New Delhi -- Tasmida is 19 and is determined to break all barriers to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor. First, she is one of the many Rohingya Muslim refugees, who had fled their homes in Myanmar to start life afresh in India. Second, she is a girl and her orthodox community does not allow women/girls to venture outside their homes to study or work. Moreover, she belongs to a poor family where finances are not enough to support education for children.

In spite of all these odds, Tasmida creates a record of sort by becoming the first Rohingya girl to write her Class 10 board exams in India recently. A resident of a refugee camp in Delhi, now Tasmida is eagerly waiting for her exam results scheduled to be declared on June 9. 

A determined Tasmida tells The Indian Express that she aspires to become a doctor to treat Rohingya patients in Myanmar who have no access to health care. Until and unless, the teenager does not adorn the white coat, Tasmida vows not to get married. "I want to be a doctor because no doctor tended to the Rohingyas back home... I will not get married till I become a doctor," she says. In her community, girls usually get married at a young age. Tasmida giving priority to her career over her personal life is one more step towards breaking gender gap. "In Myanmar, Rohingyas are not allowed to study beyond Class 10. Authorities withhold Class 10 results for us. Government or private jobs are out of question," she says. Life for Tasmida and her family, like millions of Rohingyas, who were persecuted in Myanmar and took shelter in Bangladesh and India, was never easy. Tasmida's family left Myanmar in 2002 after her father was jailed for several months. First they stayed in Cox Bazaar, Bangladesh, for eight years. Then once again her family had to leave Bangladesh in 2012 after anti-Rohingya violence erupted and authorities in the country started detaining the Muslim refugees.

This time her family decided to come to Delhi in India. Since then Tasmida's family is staying in a ghetto in Southeast Delhi's Kalindi Kunj with several other Rohingya refugees. According to former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Rohingya Muslims are the world's most persecuted minority people. There are around 60 million Rohingyas from the Rakhine State of Myanmar. Most of them are on run as the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Myanmar face state-sponsored violence because of their religion and language. Figures state that 1,40,000 Rohingyas have been displaced from Myanmar. India has around 40,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, as per the figures available with the ministry of home affairs. After leaving Bangladesh, where Tasmida studied for a couple of years, the teenager restarted her education in a study centre at Kanchan Kunj in the national capital. However, when she expressed her desire to attend junior school at the Bosco Refugee Assistance Project in Jangpura, her father and elder brother did not allow Tasmida to study further.

At this juncture, her other brother, Ali Johar, 24, a college student and a women's rights activist, persuaded the family to send Tasmida to school. Ali, who heads the Rohingya Refugee Committee (Delhi) under the UNHRC says, "Rohingya women are hard-working but they are used to working as agricultural workers in Myanmar. In Delhi's urban set up, they have not been able to find the same kind of work opportunities. And the language barrier is also a problem." Like Tasmida, a couple of other Rohingya girls from her area are now going to schools. Moreover, many Rohingya refugee women have started doing small jobs to earn their livelihood and become self-reliant.

By Mizan Rahman

Gulf Times

June 2, 2017

Dhaka -- Bangladesh has welcomed the formation of a three-member fact-finding mission by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to look into allegations of atrocities recently committed by the Myanmar security forces against the Rohingya populace in Rakhine state.

Foreign ministry officials said in Dhaka, “There is doubt whether the mission will be allowed into Myanmar to carry out its activities as per its mandate because the government of Myanmar has already all but rejected it”.

“Despite this, we welcome the move. We hope that good sense will prevail and Myanmar will co-operate with the mission formed by the global body,” he said.

Echoing the sentiment of his superior, another official said, “It’s a positive step. Let’s hope Myanmar will co-operate with the UN mission to find out the truth.”

President of the UN Human Rights Council, ambassador Joaquin Alexander Maza Martelli, announced the appointment of Indira Jaising (India), Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka) and Christopher Dominic Sidoti (Australia) to serve as three members of the fact-finding mission on Myanmar.

Jaising will serve as the chair of the three-member mission, said a press release issued by the global human rights body.

On March 24, 2017, at its 34th session, the council decided to urgently dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the president of the council, to “establish facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and security forces, and abuses, in Myanmar, in particular in Rakhine State”, it said.

Through human rights council resolution 34/22, the 47-member body mandated the members of the mission to look into, allegations of arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, enforced disappearances, forced displacement and unlawful destruction of property, said the release.

The mission members, who will serve in their personal capacities, are also mandated to carry out their work with a view to ensuring full accountability of the perpetrators of these acts and justice for the victims.

India and China had disassociated from the resolution when it was passed.

The council also encouraged the government of Myanmar to fully co-operate with the fact-finding mission by making available the findings of their domestic investigations and by granting full, unrestricted and unmonitored access to all areas and interlocutors, said the release.

The council also stressed the need for the mission to be provided with all necessary resources and expertise necessary to carry out its mandate.

The fact-finding mission is scheduled to present an oral update to the Human Rights Council at its thirty-sixth session in September this year and a full report at its 37th session in March, 2018, it said.

The members of the mission are expected to meet in Geneva in the coming weeks to plan their agenda and work for the months ahead, the release said.

Any official reaction from the Myanmar side is not yet available, said the officials of the foreign ministry in Dhaka.

But, they said that right after the passage of the resolution moved by the European Union to constitute such a mission, Aung San Suu Kyi, state councillor and de-facto leader of Myanmar, rejected such a mission.

On May 2, at a joint press conference in Brussels with Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Federica Mogherini said the fact-finding mission is focusing on establishing the truth about the past and that she believes this can contribute to establishing the facts.

Asked about the move, Suu Kyi, said: “We are disassociating ourselves from the resolution because we don’t think the resolution is in keeping with what is actually happening on the ground.”

The remarks of the state councillor clearly indicate reluctance on the part of Myanmar to allow the fact-finding mission into Myanmar, said the officials.

In the past, the Myanmar government has refused to allow UN teams into the country, they said.

The officials hinted that eventually if Myanmar does not allow the fact- finding mission, then the mission may be dispatched to Bangladesh to find the truth by interviewing those Rohingyas who had to flee to Cox’s Bazaar to escape the brutality of the Myanmar security forces and local Buddhist population in the Rakhine state.

Bangladesh will be happy to facilitate such a trip as it did in case of UN special rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee, the foreign ministry officials said.

The UN team that visited Bangladesh after being refused entry into Myanmar in its report prepared based on interviewing Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar said that Myanmar’s security forces committed mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities against Rohingyas that might amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Special rapporteur Lee also voiced similar views after her visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Since October, 2016, more than 70,000 Rohingyas have crossed into Bangladesh adding to the 3,00,000 Rohingyas already living in the country for decades.

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Cyclone Mora swept across the Bay of Bengal earlier this week, damaging thousands of homes in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Shelter is urgently needed for those affected. Many refugees and internally displaced people are among the local victims.

Some injuries were reported among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar area and displaced people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. An 11-year-old refugee died on Wednesday when he was hit by a falling tree branch in Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. In Myanmar in central Rakhine state, a displaced boy aged 10 was reported missing after he was swept away by rising waters. 

UNHCR assessments in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong and Nayapara camps found that most of the refugees’ homes – which are built with mud, bamboo, corrugated iron and plastic sheets – suffered some damage. Some 20 percent are completely destroyed. Communal structures such as schools, community centres and the offices of government and NGOs are also damaged. Our partners are assessing the situation in makeshift sites and local villages hosting refugees.

In Myanmar, the government is conducting assessments with the contribution of UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies. Hundreds of shelters in the camps housing internally displaced people in central Rakhine state have suffered damage in the strong winds. This includes 186 shelters that collapsed while 339 are severely damaged.

In both countries, UNHCR and our partners are supporting government-led relief efforts to assist refugees, displaced people and their host communities who were affected by this natural disaster.

The working environment remains challenging amid persistent rains. Parts of central Rakhine are fraught with risks of landslides and collapsing river banks. In northern Rakhine state, relief work is hampered by flooding in parts of Maungdaw town as well as downed power and telecommunications lines. The electricity mini-grid in Bangladesh’s refugee camps is also broken, heightening security concerns after dark.

There is an urgent need for shelter materials. While some refugees in Bangladesh are already repairing their homes, others face nights in the open unless alternative accommodation can be found. UNHCR is prioritizing the repair of communal structures like schools to provide temporary shelter. Our staff are also distributing plastic sheets to those who need it the most.

UNHCR is seeking funds from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help those affected by the cyclone in the two Bangladesh camps where we are authorised to work.

In Rakhine state in light of the urgent needs, we have provided plastic sheets to several healthcare facilities and are distributing further to people who need a roof over their heads. We are also working with UNICEF to support repairs to schools to minimize disruption of the school year that started yesterday (Thursday). UNHCR will provide further humanitarian aid in close liaison with the authorities.

Food rations, drinking water and latrines are some of the other needs identified so far in the cyclone-affected areas. More needs are likely to be identified as further assessments are completed in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

In Bangladesh, there are more than 33,000 Rohingya refugees registered in the official camps of Kutupalong and Nayapara. Outside the camps, more than 200,000 undocumented Rohingya are living in makeshift sites and local villages in south-eastern Bangladesh, including an estimated 74,000 who arrived after fleeing the violence in northern Rakhine state in October 2016.

In Myanmar, there are some 120,500 internally displaced people who have been living in bamboo longhouses in IDP camps in central Rakhine since they lost their homes in the 2012 inter-communal violence.

For more information on this topic, please contact:

- In Geneva, Ariane Rummery, rummery@unhcr.org, +41 79 200 7617

- In Bangladesh, Joseph Tripura, tripura@unhcr.org, +88 01713 090 375

- In Bangkok, Vivian Tan, tanv@unhcr.org, +66 818 270 280

- In Myanmar, Andrew Dusek, dusek@unhcr.org, +95 9 448 034 427

By AFP

June 2, 2017

Police charge three men who prayed in street after school where they used to worship was shut down by nationalists

Authorities in Myanmar have charged three Muslim men for holding Ramadan prayers in the street after the local school where they used to worship was shut down by a nationalist mob.

Police brought the charges after about 50 Muslims gathered to pray on Wednesday on a road in Yangon’s Thaketa township, the site of one of a growing number of raids by Buddhist hardliners on Islamic events.

Two nearby Islamic schools were closed in late April after ultra-nationalists complained that local Muslims were illegally using them to conduct prayers.

Authorities have said the closure is temporary, but have given no timeline for when they may be reopened.

“We feel sorry. This month is important for us,” said the local Muslim leader Zaw Min Latt, referring to the holy month of Ramadan, which began last week.

“We used those schools for prayer for decades. These restrictions have been brought in after more than 60 years.”

Local authorities issued a statement saying the prayer session threatened “stability and the rule of law” in the mainly Muslim neighbourhood in the east of Myanmar’s commercial capital.

A police officer who asked not to be named confirmed the charges.

Two officers tried to stop AFP journalists from filming when they visited one of the madrasas on Friday.

“It’s our mosque as well as our school. We don’t know when it will be reopened,” Khin Soe, a local resident in his 50s, said as he set off to pray in another part of town.

The case comes as Myanmar’s government has been seeking to clamp down on hate speech after a spike in anti-Muslim actions by hardliners from the country’s Buddhist majority.

Religious tensions have soared since a group of Rohingya Muslims attacked police posts in Rakhine state in October, sparking a bloody military crackdown that has drawn widespread international condemnation. 

Last week Myanmar’s top Buddhist authority officially banned the Ma Ba Tha, an ultra-nationalist movement affiliated with the firebrand cleric Wirathu, which responded by simply changing its name.

The move came after nationalists this month clashed with Muslims in another Muslim neighbourhood in Yangon, after pushing police to raid a house there in search of illegal Rohingya Muslim hideouts.

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.”