By Nyein Nyein 

The Irrawaddy

April 22, 2015

RANGOON — Local relief workers in Arakan State’s Kyauktaw Township say that they have been barred from providing support to hundreds of villagers in the area, who were displaced after fighting between the Arakan Army and government troops.

Clashes beginning on Friday and continuing over the weekend saw some 450 people from the villages of Pinglong, Aung Lan Chaung, Dan Chaung and Kalakya flee to the nearby village of Zapazeik, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Kyauktaw town.

A group of Arakan locals, who banded together to provide aid to the villagers, said they were turned back by military checkpoints outside Kyauktaw town when they attempted to deliver aid supplies on Tuesday. The team traveled 100 kilometers south to Sittwe on Wednesday to seek permission to travel to Zapazeik from the state government.

“We are now in Sittwe, at the government office, trying to meet with the Border Affairs Minister on this issue,” he told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday afternoon. “It looks like we are being avoided.”

Representatives of the Arakan State government and Kyauktaw Township officials could not be reached on Wednesday.

Zaw Worn said his relief team was formed after he received phone calls from the villagers requesting urgent support. They were turned back at the first checkpoint they encountered, which was manned by the Burma Army’s 374th Infantry battalion.

“We were not able to provide them with basic needs like rice, cooking ingredients, and mosquito nets,” he said.

Many of the displaced came from Aung Lan Chaung village, largely populated by members of the Mro ethnic minority, which relief worker Nyo Aye said was razed by Burma Army troops over the weekend.

“The refugees fled their homes after the Tatmadaw burned the village, near where the fighting was, she told The Irrawaddy. “They were scared for their lives with the sound of the gunfire.”

Local aid groups in other Arakan State towns are also collecting relief supplies for the area. Ko Ko Maung, a resident of nearby Buthidaung Township, said that the community had donated a stockpile of goods and he intended to make a delivery to the displaced villagers soon.

The Arakan Army, which is not recognized by the Burmese government as a party to the nationwide peace process, has been operating in the state for about three years. While clashes between the Arakan Army and government forces have been rare, an earlier outbreak of fighting in the area was reported on Mar. 29.

State-run newspapers reported on Wednesday that five Arakanese insurgents had been arrested on Sunday evening with some weapons and ammunition, and said the Arakan Army was in retreat.

Nyo Tun Aung, the Arakan Army deputy chief of staff, said that an internal investigation was being conducted to determine whether the captured men belonged to his forces.

Additional reporting by Kyaw Kha.

Aman Ullah

RB Article

April 22, 2015

A subject is someone “under the dominion of a monarch”, says the Oxford English Dictionary.

A citizen however is someone who does have rights. In ancient Greece and Rome that meant some citizens took part in government.

The difference between a citizen and a subject 

A citizen has the right to vote and right to be elected and right to participate in the political life of the state. A subject has neither the right to take part in the political life of the State nor any say in the government.

A subject shall obligatory to abide by the all laws promulgated by those he is subject to and has no say in how they are treated. A citizen has the right to refuse to comply or to actively resist all laws that violate against his fundamental rights.

A subject is raised to believe that government is ultimately in power. A citizen knows that it is himself, and his fellow men that are in power, and he is answerable to none but his own soul.

A citizen has the right to travel and do as they please provided they do not infringe the rights of others. A subject often need permission to travel and can only take what the state says they need with them. A citizen has the right to self-defense but a subject has not, even he has no right to use effective means of defense. The role of a subject in war is most often as cannon fodder, from ancient days to modern.

In short, a citizen has rights, a subject has privileges; a subject does what he is told, but a citizen has the right to be heard.

Are the people in Burma subjects or citizens?

For over 800 years, from 1044 to 1885, the Burmese lived under an absolute monarchy. All legislative, executive and judicial powers were concentrated in the hands of the monarch. Justice was administered by issuing royal commands. As the loyal subject of the kings, the people needed to surrender all their wills at feet of the kings. They had neither rights nor liberties nor a say in the affairs of the state. 

The rule of the Burmese kings came to an end in 1885 when Burma became Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s possession. All the people of Burma were became the subjects of the Her Majesty Queen Victoria. During the colonial rule the British granted some stand of civil rights and liberties; promoted the development of economic welfare; developed communication, education, health and agriculture; introduced political democracy but the colonial state was something that was imposed from above.

The period of Japanese occupation that followed was, in terms of national independence, law and order, continuity of the state and human rights, completely a disaster.

When the British came back to Burma in 1945, they introduced to Burma the rule of law, which was used as a mere tool that expresses the will of the ruler and not of the ruled. Being the colonial subjects of the British, the people had to pass their lives under the yoke of the British colonial power.

On 4 January 1948 the Union of Burma achieved independence. The people of Burma ceased the subjects of British became independent citizens of independent country.

A constitution for this new sovereign independent republic was adopted on 24 September 1947 by a constituent assembly, which was drafted around the same time as the Universal Declaration for Human Rights.

The 1947 constitution provided safeguards for fundamental rights. Under this constitution, the people of Burma irrespective of “birth, religion, sex or race” equally enjoyed all the citizenships rights including right to express, right to assemble, right to associations and unions, settle in any part of the Union, to acquire property and to follow any occupation, trade, business or profession”.

The country entertained a competitive political party system and a free press. The Supreme Court was made the guardian of human rights and was given the power to preserve them through issuing directions in the nature of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari. No one is master or subject all are citizens. For fourteen years civil society was allowed to flourish.

Being one of the worthy citizens of Burma, the Rohingya Muslim of Arakan also enjoyed the same rights and privileges as the other nationals of Burma regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic background. Their homes were secure, their roads were safe, their properties were protected and their justices never denied at the court. Their religious lessons were included in the school’s curriculum of their children. They were enfranchised in all the national and local elections of Burma. Their representatives were in the Legislative Assembly, in the Constituent Assembly and in the Parliament. As members of the new Parliament, their representatives took the oath of allegiance to the Union of Burma on the 4th January 1948. Their representatives were appointed as cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. They had their own political, cultural, social organizations and had their programme in their own language in the official Burma Broadcasting Services (BSS).

However, since 1962 and the advent of military dictatorship, human rights have neither been institutionalized nor protected. The 1974 Constitution failed to afford the judiciary any independence. Although there was a chapter dealing with fundamental freedoms, these freedoms were heavily qualified and contingent upon fundamental duties.

For 50 years, the iron fist did indeed have a strong and direct grip on civil society. The military was in command, either directly or through its surrogate institution, the Burma Socialist Programme Party. The private sector and civil society were under the pervasive ideological and personal control of one dictator -- Senior General Ne Win, who also concurrently served as president and BSPP chairman, and then for two decades under Senior General Than Shwe.

Now, under the administration of President Thein Sein, who came to power in March 2011, which many refer as a "quasi-civilian" administration, Myanmar's return to the extreme autocratic ways of the past seems patently unlikely, barring a national disaster such as internal widespread religious conflict in the heart of the country, that would prompt the imposition of martial law. The freedoms that have been instituted are now so ingrained in the public's mind that their elimination would spur an unwanted uprising.

The present administration, dominated by retired and active duty military who came from the previous military elite, drafted a constitution in 2008 that guaranteed not only military autonomy from civilian command, but also enabled it to play a major role in governance through executive and legislative stipulations.

The successive military regimes in Burma is one of the world’s worst violators of human rights. A government or an army is obliged to serve and defend the people. When it wildly and indiscriminately open fires on its own men, women, children, doctors, nurses and monks it can only be regarded as an enemy of the people.

It has been condemned internationally for committing serious human rights abuses including extra-judicial killings, torture, rape, disappearances and forced labour. There is no rule of law. In some ways the Military rule resembles pre-colonial Burma where the king was an autocrat and his power was absolute and all the people were their subjects. Like the Burmese king, the then military junta is lord and master of the life and property of the Burmese subjects.

During pre- colonial period the people of Burma were subjects to the kings, during the colonial period they were subjects to Queen and now under the military regime they have become subjects to the generals. Only for a period of 14 years, during the democratic government, they were able to enjoy as the citizens of the country.

Among all the subjects of the junta the Rohingyas are the worst victims of human rights violations, including denial of citizenship rights, severe restrictions on freedom of movement, education, marriage, religion, forced labour, rape land confiscation, expulsion, destruction of settlements, arbitrary arrest, torture, extra-judicial killing and extortion on daily basis.

By Mizzima

April 22, 2015

ASEAN leaders must urgently respond to the escalating crisis situation for Rohingya Muslims and other vulnerable minorities in Myanmar, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said on April 22 in a public call on regional governments on the eve of the 26th ASEAN Summit.

In an open letter to ASEAN heads of state, the collective of parliamentarians called for greater recognition of the serious threat the continued persecution of the Rohingya minority represents not only to Myanmar, but to all of ASEAN. APHR also called for an independent investigation into the growing crisis and the deployment of ASEAN monitors in the lead up to elections scheduled for later this year.

“The growing risk of atrocity crimes in Myanmar represents a direct threat to ASEAN nations, both because of the security risks and economic strains it poses for all ASEAN member states, and because it undermines our shared commitment to protecting all people from persecution and violence,” said Charles Santiago, APHR’s Chairperson and a member of the Malaysian Parliament, in the organisation’s press release.

“We are standing on the precipice of a great tragedy. ASEAN as a grouping as well as individual national leaders have the responsibility, both morally and under international law, to act to prevent atrocity crimes and crimes against humanity from taking place.”

APHR MPs travelled in early April to Myanmar to see the situation first hand and said they were alarmed by the proliferation of hate speech and extremist language that the state is turning a blind eye to.

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

The Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingyas

Venues: The Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen

Oslo, Norway

26-28 May 2015 

Refugees International (RI), Justice for All (USA), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Harvard Global Equality Initiative (HGEI), and International State Crime Initiative Queen Mary University of London (ISCI) and Den norske Burmakomité will be holding a 3-day international conference to discuss the plight of over 1-million Rohingyas of Myanmar (Burma) and explore concrete ways to end their decades-long persecution.

George Soros who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary sees a parallel between his experience of life under the Nazis in 1944 and the human conditions for the Rohingyas in Western Myanmar, which he witnessed first-hand during a recent visit to the country.

At the conference, iconic leaders from diverse backgrounds including Soros, Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire, Desmond Tutu, and Jose Rose-Jorta, and the former prime ministers of Malaysia and Norway - namely Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad and Kjell Magne Bondevik - will join hands with the representatives of the two generations of Rohingya refugees and activists as well as international human rights researchers and scholars of genocides and mass atrocities. They will push for the end to Myanmar’s policies of discrimination, persecution and oppression. 

Tomas Ojea Quinta and Yanghee Lee, former and present UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar respectively, will also share their expertise with the audiences and other participants. 

The first day of the Oslo Conference is open to the public and will be webcast LIVE. 

Click here for the Conference Program (Draft).
https://www.facebook.com/OsloConferenceOnRohingyas/posts/960561500643487

To register, please RSVP by sending an email to OsloConference@yahoo.com. Be sure to include your full name, organizational affiliation (if any), and country of residence.

A 3-day Conference

26 May 2015: The first day of the conference – open to the public - will be held at the Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen conference center on 26 May 2015. 

27 May 2015: The second day of the conference – by invitation-only – will be devoted to exploring concrete ideas and proposals to help push for the restoration of basic human rights, nationality, and citizenship to the Rohingyas. 

28 May 2015: On the third and final day, the conference will host a Burma Forum in central Oslo, a public roundtable with select group of Rohingya leaders, other religious leaders and human rights experts to discuss Myanmar’s rising anti-Muslim hate campaign as well as other contemporary issues of relevance. For more information about the Burma Forum email Norwegian Burma Committee at info@burma.no

Backgrounder to the Oslo Conference

Rakhine Action Plan 

In July 2014, Myanmar government floated a comprehensive plan, known as the “Rakhine Action Plan”, to erase both Rohingya identity and the group’s legal residency in their own ancestral land and sent a 3-member advocacy team – made up of President’s adviser and former academic Dr Kyaw Yin Hlaing, Immigration Minister and ex-Brigadier Khin Yi, and Rakhine Chief Minister and ex-Major General Maung Maung Ohn - to lobby western governments and relevant international organizations to accept Myanmar’s official plan to solve “the Rohingya problem”. 

Thein Sein’s government in Myanmar is currently implementing the Rakhine Action Plan. This is evidenced from the further illegalization and disenfranchisement of the vast majority of ethnic Rohingya since March this year, by forcibly confiscating their White Cards, the only documentation that Rohingyas had of their legal, permanent residency. Meanwhile, the international community’s attention is diverted to the fighting along the country’s Sino-Burmese borders between Myanmar army and Kokant Chinese armed resistance organization and its allies, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi’s attempts to push for changes in the military’s 2008 Constitution in time for this year’s planned elections

Myanmar’s Policy of Official Denial and Persecution of the Rohingyas

Following the large scale violence against the Rohingyas in June 2012, Myanmar’s “reformist” government officially proposed two solutions to the Rohingya issue to the visiting head of the United Nations Refugee Agency or UNHCR António Guterres - either the “resettlement” of the Rohingyas to third countries, or placing Rohingya in UN-financed camps on their own ancestral soil in Western Myanmar. In his widely reported address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (or Chatham House), in London, UK on 17 July 2013, Myanmar President Thein Sein officially denied the existence of Rohingyas as either legal residents or an ethnic group while his government has made consistent attempts to pressure INGOs, foreign missions and the United Nations agencies and officials – including the UN Special Rapporteurs on the human rights situation in Myanmar - to stop recognizing the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group of Myanmar. 

Such statements and policies have been met with stiff opposition from the international community, including the highest level of leaderships such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and US President Barack Obama. In sharp contrast to the international recognition of the Rohingya as an ethnic group, deserving non-discrimination, equal rights, dignity, and the same basic respect as any other indigenous peoples of Myanmar, the country’s Bama or Myanmar Buddhist majority and Rakhine nationalists label the Rohingyas as “illegal Muslim migrants” from the impoverished Bangladesh. As such, Rohingya have popularly been dehumanized and referred to by terms such as “viruses”, “leeches”, (ugly) “ogres”, “dogs” etc. 

Sadly, Myanmar’s pro-democracy opposition leaders and human rights organizations including Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy and other iconic human rights the leaders of the 88 Generation Group also share this anti-Rohingya sentiment. The Myanmar government has, misleadingly, portrayed the plight of Rohingyas as the result of a communal conflict between the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya and a supposedly inevitable consequence of the “transition” from dictatorship. Periodically, unsubstantiated claims are made by Myanmar President’s Office attempting to link the Rohingya community to global “Islamic fundamentalism”, and worse still, “terrorism”. 

The Worsening Plight of the Rohingyas

The plight of the Rohingyas in Myanmar has worsened since the two bouts of organized attacks on the Rohingya in June and October 2012. In her 9-March-2015 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Professor Yanghee Lee stated that Rohingya refugees inside Internally Displaced Persons (or IDP) camps feel they have two (equally risky) options: “to stay and die (in Myanmar) or leave by boat”. According to the UN High Commissioner for the Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 53,000 Rohingyas, including women and children, left Myanmar (and Bangladesh) by boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia in the 11-month period between January and November 2014. International visitors to Rakhine state have described the human conditions for the Rohingyas, both inside and outside IDP camps, as “deplorable”. Even by Myanmar’s official report of Myanmar President’s Rakhine Inquiry Commission, doctor-patient ratios among the Rohingyas in the two majority Rohingya towns in Western Myanmar are 1: 76,000 and 1:83,000 (vis-à-vis 1: 1,000 for the national average). Some local Rakhine groups routinely threaten international humanitarian organizations and attempt to disrupt and stop the delivery of basic humanitarian aid to the Rohingyas. 

International Responses

Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have assessed Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingyas as ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’. UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar including Tomas Quintana Ojea and Yanghee Lee have highlighted the official nature of discrimination and persecution of the Rohingyas that a condones popular racism and violence against Myanmar’s Muslims. The Pacific Rim Law and Policy Association has published a 3-year academic study entitled “The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya” in its peer-reviewed journal “Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal” (Spring, 2014).

Renowned academics, for instance, Harvard’s Amartya Sen have characterized Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingyas as a “slow genocide”. Likewise, at the conference on the Rohingyas at the London School of Economics held in April 2014 the then outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Tomas Oeja Quintana observed reportedly “genocidal acts” in the case of Rohingyas. 

At this Oslo Conference, global leaders including George Soros and Desmond Tutu will call on the international community, both international investors, European Union and governments with close ties to Myanmar, to help end Myanmar’s Rohingya persecution. They will also call for the restoration of basic human rights, nationality and citizenship to one of the world’s most vulnerable and oppressed peoples who, as a group, do have the fundamental right to self-identity under international human rights law. 

By Rod McGuirk 

Associated Press

April 21, 2015

About 1,300 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean in April. Here’s how other countries have responded to refugees arriving by boat.

Two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 asylum seekers and migrants has highlighted the escalating flow of people fleeing persecution, war and economic difficulties in their homelands.

The United Nations refugee agency says it believes more than 800 people drowned when a boat packed with migrants trying to reach Europe sank on Saturday, the worst such incident ever in the Mediterranean.

About 350 of those aboard were believed to have been Eritreans. Others included people from Syria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

About 1,300 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean in April, taking the year’s death toll to at least 1,776.

Over the years, thousands of people in Asia have also used boats to escape. Here’s a look at where many go, and how they are treated once they arrive.

AUSTRALIA

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, China, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar and Vietnam.

DESTINATIONS: Most of the boats leave Indonesian ports for Christmas Island, an Australian territory 345 kilometres south of the Indonesian island of Java, or Ashmore Reef, a collection of Australian islands east of Christmas Island. They often arrive without passports, which makes repatriating them more difficult.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: Since July 2013, Australia has refused to allow refugees who arrive by boat to settle on the mainland, and it has been turning back boats since the current government was elected in September 2013.

It has a detention camp for asylum seekers on Christmas Island and pays Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island nation of Nauru to run similar camps where asylum seekers wait while their applications for refugee status are processed.

Australia has an agreement to pay Cambodia to take refugees detained on Nauru, and with Papua New Guinea to resettle those camped out in there. So far none have gone to Cambodia, while some have been resettled in Papua New Guinea.

Australia is much more welcoming of asylum seekers who arrive by plane, although it still requires an initial period of detention. Once out of detention, some are allowed to work while others rely on welfare, including free medical care, but they are not eligible for government housing and must find accommodation in the private rental market.

INDONESIA

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Middle Eastern countries.

DESTINATION: Australia

GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE: Indonesia, with its thousands of islands and long stretches of unpatrolled coastlines, is a key transit country for asylum seekers and migrants wanting to get to Australia.

The country hasn’t signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and doesn’t legally recognize asylum seekers or refugees. But it does operate 13 detention centres around the country that temporarily house them while the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office processes their applications for refugee status and eventual resettlement in a third country such as the U.S. or Canada. Thousands more live on their own outside the detention centres.

MALAYSIA

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Mostly Myanmar, but also from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan.

DESTINATIONS: Most register with the UNHCR for resettlement in a third country while others travel through Malaysia to Indonesia in a bid to reach Australia.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: As in Indonesia and Thailand, asylum seekers and refugees have no legal status in Malaysia, putting them at risk of arrest and detention.

There are no refugee camps in Malaysia, and more than 100,000 of these “urban refugees” live in overcrowded, low-cost apartments or houses across the country. Their children do not have access to formal education. Barred legally from working, many earn money doing dirty or dangerous jobs that locals shun, while they wait for possible resettlement through the UNHCR — typically a process that lasts several years.

EUROPE

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Mainly Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia. Palestinians also have attempted to flee to Europe.

DESTINATION: Closest point of landfall, which usually means Italy, Greece or Malta. Many travel overland to Bulgaria and Hungary, favouring destinations like Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and other Nordic countries.

EUROPEAN UNION’S RESPONSE: Asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Europe without visas are interviewed and fingerprinted by authorities. EU nations have “reception centres” to house migrants where they are fed and given health care while their applications for asylum are being assessed.

Some migrants are given temporary permits allowing them to stay while their cases are studied. The country where they land is responsible for handling this, including providing free legal assistance. The process should not exceed 11 months. Those who do not qualify for residency of some kind are in some cases invited to leave Europe voluntarily, with some incentives. Others are expelled, sometimes put on a plane and flown to their home nation.

INDIA

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Sri Lanka

DESTINATION: India

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: After Sri Lanka’s civil war erupted in 1983, hundreds of thousands from the ethnic Tamil minority fled the fighting between the majority Sinhalese government and Tamil rebels demanding an independent homeland. The refugees arrived in waves — many aboard crowded, rickety wooden boats that crossed the narrow bay between Sri Lanka their island nation and India — and landed on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state.

The Indian government erected hundreds of refugee camps, where authorities questioned people to make sure they were not linked to the rebels. Once cleared, they were given living quarters, monthly rations and the chance to find work in the community.

With ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties to India’s Tamils in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, many refugees from Sri Lanka assimilated and took Indian citizenship. Others opted for repatriation offered at various times. The arrivals ceased when the Sri Lankan government crushed the rebels with months of heavy bombings and ended the war in 2009.

BANGLADESH

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Myanmar

DESTINATION: Bangladesh

THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE: Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority group in Myanmar, have fled to Bangladesh in recent years to escape persecution in the predominantly Buddhist nation. Roughly 400,000 Rohingya are believed to have gone to Bangladesh, where many of their ancestors came from, but only about 30,000 are officially recognized as refugees. The luckiest live in designated refugee camps, which include schools and clinics, but most either live in squalid informal camps or in poor, crowded neighbourhoods.

In 2012, when waves of Rohingya sought shelter in Bangladesh, border authorities reportedly forced more than 1,300 back into the sea in their creaky vessels. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina denied the refugees had been driven away, but made clear she didn’t want them, saying the country, already densely populated, “cannot bear this burden.”

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

DESTINATION: United States, Canada, Australia

FLIGHT AND RESPONSE: The mass exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” began in 1978, a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to escape persecution by the victorious Communist government. Another wave followed in the late 1980s. The United Nations refugee agency says at least 840,000 left by sea.

The majority initially landed in Hong Kong and several Southeast Asian Nations that established refugee camps and threatened to push them back, but most eventually settled in the United States, Canada and Australia.

By Charles Santiago

Malaysia Kini

April 20, 2015

It’s really nothing more than a group of powerful people who indulge in much backslapping and handshakes, sit at dinner tables pretending all is well and ignore raising crucial issues to ensure they themselves are not put in a tight spot.

How else could one describe Asean?

Last year, as meetings wrapped up at Naypyidaw, heads of states would have been relieved that cutting political issues such as the ruthless crackdown on dissidents in Cambodia, Brunei’s introduction of the punitive Shariah law that allows for the chopping of limbs for theft and stoning for adultery or the huge borrowing that Laos had indulged itself in, and the disappearance of Loatian social activist Sombath Somphone were never discussed.

And as the Asean chair, Myanmar had banned any talk about the ongoing persecution against the Rohingya Muslims. The generals and other cabinet members would have given themselves pats on the back for having successfully dodged questions about the minority community.

I mean if at all any member country bothered to demand answers from Myanmar, that is.

We cannot allow for the same script, expensive dinners and pretentious meetings next week, as the heads of states converge again for the Asean meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s federal capital.

If last year China’s territorial ambitions on the South China Sea was a crucial issue, this year the plight of the Rohingya deserves serious attention.

And as the chair of Asean, Malaysia must ensure that this is brought to the discussion table. Furthermore, Malaysia has an added responsibility as it vouched for the inclusion of Myanmar in Asean.

The persecution and targeted killings of the Rohingya show no signs of ending. And as the country gears up for the next election in November this year, there is fear of another escalation of violence against the Rohingya and other Muslim communities in the country.

The reality for the Rohingya in Myanmar remains one that is shrouded in hopelessness and uncertainty. They live in overcrowded displaced peoples’ camps in Sittwe, which lack basic sanitation.

Lack of access to clean drinking water means waterborne diseases are high. Food is still scarce despite intervention from the World Food Programme.

Recent travels by filmmakers and photographers to these camps reveal that women are forcefully taken away for sex by the military and boys and men often go missing or end up dead.

Gross human rights violations

Therefore, Asean cannot hide under its non-interference policy any more or shut a blind eye to the gross human rights violations and state-sponsored genocide against the Rohingya.

Asean member countries must pressure Myanmar and lobby for the Rohingya to be recognised as the country’s citizens once again.

While we welcome the Myanmar government’s efforts at a peace process, this must include the Rohingya as well.

Asean leaders must push for Myanmar to look into the Rohingya’s right of return to their homeland.

Over the years, Asean has been ridiculed as the toothless tiger. If Kuala Lumpur winds up the annual meeting, glossing over the Rohingya issue, then Asean will certainly have to bear the shameful stigma of ridicule for many more years to come.

CHARLES SANTIAGO is the DAP Member of Parliament for Klang, Malaysia.

RB News
April 20, 2015

Aman Ullah

RB Article

April 20, 2015

The government of Myanmar has hired lobbyists in Washington for the first time in more than a decade, signing a contract worth US$840,000 (K840 million) with the Podesta Group, a powerful US lobbying firm, to represent its interests in Washington, reports The Hill, which covers US politics, on April 16.

The Podesta Group is a lobbying and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C.. founded by Tony and John Podesta, with the latter serving as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and now campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. Connections between governments and other influential actors in Washington are far from unique to Myanmar. Last May, the connection made headlines when officials from the firm attended a meeting in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe.

Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress. It is a highly controversial phenomenon, often seen in a negative light by journalists and the American public.

The term lobby has etymological roots in the physical structure of the British Parliament, in which there was an intermediary covered room outside the main hall. People pushing an agenda would try to meet with members of Parliament in this room, and they came to be known, by metonymy, as lobbyists, although one account in 1890 suggested that the application of the word "lobby" is American and that the term is not used as much in Britain. 

However, the term "lobbying" generally means a paid activity with the purpose of attempting to "influence or sway" a public official - including bureaucrats and elected officials - towards a desired specific action often relating to specific legislation. If advocacy is disseminating information, including attempts to persuade public officials as well as the public and media to promote the cause of something and support it, then when this activity becomes focused on specific legislation, either in support or in opposition, then it crosses the line from advocacy and becomes lobbying. This is the usual sense of the term "lobbying." One account suggested that much of the activity of nonprofits was not lobbying per se, since it usually did not mean changes in legislation. 

The securing of these services comes as the United States continues to assess how far it can go in its evolving relationship with Naypyidaw, with the country’s historic opening in 2010 and ongoing rapprochement with Washington in peril with stalled reforms ahead of crucial elections later this year. Some – including in the US Congress – remain concerned about the country’s future direction, with critical constitutional reforms being unrealized and lingering problems including those related to ethnic conflict, inter-communal violence and human rights. Some lawmakers have argued that the Obama administration has done too much too soon, and have called for a suspension of further US ‘concessions’ and even restrictions on the regime in Naypyidaw.

According to the Hill Reports, “The government of Myanmar has hired lobbyists in Washington for the first time in more than a decade, signing a contract worth $840,000 with the Podesta Group.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has had a tumultuous history, with colonization giving way to years of military rule. The country is in the midst of political reforms spurred in 2010 that were intended to move the country toward democracy.

The contract comes ahead of crucial elections in the country later this year that could go a long way toward determining whether the country’s rapprochement with the United States continues.”

The contract between Podesta Group and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, which has been signed by representatives at the embassy, will last 12 months. Each quarter, the country will pay the firm $210,000 — a relatively minor sum compared to other FARA deals

Documents say that the lobby firm “will provide strategic counsel to the principal on strengthening the principal's ties to the United States government and institutions.”

Podesta Group “will also assist in communicating priority issues in the United States-Myanmar bilateral relationship to relevant U.S. audiences, including the U.S. Congress, executive branch, media, and policy community,” according to a filing with Justice Department.

Washington has begun a slow but cautious embrace of Myanmar in recent years.

Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Myanmar in 2012, and traveled to the country again in 2014. His administration has worked to ease some of the sanctions imposed on Myanmar, as long as it makes strides on human rights and democracy.

Many members of Congress remains skeptical, noting the military still has a hold on many parliament seats. The government there also faces accusations of violence and punishing journalists and political prisoners.

Priscilla Clapp, the former US ambassador to Myanmar from 1999 to 2002, told The Hill that the country’s link with the Podesta Group was not surprising given its troubled transition and need to better navigate the American political system.

In late 2015, Myanmar is set for a general election that will be the most monitored in its history, Clapp said, to ensure that it is “free and fair.”

“Nobody expected them to move as fast as they did, or as far, in the first two years,” Clapp said. “That fueled greater expectations for the next two years” and into the present day.

“You end up moving so fast that you hit a wall and you smash your nose — and that’s what ended up happening” in the country, she said.

“The breadth of the transition that’s going on in the country is so wide and so deep that it’s having a lot of unintended consequences in the country and in the society,” Clapp said. “I suspect that this is some of the reason the embassy would want to have a very highly reputable, politically savvy firm representing them here,” she added, “because they don’t have the capacity to maneuver the political system here in the U.S., they want to make sure that the policy community in Washington understands them better.”

Some will undoubtedly view the link between Myanmar and US lobbyists as a way for Naypyidaw to deflect efforts at reform at home by shaping the narrative abroad.

“Rather than really reforming, Burma will pay Washington lobbyist $840K/year to pretend it is,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted on April 15.

By Kenny Mah

The Malay Mail Online

April 17, 2015

KUALA LUMPUR — This Saturday, Malaysians will be able to put a face to the persecuted Rohingya people of Myanmar courtesy of an exhibition by American documentary photographer Greg Constantine.

Open to the public from tomorrow to May 1, 2015 at Prototype Gallery L4 at Wisma Central on Jalan Ampang, the exhibition is called Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.

Held in collaboration with the National Endowment for Democracy, Blue Earth Alliance, Tenaganita and Prototype Gallery, Exiled to Nowhere is the latest in a series of international exhibitions held in London, Canberra, Brussels, Jakarta, Bangkok, Tokyo, and most recently in Geneva.

Constantine, who has been recording the struggles of the Rohingya for the past nine years, hopes to highlight the persecution and human rights violations against this stateless community in Myanmar.

A book of the same title chronicling his project was published to critical acclaim in 2012. We chat with Constantine about his experiences and his passion for documenting the stories of the stateless.

What drew you to the Rohingya situation? 

It’s all about the issue of statelessness. My work on the Rohingya has been specifically in southern Bangladesh and inside Rakhine in Burma. I think for anyone who wants to know more about the issue of statelessness in Asia, you have to be exposed to the story of the Rohingya.

In my own experience, the Rohingya case is by far the most extreme situation of statelessness in the world today. And in so many ways, it is the most severe situation of human rights abuse I have experienced as well. For me to do the work that I needed to do for this project, Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya, I had to spend time in Bangladesh and when the violence erupted against the Rohingya in Burma in 2012, I had to go there to document it.

It is a story that changes for the worse every year and I wanted to create a long, sustained documentation of this story for people to see. I started photographing the Rohingya in southern Bangladesh in early 2006 and made 8 trips to Bangladesh from 2006-2012. Since the violence in Burma in 2012, I’ve travelled to Burma four times, most recently in November 2014.

You’ve been based in South-east Asia for the past 10 years. Has it been predominantly Burma and Bangladesh? 

Actually I’ve spent a lot of time in countries throughout the region working on stories for my Nowhere People project. In 2006/2007, I spent time in Sabah, Malaysia working on a story about stateless children there. I’ve created photo essays on stateless people in Burma, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The project has slowly spread beyond South-east Asia. Since 2008, I’ve created photo essays on stateless people in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon, Ukraine, Serbia, Italy, Holland and the Dominican Republic. So, it truly is a comprehensive exploration of an issue that is global. 

How did you get started in documentary photography?

I made a big shift in careers when I was about 31 years old. For much of my 20s I worked for different companies related to the music industry in the US. I studied business in university; I’m a self-taught photographer.

When I was in my late 20s, I quit my job, cashed in my retirement savings and travelled in Asia for seven months. That trip in 1998 was followed by a second trip in 2000 that was eight months long and it was during these two trips that I fell in love with photography as a means to tell stories. 

It took several years, but slowly I transitioned into a full-time photographer working on long-term personal projects that focus on human rights and other social issues and injustices. In 2005, I moved from the US to South-east Asia and began my long-term project Nowhere People, which documents people and communities around the world who have been denied or stripped of the fundamental right to citizenship and as a result are stateless.

I’ve now spent nine years working almost exclusively on Nowhere People (www.nowherepeople.org) of which my work on the Rohingya is by far the biggest chapter.

What was your most challenging experience in chronicling the Rohingya situation?

I think the biggest struggle has been trying to find outlets actually interested in publishing the work. It’s become increasingly more difficult to find traditional magazines or newspapers that are willing to publish these stories. So in many ways, I’ve not put much faith in the traditional print media to get my work out there. 

How do you engage people? I’ve had to adapt and that is the reason why I’ve chosen exhibitions as the primary way to get the work out there and it has been incredibly rewarding to see how various audiences are engaged with this story. The situation for the Rohingya in Burma and Bangladesh gets worse every year. And seeing how nothing has changed over the years is another of the more frustrating aspects of documenting the Rohingya. 

After every trip to Bangladesh and especially after every trip to Burma since 2012, I always walk away saying, “How can this still be happening?” But it is still happening and people need to know it is happening. I’ve seen a lot of suffering with the Rohingya community all these years. 

Burma really is a beautiful country, but unfortunately, one experience that will stay in my memory for many years to come, will be the streets of downtown Sittwe, lined with ordinary citizens of the Rakhine community, clapping their hands and cheering as over 2,000 people (including hundreds of monks, students, men and women) marched through the streets of Sittwe shouting racist, anti-Rohingya chants. It was a very public display of hatred, bigotry and racism that is very different from the picture most people have in their head of Burma.

Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya

Prototype Gallery L4, Level 4, Wisma Central, Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur 

April 18 — May 1, 2015

www.exiledtonowhere.com

Opening Hours: Mon-Sat 10am - 8pm, Sun 10am – 5pm

Public Launch: Saturday, April 18th @ 3pm – 6pm

Photographer’s Talk: Sunday, April 19th @ 2pm – 4pm

For information, please contact Greg Constantine (grconstantine@gmail.com) or Syed Iskandar (skandar.uw@gmail.com).

By Karen Arukesamy

The Sun Daily

April 16, 2015

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will not open its doors to refugees and asylum seekers, especially to the Rohingyas from Myanmar, even under humanitarian grounds, as they have become a security threat here.

Reiterating the government’s stand in not recognising or accepting refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim called on the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees (UNHCR) to speed up the repatriation process.

“If we open the gates, the waters will gush in and flood the country … the problem is their presence here is a threat to our security, they are causing a lot of problems here,” Shahidan told the Dewan Negara today.

He was responding to Senator Datuk Noriah Mahat and Senator Datuk Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki on whether the government would consider opening doors to allow refugees and asylum seekers access for education in local institutions and/or welfare under humanitarian grounds.

“As we already know, we allow them to study in private schools, but that’s not the problem, their presence here is a threat to our security.

“The government’s stand is very clear, we will not allow them to stay unless there is a specific agreement made with regards to this,” Shahidan said.

He added that the government has constantly urged UNHCR to speed up repatriation to either the original country or a third country.

Pointing out that Malaysia is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the Refugee Status Protocol 1967, Shahidan said these refugees and asylum seekers, especially the Rohingya community, could go to Cambodia or Philippines, which are signatories to the convention.

By David Reich

Boston College Law School Magazine

April 15, 2015

The word genocide calls to mind events like the Jewish and Armenian holocausts, but according to Maung Zarni, a Burmese scholar affiliated with Harvard and the London School of Economics, smaller-scale killing can also fit the definition “if done in an attempt to destroy a people.” 

Such is the case with the victimization of Burma’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic group by members of the Buddhist majority, which has involved explicit violence on a relatively modest scale but also forced birth control, forced relocation, and denial of access to food and medical care, said Zarni, who on April 13, delivered a lecture on the topic, sponsored by the Law School’s Owen M. Kupferschmid Holocaust and Human Rights Project. 

How could Buddhists, raised to spare the lives of all creatures, even insects, perpetrate a genocide? The answer, Zarni said, is common to every genocide: the perpetrator learns to see himself as a victim, and a defender of his nation or ethnic group. “We have to frame the target of the attack as a threat to our livelihood, a threat to our national community, as a virus, a leach, a bloodsucker,” he said. 

All genocides have another common element, Zarni said, in that the genocidal acts are orchestrated, not spontaneous. “This is not like football hooliganism,” he said, “where your team lost and you want to express your rage. You always find an organization, you always find leaders who are mobilizing public opinion [in favor of] an act that is otherwise unthinkable.”