By Reuters

June 13, 2017

STOCKHOLM - A United Nations probe into alleged human rights abuses by Myanmar's military against the minority Rohingya people last year would inflame ethnic tensions, the country's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Monday.

Last month, the U.N. appointed experts to lead a fact-finding mission to investigate widespread allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority who have faced discrimination in largely Buddhist Myanmar for generations.

Myanmar has rejected the mission.

"It would have created greater hostility between the different communities," Suu Kyi told reporters in Stockholm after a meeting with Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

"We did not feel it was in keeping with the needs of the region in which we are trying to establish harmony and understanding, and to remove the fears that have kept the two communities apart for so long."

The 71-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has said she would only accept recommendations from a separate advisory commission led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan.

"I think we should really give the commission a chance to show whether or not they have done their work properly instead of condemning from the beginning," she said.

A U.N. report in February said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes in a campaign that "very likely" amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

The report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights was based on extensive interviews with Rohingya survivors in Bangladesh.

About 75,000 Rohingya fled from Myanmar's Rakhine State to Bangladesh to escape a military crackdown last year launched after nine policemen were killed in attacks that Myanmar blamed on Rohingya militants.

More than 200,000 Rohingya had already fled to Bangladesh, many living in official and makeshift camps, straining resources in one of Asia's poorest regions.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; Additional reporting by Niklas Pollard; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

By The Daily Vox

June 13, 2017

Myanmar is home to an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority. Numerous sources both inside and outside the country have reported horrific human rights violations. Shabnam Mayet explores the enduring discrimination against the marginalised group. 

The Rohingya crisis is a humanitarian disaster created over decades by the institutionalisation of a slow-burning genocide against an ethnic minority.

Made to endure the brutality and oppression of the military junta, more than 200 000 Rohingya fled across Myanmar’s border to Bangladesh in the late 1970s. In 1982 the military junta revoked their citizenship and no longer recognised them as one of the 135 “national races”.

Since 2012, the brutality against the Muslim minority has been one exacerbated by Myanmar’s unwillingness to punish the right-wing Buddhist nationalists who propagate hatred against them, address its apartheid policies, and keep its security forces in check. The persecution has forced tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee the country in recent years, with many seeking safety in Thailand, Bangladesh and Malaysia.

They have been denied the right to self-identify, freedom of movement, access to education and healthcare. The Rohingya have been subjected to land confiscations, forced sterilisation, extortion, torture, human trafficking and collective punishment, and they even require government permission to marry.

Popular media and right-wing politics use Islamophobia to condition us into believing extremism and terrorism are the sole domain of Muslims, preferably those holding weapons against the skyline of a bombed city or desert dunes. This perception allows a democratic government led by a Nobel Peace Laureate to turn a blind eye to both state terror and violent extremist Buddhism.

Despite Myanmar’s first democratic election in 2015 being won by the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, right-wing nationalist Buddhist groups have successfully rioted and looted in Rohingya communities while the police and military have idly watched on. They have lobbied for discriminatory legislation to be passed and even for the word Rohingya not to be used, once again proving that a transitional government is an acceptable justification for ignoring atrocities against minorities.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s (ASEAN) non-intervention policy has resulted in mass graves of Rohingya being found in human trafficking camps along the Thai-Malaysian border.

Since October last year, the military has undertaken a violent crackdown on Rohingya villages in Rakhine State. Security forces went on the rampage slaughtering children, arresting and torturing men, forcing entire communities to relocate, blocking humanitarian aid, burning homes and raping Rohingya women. Almost 2 000 Rohingya structures were burnt and 75 000 refugees fled to Bangladesh while thousands remain displaced internally.

A journalist who interviewed Rohingya rape victims after the military crackdown was told by a 15-year-old-girl that she was only raped by one soldier because she was not as beautiful as the girls who were gang raped. However the state maintains eyewitness accounts, including the testimonies of mass rapes, are fabricated.

The government has characterised the actions of its security forces as anti-terrorism related. Predictably, when the word terrorism is bandied about, tangible evidence is irrelevant and extreme force against a civilian population becomes an acceptable response.

Myanmar has elected to ignore the UN Special Rapporteur’s recommendations, deny access to international observers including foreign journalists and has even rejected the call for a United Nations fact-finding mission investigating the violence.

Western countries have been quick to lift sanctions and invest in the untapped market since it threw off the shackles of military dictatorship, proving once again that profits are more important than people.

Many claim the condition of the Rohingya is far worse than the apartheid experienced by both Palestinians and South Africans. Drawing these parallels underplays how disenfranchised the Rohingya are. As a country with a past steeped in discrimination and oppression, we have a responsibility to ensure others do not suffer the same fate.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Black Panther and journalist, once said that the greatest form of sanity anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit. It is with this in mind that I appeal to everyone to join Protect the Rohingya‘s event this Tuesday, by wearing black in solidarity with the Rohingya, and to call for an end to the Rohingya genocide.

Tweet your photos and messages of solidarity to @ProtectRohingya using the hashtag #Black4Rohingya.

Advocate Shabnam Mayet is the co-founder of Protect the Rohingya.

The Rohingya Aid Workers 

Ro Mayyu Ali

RB Poem

June 13, 2017

Being the victims for themselves 

Surviving in a modern Ghetto 

They those who support others 

Braving tremendous dangers 

At risk in greater orders 

Whoever the needy is, 

Their hands never discriminate. 

And never give up even for 

The hurdle of capital-based promotions 

They work hard for the well-being of their entire multicultural community 

For their least-developed Northern Rakhine State 

In the offices, 

They work together with diverse colleagues 

But nothing fades away their team spirits. 

Having the sense of 'One Humanity' 

An expert sits in front of the car 

And some of them with other colleagues 

Take seats in the middle 

And at the back, some tools of their activities 

And they head to field 

To distribute the aids to victims 

They often have to hold an extra identity 

It's called Form-4 by term locally. 

The driver stops the car reluctantly. 

They have to get off the car 

To be under the check up of authority 

In out posts of the security 

"Why is my body checked? 

Even it has a heart to save many lives! 

Why my back-bag is checked? 

Even it has tools to cure many lives!" 

And they get on again 

Having the approval of entry 

For soon, they turn to their philosophy. 

Then the expert see them back 

With a round of empathy 

"Are you okay?" by saying! 

Then they come back to their conscience. 

And bear a hard smile for their off faces 

And ever continue their humanitarian journey 

In a very strong sense of commitment 

Just rebuilding others' lives and dignities 

The poet is a Rohingya. He depicts, in his poetry the feeling of Rohingya humanitarian workers how they face difficulties and restrictions in out posts of the security forces in Northern Rakhine State.

By Jonah Fisher

BBC News

June 13, 2017

The United Nations has confirmed that its top official in Myanmar is being moved from her position. 

Diplomatic and aid community sources in Yangon told the BBC the decision was linked to Renata Lok-Dessallien's failure to prioritise human rights. 

In particular, this referred to the oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority. 

Internal UN documents - shown to the BBC - said the organisation had become "glaringly dysfunctional", and wracked by internal tensions. 

A UN spokeswoman confirmed Ms Lok-Dessallien, a Canadian citizen, was being "rotated", saying this had nothing to do with her performance which she said had been "consistently appreciated".

Late last year as tens of thousands of Rohingya fled rape and abuse at the hands of Burmese soldiers, the UN team inside Myanmar was strangely silent. 

Ms Lok-Dessallien and her spokesman declined simple requests for information; and on one absurd occasion she visited the conflict area, but on her return refused to allow journalists to film or record her words at a press conference. 

The BBC was told that on numerous occasions aid workers with a human rights focus were deliberately excluded from important meetings. 

Those moments reflect a wider criticism of Ms Lok-Dessallien and her team, namely that their priority was building development programmes and a strong relationship with the Burmese government - not advocating that the rights of oppressed minorities, like the Rohingya, should be respected. 

In an internal document prepared for the new UN secretary general, the UN team in Myanmar is described as "glaringly dysfunctional" with "strong tensions" between different parts of the UN system. 

Ms Lok-Dessallien is currently on leave but has been told that her position is being upgraded, bringing her role to an end after three-and-a-half years, rather than the usual term of up to five years.

By Safeena Wani

Youth Ki Awaaz

June 11, 2017

“My son was 16,” says Mehjabeen. “One night, Burmese soldiers raided our house, beat us black and blue and took my son away.” She never found out what happened to him. Her husband died of a heart attack a year later. His last wish was to see his son.

Mehjabeen is sitting with Naseema Begum, who fled the country in 2008. She says her husband and elder son were beaten up and hanged from a tree in the courtyard of their house. Her younger son was arrested for alleged links to Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, never to return.

Sitting in a shanty next to a garbage dump, Naseema and Mehjabeen casually discuss the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar that drove the two women to flee to Jammu leaving their home behind. As of January 2017, close to 92,000 people like Naseema and Mehjabeen have been displaced because of the violence. It is estimated that 36,000 Rohingya

It is estimated that 36,000 Rohingya Muslims live in India today, most of them having arrived in the aftermath of the 2012 sectarian riots.

The Horrors Inflicted By The Myanmar Army

Rohingya women fear the sight of a uniform – soldier or police. “In our village in Myanmar, whenever soldiers or cops showed up, no woman dared to step out,” says Naseema. “I saw them kill and rape women. Burmese doctors refused to treat us.”

Many Rohingya Muslims, including single widowed mothers, live in squalid shanty clusters across Jammu.

As Myanmar’s neighbour and as a signatory to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), India has an important role to play in not only finding a sustainable solution to the whole problem but in also supporting Rohingyas struggle for securing justice at the international level. India should ideally ensure that those Rohingyas who now live in India are not subject to further abuse or discrimination. Yet, the Rohingyas continue to live in deplorable conditions. And Khalija Bibi, who lives in a shed made of branches, shrub and plastic sheet, is a testament to this reality. Bibi got married in 2008 and fled to Jammu in 2012 at the height of the persecution when a battery of Burmese soldiers attacked her at her home in the village of Hasarbi Auk Purma in Myanmar.

They gang-raped her. She managed to escape with her three children, but her fourth child – a 4-year-old boy – got left behind and was killed by the Burmese. After that, staying in the village was unthinkable. Bibi sold off her property and valuables and with Rs 5 lakh in hand, made the long and painful journey to India. The family crossed the Bangladesh border at Jadi Mura into Meghalaya and then paid ₹5000 per head to travel to Kolkata.

“In Kolkata, the cops took ₹ 1 lakh from us and put me and my children in the train to Jammu. My husband was taken to the police station for filling some forms.”

On reaching Jammu, she found a few relatives there. Her husband joined her a week later and Bibi started a new chapter in her life. It is a life not much to write home about but at least she and her family are safe. Her husband is happy to earn ₹400 a day which helps them pay the rent of a juggi at ₹600 per month, along with electricity and water bills.

That said, sometimes she still wakes up in the middle of the night covered in sweat. The horrors of the past refuse to stop haunting her, even in this new life.

A New Threat To Face

Then there is the added threat of displacement that is hanging on the community’s head. The Modi government is “exploring” methods to deport them to Myanmar where they are persona non grata in a move that will only push the community to further depredation and violence.

This, after the Panthers Party first, and later the Jammu unit of the BJP, called for the deportation of Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis living in Jammu. The reason: Hindu Dogra majority of Jammu fear they will be swamped by Muslims. The presence of Rohingya Muslims so close to the border with Pakistan is also cited as a reason.

However, according to J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, no Rohingya Muslim was found to be involved in militancy-related incidents.

“Seventeen FIRs have been registered against 38 Rohingyas for various offences, including illegal border crossing,” the chief minister said. “A total 5,743 Myanmarese are living in the state, almost all of them in Jammu,” Mufti had said in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in January this year.

The Panthers Party is not mollified. It has put up hoardings all over Jammu warning the government that if the Centre doesn’t take steps to deport Rohingya Muslims from Jammu, it would. “Their high presence in ‘the city of temples’ is an attempt to disintegrate India,” warns Prof Bhim Singh, Panthers Party Supremo.

Traders of Jammu have also jumped into the fray. A traders body has even threatened to “identify and kill them” if the government fails to deport Rohingya Muslims.

As an upcoming economic power committed to achieving Global Sustainable Goals, India’s role in providing aid to the displaced Rohingya Muslims is crucial. The government must take remedial steps necessary towards delivering justice to the Rohingyas. For this, India not only needs to put an end to the rampant discrimination being faced by Rohingya women in the country, but to go that extra mile to eliminate all forms of violence against them. This can only happen by strengthening India’s institutions of democracy and by actively seeking justice for the community at both the national and international levels. It is also in India’s interest to reduce all forms of violence and work towards finding lasting solutions to conflict, most notably by putting diplomatic pressure on the Myanmar government to take remedial steps necessary towards delivering justice to the Rohingyas.

India has shared a cordial relationship with Myanmar ever since the Treaty of Friendship was signed between the two. With the formation of the new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2015 and India’s aspirations in South East Asia, things sure have become complicated. But by taking a non-friendly stand against the refugees, the country is going against its commitment to finding a long-term solution to the conflict and its promise of protecting the Rohingyas from further crime and exploitation. It is not too late to correct this grave error and to stand on the right side of history.

Safeena Wani is a Srinagar-based independent journalist and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.

By Aitor Sanchez Lacomba

Thomson Reuters Foundation

June 11, 2017

Boost in immediate assistance and longer-term strategic aid is more urgent than ever

In June 2012, widespread rioting and clashes between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims that captured global headlines left scores dead and displaced nearly 150,000 in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state, one of the nation’s poorest.

Five years on, as we mark this grim anniversary, nearly 100,000 people remain in IDP camps on the outskirts of Sittwe, Rakhine’s capital. Nearly all of those displaced were stateless Muslims who self-identify as Rohingya, a group whose rights and freedoms have been successively stripped away since the early 1980s. Their very existence as an ethnic category is refuted by the Myanmar authorities, who regularly assert that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. To date, tenable and dignified solutions for these thousands of displaced people remain a distant prospect – only further exacerbating the wider underdevelopment across Rakhine State and persistent humanitarian challenges that endanger the quest for an inclusive and peaceful democracy in Myanmar, and the conclusion of the world’s longest-running civil war.

In the aftermath of the violence that swept across Rakhine five years ago, internally-displaced Rohingya were housed in temporary structures in Sittwe’s camps with as many as ten families under the same roof. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of these families continue to endure the same conditions – as well as longstanding and heavy restrictions on their freedom of movement. What’s more, a recent IRC analysis has revealed that the poor shelter conditions – which fall below international humanitarian standards – have and continue to increase the risk of domestic and sexual violence, child marriage, and the outbreak and likelihood of death from preventable diseases communicated where space and hygiene are constrained. The IRC’s assessment found specifically that the caseload for these diseases – like tuberculosis – is nearly ten times higher within Rakhine’s camps than outside. Far from respecting the dignity, safety and health of Rakhine’s internally-displaced persons, these humanitarian conditions only further weaken prospects of peace between the government and its constituents.

In response to the ongoing crisis in Rakhine, the Kofi Annan-led Advisory Commission on Rakhine State proposed a series of measures to the Government of Myanmar towards the closure of the camps, including longer-term measures to support reintegration of Rakhine’s IDPs. While the IRC is in agreement with the report’s recommendation to close the camps, it is important to note that such a strategy should not detract from immediate efforts to improve these otherwise debilitating, and undignified, conditions, with any ongoing and future initiatives based on community needs and non-discriminatory in their approach.

Indeed, a boost in immediate assistance and longer-term strategic aid – as well as its full and unimpeded delivery – by the international community in key areas such as food security, disaster risk reduction and urgent support to public services is more urgent than ever in Myanmar to meet both growing and long-standing humanitarian need and to boost economic development in restive states. Development aid and private sector investment is also welcome and much needed, however it is essential that initiatives are conflict-sensitive to avoid exacerbating existing tensions.

As Myanmar’s multiple, decades-old ethnic conflicts – including in Northern Shan and Kachin States - continue to drag on despite renewed efforts to achieve peace, over half a million people across the country are in dire humanitarian need and almost a quarter of a million remain displaced. Across Rakhine and other states, the IRC has been responding to ongoing needs of Myanmar’s most vulnerable people to help them survive, recover and gain control of their future reaching over 185,000 people during 2016 alone.

The ability of INGOs like the IRC to meet urgent need and help shepherd much-needed development is imperiled by consistent and worsening lack of resources. The United Nations’ appeal remains critically underfunded - reaching barely over a third of the overall ask - an all the more worrying state of affairs as the United States, heralded with bringing democracy to Myanmar and the world’s largest humanitarian donor, proposes drastic cuts to foreign assistance. 

Five years on, Rakhine remains the ultimate test case for Myanmar. Meeting urgent humanitarian need and taking concrete, and dignified, steps towards resolving protracted displacement - themselves indispensable towards fulfilling the rights of all the country’s constituents, regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender - are pivotal to the success and stability of one of Asia’s newest democracies, and a beacon of hope for the region.

Aitor Sanchez Lacomba is Country Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Myanmar

By WAM

June 11, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: A UAE charity has organised an Iftar event for Rohingya refugees in Malaysia where 1,870 food baskets were distributed to more than 900 families.

The Iftar campaign is part of the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation's continuous efforts to provide aid assistance to Rohingya refugees, in cooperation with the UAE Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

A spokesperson from the foundation said that the campaign will continue throughout the Holy Month of Ramadan and hopes to reach more than 20,000 people. Mass Iftars will be held in locations such as mosques and orphanages.

So far, the Khalifa Foundation has donated around US$1 million towards helping Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, with the latest campaign being the fifth phase of the programme.

The event was attended by Khalifa Rashid Al Mehrazi, Charge d'Affaires of the UAE Embassy in Malaysia, representatives of Rohingya organisations in Malaysia, and local media.

By Al Jazeera UpFront

June 9, 2017

Aung San Suu Kyi: Turning her back on Rohingya? 

Since October 2016, nearly 75,000 of Myanmar's Rohingya have fled across the border to Bangladesh, as a United Nations international probe investigates accusations of rape and murder committed by Myanmar security forces. 

According to the UN, Rohingya families "may have had members killed, beaten, raped", in what likely amounts to crimes against humanity. 

With anti-Rohingya violence continuing to simmer in Myanmar, why doesn't the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, put an end to it? 

"We know that Aung San Suu Kyi does not control the armed forces," says Maung Zarni, an exiled dissident from Myanmar. "[But] she controls four other ministries that are directly involved in dismissing, denying, and legitimising the persecution of the Rohingyas." 

But former East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta disagrees, claiming Suu Kyi inherited an "extraordinarily difficult situation". 

"She has to deal with the military, who still have enormous power," says Ramos-Horta, a Nobel prizewinner. "She inherits a very fractured society with more than 18 armed insurgencies, ethnic groups, and this is a very difficult transition from military dictatorship to democracy." 

In this week's Arena, scholar and activist Maung Zarni debates with Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta on whether Suu Kyi has the power to help the Rohingya.

By Wa Lone and Yimou Lee 

Reuters

June 9, 2017

YANGON/RAMREE, MYANMAR -- When Nwe Nwe Oo left Myanmar's restive Rakhine State for the commercial hub of Yangon with a $590 government stipend in her pocket, she hoped to escape persecution against minority Muslims and start a new life. 

Two months on the 50-year-old widow, who had lived in the rundown camp for displaced people since Rakhine was roiled by communal violence in 2012, has already spent more than half of the money to rent a room of 8 square meters (86 sq ft). With few job prospects and high living costs, she struggles to feed her two daughters in a strange city 500 km (310 miles) from home.

"What do we eat after the money runs out? We are all very worried. I can't find a job here," said Nwe Nwe Oo. The family is dependent on her elder daughter who earns $88 a month in a tea factory.

The authorities began shuttering her small camp in the town of Ramree in April, the start of a push by Aung San Suu Kyi's government to close down all such camps in Rakhine within five years, following a recommendation from a commission led by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan.

Humanitarian experts back the eventual closure of the camps but criticize the way the government has begun the task, which they say sets a worrying precedent for the handling of much larger camps elsewhere in Rakhine where tens of thousands of people still live.

Without more efforts to bring peace and stability to Rakhine, "by closing camps one will simply be transferring the problem to another place," said Mark Cutts, Head of U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar.

Nwe Nwe Oo had little choice in moving to Yangon. The authorities said it was not safe for the 128 Muslim residents of the camp in Ramree, a coastal town in southern Rakhine, to remain in the town, where they had lived before the violence.

"We don't have enough police force to prevent conflict happening again," said Min Aung, spokesman of the Rakhine State government. "That's why we allow them to relocate to other places as they want to."

OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED

Nwe Nwe Oo's family belongs to the Kaman Muslim minority, who, unlike the more numerous Rohingya Muslims from northern Rakhine, have Myanmar citizenship and are officially recognized as an ethnic group. 

The homes of Kamans in Ramree were burned in the clashes between Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in 2012 that killed nearly 200 and displaced tens of thousands in the state.

"The new government helped us move to Yangon, but what we hoped for was to return to our homeland. I don't know whether that will ever happen," Nwe Nwe Oo told Reuters.

She was among nearly 100 Kaman Muslims from the camp who since April were offered bus fares, air tickets as well as additional modest financial support if they chose to leave the Buddhist-majority area.

The OCHA's Cutts said the Ramree Kamans told U.N. staff they were not allowed to go back to their original land and were given no viable options other than to leave. 

In contrast to the Kaman Muslims, the government in April resettled nearly 300 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, displaced in the same conflict, to 65 houses in the neighboring Kyauk Pyu area, local officials, residents and OCHA officials said. Each family was offered about $294 to settle in their newly-built homes with water, electricity and drainage systems.

Rights groups say that if the Kaman were not allowed to return to their places of origin, there is little prospect of a workable solution for the 120,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims still living in camps in Rakhine. 

"If the government can't facilitate the safe and voluntary return of the Kaman, a group they officially recognize as citizens, what hope is there for the Rohingya?" said Amnesty International researcher Laura Haigh.

NO GOING BACK

Kaman residents said apartheid-like conditions in Ramree, where some bus drivers refuse to carry Muslims, give them little chance of finding a job or a good education for their children in the Buddhist-majority town of 97,000. 

"I really love my homeland, but I will face so many problems if I stay," said 55-year-old Tin Hla, a father-of-four and one of the last remaining residents of the camp, who is planning to move to Yangon this month.

Some former residents, though, remain hopeful that the closure of the camp will improve their daily lives.

Back in the Yangon suburb, another recently arrived Kaman Muslim, 28-year-old Kyaw Soe Moe, anxiously awaited the outcome of a job interview with a construction material company.

While life in the country's largest city could be tough, the newly-arrived man said it's an improvement compared with the days in the Ramree camp, where their movements were restricted and job prospects bleak.

"At least there's freedom here," he said.

(Reporting by Wa Lone and Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis; Editing by Alex Richardson and Antoni Slodkowski)

Med anledning av Aung San Suu Kyi's besök i Stockholm den 12 och 13 juni

Se: http://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2017/06/statsminstern-tar-emot-aung-san-suu-kyi-i-stockholm/

så anordnar vi en demonstration på Mynttorget den 13 juni kl 09:00 - 11:30 för att uppmärksamma de brott mot mänskligheten som pågår i Myanmar uppenbarligen med Myanmars regerings goda minne.

Dessa brott har behandlats i The Permanent Peoples Tribunal i mars månad i London, och kraftfullt fördömts. Se: http://tribunalonmyanmar.org/

Vi önskar med vår demonstration uppmärksamma de övergrepp som sker i Myanmar - ofta mycket styvmoderligt behandlade i vår svenska press - och därför är det nu ett gyllene tillfälle att göra detta då Myanmars State Councellor Aung San Suu Kyi besöker den svenska regeringen för samtal med Stefan Löfven om 'bl a de bilaterala relationerna mellan Sverige och Myanmar'. Aung San Suu Kyi kommer även att ha bilaterala samtal med utrikesministern och med EU Margot Wallström - och med handelsministern Ann Linde samt med ministern för internationellt utvecklingssamarbete och klimat Isabella Lövin Det synes ej som om mänskliga rättigheter är en fråga som är planerad för ett större utrymme i diskussionerna!!

Vi har redan erhållit demonstrationstillstånd, och har förberett med banderoller, några 'affischer' och några blad att delas ut till intresserade. Vi avser också att det skall skanderas några korta sentenser för att uppmärksamma vår demonstration. Se bifogade bilder.

Vi inbjuder er att deltaga i vår demonstration så att den därmed får ytterligare slagkraft och genomslag. Vi behöver också naturligtvis deltagare i demonstrationen samt helst också aktiva funktionärer såsom t ex vakter, och självklart är finansiella bidrag också mycket välkomna (då vi fortfarande är en ofinansierad förening). Swisha gärna era bidrag till 0704 - 418078, eller betala in till vårt Bankkonto via Bankgiro 254-3940 - The Swedish Rohingya Association.

Även om ni inte önskar deltaga i vår demonstration vore vi mycket tacksamma för om ni sprider information om denna till alla ni kan tänka er, och i synnerhet till media så att det blir ett kraftigt genomslag där. Och sprid info gärna också internationellt. Det är viktigt att vår svenska protest kan höras också i andra länder.

Vi har också tankar om att göra en protestaktion den 12e juni i samband med ASSK's besök på Utrikesdepartementet och Rosenbad. Denna idé är ännu ej färdigtänkt men alla förslag och önskemål om deltagande mottages gärna.

(Önskar ni att er ev medverkan på något sätt skall hållas konfidentiell så säg till så att vi inte sprider era ev meddelanden ut till andra.)

Hör gärna av er så snart ni kan.

Med vänliga hälsningar

Abul Kalam / Jan Wihlborg

för

The Swedish Rohingya Association

TYSTNAD INFÖR MÄNNISKORÄTTSBROTT ÄR ETT MÄNNISKORÄTTSBROTT - ALLTID!!

By Anadolu Agency

June 7, 2017

Turkey's Diyanet Foundation gives Rohingya children hope, teaches mathematics, religion and culture

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Turkey’s Diyanet Foundation is providing schooling to 4,000 Rohingya children in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi, the project's coordinator has said.

Ahmet Kandemir told Anadolu Agency the scheme, which started in 2015 with 25 courses, now includes 100 courses.

Students enrolled in the program are taught Urdu, English, mathematics, religion, culture and the Quran. Books and logistic support for the schools are all provided by the foundation.

The project targets the coastal Korangi and Malir districts of the city, where the Rohingya population ekes out a living as cheap labor in the fishing industry.

A law passed in Myanmar in 1982 denied Rohingya -- many of whom have lived in Myanmar for generations -- citizenship, making them stateless, removing their freedom of movement, access to education and services, and allowing arbitrary confiscation of their property.

They have been fleeing Myanmar in droves since mid-2012, when communal violence broke out in Rakhine state between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims.

For years, members of the minority have been fleeing to nearby countries, including Pakistan.

"The Rohingya have settled on the eastern shores of Pakistan, escaping political pressure from their countries," Kandemir said. "These people have no right to citizenship in Pakistan so they are deprived of any kind of service provided by the government.

"With the support and donations we get from Turkish people we are looking forward to give these children hope for their future."

Zafer Iqbal, managing director of Diyanet's Pakistan partner The NGO World, said the schools are monitored by the education directorate.

"The families in these areas have never had the opportunity to send their children to schools," he said. "Now they have a goal, a hope." 

Reporting by Mahmut Serdar Alakus;Writing by Meryem Goktas