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SPEAKING UP. Indonesia's Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi speaks at the RSIS Distinguished Public Lecture titled "Indonesia's Foreign Policy under the Jokowi Administration" in Singapore on February 10, 2017. Photo by Roslan Rahman/ AFP

By AFP
February 11, 2017

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, joins a chorus of concern Friday calling for an end to the crisis

SINGAPORE – Myanmar should take significant steps to achieve peace in Rakhine state, Indonesia's foreign minister said on Friday, February 10, warning that the bloody crackdown on the country's Muslim Rohingya minority could lead to instability across South East Asia.

Hundreds of Rohingya are thought to have been killed during a brutal campaign by Myanmar security forces in Rakhine to find militants accused of carrying out deadly raids on police border posts.

Almost 70,000 have fled to Bangladesh since "clearance operations" began 4 months ago, bringing horrific stories of mass rape, murder, torture and arson.

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, joined a chorus of concern Friday calling for an end to the crisis.

"I would like to once again reiterate the importance for the government of Myanmar to take significant steps to create an enabling environment for peace and reconciliation to take place," said foreign minister Retno Marsudi on a visit to Singapore.

"Indonesia shares the concern of the international community on the humanitarian and security situation in Rakhine state."

The plight of the Rohingya, a stateless group denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and reviled as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, has become a lightning rod for anger across the Muslim world. 

Myanmar also drew criticism from Malaysia on the issue last month, in a rare spat between Southeast Asian neighbours.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya was a "stain" on the 10-member Southeast Asian regional bloc ASEAN, and warned that Islamist extremists may exploit the crisis.

Marsudi made clear that Indonesia wanted to provide constructive assistance.

"Our inability to address the situation in Rakhine state will no doubt have (a) negative impact on the region's stability. It is within this context that Indonesia has taken an active role in assisting Myanmar to address the situation."

Last month, a Myanmar delegation was in Indonesia to learn how Jakarta reached a peace deal between warring Muslims and Christians in the eastern province of Maluku, Marsudi added.

One member of that delegation was Ko Ni, a 63-year-old Muslim lawyer who was assassinated outside Yangon's airport on January 29 on his return.

Ko Ni was a prominent Muslim figure who spoke out against the increasingly vocal anti-Islamic sentiments of Buddhist hardliners and criticised the military's lingering grip on power.

A Rohingya Muslim woman and her son cry after being caught by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) while illegally crossing at a border check point in Cox’s Bazar , Bangladesh, November 21, 2016. REUTERS

February 11, 2017

Mass gang-rape, killings – including of babies and young children, brutal beatings, disappearances and other serious human rights violations by Myanmar’s security forces in a sealed-off area north of Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State have been detailed in a new UN report issued February 3 based on interviews with victims across the border in Bangladesh

Of the 204 people individually interviewed by a team of UN human rights investigators, the vast majority reported witnessing killings, and almost half reported having a family member who was killed as well as family members who were missing. Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported having suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence.

Especially revolting were the accounts of children – including an eight-month old, a five-year-old and a six-year-old – who were slaughtered with knives. One mother recounted how her five-year-old daughter was trying to protect her from rape when a man “took out a long knife and killed her by slitting her throat”. In another case, an eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers.

“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable – what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk? And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her – what kind of ‘clearance operation’ is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?” High Commissioner Zeid said, noting the report suggests the recent level of violence to be unprecedented.

At the request of the High Commissioner, an OHCHR four-member team was granted access to Bangladesh from January 8-23, 2017 to interview Rohingyas who had entered Bangladesh from northern Rakhine State in the aftermath of the October 9, 2016 attacks.

The team gathered testimony from more than 220 people who had fled Rakhine state, conducting interviews from January 12-21, 2017 in the district of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Here are a few of the accounts reflecting the horrible nightmare inflicted upon the Rohingya:

Death due to stabbing by knife

An 18-year old girl from Kyet Yoe Pyin lost her mother in a knife attack: “My mother was rather old, over 60, so when the military came she could not run very well, so we saw them catch
her and cut her throat with a long knife.”

Beaten to death

A resident of Laung Don informed OHCHR: “The military rounded me and some 85 other villagers up. They tied our hands behind our backs. We were taken to an open space, where we were forced to sit in a stress position, with our body bent and looking down towards the ground. They were hitting us with rifle butts, wooden sticks, kicking and punching us, inflicting severe injuries. An elderly villager was beaten to death by five army officers in front of our eyes.”

Killings of children

A mother of four from Pwint Hpyu Chaung: “I fled together with my four children. I was holding and carrying the two youngest. My two oldest children, my daughter who was six years old and my son who was 10, were behind me. When the armed men were running after me, I hid behind some trees and bushes. The men caught my two oldest children and killed them. They used a knife of the kind we use to slaughter goats. I saw this from where I was hiding.”

Rape

A 27-year old old fisherman from Kyein Chaung: “During their operations, the army entered our house, where they found my mother, wife and sister at home. They took my 18-year-old sister to nearby bushes and gang-raped her. She was brought back after the rape. She was in a critical situation and died the same day. I was in the canal fishing and upon my return, I found her dead.”

Sexual violence other than rape

“They would also press our breasts and put hands on other private parts in the name of searching for objects we were hiding. They did this to me, my daughter and my daughter-in-law. They did this in front of everyone in the paddy field, it was so embarrassing. They even touched my seven-year-old daughter on her chest and near her private parts.” 45-year-old woman from U Shey Kya.

The accounts from the report conclude that the widespread violations against the Rohingya population indicate the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.

Canadian High Commissioner Benoit-Pierre Laramée is seen talking to Rohingya refugees at Ukhiya camp on Thursday
Dhaka Tribune

By Abdul Aziz
February 9, 2017

The high commissioners of Australia, Britain and Canada visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar on Thursday.

The high commissioners of three Commonwealth countries have visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

Australian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Julia Niblett, British High Commissioner Alison Blake, and Canadian High Commissioner Benoit-Pierre Laramée visited a Kutupalang Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhiya around 11am on Thursday. They were accompanied by representatives of the district administration, police, United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, International Organisation for Migration and Action Against Hunger.

The high commissioners spoke to a number of refugees at an unregistered camp, after which they spoke to the media.

Alison Blake, high commissioner of Britain, said: “I have a first-hand account of what life is like in the refugee camps. The refugees have told us all about the torture and the massacre in Myanmar.

“Based on their accounts, the atrocities in Myanmar is tantamount to genocide. We urge the Myanmar government to put an end to the hostilities and repatriate the Rohingya population,” she said.

Benoit-Pierre echoed her compatriot’s sentiments and lauded the Bangladesh government’s efforts to accommodate the Rohingya people.

She said: “The government’s humanitarian actions are laudable. We have to continue working to protect the basic human rights of the Rohingya.”

Australian High Commissioner Julia emphasised the need for international efforts to preserve the rights of the Rohingya people when they are sent back to Myanmar.

They reached Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday afternoon and met with Additional Deputy Commissioner Kazi Abdur Rahman, who received the envoys on behalf of the deputy commissioner.

The three envoys praised the Bangladesh government for accommodating the Rohingya refugees during this time of crisis.

Earlier, a three-member team of the Annan Commission visited the refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf on January 29 and 30.

On January 31, a nine-member delegation, including US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, visited the Rohingya camps.

An estimated 70,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since the army began a massive anti-insurgency operation in the Rohingya-dominated area in October.

Two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing violence say more than 1,000 Rohingyas may have been killed in the crackdown.

The Myanmar government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, has previously denied allegations of torture, rape, arson and murder by the army during the operation.

About 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Rohingya refugees look on inside their house at Balukhali Makeshift Refugee Camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, February 8, 2017. © Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

February 9, 2017

Provide Protection, Not Isolation on Flooded Island
New York – The Bangladeshi government should immediately drop its plan to transfer Rohingya refugees to an uninhabited, undeveloped coastal island, Human Rights Watch said today. Relocating the refugees from the Cox’s Bazar area to Thengar Char island would deprive them of their rights to freedom of movement, livelihood, food and education, in violation of Bangladesh’s obligations under international human rights law.

Between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, most of them unregistered by the authorities, are in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Burma dating back to the 1990s. Since October 2016, nearly 69,000 Rohingya from Rakhine State in Burma have entered Bangladesh to escape attacks by Burmese security forces, including unlawful killings, sexual violence and wholesale destruction of villages.

“The Bangladesh government is making the ridiculous claim that relocating Rohingya refugees to an island with absolutely no facilities that is deluged at high tide and submerged during the monsoon season will improve their living conditions,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “This proposal is both cruel and unworkable and should be abandoned.”

The plan to move long-term refugees to Thengar Char was first suggested in 2015, but was shelved after widespread condemnation.

A 2015 letter from the Bangladeshi government on the appropriate location to relocate the refugees stated that it must “minimize conflicts between Bangladeshis and Rohingya.” Thengar Chor was apparently chosen because of its distance from inhabited areas – it is 30 kilometers from the populated Hatiya island and a long journey from existing Rohingya camps. 

The government revived the plan in late January 2017 following the new influx of Rohingya refugees. Officials contended that the new arrivals pose a law and order and a public health problem, but have produced no evidence to support this claim. In addition, the government has issued warnings against new arrivals mixing with the general population and established committees to increase security around the camps to prevent refugees from exiting the camps or “intermingling” with Bangladeshi citizens.

A cabinet order, passed on January 26, 2017, is unclear as to whether all Rohingya in Bangladesh would be transferred or only new arrivals. However, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammad Shahriar Alom has said that, “The Rohingya will live [in Thengar Char] temporarily and our desire is that the Myanmar [Burma] government will take them back as soon as possible.”

Journalists who have visited Thengar Char island, which emerged from river silt deposited in the Bay of Bengal just a decade ago, describe it as empty and featureless, subject to cyclones and flooding. During monsoon season, the island is submerged; anyone living on the island will have to be evacuated, and any infrastructure would be damaged. The government announced that it will build embankments around the island to stave off the constant flooding, but similar islands along the coast have long faced flooding and frequent evacuations despite government interventions. One government official from the area, speaking anonymously to the BBC, said that sending people to live there was “a terrible idea,” noting that the island is "only accessible during winter and is a haven for pirates."

Aid agencies, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which administers the refugee camps, expressed alarm over the revival of this plan, and said that any relocation of the refugees to Thengar Char must be voluntary, and be done through a consultative process after a feasibility study has been completed.

Human Rights Watch regards Rohingya people who flee from Burma to Bangladesh to be prima facie refugees for four reasons. First, the Burmese government has effectively denied its Rohingya minority citizenship, failing to protect them and itself perpetrating rampant and systemic violation of their human rights, including restrictions on movement; limitations on access to health care, livelihood, shelter, and education; arbitrary arrests and detention; and forced labor. Second, because of Burma’s discriminatory citizenship policies, it also refuses to cooperate in the repatriation of Rohingya, itself a denial of the human right of any person to return to their country, and the basis for a sur place claim to refugee status. Third, Bangladesh is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and has neither registered Rohingya as refugees since the early 1990s, nor allowed them to lodge asylum claims, thereby abdicating its responsibility to determine their status. Finally, a person does not become a refugee because of recognition, but is recognized because they meet the refugee definition, so refugees in Bangladesh do not forfeit their rights as refugees simply because the authorities have not recognized their status.

“The Bangladeshi government needs to treat the persecuted Rohingya humanely, but they shouldn’t have to go it alone,” Adams said. “Instead of dumping Rohingya on a flooded island, the government should be seeking immediate donor support to improve existing conditions for the refugees.”

Rohingya refugees sit on the roadside to get financial help from commuters near Kutupalang Makeshift Refugee Camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Antoni Slodkowski
February 9, 2017

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, according to two senior United Nations officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence, suggesting the death toll has been a far greater than previously reported.

The officials, from two separate UN agencies working in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months, said they were concerned the outside world had not fully grasped the severity of the crisis unfolding in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

"The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation - we could be looking at thousands," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both officials, in separate interviews, cited the weight of testimony gathered by their agencies from refugees over the past four months for concluding the death toll likely exceeded 1,000. 

Myanmar's presidential spokesman, Zaw Htay, said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people have been killed in a counterinsurgency operation against Rohingya militants who attacked police border posts in October.

Asked about the UN officials' comments that the dead could number more than 1,000, he said: "Their number is much greater than our figure. We have to check on the ground."

About 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

In addition to the information the two UN officials gave Reuters, a report released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Friday gave accounts of mass killings and gang rapes by troops in northwestern Myanmar in recent months, which it said probably constituted crimes against humanity.

The government led by Aung San Suu Kyi said last week it would investigate the allegations in the report. It has previously denied almost all accusations of killings, rapes and arson.

But mounting evidence of atrocities by the army puts Suu Kyi, who has no control over the armed forces under a constitution written by the previous military government, in a difficult position, Myanmar-based diplomats say.

The Nobel peace prize winner has been criticized in the West for her silence on the issue, undermining the goodwill she built up as a democracy champion under years of junta rule and threatening international support. Challenging the generals, however, could put Myanmar's democratic transition at risk.

COUNTING THE DEAD

Independent verification of what has been happening in Myanmar is extremely difficult as the military has cut off access to northwestern Rakhine.

The OHCHR report cited supporting evidence including bullet and knife wounds sustained by refugees and satellite imagery showing destruction of villages.

A second senior UN official, from a different agency in Bangladesh, told Reuters that the report only described "the tip of the iceberg".

The OHCHR report was based on interviews with 220 people, the majority of whom said they knew of people who had been killed or disappeared.

Reuters also has reviewed a separate, internal UN analysis using a much larger sample size.

In this unpublished report, based on interviews with families comprising more than 1,750 refugees, there were 182 reports of killings of people just in the interviewee's home village, and 186 reports of people from their village disappearing, more than 10 percent in both cases.

The document acknowledges the actual number in both categories was likely lower as interviewees from the same village may have separately described the same incidents.

The UN says 69,000 people have crossed the border since October, so if the proportion reporting people killed or missing among all the refugees was consistent with those in the report the total number would run into the thousands.

HARROWING ACCOUNTS

According to refugees' accounts provided to Reuters in camps in Bangladesh over the past two weeks, the army intensified its offensive in northern Rakhine in mid-November, unleashing what the OHCHR report described as a "calculated policy of terror" after an incident in which several hundred Rohingya attacked an outnumbered group of soldiers, killing an officer.

The OHCHR report details deaths in random firings, including from helicopters and grenades; targeted killings of imams and teachers, slitting of throats with knives and locking people inside burning houses.

Reuters reporters have heard similar accounts from refugees in the camps in Bangladesh.

Khatun Hazera, a 35-year-old woman from the village of Kya Guang Taung, told Reuters that soldiers shot her husband, a teacher at the village madrassa, as he was returning from school with his students.

"They shot him and then turned the body upside down, dragged it, put a sword inside it and took pictures," she said. Her elderly parents-in-law, interviewed separately, gave similar accounts.

Reuters could not independently confirm these accounts. 

Presidential spokesman Zaw Htay said the authorities "will try to verify" such reports, adding: "If it's true we need to find out the reason and the background data about the incident."

"WHERE ARE THE MEN?"

The OHCHR report says that the vast majority of the new Rohingya refugees were women and children, raising questions about the fate of the men left behind, UN officials said.

"Boys and men between the age of 17 and 45 were particularly targeted, as they are considered to be strong and seen as a potential threat to the army and authorities," it said, adding that many accounts describe men of that age being rounded up and taken away with their hands tied behind their backs or heads.

Zaw Htay said the police and army were doing their jobs in making arrests.

Myanmar authorities have given little information about how many may have been detained, although prison officials told a UN human rights envoy last month that they were holding about 450 people.

"If you look at the new arrivals - the majority are women - so many of them talk about a killed husband, a slaughtered uncle or a missing brother. Where are all the men?" said the first UN official.

(Additional reporting by Simon Lewis in Yangon; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Boxes with images of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak containing aid for Rohingya are piled up on a Malaysian ship upon arrival at Thilawa port in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017. The “Food Flotilla for Myanmar” carrying 2,300 tons of food and medicine to help members of Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority arrived in Yangon as rights groups accuse the army of mass killings, rapes and other crimes targeting the ethnic group. (Thein Zaw/Associated Press)

By Esther Htusan 
February 9, 2017

YANGON, Myanmar — A Malaysian ship carrying 2,300 tons of food and medicine to help members of Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority arrived in Yangon on Thursday as rights groups accuse the army of mass killings, rapes and other crimes targeting the ethnic group.

The “Food Flotilla for Myanmar” arrived following a sweeping counterinsurgency campaign in Rakhine state, where most of the estimated 1 million Rohingya live. Last week, U.N. human rights investigators said it was “very likely” that Myanmar forces were guilty of crimes against humanity in the crackdown.

Organizers of the aid shipment say they trust the Myanmar government to deliver the supplies as promised despite its record of discrimination.

“We have to respect Myanmar’s sovereignty,” said Razali Ramli, from the 1Putera Club Malaysia, which helped organize the shipment along with a coalition of non-government organizations. “We hand over the aid in good faith.”

The Rohingya have long faced official and social persecution in Myanmar, a majority-Buddhist country. Most do not have citizenship and are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even when their families have lived in Myanmar’s Rakhine state for generations.

The conflict has been simmering for years but there are worrying signs that it is escalating into an armed insurgency, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group.

The army launched its most recent crackdown in October following attacks on guard posts near the Bangladesh border that killed nine police officers. According to ICG, the border attacks were coordinated by a new insurgent group calling itself Harakah al-Yaqin, or the Faith Movement.

Organized by a network of Rohingya in Saudi Arabia and bankrolled by wealthy donors, the militant group is drawing Muslims disillusioned and desperate from years of disenfranchisement by the Myanmar government, the report said.

The government has denied abuses and has blocked independent journalists and aid workers from visiting the military’s operation zone in Rakhine. On Wednesday, the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said a government-appointed commission on Rakhine will investigate some of the recent accusations of abuse.

“Where there is clear evidence of abuses and violations, the government will take necessary measures,” she said in a statement carried by the country’s state-run newspaper.

When Malaysia first proposed the flotilla in December, Myanmar officials said they would turn it away. In January they said they’d permit the vessel, but that it had to dock in Yangon instead of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine.

Malaysia, which has a Muslim majority, is an outspoken critic of Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. Last month, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak slammed Myanmar for letting the abuses continue.

On Thursday, dozens of Buddhist monks protested outside the port where the aid ship arrived, denying that the ethnic group Rohingya even exists. Many in Myanmar refer to the Rohingya as Bengalis, suggesting they belong in Bangladesh.

“We can accept if the ship is coming to help the Bengalis and we are not trying to stop the donation,” said Win Ko Ko Lat, the leader of Myanmar Buddhist Nationalists Network. “But we want them to know that there is no Rohingya in Myanmar. This is our campaign.”

A detailed report released last week by the U.N.’s human rights agency alleging widespread killing and rape by Myanmar government security forces has intensified international concern about the Rohingyas’ plight.

On Wednesday, Pope Francis appealed for prayers for the Rohingya ethnic minority.

“These are good people, peaceful people,” Francis said. “They’re not Christians, but they’re good, our brothers and sisters. And they have been suffering for years. They’ve been tortured and killed, simply because they are continuing their traditions, their Muslim faith. Let us pray for them,” he said.
__

AP writer Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

Children recycle goods from the ruins of a market which was set on fire at a Rohingya village outside Maugndaw in Rakhine state, Myanmar, October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

February 8, 2017

Pope Francis issued a stinging criticism of atrocities against Myanmar's Rohingya minority on Wednesday, saying they had been tortured and killed simply because they wanted to live their culture and Muslim faith.

The pope's remarks at his weekly audience followed last week's U.N. report that said security forces in the north of the country had carried out mass killings, gang rapes and had burned villages.

"They have been suffering for years, they have been tortured, killed simply because they wanted to live their culture and their Muslim faith," the pope said.

"They have been thrown out of Myanmar, moved from one place to the other because no one wants them. But they are good people, peaceful people. They are not Christian. They are good people. They are our brothers and sisters," he said.

After the report was issued on Friday, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, said Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi had promised to investigate the allegations.

Myanmar, a mostly Buddhist country, had previously denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses against Muslims in the north. The pope is expected to visit neighbouring Bangladesh later this year.

Witnesses cited in the U.N. report testified to "the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food".

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Rohingya children react to the camera as they attend a class at a school inside the Kutupalang Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters

By Adam Withnall
February 8, 2017

'The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths... we could be looking at thousands'

The Burmese authorities may have killed more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims during a recent crackdown on the minority group in the northeast Rakhine state, two unnamed UN officials have told the Reuters news agency.

Authorities in Burma launched a military campaign against the Rohingya after militant elements of the group were accused of attacking police border posts in October last year.

The government accepts it has killed some Rohingyas in the crackdown but denies allegations of atrocities against civilians, including claims that women and children have been raped and murdered.

The two UN officials, who Reuters said were senior members of different agencies involved in monitoring the human rights situation in Burma, said they were concerned the scale of the casualties had not been grasped by the outside world.

"The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths," one was quoted as saying. "This is probably an underestimation - we could be looking at thousands."

Myanmar's presidential spokesman, Zaw Htay, said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 Rohingya militants have been killed in a counterinsurgency operation.

Asked about the UN officials' comments that the death toll could be over 1,000, he said: "Their number is much greater than our figure. We have to check on the ground."

Earlier, Pope Francis issued a strong defence of the Rohingya Muslims' right to live free from persecution. In a stinging attack on the Burmese regime, the Pope said the Rohingyas have been tortured and killed “simply because they want to live their culture and their Muslim faith”.

Pope Francis made his comments during an unprepared section of his weekly address. He appeared to be referring to a UN rights office “flash report”, issued last week, detailing allegations of abuse, rape and murder of Rohingyas at the hands of the Burmese military.

The UN has previously dubbed the Rohingyas, who are also denied access to university education and in 2013 were hit with a two-child policy, as “the most oppressed people on Earth”.

"Pope Francis' comments should serve as a wake up call to the international community," Charu Lata Hogg, an associate fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House, told The Independent.

"Despite the scathing UN report and the stream of NGO reporting on the plight of the Rohingyas, there doesn't seem to have been much international condemnation. 

"Strong political leverages need to be exercised to stop this egregious assault on a stateless people."

Sufia Begum, a Rohingya who crossed over to Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state in November. AP

By Robbie Gamer 
February 8, 2017

It's a United Nations report that its officials themselves call revolting and unbearable. Myanmar's security forces killed, gang-raped, and tortured hundreds of Rohingya Muslims in a wave of unprecedented violence, according to a new UN report earlier released this month. Victims included children and babies as young as 8 months.

In recent months, Myanmar security forces stepped up their efforts to clear the ethnic group from the country's borders – in a campaign of "area clearance operations" – to historic levels in terms of scale and brutality.​

"The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths and have led to an estimated 66,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh and 22,000 being internally displaced," the new UN report says.

A UN human rights research team wrote the report after interviewing hundreds of Rohingya who Myanmar security forces drove to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Rohingya in the Kutapalong refugee camp in Bangladesh in January. More than 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since October last year, after the Burmese army launched a campaign it calls "clearance operations".Allison Joyce

The UN human rights office called the accounts "revolting". Of the 101 women interviewed, over half told the UN team they had been sexually assaulted, raped, or gang-raped. One gang-rape victim was 11 years old. Another was nine months pregnant. The UN also received reports of Myanmar security forces killing children aged 6 and younger with knives.

"The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement. "What kind of 'clearance operation' is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?" he added. In December, John McKissick, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees, labelled the operations, which first started in October, "ethnic cleansing."

Military backed

The Rohingya, numbering 1.1 million people in the country's western Rakhine state, are loathed by the rest of the population and live in apartheid conditions. They've been called "the most persecuted minority in the world".

Despite its brutality, the military's campaign against the Rohingya is widely popular in Myanmar. The military claims it is fighting a Rohingya rebel insurgency, which restored the military's popularity in the public's eye.


A Rohingya woman feeds her one-month-old baby at an internal displacement camp in Sittwe, Myanmar. Getty Images

Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a recipient of the Nobel peace prize, is facing increasing international criticism for ignoring the plight of Myanmar's Muslim population – though it's unclear how much authority she has over the military.

She refused UN requests to gain full access to its Rakhine state, where most of the violence reportedly took place. After the report's release last Friday, Ms Suu Kyi vowed to launch an investigation into the crimes and "take all necessary action" against abusers.

On Sunday, one of the country's top legal advisers and a prominent member of Myanmar's minority Muslim community, Ko Ni, was shot dead after speaking out about atrocities against the Rohingya. At the time he was shot, Ko Ni was holding his grandson.

UNHCR: "The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable." AP

Robbie Gamer is associate director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Brent Scowcroft Centre on International Security

Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng. UN Photo/Manuel Elias

February 7, 2017

The scale of violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar's Rakhine state documented in a recent United Nations human rights report is a level of dehumanization and cruelty that is “revolting and unacceptable,” the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide said today, underlining the Government's responsibility to ensure that populations are protected.

In a statement, Special Adviser Adama Dieng said the flash report issued last week by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) gave further credibility to allegations that security forces were committing serious human rights violations against civilians in northern Rakhine state from the very beginning of the recent escalation of violence, which was precipitated by attacks on border posts in early October 2016 and the ensuing operations by those forces. 

According to the findings contained in the OHCHR report, human rights violations committed by the security forces include mass gang-rape, extra-judicial killings – including of babies and young children, brutal beatings and disappearances. 

“If people are being persecuted based on their identity and killed, tortured, raped and forcibly transferred in a widespread or systematic manner, this could amount to crimes against humanity, and in fact be the precursor of other egregious international crimes,” said Mr. Dieng. 

“This must stop right now!” he declared. 

Current panel not a credible option to carry out new investigation

Mr. Dieng also expressed concern that the commission previously appointed by the Government to investigate the allegations and which, despite having unhindered access to the region, found no evidence, or insufficient evidence, of any wrongdoing by Government forces. 

“[However,] OHCHR, which was not given access to the area, found an overwhelming number of testimonies and other forms of evidence through interviews with refugees who had fled to a neighbouring country,” the Special Adviser added. “The existing Commission is not a credible option to undertake the new investigation.” 

“I urge that any investigation be conducted by a truly independent and impartial body that includes international observers,” he noted, welcoming the Government's commitment to open an immediate probe. 

“If the Government wants the international community and regional actors to believe in their willingness to resolve the matter, they must act responsibly and demonstrate their sincerity,” Mr. Dieng said. 

“There is no more time to wait. All of this is happening against the background of very deeply rooted and long-standing discriminatory practices and policies against the Rohingya Muslims and a failure to put in place conditions that would support peaceful coexistence among the different communities in Rakhine state,” he concluded.

(Photo: CNN)


By Zeenat Islam
February 7, 2017

“Five soldiers were taking turns to rape a 25 year old woman after they butchered her husband with a knife, when her eight month old son started crying because he was hungry and wanted to be breast fed. To silence him, they killed him too with a knife.”

This is the nature of reports currently pouring out of the Rohingya community in Myanmar. The Rohingya have been described as the most persecuted minority in the world. So why do so few of us know who they are?

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority, originating from the Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) in Myanmar (Burma). They are both ethnically and religiously distinct from the Buddhist majority. Their heritage in the Arakan region dates back centuries. The exact date is in dispute, but there is strong historical basis that the Rohingya are indigenous peoples of the Rakhine State.

Following independence in 1948 and prior to the 1962 military coup, the Rohingya had full citizenship and corresponding rights and freedoms. However, beginning in 1962, the ruling military junta deemed the Rohingya people illegal “Bengali” immigrants. This further fueled and legitimized anti-Rohingya attitudes already held by the Buddhist majority.

These sentiments became systemized, and, over time, the Rohingya were stripped of civil, political and economic rights. At the height of this discriminatory campaign was the 1982 Citizenship Law, which specifically excluded the Rohingya from the list of recognised ethnic groups. The Rohingya were made stateless within their own state and were legislated out of existence.

For decades, they have consistently been subject to flagrant human rights abuses including restriction on movement, forced labour, land confiscation, denial of rights to education, work and marriage. Such policies have clearly been designed to push them to the fringes of society, marginalizing them and forcing them into a life of extreme poverty. Most significantly, this has disempowered them as a community, eliminating their ability to effectively resist.

Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, the denial of basic fundamental human rights forced the Rohingya to flee their homeland to escape the tyranny of the regime. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, however they continue to live in hostile environments in refugee camps. Rather than find sanctuary, the Rohingya have suffered sexual violence and continue to be denied basic fundamental rights.

In 2012, deadly sectarian violence emerged between the Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists. The government not only failed to intervene but the security forces partnered with the Rakhine mobs and committed killings, rape, arbitrary violence, and mass arrests against the Rohingya. The state sanctioned violence led to the displacement of over a 100,000 people.

The institutionalized discrimination continued with former president Thein Sein passing four Protection of Race and Religion laws in August 2015, which received widespread criticism from human rights groups for their discriminatory nature and targeting of Muslim minorities intended to eradicate the Rohingya’s right to exist as a distinct minority.

Central to the Rohingya plight is the denial of citizenship, the denial of a right to identity—essentially the denial of a right to be. An example of this is the revocation of Rohingya ID cards. One may only obtain a new card, and therefore apply for citizenship, if they identify as ‘Bengali.’ Tactics such as these have been employed to erase the Rohingya’s existence as an indigenous group and to redefine their very humanity.

A number of parallels can be drawn between the Rohingya plight and the Palestinian plight, a key area of CCR’s work. Parallels include state sponsored discrimination, policies designed to distort geographical and historical realities to erase an indigenous group. One similar policy is Israel’s ID card system used to control Palestinian identity in the wider context of the Zionist colonial project. Palestinians can apply for Israeli citizenship at the expense of denying their heritage, asserting themselves as Israeli as opposed to Palestinian.

Like Palestinians, the Rohingya continue to face systematic persecution, despite the historic elections in 2015 where so-called human rights activist Aug San Suu Kyi won by a landslide. Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingya has been described as “shameful,” and rightly so given her reputation as an iconic Nobel Peace Laureate and the violence that has flared up since October 2016.

Countless atrocities against the Rohingya have been reported, including extrajudicial killings, villages being burnt down, mass rape, disappearances and forced displacement. There have been reports to UN investigators of babies and young children being trampled or knived to death. One five-year-old had her throat slit for screaming trying to protect her mother from being gang raped. As of 6th February, the UN Humanitarian Office reports that 69,000 Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh. Their efforts to flee remain futile, with Bangladesh often forcing people back.

Where does the international community stand in all of this? As a result of Myanmar’s alleged move towards democratization, a number of countries including the U.S. have lifted sanctions against Myanmar, completely disregarding the plight of the Rohingya and providing a license to continue to act with impunity. All we have had in response to one of the gravest humanitarian catastrophes of our time is the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s “deep concern” for reported human rights abuses in the Rakhine State which has more recently developed into statements that Myanmar security forces have ‘very likely’ committed crimes against humanity.

The Rohingya struggle is one of the starkest embodiments of the failure of international systems and international law. There are a number of legal and normative frameworks that ought to apply to the Rohingya plight, including international human rights law, international criminal law, international refugee law and the responsibility to protect. Yet there is no relief, no remedy and no effective recourse.

The phrase “never again” is often espoused on genocide commemoration days when we talk about preventing mass atrocities. But, in so many cases such as Myanmar, Palestine, Syria and Yemen “over and over again” is more accurate. Language, labels, and legal definitions are selective because they reflect oppressive relationships of power that enable human rights violations to begin with. Too often, oppressed people have to wait for their suffering to reach an arbitrary threshold imposed by those complicit in their oppression. Consequently, their struggle is appropriated and their suffering is colonized, just like their existence. Just like their place in history—a history that is simultaneously being erased and rewritten.

To navigate within an unjust system, we must first recognize that the political system and the law will never be enough. We must raise our consciousness on an individual level and in community with one another. We must identify shared struggles when we try and support groups in elevating their voices. When we talk about Palestine, we must talk about the Rohingya. When we talk about Standing Rock, we must talk about the Rohingya. When we speak for Syria we must speak for the Rohingya, whose decades long struggle has so often been silenced. We must not be selective in our outrage or condemnation.

We must universally stand with all oppressed people, if we are truly committed to every individual’s right to live in their full humanity, in dignity and with freedom.

Zeenat Islam is a London based barrister specializing in criminal defence with a background in international law and human rights. She was the 2016 Pegasus Fellow at the CCR. Follow @zeenat_islam



February 7, 2017

The United States is "deeply troubled" by the findings of a United Nations report that said soldiers in Myanmar's Rakhine State had committed atrocities against minority Muslims, the State Department said on Monday.

Washington was still studying the report, but urged the Myanmar government "to take its findings seriously and redouble efforts to protect the local population," a spokeswoman for the department, Katina Adams, said.

"We are deeply troubled by the findings," Adams said, referring to the Feb. 3 report from the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. (Report: bit.ly/2kwtWGq)

The allegations should be investigated "in a thorough and credible manner," and those responsible for any violations held accountable, she said, adding that Washington was continuing to call on the government to restore fully humanitarian and media access to the area.

The U.N. report issued on Friday said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that "very likely" amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has said it is conducting a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.

While denying observers and independent journalists access to the conflict area, officials have accused Rohingya residents and refugees of fabricating stories of killings, beatings, mass rape and arson in collaboration with insurgents who they say are Rohingya terrorists with links to Islamists overseas.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama made a priority of encouraging democratic change in Myanmar after decades of military rule.

The new administration of President Donald Trump has yet to outline its Myanmar policy, but has drawn fire for announcing a temporary ban on entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries, citing the threat of terrorism.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Lisa Shucker)

Rohingya Muslims are stopped at a check post in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on November 21, 2016.
© 2016 Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Simon Lewis 
February 6, 2017

YANGON -- Human Rights Watch on Monday called for Myanmar to punish army and police commanders if they allowed troops to rape and sexually assault women and girls of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

The New York-based campaign group said it had documented rape, gang rape and other sexual violence against girls as young as 13 in interviews with some of the 69,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar security forces responded to attacks on border posts four months ago. 

"The sexual violence did not appear to be random or opportunistic, but part of a coordinated and systematic attack against Rohingya, in part because of their ethnicity and religion," a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news release said.

Reuters was unable to contact a Myanmar government spokesman to respond to the allegations.

An estimated 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western state of Rakhine, but have their movements and access to services restricted. Rohingyas are barred from citizenship in Myanmar, where many call them "Bengalis" to suggest they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Independent journalists and observers have been barred from visiting the army's operation zone in northern Rakhine since the Oct. 9 attacks that killed nine border police. 

The government has so far dismissed most claims that soldiers raped, beat, killed and arbitrarily detained civilians while burning down villages, insisting instead that a lawful operation is underway against a group of armed Rohingya insurgents.

The HRW report comes just days after United Nations investigators said Myanmar's security forces had "very likely" committed crimes against humanity, posing a dilemma for de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. 

The Nobel Peace Prize winner took charge of most civilian affairs in April after a historic transition from full military rule, but soldiers retain a quarter of seats in parliament and control ministries related to security.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said on Friday that Suu Kyi had promised to investigate the U.N.'s allegations.

HRW said it had gathered evidence on 28 separate sexual assaults, including interviews with nine women who said they were raped or gang raped at gunpoint by security forces during the army's so-called "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine.

The women and other witnesses said the perpetrators were Myanmar army troops or border police, who they identified by their uniforms, kerchiefs, arm bands and patches, HRW said. 

“These horrific attacks on Rohingya women and girls by security forces add a new and brutal chapter to the Burmese military’s long and sickening history of sexual violence against women,” said HRW senior emergencies researcher Priyanka Motaparthy. 

“Military and police commanders should be held responsible for these crimes if they did not do everything in their power to stop them or punish those involved.”

(Editing by Michael Perry)

Prime Minister Hun Sen shakes hands with Myanmar President Htin Kyaw at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on Saturday. Facebook


By Erin Handley
February 6, 2017

Prime Minister Hun Sen has reassured his Burmese counterpart that the Kingdom will not interfere in the escalating “Rohingya issue”, a day after a damning UN report revealed widespread gang rape and murder allegedly committed against the Muslim ethnic minority by Myanmar security forces. 

During talks at the Peace Palace on Saturday, the premier told President Htin Kyaw that “Cambodia disagrees with the attempt to internationalise the Rohingya issue, considering it as an internal issue of Myanmar, and the ASEAN Charter prohibits the interference in the internal affairs of each Member State,” according to a Facebook post from Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith. 

Reached yesterday for clarification, Kanharith said Cambodia could not condemn Myanmar’s actions and that “the government of each country has to settle their own issues”, though Prime Minister Najib Razak of fellow ASEAN state Malaysia recently called for the world to act to end what he characterised as “genocide”. 

Hun Sen’s comments came barely a day after the UN released a harrowing report in which 204 interviewees who had fled to Bangladesh testified they had seen homes burned, people killed, and women and girls raped in Rakhine state (see page 12 for more information on the report).

“They held me tight, and I was raped by one of them. My 5-year old daughter tried to protect me, she was screaming, one of the men took out a long knife and killed her by slitting her throat,” a mother of three from Kyet Yoe Pyin told UN investigators. 

Another described how her 8-month-old baby was slaughtered with a knife before her eyes as five men raped her. More than half of the 101 women interviewed reported they were raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence. 

In stark contrast to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s comments, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein called on the international community to urge Myanmar to end the atrocities. “The gravity and scale of these allegations begs the robust reaction of the international community,” he said in a statement on Friday. 

Dr Maung Zarni, Burmese co-author of the Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas and non-resident fellow at the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia, said the parallels between the human rights abuses committed in Myanmar and those which ravaged Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge should prompt the premier to be more compassionate.

Prime Minister Hun Sen talks with Myanmar President Htin Kyaw at the Peace Palace on Saturday. Facebook
“Myanmar’s decades-long persecution and extreme mistreatment of Rohingyas have been causing periodic and voluminous flows of persecution-fleeing refugees . . . across both South and Southeast Asia, who are in turn preyed upon by the ruthless human-trafficking criminal gangs,” Dr Zarni said. 

“A population having been halved as a matter of provable national policy based on extreme racism against an ethnic group is deeply troubling. This is where the international concern comes in,” he said, adding the crimes amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said the prime minister’s assurances were a form of “mutual back-scratching among rights-abusing leaders”. 

“The real reason [Prime Minister] Hun Sen said that is [because] he doesn’t want anyone interfering in his own rapidly intensifying crackdown on opposition party members and civil society activists.”

While the ASEAN Charter outlines respect for a country’s sovereignty, it also calls on member states to respond effectively to all forms of threats and to ensure that people live in peace in a just and harmonious environment in those member states.

The OHCHR’s acting regional representative for Southeast Asia, Laurent Meillan, said in an email yesterday that the report called for stronger engagement from ASEAN to address the plight of the Rohingyas. 

“The ASEAN principle of non-interference should be interpreted with flexibility when significant humanitarian and human rights crises occur in the region,” he said. 

Mohammed Rashid, a Rohingya refugee living in Cambodia, said while it was nearly impossible to reach those being persecuted in the closed-off zone, Cambodia should do anything it could to assist. 

“Yes, yes they should help,” he said. 

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY TOUCH SOKHA



By Abdul Aziz
February 6, 2017

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh -- A Bangladeshi fisherman has been killed and one injured in Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) shooting on Teknaf border in Cox’s Bazar.

The incident took place in the Naf River around 6:30am Monday.

The deceased is Nurul Amin, son of Kabir Ahmed of Chowdhurypara village under the upazila.

Witness fisherman Mohammad Hakim said: “We three including Amin went for fishing on Moulvibazar Point of Naf River in the morning. At that time, seven BGP members drove a patrol boat into Bangladesh territory.”

“They opened fire on us, leaving two injured. Later with the help of other fishermen we rushed the duo to Teknaf Health Complex where doctor declared Amin dead,” he added.

Hospital’s Medical Officer Dr Suban Das said: “Amin died due to excessive bleeding and another fisherman has been sent to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital as his condition deteriorated.”

Teknaf OC Abdul Majid said he was informed about the matter. “I sent a police team to Teknaf hospital after BGB commander informed me about the shooting incident,” he added.


    • Rohingya Exodus