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February 15, 2017


The Rohingya Advocacy Network in Japan (RANJ) along with Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights Now (HRN) held a meeting Japanese Foreign Ministry Officials at the Japanese Parliament Building, Upper House Building on 13 February, 2017 from 9:30 to 11 am in Tokyo. The Social Democratic Party Leader & Upper House Member Ms. Mizuho Fukushima presided over the meeting while the Japanese Foreign Ministry Officials’ Principal Deputy Director Mr. Kensuke NAGASE, First Southeast Asian Affairs Department, Deputy Director Ms. Yoko Takushima,First Southeast Asia Division, Deputy Directors Mr. Suzuki Risoko and Ms. Nakagawa Tomohiro from Human Rights Department and Deputy Director Ms. Kawamura Maki from Humanitarian Assistance Department attended. Human Rights Watch Tokyo Office Director Ms. Kanei Doi and Human Rights Now Director Attorney Ito Kazuko briefed those attending on the HRW reports and UN reports on atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar by the government’s armed forces. Prof. Muranushi Michimi of Gakkushuin University asked for humanitarian assistance for Rohingya victims in Myanmar and Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh. 



The Rohingya Advocacy Network in Japan (RANJ) Executive Director Zaw Min Htut and other Rohingya participants explained the overall situation in Rakhine to the Foreign Ministry Officials in detail and further detailed the ongoing government scheme of issuing National Verification Cards to Rohingya, mass arrests, torture, looting, sexual violence, extortion and other human rights violations. 

At the end of the meeting all the participants including Ms. Mizuho Fukushima, officially asked the Japanese government to call for an International Independent Investigation Commission, to raise the Rohingya issue at the UNSC official agenda by Japanese government, as Japan is a current UNSC member State, and asked them to send humanitarian assistance to Rohingya victims in Myanmar and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. 

The Rohingya Advocacy Network in Japan (RANJ) presented an appeal letter to Japanese Foreign Minister with the relevant documents as below: 


On board Nautical Aliya.

By Patrick Lee and Shahrul Nazrij Rezal
February 14, 2017

CHITTAGONG: When word started to spread that only 25 people from the aid ship Nautical Aliya would be able to go to Rohingya refugee camps, Abdullah Yusuf, 26, got angry.

The Swedish volunteer was seen talking heatedly with Bangladesh immigration officers, asking if he could be left off the ship.

“I left my job, I left my wife (back home). I just got married two months ago, and now you tell me I cannot go?” he told The Star.

“I just hope I can take my passport and leave.”

On Tuesday at about 11.30am local time, the aid ship carrying some 2,100 tonnes of cargo for Rohingya refugees arrived in Chittagong, Bangladesh, on what organisers are calling the “Food Flotilla for Myanmar” mission.

Bangladesh government officials then met with mission organisers for about two hours on how the aid was going to be distributed.

They later decided that only 25 of the 182 passengers would be allowed off the ship to go to Rohingya refugee camps on Wednesday and Thursday.

Aid mission organisers said Bangladesh officials would not allow more than this number, citing safety reasons.

On Saturday, volunteer Kelana Putra Muhamad, 44, told The Star that all he wanted to see was the condition at just one camp and how its people lived.

“I wanted to see with my own eyes how much they have suffered, so that I can go back to Malaysia and tell people how good we really have it,” he said then.

On Tuesday, however, he was speechless.

“I don't know what to say. I don’t know how to express this,” he said.

French volunteer Moussa Yacoub, 39, who has been to Bangladesh many times, said, “Sometimes you win, (sometimes) you lose. You can’t win all the time.”

Still, he wondered why so many of those who were going were journalists.

Though sad at not being picked to go, Muhammad Uqbah Ahmad Termiz, 25, however was still hopeful.

“A lot of us are dissatisfied. We wanted to help them (the Rohingya) and kiss them.

“But it doesn’t matter whether we go or not, the mission is important for the media to go in the camp and record what’s going on there,” he said.

Except for a small amount given on Wednesday and Thursday, most of the cargo lifted from the Nautical Aliya will be distributed by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).

Committee co-chief Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim said Bangladesh invited organisers to come back in about 10 to 15 days and see how the aid is being distributed.

He added that only a small number of people, about 15 to 20, would be able to go on this visit.

Only 25 from Rohingya aid ship allowed to go to camps

Only 25 people from the Rohingya aid ship will be allowed to go to refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh. Aid mission organizer co-chief Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim said the Bangladesh government only allowed the small group due to safety reasons.




(Photo: AP)


February 14, 2017

Asean and the UN should shun Hun Sen’s hands-off advice and act to help the Rohingya

The suggestion by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen that the ongoing crisis being suffered by the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar be left to that country’s government and regarded as purely an internal affair is likely to fall on deaf ears. So it should. Hopefully Cambodia and Myanmar’s other partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will display greater compassion and care than Hun Sen is offering.

Hun Sen is right only in the sense that Myanmar will have to make the final call on the means to address this grievous problem. But international pressure is clearly needed to compel it towards fair resolution of the issue, just as foreign influence resulted in the 1991 Paris Accord that finally ended Cambodia’s own drawn-out horror. Consider that Hun Sen would not be in his position today had Vietnam not intervened to rid his country of the brutal Khmer Rouge, halting genocide. 

The murderous mistreatment of the Rohingya might be a different kind of situation, but it too is having an impact beyond national borders, and thus the need for international involvement apart from humanitarian concerns. And only when the matter is resolved can Myanmar continue its peaceful progress towards democracy, which is also in the world’s interest.

Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and other nations have been obliged on moral grounds to take in thousands of refugees fleeing the bloodletting in their home state of Rakhine. Clearly the government of Myanmar requires outside prodding to end the brutality. Since the conflict stems in large part from widespread prejudice against the Rohingya, it is a political issue, and the government has been shockingly slow to act.

As Muslims in a predominantly Buddhist population, the million-plus Rohingya in Rakhine have been scapegoats for the uncertainty and anxiety arising from Myanmar’s sudden “opening” to the world. When a handful of Rohingya men were accused in 2012 of raping a Buddhist, it was the spark needed to ignite deep-seated xenophobia, and this already repressed minority was an easy target. 

In the eyes of officialdom, the Rohingya will always be outsiders, even though they’ve lived in the country for many generations. They are denied citizenship, their travel is curtailed and they have long been the victims of sporadic bouts of suppression that have extended to torture, rape and murder. The latest round of army-led violence has been characterised as a form of ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Just last week the United Nations was told the death toll now tops 1,000. Two separate UN agencies working in Bangladesh estimated that nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months and expressed concern that global understanding of the severity of the crisis is still lacking.

The most that Aung San Suu Kyi’s government has offered thus far is a pledge to investigate rights abuses. The official line in Nay Pyi Taw appears to be that the Rohingya have engaged in unlawful activities and their rights have not been violated. If an investigation does proceed, it’s difficult to believe it would be transparent, since both the military and the police would be involved, and they are the accused perpetrators of the abuses. The military remains politically powerful and its core mission is containing insurrection among ethnic minorities. 

There needs to be an enforced peace in Rakhine and then an open investigation of the atrocities – not by local authorities but by the international community. The United Nations and Asean should be prepared as needed to examine the claims and the evidence and work out a resolution. To not intervene, as Hun Sen suggests, would be aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.

The Nautical Aliya set off from Malaysia last week carrying 2,200 tonnes of rice, medical aid and clothing along with hundreds of health workers and activists. ― Bernama

By Eleanor Ross
February 13, 2017

 A recent shipment of aid from Malaysian Muslim groups arrived to protests in Yangon.

When a ship crammed with 2,200 tons of rice, emergency supplies and aid-workers tried to dock at Yangon port on 10 February, it arrived to protests by hard-line Buddhists. The aid was from Malaysia, and part of it was meant to deliver relief to the Rohingya Muslims experiencing a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Maungdaw states. The ship successfully docked in Bangladesh on 13 February.

Initially the boat was banned from entering Burmese waters, but was later allowed through by Port Authorities, though expressly forbidden to enter a river north to Sittwe, capital of the Rakhine region. It was permitted to dock just outside Yangon, where it began to unload 500 tons of produce. The rest was destined for southern Bangladesh where up to 70,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled since the military crackdown in October and are living in atrocious conditions in official and unofficial refugee camps.

They are displaced citizens, seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in Myanmar, and illegal immigrants from Myanmar in Bangladesh. The government has reportedly returned thousands of Rohingya to Myanmar according to Amnesty International; the organization says it is a violation of international law, which states you cannot forcibly return people to a country where they are at risk of human rights violations.

A group in Muslim-majority Malaysia, frustrated by reports of inaction and persecution in Rakhine, put an aid ship together to support the refugees. Unusually for Southeast Asian stability, Malaysia has been openly critical of Myanmar’s actions.

When the boat arrived, a group of Buddhists, including monks, held up signs saying “No Rohingya,” One of the most vocal groups present was a faction of Buddhist monks belonging to the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, a nationalist group.

Recent reports by the U.N. and its workers have said the death toll of Rohingya Muslims could number in the thousands and that the situation has worrying similarities to ethnic cleansing. Refugees from the group are not always welcome in Bangladesh either, where Amnesty International has reported “callous” actions against the minority.

“Their desperate need for food, water and medical care is not being addressed,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director in a November report.

Here, Newsweek reviews the events that have led to Burmese Buddhists attempting to deny the distribution of aid to a needy minority, and the role both countries have played so far.

Who are the Rohingya?

Described by the U.N. as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities in 2013, there are around 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar, out of a population of 50 million. The majority live in Rakhine State, and speak Bengali, rather than Burmese. Many (approx 140,000 Rohingya) live in camps in Rakhine that they cannot leave without government permission.

Why did Malaysia send aid?

The Malaysian boat carried 1,000 tons of rice, 1,200 packets of instant noodles, hygiene kits, chapati flour, and a legion of aid workers. The aid has not come directly from the government, but was instead organized through the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisations, and a number of local NGOs, including 1 Putera Club.

As residents of one of the wealthiest Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia, many Muslims want to help their northern neighbors.

In January Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak warned Myanmar could be a target for the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) if the Rohingya crisis is not resolved, and stressed that the potential exodus of refugees could cause the region to be “destabilized.”

"This must happen now…The government of Myanmar disputes the terms 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing,' but whatever the terminology, the Rohingya Muslims cannot wait," Razak said, according to Al Jazeera.

Indonesia has also offered to act as a facilitator to ease the crisis in Myanmar, after Razak described Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya as a “stain” on the ASEAN bloc, and called on other countries to help.

Why are people protesting against the aid shipments?

For external observers, the presence of people protesting against the aid shipment might seem strange. For ordinary people, it could be considered a boon for a country to receive free aid in any context, but especially for people it does not see as citizens.

However, monks believe they have a responsibility to defend and protect Buddhism, explains Matthew Walton, Aung San Suu Kyi senior research fellow in modern Burmese studies at St Antony's College, Oxford.

“It can be difficult to say whether the people who are going to rallies or sharing their Facebook posts actually support [the monks’] specific aims or whether it’s just social pressure to support monks, especially when those monks present their activities as being done in defense of Buddhism,” he says.

Why do some people deny the Rohingya exist?

Some of the protesters meeting the aid shipment made claims there are no Rohingya in Myanmar. Despite the government having established a commission to look into Rohingya abuse, the government of Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as official citizens.

The stance stems a concern over what could happen if the Rohingya were recognized as an official ethnic group.

Walton says that the 2008 constitution allows for special representation for minority groups within regional and state parliaments and the former military government created several semi-autonomous zones for different ethnic groups. “The fear that some people, particularly Rakhine Buddhists, but Buddhists across the country, have is that if the Rohingya were recognized as such, their population numbers would make them eligible to demand certain special treatment and would also allow them to contest for parliamentary seats in the Rakhine State Parliament, challenging the near-monopoly that Buddhists have there… [thus] upsetting the balance of power in Rakhine State.”

Is Bangladesh helping the situation?

Not according to reports from rights organizations. Around 1,700 tons of the aid from the Malaysian ship is destined for the 70,000 Rohingya living around Cox’s Bazaar in southern Bangladesh, but proved difficult to deliver due to resistance from the government. On 3 February, the Bangladeshi government denied the ship access to Teknaf Port, but after a meeting between officials, it was agreed the ship could dock just outside Teknaf, an area where many Rohingya live in subsistence conditions according to Amnesty.

Bangladesh sees the Rohingya as ethnically from Myanmar and the government has said it can’t afford to support more refugees. Authorities estimate between 300,000 and 500,000 unregistered Rohingya currently live in Bangladesh and the U.N. has asked Bangladesh to keep its border open to allow anyone fleeing violence to escape.



An armed policeman guards a road at the Aung Mingalar displacement camp for Rohingya in Sittwe, in September 2016. (AFP/Romeo Gacad)


By AFP
February 13, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar authorities have sentenced a Rohingya man to death for leading raids on police border posts that sparked a deadly military crackdown in the north of Rakhine state, police said on Monday (Feb 13).

Hundreds from the Muslim minority are thought to have died and tens of thousands have fled to Bangladesh since the army launched "clearance operations" four months ago to find the attackers.

Sittwe police chief Yan Naing Lett said the court in the town, the capital of Rakhine, had sentenced the leader of the raid on the Kotankauk border post to death on Friday.

"He was sentenced to death on Feb 10 at Sittwe court for intentional murder," Yan Naing Lett told AFP, without giving a date for the execution.

"He participated in the attacks and led them, and planned them with others. He is one of 14 attackers who were detained in Sittwe township," the officer said, naming the man as Mamahdnu Aka Aula.

The other 13 people also appeared in court but have yet to be sentenced, he added.

Than Tun, the leader of an aid organisation operating in northern Rakhine, confirmed the sentence, adding: "He is the first one to face such action since the attack."

Myanmar's government said hundreds of Rohingya militants carried out raids on three posts on the Bangladesh border on Oct 9, killing nine police in a series of coordinated attacks.

The International Crisis Group think-tank has said the attackers were a Saudi-backed group called Harakah al-Yaqin, which it said had spent years recruiting and training fighters in Bangladesh and northern Rakhine.

The sentencing comes days after a blistering report from the UN accused Myanmar's troops and police of carrying out a campaign of rape, torture and mass killings of Rohingya.

Based on interviews with hundreds of escapees in Bangladesh, investigators said the military's "calculated policy of terror" very likely amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Several hundred Rohingya have also been detained, the UN report said, describing how they were stripped, beaten, tortured and deprived of food and water.

Myanmar's government has pledged to investigate the allegations after spending months dismissing similar reports from international media and rights groups as "fake news".

The 1.1 million Rohingya are loathed by many from the Buddhist majority, who insist they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have lived in the country for generations.

The recent violence has sparked criticism that Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done little to help them since taking office almost a year ago.




February 13, 2017

Myanmar is to investigate whether police have committed abuses against Rohingya Muslims, the government has said, after officials promised that allegations of atrocities against members of the Muslim minority would be looked into.

The U.N. human rights office said in a report this month 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 denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in northern Rakhine State, where many Rohingya live, and says a lawful counterinsurgency campaign has been under way since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border on Oct. 9.

The military said last week it was setting up a team to investigate alleged atrocities by the security forces and the interior ministry followed that up on the weekend with a promise to investigate police.

The Home Ministry said in a statement a "departmental inquiry" would be conducted "to find out whether the police forces have committed illegal actions including violations of human rights during their area clearance operations".

The ministry, which is controlled by the military, said action would be taken against personnel "who failed to follow instructions".

"The U.N. report provides many detailed accounts of what allegedly happened, and that's why an investigation committee was set up to respond to the report with evidence," Police Colonel Myo Thu Soe told Reuters on Monday.

"The U.N. report includes very serious human rights abuses allegations against police in Myanmar including rape. But as we know, it did not happen," he said. 

DISCRIMINATION

Separately, five policemen have been sentenced to two months detention after a video appeared online showing them abusing Muslims during an operation aimed at rooting out suspected militants in Rakhine State, Myo Thu Soe said.

In addition, three senior police officers involved in the case have been demoted, he added. 

It is rare in Myanmar for security forces to be held accountable for abuses, or for such allegations to be investigated transparently, rights groups say.

Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since the security force sweep was launched in October, according to U.N. estimates.

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior U.N. officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence said last week.

A Myanmar presidential spokesman said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya have faced discrimination in Myanmar for generations. They are not classified as a distinct group under citizenship laws and are regarded instead as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights.

About 1.1 million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.

(Reporting By Yimou Lee and Shwe Yee Saw Myint; Editing by Robert Birsel)

(Photo: AP)


By Patrick Lee and Shahrul Nasrin Rezal
February 13, 2017

BAY OF BENGAL: The Rohingya aid ship Nautical Aliya has entered Bangladeshi waters and is now heading to Cox's Bazar, the ship's crew said.

"At about 2am local time, the Bangladesh Navy called us and informed us to go to Cox's Bazar," the ship's second officer Justin Savari Nathan told The Star when met on the bridge. 

He added that the Bangladesh Navy told him that the ship will be provided with barges to offload the ship's aid cargo. 

Nathan added that the ship was given an anchor point about two nautical miles off the Cox's Bazar coast, which he expected to reach by about 10am local time. The Nautical Aliya was previously sailing towards Chittagong, Bangladesh with about 2,100 tonnes of aid meant for Rohingya refugees in the country. Cox's Bazar is about 140km from Chittagong.

At the moment, the ship is being escorted by two Bangladesh Navy vessels. 

On Feb 3, Bangladesh declined to let the Malaysian aid ship enter its waters but overturned this by allowing them to come in just hours later. 

A few days later they declined the ship's docking at Teknaf - at the country's south-eastern point- and where some Rohingya refugee camps are said to be. 

Bangladesh then offered three alternatives to Teknaf including Chittagong, which aid mission organisers accepted.

However, the aid mission's volunteers are not allowed to get off the ship or to visit the Rohingya camps. 









In crisis -- In this Dec. 2, 2016 photo, Mohsena Begum, a Rohingya who escaped to Bangladesh from Myanmar, holds her child and sits at the entrance of a room of an unregistered refugee camp in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar, a southern coastal district about, 296 kilometers (183 miles) south of Dhaka, Bangladesh. “They drove us out of our houses, men and women in separate lines, ordering us to keep our hands folded on the back of our heads,” says 20-year-old Mohsena Begum, her voice choking as she described what happened to the little village of Caira Fara, which had long been home to hundreds of members of Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community. In refugee camps in Bangladesh, survivors of a wave of violence that has swept Myanmar in recent weeks say government forces have targeted minority Rohingya villages, burning many to the ground, killing the innocent and raping women. (AP/A.M. Ahad)

By Haeril Halim, Apriadi Gunawan and Audi Hajramurni 
February 13, 2017

Medan/Makasar -- Despite tough immigration policies introduced by United States President Donald Trump, American representatives in Medan and Makassar have begun to resettle Rohingya Muslim refugees, giving light to the country’s recently eclipsed image as the world’s beacon of democracy, freedom and tolerance.

The refugees from Myanmar whose boats washed ashore in Aceh two years ago, have passed interviews conducted by the US Consulate in Medan, North Sumatra, with the assistance of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Juha P. Salin, US Consul for Medan confirmed the transfer of Rohingya refugees to America, adding that the process would be conducted gradually.

“These cases are being processed continually and those who have the approved travel documents can travel to the US,” said Salin.

He refused, however, to confirm the number of Rohingya refugees who had been permitted to resettle in the US.

Trump had ordered a fourmonth hold on allowing refugees into the US and a temporary ban on travelers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, which he said would protect Americans from violent Islamists.

The executive order has been blocked by the lower courts, but immigration authorities have continued to conduct raids across major cities in America.

The Ambassador to Indonesia Joseph R. Donovan has reassured Indonesia that the executive order will not affect the American value of religious tolerance.

“Both Americans and Indonesians are very tolerant people at their core and I believe that these values that we share, the importance of tolerance and respect for religious beliefs, particularly other people’s religious beliefs, are the kind of values that will prevail in both of our societies,” Donovan said earlier.

The resettlement process for Rohingya refugees in Indonesia began in November after the US Consulate in Medan started to interview the 184 Rohingya Muslims, stranded in Aceh.

The process, however, did not involve Rohingya refugees stranded in Medan for a longer period of time.

About 800 Rohingyas are currently staying in Indonesia, all of whom have been granted refugee status by the UNHCR.

According to a Rohingya refugee who was not included in the resettlement process, at least three had already flown to the US in the resettlement program.

Yudi Kurniadi, the head of North Sumatra Immigration Office, said Trump’s policy had not affected the asylum applications of Rohingya refugees because Myanmar was not on the list of Trump’s banned countries.

“Several Rohingya refugees were sent to the US this month. This was the first batch since the inauguration of Trump as US President,” Yudi told The Jakarta Post.

Yudi said the refugees from the province sent to the US over the past few months were only those from Myanmar. Some others had been sent to Australia and Canada.

Medan hosts 2,089 refugees, 390 of whom are from Afghanistan, 363 from Sri Lanka, 490 from Myanmar, 283 from Somalia, 279 from Palestine and 129 from Iran.

Their destination countries include the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

In Makassar, South Sulawesi, Zarida, another refugee from Myanmar currently living in the city, is also scheduled to be sent to the US on Feb. 14.

Zarida has been staying in Makassar since 2013. The city hosts 1,900 refugees from the Middle East and 60 from Myanmar.

Ramli, the head of the South Sulawesi immigration office, said Zarida’s departure to the US was facilitated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“She passed the verification process and so she will be sent to the US on Feb. 14,” said Ramli.

Zarida was first discovered as an undocumented immigrant four years ago in the city.

She was later verified and granted refugee status under the supervision of the IOM.

US begins to resettle Rohingya refugees, transferred from Indonesia Myanmar not subject to Trump’s executive order.

Heavily armed Myanmar army troops patrol Kyinkanpyin area in Maungdaw town located in Rakhine near the Bangladesh border on October 16, 2016. Photo: Khine Htoo Mrat/AFP

February 11, 2017

The Tatmadaw (Defence Services) issued a news release dated 9 February stating it was forming an Investigation Committee to investigate alleged human rights violations in Myanmar mentioned in a report released by United Nations Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights (UNOHCHR).

The notification says the investigation committee will look into alleged human rights violations and other illegal activities committed during area clearing operations by Tatmadaw after coordinated attacks in Rakhine State on three Police Border Guard posts on 9 October 2016.

UNOHCHR alleged in its report issued on 3 January that Security Forces had committed numerous human right violations against Rohingya in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine State.

The news release issued by Tatmadaw says they will take legal action against anyone if there is evidence of such human rights violations.

The Committee is comprised of Lt. Gen. Aye Win, Tatmadaw Inspector General, as Chairman, and members are Brig. Gen. Khun Thant Zaw Htoo Joint Adjutant General, Brig. Gen. Aung Kyaw Hoe Principal of No.9 Tatmadaw Advanced Combat Training School, Maj. Hla Myo Kyaw Deputy Advocate General, Western Command HQ, Lt. Col. Myo Win Aung Deputy Advocate General, Secretary, Advocate General Office.

President’s Office Deputy Director General Zaw Htay told journalists, “We will take action if there is sound and concrete evidence of such human rights violations.”

Myanmar Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on February 8 that the Rakhine State investigation committee led by Vice-President Myint Swe was investigating these allegations and instructed security forces in the region to perform their duties in accordance with human rights norms and said the government would take action against anyone if they are found guilty of abuses.

Ma Ba Tha Buddhists protest the use of the word 'Rohingya' as a Rakhine donation ship from Malaysia arrives on Feb. 9 in Yangon, Burma. The Rohingya aid ship, Nautical Aliya, landed at Thilawa port near Yangon while making its way to the Rohingya refugee camps in Myanmar and Bangladesh, bearing 2,300 tonnes of food, clothes and medical supplies for the Rohingyas in the two countries. Below, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar has spoken with Pope Francis on alleviating the suffering of this Muslim minority. (Lauren DeCicca and Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

By Simon Roughneen 
February 11, 2017

Pope Francis and Myanmar’s Cardinal Bo have again highlighted the plight of the Southeast Asian country’s oppressed Muslim minority.

YANGON, Myanmar — Numbering around 1 million people living in western Myanmar, along with several hundred thousand refugees and migrants in neighboring countries, there are few peoples in the world as marooned as the Muslim Rohingya.

Most are stateless, denied citizenship by Myanmar due to a 1982 law dictated while the country, then known as Burma, was run by the army. But the end of dictatorship in 2011 and the rise to power of an elected government last year — headed by one of the world’s best-known former political prisoners Aung San Suu Kyi — has done little to help the Rohingya.

“They have been suffering, they are being tortured and killed, simply because they uphold their Muslim faith,” said Pope Francis in his latest weekly audience Feb. 8.

Over the decades, several hundred thousand have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh, where they stay in squalid border camps. Tens of thousands more made it to Malaysia and Thailand in recent years, where many are refugees and cannot officially work. And those roughly 1 million Rohingya left inside Myanmar have faced several bouts of violence at the hands of Buddhist mobs since 2012, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from towns in Rakhine state in the west of the country. 

Accounts given by refugees in Bangladesh fleeing a recent “clearance operation” by the Myanmar army suggested that around half the women had been sexually assaulted, some after seeing male family members executed.

In a report released Feb. 3, the U.N. contends that it is “very likely” that crimes against humanity have been taking place in Myanmar since October, when the Myanmar army retaliated against the killing of nine border police by militants claiming to be fighting back after decades of oppression.

The U.N. report makes for grim reading. One account cites “An 11-year-old girl from Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son” who said: “After entering our house, the army apprehended us. They pushed my mother on the ground. They removed her clothes, and four officers raped her. They also slaughtered my father, a prayer leader, just before raping my mother. After a few minutes, they burnt the house with a rocket, with my mother inside. All this happened before my eyes.”

Regarded as Foreigners

Most of Myanmar’s population is hostile to the Rohingya, inasmuch as can be gauged in a country that lacks opinion surveys but where social media commentary is something of a yardstick — including it seems many in Myanmar’s small Christian population. 

Aye Maung, leader of the biggest party in Rakhine, the western region where most of the Rohingya live, said in an interview that “Myanmar people do not accept the term Rohingya” — effectively denying the existence of a Rohingya ethnic group. The mostly Buddhist politicians in Myanmar call the Rohingya “Bengali,” implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh, which in turn does not want the Rohingya, not only confining refugees to camps but demanding that Myanmar take them back, and suggesting that more recent refugee arrivals would be taken to an island vulnerable to flooding at high tide. 

One notable exception in Myanmar has been Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, who has consistently spoken up for the Rohingya when few others in Myanmar public life would do so. On Feb. 6, two days before the Pope’s comments, Cardinal Bo described the latest accounts of army brutality as “heart-breaking and very profoundly disturbing” and called for “an end to the military offensive against civilians in Rakhine State.”

Cardinal Bo is Myanmar’s first cardinal, receiving his red hat from Francis in 2015, and leads the country’s roughly 800,000 Catholics — out of a total population of 51 million. 

And while Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto head of government, does not control the army, she refuses to acknowledge the Rohingya’s plight and ministries under her control have been pumping out propaganda questioning refugee accounts of army brutality and telling outsiders not to interfere. 

Before Suu Kyi took office, bureaucrats in the religious affairs ministry asked Cardinal Bo not to use the term “Rohingya” in his correspondence with Pope Francis. It appears the attempt at censorship did not work. In his latest weekly address, the Pope urged prayers “for our Rohingya brothers and sisters who are being chased from Myanmar and are fleeing from one place to another because no one wants them.” 

The History of the Rohingya

The Rohingya can trace their presence in Myanmar to “more than a century ago,” Cardinal Bo said, when this correspondent asked him in 2013 and again in 2015 whether or not he thought the Rohingya should be recognized in Myanmar. Myanmar was part of the British Indian Empire from the 19th century until just after World War II, and during that time millions of Hindus and Muslims migrated from what are now Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to what is now Myanmar, but there are traces of a Muslim presence in Rohingya populated parts of Myanmar going back to the 14th century, while a Scottish doctor traveling the region in the late 18th century noted the presence of a people he called the “Rooinga.”

“Nobody can deny us to call ourselves by our name, that is our right,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K.

Last week’s remarks were not the Holy Father’s first comments on the Rohingya, but they were his most pointed. In August 2015, after thousands of Rohingya were found adrift at sea on rickety boats and rafts, hoping to get ashore in neighboring Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — all of which were reluctant to assist — the Pope spoke up.

“They were chased from one country and from another and from another,” Francis said of the situation. “When they arrived at a port or a beach, they gave them a bit of water or a bit to eat and were there chased out to the sea.”


    • Rohingya Exodus