Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO)

Press release: 31 May 2017

ARNO Welcomes UNHRC Fact-finding Mission

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) welcomes the appointment of a three-person fact-finding mission on 30 May by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate alleged atrocities committed by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya Muslims.

It is an excellent team of experts headed by India’s Supreme Court Lawyer Ms. Indira Jaising; and its two other members are Sri Lankan lawyer Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy and Australian rights consultant Mr. Christopher Dominic Sidoti.

On 30 May the President of the 47-member Human Rights Commission, Ambassador Joaquin Alexander Maza Martelli has appropriately formed the team in accordance with Council resolution of March 24 to ‘dispatch urgently’ an international fact-finding mission to Myanmar to prove alleged abuses by military and security forces, particularly against the minority Rohingya Muslim community, including allegation of arbitrary detention, torture, inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary killings, enforced displacement, and unlawful destruction of property.

It has been a serious concern that Myanmar government and military authorities continue denying any violations in spite of well-documented evidences and accounts of atrocity crimes committed against the defenseless Rohingya population, including mass killings, gang rapes and arson in state sponsored deadly violence since 2012 and in systematic military campaigns from 2016 causing influx of thousands of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh.

The Government of Myanmar has the responsibility to protect the victims and is duty-bound to cooperates with this fact-finding mission, including granting it full access as called for in the Human Rights Council resolution. 

However, it is a “welcome relief” and hope to be a great move towards creating a full commission of inquiry to investigate the crimes against Rohingya.

For more details, please contact: 

Australia: 

Dr. Hla Myint +61-423381904

Bangladesh: 

Ko Ko Linn: +880-1726068413

Canada: 

Nur Hasim +1 -519- 5725359

Japan: 

Zaw Min Htut +81-8030835327

U.K. 

Ronnie: +44-7783118354

USA: 

Dr. Habib Ullah +1-4438158609

Email: info@rohingya.org

www.rohingya.org

Ayesha, 16, a Rohingya refugee girl poses for a photograph in her house which has been destroyed by Cyclone Mora at Balukhali Makeshift Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Ruma Paul

Reuters

May 31, 2017

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh - Left drenched and near destitute by a cyclone that hit Bangladesh a day earlier, thousands of Rohingya refugees hunkered down in the ruins of their camps on Wednesday, waiting for help after a night in the rain.

At least seven people were killed and 50 injured by Cyclone Mora, according to Mohammad Ali Hussain, the chief administrator of Cox's Bazar district, a sliver of land in southeast Bangladesh bordering Myanmar.

The border area that bore the brunt of the storm is home to refugee camps for Muslim Rohingyas who have fled from their homes in northwest Myanmar to escape communal violence and Myanmar army crackdowns.

"Initial reports suggest damage to shelter in camps sheltering Rohingya refugees, is severe,” the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator for Bangladesh said.

The Bangladeshi government has estimated that in all, there are about 350,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh following a new influx last October, when the Myanmar army launched an offensive in response to insurgent attacks.

Authorities in Cox's Bazar and neighbouring Chittagong district evacuated 350,000 people from low-lying areas before the storm roared in from the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday.

But most Rohingyas remained in their flimsy shelters in the camps when the storm struck, with priority given to evacuating only the most vulnerable, like heavily pregnant women.

Omar Farukh, a community leader in Kutupalong camp - one of several camps for Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar - described the misery of those left behind.

"We have passed a difficult time. We had no tin or plastic sheets above our heads and almost all of us passed the night in the rain," Farukh told Reuters by telephone.

"We tried to save our belongings, whatever we have, with pieces of plastic sheet."

A senior U.N. official working in Cox’s Bazar said there had been no reports of deaths in the camps, only some injuries.

STILL WAITING

The cyclone formed after monsoon rains triggered floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, off India's southern tip, killing 202 people in recent days, authorities said, adding 96 people were missing.

An Indian navy boat rescued 33 Bangladeshis at sea off Chittagong, and recovered one body, the Indian mission in Dhaka said. It was not clear if the people had been on a boat that sank or were washed into the sea by a storm surge.

Transport and communications were in chaos in northwest Myanmar, state media there said.

Camps for internally displaced Rohingya in Myanmar suffered extensive damage, and there were pockets of damage in the broader community, but no reports of casualties, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

When the storm hit Bangladesh it brought wind gusting up to 135 kph (85 mph) and heavy rain. 

By daybreak on Wednesday the storm had died down with only a steady rain falling. Airports and ports reopened. 

Rohingya community leader Farukh said aid agency officials had visited the Kutupalong camp to see what was needed.

A relief worker who had visited the Balukhali camp estimated that one in four huts there had been damaged but there were no serious injuries and people had begun repairs.

Beyond the camps, officials were also assessing the damage elsewhere in Cox's Bazar. The chief administrator said 17,500 houses had been completely destroyed and 35,000 partially damaged in the district.

"Almost all rickety houses in the district were completely or partially destroyed by the cyclone. Not only Rohingya houses," Hussain said.

The cyclone lost some of its force as it moved inland and across the eastern border into India.

Strong wind and heavy rain battered houses, brought down electricity lines, and damaged telecommunication towers in India's Mizoram state, cutting communications and power.

The Meteorological Department said the weather system was very likely to continue to move north-northeast and weaken into a cyclonic storm and later into a depression.

Other northeastern Indian states had received heavy to very heavy rainfall since Tuesday evening.

(Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA, Zarir Hussain in GUWAHATI, India, Yi-Mou Lee and Antoni Slodkowski in YANGON; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Robert Birsel)

By Kyaw Ye Lynn

Anadolu Agency

May 31, 2017

YANGON, Myanmar -- Muslim residents in Myanmar’s largest city Wednesday protested the closure of their two religious schools as they have fewer place for worship in the month of Ramadan -- the ninth and holiest month of the Islamic lunar calendar.

Local authorities -- following negotiations with local Muslim leaders -- chained shut two madrasahs in Yangon city on April 28 after a mob led by ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks demanded an immediate closure of religious schools in the area.

On Wednesday evening, some 100 Muslims gathered on the street in front of one of the two madrasahs to pray and protest the closure as the madrasahs stayed closed until now though the authorities said it was just temporary.

Tin Shwe, the head of the madrasah, told Anadolu Agency that authorities also barred Muslim residents from worshiping in six other schools in Thakayta Township without giving any proper reasons.

“We requested them to let us worship in these schools during Ramadan. But it went unanswered,” he said on Wednesday.

He added local Muslims were performing prayer at their individual places such as houses and shops since the ban.

“This is not the way we should perform prayers, especially in the month of Ramadan,” said Tin Shwe, adding the closest mosque was about a 45-minute walk away.

Min Naung, a 32-year-old Muslim resident of Thakayta, who joined the protest, said he has worshiped in the schools since he was a child.

“This is the first time we are not able to gather during the Ramadan month,” he told Anadolu Agency after the street prayer.

“The ban makes us shocked,” he said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch earlier this month said the closure was "the latest government failure to protect country’s religious minorities".

"The government should immediately reverse these closures, end restrictions on the practice of minority religions, and prosecute Buddhist ultra-nationalists who break the law in the name of religion," said HRW’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson.

HRW said Myanmar government has placed opaque and onerous restrictions on the construction or renovation of religious structures, as well as limits on the practice of religion, elements of the systemic discrimination facing Muslims, including the ethnic Rohingya Muslims in western Rakhine State.

Anti-Muslim movements have been on the rise in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar since an outbreak in communal violence in the western Rakhine state in 2012.

By Jacob Goldberg

Coconuts Yangon

May 30, 2017

A Twitter account that appears to be run by a member of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) posted a press release today to deny the group’s involvement in the killing of civilians in Rakhine State and to dismiss claims of terrorist links.

The statement accused the Myanmar government, particularly the Office of the State Counsellor, of disseminating “false, fabricated, and fake news” to harm the group’s “dignity and decency”.

Since ARSA (also known as Harakah al-Yaqin or Faith Movement) claimed responsibility for a series attacks on military and police installations in northern Rakhine State in October 2016, the Office of the State Counsellor has regularly blamed a series of murders and kidnappings in the area on the group, referring to them as “terrorists” and “violent attackers”.

The same Twitter user added in another tweet that the group holds the Myanmar military responsible for the killings.

The ARSA statement said the group was established “to defend, salvage, and protect the Rohingya community in Arakan” and that it has only carried out “defensive attacks” aimed at “the oppressive Burmese regime”.

“We have the legitimate right under international law to defend ourselves,” the statement said.

Among the group’s demands are political representation, freedom of movement and religion, the right of return for Rohingya refugees, and access to relief aid, markets, and education. (See a full list of demands here.)

The statement continued: “We do not commit any form of terrorism against any civilian regardless of their religious and ethnic origin.”

A December 2016 report by International Crisis Group claims ARSA leaders have links to private individuals in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and that Rohingya villagers have been “secretly trained” by Afghan and Pakistani fighters.

“We are well aware and conscious that both the Burmese government and the oppressive Burmese military regime are trying their best to tarnish the noble image of ARSA in order to create obstacles for us in seeking political, financial, technological, and logistics supports and assistances from the members of the international community,” the statement said.

ARSA has also publicly endorsed the establishment of a UN-led fact-finding mission to investigate claims of atrocities committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya civilians, while the Myanmar government has refused to cooperate.

By Al Jazeera

May 30, 2017

The UN is sending a fact-finding team to investigate alleged human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The UN on Tuesday appointed a three-member team to investigate alleged abuses by security forces against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The fact-finding mission will be led by prominent Indian lawyer Indira Jaising, Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy, and Australian human rights consultant Christopher Dominic Sidoti, according to a statement from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Tuesday.

Myanmar's military has been accused of killing and raping Rohingya Muslims, a persecuted minority group, in a crackdown in Northern Rakhine state in western Myanmar last year. 

"We expect the mission members to meet in Geneva in the coming weeks to determine their initial course of action – the strategy, methodology and fact-finding approach they will employ in discharging their mandate," Rolando Gomez, a HRC spokesperson, told Al Jazeera via email.

"The three members will be supported by a team of human rights specialists in Geneva."

The mission will present an oral mandate to the UN in September and a full report in March 2018.

The UN adopted a resolution to set up an independent, international mission in March. It was brought by the European Union and supported by other countries including the US to "ensure full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims".

Some countries including Myanmar, China, India, and Cuba did not support the resolution.

'Much to hide'

Rohingya Muslims, stripped of their citizenship in 1982, are often referred to as "illegal" immigrants by Myanmar's leaders. About 1.1 million Rohingya are denied citizenship and their movement is severely restricted, with tens of thousands confined to camps in Bangladesh since violence drove them from their homes in 2012 and more recently.

Around 75,000 people have fled Rakhine state since the military began a security operation last October in response to what it claims was an attack by Rohingya armed men on border posts, in which nine police officers were killed.

Myanmar has staunchly opposed a UN Commission of Inquiry into alleged abuses. It is not yet clear if the UN team will be granted access to Rakhine, or even be permitted to land in Myanmar.

"As in all such cases, the mission members will make it a priority to reach out to and engage constructively with [Myanmar's] government and other relevant interlocutors. It remains the hope of the HRC that the mission will be facilitated by the government through unfettered access to the affected areas," Gomez said.

In February, a UN report, based on interviews with Rohingya refugees, accused Myanmar's security forces of carrying out mass rapes and killings, possibility amounting to crimes against humanity.

"Minorities all over the world are facing persecution. The situation of the Rohingya community in Myanmar is especially deplorable because they face the risk of a genocide," Indira Jaising, heading the UN mission, told Al Jazeera by telephone.

"We are hoping that our recommendations will make an impact and awaken the conscience of the international community," she said.

The UN team will also look into allegations of arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman treatment, enforced disappearances, forced displacement and unlawful destruction of property by security forces, according to the UN's statement.

A widely discredited army-led report on the crackdown published earlier this month found no abuses had been committed.

"It is unsurprising that Myanmar has rejected a UN probe. Criminals rarely wish for scrutiny of what they have been doing and what is going on in Myanmar is criminal state-led bloodshed on a gargantuan scale," said Priyamvada Gopal, an author and academic who has written about Rohingya Muslims, via an email to Al Jazeera.

"What that does tell us is, of course there is much to hide."

By Nurul Islam

Reuters

May 30, 2017

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- A cyclone battered refugee camps in Bangladesh on Tuesday where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have taken refuge from violence at home, as authorities moved at least 350,000 Bangladeshis out of harm's way.

Cyclone Mora struck the island of Saint Martin and Teknaf in the coastal Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, where officials said some 200,000 people were evacuated to shelters. In Chittagong district, about 150,000 people were evacuated.

The border area is also home to refugee camps for Rohingyas who have fled their homeland in northwest Myanmar.

Shamsul Alam, a Rohingya community leader, told Reuters that damage in the camps was severe with almost all the 10,000 thatched huts in the Balukhali and Kutupalong camps destroyed.

"Most of the temporary houses in the camps have been flattened," Alam said.

Omar Farukh, a community leader in Kutupalong camp, said conditions were dire: "Now we're in the open air."

Cox’s Bazar district chief Mohammad Ali Hussin said at least 15,000 houses in the district had been destroyed and he had unconfirmed reports of three people killed and dozens injured, including several Rohingya refugees.

Officials in Chittagong reported winds gusting up to 135 kph (85 mph), and said low-lying coastal areas were flooded by a storm surge with waves 2 meters (7 feet) high.

Flights in the area were canceled.

Last October, following a Myanmar army operation launched in response to insurgent attacks, an estimated 74,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh where they joined more than 200,000 who have taken refuge there over the years.

The Bangladeshi government has estimated that in all, there are about 350,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh.

In predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, where Rohingyas are officially denied citizenship and classified as illegal immigrants, about 120,000 of them have been internally displaced by communal violence over recent years and are living in camps.

'WE'RE WORRIED' 

A U.N. official working with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh said the damage in the camps could not be assessed while the storm was raging.

"Heavily pregnant women have been evacuated but most people in areas like Balukhali and Kutupalong makeshift settlements have stayed," said the official, who declined to be identified.

"The winds are strong and people there live in flimsy structures, so we're worried."

In Myanmar, about 300 houses were damaged in Rakhine State but the extent was unclear, the government said.

But Bangladeshi weather officials said the cyclone was not as bad as they had feared.

"The severity was less than the apprehension,” Shamsuddin Ahmed, a weather official based in Chittagong said.

The cyclone was expected to weaken in Bangladesh by late morning as it moved inland towards India where authorities have warned of heavy rain in the northeastern states of Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

The cyclone formed after monsoon rains triggered floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, off India's southern tip, killing at least 180 people in recent days, authorities said, adding 99 people were missing and 112 had been injured.

In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, 24 people have been killed in recent days, either by lightning or in collapsed dwellings.

While the rains bring death and destruction every year, they also underpin life across the region.

Monsoon rains arrived at on India's southern coast on Tuesday, a weather office source said, making it the earliest since 2011 and setting India up for higher farm output and robust economic growth. 

(Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul in DHAKA, Shihar Aneez in COLOMBO, Wa Lone and Antoni Slodkowski in YANGON; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Robert Birsel)

By AFP

May 29, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar's ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement announced Sunday it was rebranding under a new name, days after Buddhist authorities banned the network which has been accused of stoking Islamophobia.

The monk-led movement grew in strength under the country's previous military-backed government, peddling a form of hardline Buddhist nationalism that intensified sectarian tensions with minority Muslims.

But after months of distancing itself from the radical group, Myanmar's top Buddhist clergy on Tuesday ordered the Ma Ba Tha to cease all activities by mid-July or face prosecution.

The threat did little to deter thousands of maroon-robed monks, nuns and lay followers from attending a weekend summit at a Yangon monastery decorated with Ma Ba Tha banners, with many defiantly declaring their intention to keep the movement going.

On Sunday the group released a statement saying they would use a new name: the Buddha Dhamma Philanthropy Foundation.

"We urge all members in all regions and states around the country to work for the country, people and religion using the name of the Buddha Dhamma Philanthropy Foundation," said the statement, signed by its monk leader Tilawka Biwuntha.

The new name is noticeably less controversial and confrontational than the original.

Ma Ba Tha is the Burmese abbreviation for a phrase that translates as "The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion" - a name the group would also give as its official English title.

With the help of notorious firebrand monk Wirathu, who attended the weekend gathering and has a significant Facebook following, Ma Ba Tha became know for sermons and protests that helped foment the idea that Buddhism in Myanmar is threatened by Islam.

Muslims have lived in Myanmar for centuries but only make up around five per cent of the population.

In recent months Buddhist hardliners have shut down religious events across the country and forced two Yangon schools accused of illegally doubling up as mosques to close their doors.

Police arrested several nationalists this month after a fight broke out in a Muslim neighbourhood of Yangon, when dozens of people raided a house believed to be hiding Rohingyas - a Muslim minority maligned by many Buddhists.

Earlier this year the ruling clergy, a body known as Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, banned Wirathu from preaching for a year, though he still spoke at the gathering on Saturday.

The same day Tilawka Biwuntha signalled the group had no intention of disbanding.

"If you write Ma Ba Tha, you can erase the words. But no one can erase Ma Ba Tha from your heart," he told supporters.

By AFP

May 29, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar netizens were in an uproar on Monday (May 29) after Facebook seemingly banned people from posting the word "kalar" - often used as a slur against Muslims - at a time of rising Islamophobia in the country.

Facebook is under global pressure to clamp down on hate speech, violent threats or deliberately misleading information on their platform - with efforts showing varying degrees of success.

Dozens of users in Myanmar reported being temporarily barred from the site recently after posting the controversial term kalar, which is frequently used as an insult for the country's embattled Muslim minority.

Some users said they were even blocked after writing other words that include the same sound in the Burmese alphabet, highlighting the difficulties Facebook has monitoring millions of posts in multiple languages.

Aung Kaung Myat said he had been prevented from liking, posting and sharing content on the site for 24 hours last week for writing about the apparent ban, as had many of his friends.

"It is ridiculous," he said. "I became a victim of it myself when I wrote: 'Facebook is deleting the posts that include the word kalar'."

Yarzar Soe-Oo said he was barred on Friday after posting a jokey quip about eating Indian bean soup ("kalar pal hin") while sitting in a chair ("kalar htaing").

A spokeswoman for Facebook said the company was working to combat hate speech but as "our teams process millions of pieces of reported content each week... we sometimes make mistakes".

A spokesman for the Myanmar government said it had not pushed for a ban.

"WE OWN KALAR"

Kalar is a deeply controversial term in Myanmar, where it is used to refer to foreigners in general but most commonly to describe people of Indian origin and anything relating to their culture.

Over the years it has also been turned into a derogatory slur by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims.

Two angry Facebook users have responded to the apparent ban by creating an event called "We own Kalar" in protest. By early afternoon about 1,400 people had said they were interested in attending the gathering, scheduled for Wednesday in Yangon.

"Even though no action is taken against fake accounts which share hate speech and spew abuse... action is taken over (words we use every day)," said the organisers. "We own the word as we have been using it for decades and over the centuries."

The push comes as Myanmar's government has been seeking to clamp down on hate speech after a spike in anti-Muslim actions by Buddhist hardliners.

They have shut down religious events, forced two Yangon schools accused of illegally doubling up as mosques to close and this month clashed with Muslims after pushing police to raid a house in their neighbourhood.

Last week Myanmar's top Buddhist authority officially banned ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement, which responded on Sunday by simply changing their name.

"If you write Ma Ba Tha, you can erase the words. But no one can erase Ma Ba Tha from your heart," leader Tilawka Biwuntha told the gathering.

By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim

Al Arabiya

May 29, 2017

Though the humanitarian crisis in Syria still dominates international attention there are many other crises around the world. Among the worst, is that in Mynamar, about which I have written at length.

Despite now having a democratically elected civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after decades of military rule, and despite the country’s ongoing efforts to re-join the international community as a fully-fledged member, many aspects of the government remain in the hands of the independent military, including domestic security.

Following a series of attacks on border outposts last October, the Rohingya minority has been fingered as responsible, and has suffered brutal collective reprisals by the military and other branches of Myanmar’s security apparatus, both at the federal and at the local state level. These have included wanton rape of women and children, as well as extrajudicial killings of men, women, children and even infants, which have led to a new wave of refugees fleeing the country.

It has been enough to make some UN experts and observers infer that the end-goal of the the ongoing brutality might be to finally ‘expel’ all the Rohingya from Myanmar. After all, the decades of persecution at the hands of the succession of military governments had already pushed over half of the Rohingya people out of the country, while successive waves of communal violence since 2012 have left more than 120,000 stuck in internally displaced people’s camps, a substantial percentage of the country’s remaining 7-800,000 Rohingya.

Nevertheless, the Brumese Army’s internal investigation into its own conduct in the local Rakhine state since last autumn has found ‘no wrongdoing except in two minor incidents’. Nor is there much hope that the civilian government might put any pressure on the military over these findings, if history is anything to go by. So far, Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have shown a studied reluctance to step on the military’s toes, and she has specifically rejected the concerns raised by the UN regarding ethnic cleansing.

Accountability

Indeed, Daw Suu Kyi has already opposed the UN’s rights council decision to investigate the allegations of abuses independently. But in the wake of the shambolic findings produced by the Army’s internal investigation, it seems clear that we can no longer leave this issue to Myanmar’s authorities.

The fundamental issue here, as is often the case in politics, is one of accountability. It is no surprise that the Army is not going to hold itself accountable for the reported abuses. 

It would therefore have been the right and proper place for the Burmese government of the country to hold them accountable for them.

Yet this government is showing itself unwilling. Indeed, given the peculiar constitutional arrangements the country has in place for its managed transition to democracy, the civilian government may be unable to impose any censure on the armed forces. If that is the case, much of the ‘progress’ towards democratisation would be revealed as illusory, since ultimate sovereign power still resides with the Army’s strength of arms rather than the state’s civilian institutions.

But the human rights abuses against the Rohingya will not stop until the individuals and institutions which are perpetrating them are held to account. And the only party showing itself willing to do so, with proper judiciousness and due diligence, is the United Nations Human Rights Council.

It is therefore imperative that the international community empowers the Council to pursue its own independent investigation, and back international criminal proceedings against any individuals violating international humanitarian law in international courts if the Burmese courts refuse to prosecute appropriately.

If we do not, the Burmese Army may yet complete its programme of ‘ethnic cleansing’. And the rest of us in the international community will be left picking up the human and financial costs of dealing with yet another wave of refugees, and yet another hotspot of instability in the world.

____________________________

Azeem Ibrahim is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Policy and Adj Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. He completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He tweets @AzeemIbrahim.

By Yi Shu Ng

Mashable

May 29, 2017

Efforts by Facebook to moderate content in one of its fastest-growing countries has evidently not been easy.

Like what it's doing in many other markets, the social media giant is trying to stem content deemed hateful in Myanmar. 

The emerging market experienced a surge of new internet users in recent years, and Facebook benefited with 10 million Burmese users by 2016.

With these new users come challenges. One hot button topic, the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis, has resulted in posts made insulting the minority Muslim Rohingyas.

On Facebook's end, it's trying to cut derogatory terms that have traditionally been thrown at the group. But like many automated processes dealing with a language's nuances, it can get those wrong.

In a Medium post, Facebook user Aung Kaung Myat, points out that Facebook has — nearly comically — blocked posts with any reference to banned words. This includes puns and words that sound like them.

In a statement, Facebook said that the company's teams of moderators regularly engages and listens to feedback from the community, safety experts and NGOs in Myanmar.

"Once we’re made aware of errors we quickly act to resolve them," a spokesperson told Mashable, adding that the company conducts "regular audits and quality assessments" so errors will not happen again.

Moderation is an uphill battle

The move to ban slurs in Myanmar is the latest in Facebook's efforts to ban hate speech on its platform. In a series of leaked documents published by the Guardian last week, Facebook outlined racial slurs as unacceptable on their platform, except in cases of ironic use.

The social media giant is facing pressure by governments to stop hate from its nearly two billion users. The company is also attempting to use machine learning and AI to ease the burden on its 4,500 content moderators.

Posts can be made in more than 70 languages, and in rapidly developing countries like Myanmar where Facebook has a growing user base, moderation could be a very difficult job.

"Hardliners know the effectiveness of online hate speech and are using it more," Ma Zar Chi Oo, a program manager at PEN Myanmar Centre, a literary advocacy group, told the Myanmar Times last year. "The number of shares, likes and comments on false information or fake news is astounding." 

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting found 565 cases of hate speech on social and broadcast media in Myanmar from August to October last year, with just over half targeted to Muslims and Rohingya.

By Asian Correspondent

May 28, 2017

AS Ramadan begins, Muslims in Burma are increasingly restricted in where they can pray or study their faith, points out Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Using Thaketa Township in Rangoon as a case study, Richard Weir, a Fellow in the Asia Division of HRW, highlights the pressure on the Muslim community after the closure of the township’s two Islamic schools, or madrassas.

Both establishments were chained shut late last month after a Buddhist ultranationalist mob pressured authorities to close them. At the time, HRW called for the Burmese government to immediately reopen the schools, labelling the move a “craven capitulation to mob demands.”

Despite these appeals, the schools have not been allowed to reopen and some fear they will suffer the fate of other madrassas shut by the authorities, and stay closed.

Wunna Shwe, joint secretary general of the Islamic Religious Affairs Council, told HRW 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, madrassas that are sealed or closed almost never open again,” Shwe said.

Muslims make up a tiny minority in the Buddhist-majority nation, with the percentage estimated to be in the lower single digits. But as the community grows, the places to safely practice their faith diminish.

Buddhist ultranationalist groups claim that the shutdowns are lawful as madrassa leaders signed a document in October 2015 agreeing not to use the schools for prayer. But residents of Thaketa Township told HRW that for several years they’ve received permission to pray there during Ramadan.

That, however, is no longer an option and Muslims are being forced to go further afield to overcrowded mosques – the closest is a 30-minute walk away – with staggered prayer sessions to accommodate everyone.

“It has been a long time since we have been able to build new mosques in this country,” said Kyaw Khin, head of a national Muslim group. “Others are destroyed in violence, and some are closed by the government.”

The Burmese government has placed harsh restrictions on the construction or renovation of religious structures, as well as limits on the practice of religion. These are just some of the elements of the systemic discrimination faced by Muslims in the country.

HRW called on the government “to allow all people in Burma to worship freely, including by reopening religious schools and protecting minorities from mobs.”

Until that happens, the people of Thaketa Township will spend this Ramadan walking several hours every day just to make it to daily prayers.

By Associated Press

May 28, 2017

YANGON, Myanmar — Thousands of Buddhist monks, nuns and supporters of an ultranationalist Buddhist group gathered at an annual conference on the outskirts of Myanmar’s biggest city on Saturday despite being banned by the government.

The State Sangha Maha Nayaka, the country’s highest Buddhist institution, officially banned Ma Ba Tha for motivating riots largely targeting Myanmar’s Muslim minority. The group was ordered to stop its activities and to take down its signboards nationwide by July 15.

“According to their terms, our group is called an unlawful association, but we want you to know that our group will not be abolished,” a senior monk from the group told the audience at the conference.

Ma Ba Tha and its high-profile leading monk, Wirathu, have been accused of summoning anti-Islamic preaching and stirring up mob violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, causing deaths of Muslims and destruction of their property. Most of the victims are from the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state.

“We just wanted to save our people, but maybe many people just want to die like dogs and pigs in the hands of the enemy,” the monk said.

The government’s ban came after Buddhist hard-liners forced local authorities to shut down two Muslim schools in April and later confronted Muslim neighborhoods claiming to search for illegal Rohingya hiding in the area. It was the latest manifestation of years of rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar.

“Even if we are banned, that doesn’t mean we will disappear,” the monk said Saturday. “We will continue to do what we can to protect our race and religion.”

By bdnews24.com

May 28, 2017

The United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA has provided a new ambulance and inaugurated the improved primary healthcare services for the Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar camps.

The ambulance handed over to an NGO, Research, Training and Management (RTM) International, on Sunday will ensure that the refugees living in two camps, as well as host communities, can access lifesaving treatment in the case of a medical emergency, the UN agency said.

Kutupalong and Nayapara camps host hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The Myanmar government denied the citizenship of the Muslim minority group.

With the new ambulance, the UNFPA said a total of four ambulances are now available to transport critical cases from the refugee camps to the district hospital or NGO-run clinics.

Apart from local administrators, UNHCR Country Representative Shinji Kubo, UNFPA Chief of Health Dr Sathyanarayanan Doraiswamy and RTM International President Dr Ahmed-Al Kabir were present during the handover ceremony.

They also celebrated the newly integrated health services available at the primary healthcare centre.

The integrated health centre, a joint effort by UNHCR and UNFPA, will now provide refugees with sexual and reproductive healthcare and maternity and newborn care -- all in one space.

Four midwives, recruited by UNFPA, will ensure that women are taken care of in a professional manner throughout their pregnancy and at the time of delivery.

The healthcare centre also includes an adolescent health corner where young people receive information and services specifically targeted for their needs.

The same model of services is also available in Nayapara refugee camp in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar.

Since 2008, UNFPA has been providing assistance to RTM to implement comprehensive lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services in Nayapara and Kutupalong areas in Cox’s Bazar district.

The overall objective of the assistance is to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity among refugees, the UN agency said.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 26, 2017

BURMA: Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Pwint Phyu Latt & Zaw Zaw Latt Released

USCIRF Praises Their Release and Calls for All Prisoners of Conscience to be Freed

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) expressed satisfaction that the government of Burma has released prisoners of conscience Pwint Phyu Latt and Zaw Zaw Latt. They were released along with more than 250 other prisoners Burma’s government freed as part of a presidential amnesty.

USCIRF Vice Chairman Daniel Mark, who has advocated on behalf of Pwint Phyu Latt and Zaw Zaw Latt, stated that he “welcomed this long-overdue step by Burma’s government. Pwint Phyu Latt and Zaw Zaw Latt, both Muslim, were wrongfully imprisoned for their interfaith activities. Although I welcome and applaud their release, the fact remains that they never should have been imprisoned in the first place. I hope their release signals a more positive trajectory for the freedom of religion or belief in Burma.”

Vice Chairman Mark took up the case of Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt as part of USCIRF’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project. This project highlights the plight of individuals who have been imprisoned for their religious beliefs, practices, or identity and the laws and practices that led to their imprisonment.

At an event in Washington, DC last week for the release of the USCIRF 2017 Annual Report, Vice Chairman Mark cited the case of these interfaith advocates as a dramatic example of a country using security laws to crack down on those pressing for religious freedom. He highlighted that the Immigration (Emergency Provisions) Act, one of the laws under which Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt had been detained and sentenced, had been repealed, yet they were not released and their sentences were not reduced. Their initial sentence was, in fact, extended in 2016 by two years of hard labor on the same day that more than 100 other prisoners were amnestied.

Vice Chairman Mark called on “the government of Burma to repeal repressive laws and policies that target individuals for peaceful dissent and expression and abide by international human rights standards and the rule of law.”

Although the 2017 USCIRF report noted a historic and peaceful transition of government in Burma in 2016, the Commission still recommended that the U.S. State Department designate Burma as a “Country of Particular Concern.” This recommendation is due to the government perpetrating or tolerating religious freedom violations that are “systematic, ongoing, and egregious,” with the most famous example being the abysmal treatment of the Rohingya Muslims in that country.

By Kyaw Ye Lynn

Anadolu Agency

May 25, 2017

YANGON, Myanmar -- Civil society organizations (CSOs) in Myanmar urged the government to fully cooperate with United Nations mission to probe into alleged human rights violations in country’s ethnic areas including western Rakhine state.

Myanmar rebuffed in March the UN decision to send an international fact-finding mission to the country to establish "the facts and circumstances" of the alleged "violations by military and security forces, and abuses" against Rohingya Muslims in particular.

50 CSOs, mostly based in Myanmar’s ethnic areas, on Thursday said the mission is important for the people of Myanmar and their shared struggle for rule of law and human rights.

“The Fact Finding Mission will help the Government of Myanmar to uphold human rights,” the groups said in a joint statement.

The groups added that it will foster a rule-of-law culture by establishing the facts and identifying perpetrators of human rights violations to prevent future atrocity crimes in Myanmar.

According to UN and human rights advocate groups, security forces have committed atrocities against Rohingya Muslim civilians, which they described may amount to crimes against humanity, during military operations after a gang killed nine police in Maungdaw area of Rakhine state in October last year.

The CSOs said similar patterns of violence and abuse have been long noted, including to the present day, in ethnic areas such as northern Kachin, eastern Kayin and northeastern Shan states.

“We fully encourage the authorities to cooperate with the Fact Finding Mission to look into the human rights situations in at least Rakhine, Kachin, Shan, and other ethnic states of Myanmar,” it said.

“We strongly support the mission to carry out their mandate.”

Following the growing international pressure, Myanmar’s police and military established their own teams to investigate the alleged abuses of Rohingya Muslims in February in addition to a commission set up by the government in December to probe the allegations.

On Tuesday, military denied the accusations that soldiers committed atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar despite evidence from the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and rights groups.

A New York-based advocate group, Human Rights Watch, said on Thursday that the army’s failure to find its troops responsible for any serious abuses demonstrates the urgent need for the government to allow unfettered access to the United Nations international fact-finding mission.

By Human Rights Watch

May 25, 2017

Grant UN Fact-Finding Mission Full Access to Rakhine State

Rangoon – The Burmese army announced on May 23, 2017, that its investigation into alleged military abuses in Rakhine State uncovered no wrongdoing except in two minor incidents, Human Rights Watch said today. The army’s failure to find its troops responsible for any serious abuses against ethnic Rohingya since October 2016 in northern Rakhine State demonstrates the urgent need for Burma’s government to allow unfettered access to the United Nations international fact-finding mission.

“The Burmese army’s denials of well-documented abuses shows unvarnished contempt for truth, accountability, and respect for human rights,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “The army’s approach highlights the need for Aung San Suu Kyi’s government to allow the UN fact-finding mission into Burma, and to call on the army to provide full access to conflict areas.”

The army investigation team, led by Lt. Gen. Aye Win of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief, reportedly interviewed approximately 2,875 villagers in 29 villages in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township from February 10 to March 4. The team said it recorded the testimonies of 408 villagers, and interviewed more than 200 soldiers and members of the border guard police. However, to have interviewed the number of villagers it claims to have spoken to, the team would have had to interview at least 125 people each day while in Rakhine State.

The army investigation reported finding two cases of abuse. One involved the theft of a motorbike, for which a soldier was sentenced to one year in jail and received a fine. The other involved military personnel who beat villagers for allegedly not helping to extinguish a fire, for which one officer was “penalized and warned” and two soldiers were sentenced to a year in jail. The investigation team also concluded that the allegations against the army in a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights were either “totally wrong” or “found to be untrue due to false accusations and exaggerations.”

The UN, Human Rights Watch, and others have documented numerous serious human rights violations committed by Burmese security forces against the Rohingya in Rakhine State following the October 9, 2016, attacks on three police outposts. Human Rights Watch documented extrajudicial killings, the rape of women and girls, and the burning of at least 1,500 structures. The violence caused massive displacement, with more than 70,000 fleeing to Bangladesh and more than 20,000 temporarily internally displaced. A report issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on February 3, concluded that the attacks against the Rohingya “very likely” amounted to the commission of crimes against humanity.

The Burmese government established four separate commissions to investigate the violence, none of which have been credible or impartial. In March, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing an independent international fact-finding mission with a mandate to investigate allegations of recent human rights abuses in Burma, especially in Rakhine State. The Burmese government has not said whether it will grant access to the mission.

Past Burmese government investigations have exposed deep methodological flaws and lack of care for victims and the collection of accurate testimonies. The Union-level investigation commission, led by Vice President Myint Swe, has used methods that produced incomplete, inaccurate, or false information. According to reports, testimony, and publicly released footage, the Burmese investigators badgered villagers, argued with them, told them not to say things, accused them of lying, and interviewed victims – including rape survivors – in large groups where confidentiality was not provided.

The Union-level commission released an interim report on January 3 that summarily dismissed allegations of genocide, religious persecution, and states that it was unable to find sufficient evidence of other abuses. The commission has yet to issue its final report and there is no set date for its release.

“Despite overwhelming evidence of mass atrocities, the Burmese army has again failed to credibly investigate itself,” Robertson said. “For there to be any hope of uncovering the truth, the Burmese army can no longer be standing in the way of a serious international fact-finding mission.”

By Fiachra GIBBONS

AFP

May 24, 2017

Cannes (France) -- Barbet Schroeder spent months with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin at the height of his power, when corpses would wash up every morning on the shores of Lake Victoria and Kampala was rife with rumours that he was eating his opponents.

But in his decades of documenting evil, the veteran Swiss filmmaker says he has never been as scared by anyone as he was by a Myanmar Buddhist monk named Wirathu.

"I am afraid to call him Wirathu because even his name scares me," the highly acclaimed director told AFP. "I just call him W."

"The Venerable W", his chilling portrait of the monk who has been accused of preaching hate and inciting attacks on Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority, has been hailed by critics at the Cannes film festival as a "stirring documentary about ethnic cleansing in action".

What dismays Schroeder is that Wirathu, whom Time magazine dubbed "The face of Buddhist terror" in a 2013 cover, is utterly unfazed by the chaos and suffering he has unleashed.

Buddhism is supposed to be the philosophy of peace, enlightenment and understanding, he thought.

It helped centre Schroeder's own life when he made a pilgrimage to India to follow on the path of the Buddha 50 years ago to "cure myself of my jealousy".

But the hate speech and fake news that Wirathu spreads from his Mandalay monastery, accusing Muslims -- barely four percent of the country's population -- of trying to outbreed the majority Burmese, made Schroeder's head spin.

- 'Devilishly clever' -

"He is much more intelligent and in control of himself that I thought, devilishly clever in fact," said Schroeder, who shot his film secretly in Myanmar until he attracted the attention of the secret police.

"It was like being faced by a good Jesuit or some very clever communist leader back in the day," he said.

Rather than "question him like a journalist", Schroeder just let the monk talk as he did with the other subjects of his "Trilogy of Evil", which began with "General Idi Amin Dada" in 1974 and includes his 2007 film "Terror's Advocate" about the French lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

"If you wait long enough, slowly the truth would come out," Schroeder said. "That is what I did with Idi Amin and Jacques Verges."

"When he lied I'd say, 'Tell me more, how interesting... So the Rohingya burn their own houses so they can get money from the United Nations...'"

"For me one of the most shocking moments is when he says they destroy their own houses, and then you see a crowd of maybe 3,000 people fleeing their burning homes. It's nightmarish."

In another telling scene Wirathu, leader of the Buddhist nationalist 969 movement, is shown watching Muslims being beaten to death in Meiktila near Mandalay in 2013, a month after he gave an anti-Muslim speech there.

- Hate speech 'escalating' -

Schroeder said the monk had returned "all peace and love" to the town to call for calm, "but he was at least indirectly responsible for what was happening."

"Wirathu said all this happened because a monk was killed by the Muslims. But I read the pamphlet that sparked the riots and it sounded very much like his speeches and that he could have written it."

This month, Wirathu -- who has been called the Buddhist Bin Laden -- stirred tension by touring Muslim areas in troubled Rakhine State despite Myanmar's top Buddhist body banning him from preaching in March.

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims died in 2012 when sectarian violence ripped the state apart, and tens of thousands still languish in fetid displacement camps.

More than 70,000 have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh since October after the military launched a months-long crackdown that UN investigators say cost the lives of hundreds of the persecuted minority and may amount to crimes against humanity.

Last week a UN envoy criticised the government of Aung San Suu Kyi for not clamping down on "hate speech and incitement to discrimination" which she claimed "appear to be drastically escalating".

In the film Schroeder, 75, seems to trace Wirathu's Islamophobia to the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim in his hometown of Kyaukse.

But in person he is not so sure. "Another theory is that his mother left his father and married a Muslim, or because his monastery was burned when he was 14. But every time I checked I was never sure.

"Why was Hitler like he was? We will never know how this garbage collected in his mind."