By Reuters

July 13, 2017

SWITTE, MYANMAR — Myanmar pledged on Wednesday "no restrictions" on journalists visiting the troubled state of Rakhine this week, in the first official trip to include foreign reporters to mostly Rohingya Muslim villages affected by violence since October.

Eighteen Myanmar nationals and foreigners representing international media, including Reuters, arrived in the state capital of Sittwe on Wednesday ahead of a government-escorted visit to the northern areas of Buthidaung and Maungdaw, where most residents are stateless Rohingyas.

"There are no restrictions regarding the areas that you can report from," said Thet Swe, a director at the Ministry of Information's News and Periodicals Enterprise.

"We didn't arrange any 'for show' places for news reporting," he said.

Last year, Myanmar's army unleashed a crackdown in the area after Rohingya militants attacked posts near the Bangladesh border, killing nine police officers.

Some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations, which has documented allegations of gang rape, torture, arson and killings by security forces.

Myanmar's government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most of the allegations, and has denied entry to a U.N. fact-finding mission tasked with looking into the allegations.

The government has blocked independent journalists and human rights monitors from going to the area in the far north of the state for the past nine months.

Suu Kyi has said a U.N. fact-finding mission would only heighten tension in the region. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Myanmar officials say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe - a former lieutenant general in the army - and a commission headed for former U.N. chief Kofi Annan - which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses - are the appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State.

Securtity concerns

Annan recommended in March that authorities "provide full and regular access for domestic and international media to all areas affected by recent violence."

Reporters on the visit to the northern areas would be provided security by Myanmar's paramilitary Border Guard Police force, Thet Swe said.

Although access would not be restricted, he said, reporters should stay close to officials during visits to villages for their own security.

A detailed itinerary for the five-day trip was provided to reporters on Wednesday.

The itinerary does not include visits to the villages at the center of a two-week offensive in mid-November, in which Reuters has documented numerous allegations of abuses by troops following a clash with Rohingya militants.

However, Thet Swe said, the plan was "not fixed" and would be subject to changes due to the weather and security concerns.

He invited reporters to suggest additional places they want to visit.

Reporters would be taken to the village of Tin May, where security forces killed two suspected militants and arrested one after they detonated a bomb on Sunday, according to an announcement from Suu Kyi's office.

While Myanmar has denied entry to a U.N. fact-finding mission, a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights, Yanghee Lee, is visiting Rakhine State this week.

Although she is not expected to visit the northern areas near the border with Bangladesh, she is due to meet some of the people displaced in violence since 2012.

About 120,000 Rohingya have lived in "internally displaced persons" camps in Rakhine State, dependent of international aid, since communal widespread violence that year.

By Esther Htusan

Associated Press

July 12, 2017

SITTWE, Myanmar -- Buddhist demonstrators on Wednesday protested the arrival of the U.N. human rights envoy to Myanmar for an information-gathering trip in troubled Rakhine state, where security forces have been accused of rights abuses against the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Less than 100 protesters from the state's ethnic Rakhine Buddhist community shouted and held signs as Yanghee Lee passed in her car in Sittwe, the state capital, calling her unfair and unwanted.

Lee has criticized the government's treatment of the Rohingya minority, who face severe discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. They were the targets of intercommunal violence in 2012 that killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people - predominantly Rohingya - from their homes to displacement camps, where most remain.

Last October, the army launched counterinsurgency operations in Rohingya areas after assailants presumed to be Rohingya attacked police outposts along the border with Bangladesh, killing nine officers and seizing weapons and ammunition.

U.N. human rights investigators and independent rights organizations charge that soldiers and police killed and raped civilians and burned down more than 1,000 homes during the operations.

Lee is on a 12-day visit to Myanmar at the invitation of the government during which she is to discuss human rights issues with political and community leaders and civil society representatives.

After her arrival in Sittwe, she visited a prison where hundreds of Rohingya men are detained on suspicion of having links with the assailants who carried out the October attacks.

"Yanghee Lee has been here in Rakhine three or four times but every time she goes back and writes a report about her trip or has press conferences and never mentioned any good thing about either Rakhine people or the Myanmar government," said Than Tun, a leader of the Rakhine Buddhist community.

"What Rakhine people think about Yanghee Lee is that she is too one-sided," he said. "This is why people in Rakhine state don't like Yanghee Lee's visit, because whether she comes here or not, nothing will change for us."

Lee has been outspoken in her criticism of the government on previous visits, and recommended the establishment of a special U.N. mission primarily to investigate the problems in Rakhine. The U.N. Human Rights Council approved the mission by consensus in March and in May appointed three legal experts and human rights advocates to lead it.

In June, however, Myanmar officials announced that the mission's members would not be allowed into the country. They insisted that their own efforts to deal with the problem - including an advisory committee appointed by Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan - are adequate.

By AFP

July 12, 2017

GENEVA: Aung San Suu Kyi's government in Myanmar risks getting bracketed with "pariah states" like North Korea and Syria over its refusal to grant visas to a UN team investigating the plight of Rohingya Muslims, activists said Wednesday (Jul 12).

The civilian government of the Nobel peace laureate said on Jun 30 that the three investigators designated by the UN's Human Rights Council were not welcome, insisting it was conducting its own probe into alleged atrocities against the minority group.

That refusal amounts to "a slap in the face to victims who suffered grave human rights violations by Myanmar's state security forces", John Fisher, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Does Aung San Suu Kyi's government really want to be included in a very small and ignominious club of countries that reject Human Rights Council decisions?" he said.

"North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, and Burundi are human rights pariah states that obstructed the work of independent, international investigations into alleged rights abuses, and it would be a travesty for a democratically elected, National League for Democracy-led government in Myanmar to do the same."

On Monday, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley also called on the Myanmar government to give visas to the UN fact-finding mission, arguing the "international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma".

The north of Myanmar's Rakhine state has been under lockdown since October, when the military launched a campaign to hunt down Rohingya militants who staged deadly attacks on police posts.

More than 90,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes since the crackdown began, according to UN estimates.

A UN report in February said the campaign against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and other rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, "very likely" amounted to war crimes.

In May, the Geneva-based rights council appointed Indira Jaising of India, Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia to serve as the three members of the UN mission.

The mission was ordered to "urgently" investigate abuses reportedly committed by the security forces, particularly in Rakhine state where troops have been accused of raping, torturing and murdering members of the Rohingya community.

By AFP

July 12, 2017

US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Monday ramped up pressure on the Myanmar government to accept a UN fact-finding mission tasked with investigating human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims.

Yangon officials said last week that they would deny visas to the three-person team mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate abuses reportedly committed by security forces in Rakhine state.

"It is important that the Burmese government allow this fact-finding mission to do its job," Haley said in a statement.

"The international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma – we must stand together and call on the government to fully cooperate with this fact-finding mission."

Myanmar's de facto leader and Nobel prize winning democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi has rejected the UN fact-finding mission, arguing that the government is carrying out its own investigation.

The north of Rakhine state has been under lockdown since October, when the military launched a campaign to hunt down Rohingya militants who staged deadly attacks on police posts.

More than 90,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes since last October, according to UN estimates.

A UN report in February said the campaign against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and other rights in Myanmar, "very likely" amounted to war crimes.

Haley said the violence in Rakhine continues to claim lives and that there were continuing allegations of sexual violence targeting women and children.

In May, the Geneva-based rights council appointed Indira Jaising of India, Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia to serve as the three members of the fact-finding mission.

By BDNews24.Com

July 12, 2017

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged the UNHCR and others in the international community to pursue Myanmar to take back Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

She was speaking to visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi at her parliament office on Sunday.

The prime minister said the 'only and ultimate' solution to the prolonged refugee problem is to ensure a 'sustainable repatriation' of the Myanmar nationals to their country, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim told reporters.

"Myanmar should create a congenial atmosphere for the repatriation of its refugees from Bangladesh," he quoted her as saying in the meeting.

The prime minister said the Myanmar refugee problem has only added to the socioeconomic problems to Bangladesh.

She said her government identified some island areas for rehabilitation of the Myanmar refugees and planned to build necessary infrastructures, shelter, schools and hospitals for them.

The prime minister said Bangladesh had an insurgency problem in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but the problem was 'ultimately' solved trough bilateral discussions.

"We brought back our nationals who took refuge in India," she said.

Sheikh Hasina reiterated her government's 'firm' stance on stopping foreign insurgents from using Bangladesh's soil.

She said Bangladesh has good relations with all the neighbouring countries, including Myanmar.

She recalled the visit of the Myanmar security advisor to Bangladesh and said both countries are continuing discussions on economic development.

UN High Commissioner Grandi assured Bangladesh of extending all possible help to solve the Myanmar refugee problem.

He expressed 'immense gratitude' to Bangladesh for sheltering the Myanmar refugees, Karim said.

"Bangladesh needs full appreciation and recognition for the sacrifice it is making for the Rohingya refugees," the PM's press secretary quoted him as saying.

PM's Principal Secretary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury and UNHCR Country Representative in Bangladesh Shinji Kubo were also present.

Grandi arrived in Dhaka on a three-day visit on Saturday afternoon to discuss the Rohingya issue with the government and see their situation in Cox's Bazar camps.

Ro Mayyu Ali

RB Opinion

July 12, 2017

The honor of Suu Kyi’s human rights falls down when she is, being the country’s de facto leader not allowing U.N investigation to visit the country. Instead, the coordinated operation started again one more in troubled Northern Rakhine State since last week. 

Winning the Noble Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi has become the world's most famous political prisoner and a touchstone of Western liberal conscience. The Western World has been keeping their eagle-eyes on her every single step. Every breath in her past has earned the big round of applause and encouragement. “Ms. Suu Kyi, 64, was a model of dignity and composure” said a senior Western diplomat who was in court during her house-arrest detention time. 

On 13 of November, 2010, she was released from her house-arrest. From then on, she has started to tour throughout the western world to collect her furthermore honors. Every corner where she has visited, she was treated like “beacon of hope” and “champion of Human Rights”. How thrilled it was seeing the moment when she was welcomed and praised with a garland putting on her neck by Myanmar’s ethnic minorities who live in abroad. The world was like her grandparents’ home where she has received many surprises and wonderful things for her life. 

Few months later on Suu Kyi led civilian democratic administration, there was a coordinated area clearance operation launched by military and police accused for many human rights abuses against Rohingya in Northern Rakhine State. Being the Myanmar’s State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi has been denying any human rights abuses caused by her country’s security forces during the operation in Maungdaw. “The accusation was ‘false’ and ‘fabrication’” replied Aung San Suu Kyi by laughing out loud during a visit in Singapore. 

In December, 2016, more than a dozen fellow Nobel laureates wrote an open letter to the UN Security Council warning of a tragedy “amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. It cited the “potential for genocide”. Moreover, some of Suu Kyi’s other supporting fellows highly encouraged her to seek a resolution for her country’s Rohingya minority. “Show me a country without human rights issues” Aung San Suu Kyi said in October, as reported by New York Times. “Every country has human rights abuses” she added.

During the last 34th Session, the United Nations Human Rights Council has decided to set up an independent investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Northern Rakhine State. The government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, had already said it would not cooperate with a mission. “If they are going to send someone with regards to the fact-finding mission, then there’s no reason for us to let them come,” said Kyaw Zeya, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “It would have created greater hostility between the different communities” said Suu Kyi. 

Having led the pro-democracy in Myanmar, Suu Kyi has attracted widespread criticism for her failure to condemn persecution of the Rohingya minority. The arrests alarmed Myanmar’s media community, fuelling fears that freedom of speech has become increasingly restricted since the government of Suu Kyi took power in April last year. A couple of week ago, three reporters from the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) and the Irrawaddy were detained at an undisclosed location by the army will be charged under a colonial-era statute against “unlawful association”. 

However, nothing matters to Suu Kyi even being a Noble Peace Laureate. Speaking to the BBC’s special correspondent Fergal Keane in last April, she said, “I’m just a politician. I’m not quite like Margaret Thatcher… but on the other hand, I’m no Mother Teresa either.” 

Some unusual things in Suu Kyi’s life has been discovering so significant in these days. When she visits to foreign countries, she faces with a mass protest. She is the first Burmese woman who is treated as ‘denying mother’ and ‘cursing mother’ by Myanmar’s minorities living in abroad. She always tries to refuse meeting with Burmese appointees in there. Perhaps, she is no longer a good leader. 

Ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide are the respective higher levels of human rights abuses. Denying those abuses is denying human rights. The one who denies human rights is a human rights violator. How much amount of criticism Suu Kyi faces for her failures or encouragement she receives to stand on the side of minorities’ rights, she seems no more compromising. Indeed, she is the world’s first Noble Peace Laureate who denied the self-identity of a minority group of people like Rohingya in Myanmar to be called they themselves as ‘Rohingya’. 

Today, she is seen as the most human rights denying Noble Peace Laureate in the world. Thus, she is no more the Aung San Suu Kyi whom the world had once. She is just a failure wife for her husband, a failure mother for her two sons, a failure beacon of hope for her country’s minorities and a failure human rights icon for the whole world.

7 July 2017

To,

Dr Gianni Tognoni

General Secretary

Secretariat of the Permanent People's Tribunal

Rome, Italy

Subject: ​Myanmar Muslim victims’ request for PPT to investigate the charges of Myanmar international crimes

Dear Sir,

Our group of Myanmar Muslim Human Rights Activists and our fellow Myanmar Muslim activists around the world together with Myanmar Muslim Refugees hereby request that the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) take up the urgent case of Myanmar Muslim minority. We hereby make this appeal based on well known Anti-Muslim Atrocities: Hate Speech, Racial-Religious Discrimination, Hate Crimes, Anti-Myanmar Muslim riots, looting, burning of Muslim houses and places of worships and mass murders by successive Myanmar Military Governments in the whole of Mainland Myanmar since 1962.

These Crimes Against Humanity and mass murders are well documented and reported in the International Media, Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, USCIRF's Annual Reports, Fortify Rights but UN, UNSC, ICC, ASEAN, OIC, UNHCR etc failed to prominently highlight our plight and failed to take any action.

After careful consultations among ourselves, activists and concerned citizens from Myanmar, we have opted not to involve the Muslim organisations inside Myanmar in our justice-seeking efforts abroad. For we know that Myanmar authorities would target them should they dare to come on board with our efforts internationally to seek justice and accountability for Myanmar's faith-based persecution and discrimination in a vital forum such as the Permanent People's Tribunal. In a country where anti-Muslim hate speech and organized mass violence enjoys blanket impunity Muslim communities, with their rich associations, are a sitting duck. But please do know that even the Muslims of Myanmar who live in deep fear of government retaliation and popular mass violence naturally long for justice, accountability and the right to life free of fear, uncertainties and anxieties for safety.

We make this request to your good-self, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the basis of compelling evidence of ongoing: widespread institutional discrimination; state sponsored hate crimes; mass killings; wholesale destruction of communities and neighbourhoods; massive forced displacement; apartheid structures of segregation; targeted population control; state denial of Myanmar Muslim identity; forced labour; denial of access to livelihood, healthcare, freedom of movement, and food. Evidence of these genocidal violations, with blanket impunity, is to be found in the extensive and systematic research conducted by a range of academic and human rights organizations. (Ref: United States Commission on Tier 1 CPC Countries Designated by State Department & Recommended by USCIRF 2016 ANNUAL REPORT OVERVIEW)

While working as Human Rights activists, we came to know that former chief of military intelligence ex-general Khin Nyunt, the late ex-brigadier Aung Thaung, Former Chief Minister of Mandalay Division and former chief of military intelligence ex-lt. general Ye Myint, Former President & ex-general U Thein Sein, the present Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Armed Forces Sr General Min Aung Hlaing, and Former Sr-General Than Shwe are using the Wirathu/Thidagu led 969,Ma Ba Tha and their “Patriots” Swarn Arr Shins and other proxy groups as instruments to commission numerous atrocities against our community of Muslims in Myanmar.

We can prove these allegations based on our close interactions with and previously close relations with the notorious U Wirathu, TIME's "The Face of Buddhist Terror", and our first-hand eye-witness observations of Meiktila and Mandalay Riots.

We hereby wish to request the PPT in Rome to allow us to present to you for the Myanmar Muslims’ suffering for hate crimes against Muslims in Meiktila, Lashio, Mandalay, Pegu, Prome, Yangon etc as I have evidence, material and human witnesses which I could present.

Signed

U Maung Maung (Shwe Karaweik)

On behalf of the following organizational initiators:

Initiators

1. Myanmar Muslim Human Rights Association (Malaysia)

2. Majalis Pertubuhan Kebajikan Al-Islam Malaysia (Ulama dari Myanmar) [ Translation into English = Council of Myanmar Muslim Maulavis’ Welfare Organization in Malaysia]

3. Bama Muslim Council (of Maulavis in Malaysia)

4. Selayang Myanmar Muslim Association (Malaysia)

5. Penang Myanmar Muslim Association (Malaysia)

6. Myanmar Muslim Citizen Journalists (Malaysia-Singapore)

7. Johore Myanmar Muslim Welfare Group (Malaysia)

A girl wears thanakha powder on her face in a Rohingya refugee camp outside Kyaukpyu in Rakhine state, Burma, May 17, 2017. Source: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun

A boy sleeps in a hammock inside a Rohingya refugee camp outside Kyaukpyu in Rakhine state, Burma, May 17, 2017. Source: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun

RB News

July 8, 2017

Maungdaw -- Sources say at least ten Rohingya civilians have been arrested in Southern Maungdaw for alleged links to rebels fighting against the Myanmar military in the country's western Rakhine state.

The military and Border Guard Police (BGP) jointly conducted raids on the village of Nurullah in Southern Maungdaw around 4:00am today (July 8) arresting at least 25 people and of whom, 15 were released later.

"They were accused to have connections with Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a rebel group operating in the region since last year. But the locals firmly believe that they are innocent people", said a human rights activist based in Maungdaw.

The victims arrested are:

1) Hafiz Idiris (27), s/o Hafiz Amanullah

2) Hafiz Abdul Hoque

3) Shah Alam s/o Iqbal

4) Yunose (School Teacher from Ye Bone Pyin, Padin village tract)

5) Jahangir (18), s/o Baser

6) Kifayat Ullah

7) Hafiz Nayeem

8) Hussain

9) Yahya Khan

10) And one more.

The victims are now said to have been transferred to and detained in the camp of the Border Guard Police Regional Command 9 in southern Maungdaw. 

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, earlier called Harakatul Yakeen or the Faith Movement, launched post midnight attacks on the Border Guard Police (BGP) Headquarter killing nine policemen, in October 2016. [The BGP has been responsible for wide and systematic abuses of the Rohingyas since it was formed and replaced its predecessor, NaSaKa (the former Border Security Force), in 2013.]

Since then, the joint forces of the military and the Border Guard Police have killed hundreds of people and raped women en masse, destroyed or partially destroyed at least 40 villages displacing more than 70,000 people and forcing at least 65,000 people to flee to Bangladesh as refugees. The human rights groups worldwide have widely condemned the atrocity crimes as a collective punishment on the civilians under the disguise of 'Region Clearance Operation.'

[MT Myo Naing Reports; Edited by M.S. Anwar]

Please email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and feedback.

By The Straits Times

July 8, 2017

Not surprisingly, Myanmar has said it will refuse entry to members of a United Nations panel investigating the alleged killings, rape and mistreatment of Rohingya Muslims by its national army. Naypyitaw had rejected the fact-finding mission when it was announced in March. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the nation's de facto leader who goes by the designation of State Counsellor, had no hesitation in making her stand clear even as she travelled in May to the headquarters of the European Union - a grouping that had lent her some of the staunchest support she received during her long years of struggle. That the UN resolution was brought by the EU adds a twist of irony to the situation.

The issue of the Rohingya, who are an ethnic Muslim minority group predominantly settled in the Rakhine state, has been festering for four decades. Although their presence in what is now Myanmar has been recorded for at least four centuries, they face rejection by the dominant Buddhist community, which sees the Rohingya as illegal settlers whose numbers surged under British colonial rule from Calcutta, seat of the British Raj. Refused citizenship papers, and subject to extreme harassment, thousands of Rohingya have turned refugees, heading towards Muslim-majority nations in Asean such as Malaysia and Indonesia, but chiefly into adjoining Bangladesh. Last year, after Myanmar troops conducted a security operation against Rohingya extremists who killed nine soldiers, an estimated 75,000 fled into Bangladesh. As much as a humanitarian crisis, the issue is a full-blown political one.

While she is de facto leader, few doubt the massive constraints Ms Suu Kyi operates under. A suspicious military will not yield the national security and border issues portfolios, and the Constitution is tailor-made to circumscribe her politically. Thus, she lacks the freedom to do the right thing, as the world expects of this Nobel Peace Prize winner. Myanmar's generals also feel little international pressure on this score because China and India, giant neighbours that are both jockeying for influence, have conveniently looked the other way, just as they did in Sri Lanka when the military's worst excesses surfaced during the closing stages of the ethnic conflict in that country. Given US President Donald Trump's barely concealed suspicions of Muslims, the Rohingya cannot expect help from that quarter either.

Sadly, Ms Suu Kyi's fans, and they number millions still, are veering round to the view that her own Burman instincts may not be too different from the military's hard line when it comes to the Rohingya. That would be a tragedy for those who looked to her to be the moral voice of the early 21st century, just as Mahatma Gandhi was in the early 20th century, and Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela in its latter part.

By Paul Gregoire

Sydney Criminal Lawyers

July 7, 2017

At around 3.30pm on June 26, a group of seven people were arrested by Myanmar authorities at a military checkpoint in the country’s conflict-ridden northern Shan state. Three local journalists were among the group who were detained in Namhsan township in the north of the region.

Democratic Voice of Burma reporters Aye Nai and Pyae Phone Naing were arrested, along with the Irrawaddy’s Thein Zaw, also known as Lawi Weng. The journalists were returning from a drug burning ceremony marking the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The event had been organised by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), one of more than a dozen armed ethnic minority groups that have been in conflict with the Tatmadaw – Myanmar’s armed forces – for decades now.

The TNLA were not one of the eight armed groups that were a signatory to the October 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. However, the group did attend the second round of the Panglong Peace Conference held in the Myanmar capital Naypyidaw in May this year.

Modern laws silenced by relics of the past

After initially being held at an undisclosed location for three days, the journalists are now being detained in Hsipaw prison and have since been charged under colonial-era security laws, that the Myanmar government still routinely uses, despite international pressure to cease doing so.

Section 17(1) of the Unlawful Associations Act provides that anyone who’s a member of an unlawful association, or takes part in meetings with or contributes to such an association, “shall be punished with imprisonment for a term” of up to three years.

The arrest of the reporters seems at odds with Myanmar’s News Media Law, according to Human Rights Watch. Enacted in June 2015, section 7(a) of the law provides that a journalist “shall be exempt from being detained” by security forces “where wars break out and conflicts… take place.”

Volatile border regions

Conflict has been escalating over recent years in the north of Shan state. The fighting involves a myriad of ethnic minority groups and government security forces.

All of the armed groups are involved in the profitable local drug trade. Along with being a major opium producer, Myanmar is the largest producer of methamphetamine in the world.

Meth pills are widely produced in the northern border regions of the country. These drugs are relatively cheap and readily available across Asia. The pills – popularly known as yaba – contain a concoction of crystal meth and caffeine.

Research carried out by Amnesty International outlines that since late 2016 the Myanmar security forces have been carrying out torture and extrajudicial killings in the region. While groups like the TNLA have been documented abducting civilians and imposing “taxes” on villages.

Amnesty International Australia’s Crisis Campaign Coordinator Diana Sayed has called on the Australian government to demand that Myanmar authorities end restrictions on humanitarian access into these areas, and bring a halt to the ongoing human rights violations in the region.

A crackdown on reporters

The three journalists currently being detained are not the first to have been silenced over recent months. In late October last year, journalist Fiona MacGregor was sacked by the English-language Myanmar Times for reporting on alleged rapes perpetrated by government security forces.

An article by MacGregor was published on October 27 about the alleged rapes of up to 30 Rohinygawomen in the north eastern state of Rakhine. At that time, the region was in lockdown, as Myanmar armed forces were carrying out a counterinsurgency operation in Maungdaw township.

The journalist said the paper had informed her that she’d “breached company policy by damaging national reconciliation.” And some of the senior staff at the paper led her to believe that the government had put the pressure on to dismiss her.

The silent Nobel laureate

Press freedoms in Myanmar are still uncertain after the nation recently emerged from decades of military rule. Despite the National League for Democracy party winning the country’s first free elections in 25 years in November 2015, the military still maintain key government positions.

Aung San Suu Kyi is now Myanmar state counsellor, which is the de facto head of state. However, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has been criticised for her slow approach to condemn the current detention of the three journalists, as well as a number of other infringements on media freedom.

Ms Suu Kyi has also come under widespread international criticism for her initial lack of response, and then for her approach, to the escalating violence that was unravelling in the state of Rakhine in October last year.

A question of genocide

Sectarian riots broke out in Rakhine state in June 2012, as extreme factions of the Rakhine Buddhist population began violently attacking and burning down villages of the Rohingya Muslim minority. This drove an estimated 120,000 Rohingya into internally displaced people camps that line the Bay of Bengal.

In October last year, Myanmar forces launched sweeps in the north of the state, after members of an alleged militant group known as Harakah al-Yaqin attacked three police posts along the Bangladeshi border, killing nine officers.

Ms Suu Kyi said in April that the ongoing violence and persecution of the stateless Rohingya was not ethnic cleansing. And last week, the state counsellor again rejected a decision by the UN to send a fact-finding mission into the region, ordering that visas not be issued to delegates.

A stateless people

There’s an estimated 1.3 million Rohingya people living in Rakhine, making up about a third of the state’s population. However, the Myanmar government doesn’t recognise them as citizens. It refers to them as Bengalis, and classes them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The recent unrest in the state has led more than 75,000 Rohingyas to flee across the border to Bangladesh, while another 23,000 have become internally displaced within the state. And reports of systematic rape and human rights abuses carried out by the Myanmar military continue to emerge today.

Rohingya rights activist Aung Win lives in the state capital of Sittwe. He told Sydney Criminal Lawyerslast November that at time the government couldn’t find any terrorists, so they were arbitrarily “arresting people and burning houses.”

But if the authorities continue on causing the Rohingya people so much “frustration and depression,” Mr Win warned, it could actually lead to the establishment of some form of militant group.

By UN News Centre

July 7, 2017

Concluding his first visit to Myanmar, the United Nations refugee chief today appealed for inclusive and sustainable solutions to protracted displacement and statelessness. 

“These are complex issues but they are not intractable,” said High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in a press release issued by his office (UNHCR).

In Kachin and Rakhine states, some 100,000 and 120,000 people, respectively, have remained displaced for more than five years following the eruption of inter-communal conflict between Buddhists and minority Muslim Rohingya. 

In Rakhine state, Mr. Grandi met with displaced Muslims in Sittwe’s Dar Paing camp who expressed their strong desire to return home. He also reached out to Rakhine and Muslim communities north of Maungdaw and listened to their safety and livelihood concerns. 

He also met with high-ranking officials in the South-east Asian nation to discuss humanitarian access in Kachin and Rakhine states.

“A crucial first step is to pursue freedom of movement and access to services and livelihoods for all. Accelerated pathways to citizenship are also part of the solution, as are efforts to tackle exclusion and poverty,” Mr. Grandi said, alluding to the country’s denial of citizenship for the Rohingya.

Among the officials he met with were State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi; the Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Min Myat Aye; the Minister of Labour, Immigration and Population, U Thein Swe; and the Minister of Border Affairs, Lt. Gen Ye Aung.

“I was very happy to hear the State Counsellor saying that refugees are welcome back from Thailand,” said Mr. Grandi. “We agreed that returns must be voluntary and sustainable. Refugees should not come back to a situation of dependency but of self-reliance.”

He highlighted that the recommendations of the Advisory Commission of Rakhine State provide an important roadmap for the way forward. 

The High Commissioner will next visit Thailand before concluding his regional trip in Bangladesh next week.

MEDIA STATEMENT 7 JULY 2017

CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH & ADVOCACY (CENTHRA)

UN and Myanmar smoke and mirrors on Rohingya plight means no UN resolution in sight

The Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (CENTHRA) notes that recently in March 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a report prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in investigating allegations of mass killings taking place in Myanmar since late 2016, when some 75,000 ethnic Rohingya, already suffering from systematic state sponsored persecution for decades, fled violence by a military hell bent on blaming them for a minor border incident on 9 September the same year.

The report included accounts of mass killings and gang rapes by troops in north-western Myanmar in recent months in what it has described as a calculated policy of terror, which most probably constituted crimes against humanity. The Government of Myanmar led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had rejected the findings of the report outright despite promising to ‘investigate’ its contents.

Despite all the evidence already cited in support of the report’s findings, and indeed the findings of countless previous reports, the United Nations has decided to send a further fact finding team to Myanmar to focus on allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against Rohingyas. In response to this, the Government of Myanmar has stated that it will deny visas to this United Nations team of human rights investigators.

CENTHRA is of the firm opinion that contrary to the general view that the decision by Aung San Suu Kyi to deny visas to this UN team indicates friction between the UN and the regime in Myanmar; it is in fact indicative of their implicit partnership. While the regime in Myanmar continues to terrorise and kill innocent members of an ethnic minority, the UN continuously finds ways and means to avoid imposing much needed and much demanded tangible economic and political sanctions against this regime, unlike as is the case with Iran and North Korea, for example.

Indeed, recently leaked internal UN documents reveal that the organization has failed miserably to protect the Rohingya while over-emphasizing development investment as the solution to Myanmar’s problems. By banning an investigative mission, the regime is essentially providing the UN with a rebuttal against the charges of incompetence; implying that UN investigations are meaningful and effective; while UN staff themselves secretly acknowledge that they are, in fact, useless. 

By postponing the fact-finding mission, Aung San Suu Kyi has clearly deflected growing discontent with UN inaction, allowing UN officials to demand nothing more than the right to pursue the course they themselves know is ineffectual; ineffectual, that is, except insofar as it furthers the interests of foreign investors and their globalist cohorts. She has, in short, done the UN a favour. And the UN officials have thanked her for this favour behind the scenes.

CENTHRA believes that there is, in effect, a game of smoke and mirrors being played by both the United Nations and the Myanmar regime into which the international community has been drawn as an unaware and unwilling participant.

The role of the United Nations in this game is to use its mandate to divert, not impose, pressure on the regime; delaying any calls for active intervention to halt the genocide, and the regime is cooperating with this agenda quite consciously. The reason this is being done is because both sides are anxious to ensure that investment opportunities within Myanmar, especially those made available to globalist corporations and their cronies in governments around the world, will not be lost, hindered or be subject to restricted access on account of ensuring regime accountability for its genocidal actions against the ethnic Rohingya within its territory. 

As such, it seems clear now that no meaningful solution to the catastrophe that has and still is befalling the Rohingya people is going to come via the United Nations. The matter must be taken up directly with the globalist investors and corporations whose interests the UN is serving, and it must be taken up by the consumers in the constituencies of those multinational companies whether in Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia or the entire ASEAN region, and indeed, around the world. CENTHRA accordingly calls on the relevant parties to do the necessary in this regard.

This Medias Statement has been issued by Azril Mohd Amin, Chief Executive of the Centre for Human Rights and Advocacy (CENTHRA).

RB News 

July 4, 2017 

Sittwe (Akyab) -- One Rohingya man was killed and eight others wounded during an attack by a group of Rakhine extremists in Sittwe (Akyab) this afternoon (Jul 4). 

The victims were from 'Dar Paing' IDP (Internally Displaced People) Camps in the township and hired by a retired policeman, U Hla Myint @ Nuru, to dismantle an old and out-of-service motor-boat which he had bought from a Rakhine lawyer. 

While they were checking around the boat nearby the 'Yaung Ni Oo' jetty at 'Yaw Gyi Myauk' village, a group of Rakhine extremists popped up; and attacked and hacked them, killing one of them and injuring 8 others. 

"Normally, displaced Rohingyas from the camps dare not go to the downtown of Sittwe as the Security Forces often stop them and also Rakhine extremists pose danger. However, this time, they went there as hired workers for a retired policeman and also with some police escorts yesterday. But some Rakhine extremists might have spotted them there and made plots to launch attacks since yesterday. 

When they were working to dismantle the boat, the Rakhine extremists attacked them. One worker was killed and eight others were wounded", said an eyewitness asking not to be named. 

The eight people injured are currently taking treatments in Sittwe General Hospital. The local police are said to have been investigating the incident. 

The person killed was U Monu (60), s/o Abdu Shukkor. And the remaining 8 people wounded are: 

1) Abu Alam (65), s/o Abul Hussain 

2) Abdul Malik (38), s/o Sayed Hussain 

3) Futiya (35), s/o Khala Meah 

4) Abdul Hamid (32), s/o Abdul Mabud 

5) U Hla Myint @ Nuru (60) (the retired policeman) 

6) One of U Hla Myint's son 

7) Mohammed Hussain (25), s/o ??? 

[Reported by Saed Arakani & Mohammed Islam; Edited by M.S. Anwar] 

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