More voices must join those speaking out in support of their rights. Organisations such as Asean must break away from their silence and insist that there be no normalisation with Myanmar while these outrageous policies are adopted against innocent men, women and children in their own homeland.

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is a writer based in Qatar and the UK.

PRESS STATEMENT

Arakan Rohingya Union warmly welcomes the Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Yanghee Lee, on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, including that in Arakan/Rakhine state. 

The report summarizes: The important transition and far-reaching reforms in Myanmar must be commended. Yet, possible signs of backtracking should be addressed so as not to undermine the progress achieved. The present report sets out the Special Rapporteur’s preliminary key areas of focus and recommendations aimed at contributing to Myanmar’s efforts towards respecting, protecting and promoting human rights and achieving democratization, national reconciliation and development.

Arakan Rohingya Union urgently appeals the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the members of the global community of nations to demand the Government of Myanmar to abide by the international rule of law, permanently cease the hostility toward Rohingya ethnic minority, and immediately address the following recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur to Myanmar in the report (UNGA A/69/398; Section VI. 82):

(a) Immediately address the critical health situation in camps for internally displaced person and isolated locations, in particular for those comparatively underserved, namely, the Rohingya, including by increasing the authorities’ capacity to provide adequate health services;

(b) Provide adequate basic services, including in camps for internally displaced persons, and remove any restrictions against the Rohingya on freedom of movement and other rights so as to ensure access to livelihoods, food, water and sanitation, and education;

(c) Investigate and prosecute those responsible for human rights violations perpetrated against the Rohingya community;

(d) Respect the Rohingyas’ as well as other minorities’ right to self-identification in compliance with international human rights standards, including by refraining from directing international actors to adopt positions that run counter to such standards;

(e) Immediately release the international NGO staff members imprisoned in connection with the violence of June 2012;

(f) Address the long-standing social and economic development challenges in Rakhine State through a human-rights-based approach, ensuring the participation of affected communities, including through greater cooperation with the international community;

(g) Develop reconciliation measures as a necessary step to rebuild integrated communities for inclusion in the Rakhine State Action Plan.