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President M Abdul Hamid.

May 13, 2017

President Abdul Hamid yesterday urged the outgoing Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka Myo Myint Than to convey the message to his government to repatriate the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh has been bearing the brunt of repeated exodus of Rakhine Muslims into Bangladesh," the President said when the ambassador made a farewell call on him at Bangabhaban in Dhaka last afternoon.

President's Press Secretary Md Joynal Abedin briefed reporters after the meeting.

Noting that around 34,000 registered refugees have been waiting for repatriation, the President said around 2 lakh undocumented Myanmar nationals have also been living in makeshift shelters.

In addition, he said, around 76,000 Rohingyas took shelters in Bangladesh after October 2016 and they are huge burden for the country.

Both countries should start discussion on a process to repatriate them to Myanmar.

About the existing bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar, Hamid said Bangladesh always give emphasis on strengthening bilateral relations with neighbours.

He said the relations between the two countries are rooted in geographical proximity, shared history spanning over many centuries and commonalities in cultures and traditions.

About the global terrorism, the President said Bangladesh maintains zero tolerance to terrorism and militancy.

"Bangladesh does not allow armed groups or insurgents to use its territory against any neighbour. We are firm in our policy of respecting national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs of other countries," he added.

The President stressed the need for arranging exchange of visits at private and public levels between Bangladesh and Myanmar aiming to boost trade and investment in the two countries.

Myanmar Ambassador hoped that bilateral relations between the two neighbouring countries will further extend in the days to come.

Secretaries concerned to the President were present.

Scot Marciel, U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, addresses the audience during his first public speech as the ambassador to Myanmar in Yangon, Myanmar, May 10, 2016.

By Thing Htike | Kyaw Kyaw Thein
May 13, 2017

YANGON, MYANMAR — Calling Myanmar “a new democracy,” the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA the latest manifestation of increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation is a problem rooted in “the rule of law.”

The early morning confrontation Wednesday began late Tuesday night when a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya were illegally hiding in a house in a Yangon neighborhood, according to local press accounts.

Police who investigated refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims allowed to be there.

Hard-line Buddhists ride on motorbikes during a protest march, led by Rakhine State's dominant Arakan National Party, against the government's plan to give citizenship to some members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority community in Sittwe, Rakhine State.

Authorities in Myanmar, a Buddhist majority country, consider most Rohingya to be “resident foreigners,” not citizens, according to Human Rights Watch. The majority of them live in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State and cannot travel without special permission.

An Associated Press reporter saw approximately 30 Buddhists, including monks, in the neighborhood. Some were armed with stones, as were many of the area’s Muslim residents. Police fired two warning shots to disperse the crowds, and at least one Muslim man was hospitalized with injuries.

Rule of law

“To me, this is really a matter of the rule of law,” the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, told VOA’s Burmese Service.

Emphasizing that the only information he had about the incident came from press accounts, Marciel said, “What’s important in this case, or any other case like this, is that the law be applied fairly.” He added that it is “problematic to have citizens accompanying law enforcement to look into a possible crime. … It raises a lot of concerns, a lot of problems.”

Calling Myanmar “a new democracy,” Marciel said that the hope would be that “as Myanmar builds the rule of law,” citizens would raise any concerns they have about illegal activities with law enforcement, and that law enforcement “would take over from there so you avoid situations of crowds getting involved to enforce what they see as the law.”

But, he added “it takes time for societies to learn how they want their democracy to operate and what rule of law means.”

The Wednesday night incident was the second one in less than a month in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. On April 28, ultranationalist monks and their supporters forced two Muslim schools to close. Police stood by as the protesters chained the doors of the schools, according to Human Rights Watch. As of May 8, the schools remained closed.

Militant monks

A militant organization of Buddhist monks known as Ma Ba Tha has spearheaded protests against Muslims. Its leaders have been accused of stirring up mob violence leading to the deaths of Muslims and destruction of their property around the country. Most of the anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar since 2012 has occurred in Rakhine State, where the Rohingya are accused of entering the country illegally from Bangladesh.

“It’s a tremendous concern that this is happening in Yangon,” Derek Mitchell, the former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA’s Burmese Service.

Although Myanmar prohibits religious discrimination “it’s very sensitive when you’re dealing with monks in this very highly Buddhist country, a very proudly Buddhist country,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who served in Myanmar from July 2012, and departed March 2016, said that it is difficult to say why the tension is erupting in Yangon.

Broader problem

Mitchell said that while the situation in Rakhine State has attracted the most attention, the incidents in Yangon reflect “a broader issue of anti-Muslim sentiment” in Myanmar, something that cannot be blamed on State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who is the de facto government leader.

“I think she and the NLD government are sincere and are doing everything they possibly can to try to root it out and prevent it,” Mitchell said. “But it’s very difficult to block out and change minds and mindsets.”

This report originated in the VOA Burmese Service.

By Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi
May 11, 2017

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 if not demolished 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 faced with “a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”.

On Tuesday, the increasing gulf between her and her long-time international supporters was exposed again when she appeared alongside the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The EU rightly backs the United Nations Human Rights Council’s decision to dispatch a fact-finding mission over allegations of murder, rape and torture by military and security forces. She insisted the decision was “not in keeping with what is really happening on the ground” and would make matters worse.

The above-stated remarks were part of an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian, which did not accept the deceptive logic used by Suu Kyi, the de facto ruler of Myanmar (formerly Burma), with regard to the Rohingya Muslim minority who live in northwestern Rakhine state. At a time when the Rohingya Muslims have been subjected to all kinds of persecution and atrocities at the hands of Buddhist extremists, Suu Kyi is trying to portray all of these crimes as a conflict between two communities who are equal in terms of their potential and power.

The world wants to believe her words but the reality is totally different, and as such even her supporters no longer trust what she says. They see that her words resemble the proverb: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” She was able to fool many people and even international human rights organizations, which had once mistakenly believed that she was an advocate of human rights. Suu Kyi was also able to fool the Nobel Peace Prize Committee so that the committee chose her for the most prestigious global recognition for promoting peace.

The entire world stood by her against the military junta that was in power in Myanmar and the mounting global pressure forced the military rulers to lift the house arrest that had been in force for about six years. This was instrumental in increasing her popularity as the leader of the National League for Democracy, which stormed into power with a landslide victory in elections held last year.

Since her release from house arrest, Suu Kyi has done nothing and has not said anything about the ethnic cleansing and genocide being perpetrated against Rohingya Muslims, who are considered by the United Nations to be the most persecuted minority in the world. Some people excused her before the elections saying that she feared a backlash from majority Buddhist voters while others blamed her for sacrificing her ideals and human rights credentials for the sake of winning cheap political gains. Those who criticized her included her fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader in Tibet, was in the forefront of the critics. He spoke to her two times before she came to power urging her not to remain silent about the gross human rights violations being committed against the Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi’s ulterior designs against the Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar came to the fore at the time of the preparations for elections. Not a single Muslim was included in the list of her party’s candidates for the elections. Even Muslim members of previous parliaments were denied tickets.

At a time when all international human rights organizations, including the United Nations Human Rights Council and all prominent global human rights figures agree that what is being practiced against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is ethnic cleansing, Suu Kyi denies that there is any ethnic cleansing in her country, contradicting the findings of UN investigators. She said: “I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening. It is not a matter of ethnic cleansing; it is a matter of people on different sides of the divide, and this divide we are trying to close as best as possible and not to widen it further.”

Through these statements, she makes desperate attempts to equate the victim with the executioner – a bizarre comparison of those, who have been subjected to killing, rape, torching of homes and places of worship with the Buddhist extremists who are the perpetrators of these crimes and atrocities with the clandestine understanding and blessing of government agencies and security forces.

When the UN Human Rights Council decided to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar, Suu Kyi rejected this under the pretext that it would further worsen the situation. She also stated that her government is investigating the abuses in Rakhine state. In fact, any investigation her government may carry out in line with its unfair laws, such as the Race and Religion Protection Laws and the law to deprive Rohingya Muslims of citizenship, will not be helpful in alleviating the suffering of these hapless people. She justifies her claims by appointing a panel, headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, to propose concrete measures to end tensions and improve the welfare of all people in Rakhine. However, Suu Kyi failed to implement the recommendations on the grounds that she cannot implement all of the recommendations at once.

Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at algham@hotmail.com

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Peter Maurer attends a news conference to launch the survey ''People on War'' in Geneva, Switzerland, December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Simon Lewis 
May 11, 2017

YANGON -- The International Committee of the Red Cross has asked Myanmar to let aid workers get access to people caught up in conflicts that have displaced tens of thousands despite a transition that brought Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to power.

Authorities have blocked the ICRC from areas under the control of ethnic minority forces and from visiting some prisoners, the organisation's president, Peter Maurer, told reporters late on Wednesday in the commercial capital, Yangon.

"We would like to have access to all the people in need in order to do proper assessments, to help ease according to needs," he said.

Maurer visited the northwestern state of Rakhine, where he toured camps set up almost five years ago to house those displaced by communal clashes between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

He did not visit the north of the state, where a security operation in response to insurgent attacks in October sent an estimated 74,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.

Troops and police have been accused of killing and raping Rohingyas, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar and widely viewed as interlopers from Bangladesh.

The government only recently allowed international aid workers to visit affected villages, under the condition that they are accompanied by government officials, the U.N. humanitarian agency said on May 1.

A separate ICRC delegation visited detainees in the area last month. 

Maurer was set to visit Kachin State in the north on Thursday, but the government denied a request to visit the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) stronghold of Laiza. 

The ICRC is assisting a civilian hospital there, but staff have not been able to visit since fighting between the KIA and government forces broke out eight months ago.

Maurer travels to the capital, Naypyidaw, on Friday to meet officials and he will meet Suu Kyi in Beijing during an international conference there next week, he said.

Former political prisoner Suu Kyi won a landslide in elections before becoming the de facto head of the civilian administration in April 2016 after decades of military rule.

But her priority of securing peace with autonomy-seeking minority insurgents has been set back by fighting that has displaced an estimated 160,000 more people since the transition, according to U.N. data.

Suu Kyi's spokesman, Zaw Htay, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Maurer said access to conflict areas was "always a difficult equation of security considerations versus needs of people for assistance and protection," but he was "unsatisfied" by the limits in place in Myanmar.

Granting more access was in the interests of the government and the armed forces, he said.

"At the end of the day there is no more effective tool to ease tensions than to offer fluid procedures for access to humanitarian organizations like us,” he said.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

Rohingya refugee Ali Johar speaks to a child in the New Delhi, India slum that he calls home.
CBS
By Arshad R. Zargar 
May 10, 2017

NEW DELHI -- The birth of Muhammad Haroon's son a few months ago brought some measure of joy to his shanty in New Delhi. But he can't help worry about his young boy's future; Atif-ul-Islam was born a refugee, into a fetid maze of a slum.

Haroon visits his son several times a day. It provides a welcome break from the small United Nations-funded shop he runs in the slum, which is home to about 50 families, all Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar.

Haroon is one of about 14,000 Rohingya refugees registered in India. They all fled alleged ethnic persecution in Myanmar's western Rakhine state. 

The Rohingya are believed to have migrated from what is now Bangladesh to Rakhine (then known as Arakan) in the 17th century. When Myanmar gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948, the Rohingya were left stranded in Rakhine state; no longer Bangladeshi, but viewed by the newly-independent nation of Burma as outsiders.

"We are people of nowhere," Haroon told CBS News. "Myanmar doesn't recognise us as its citizens, other countries don't want us. Where should we go?" 

Almost 100 people were killed when tension between the Rohingya and the majority Buddhist population boiled over into ethnic rioting in 2012. An estimated 90,000 Rohingya were displaced amid the violence. 

The riots may have been the tipping point of distrust between the Rohingya population and the state, which passed a law in 1982 effectively rendering them stateless, with no voting rights.

Every one of the refugees has his or own story to tell about the horrors of life back home.

"No choice"

Myanmar's own military, along with extremist Buddhist groups, have been accused of subjecting the Rohingya to sexual violence, torture, arbitrary arrests and organized mass killings for many years. 

The U.N.'s human rights agency, UNHCR, has described Rohingya Muslims as "the most persecuted minority in the world," and is sending a team to the country to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity.

Haroon made a dramatic escape from Myanmar in 2012, during the riots.

One afternoon, a friend told his father that the military would come to arrest him at night.

"We fled to our uncle's house nearby. But they found us," Haroon said. 

He told CBS News that soldiers raped his uncle's wife and daughter and arrested his father in the midnight raid. 

"When my uncle protested, he was beaten so badly that he died a couple days later."

A few days later, Haroon made the decision to take his own family and escape. 

"Who would want to see his mother and daughter getting gang-raped? Nobody wishes to leave the comfort of his home, but we had no choice," he said.

A mother of three living in the refugee slum in New Delhi told CBS News that soldiers raped her sister in 2012. 

"I could hear her screams from behind a cupboard, but I was helpless," said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. "If I would have come out to save her, I would have been raped, too."

Nazeer Ahmad, a father of three children all born as refugees in India, remembers when his father "was arrested by the military on false allegations. We had to pay 3 million Myanmar Kyat (about $2,200) to get him released."

Ahmad fled to India with his family in 2008. He hasn't had any news about his relatives back home since then.

"Like hell"

Other refugees say that when they do get word from Rakhine, their friends and loved ones paint a grim picture of life in the region, which Myanmar's government doesn't let journalists visit.

"We get phone calls from our relatives. They tell us their village is like hell," Ali Johar, who also escaped to India during the 2012 unrest, told CBS News. "They tell us they don't know when they will be killed, so pray for us."

"Relatives told us more than 20 villages have been burnt down back home," he said. "Women have been gang-raped and children killed." 

Muhammad Shakir is also in contact with relatives and friends in Rakinhe. He says he continues to receive videos depicting ongoing violence there, but he deletes them quickly from his phone out of fear he could be under the scrutiny of security agencies.

His fear is not just of the powers that be in Myanmar, but also of the authorities in India, where he lives as a refugee. 

They're safe from the violence of Rakhine, but for Shakir and the thousands of other Rohingya living in India, the future is uncertain. 

The second part of our report on the Rohingya of New Delhi looks at the challenges they face now, and the daunting prospects for these "most persecuted" of refugees.

© Provided by AFP Myanmar riot police patrol Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township after scuffles broke out between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims on May 10, 2017

By AFP
May 10, 2017

Police in Myanmar fired warning shots to break up scuffles between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims in Myanmar's biggest city in the early hours of Wednesday after a crowd went hunting for "illegal" Rohingya.

The incident comes as nationalists from Myanmar's Buddhist majority have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the country's hard-pressed Muslim minority.

Police in Yangon said they were forced to fire in the air to break up the confrontation between dozens of hardliners, including several monks, and local Muslims that left at least one man injured.

The Rohingya, a group of more than a million Muslims who live mainly in western Rakhine State, are particularly maligned as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and their movements are heavily restricted.

Late on Tuesday night a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya, pejoratively known as "Bengalis," were illegally hiding in a house in Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township.

Tempers started to fray when police who had gone to investigate refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims who were allowed to be there.

"While they (the nationalists) were complaining to the police, Muslims from the area gathered and the groups started quarrelling," said one officer on condition of anonymity.

"Although police asked both sides to go back, they punched each other. So police fired shots in the air to disperse the groups."

© Provided by AFP Myanmar riot police said they were forced to fire in the air to break up clashes between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims in Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township on May 10, 2017

Kyaw Nyein, a legal advisor to Muslim group Jamiat-Ulama-El Islam, said the incident was "heart-breaking and worrying".

"It was just an attempt to incite anger without any firm evidence," he told AFP. "They are looking for trouble."

In recent months nationalists in Yangon have held protests, stopped Islamic religious ceremonies and most recently forced two schools to close temporarily over accusations they were illegally doubling up as mosques.

Thuseitta, a monk from the Yangon chapter of the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, accused the police of treating them "like animals" and said the Muslims had attacked them with sticks and knives in a video shared on social media.

Tensions have boiled over since militants attacked police posts in northern Rakhine, sparking a brutal army crackdown that has sent more than 70,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.

UN investigators who spoke to escapees say the campaign was so brutal it may amount to crimes against humanity.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are seen in the New Delhi, India, slum they now call home.
CBS

By Arshad R. Zargar 
May 10, 2017

NEW DELHI -- Life for the 14,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees crammed into slums in the Indian capital is a daily struggle. There is little in the way of sanitation. Even electricity can be hard to come by.

Row after row of small shanties -- most, just simple bamboo frames covered with tarps -- are crammed onto low-lying pieces of land in New Delhi. There are no proper roads, just narrow tracks weaving through the fetid maze of shacks.

In one slum, home to about 50 Rohingya refugee families, there are just two water pumps and a couple toilets for all to share. Human and animal waste litters the alleyways, drawing armies of flies and mosquitoes in the steaming Delhi summers when temperatures regularly top 110 degrees.

"Health and sanitation are the key challenges here," Muhammad Haroon told CBS News. He lives in the slum with his children, including a son born just three months ago. "Our children fall ill due to mosquito bites and the unhygienic conditions here."

The United Nations refugee agency helps the Rohingya, who fled alleged government-backed persecution in their home country of Myanmar. The UNHCR helps the refugees gain access to public education and health facilities in India, but many of the kids don't actually go to school, and if they do, they often drop out within months.

Most adults in the slums don't have a stable income. A few have opened shops funded by UNHCR, like Haroon, but most work as laborers, earning less than $5 a day -- and they don't get work every day.

"This is not a human life," refugee Ali Johar told CBS News. "The basic human rights; a proper place to stay, toilet, water, are missing." 

And those are just the immediate concerns. 

"Feeding us to the sharks"

In early April, Indian media reports suggested the government was working on a plan to try to arrest and deport the Rohingya refugees on the grounds they were illegal immigrants. Some officials within the Indian security and intelligence agencies believe the Rohinya are prone to radicalization by Muslim extremist groups.

But it may be difficult -- if not impossible -- for India to deport the Rohingya, even if such planning is afoot.

A senior UNHCR official in India told CBS News it was "considered part of customary international law, binding on all states" that registered refugees cannot be sent back to their home countries if they could be subjected to persecution.

The official also noted that India is party to several international human rights conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Rights of the Child, which would make a mass-deportation impossible.

"If India sends us back to Myanmar, we will face much more persecution than we have already faced," Johar told CBS News. "It will be like feeding us to the sharks."

Just as they did at home, the Rohingya face regular threats in the country to which they have fled. A trade body in Jammu, northern India, has threatened to "identify and kill" Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshi immigrants in the city if they're not deported.

"Habit of lying"

"Why doesn't the world help solve our issue with the Myanmar government, so that we won't need to flee to any other country?" Johar wondered as he spoke to CBS News.

Myanmar's de-facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi spent decades under house arrest in Myanmar as an outspoken critic of the country's ruling military junta, which seized power in the early 1960s. 

Significant reforms, much lauded by the West, saw her released in 2015 and her political party won huge support in elections that year. Her rise to power, after years as an outspoken but imprisoned advocate for democracy, brought new hope that the contentious issue of the Rohingya might finally be addressed.

In a recent interview, however, Suu Kyi denied that her country's Rohingya Muslim minority is deliberately targeted.

"Ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression" she said, suggesting violence in the western Rakhine state also included, "Muslims killings Muslims."

Johar believes Myanmar's government is still, "in the habit of lying to the international community."

"When Suu Kyi was under detention, she told the world, 'please use your liberty to promote ours,'" Johar said. "I want to tell her today, 'now you are free, please use your freedom to promote ours.'"

Johar does not, however, intend to just wait for others to help his people.

When he first arrived in India he worked as a laborer on construction sites for about six months, but then managed to finish school in Delhi with the help of the UNHCR. Now he's studying to earn a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi, and he intends to become a lawyer, to fight for his people.

By John Owens
May 9, 2017

Among the estimated 75,000 Rohingya who fled their homes in Myanmar into Bangladesh following a military crackdown, Dr. Nur Kabir has become a savior for refugees at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh.

As Nur Kabir tends to Sona, who recently suffered a miscarriage, her children look on. With efforts to thoroughly investigate the Myanmar military’s recent offensive on Rakhine state so far thwarted, and Bangladesh not providing citizenship to Rohingya who fled to the country decades ago, many fear for the future of the next generation. John Owens

KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, BANGLADESH – A well-known doctor in his community, Nur Kabir was among an estimated 75,000 Rohingya who fled Myanmar into Bangladesh amid a military offensive last October. Yet displacement will not stop his work.

After fleeing the military to a nearby area, the 30-year-old physician briefly returned to the wreckage of his village in Myanmar’s Maungdaw district. He made sure to bring all the medicine he could before joining a mass exodus across the border in mid-October.

Now living among his fellow refugees in the Kutupalong camp in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, Kabir is one of the few trusted doctors in the community, and his skills are needed more than ever.

Around 70,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since October. Many have built shelters in the ever-expanding Kutupalong camp, and some fear they may not be able to return home. (John Owens)

Lacking Everything

Between those who turn up impromptu at the hut he now calls a home and shares with his wife, five children and extended family, and those who call him on his ever-ringing mobile phone, Kabir estimates that he sees around 30 patients per day.

Like any doctor, he deals with a variety of ailments, but in the conditions of a refugee camp some illnesses are all too common.

While malaria and cholera are the challenges of the present, his work often includes the recent trauma of the past – Kabir regularly checks up to see how those who suffered gunshot wounds fleeing the crackdown are healing.

Petam Ali says he was shot in the arm while fleeing the Myanmar military four months ago. Nur Kabir, who is from the same village, explained that he helped shortly after the wound was inflicted, binding the hand and using a bamboo splint. (John Owens)

Supplies are limited. Unaffiliated with any NGO, Kabir buys low-cost pharmaceutical drugs from a local supplier on credit, which he pays back after charging patients a small fee.

Asked what he is short of, his answer is succinct: “everything.”

Nur Kabir takes a break from his work as a doctor to pray. The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group in Myanmar, which is nearly 90 percent Buddhist. (John Owens)

Rohingya Marginalised

Kabir’s passion for his work is a response to the marginalization of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

The Rohingya, a minority Muslim community in a country that is nearly 90 percent Buddhist, have long been persecuted within Myanmar. They are deprived of citizenship and labeled Bengali immigrants despite a presence in the country dating back generations. They are also subject to limitations on nearly every aspect of life, from movement to education to health provision.

Nur Kabir takes a call from a patient. He sees an estimated 30 patients a day, sometimes simply dropping in to check that they have recovered. (John Owens)

“I realized that when Rohingya people went to non-Rohingya doctors they weren’t given proper treatment,” he said. “It was from this that I realized being a doctor would be a way of helping my community.”

Among the major problems Dr. Kabir deals with in Kutupalong is cholera, something he attributes to the use of unclean water. (John Owens)

The military launched an offensive in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last October following the death of nine policemen at the hands of an insurgent Rohingya group. The U.N. has documented reports of mass killing and rape by troops, allegations that are denied by Myanmar authorities.

As well as the latest wave of refugees, between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya are estimated to now live in Bangladesh. Some have lived in the long-established parts of Kutupalong camp for decades.

Because of the ongoing persecution that Rohingya face within Myanmar, some have lived in the Bangladeshi camp of Kutupalong for decades. Others have only recently arrived amid the latest wave of violence. (John Owens)

‘The Lady’

Kabir’s view of Aung San Suu Kyi – whose party was voted into power last year and who was seen as a flag bearer for human rights – reflects widespread disillusion among the Rohingya.

“She has political power, but that is the power of speaking, no more,” he said, alluding to the continued influence of a military junta that has long controlled Myanmar despite recent moves toward democracy.

For those who arrived in Bangladesh last winter hoping to return quickly, days have turned to weeks, and weeks to months.

Kabir fears the onset of the rainy season later this month, and the lurking threat it brings of typhoid. However, he remains hopeful that international pressure will allow the possibility of safe return for his people.

As a Rohingya himself and a practicing doctor back in Myanmar, Nur Kabir is well known among the displaced community. Due to persecution and poor access to healthcare in Myanmar, distrust of non-Rohingya doctors is high. (John Owens)

One of his patients, however, is not so sure.

Sayeda Khatum, 60, was diagnosed with tuberculosis when she arrived in the camp at a nearby Medecins Sans Frontieres clinic. She believes non-Rohingya doctors ignored her illness back in Myanmar. Despite suffering in the harsh conditions of the camp, she feels her chances of getting treatment are better while displaced in Bangladesh than back home.

And at least in Kutupalong, she adds, the Myanmar military are nowhere to be found. “Here, I can sleep peacefully,” she said.

Rucia Begum awaits treatment. She lives in a recently constructed hut with six other members of her family, including her mother, Sayeda Khatum, who suffers from tuberculosis. (John Owens)
Outgoing Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka Myo Myint calls on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at Gono Bhaban in Dhaka on Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Photo: PID

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)
The Nation
May 9, 2017

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.

Rohingya Muslims in a refugee camp in Teknaf, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Reuters

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.”

Ashin Wirathu, the spiritual leader of anti-Muslim, ultra-nationalist group Ma Ba Tha sits in his office inside the Masoeyein monastery. Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom

By Poppy McPherson
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.”

Wirathu and his entourage in Mandalay after leading an anti-Muslim sermon in front of hundreds of supporters in 2013. Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom

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.

Muslim neighbourhoods have put up gates as a security measure. Photograph: Nicolas Axelrod/Ruom

“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.

Kar Wi Ya is one of the few Buddhist monks who publicly stands against Ma Ba Tha. Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom

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.

Myanmar’s Muslim minority are said to make up about 5% of the population. Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom

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.”


    • Rohingya Exodus