Min Khant

RB Opinion

January 25, 2018

To repatriate innocent Rohingyas refugees who have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh due to unbearable multiple violence of Myanmar regime’s military operations on them under the banner of ‘Operation Clearance’ against accused ARSA attackers since 25th August 2017, Myanmar state Counsellor, should better show in prior her ethical sincerity regarding the bilateral agreement struck between Myanmar and Bangladesh. 

The world community has regarded Rohingyas people, regardless of their belief (few are Hindu believers) in religion, as the most persecuted people in the world. Since then, though the world body could not adopt with having unanimous resolution due to the issue because of some super power nations’ unilateral bias for Myanmar brutal regime, the world community has been concerned about their fate whose destinies are in the hand of uncontrollable cheating and disgusting brutal regime of Myanmar. 

During the 2015 election campaign, Aung San Suu Kyi would impudently reply to the global reporters’ inquiries about Rohingyas “don’t be exaggerating the Rohingya issues as there were available genocidal issues on all ethnic groups of Myanmar along the nation”. In reality, rudely, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi does not heed the subject of Rohingyas who are Myanmar citizens and reside in Arakan State. 

The bilateral agreement that recently done between Bangladesh and Myanmar has been the case of entire world criticism while the Rohingyas refugees’ matter has been wholly carried out from top to bottom by the world people. 

Rohingyas refugees, in the year October 2016 and August 2017, who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh due to oppression and suppression of Myanmar military extrajudicial killing, in first Bangladesh did not allow them to cross to her territory. However, later, it had come to agree to sheltering them under the instant insistence of the world body, while which has taken the guarantee to support all due necessary for frustrated Rohingyas people. The most importantly, the world community has been carrying out all outstanding issues of Rohingyas by supporting procedural and humanitarian assistances to the host nations such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. Now, the Rohingyas issues become the world headache question at this time. 

Apparently, the world body has been fulfilling the necessary things such as food, shelters, medicine, and teamwork technical co-operations throughout several groups of the world communities for a nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees, while neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar is feeding & fulfilling the compulsory amenities for the refugees in the land of Bangladesh. 

The sympathies, of Bangladesh people and that of the state leader and other political leaders, were, so much thankful for morally supporting and allowing refugees to their land to be sheltered for the fled Rohingyas people, who had faced multiple horrendous absurdities of combined Myanmar atrocious forces and that of the people. While the highly educated state Counsellor had been, busy with the world diplomats in Nay Pyi Daw how to shielding military brutalities as the legitimate right of its sovereignty to punish on innocent Rohingyas and the atrocities sparked to flee nearly 700,000 Rohingyas people to Bangladesh. The operation clearance meant all the innocent Rohingyas people are either ARSA members or the sympathizers to the ARSA.

The Myanmar’s conspicuous attempts to ink with Bangladesh government to repatriate the Rohingyas refugees are to exclude world prominent organizations that have been taking care of the refugees. If Myanmar insists as an honest partner to the repatriation process, then the world body, Myanmar and Bangladesh should be involved as combined trilateral partners in the process as a matter of importance not to be ensuing such the exodus again at the border. What is the idea of Myanmar government to exclude the world community while the entire world community concerns about the Rohingyas refugees, as it becomes the regional and intercontinental problems to pay attention in a manner of a coordinated way? 

What Myanmar government should do first thing first is to clear the world’s demand to have the unhindered investigation into the brutal killings where many more innocent have already been killed. Women were being gang-raped, many villages were burned down and uncountable materials were damaged, and the landscapes of the localities were dismembered by Myanmar forces in townships such as Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung.

Myanmar government has hurriedly constructed some of the Transit Camps with the help of Myanmar cronies, whom the past governments let to exploit the resources of the country and compensate to high-ranking military officials for more than two decades, to keep the returnees for some days. In addition, the camps, which have already been built and cordoned off with barbed wire show the TC, are forever to keep the returnees to kill slowly and steadily them at the absence of world community’s supervision, while the repatriation agreement is only concerned with Bangladesh and Bangladesh itself won’t interfere to supervise strictly to Myanmar handling to the affairs.

Myanmar with having dishonest attitude to repatriate the Rohingya refugees by guaranteeing them in full citizenship, dignified, safety, and voluntarily coming back to their original locations rather than keeping them in TC camps, Myanmar regime only wants to cooperate with China, Russia, Japan and India only for necessary assistance in repatriation process. WHY?

Why doesn’t Myanmar regime want to cooperate with the WEST and OIC is just because those countries have been demanding to restore the rights of Rohingyas as the sons of the land, and outstandingly rhetoric about the brutality, and discriminatory policy of Myanmar military and Aung San Suu Kyi led regime. 

The Rohingyas repatriation process plan is a bogus from the beginning. On 23rd January 2018, the Immigration Department Director U Ko Ko Thaw interviewed with Mizzima Journal and said: “While the returnees were found they have never lived in Myanmar, then they would be taken action. But what kind of action he has never clarified. His interview meant as if Bangladesh government would add Bangladeshi to be Rohingyas returnees.” 

The interview was very clear that the government of Myanmar will make many Rohingyas people as illegal returnees and they will take action on ground of illegal immigrants or they will be sent back to Bangladesh accusing them as Bangladeshi. These are the government hypothesis to deal the Rohingyas under the bilateral agreement with Bangladesh government. 

The WEST had been advocating due to Aung San Suu Kyi’s release while she had been under long time house arrest by the consecutive military rulings of Myanmar. Daw Suu Kyi became famous in the face of Myanmar citizens not because of her fame in education obtained in abroad nor being a daughter of late General Aung San, but because of the world community’s right from the start classic propagation, particularly the west, and the USA.

Daw Suu Kyi, being as a Myanmar unexpected and highly educated modern age embolden RACIST, ‘she has now betrayed all the gratefulness owes to the WEST and the USA. That had been championing through cash, kinds and valuable times to release Suu Kyi and ascend to throne her to becoming the devastated nation to full fledge democratic one under the leadership of Laureate Daw Suu Kyi. 

Mr. Kofi Anan and his entourage were hired by the State Counsellor, and she let them do the relevant works as if she would agree to implement the Rakhine advisory commission’s recommended results. Which were supposed to be implemented by the commission, and most of the world community organizations have agreed upon the recommendation to implement as soon as possible. Intrinsically many racist bound political parties of the nations and Buddhist monk associations were secretly asked to be pointing the Kofi Anan Rakhine advisory commission reports, particularly Rakhine leader, who had been an odd, currently detained vet. Aye Maung and many others from Rakhine state not to successfully implement the report. 

Amid from the world condemnation to the government of Myanmar in regards the dishonesty of her handling to Rohingyas affairs; Daw Suu Kyi has formed the ‘Advisory Board for implementation of Recommendations on Rakhine State’ couple of months ago by her chosen world dignitaries. 

Whom, Daw Suu Kyi believes as her coordinated partners in the brutal killings to make a small beautiful and possible EPISODE, which she wants to show the world as an authentic affairs of Rakhine’s while international investigation demand into the atrocities was strongly denied and saying such a world investigation to the brutality would breach the statehood of sovereignty of Myanmar. 

What she has earned the abroad classic education and the fame she obtained from not only in local but global at large are shameful, unmeritorious, and disgraceful while her mindset and personal attitude are not suited as wise women but the ugly & bad omen-lady for the world community. 

Mr. Bill Richardson, an American and a member of Advisory Board for implementation of Recommendations on Rakhine State, has resigned on 24.1.2018 from the advisory board after having fully understanding the deep nature of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who wants all the board members to act on behalf of her regime to shield from the world possible actions. What about the rest persons of the Advisory Board on Rakhine State, it is sure they will resign also? at the end. 

Right now, the world conscious community should not let the notorious Myanmar leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her partners of outside the world to coil the Rohingyas affairs in the sight of the world people and off-putting the track from implementing as per the supposition of Mr. Kofi Anan recommendation in time. 

Right now, the world conscious community should not let the notorious Myanmar leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her partners of outside the world to coil the Rohingyas affairs in the sight of the world people and off-putting the track from implementing as per the supposition of Mr. Anan recommendation in time.

The truth prevails in the end.

By Michael Bowman

CAPITOL HILL — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators moved to confront Myanmar over ethnic cleansing on Wednesday, with one Democrat accusing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of holding up action on the Rohingya crisis because of his ties to the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

“The problem comes down to one specific issue — the relationship and friendship between Senator McConnell and Aung San Suu Kyi,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois told VOA. “Time and again when we’ve tried to tell the Rohingya story, the atrocities that are occurring to these people at the hands of the Myanmar military and suggest the need for leadership in Myanmar to stop it, there’s been an effort by Senator McConnell and others to stop the conversation.”

For more than two decades, McConnell was a prime sponsor of numerous sanctions measures aimed at the military junta which finally released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and permitted elections won by her party in 2015.

McConnell “felt and we all felt years ago that she [Aung San Suu Kyi] showed extraordinary courage,” Durbin said, “but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore what’s happening today in her country and the need for her leadership.”

McConnell 'deeply troubled'

Voice of America reached out to the Republican leader’s communications director, David Popp, for comment and was referred to a statement from last September in which McConnell said he was “deeply troubled by the humanitarian situation along the Burmese-Bangladeshi border” but said that “publicly condemning Aun San Suu Kyi — the best hope for democratic reform in Burma — is not constructive.”

Hours earlier, Durbin and 14 other senators, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida as well as Democrats Tim Kaine of Virginia and Dianne Feinstein of California, introduced a Senate resolution condemning “the violence and displacement inflicted on Burma’s Rohingya and other ethnic minorities” and calling for “an immediate halt to all hostilities by Burmese authorities.”

The resolution seeks “voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation” for Rohingya refugees, who should “enjoy equal rights with others in Burma, including the restoration or granting of full citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to basic services.”

'The greatest hope'

The resolution also urges the United Nations “to consider the feasibility of Bangladesh’s proposal for a ‘safe zone’ or for a peacekeeping mission to protect and defend vulnerable communities under international supervision.” In addition, it calls for the release of two Reuters journalists arrested and charged with violating the country’s Official Secrets Act.

McConnell had declined to support an similar resolution in September, which demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi do more to protect the Rohingyas. “I don’t favor a resolution going after her,” he said at that time. “I think she’s the greatest hope that we have to move Burma from where it has been, a military dictatorship, to where I hope it’s going.”

Amid Capitol Hill’s renewed focus on the Rohingya crisis, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations quit a Myanmar government advisory board on the country’s troubled Rakhine State, decrying the panel as “a cheerleading squad for government policy.”

Absence of 'moral leadership'

In a statement Wednesday, Ambassador Bill Richardson, who also served as governor of New Mexico, described himself as a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi but accused her of an absence of “moral leadership” on the refugee crisis and of disparaging “the media, the United Nations, human rights groups, and in general the international community.”

Richardson added, “Without the commitment and moral leadership needed from the top, my engagement on the Advisory Board is no longer tenable.”

Neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor her spokesman responded to questions for comment.

Bipartisan outrage building

In Washington, bipartisan outrage over the refugee crisis has been building to a boiling point among lawmakers.

“Since August, more than 650,000 innocent men, women and children have been forced to flee a campaign of unspeakable violence that the United Nations has called a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” McCain said in a statement. “Many Rohingya believe their return home will be met with more violence. These displaced families deserve to have confidence that their return will be safe, voluntary and dignified. The United States and the international community should stand for nothing less,” added McCain.

“It is a most horrific circumstance,” Durbin told VOA. “When you go to a country and you say the word ‘Rohingya’ and the people of Myanmar stop to correct you, saying, 'There is no such thing — you can’t use that term,’ they deny, literally, the existence of the people who are the victims.”

YANGON -- Veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar to advise on the Rohingya crisis, saying it was conducting a “whitewash” and accusing the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership”.

Richardson, a former Clinton administration cabinet member, quit as the 10-member advisory board was making its first visit to western Rakhine State, from where nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months. 

“The main reason I am resigning is that this advisory board is a whitewash,” Richardson told Reuters in an interview, adding he did not want to be part of “a cheerleading squad for the government”. 

Richardson said he got into an argument with Suu Kyi during a meeting on Monday with other members of the board, when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters who are on trial accused of breaching the country’s Officials Secrets Act. 

He said Suu Kyi’s response was “furious”, saying the case of the reporters “was not part of the work of the advisory board”. The argument continued at a dinner later that evening, the former New Mexico governor said. 

Suu Kyi’s spokesman, Zaw Htay, told Reuters on Thursday that the Advisory Board was meeting about the “Rakhine issue”. 

“(Richardson) talked on a topic outside the agenda of the meetings and went beyond the framework,” Zaw Htay said. “We feel sorry for his resignation due to the misunderstanding.” Reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine, from where 688,000 Rohingya have fled an army crackdown on insurgents since late August, according to estimates by the United Nations. 

They were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon. The government has cited police as saying they were arrested for possessing secret documents relating to the security situation in Rakhine. 

‘GOOD FAITH EFFORTS’ 

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called Richardson’s decision to resign from the board and his reasons for doing so “cause for concern”, but noted he had been acting as a private citizen in joining the board and visiting Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. 

”Ultimately, the Burmese government and military have the authority to determine whether the Advisory Board will succeed,“ Nauert said. ”The United States has made clear that we are willing to support good faith efforts to implement the Annan Commission recommendations.” 

The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Myanmar last year, to advise on enacting the findings of an earlier commission headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 

The armed forces have been accused by Rohingya witnesses and human rights activists of carrying out killings, rapes and arson in a campaign senior officials in the United Nations and United States have described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects that label and has denied nearly all the allegations. 

Richardson said he was also “taken aback by the vigor with which the media, the United Nations, human rights groups and in general the international community were disparaged” during the last three days of meetings the board held with Myanmar officials. 

“She’s not getting good advice from her team,” Richardson said of Suu Kyi, whom he said he has known since the 1980s. “I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown moral leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I regret that.” 

Suu Kyi’s national security adviser, Thaung Tun, told Reuters he had escorted the other board members on a trip to Rakhine on Wednesday, but that Richardson had not taken part.

“He said he was unhappy about the situation but I am not sure what he was unhappy about,” he said. “This is just the initial stage, this is the start of a whole year of business so I don’t know what happened to make him feel like that.” 

PANEL CHAIRMAN SLAMMED 

Before Richardson quit the advisory board had 10 members, including five from overseas, chaired by former Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai. 

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, also had harsh words for Surakiart. 

The board chairman, he said, was not “genuinely committed” to implementing recommendations regarding the issues of Rohingya safety, citizenship, peace, stability and development. 

“He parroted the dangerous and untrue notion that international NGOs employ radicals and that humanitarian agencies are providing material support to ARSA,” Richardson said, referring to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army militants. 

Surakiart was traveling with other members of the board in Rakhine and did not respond to requests for comment. 

Another board member, former South African Defence Minister Roelof Meyer, told Reuters the visit to Rakhine had been “very constructive”. 

“If anybody would say that we are just a rubber stamp or a voice on behalf of the government that would be completely untrue, unfair,” he said. “We haven’t done any recommendations so far.” 

Other members of the board, which also includes British doctor and politician Lord Darzi of Denham and speaker of the Swedish parliament Urban Ahlin, were not immediately available for comment. 

Richardson said he declined to join the advisory board’s tour of a new repatriation camp in Rakhine State on Wednesday, instead traveling to Yangon.

MASS GRAVE 

Myanmar’s military said earlier this month its soldiers had taken part in the killings of 10 captured Muslim “terrorists” during insurgent attacks at the beginning of September, after Buddhist villagers had forced the captured men into a grave the villagers had dug. 

It was a rare acknowledgment of wrongdoing during its operations in Rakhine by the Myanmar military, which said legal action would be taken against members of the security forces who violated their rules of engagement and the villagers involved. 

Richardson said he has asked the board to recommend that the Myanmar government set up an independent investigation into “the mass grave issue, especially as it pertained to ... the involvement of the military”. He did not say how the board had responded. 

The Rohingya crisis erupted after ARSA attacks on security posts in Rakhine on Aug. 25 triggered a fierce military response. Myanmar says its troops were engaged in legitimate counterinsurgency operations. 

The U.N. on Wednesday called on Myanmar to give aid agencies unhindered access to camps it has built for tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees after agreeing a deal with Bangladesh on their return. 

Reporting by Bill Tarrant; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Panu Wangcha-um in Bangkok and Yimou Lee in Yangon; Editing by Alex Richardson

By Reuters

January 24, 2018

MAUNGDAW, Myanmar -- The United Nations on Wednesday called on Myanmar to give aid agencies unhindered access to camps it has built for tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees before they can return after fleeing Myanmar military operations last year.

An international delegation advising Myanmar toured the Taung Pyo Letwe refugee camp outside the town of Maungdaw near the Bangladesh border. Video of the camp shows long, plywood houses set on a rocky field and surrounded by a wire mesh fence topped with barbed wire. 

Bangladesh on Tuesday delayed the repatriation of the largely stateless Rohingya to Myanmar as the process of compiling and verifying the list of people to be sent back was incomplete. 

But the United Nations said necessary safeguards for the refugees were still missing. 

“Until the safety and wellbeing of any child returning to Myanmar can be guaranteed, talk of repatriation is premature,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth said in a statement. 

The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR said earlier “there are continued restrictions on access for aid agencies, the media and other independent observers” in Myanmar.

The UNHCR called on Myanmar “to allow the necessary unhindered humanitarian access in Rakhine State and create conditions for a genuine and lasting solution”. 

More than 688,000 Muslim Rohingya and a few hundred Hindu Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 last year after the Myanmar military cracked down in the northern part of Rakhine state, amid witness reports of killings, looting and rape, in response to militant attacks on security forces. 

Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard the Rohingya community as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The United Nations described Myanmar’s crackdown as ethnic cleansing, which Myanmar denies.

FILLING OUT FORMS 

Myanmar officials told a news conference on Tuesday that Bangladesh was not ready to send back the refugees as scheduled because the potential returnees hadn’t completed the forms Myanmar provided attesting to their former residency in Myanmar. 

“They also have to check with the UNHCR about whether it’s voluntary,” Minister of International Cooperation Kyaw Tin told the news conference.

“They need a lot of time to fill out the forms and to determine if they really want to come back.” 

But a UNHCR spokesperson in Bangladesh told Reuters the agency had not been involved “in the bilateral discussions on repatriations or signed any agreements”. 

“We would like to be part of the process and discussions to ensure the reparations are voluntary, safe and sustainable and that any returns are in line with international standards,” said Caroline Gluck, UNHCR’s senior public information officer, in Cox’s Bazar. 

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed earlier this month to complete a voluntary repatriation of the refugees in two years. Myanmar says it has set up two reception centers and the temporary Taung Pyo Letwe camp to receive the first arrivals. 

The plan has sparked fears in refugee camps in Bangladesh that people may be forced to return despite a lack of guarantees around their security. 

Late on Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the delay in the repatriations was a good idea and Washington was concerned about a lack of access for U.N. organizations. 

Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui; Writing by Bill Tarrant and Euan Rocha; Editing by Nick Macfie

RB News

January 24, 2018

Buthidaung -- A group of Rakhine Buddhist extremists have set fire on Rohingya homes in Buthidaung Township this early morning, say reliable reports.

The fire which happened at 'Htin Shaar Pyin' hamlet, 'Latwei Dek Pyinshay' village, in Buthidaung around 3 am today destroyed three houses (that had been) abandoned by their owners.

"First they torched two deserted houses and then, another one that is four houses apart from the early two. As the villagers came out to extinguish the fire, a group of Rakhine extremists were seen fleeing towards the Rakhine villages called 'Inn Pauk' and 'Thabbyay Taw' (located to the West of

Htin Shaar Pyin).

"The fire burnt down the three houses and the villagers extinguished the fire before it could do further damages", a local of the village told RB News.

The houses destroyed in the fire belonged to 1) U Asmat Ullah s/o Basu Meah, 2) Daw Safura and 3) Mohammed Alam.

Some 100 of total 300 houses (households) at 'Htin Shaar Pyin' were abandoned by their owners as they had sought refuge in Bangladesh to escape from the Burmese (Myanmar) military terrorism last year.

On Monday (Jan 22) evening, the Burmese Security Forces burnt down 4 Rohingya homes at 'Taungpyo Letya' sub-township in Northern Maungdaw.

[Edited by M.S. Anwar]

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

By Foster Klug

Associated Press

January 23, 2018

Myanmar officials say they are ready to begin a gradual repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, despite a delay announced by Bangladesh authorities.

YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar says it's ready for a gradual repatriation of Muslim Rohingya refugees chased out by the Buddhist-majority country's military. Bangladesh says it's preparing for the transfer, but it might need more time.

And the refugees themselves?

In interviews in recent weeks with dozens of the nearly 700,000 Rohingya who've poured into Bangladesh since August in what's become the world's worst refugee crisis, The Associated Press has found deep skepticism, if not outright terror, about returning to a place where they say their homes were burned, their wives, sisters and mothers raped, and their friends and neighbors slaughtered.

The two nations' border seemed calm Tuesday, despite some sense, in Myanmar, at least, that the proposed transfer of refugees might still go forward.

"No matter what, from our side, Myanmar is ready to start the process, but Bangladesh may have difficulties, causing a delay in sending refugees back," said Win Myat Aye, Myanmar's social welfare minister.

If the desires of the refugees themselves are considered, it won't happen any time soon. In the sprawling camps that cover the hills south of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, along the border with Myanmar, the Rohingya say they want to return to their burned villages, but only with strong outside monitoring of their safety and living conditions.

"How can we go back to Myanmar without anyone guaranteeing our security," said Alam, a Rohingya in the Bulakhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, who, like many Rohingya, goes only by one name. "If we would be given homes in our villages that were burned, then we will go back."

More than 680,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape a crackdown by Myanmar's military that began following attacks by a Rohingya militant group on Aug. 25. The United Nations and the United States have described the crackdown as "ethnic cleansing." The U.N. human rights chief has also suggested that it may be genocide.

The two countries have agreed to a two-year repatriation process set to begin Tuesday. But officials in Bangladesh on Monday said a number of issues remained unresolved, in particular worries that refugees were being forced to return.

Abul Kalam, a Bangladesh relief official, said by phone from Cox's Bazar that officials are preparing lists of potential returnees.

"We are doing our work. This is a human process, and it needs the preparing of lists, proper verification, coordination with Myanmar and other departments and agencies here," he said. "Both sides have agreed to execute it and the process has started. I don't see any problem in implementing the deal."

There's little sign of that, however, at the border.

A local government official, Khaleda Begum, called the border calm. She told the AP that she saw two men and one woman with their belongings enter Bangladesh in the morning from Myanmar.

"I asked them who they are," she said. "They told me they were coming from Myanmar to get to Kutupalong (refugee) camp."

Win Myat Aye said Myanmar has provided Bangladesh with a list of 700 Rohingya and 400 Hindu refugees who have been verified as eligible for repatriation. Only refugees with identity documents — which most Rohingya lack — will be allowed back into Myanmar.

Many in Myanmar see Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, although many families have lived in Myanmar for generations. They have been denied citizenship, freedom of movement and other basic rights.

Though a total of more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, international aid workers, local officials and the refugees themselves say preparations for repatriation are far from complete.

Myanmar Union Minister Thaung Tun told reporters Tuesday that his country is "ready to receive those who will be coming across the border."

Thaung Tun said Myanmar is currently prepared to receive 300 returnees a day and "the number could increase based on the progress of the first batch that will be coming across."

The two countries have signed an agreement to begin sending people home in "safety, security and dignity," but rights groups have expressed worry about Rohingya returning to villages they left only months ago in terror. According to the U.N. refugee agency and other rights groups, Rohingya are still fleeing across the border into Bangladesh, although the numbers are smaller than in previous months.

"As of today, the necessary safeguards for potential returnees are absent, and there are continued restrictions on access for aid agencies, the media and other independent observers," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday.

___

Associated Press writer Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributed to this story.

By Ben Dunant

Voice of America

January 23, 2018

YANGON, MYANMAR — Myanmar’s top business leaders have rallied behind State Counselor Aung San Kyi’s plan for Rakhine State, expending money and resources on frontline efforts to resettle refugees and rebuild infrastructure.

A government agency chaired by the country’s de facto leader is also wooing private capital into an area cleared of a substantial portion of its people. Rohingya militant attacks on police posts in August provoked a military sweep driving more than 650,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

In an e-mailed statement to VOA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said, “conditions in Rakhine State are not yet fully conducive to the safe and sustainable return of refugees.” 

The repatriations have been put on hold and Rohingya community leaders have demanded the restitution of community land, legal redress for atrocities, and a path to citizenship as essential preconditions.

While Myanmar’s civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), is constitutionally barred from holding the army to account, it has tried to take control in other ways, chiefly via the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine, or UEHRD. It was formed in October to mobilize Myanmar society in a shared patriotic venture. 

Roads and fences

Pivotal to the vision is the support of Myanmar’s tycoons—the dozen or so business leaders who made fortunes during military rule and continue to dominate the economy through privately owned, highly diversified conglomerates.

They were quick to oblige. A UEHRD ceremony held in the capital, Naypyidaw, in October drew close to $13.5 million from a roster of well-known company chairmen: Aung Ko Win of KBZ, Zaw Zaw of Max Myanmar, Steven Law of Asia World, Chit Khine of Eden, and Khin Shwe of Zaykabar, among others.

Nyo Myint, senior managing director of KBZ Group, told VOA some of the $2.2 million donated via its charitable arm, the Brighter Future Foundation, would be spent on a new fence across a stretch of the border with Bangladesh. He said this would benefit “both countries” in deterring illegal migration, a supposed conflict trigger.

Other support has been more direct. Chit Khine, the Eden Group chairman, told VOA over the phone that his company—which constructed substantial parts of Naypyidaw, launched as Myanmar’s new capital in 2005—was now helping build structures in Nga Khu Ya, one of two processing sites for returning refugees established near the border.

In early January, Myanmar state media ran a press release from Asia World, Myanmar’s largest conglomerate. It depicted a “non-for-profit” 80-kilometer road in northern Rakhine State built under the banner of its own charitable foundation—a “proud” effort undertaken as part of UEHRD’s construction taskforce.

The thaw

The heads of Eden, KBZ, and Asia World were previously under Western sanctions for their alleged links with the former military junta. Their prominence in Aung San Suu Kyi’s plan marks a broader rapprochement between the former dissident leader and the tycoons whom, during her years of house arrest, she lambasted as military “cronies.”

The thaw began early in her government tenure. In an October 2016 event for top taxpayers, she told assembled tycoons she wouldn’t dwell on past misdeeds but asked for, “those who have previously worked for their own self-interest work for others in the future.”

Gerard McCarthy, associate director of the Myanmar Research Center at the Australian National University, told VOA that enlisting the support of tycoons for national causes is not a departure from core NLD values, which center on “a morally virtuous project,” defined by individual acts of merit. Under this ethos, he said, “capitalists can be moral as long as they contribute.”

But Aung San Suu Kyi’s public-private fix for Rakhine State doesn’t stop at charity. It also involves presenting Rakhine State as a promising business opportunity in answer to a recommendation by the Advisory Commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for increased, albeit responsible, investment in one of Myanmar’s poorest states.

Former glories

To spur private sector interest, the government in October rebooted a stalled economic zone, with a focus on trade facilities, in Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State, by signing a memorandum of understanding with a consortium of local and Yangon-based firms.

The Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) is coordinating a private sector investment drive in Rakhine, on behalf of UEHRD, covering sectors ranging from agriculture to micro-finance to tourism.

Ye Min Aung, vice chair of the UMFCCI and secretary-general of Myanmar Rice Federation, told VOA, “Some people, they don’t want to donate, but they want to invest.”

“The root of all the problems in Rakhine is the desperate economic situation,” he said, adding they would promote “agribusiness for peace” by establishing a new firm, the Rakhine Agribusiness Public Company, which would eventually trade on the Yangon Stock Exchange.

He said he was lobbying the government to offer more concrete incentives for investors.

Patriotic duty

Vicky Bowman, director of the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business, told VOA via email that while humanitarian needs should come first, there was “a need for public investment in infrastructure to combat Rakhine’s isolation and associated poverty.” She added, “the private sector may be a suitable partner.”

However, among other risks, Bowman noted “local resentment that businesses from outside of Rakhine have had more opportunity than locals.” The entry of major conglomerates could foment tensions at a time of heightened Rakhine nationalism.

On January 16, the local government’s banning of a ceremony commemorating the 1784 fall of the Rakhine kingdom to the Burmese, led to deadly confrontations between the police and thousands of angry locals in the town of Mrauk-U. 

Yet, both Ye Min Aung of UMFCCI and Nyo Myint of KBZ described their efforts in terms of patriotic duty. “This is the time the Myanmar private sector should be united to show solidarity under the leadership of the present government,” said Ye Min Aung.

By UN News

January 23, 2018

The necessary safeguards for Rohingyas to return to Myanmar are absent, and there are ongoing restrictions on access for aid agencies, the media and other independent observers, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, two months after Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed on a plan for the refugees’ voluntary return to their homes.

“To ensure the right of refugees to return voluntarily, and in safety and in dignity, we call again on Myanmar to allow the necessary unhindered humanitarian access in Rakhine State and create conditions for a genuine and lasting solution,” Adrian Edwards, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told the regular news briefing in Geneva.

Access would allow for assessment of the actual conditions and the long-term viability of the returns, as well as help address the legitimate safety concerns for any refugees contemplating their return there, he emphasized.

In addition, refugees also need to be properly informed and consulted about such conditions in order for returns to be safe, voluntary and sustainable added the UNHCR spokesperson.

Also vital is the full implementation of the recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission [a panel led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan], including the call for peace and security for all communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, inter-communal dialogue, freedom of movement, access to livelihoods and achieving solutions for the legal and citizenship status of Muslim communities.

“Turning these recommendations […] into a reality on the ground is essential to building confidence for returns and addressing the tense inter-communal situation that has built up over many years in Rakhine state,” said Mr. Edwards.

“Without this, the risk of dangerous and rushed returns into a situation where violence might reignite is too great to be ignored,” he stressed.

Over 650,000 members of the minority Muslim Rohingya community have taken refuge, and more continue to arrive, in Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh after having been forced to flee their homes in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine province following an outbreak of brutal violence in late-August 2017.

UNHCR remains prepared to work with both governments towards finding a long-term solution to this crisis in the interest of the refugees themselves, of both governments, the host community in Bangladesh and all communities in Rakhine state.

JAKARTA -- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the plight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar was even worse than media portrayals.

More than 688,000 Muslim Rohingya and a few hundred Hindu Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 last year after the Myanmar military cracked down in the northern part of Rakhine state, amid witness reports of killings, looting and rape, in response to militant attacks on security forces. 

“This is a tragedy that’s worse than anything that CNN or BBC has been able to portray about what has happened to these people,” Mattis said, speaking to reporters during a trip to Indonesia. 

“And the United States has been engaged vigorously in the diplomatic realm trying to resolve this, engaged with humanitarian aid, a lot of money going into humanitarian aid.” 

Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The United Nations described Myanmar’s crackdown as ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, which Myanmar denies. 

Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Nick Macfie

Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh protest to fulfill demands before their repartriations.

RB News

January 23, 2018

Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh -- The Bangladesh Police arrested 3 Rohingya refugees in 'Ukhia' area on Monday (Jan 22) for reportedly trying to stage a protest, reports say.

The 3 refugee figureheads from 'Kutupalong camps' visited 'Zamtoli Camps' yesterday apparently to organize a protest against the forced repartriation of the refugees from Bangladesh to Burma (Myanmar).

"First, they were arrested and detained by the Bangladesh Army at around 11:30 am. After investigations, they were released in the afternoon.

"And at around 8 pm, the Ukhia Police arrested and detained them. They are still physically in safe condition in the Police custody but will be detained up to 7 days under the charges which we don't know", said an eyewitness at 'Zamtoli' Camps.

The 3 refugee figureheads are identified as: 1) Muhibullah s/o Fazal, 2) Ali Hussain s/o Rashid Ahmed and 3) Abdu Jaber s/o Kabir Ahmed.

We were unable to reach out to the Ukhia Police (through telephone) for further verifications and the latest information on the detainees.

More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh to escape from Genocide that the Burmese military and the Rakhine Buddhist extremists have unleashed in Arakan state, Burma, since August 25, 2017.

An overwhelming majority of them do not to be repatriated to Burma until and unless their ethnic status and citizenship are restored; the safety and securities for their lives are guaranteed; and other basic human rights are ensured through effective interferences of the UN and the international community.

[Reported by MYARF; Edited by M.S. Anwar]

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

By Stephanie Nebehay

Reuters

January 22, 2018

GENEVA -- More time is needed to prepare the return of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, the U.N. refugee chief said on Monday, after a Bangladeshi official said the plan to begin on Tuesday had been delayed. 

“In order for the repatriation to be right, sustainable, actually viable, you need to really to address a number of issues that for the time being we have heard nothing about, including the citizenship issue, the rights of the Rohingya in Rakhine state, meaning freedom of movement, access to services, to livelihoods,” Filippo Grandi told Reuters. 

Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Tom Miles

By Roli Srivastava

Thomson Reuters Foundation

January 22, 2018

NUH, India -- At 15, Raheema left her home in Rakhine state in Myanmar, crossed two international borders and was sold to be married to a man in India just a few years younger than her father. 

“He had asked the agent if I was married before. I was single so he bought me for 20,000 Indian rupees (about $300). Married women go for 15,000 rupees,” Raheema, who gave only her first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

“He was only slightly younger than my father... He would beat me up with electrical wires and not let me leave, saying he had bought me,” said Raheema, who now lives in a settlement in northern India housing Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar. 

Raheema’s husband let her leave last year after five years of abuse. She was five months pregnant with their second child. 

In a burgeoning refugee crisis, about 660,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar’s western Rakhine state across the border to Bangladesh since late August, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the army launched a counter-offensive. 

They join tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims already in Bangladesh, while pockets of Rohingya communities are dotted across South Asia, having escaped discrimination and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. 

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said the new arrivals – the majority of them women and children - are at risk of human trafficking, as officials and aid workers struggle to cope with the influx. 

Cases of men and women enslaved in bonded labor or trafficked for marriage have also started to emerge in India after they managed to escape or were rescued and found their way to Rohingya settlements like the one in Nuh. 

Rohingya started to migrate to India years ago and there are now close to 40,000 Rohingya Muslims living in the country. 

Raheema left her home in Myanmar, “surrounded by tall blades of grass and paddy fields” to join her father in a refugee camp in Bangladesh in 2012. 

“There was no food at home and my mother thought I would be better off if I joined my father,” said Raheema, now 22. “But my aunt at the camp sold me to the agent who told her he would get me married in India.”

“I was numb to the idea of marriage. I just followed the agent and reached Kolkata. I didn’t know any Indian language, but I thought I will be safe,” she said in fluent Hindi, from her home in Nuh in the northern Indian state of Haryana. 

SAFETY LESSONS 

Bangladesh’s chaotic refugee camps are fertile territory for agents like the one who bought and sold Raheema. The promise of marriage is a typical way for traffickers operating in the camps to lure girls. 

“Marriage is big for young girls and parents are agreeing to it because they see better economic stability (for their daughters),” said Iffat Nawaz, spokeswoman for aid and development organization BRAC. 

In December, BRAC volunteers started visiting young girls at the refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar to give them information and support on how to stay safe among so many strangers. 

“Many of these girls have never been around so many men. They are meeting a lot of new people,” said Nawaz. 

The girls are trained over 12 sessions on signs they need to look out for - inappropriate touching, offers of money or food and shelter, and ways to differentiate between genuine humanitarian workers and traffickers. 

“There are enough incidents of girls going missing...They are being trafficked to India and Nepal. We launched this program to reduce that risk,” Nawaz said. 

IDENTITY 

Across the border in India, cases like Raheema are gradually emerging. 

Hasina Kharbhih, founder of anti-trafficking charity Impulse NGO Network that works in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the group was working on reuniting 15 Rohingya girls in India with their families. 

“These girls were trafficked and sold in India for sexual slavery or for marriage six to eight years ago. They are at government-run shelters now,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

“We have not succeeded in sending any of them back home as we are unable to trace their families in Myanmar.” 

Kharbhih also received five cases in the last six months of families in Bangladeshi refugee camps looking for girls they say were trafficked to India. 

Campaigners say there are more cases of girls sold in India, but there are challenges in identifying them. 

“(It‘s) because of the language issue - it is difficult to identify them as Rohingya or Bangladeshi as the language is very similar,” said Adrian Phillips of Justice and Care, an anti-human trafficking NGO. 

About 17,000 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers are registered with U.N. refugee agency UNHCR in India and many, like Raheema, use the UNHCR’s letter acknowledging their application for a refugee card as proof of identity. 

Officials at UNHCR, however, said neither they nor their partner organizations had recorded cases similar to Raheema‘s. 

“Based on information available with UNHCR, there is no record of a pattern of trafficking for marriages in the Rohingya refugee community in India,” said UNHCR’s Ipshita Sengupta by email. 

Raheema now lives with her two children in a slum in Nuh, in a hut made of tin and cardboard with plastic sheeting for a roof. She shows the small space she has created for a clay stove to cook food. 

She is in touch with her mother, who is still in Myanmar. 

“I work as a maid servant here and earn 1,200 rupees,” she said. “But who will feed me if I go back to my mother?” 

Reporting by Roli Srivastava @Rolionaroll; Editing by Ros Russell.

By Lisa Schlein

Voice of America

January 22, 2018

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The World Food Program warns food shortages and undernutrition in Myanmar's Rakhine State are seriously affecting the health of women and children.

More than one million Rohingyas lived in Myanmar's Rakhine State before a brutal military crackdown against the civilian population began in late August. Since then, more than 655,000 refugees have fled to Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Myanmar authorities have cut off access by the U.N. and other international organizations to Rakhine State. But local aid workers are allowed to distribute a limited amount of aid to the Rohingyas.

Before the mass exodus, the World Food Program provided aid for some 250,000 people across Rakhine State. WFP spokeswoman, Bettina Luescher, said that number has gone down. But, with the help of local staff on the ground, WFP is succeeding in gradually reaching more people.

"In December, we reached 63,600 people in Northern Rakhine, twice as many as in November. And in Central Rakhine… we assisted 114,000 people. We are working with local NGO's and government authorities to distribute the food and we are coordinating with the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] so we do not overlap. And, food is given to vulnerable people from all communities based on needs irrespective of ethnicity and religion," she said.

WFP reports child malnutrition rates in northern Rakhine State already were above emergency thresholds before the recent violence. It says the violence and displacement have likely made this situation worse.

In a welcome move, Luescher said the Myanmar Government has asked WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization to conduct a Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission in Rakhine State to assess the food situation on the ground. She said no date has yet been set for the start of the mission.

By Zeba Siddiqui

Reuters

January 22, 2018

PALONG KHALI, Bangladesh -- Bangladesh has delayed the repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar, set to start on Tuesday, because the process of compiling and verifying the list of people to be sent back is incomplete, a senior Bangladesh official said.

The decision comes as tensions have risen in camps holding hundreds of thousands of refugees, some of whom are opposing their transfer back to Myanmar because of what they say is a lack of guarantees of their security. 

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed earlier this month to complete the voluntary repatriation of the refugees within two years, starting on Tuesday. Myanmar says it has set up two reception centers and a temporary camp near the border to receive the first arrivals. 

But Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and rehabilitation commissioner, said on Monday the return would have to be delayed. 

“There are many things remaining,” he told Reuters by phone. “The list of people to be sent back is yet to be prepared, their verification and setting up of transit camps is remaining.” 

A Bangladesh Border Guard official said it could be months before the transfers begin. 

The International Organisation for Migration says the number of Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh since late August now stands at 688,000. The exodus began when the Myanmar military launched a crackdown following insurgent raids on security forces on Aug. 25. 

The head of the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, said more time was needed to prepare the return of the Rohingya refugees to Rakhine, and urged the two governments to involve it in their efforts to resolve the refugee crisis.

“In order for the repatriation to be right, sustainable, actually viable, you need to really to address a number of issues that for the time being we have heard nothing about, including the citizenship issue, the rights of the Rohingya in Rakhine state, meaning freedom of movement, access to services, to livelihoods,” Filippo Grandi told Reuters. 

The UNHCR, which is helping to administer the refugee camps, is not involved in the repatriation process. 

Grandi said it was especially important to set up a monitoring mechanism in northern Rakhine for the returning people. 

The Rohingya have long been denied citizenship by Myanmar, where many in the Buddhist majority regard them as interlopers from Bangladesh.

GUARANTEES 

Myanmar said on Monday it was ready to take back the returning Rohingya. 

“We are ready to accept them once they come back. On our part, the preparation is ready,” Ko Ko Naing, director general of Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, told Reuters by phone. 

He declined to comment on whether Bangladesh had informed Myanmar about the delay. 

At the Palong Khali refugee camp, near the Naf river that marks the border between the two countries, a group of Rohingya leaders gathered early on Monday morning with a loudspeaker and a banner listing a set of demands for their return to Myanmar. 

These include security guarantees, the granting of citizenship and the group’s recognition as one of Myanmar’s official ethnic minorities. The Rohingya are also asking that homes, mosques and schools that were burned down or damaged in the military operation be rebuilt. 

Bangladesh army troops arrived at the camp and dispersed a crowd of at least 300 people who had gathered to listen to the leaders, according to witnesses who said they saw the army take away one of the Rohingya leaders. 

Bangladesh army spokesman Rashedul Hasan said he had not received any information about protests in refugee camps on Monday.

Burmese (Myanmar) Security Forces carrying out surprise raids in Rohingya villages in Maungdaw after a rumor originally spread by the government officials themselves

RB News

January 22, 2018

Maungdaw -- Two suspicious people, who the authorities said, entered Maungdaw from Bangladesh last week and are plotting to carry out explosions in the township.

Following what's likely a rumor, the joint-forces of Burmese Military and Security Forces carried out surprise raids in 'Italia village and Bohmuu hamlet of Quarter 4' on Sunday (Jan 21). No suspicious people or materials were discovered in the raids.

At around 10:30pm on Sunday, at least 18-truck loads of the joint-forces were patrolling around the village of Shujah (Shwe Zar) in northern Maungdaw and afterwards, they continuosly carried out gun-fires and explosions that sounded like 'bomb explosions' at the Naff river-bank to the west of the village, according to a local's report.

The joint-forces conducted similar raids at Pantawpyin (Lal Boinna) village in southern Maungdaw today but no arrests were made. They searched in and around the Rohingya houses and checked the Family Members against the 'Family Registration List.'

"It is really a suspicious thing because the rumor-mongerers are government officials themselves. It's likely being done to intensify the situation during the time of a scheduled repartriation of the first batch of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh", said a local in Maungdaw.

[Reports by MYARF; Edited by M.S. Anwar]

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