By bdnews24.com

May 9, 2017

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today urged the outgoing Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka Myo Myint Than to convey the message to his government to find out a solution to repatriation of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

"Together we should find out a solution to resolve the issue," the prime minister said when the ambassador made a farewell call on her at Gono Bhaban in Dhaka today.

"As a neighbour we always want to resolve the issue through dialogue," the prime minister also said.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, PM's Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim said the prime minister reiterated Bangladesh's position on the Rohingya issue saying the refugees are creating social and environmental pressure on Bangladesh.

There are many undocumented Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina said adding that Rohingyas are also living in a very inhumane condition.

Pointing out the singing of the peace accord with insurgents in Chittagong Hill Tracts, the prime minister said Bangladesh brought back its refugees peacefully from India under the agreement.

The press secretary said in the meeting the prime minister laid emphasis on strengthening cooperation with Myanmar as a neighbour to further boost economic ties.

In this regard, the prime minister gave importance to activating the joint trade commission and cargo shipping service between the two countries.

"We don't allow our soil to be used against neighbours," Sheikh Hasina said pointing out her government's zero tolerance toward terrorism.

Bangladesh always gives value to its relations with the neighbours, she said adding that "in recent times we have been firm in disallowing our country to the armed insurgent groups of Myanmar."

By Roland Watson (www.dictatorwatch.org)

Fifteen years ago the website I run chose to issue a statement criticising Aung San Suu Kyi (“End the Dialogue: An Open Letter to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi”, www.dictatorwatch, February, 2002).

It was perhaps the first comprehensive criticism of Suu Kyi, at a time when pretty much everyone supported her. A few people from the ethnic nationalities were suspicious about her lack of cooperation with them, but no one was going to confront the international democracy icon and cause her to lose face. I realised that it would be useful to say what people of the country were too deferential to mention.

The statement was exceedingly polite, pointing out that you can’t negotiate with tyrants – and certainly not from a position of weakness. She was a the time involved in a “dialogue” with the ruling junta, which had released some political prisoners to give her “ammunition” that the approach might yield real results. To my knowledge, this was the first time they “played” her, using her to reduce the domestic and international pressure that their human rights atrocities generated. But it was absolutely clear that the regime was not sincere, that the release was a token step, and that the dialogue would never change anything. Now, 15 years later, she is still following that same failed strategy.

My criticism became much more pointed when she betrayed the pro-democracy movement by reregistering the NLD in 2011, ending her election boycott; when she ignored fresh offensives in the North against the Kachin and other groups that began that year; and when she refused to condemn the pogroms against Muslims that were perpetrated the following year, and which grew into the Rohingya genocide. It seemed Suu Kyi was walking the same path as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, changing from a resistance leader into an authoritarian ruler. Now she has progressed even further, from surrendering to the generals, to actively covering-up and attempting to justify their crimes.

The people of Myanmar have to throw off their reservations and oppose her forcefully. If she is allowed to have her way, you will always be dominated by the Tatmadaw. You will never know true freedom. There will be no peace, and the crimes against humanity will never cease.

By bdnews24.com

May 8, 2017

To prop up humanitarian support to the displaced people from Myanmar in Cox's Bazar, Japan has provided an emergency grant-in-aid of $2 million.

The aid will be distributed through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

An estimated 74,000 people have crossed the border from Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar since October 2016.

Bangladesh has also sheltered more than 500,000 Rohingya refugees who have crossed the border at different times over the past few decades.

The refugees face limited shelter, food, necessary item, health service and poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene.

According to a statement, funds from the grant will help UNICEF to provide Maternal Neonatal Child and Adolescent Health (MNCAH) to 61,822 children under the age of five, 58,299 women between 15-49 years of age and 2,000 adolescents in the refugee communities.

It will also distribute health information and education services, immunisation, latrines, hygiene and hand washing devices.

The UNHCR will distribute non-food items among 2,600 families to help them weather the monsoons.

The IOM will attend to the emergency needs of the recently arrived, provide shelter to the homeless, necessities and access to mental health care.

“With the increasing influx of DPs in the host communities and the makeshift settlements, the services and resources are falling short, children bearing the biggest brunt,” said UNICEF Bangladesh Representative Edouard Beigbeder.

The representative expressed his gratitude for the aid from Japan.

“We want all children from all communities to get basic education services and be protected from abuse, violence and exploitation. This grant will help us to complement education and protection services with health and wash emergency interventions for all children. This will prepare the children for a healthier life indispensable to their development and well-being.”

By Poppy McPherson

The Guardian

May 8, 2017

Ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha has been spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric across Myanmar for years. Cosmopolitan Mandalay is at the heart of this hostility – which many fear is here to stay

In a cluttered room in a monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city, a group of crimson-robed monks and their followers feverishly smoke and talk. One monk wearing black, thick-rimmed glasses feeds paper into a photocopier. Another lies on the floor, stapling pages of propaganda together. Hangers-on laugh loudly and flick cigarette butts into an ashtray.

They’re forming petitions, explains a monk with oversized sunglasses perched on his forehead. A local journalist recently criticised the group’s front man, the vitriolic monk Ashin Wirathu, known for his violently anti-Muslim rhetoric. They now want the reporter arrested.

“Jihadi Muslims want to overwhelm the country, so we have to protect it,” says Eindaw Bar Tha, the monk lying on the floor.

This is the headquarters of the Committee to Protect Race and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha. It is an ultra-nationalist Buddhist organisation, and for years it has been spreading anti-Muslim sentiment across the country from this unassuming base. Self-anointed protectors of Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist religion, Ma Ba Tha members have sown insidious new tensions in Mandalay, a diverse city home to sizeable Muslim, Christian and Hindu populations.

In 2014, the hostility culminated in anti-Muslim riots widely linked to Ma Ba Tha – a tension that’s still present throughout Mandalay. On the street, a Muslim man passing a monk freezes up for fear of saying a wrong word. A Buddhist taxi driver, driving away from an Islamic neighbourhood, mutters: “So many Muslims.”

Smar Nyi Nyi, a softly spoken Muslim businessman, puts it like this: “When we are speaking with the Buddhists we have to be careful. We don’t want our words to harm them. Also, we are thin-skinned about their words.”

The people in his neighbourhood have responded by putting up huge grey gates, which are shut each night at 10pm. “We are preventing trouble,” he says. “Some of the young kids, when they are insulted they will speak back, they will act back.”

Two eras: before and after 2014

The country’s ancient royal capital situated in the dry and dusty northern lowlands, has long been viewed by western travellers through a romantic lens. Britain ruled Myanmar from here, and colonial-era writer Somerset Maugham called the reconstructed palace and surrounding moat “one of the minor beauties of the world”.

Today, Mandalay is a rapidly modernising trading town, strongly influenced by its proximity to China – the motorbike-choked streets are packed with Chinese hotels, clothes stalls and cosmetics shops.

It’s also the country’s Buddhist heartland, home to hundreds of golden pagodas and monasteries. When King Mindon founded the city in the 19th century, he was fulfilling an old Buddhist prophecy that the location would be a centre for the revival and study of the religion.

Nevertheless, the city has become a melting pot of cultures and religions. Mosques, churches and sculpture-encrusted Hindu temples stand interspersed with the glittering spires of pagodas. Burmese kings had Muslim advisers. One of them, U Bein, lent his name to a spectacular teak bridge – now a popular tourist site. 

During British rule, the city drew Armenian businessmen, Iraqi Jews and many south Asians. It wasn’t continuous harmony – anti-Muslim riots in 1938 claimed hundreds of lives – but relations have mostly been peaceful.

However, the city’s status as a centre of Buddhism gives Mandalay a special place in the national psyche . In the 1960s, the Ministry of Information referred to the city as “the indestructible heart of Burma” – and Ma Ba Tha has its roots in this nationalistic attitude.

“According to the constitution, most of the civilians’ religion is Buddhism,” says Eindaw Bar Tha. “The government has the responsibility to respect the rights of Buddhist citizens, too. But they’re not doing this. That’s why we have the full responsibility to protect our religion.”

The biggest threat, in their eyes, comes from their Muslim neighbours, who they view with atavistic suspicion: they say Muslims steal Buddhist women, outbreed the Buddhist majority and plot terror attacks.

While many people in cosmopolitan Mandalay eschew Ma Ba Tha’s fanaticism, the city’s Muslim residents date the escalating hostility to the emergence of the group (and its precursor, the 969 movement) in 2013. When the movement’s logo began to appear on car decals and in shops, and they started handing out pamphlets listing Muslim businesses to avoid, people such as Zin War Law, a Muslim office worker in her mid-30s, thought it was a joke. “It is very childish, their activity, and their manners are childish,” she says. Later, she heard Buddhist friends parrot their views.

“I feel disgusted,” says her friend Yin Yin Mya, a spritely 61-year-old Muslim woman. Her great-grandfather, who was also Muslim, served in the royal palace. “I hate them because actually the communities got along since a long time ago, but because of them they started to split.”

For many Mandalay residents, recent history falls into two eras: before and after 2014. 

After a local Muslim was accused of raping a Buddhist girl, several nights in July brought the worst intercommunal riots in years. A mob on motorbikes, armed with machetes, rampaged around targeting Islamic homes and businesses. Two men died.

“After 2014 we lost the peacefulness,” says Yin Yin Mya.

She lives around the corner from the Muslim-owned chapati shop where the violence first broke out. Her own daughter, Pwint Phyu Latt, helped broker peace, but was later arrested – after a campaign by Ma Ba Tha – and remains in prison.

Yin Yin Mya says she saw rioters drive motorbikes down the road that leads from Wirathu’s monastery. “At the time the groups of people – they were drunk – were sent by Wirathu,” she says.

Ma Ba Tha denies any involvement in the riots. At the suggestion that they paid rioters, Eindaw Bar Tha snorts with laughter. “We have no money to buy a tea,” he says.

The ‘water’ to Wirathu’s ‘fire’

Most people don’t dispute the role the nationalists played in the riots. At another monastery a short drive away lives an eccentric, round-faced monk who calls himself the “water” to Wirathu’s “fire”. Kar Wi Ya, 60, lives with a collection of cats and kittens named after Myanmar film stars. He was one of the people responsible for calming the violence in 2014, and Muslim groups consider him a friend and sometime protector.

“After I was called by the Islamic leader, I came there with about 200 people,” he recalls. “When I arrived, there were two groups fighting. I went into the middle and stopped them … I led both groups to their respective homes.”

He insists Ma Ba Tha members were among the rioters. “When they saw me, they went back,” he says. “Actually, this violence was created by Ma Ba Tha.”

But because he has relationships with both the Muslim community and Ma Ba Tha, some view him with suspicion. In 2013, he led protests against a visit to Myanmar by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. “He’s like a gecko, easy to change colour,” says Yin Yin Mya.

Nevertheless, the monk, who spent more than a decade in prison for opposing the former military junta, says he has no love for Wirathu. He echoes the commonly held belief that Ma Ba Tha has close ties to the army and was created to foment trouble ahead of the pivotal 2015 election.

Last year, after half a century of military rule, the generals handed power to a civilian government led by longtime opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. They retain control over key institutions, including the security forces.

The fact that large-scale violence has not broken out in Mandalay since 2014 is partly thanks to the grassroots work of sympathetic monks like Kar Wi Ya, and activists who have calmed the skirmishes that are publicised and manipulated by nationalist groups on social media.

“These small things happen occasionally,” says Harry Myo Lin, who runs an advocacy group called the Seagull. “It’s solved underground.”

He gives the recent example of a Buddhist man and Muslim woman who eloped together. Ma Ba Tha supports a ban on interfaith marriages, and local monks used this case to rile up anti-Muslim sentiment.

On another occasion, two groups of young people fought in the city and a Buddhist boy was killed. Although both groups contained Muslims and Buddhists, the incident was framed as a religiously motivated killing.

Such situations have been resolved quietly through interventions, Harry Myo Lin says. Sometimes, money changes hands.

“There are countering forces which make peace,” he says. “Maybe it’s not continuous peace messaging, but at least they are easily coming together to stop any possible violence.”

But activists like him face continuous interference from nationalist groups. In addition to Ma Ba Tha, there are numerous youth organisations that follow their example.

“Interfaith activists in Mandalay operate amid a climate of severe hostility and fear, facing parallel forms of harassment and discrimination from both state and non-state actors,” says Shaivalini Parmar, Myanmar programme officer for Civil Rights Defenders. 

‘We don’t need Ma Ba Tha’

While it has done nothing to help persecuted interfaith activists, the NLD government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has shown some limited willingness to act against Ma Ba Tha. Shortly after taking power, Yangon chief minister Phyo Min Thein breezily told crowds on a trip to Singapore: “We don’t need Ma Ba Tha.”

Meanwhile the group has demonstrated callousness that may have dented its popularity. After the popular Muslim NLD legal adviser Ko Ni was assassinated in February, Wirathu publicly thanked the killer, prompting widespread ire.

Last month, Ma Ha Na, the state Buddhist organisation, sought to clamp down on Wirathu’s hateful preaching – but he has continued to travel the country, broadcasting pre-recorded sermons with duct tape plastered across his mouth.

While the case against the journalist accused of defaming Wirathu was thrown out on a technicality this month, the incident demonstrates the group’s continuing political sway.

Kar Wi Ya is skeptical about the government’s ability to reign in Ma Ba Tha. He predicts further clashes between Buddhists and Muslims. “No hope,” he says, when asked about relations between the communities.

Muslims and activists in Mandalay tend to view extremist Buddhist nationalism as a multi-headed hydra that, no matter how many heads you cut off, is liable to keep coming back.

“If you remove Ma Ba Tha, another group will come,” says Smar Nyi Nyi. “We have to remove the power[ful] guys stringing behind.”

In the meantime, the climate of mutual distrust they have helped foster in Mandalay will be hard to shift. 

Zin War Law, for her part, regrets the loss of her Buddhist friends. “They changed,” she says. “Whenever they see Muslim people they feel afraid.”

By Human Rights Watch

May 8, 2017

Protect Religious Freedom, End Restrictions Targeting Minorities

Rangoon – The Burmese government should immediately reopen two madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, that local authorities sealed off in Rangoon on April 28, 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should publicly commit to protecting the right to freedom of religion for all religious communities in Burma, including in worship, observance, practice, and teaching.

In late April, a mob of about 50 to 100 Buddhist ultranationalists put pressure on local officials and police in Rangoon’s Thaketa Township to close the two madrasas. The ultranationalists alleged Muslim community members were using the schools to conduct prayers, which they claimed violated an agreement signed by the schools’ leaders last year. The authorities carried out the mob’s demand and have not reopened the schools, denying a reported several hundred students their education.

“Burmese local officials’ craven capitulation to mob demands to shutter two Muslim schools is the latest government failure to protect Burma’s religious minorities,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “The government should immediately reverse these closures, end restrictions on the practice of minority religions, and prosecute Buddhist ultranationalists who break the law in the name of religion.”

Claims by Buddhist ultranationalist groups that the shutdowns were lawful because madrasa leaders had signed a document in October 2015 agreeing not use the schools for prayer provide no justification for their closure. Even if the agreement was not signed under duress, as evidence suggests, it would be an infringement on the Muslim community’s basic rights to religious freedom. The media reported that Buddhist ultranationalists had previously pressured local officials about whether prayers were being said at the two madrasas.

Tin Myo Aung, 45, a security officer at one of the schools, told Human Rights Watch that a crowd of Buddhist ultranationalists appeared at about 4 p.m. outside the school he was guarding. As they grew more agitated he became worried, before the police arrived. At about 6 p.m. the police padlocked the schools to prevent anyone from entering. An altercation between some Buddhist ultranationalists and a reporter from the Associated Press did not escalate. A school committee member told Human Rights Watch that the authorities said the closure was temporary but gave no timeline for the schools’ reopening.

Human Rights Watch visited Thaketa Township on April 29 and observed dozens of police outside both schools. Just after 11 a.m., local authorities and school representatives, along with individuals identified by local residents as Buddhist ultranationalists, entered the schools to examine them. After they emerged, the officials replaced the locks and put yellow tape and barricades around the entrances. Police outside the schools have since refused to allow Muslim community members, including those whose children attend the schools, to enter.

The school committee member told Human Rights Watch that the schools immediately sent a letter to the Rangoon Region chief minister’s office requesting to have the schools reopened. However, so far they have not received a response. Tin Myo Aung said that several hundred children between the ages of 5 and 12 ordinarily attend the two schools. The closures deny children their right to an education.

Wunna Shwe, 54, joint secretary general of the Islamic Religious Affairs Council, said that closures like this are not uncommon in Burma, and that they also affect other minority religious groups, such as Christians.

“According to our experience, madrasas that are sealed or closed almost never open again,” Wunna Shwe said. He added that since violence in Taungoo, Bago Region, in 2001 caused the government to seal ten mosques, only four have since been reopened.

Human Rights Watch repeatedly telephoned the Rangoon police information committee, but no one was willing to comment on the incident.

“Burmese authorities and police have repeatedly shown they are unwilling to confront Buddhist ultranationalists inciting violence against Muslims and other religious minorities,” Robertson said. “In doing so the government has failed to protect the rights to freedom of religion and education and provide basic security to all of its people. Burma’s leaders can’t sit back and wait for the next round of violence against a minority group; they need to take proactive steps to address religious tensions and disputes so that all can practice their religion peacefully and safely.”

Muslims in Burma

During the British colonial period and early years after independence in 1948, Muslims held high positions in Burma’s government and civil society. They were in the forefront of the fight for independence from the British. After independence, Muslims continued to play a prominent role in the country’s business, industrial, and cultural activities. Many were public servants, soldiers, and officers. After General Ne Win seized power in 1962, he initiated the systematic expulsion of Muslims from the government and army. No written directive bars Muslims from entry or promotion in the government, but that has long been the practice. In 2001, Human Rights Watch documented anti-Muslim violence in various parts of the country that left dozens of mosques and madrasas destroyed.

According to government census data collected in 2014, Muslims make up just over 2 percent of the population of Burma, which is about 90 percent Buddhist. However, that figure does not include more than one million Muslims who are Rohingya, a largely stateless ethnic group living primarily in Rakhine State. Christians make up just over 6 percent of the country’s population.

Burma is obligated under international human rights law to protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to express religious belief in worship, observance, practice, and teaching. Protection of this right must be done in a nondiscriminatory way. The right is subject to limitations for the protection of public safety, order, health, or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. However, those restrictions must be prescribed by law, narrowly tailored to prevent a specific threat, and proportionate to the threat. Burmese officials have provided no information or evidence to suggest that the two Islamic schools posed any imminent threat.

Successive Burmese governments have repeatedly allowed Buddhist ultranationalist groups to prevent minority religious communities from choosing the places they worship, practice, or receive religious education. In its 2017 annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom again found pervasive discrimination against both Muslims and Christians in Burma.

Government regulations on venues for prayer and constructing religious buildings are opaque, often only explained orally by local officials, and have onerous requirements. Wunna Shwe told Human Rights Watch that there are no official written rules or regulations proscribing prayer at religious schools or restricting the construction of religious buildings, though some religious schools have been required to ask for permission to conduct prayers over limited periods of time. Burmese government authorities also prohibit construction of new mosques, and make it extremely difficult to get authorization to make repairs to existing religious buildings. Such restrictions have been in place since the early 1960s, and as a result there are many mosques in Burma that have fallen into severe disrepair, while others struggle to support growing Muslim communities.

For example, a leader at a mosque said that local authorities recently forced the mosque to tear up a concrete floor built to keep out rats. Officials had said the construction was illegal because the mosque did not receive permission before undertaking the project. Mosque leaders said this approval process involves no less than six approvals from nearly every level of local and regional governmental office – from the ward-level up to the Rangoon regional administrative office.

The forced closure of the two madrasas in Rangoon is part of a broader trend of pressure, intimidation, and violence perpetrated by Buddhist ultranationalist groups against Muslim communities. The most prominent such group, Ma Ba Tha, or the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, has been actively promoting discriminatory policies and fueling anti-Muslim sentiments. These have included a successful campaign to have enacted four rights-abusing “race and religion laws,” signed into law in May and August 2015, which inordinately target Muslims and other religious minorities, violate women’s rights, and encourage Buddhist ultranationalist groups to pressure local officials to enforce the laws.

Successive waves of violence against Muslim populations in various parts of the country, but particularly against Rohinyga Muslims in Burma’s western Rakhine State, have left many mosques razed and communities without places to worship. Violence in June 2012 between Buddhist and Muslims in Rakhine State was followed in October 2012 by coordinated attacks against the Rohingya by Rakhine Buddhist mobs backed by the police and military. Human Rights Watch found that the assaults on Rohingya communities in October amounted to “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity. Thousands of buildings were burned, displacing over 140,000 people, most of whom were Rohingya and Kaman Muslims.

In 2013, clashes between Muslims and Buddhists in Meiktila, Mandalay Region, resulted in dozens killed and over 800 buildings destroyed. Further attacks against Muslim communities over the course of the year occurred in April in Okkan village, Sagaing Region; in May in Lashio, Shan State; in August in Htan Gone village, Sagaing Region; and in October in Thandwe Township, Rakhine State. In July 2014, a Buddhist mob attacked a Muslim house in the city of Mandalay.

In late June and early July 2016, mobs destroyed two mosques in the same week, one in Bago Region, the other in Kachin State.

In October 2016, after a Rohingya militant group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked three border posts in northern Rakhine State, Burmese security forces engaged in a campaign of arson, torture, extrajudicial killings, and rape. In March 2017, the United Nations passed a resolution to dispatch a fact-finding mission to investigate these attacks and other abuses, which a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said very likely amounted to crimes against humanity.

By Sally Kantar

The Irrawaddy

May 8, 2017

Activists and refugees demonstrated as State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was presented with the Freedom of the City of London award on Monday, calling the recognition “disappointing” in light of ongoing abuses against ethnic and religious minorities, journalists and rights activists in Burma.

“I’m so disappointed. She needs to stand on her moral ground—people have been dying, people have been raped,” said Ko Aung, an 88-Generation student activist and former security assistant of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who, before moving to the UK nearly 20 years ago, spent seven years as a political prisoner in Burma.

Along with the Kachin National Organization (KNO), Burma Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), and the charity Restless Beings, Ko Aung helped organize Monday’s demonstration in central London. It was attended by around 40 people who opposed the award, citing reports of abuses in Burma which they say have continued since the elected National League for Democracy-led (NLD) government took office more than one year ago.

Chanting “Aung San Suu Kyi, shame on you,” they stood on the chilly London street corner for nearly three hours, holding signs calling for a release of political prisoners, a halt to religious hate speech, and an end to military violence against different ethnic nationalities, including the Kachin, Ta’ang (Palaung), Rohingya and Shan.

“We have a chance to cooperate here. In Burma, we had no chance,” said Ring Du Lachyung, chairperson of the KNO, regarding the attendance of demonstrators from various religious and ethnic backgrounds. “We are the same victims of military perpetrators,” he added.

The Freedom of the City honor, which dates back nearly 800 years, was awarded to Daw Aung Suu Kyi in a private ceremony in London’s Guildhall, to which a spokesperson for the city of London confirmed to The Irrawaddy that no media was invited. Fellow Nobel Peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have also received the same award.

Ring Du Lachyung told The Irrawaddy at the protest that he objected to the State Counselor receiving a “freedom” award from the city of London, when, “in reality, they don’t recognize the freedom of the Kachin.”

“The UK government should stand with us, but they stand with her,” said Daw Khin Hla, a former schoolteacher from conflict-torn Buthidaung Township in Arakan State and current member of BROUK, on why she had decided to protest the event, adding, “they aren’t accepting our suffering.”

The State Counselor has come under increasing international criticism for a stalled peace process with ethnic armed groups, continued military clashes and displacement of civilians in the country’s north, and increased arrests of journalists under the country’s defamation law. At an EU press conference on May 2, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also said that she would “disassociate” from a United Nations fact-finding mission mandated to investigate recent reports of rape, extrajudicial killings, arson and torture by security forces against the Rohingya community in Arakan State in late 2016 and early 2017.

In an April interview with the BBC, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi rejected assertions that crimes against the Muslim minority in northern Arakan State amounted to ethnic cleansing, and her government has repeatedly described the issues as an “internal affair.”

Two counter-protesters at the London demonstration echoed these sentiments and said they had come to “support Daw Aung San Suu Kyi” and to “condemn” the protest.

“Aung San Suu Kyi is our legitimate leader,” said Htein Lin, who came to London as a refugee in 2007, but denounced the Rohingya who have also sought asylum in the UK, saying, “they are not a real nationality.”

‘Screened From Criticism’

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in London on Friday night—after previously visiting Belgium, the Vatican and Italy—and, according to Burmese state media, was met by a delegation at Heathrow airport, including U Kyaw Zwa Min, Burma’s ambassador to the UK.

When The Irrawaddy contacted the Burmese embassy in London to inquire about the State Counselor’s visit, this reporter was told that the embassy knew “nothing” of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s schedule or public engagements during her trip.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is reportedly staying at The Dorchester hotel for the duration of her time in the British capital. It is the same establishment in which her father, the late independence leader Gen Aung San, and his delegation stayed in January 1947 during the trip in which he negotiated an agreement with then Prime Minister Clement Attlee guaranteeing independence for Burma by within one year. Weeks later, he signed the Panglong Agreement in Shan State, promising ethnic nationalities equality and autonomy within a federal Union.

It is said that during his weeks at the establishment 70 years ago, Aung San invited members of the Burmese community in London to The Dorchester to share meals, music and memories of their homeland.

Activists have noted that his daughter’s trip—her third to the UK in the last five years—has been considerably more guarded.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is scheduled to meet “select” members of the Burmese community on Tuesday, but at the time of reporting it remained unclear who would be attending the event.

Not invited, said those at the protest, are members of the Burmese Muslim and the Kachin communities in London.

Ko Aung, who remembers “working tirelessly” for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release when she was under 15 years of military-imposed house arrest, met her during her trip to the UK in 2012, but will not be attending Tuesday’s gathering.

Mark Farmaner, director of advocacy organization Burma Campaign UK (BCUK), which was not involved with Monday’s protest, confirmed to The Irrawaddy that his organization had also not been invited to any events relating to the State Counselor’s London visit.

“[The Burmese embassy] is not making official approaches to community organizations,” he said in an email. “She won’t be meeting a representative group and is being screened from criticism.”

BCUK published ten questions in a statement for British officials to consider during the State Counselor’s trip to London. It highlighted the continued detention of political prisoners, restrictions on aid to communities displaced by conflict in Arakan, Kachin, and Shan states, an increase in prosecutions under the country’s Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, the continued use of a visa ban list affecting diaspora activists, and the rejection of the United Nations fact-finding mission.

Reuters reported that the State Counselor met the UK’s Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace for lunch on Friday, and that they were joined by other members of the British royal family.

By AFP

May 8, 2017

London -- Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the honorary freedom of the City of London on Monday, as a small group of demonstrators protested outside about the treatment of minority Rohingya Muslims.

Myanmar's de facto leader received the award at the Guildhall, after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II and heir to the throne Prince Charles on Friday.

The award was in recognition of her "non-violent struggle over many years for democracy and her steadfast dedication to create a society where people can live in peace, security and freedom", the City of London said.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi is on a tour around Europe that has already taken her to Belgium, Italy and the Vatican City.

On Monday around 40 demonstrators protested outside the Guildhall, with signs reading "Free All Political Prisoners in Burma" and "Please Stop Military Burning of Rohingya Villages".

They chanted "Suu Kyi is lying; Rohingyas are dying" and said that people who had once supported her now opposed her.

"We believed that she would be a champion of human rights but she has been complicit with... the junta murdering innocent Rohingyas," one speaker said.

Last week Suu Kyi rejected a decision by the UN's rights council to investigate allegations of crimes by Myanmar's security forces against Rohingyas.

Myanmar is scheduled hold peace talks this month aimed at ending decades-long ethnic wars that have intensified since Suu Kyi's party took power a year ago.

Earlier on her Europe trip, she met Belgium's King Philippe and Prime Minister Charles Michel.

She also met European Council president Donald Tusk and European Commission foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini while in Brussels.

She then met Pope Francis and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni while in Rome on Thursday.

By David Nakamura

The Washington Post

May 7, 2017

As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcomed officials from 10 Southeast Asian nations this week, a Burmese representative handed him a personalized letter. 

The author was Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and de facto leader of the nation’s civilian government, who wanted to express her regret for being absent due to a scheduling conflict, U.S. officials said.

The note represented rare direct communication between Suu Kyi and the Trump administration. As President Trump has made a flurry of calls to foreign leaders, he has yet to speak with Suu Kyi, who twice welcomed Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, to her lakeside villa in Rangoon as a powerful symbol of U.S. support for Burma’s slow, fitful transition from authoritarian military rule to fledgling democracy.

The Burma project remains fraught — political reforms have ebbed, and Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for failing to speak out more forcefully against ethnic violence directed toward the Muslim minority. And China continues to exert economic and political pressure on the neighboring nation of 54 million, also known as Myanmar.

From Capitol Hill to Rangoon, the question is whether the Trump administration will continue to nurture Burma’s transition or turn its back at a crucial juncture.

“The country wants it. It gives them a sense of confidence,” Derek Mitchell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Burma from 2012 to 2016, said of political support from Washington. “But the focus on things we care about, such as values and democracy and human rights, they don’t feel that with Trump. There’s a cost in losing all of that.”

Behind the scenes, Burma’s ambassador to Washington has been pressing the White House for more attention from high-level officials, a sign of Suu Kyi’s uncertainty about Trump’s public silence.

Trump aides emphasized that the president’s failure to contact her is not intended as a slight. On Friday, national security adviser H.R. McMaster hosted the Southeast Asian officials, including Burma’s representative, at the White House. Trump aides said the president, who was away at his estate in Bedminster, N.J., would have stopped by had he been in town.

The questions over Trump’s approach to Burma come as the administration is starting to formulate its broader policy stance toward Southeast Asia and what role the countries there may play in the U.S. effort to further isolate North Korea diplomatically and economically. Administration officials pointed to several signals in recent days that were intended to reassure the region that the White House would maintain a focus there even as it scrapped the Obama administration’s “Asia rebalance” policy aimed at deepening U.S. security and trade ties.

In Indonesia last month, Vice President Pence announced Trump would attend a trio of security and economic summits in Vietnam and the Philippines this fall.

Tillerson emphasized to the Southeast Asian officials that the administration would make a “sustained commitment” to the region, said W. Patrick Murphy, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Southeast Asia.

In a conference call with reporters, Murphy added that the administration’s relationship with Burma would be “enduring.”

In a separate interview, a senior White House official was more emphatic, emphasizing that Trump views Southeast Asia as “the most exciting component” in an emerging administration strategy for the broader Asia region.

This official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking, pointed to the combined population of more than 600 million among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their fast-growing economies as key reasons for sustained U.S. engagement.

The Trump aide jokingly referred to the countries as the “swing states of Asia.”

“This is a region that is fairly firmly rooted in a liberal order,” the aide said. “Some of those countries have — I wouldn’t call it a Jeffersonian democracy, but they’re facing in that direction. Burma is an amazing success story that we want to build on.”

Yet the administration’s failure to produce a coherent foreign policy strategy has alarmed members of Congress who fear Burma will be neglected or mishandled as the White House focuses on containing North Korea’s mounting nuclear weapons threat.

In his first meeting with Tillerson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told him, “Don’t forget about Burma,” according to people familiar with the conversation.

But McConnell, who helped shepherd the U.S. economic sanctions that prodded Burma’s military regime toward reforms, has been left trying to piece together where the administration is headed from scant public or private signals.

A Senate Republican leadership aide said that as the administration attempts to coax Beijing to do more to change North Korea’s behavior, it is unclear where Burma, whose opening to the West was once viewed as a hedge against China’s economic and military muscle, fits in.

“It’s a work in progress,” the Senate aide said. “It’s going to be slow going.”

Experts said Southeast Asian capitals remain wary of Trump’s motives, even as they were encouraged by his commitment to attending the regional summits.

“There’s a lot of concern over the way they’ve been engaged,” said Ernest Z. Bower, a Southeast Asia analyst and business consultant affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Officials in the region view Trump as “very transactional,” Bower added, and they fear Trump is wooing them solely to build international support for his administration’s push to further isolate North Korea.

Murphy, the State Department official, said the Southeast Asian representatives proactively raised the issue of North Korea in their meeting with Tillerson.

“We have heard from countries that they are taking steps, looking at the size of North Korea’s diplomatic presence and activities and commercial transactions,” Murphy said. “North Korea’s provocations threaten the peace and prosperity of the entire region. . . . We think more can be done.”

But some experts said the risk is that the Trump administration would reduce the emphasis on free speech and human rights as it pursues security cooperation. For example, Trump invited President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose administration has overseen a ruthless extrajudicial campaign that has killed thousands of suspected drug dealers, to visit the White House.

In Burma, the military, which retains 25 percent of the seats in parliament under the constitution, has long had ties to North Korea, including buying arms from Pyongyang.

Erin Murphy, a former State Department official who accompanied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a historic visit to Burma in 2011, said the Trump administration could seek to boost ties with the Burmese military as leverage against Pyongyang, an effort that could set back democratic reforms if not handled carefully.

“If you want to put the screws on North Korea — and the Trump administration has declared that a policy priority — you’d look at countries that are partners,” she said. “And if you look at that list, you would see Myanmar.”

By Reuters

May 5, 2017

Myanmar's government has warned the public that false news and rumors are being spread by unidentified people wishing to cause "political instability" during the tenure of leader Aung San Suu Kyi, state-run media said on Friday.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi took power in April 2016 as part of a transition from military rule.

Her first year in power has been beset by bureaucratic inertia, ethnic and religious tensions, and conflicts that have displaced tens of thousands, including an estimated 75,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh amid a military crackdown late last year.

Rumors emerged in recent days that President Htin Kyaw - who Suu Kyi picked for head of state - would step down. Suu Kyi directs the civilian administration in the specially created role of state counselor because the constitution - drafted by the still-powerful military - bars her from the presidency.

Police said they would prosecute those responsible for the information, which has spread quickly on online social networks that have grown in popularity amid expanding freedoms and internet access in Myanmar.

"False news regarding the president and the state counselor have been spread on purpose by using accounts with false names," Suu Kyi's office carried in the government's Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Friday.

It named two Facebook accounts that it said had published "fabricated news".

"It has been found that these acts are being done intentionally to cause political instability during the tenure of the incumbent government," Suu Kyi's office said, adding that the perpetrators wished to "create a situation among the people to live in fear and anxiety due to the spread of rumors".

Police Colonel Myo Thu Soe, national police spokesman, told Reuters an investigation was being launched and anyone intentionally spreading false news would be brought to court.

“We will conduct a focused and intensive search for those responsible for this,” Myo Thu Soe said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Wa Lone; Editing by Robert Birsel)

By Asian Correspondent

May 5, 2017

FIREBRAND Buddhist-nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu has sparked concerns of religious clashes as he visits Burma’s troubled Rakhine State.

The ultranationalist anti-Islam campaigner, who has compared himself to Donald Trump and is labelled by some as the “Burmese Bin Laden”, arrived in the state where a million Muslims live on Wednesday.

“We are concerned about his trip because he always spreads hate of Muslims,” a Muslim leader in northern Rakhine told Reuters.

During clashes between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslim residents in 2012 which displaced 140,000 people, Wirathu went to Rakhine and delivered incendiary sermons, blaming violence on Muslims and calling for their deportation.

He is a senior figure in Ma Ba Tha movement of nationalist monks, which calls on its followers to boycott Muslim businesses in the name of “protecting race” and Theravada Buddhism in Burma.

Maungdaw police said they would provide security for the monk and his entourage during his visit, which the group claims is to “make donations” to Buddhist Arakanese villages. Wirathu’s party did not specify how long they intended to stay in the Rakhine.

The trip has stoked fears of emboldening hardline nationalists against the Rohingya, who they consider illegal immigrants and refer to as “Bengalis,” advocating that they be “returned” to Bangladesh despite living in Burma for centuries.

In March, the Arakan National Party led a rally against suggestions the Rohingya might be granted Burmese citizenship.

Under the country’s 1982 citizenship law, the minority group are not currently recognised as one of the national races.

Last Friday, Wirathu joined a group of around 100 monks and Buddhist nationalists who forcibly shut down four Islamic schools in Thaketa Township near Yangon.

The monk is also the head of the anti-Islam 969 movement. Wirathu told TIME magazine in 2013 that “you can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” referring to Muslim Burmese.

The UN has claimed that more than 1,000 Rohingya have been killed in the army’s operations in Rakhine, and at least 70,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since late 2016.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

5 May 2017

London: On May 8 (12 noon-2 pm), UK-based rights activists and multi-ethnic refugees from Burma will be holding a rally at the Guildhall to protest the City of London honouring the Myanmar State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, with its Freedom of the City award. 

The “Freedom of the City” award was first recorded in AD 1237 and connected to the ancient trade associations. Honourees are “enrolled in a ceremony in Guildhall, when they receive a guide to conducting their lives in an honourable fashion”. 

The protest organizers say Aung San Suu Kyi has discarded her oft-touted Buddhist principles of compassion and truthfulness or universal human rights since entering into a partnership with the country’s most powerful military a year ago.

In its editorial on 3 May, the Guardian wrote, “when Aung San Suu Kyi was finally able to collect her Nobel peace prize in 2012, the committee’s chairman described how her “firmness of principle” in the struggle for human rights and democracy had made her “a moral leader for the whole world”. Since taking power in Myanmar, the former political prisoner’s moral credibility has been vastly diminished by her failure to even acknowledge the brutal persecution of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state. A dozen fellow Nobel peace laureates have lamented her inaction in the face of “a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”.

Ring Du Lachyung, Chairman of the Kachin National Organization - UK, a well-known Kachin diaspora group, accuses the former Burmese human rights icon of “being complicit” in the Burma army’s war crimes against his Kachin people in Northern and Eastern Burma. “Since her first ever return to London in 2012, she has adamantly refused to condemn the Burmese military’s indiscriminate violence against our civilian communities including rape, air strikes, and shelling of churches,” said Ring Du. He stressed that “Suu Kyi chooses to ignore the fact that her military partners are the aggressor, who are attacking our (Kachin) communities in our ancestral homeland adjacent to India and China, in order to control our jade mines, fell our teak forests, extract hydropower from our rivers for generating and exporting electricity to China, and take over strategic border trade routes – without giving anything back to our Kachin people.”

Ko Aung, a prominent Burmese exile and former political prisoner, who has known the Burmese leader since he was a young university student activist during the country’s nationwide uprisings in 1988, said, “Suu Kyi has betrayed the cause of human rights in the name of political pragmatism. Her pragmatic politics have ruined her reputation without ushering in any tangible improvement in the lives of ordinary people or improving the general human rights conditions for democracy activists.”

Under Aung San Suu Kyi’s watch, human rights conditions are worsening not just for ethnic and religious minorities but also for Burmese human rights activists and journalists.

Despite the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in ethnic minority regions and the persecution of journalists and rights activists, British companies are eager to expand their business ties with the Aung San Suu Kyi government. Reuters reported that the Anglo-Dutch consumer good maker Unilever (ULVR.L) (UNc.AS) just signed an expansive deal in Myanmar in order to triple its current annual sale revenues of 100 million euros (84.75 million pounds) by 2020.

Ring Du Lachyung, Kachin National Organization UK, 077 9235 7887

Tun Khin, Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, 078 8871 866

Marbur Ahmed, Restlessbeings, UK, 075 0610 0785

Ko Aung, Burmese dissident in exile & former Burmese political prisoner, 077 6209 4562

Rohingya refugees, displaced by violence in Myanmar, at a camp in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo: UNHCR/Saiful Huq Omi

A boat off the coast of Myanmar’s Rakhine province. Photo: OCHA