By Erin Murphy

The Diplomat

April 11, 2017

Though the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi have had a disappointing year, there are some steps they can take to get back on track.

The reviews (and votes) are in for Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD) government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and they are not positive. The NLD’s grace period to show progress is short and it will be unable to lean on excuses (however justified) of inheriting a dilapidated economy, infrastructure, and a nation ravaged by civil war. The government must show action toward building a sound foundation for the country and demonstrate that it is, as the party has often said, for the people.

Many of these challenges are difficult to address for even mature democracies. However, there are initial steps Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD-led government can take to help rebuild its connection to supporters and get back on its path.

A Disappointing First Year

The litany of first year post-mortems reflect disappointment and deep frustration. Some things will take time, including the role of the military, national reconciliation, and racial and sectarian sentiment and policies. The military holds 25 percent of all parliamentary seats, three important ministerial posts, and is a key player in Myanmar’s defining challenge: national reconciliation, a ceasefire and political dialogue aimed to end decades of armed resistance.

Peace will not easily be achieved particularly as the armed (and non-armed) ethnic nationalities not only mistrust the military, but the majority ethnic Bamar (of which Aung San Suu Kyi and the majority of the NLD belong). Peace talks have stalled and the NLD’s pro-democracy and non-military background credentials did not convince groups to sign an accord. The military has asserted its authority in the process, resulting in heightened tensions and ongoing clashes. The government must walk a fine line with the military to ensure trust building and the continuation of democratization but also to push for a lasting peace.

The government is also failing with regard to Rohingya and anti-Muslim violence — at its core, a racial issue — and its inaction and bigoted comments continue to shock the international community. Though the NLD should not be given a free pass (particularly as the West clearly struggles with race and anti-Muslim sentiment), it should be understood these issues will not be resolved overnight.

Despite this, the government has authority to enact its agenda but has undermined itself and its success. The party selected ministers who were unqualified, had little capacity or related experience, and were left without decision-making authority. Aung San Suu Kyi herself took four ministerial portfolios, but whittled this down to two and created a new, all-encompassing role of State Counselor. Her micromanaging leadership style is stifling decision-making, creating serious bottlenecks and driving ministers and deputies to inaction.

More disturbing has been the government’s stance on human rights and political freedoms, which has not only undermined support from prodemocracy and civil society groups, but also from the international community that has lavished praise for years. In short, the NLD-led government has had a difficult first year governing.

Getting Back on Track

That said, it can take a series of steps to get back on track.

Mend Fences and Be More Inclusive: This is where the NLD has done itself the most unnecessary harm. The party enjoyed goodwill from pro-democracy groups, ethnic nationalities, and civil society and rather than capitalize on it, the NLD shunned inclusivity, and in some cases, purposefully cut out groups like the 88 Generation Students and Shan and Rakhine States-based parties. Myanmar is plagued by political fractiousness, something that voters in 2015 recognized and sought to eliminate by getting a parliamentary majority, and not a messy coalition government. But voters expect the NLD to listen to the various ethnic nationalities and other pro-democracy leaders. Though relationships are strained, it is not too late to undo the damage.

Provide More Frequent Policy Status Updates: The lack of policy statements and updates is resulting in decreased confidence and confusion (foreign investment is set to drop 30 percent this year) among the local and international communities. The release of its economic policy last year fell flat and there has been little discernible movement on improving the document. The NLD must demonstrate efforts are underway and provide consistent updates, even if there is nothing to say or progress is not as visible, to allay fears.

Establish a Clear Civilian Hierarchy: In a political system that mixes military officials with civilian bureaucrats, establishing a ranking system providing an equivalent military status to a civil servant may ease decision-making challenges and get both sides to speak the same language. The United States has such a system that provides clear authority without questions. A rank can be based on experience, years of service, and job title with requirements for a particular rank publicly available.

Curb Micromanaging and Build Capacity: Micromanaging will undo this government and this party should work as a team, not as competitors or puppets. Aung San Suu Kyi and her ministers must be self-reflective and delineate decisions critical for the State Counselor or for the responsible ministry and respective chains of command. They must commit to provide resources to build each minister’s capacity where needed coupled with explicit guidance on professional accountability. This not only boosts confidence among the electorate and investors, but it would start fixing the government’s tattered legacy.

Look to the Party’s Future: A constant concern revolves around future NLD leadership. Initial steps to cultivate and infuse fresh ideas into party faltered, leaving younger members frustrated and former political prisoners unsure of their place. The NLD not only should recruit new members, but ensure it fosters and builds capacity among current members, assuring disappointed members, ensuring future stability, and building a clear leadership path to halt fractiousness and foster unity.

Remember the Mandate and the People: The NLD was the voice of the people and was expected to use its authority to remedy the atrocities of the past and pave the way for a democratic future. The NLD-led government’s stance on freedoms of the press and speech and lack of progress on core economic issues have many wondering who the government speaks for. Yes, the NLD must be wary of flash points with the military, but this party was elected to start sweeping away draconian laws, not enforce them, bring about peace, not stifle it, and brings jobs, education opportunities, and a stronger economy, not suppress them. The party still has the faith of the people, it must now earn their respect.

Acceptance of a difficult first year should be viewed as an opportunity. This is a time to stop making excuses, be clear and transparent with goals, work with long-time supporters, and demonstrate governing that will bring the country back to and beyond its past prominence. Myanmar cannot do that by wallowing in its own mistakes and giving into the fractiousness and mistrust that has percolated for decades.

As for the international community, we must stop viewing Myanmar as a mature democracy; it is still at the beginning and is dealing with issues that even mature governments consistently mishandle. We must be constructive, continue to highlight and bring truth to serious issues, and find a way to help all sides find stability, safety, and growth.

Erin Murphy is the Principal and Founder of Inle Advisory Group, a Myanmar and emerging market-centric business advisory firm. She was previously the Special Assistant to the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma and a political analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Myanmar National Security Advisor Thaung Tun meets heads of diplomatic missions and UN agencies in Myanmar in Yangon on the Rohingya crackdown, in Yangon, Myanmar April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

By Reuters
April 11, 2017

A senior Myanmar government official on Tuesday denied there was ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in the troubled northwestern state of Rakhine, where a military operation aimed at the minority has forced 75,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.

Attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in October last year by a Rohingya insurgent group ignited the biggest crisis of country leader Aung San Suu Kyi's year in power.

A UN report in February said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes against Rohingya during their campaign against the insurgents, which may amount to crimes against humanity.

The military has denied the accusations, saying it was engaged in a legitimate counter-insurgency operation.

Thaung Tun, a recently appointed National Security Adviser, reiterated the claim made by Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi during a recent interview when she said "ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening".

"There is no ethnic cleansing of Muslim minority in Rakhine," Thaung Tun told a group of diplomats in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon. "It is a matter of people on different sides of the divide and the government is striving to overcome the situation and to close the gap."

His comments come amid several ongoing investigations into the allegations, including one mandated by Suu Kyi's government and chaired by the vice-president and former head of military intelligence, Myint Swe.

Last month, the top UN human rights body agreed to send an international fact-finding mission to investigate the allegations - a move that Myanmar has opposed.

While the UN February report stopped short of explicitly labeling the actions of the security forces as ethnic cleansing, it said the violence committed against the Rohingya "has been described in other contexts" as ethnic cleansing.

It also expressed "serious concerns" that the attacks were a result of a "purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas".

Thaung Tun said the government needed time and space to address the issues and "where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing, we will take firm action in accordance with the law".

He added the government had initiated the process of closing down some of the camps where tens of thousands of Rohingya internally displaced people have lived since clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012, but did not provide any specifics of what is likely to be an extremely complex process.

(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Nick Macfie)

UNHCR

April 10, 2017

Asif, 8, and Suleman, 12, say their parents were killed in the violence near Maungdaw, Myanmar. © UNHCR

By Shashank Bengali

Los Angeles Times

April 9, 2017

Sittwe, Myanmar -- It is just an ID card, sky blue and gently creased, but it is Mohammad Siddique’s greatest source of shame.

The indignity arises not from its routine details — his name, date of birth, photo, thumbprint — but from what it omits. Unlike documents held by citizens of Myanmar, there is no mention of Siddique’s race or religion.

To him it is an identity card that erases his identity.

Siddique, 25, is a Rohingya Muslim, a stateless minority of more than 1 million people who live in apartheid-like conditions in the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation of 53 million previously known as Burma.

Stripped of their citizenship by the country’s former military rulers, many are effectively trapped in villages and internment camps without the right to travel, work or marry freely within the country where they were born.

After a half-century of military rule, human rights activists and Myanmar’s international allies hoped that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi would loosen the restrictions when her civilian government took office a year ago. But she has refused to restore citizenship to the Rohingya or recognize them as an ethnic group — a sign of the army’s enduring influence as well as the deep antipathy that many Myanmar Buddhists, including leaders of Suu Kyi’s own party, feel toward Muslims.

In a limited step, Suu Kyi has adopted a plan to issue the Rohingya ID cards that acknowledge they are residents and start a process to consider their citizenship claims, with no assurances.

But many Rohingya oppose the cards, saying the omission of ethnicity is part of a continuing effort to eradicate any record of their existence here.

“This government doesn’t want to accept us as citizens of Myanmar,” Siddique said at his home in U Yin Thar, a Rohingya village of tidy wooden shacks outside the coastal town of Sittwe. As a downpour lashed the tin roofs, children scurried barefoot through muddy lanes and Siddique’s voice grew faint.

“They just want to kick us out of this country,” he said.

The ID push comes as the United Nations’ Human Rights Council prepares to investigate reports that the Myanmar army indiscriminately killed, raped and abused Rohingya civilians during a crackdown that began last October in northern Rakhine state, 60 miles from Sittwe.

“Trust has been eroded for decades” between the Rohingya and the government, said Matthew Smith, co-founder of Fortify Rights, an advocacy group in Southeast Asia. “It’s lunacy to think that soldiers could commit atrocity crimes with impunity on Monday and have civilians happily cooperate with the [ID] scheme on Tuesday.”

“There is no meaningful difference between the previous and current regimes on this issue,” he said.

Myanmar has long viewed the Rohingya — who share physical, cultural and linguistic similarities with South Asian ethnic groups — as foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh, even though many families have lived here for generations.

In 1982, the army enacted a law that dialed back full citizenship to include only members of 135 “national races” that purportedly existed in Burma before British colonialists invaded in 1824. The Rohingya were not included.

Under the law, the best they could hope for was naturalization and a limited set of rights granted through a verification process that has proved slow and opaque.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere on the planet that privileges particular ethnicities the way Myanmar does,” said Ronan Lee, a researcher at Australia’s Deakin University who has studied the Rohingya.

In 2014, when the former government introduced the ID cards, it ordered the Rohingya to identify themselves as “Bengali,” a label they oppose. Last year, Suu Kyi relaunched the effort, but tried to skirt the issue of ethnicity by eliminating race and religion from the document.

By early February, officials said they had issued 6,202 cards in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, home to most of the Rohingya population. Rohingya leaders say many of those were the result of coercion.

Siddique said he was tricked into accepting the card as a condition of his release last month from jail.

He had served 17 months for violating travel restrictions that have been strictly enforced since clashes erupted between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012 and the government confined more than 120,000 Rohingya to swampy displacement camps at the edge of Sittwe.

Unable to work or study freely, thousands have attempted to escape on overcrowded fishing boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia.

In October 2015, Siddique took his chances by slipping into the back of a car headed south toward the city of Yangon, but was quickly intercepted by police and arrested.

The day before he was freed, he was brought to a room where a prison guard took his picture and told him to sign and leave a thumbprint on one side of what Siddique thought was a prisoner release form.

When he folded the card over, his heart fell. “Identity Card for National Verification” was printed in bold letters.

At home, he reluctantly showed his family the document, holding it by the edges, as if it were soiled. Although officials said the card would give him freedom of movement, police at the checkpoint that seals off his village wouldn’t let him leave.

“Why did you take it?” his mother asked.

He told her he had no choice, that guards had kicked him with their boots and called him kalar, a slur for dark-skinned.

“I worry that the card will be used to persecute him,” said his aunt, Zurah Khatu.

Siddique was born in the same village as his father, who once worked for the army. No one in the family has held a job since 2015, when authorities bowed to the demands of Buddhist nationalists and revoked the temporary IDs that had allowed the Rohingya one of their last basic rights: to vote.

Unlike other controversial provisions enacted under military rule — such as blocking Suu Kyi from the presidency because she had a foreign spouse, or reserving one-quarter of parliamentary seats for the military — there is little support in Myanmar for changing the citizenship law. With Buddhist nationalists and extremist monks fanning anti-Muslim sentiment, Suu Kyi has remained largely silent on the Rohingya question.

U Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s party, said the government supported expanding citizenship criteria — to a point.

“We want to see citizens, not ethnic groups,” he said. “But there is no such ethnic group as the Rohingya in our history.”

Even Suu Kyi’s modest step has triggered protests in Rakhine state among hard-line Buddhists who complain that making Rohingya eligible for citizenship risks “Islamizing” the country — even though it’s more than 90% Buddhist.

“The government should be conscious of the security of the country,” said U Aung Htay, leader of a Buddhist civil society group in Sittwe. He pointed to the deaths of nine police officers in northern Rakhine last October at the hands of alleged Rohingya militants, a series of attacks that prompted the army crackdown.

“If that kind of attack happens again, people will suffer,” he said. “And you can assume the Bengali people are responsible.”

Rohingya say that even if they accepted the new ID, many would have little chance of meeting the law’s onerous requirements for regaining citizenship, including “conclusive evidence” of lineage in Myanmar.

In the Maw Thi Nya displacement camp outside Sittwe, 63-year-old Abdul Shafi held out his battered old citizenship card — nullified by the 1982 law — that he rescued from the 2012 clashes.

Shafi said officials had visited the camp multiple times in recent months to promote the new card, and he worried the government would use their refusal as a pretext to expel Rohingya from the country. As a group of men around him nodded vigorously, he remained defiant.

“We will not take this card,” he said. “Even if they kill us, we will not accept it.”

By AFP

April 9, 2017

The UN children's agency UNICEF has called on Myanmar's government to release Rohingya children detained as part of a sweeping military campaign in Rakhine state.

More than 600 people were arrested in an army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in the north of the restive state. The operation was launched after deadly attacks by militants on police posts in October.

Rohingya escapees in neighbouring Bangladesh, where more than 70,000 have fled, gave UN investigators accounts of beatings, torture and food deprivation inside the jails.

Minors are among those detained.

UNICEF's deputy executive director Justin Forsyth said he had given the country's de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi details of around a dozen youngsters being held in Buthidaung prison.

"There are some children that are detained in prison, so those are the cases that we're raising," he told AFP late on Saturday at the end of a brief trip to Myanmar.

"Any child that's detained is an issue for us."

Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi and Myanmar's army chief both recognised "that there's an issue here" but made no firm committment for their release, he added.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Sunday.

The UN Human Rights Council has agreed to send a mission to Myanmar to probe allegations that troops and police raped, killed and tortured Rohingya in their months-long campaign.

Myanmar has rejected the accounts collected by UN investigators in the Bangladesh refugee camps, who said the crimes could amount to ethnic cleansing.

"I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening," Suu Kyi said in an interview with the BBC last week.

Myanmar's police and the military have both launched separate probes to investigate the deaths of at least eight people in custody in northern Rakhine.

UN rights envoy for Myanmar Yanghee Lee said some 450 people were being held in Buthidaung prison when she visited in January, most without access to lawyers or their families.

Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of more than one million Rohingya, who are vilified as illegal "Bengali" immigrants and forced to live in apartheid-like conditions even though many have lived in the country for generations.

A group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has claimed the October attacks, which it said were intended to defend the rights of the persecuted minority after years of worsening conditions.

Forsyth said there was a growing recognition among both Myanmar's civilian government and army that depriving Rohingya children of opportunities had bred militancy.

"The reality is if you don't address these issues particularly for these communities then it will come back to haunt them, which is partly what has happened," he said.

By Sajeeb Wazed

The Diplomat

April 7, 2017

But the government needs international support to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

The plight of the Rohingya – the stateless Muslim people fleeing persecution and violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar – has become well known. The Rakhine state borders the Bay of Bengal and the southeastern tip of Bangladesh. Recurrent violence and torture has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar. Owing to its proximity, more than 300,000 displaced Rohingya have entered Bangladesh in recent years and nearly 70,000 more since late last year.

Having faced its own humanitarian and refugee situation during its war of liberation against Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh is sensitive to people seeking protection from torture and exclusion. That is why Bangladesh, which only two years ago climbed into lower-middle-income status in the World Bank rankings, has been expending significant government resources to help the displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh strongly supports the recommendations of a June 2016 report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Rohingya situation in Myanmar, which include: an abolition of discriminatory local orders against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, the lifting of restrictive bureaucratic requirements for emergency medical referrals and the establishment of guidelines that will eventually eliminate all freedom-of-movement restrictions on the Rohingya.

Bangladesh has successfully repatriated more than 236,500 Myanmar refugees through an agreement negotiated between the two nations in 1991-92 – until the process was halted by Myanmar in 2005. The remaining Myanmar refugees, numbering more than 33,000 now, are living in two camps in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal district near the border of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. But the Rohingya, having been denied citizenship in Myanmar, were forced to leave their homeland. Over the last decade, nearly 300,000 have entered Bangladesh and taken shelter in makeshift settlements in and around Cox’s Bazar.

The Cox’s Bazar settlements are not an ideal or tenable solution. Although the Bangladesh government has done its best, the sheer number of Rohingya living there has posed socio-economic, demographic, environmental, political, humanitarian and security challenges. It’s difficult for the government and NGOs to distribute assistance to the Rohingya in the settlement camps.

The Rohingya population is extremely vulnerable and its size is well beyond the capacity of the local administration to manage. Criminal networks have emerged that are engaging in narcotics smuggling and human trafficking. Adding more settlements to the Cox’s Bazar area, loading more onto an already over-strained system, is not feasible.

As an alternative, the government of Bangladesh has crafted a plan that would relocate the Rohingya population to Thengar Char, an island in the northern Bay of Bengal at the mouth of the Meghna River, north of Cox’s Bazar and south of the capital of Dhaka.

Conditions in this new settlement will be far better than what the Rohingya have in Cox’s Bazar. The government will build housing, schools, hospitals and health centers, mosques and roads.

Some news reports have falsely claimed that Thengar Char is completely submerged for part of the year, a baseless allegation that subjected the government to unwarranted criticism. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina dispatched a team of researchers to Thengar Char to closely examine its condition. The truth is that, as in any tidal region, waters rise and fall daily. As a result, a small percentage of Thengar Char – the coastline – is under water half of each day, at high tide, then exposed again at low tide. The vast majority of Thengar Char is never submerged.

The Bangladesh government will not build Rohingya settlement facilities in those areas of Thengar Char that are subject to tidal fluctuations. It is also doing its best to handle the influx of Rohingya people in the most humanitarian way.

During a recent hearing of the Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives, Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights, who has visited the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, said he is sympathetic with the challenges the Bangladesh government faces from the crush of refugees.

Another witness at the hearing, Andrea Gittleman, program manager of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, also recently visited Rohingya population living in Bangladesh and said that the Bangladesh government believes that the root of the Rohingya crisis must be solved in Myanmar.

Correct. The solution to the Rohingya crisis must be based in Myanmar and it will take many international hands. Bangladesh asks its international friends for help in developing Thengar Char and transporting the refugees there. It also seeks support for the sustainable return of the Rohingya to their homeland in Myanmar, in safety, security and dignity. 

Sajeeb Wazed is the information technology adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

By VOA News

April 7, 2017

The director general of an international coalition of 61 Rohingya organizations said he was “disappointed” at Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi for saying ethnic cleansing was “too strong” a term to describe what was happening in the Muslim-majority Rakhine region.

Wakar Uddin also called on her to reinstate a pre-independence system that showed Rohingya’s citizenship.

“I was very disappointed,” said Uddin of the Arakan Rohingya Union. “I can understand why she said that because she’s the head of state. If she admits it is ethnic cleansing, and for that matter genocide, there will be consequences from the international community.”

BBC televised a rare interview with the Myanmar’s state counselor on Wednesday. Attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in October last year by a previously unknown insurgent group set off the biggest crisis of Aung San Suu Kyi's year in power. More than 75,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in the ensuing army crackdown.

"I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on," Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said of the situation in Rakhine state. "I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening."

"It is not just a matter of ethnic cleansing,” she said. “It is a matter of people on different sides of a divide, and this divide we are trying to close up as best as possible and not to widen it further.”

"What we are trying to go for is reconciliation, not condemnation," Aung San Suu Kyi told the BBC. "It is Muslims killing Muslims as well."

Uddin, a professor of plant pathology and environmental microbiology at Penn State University, said in response that "Ethnic cleansing … is defined by what is going on on the ground. … She needs to understand, to know, the truth of what is going on -- the violence, the turbulence, the population displacement."

The recent violence is the latest in a long cycle. Zar Ni, a genocide scholar in London, said “Half of the [Rohingya] population was deported from the country in 1978. Almost 300,000 were then driven out of [Myanmar]. About 200,000 of them later came back. This kind of harassment is repeated every five or 10 years.

“The expression ‘genocide’ is used based on these actions of about 40 years,” he said. “There is no necessity to actively kill the entire population to say that is genocide.”

Burmese authorities consider most Rohingya to be "resident foreigners," not citizens, according to Human Rights Watch. In a report, the organization says “This lack of full citizenship rights means that the Rohingya are subject to other abuses, including restrictions on their freedom of movement, discriminatory limitations on access to education, and arbitrary confiscation of property.”

Uddin called on Aung San Suu Kyi to reinstate the national registration certificate (NRC), cards issued to Rohingya as proof of citizenship in 1947, a year before Myanmar - then known as Burma - gained independence from Britain. The military effectively voided the NRC with the 1982 citizenship law, by defining who was not a citizen and making some 800,000 Rohingya stateless.

“Reinstate the NRC,” Uddin said. “Many people still have those cards. The NRC cardholders and their children, who hold white cards, Aung San Suu Kyi can reinstate those and go from there. That is a fundamental issue.”

Myanmar has launched its own probe into possible crimes in Rakhine and appointed former United Nations chief Kofi Annan to head a commission tasked with healing long-simmering divisions between Buddhists and Muslims.

A U.N. human rights report issued earlier this year said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes against Rohingya during their campaign against the insurgents, which may amount to crimes against humanity.

The military has denied the accusations, saying it was engaged in a legitimate counterinsurgency operation. The U.N. Human Rights Council has called for an investigation, which Myanmar has refused to accommodate.

In the interview, Aung San Suu Kyi tried to reassure those who fled that "if they come back they will be safe."

Thar Nyunt Oo contributed to this report which originated with the VOA Burmese Service.

By Adil Sakhawat

Dhaka Tribune

April 7, 2017

'If anything like that happens again, we will exchange information (and) we will base our security measures on what we know'

A top Bangladesh Border Guard official on Thursday said the border agencies of Bangladesh and Myanmar have resolved to shut all crossing points between the two countries if there is any repeat of the recent Rohingya refugee crisis.

Speaking to the press at the end of a six-day conference on Thursday, BGB Additional Director General Anisur Rahman said the two border authorities had agreed to exchange information and act when necessary to seal their shared border to stem any flow of illegal immigrants.

At the same press conference, however, when questioned again, the ADG appeared to back off from his assertion that the borders would be closed down.

Instead, he said: “With our stance of mutual cooperation, we had agreed to immediately communicate with the Myanmar border authorities in case something like this happens again and then close the borders to prevent the influx of illegal immigrants.”

He continued: “If anything like that happens again, we will exchange information (and) we will base our security measures on what we know,” ADG Anisur said.

The ADG said a large number of Rohingya had illegally entered Bangladesh from Rakhine state in Myanmar since a military crackdown began in October 2016.

“They fled because they were terrified of the constant persecution and oppression they were facing in their homeland. We explained our concerns to Myanmar and they said the situation had been resolved and the area was perfectly peaceful now,” he said.

The chief of the Myanmar Police Force (MPF), Brig Gen Myo Swe Win, stressed that the conditions in Myanmar were stable.

At the press briefing, the border agencies also revealed that countless land mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had been placed around the zero line along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

Neither BGB nor MPF officials could clarify who placed the explosives, but they confirmed there had been casualties without giving exact numbers.

ADG Anisur and Brig Win agreed that it was imperative the explosives be removed.

BGB also expressed a concern about the drugs trafficked from Myanmar into Bangladesh and gave the MPF a fresh list of 49 possible yaba factories in Myanmar.

The next conference of the heads of the border agencies has been scheduled for November 2017 in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar.

By Carlos Sardina Galache

TIME

April 6, 2017

Maungdaw: On the morning of Oct. 10, Hussein Muhammad, an old Rohingya man who doesn’t know his age, was awoken at 6 a.m. by a noise outside his home. When he stepped outside, he saw that dozens of soldiers and members of Myanmar's Border Guard Police had his hut surrounded.

“They asked us if there was any ‘terrorist’ in our house," he says, speaking from his home in Myo Thu Gyi village near Maungdaw town, in Myanmar's western Rakhine state. "Then they dragged two of my grandsons. I tried to stop them and give them my family list to show them they were my grandsons, but they beat me up and threatened me with their weapons,” Muhammad recounts, breaking into tears.

His two grandsons, Ali Muhammed and Ali Ayaz, were 20 and 13 years old respectively. They were dragged to a small forest locally known as “betel garden” on the fringe of the village. There, Muhammad says, they were executed along with another man.

The raid on Myo Thu Gyi village followed a series of attacks on Oct. 9, in which a group of suspected Rohingya insurgents stormed three Border Guard posts in Rakhine state's Maungdaw and Rathedaung towns, killing nine policemen. In response to the attacks, the Myanmar military launched violent counteroperations in the north of the state, in which several villages were burnt to the ground, and up to 1,000 Rohingya people may have been killed. In the wake of the so-called clearance operation, more than 70,000 people fled to Bangladesh, bringing with them stories of extrajudicial killings, gang rape and children thrown into the flames of burning buildings.

Myo Thu Gyi was the first village attacked by the security forces. Until now, the area has been completely closed off to foreign journalists, but TIME was granted a permit to visit Maungdaw independently, the first since the violence began.

Ahmed Mahmood, a farmer in his late 20s from the same village as Hussein Muhammad, was hiding in a hut nearby and says he saw the executions. "Four members of the Border Guard Police made them sit down on the ground with their hands under their legs. One of the policemen executed them while the others were looking around. He kicked them first in their backs and then put a bullet in their heads, one by one. He shot the youngest one twice, once in his back and once in his head," Mahmood says.

According to several eyewitnesses interviewed by TIME in Myo Thu Gyi, seven villagers were killed on Oct. 10. Villagers say the military returned hours after the assault and took four bodies with them. Relatives and neighbors say they were able to hide three other corpses and gave them a proper Muslim burial the next day.

About 80% of the population in the area, along the border with Bangladesh, belong to the 1 million strong Rohingya Muslim community, an ethnic group that has suffered decades of persecution at the hands of the Myanmar government. Labeled as “Bengalis” by authorities, they are regarded as illegal interlopers from Bangladesh and denied citizenship. Most live in apartheid-like conditions with restrictions on education, healthcare and freedom of movement.

Laura Haigh, Myanmar researcher for Amnesty International, who investigated the incident and spoke with eyewitnesses, said the killings are part of a wider pattern. “What happened in Myo Thu Gyi is a clear example of how security forces targeted villagers at random, often without any evidence or known links to armed groups," she says, adding that the military and police would enter villages and open fire "shooting at people even as they fled."

"The lack of access to the area, and intimidation and threats against those who speak out means that we simply do not know how many were killed during this appalling offensive," says Haigh.

The speed at which the military moved in on the village — just one day after the attacks on the Border Guard posts — has experts doubting that proper investigations were carried out.

“It is impossible that the security forces could have enough time to have conducted a proper investigation to ascertain if there were insurgents hiding in that village,” says Chris Lewa, director of Arakan Project, a human-rights watchdog that has been documenting human-rights violations in Rakhine state for years. “And how a 13-year-old child could take part in the insurgency? Those were just random summary executions,” she adds.

“My grandsons had nothing to do with the insurgency, they were here in our house when the insurgents attacked the Border Guard Police. They just sell betel nut, work and try to study,” Muhammad says.

Five months after the attacks and subsequent raids, daily life in Maungdaw — a dusty city near the Naf River marking the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh — continues, though a curfew remains in place from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. In an unusual display of openness, the security forces allowed TIME to accompany a police convoy patrolling the town.

As the three trucks wound their way through the streets, the contrast between the Rohingya and the Rakhine quarters was stark, at least during the first hour of the curfew. Though the majority of people living in Maungdaw are Rohingya Muslims, the town has a sizable Rakhine Buddhist community and the two ethnic groups mostly live in separate neighborhoods. The patrol passed houses with lights on; people sit watching TV or talk with neighbors in their courtyards. "This is a Rakhine quarter," said the police. But the Rohingya areas were eerily deserted: all windows closed, no lights were turned on, and no human presence visible.

Since the crackdown, about 600 people have been arrested on charges of terrorism, the government said. Security forces are still trying to find the leaders, though the police captain in charge of the patrol says he knows who they are. “We haven’t been able to find them so far, they must be hiding somewhere. We know their faces and their names," says Kyaw Aye Hlaing, adding: "For us all these 'Bengalis' look the same, so it’s difficult to recognize them."

In the darkness, 4 km away, lay Myo Thu Gyi. Kyaw Aye Hlaing says that the security forces launched the first assault on that particular village in October because the village "is full of extremists."

"It was a very troublesome village during the violence in 2012,” he says, referring to the successive waves of attacks between the Buddhist and Muslim communities that swept Rakhine state that year, resulting in up to 200 deaths and 140,000 internally displaced people, most of them Rohingya.

A few days after TIME visited the area, the U.N. Human Rights Council approved a resolution on March 24 to "dispatch urgently" an international fact-finding mission to probe alleged abuses by military and security forces, particularly against the Rohingya community. The Myanmar government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, rejected the decision, alleging that the probe would only "inflame" the situation in Rakhine. Myanmar authorities have been accused of pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, which on Wednesday Suu Kyi denied, saying it was "too strong an expression" to use.

For those whose lives have been shattered by the crackdown in Maungdaw, there is little hope for recourse.

"There is no protection for us," Muhammad says. "I know we will never get justice for this."

The names of all the Rohingya villagers interviewed for this report have been changed for security reasons.

By Coconuts Yangon

April 6, 2017

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s responses to BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane in an interview released today have been described by Myanmar watchers as “regrettable” and “deeply disingenuous“. But for the Lady’s millions of admirers, it may be difficult to see how.

Here’s our recommendation: watch the interview again, and if you still feel satisfied with Aung San Suu Kyi’s performance, help yourself to a healthy dose of skepticism from BBC’s Myanmar-based reporter Jonah Fisher, who has painstakingly and super-helpfully fact-checked her statements. Check out his comments below.

A Rohingya refugee girl wipes her eyes as she cries in a Bangladesh refugee camp (Photo: Reuters)