High ranking police officers sell looted rice in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: High ranking police officers –District police head, Township police head with other junior polices-   are selling the rice which the police personnel and Rakhines loot rice from Rohingya shops since June 10, according to an elder from Maungdaw.

“The police officers are sending rice bags from ESB (Electricity supply station compound) to Mozeullah shop of Karee (Khanpara) village every day since June 27.”
“The police officers also sent rice bags to Kamal shop of same village daily since June 27.”
The police officers sent the rice bags by police vehicle to the shops daily 100 bags and collected money from Mozeullah and Kamal 20,000 kyats per bags.
U Myo Win – the district police head – has been going to the shops and collects the money of rice bags.
The rice bags are from Mohamed Younous (alas) Miniga, Shamshu from Shwezarr village and Ramzan Ali from Ward number 5 where more than 1500 bags of rice bags were looted by Rakhine along with police personnel from rice store behind of Maungdaw municipal  market, according to a shopkeeper from Maungdaw.
The authority are selling goods to the Rohingya again which were looted from Rohingya store in Maungdaw and store in the compound of ESB where most of staff are Rakhines and they all together with police looted goods from Rohingya stores.
It is also a big problem for Rohingya as the authority imposed emergence ACT which is only for Rohingya not for Rakhine in Arakan State. Rohingya are not able to go out of their home to finds out kitchen items for survival for their family.

Irony of Myanmar's 'Iron lady': Peace activist Aung San Suu Kyi indifferent to Rohingya Muslims' plight in Burma

'Peace activist' mum on persecution

Aung San Suu Kyi was a world hero but does she command the same respect? This is now a question being asked repeatedly due to her apathy towards the plight of Rohingya minority and her controversial statements about their citizenship status.


The world had stood by Suu Kyi and openly supported the pro-democracy woman who had been under house arrest by the military government in Myanmar but after her release and victory, her stand on the Rohingya issue has been shocking to say the least.


Worse, Rohingyas were getting killed in the rioting when she was on a tour to Europe. She didn't speak about the violence back home, issued no direct appeal to her people to stop violence and while newspapers said she was treated like 'Rockstar' and awarded doctorate, Suu Kyi made THE controversial statement. 


The 'iron' woman, who was supposed to have spoken for the rights of the community, has gone to the extent of questioning that if the minority indeed belongs to Burma. What can be the biggest irony? She was a hero for everyone but no more for me and perhaps many others. 

The Rohingyas, a stateless people, have been living in Myanmar for centuries until the military government in 1982 [through a citizenship law] decided to strip the off their nationality. The community that is termed by Amnesty and other agencies as one of the most persecuted in the world, is now termed 'outsider'. 


Rohingyas population estimates range from 8,00,000 to 1 million though it is suspected that the government figures are markedly less than the actual population. The community has faced hostility, prejudices and massacres for the last 60 years.

World Wakes up to the plight of Rohingyas

But the woman who suffered most at the hands of the military, seems to be in sync with the junta's [army] views about the Rohingyas who have been discriminated, oppressed and systematically forced out of Burma for decades.


Now pandering to popular sentiments, Suu Kyi has refrained from making any statement. No wonder, the Rohingyas are dejected and have lost hope from the woman they had supported and even vote for in election, aiming for change. Does she feel the Bamars would get upset if she speaks for Rohingyas!


That't what politicians do. But this is not expected from a leader of her stature. The ethnic riots between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims left nearly 90 dead while 90,000 were displaced. But she ket mum. Bangladesh didn't let fleeing Rohingyas, who wanted an asylum, and forced them to go back to their country. 


It was in this scenario that reporters during her tour to England, France, Ireland and other countries, asked her repeatedly on this humanitarian crisis. She kept mum and avoided a comment on this issue, even as the extent of violence had shaken her country.

Rohingya woman cries after her husband got killed

When she was not left with any alternative, she shrewdly said, "The rule of the law is needed". 


Is this you expect from a statesman, a Nobel prize winner or a world leader or a fighter? 


Newspapers were finally getting critical about the fact that her tour appeared more a celebration and PR exercise.


She seemed to echo the hardline sentiment that Rohingyas are illegal immigrants [refugees] in Myanmar. 


She finally said that Myanmar must clarify citizenship rules and that she was unsure whether Rohingyas could be regarded as Maynamar nationals. WHAT A SHAME!


The world is changing Ma'am. The fascist rule had somewhat managed to keep the country insulated but news about the clashes and genocides can't be suppressed any more. 

That day I saw the group on Facebook group 'I have no respect left for you Aung San Suu Kyi...'.A leading newspaper questions, 'Has Suu Kyi lost that moral voice?' 


It is no bravery to get aligned to right-wing forces for minor gains. Nationalism becomes Jingoism easily. It takes a GANDHI to counter populist mood and use the leader's moral authority to say things that may not appear nice [and to go against the tide]. 


So those who compared you to the great Nelson Mandela, may have to do a rethink now. As an activist you struggled, spent a lifetime fighting oppressive forces. People put faith in you but you let us down. 


Your tour is over and soon you will be back to Yangon [formerly Rangoon]. If you don't speak for the victims, just because they look like Bengalis, you will be considered an accomplice in letting this persecution go on. 


We urge you to make amends and take steps for reconciliation between Rohingya and the rest. Isn't it time for you to live up to your own reputation and redeem yourself?

Myanmar ethnic alliance says Rohingya “not Burmese”

Malaysia’s Rohingyas protest violence in Myanmar.

KUALA LUMPUR: Adding anger to an already tense situation in Myanmar, a group of 8 ethnic parties currently allied have said the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority are not considered an ethnic minority.
The statement by the group’s reiterated their position adopted in 2005.
It comes as the Rohingya minority in the country face waves of attacks and reported massacres in the Western Arakan area of the country.
“‘Rohingya’ is not to be recognized as a nationality,” said a statement by the National Democratic Front (NDF), saying it wanted its views to be known to “the people at home and in foreign lands” because of the sectarian violence that has erupted in Rakhine State, claiming nearly 80 lives since May 28.
Some 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma, where the government considers them illegal immigrants and denies them citizenship. Most Burmese call Rohingya “Bengali.”
NDF Secretary Khun Oh said, “Even before the current conflict, there has been frequent conflict between Rakhine and Bengalis,” referring to the Rohingyas as people from Bangladesh.
The NDF statement said the violence, which saw up to 3,000 homes and businesses burned, was a result of poor immigration regulations and enforcement.
However, Khun Oh told local media that some Rohingyas could be granted Burmese citizenship if they met appropriate qualifications, such as knowledge of the national language.
The stateless community has struggled to find a positive way of life as many fled violence in Myanmar in the early 1980s.
The Rohingyas said the flare up of violence in Myanmar has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the past three decades and they want an end to the alleged atrocities.
They want a UN peacekeeping force as well as a medical team to be sent there immediately.
Many fear that thousands of Rohingyas may be heading towards a crisis situation without food, shelter and medication.

Call for Respect and Tolerance Amid Violence in Burma’s Arakan State

Editor’s Note: Below the author shares her experience, observations and opinion regarding the outbreak of violence in Burma’s Arakan State (also called Rakhine State). The recent fighting has cost the lives of dozens of people and forced tens of thousands to flee.
By Sandi Aung
Recent images of fighting in Burma’s Arakan State, the home of my ancestors, has deeply saddened me. I am struck by the loss of life, the violence and the livelihoods destroyed. But, I am also disturbed by how little the social and economic conditions have changed.
I still remember the faces of people, like the Rakhine and Rohingya, that surrounded me when I was 5 years old living in the state and, later, when I returned to visit as a college student. The conditions captured in the recent images—the boats, villages, buildings and streets — sadly, look the same as when I was there more than 20 years ago.
While growing up in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, I remember going to the neighborhood market with my grandmother and buying grocery items from both Rakhine and Rohingya merchants. The Rohingya were around me in my daily life, serving as hired hands for businesses, selling fish and vegetables at the market and selling snacks and traditional medicines. I would see Rohingya women walking down the streets wearing longyi (traditional woman’s wear in Burma) with scarves around their necks and faces representing their Muslim faith.
As a child, I was always told that Muslims, the Rohingya, were immigrants from Bangladesh. Isolated incidents of violence between individuals from both sides would happen from time to time — sometimes escalating into riots. Growing up, I was indifferent to the problem.
I had a chance to visit Bangladesh back in the early 2000s, and met some Rohingya women who were living outside of camps (I wasn’t able to visit the camps themselves) in utter poverty. They could barely speak Bengali or other tribal dialects used in Bangladesh. Their stories were shared through the hard-work of translation:

left with several children because husband never came back (not knowing what had happened to him), making a living by breaking big cement pieces at the construction sites, selling vegetables or selling any creatures that can be dug out from the mud,  to feed themselves.

They said they wanted to go home, pointing toward Arakan state.
I thought to myself that, if they had indeed just crossed the border to live in Arakan state, shouldn’t they be feeling comfortable because they were back at home, safe and sound in a Muslim community? Why go back to the territory dominated by Buddhists who have discriminated against them for centuries?
Differences along ethnic and racial lines are common across the world, but it is wrong and unacceptable for people to use these differences as justification for killing, looting, and other forms of abuses. Even worse, is tolerating such behaviors for years.
So what spurred the recent outbreak of violence?
To me, it was a perfect storm in the making for years — the absence of the rule of law, the lack of civic education and severely limited economic opportunities. All of this has been coupled with the strain of living under a repressive regime for decades.  While I appreciate the international community’s concerns, I don’t welcome finger-pointing or blaming one group over another. Yes, individuals from both sides who committed the crimes should be brought to justice. But, labeling the crisis as “Buddhists” vs. “Muslims” or “Rakhine” vs. “Rohingya” simply exacerbates the divide. The leaders of both sides, with access to international media, have called out loudly for their own causes. They are sitting in their comfortable homes while ordinary people were out on the streets fleeing from violence, possibly triggered by their words.
It’s time for everyone to take a step back. It’s too bad that we have left this wound unhealed for this long and what a shame for a country known to have fought so hard for democracy! But, here is a chance: let’s show the international community that we belong to a democratic world by treating everyone with respect regardless of their ethnicity, color, religion or legal status. Let’s keep the debate in the peaceful forums represented by all parties through a democratic process and by keeping an open mind.
Yes, it will be a difficult emotional process for all of us, but it’s the right thing to do and necessary for the country to move forward.
Sandi is a native of Burma and a graduate of  University of Yangon and University of Notre Dame.  She is an educator and currently lives in Conway, Arkansas.

Breaking news: June 29, 2012

No relief for Rohingya in Maungdaw

Two helicopters with relief goods arrived yesterday in Maungdaw and all the relief goods are kept in Myoma monastery where the relief goods were distributed to the Rakhines who are not taking shelter as refugees. Most Rakhines have homes and foods but they receive the relief from distribution centers. The authority setup three centers in Maungdaw – Myoma monastery, Myo Oo Pagoda monastery and Ward number 5 junctions “Community hall for Buddha religious purposes.”

The relief goods are not distributed to the Rohingya community and has no plan to distribute relief to them. Most of the Rohingya community who are living inside town and nearby town are facing foods shortage and some become starvation which will be danger for this community in the future and will die.
Still not able to pray Juma  in Maungdaw
Maungdaw authorities are still blocking Rohingya community to pray Juma in the Mosques in Maungdaw Township.
Authority extracts forced labor to build new Natala villages
The concerned authorities forcibly extract forced labor from Rohingya community to build new Natala villages where the concerned authority paid only 1000 kyat and one kilogram of rice per day where normally one labor gets more than 2000 kyat. No foods or water are provided during the working period.

Myanmar ethnic alliance says Rohingya “not Burmese

Malaysia’s Rohingyas protest violence in Myanmar.

KUALA LUMPUR: Adding anger to an already tense situation in Myanmar, a group of 8 ethnic parties currently allied have said the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority are not considered an ethnic minority.
The statement by the group’s reiterated their position adopted in 2005.
It comes as the Rohingya minority in the country face waves of attacks and reported massacres in the Western Arakan area of the country.
“‘Rohingya’ is not to be recognized as a nationality,” said a statement by the National Democratic Front (NDF), saying it wanted its views to be known to “the people at home and in foreign lands” because of the sectarian violence that has erupted in Rakhine State, claiming nearly 80 lives since May 28.
Some 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma, where the government considers them illegal immigrants and denies them citizenship. Most Burmese call Rohingya “Bengali.”
NDF Secretary Khun Oh said, “Even before the current conflict, there has been frequent conflict between Rakhine and Bengalis,” referring to the Rohingyas as people from Bangladesh.
The NDF statement said the violence, which saw up to 3,000 homes and businesses burned, was a result of poor immigration regulations and enforcement.
However, Khun Oh told local media that some Rohingyas could be granted Burmese citizenship if they met appropriate qualifications, such as knowledge of the national language.
The stateless community has struggled to find a positive way of life as many fled violence in Myanmar in the early 1980s.
The Rohingyas said the flare up of violence in Myanmar has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the past three decades and they want an end to the alleged atrocities.
They want a UN peacekeeping force as well as a medical team to be sent there immediately.
Many fear that thousands of Rohingyas may be heading towards a crisis situation without food, shelter and medication.

Egypt activists to protest at Myanmar embassy over Rohingya attacks

Western Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims face food shortages and ethnic violence.

CAIRO: Egyptian rights activists announced their solidarity with the under attack Muslim Rohingya community in Arakan, Myanmar, and plan to protest outside the Myanmar embassy later on Thursday.
“We are against exterminating peoples for their religion or beliefs,” said the invitation to action.
“The Arakan region has seen some serious human rights violations since the beginning of June where Muslims were attacked by Buddhists.”
The activists plan to gather in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek at 5 PM to protest the ethnic violence outside of the embassy.
Some 30 Rohingya have been killed in violent clashes in Myanmar as a result of ethnic violence with Buddhists in the Western area.
The stateless community has struggled to find a positive way of life as many fled violence in Myanmar in the early 1980s.
The Rohingyas said the flare up of violence in Myanmar has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the past three decades and they want an end to the alleged atrocities.
They want a UN peacekeeping force as well as a medical team to be sent there immediately.
Many fear that thousands of Rohingyas may be heading towards a crisis situation without food, shelter and medication.

No reason to abandon Rohingyas

Apparently, Bangladesh's pushback of helpless Rohingyas from its territorial waters into those of Myanmar seems to have worked. Or has it? Given that 30,000 were afflicted in the latest eruption of ethnic violence in Rakhine state capital Sittwe, this may have been just a stalling operation.

Since no media is allowed in the troubled zone, there's no way knowing whether those sent back by us are safe. Perhaps, Bangladesh's stern approach has gone down well with the Myanmar authorities. For once, we could bite the bullet and let them float into the elements of nature, or shove them into the tunnel of uncertainty.

Clearly, all this is a palliative, and not a cure of the disease. Because the fundamental issue of statelessness of the Muslim minority in the Rakhaine state of Myanmar remains intact. Persecution and ethnic cleansing of varying intensity follow from this non-existent status of not even second class citizens.

So long as this seminal question of nationality is not resolved, Rohingyas in boatloads or trickles would keep coming in through the 200km long porous border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Thus, we find in the UNHCR's version, eight unregistered Rohingya refugees to every registered one. In contrast, government's ratio between listed and unlisted refugees stands at 15 to 1. This demographic pressure on an already densely populated part of Bangladesh is headed for snowballing with severe repercussions in the horizon.

One reputed international observer Derek Tonkin's position on this fallacy is unassailable: "The statelessness of the Rohingya is a breach of Article 15(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which provides that: 'Everyone has the right to a nationality'."

When a country is at the receiving end of fallout from either a willful persecution of the Rohingyas by the military as in 1978 and 1991 and internal ethnic violence as erupted lately, it has to defend its national interest. Bangladesh has every right to address the problem bilaterally, and if necessary, internationally. But a hands-on role is missing.

What is difficult to understand is Bangladesh government treating the latest dimension to the Rohingya question in a way that it can make all the difference between good and bad bilateral relations. Why must this be so; an issue has arisen and it must be dealt with, first compassionately and then by taking it up at the government-to-government level in a no nonsense manner.

Now, why have a short memory? In both times that the spates in Rohingya exodus were triggered by military operations in Myanmar, we arranged repatriation of the refugees by engaging the military authorities, post-1978 and 1991. We could work out a solution, incomplete that it might have been, albeit under the auspices of the UNHCR. Why then the latest upshot of ethnic raw nerves centering around a criminal act but allowed to proliferate as a religious-ethnic reprisal by the majority community under military watch should be handled like "glass with care" approach? By accident, if you like, the core issue has come to the fore, through a haemorrhage though. And if the wound is 'band-aided' now, it would bleed again.

In a sense, the international community is also playing kid glove with Myanmar authorities. The West is supersensitive to the cause of consolidating the pro-democracy and open economy gains and advancing the freedom and leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi to complete the process of Myanmar's opening to the world. So, why rock the boat?

Suu Kyi's appeal to reason, her sagacity, and persistent theme of reconciliation have inspired analogies with Nelson Mandela. This is something to draw on. One of the first Suu Kyi statements on her release from house arrest had been to call for speedy resolution of ethnic minority issues. We are looking to her to take a conscientious role in resolving the "nationality" issue of the Rohingyas. We are heartened by her expression of concern over "the handling of the situation by local Rakhaine authorities, in particular their failure to dampen anti-Muslim sentiment. Suu also calls on Buddhists to 'have sympathy for minorities'." (Xinhua)

Suu Kyi's growing international image is of value to the military who still retain the levers of power but understands the efficacy of withdrawal of sanctions on and investment in Myanmar. Pragmatism suggests they should swim with the current.

The two foregoing factors taken together, condition in Myanmar couldn't have been potentially more conducive than it is today towards settling all the ethnic minority issues that bristle the Myanmar body-politic.

There is a third element that the Myanmar government needs to consider to reshape its policy towards the Rohingyas. Ethnic groups like the Karen and Kachin are "insurrectionist" espousing the aspirations of small nations. While attempts are made to assimilate them into the Myanmar society, why should the innocent, armless Rohingyas be left behind?

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.

Arakan Roit News Update : June 28, 2012

Rathedaung Township:

Twenty two villagers were arrested from Anukpin village of Rathedaung Township earlier and on June 27, again 60 villagers were arrested from the said village by army and Nasaka. After arrest, they were sent to Rakhine villages where they were tortured severally by Rakhine villagers. After that, they were sent to Akyab. The fate of the arrested villagers is not known to their relatives. The village has about 1000 houses, of them, 60 houses were burned down by Rakhines with the help of army and Nasaka though they have responsibility to give security of the Rohingya villagers, said a villager from Rathedaung on condition of anonymity.

Besides, 350 houses from Mozai Dia village and 150 houses of Sarat Pyin village were burned down into ashes by a group of Rakhine extremists in front of army and Nasaka. The concerned authorities declared that the army and Nasaka take security of the villages of Rathedaung Township. It is very difficult to understand that the army and Nasaka give security only Rakhine, but not to Rohingyas. They also co-operate with the racist Rakhines for arson attack to the Rohingya villages. The Burmese media also highlighted that the Rakhines are suffering from crisis of food and shelter, showing artificial Rakhine refugees who have been taking shelter in Nasaka camps and Buddhist monasteries of Maungdaw and Akyab (Sittwe).


It is learnt that many Rohingya villagers in Rathedaung Township have been suffering from food, shelter, medicine crisis since the event were broken out.

In addition on June 26, the Rohingya villagers were flooded by heavy rain fall in Rathedaung. There is no place to take shelter whose houses had already burned down by Rakhine mobs. There is no one to give them any help as it is an isolated area. Every day, the army and Nasaka along with some Rakhines arrest the Rohingya villagers, so, the villagers are passing their days and nights with terrible situation for fear of arrest and torture.

Situation Maungdaw Township:

Yesterday, at about 4:00 pm a widow – Syeda Kanon daughter of Basa Meah – was shot dead by army while she was returning from a grazing ground with her goat. When the army took away her goat forcibly from her, the widow asked the army “Why do you take away my goat?”. It caused army angry and shot dead her on the spot. She was forty-five year old of Lamba Ghona village. Earlier, the army also took away a cow from her.

Moreover, today, at about 8:30 am, two helicopters arrived at Aley Than Kyaw village of Maungdaw Township from Akyab(Sittwe) and then flied to Nasaka headquarters to see the Rakhine refugees who have been taking shelter in the Nasaka camps and Buddhist monasteries at Maungdaw. The refugees are the Natala villagers who were brought to the Nasaka camps from Maungdaw north, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships and the relocated Natala villagers of southern side of Maundaw town. Whenever, the international community and the high level officials from Naypyidaw visited Maungdaw, they only see the Rakhine refugees. They never visited to Rohingya refugees (internal refugees) who have been locking in their own villages by imposing state of emergency. They have been suffering from food crisis since the sectarian violence was occurred. The government didn’t expose to the international community regarding the internal Rohingya refugees who have been persecuted by the Burmese authorities by daily basis.

Besides, the army and Nasaka are arresting the Rohingya villagers continuously, especially from Nurrullah Para, Kilaidaung, Sarcumbo, Horsara and Sombonna villages and other villagers of Maungdaw Township. The authorities are targeting mostly to Rohingya young people even 10-12 year old boys. It is learnt that the young boys were stabbed by Natala villagers, after arrest.

The authorities also took away cattle, goats, rice, fowls and valuables from Rohingya villagers. Every night, the armies, Nasaka accompanied by Rakhines go to the said villages and make arbitrary arrest to the villagers. So, the villagers flee from the villages leaving their family members in the villages. Taking this advantage, the authorities assault the Rohingya women and young girls in the villages. This is the daily basis occurrence in the Rohingya villages. Where is the international community? asked a villager from inside Arakan.
Police arrests with various forms in Maungdaw.

Police officer inspector U aung Kyaw Than and its groups arrested Rohingya with various forms – called for repairing, meeting , listed involved in the demonstration on June 8 and meeting on the road- recently in Maungdaw, according to Maungdaw resident.
Today evening, the police personnel arrested Mohamed – a Rohingya technician- from clock tower junction for calling to repair the police vehicle, but he was sent to the Maungdaw police station with false allegation as he involved in the demonstration on June 8.
Similarly, two Rohingyas from Bomu village were arrested while they are going to their home from another friend home in the same village. The police met them on the road inside the village, but arrested with false allegation that they were doing to set fire the house yesterday.

Nasaka checks Rohingyas’ family list in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Burmese border security force (Nasaka) has been going to check the family lists of Rohingya today morning, according to village administration office member from Maungdaw.

The Nasaka has been starting to check the family list of Ward number 2 and 4 where the Nasaka checked the lists with family members and if anyone fail to show on the time of checking, he/she was eased from the list. If every member is present at the time of checking, the authority issued a card masked “Checked”But, in Kyikanpyin and Nwahyondaung village, Nasaka has been checking the family lists but Nasaka has been taking signature from the family head on a blank paper after checked the list.

It is learnt that the medicine of MARTEZA (an NGO) and food items of World Food Program (WFP) were destroyed by the flood of June 26. On that day rain fall very heavily and caused inundated many villagers of Maungdaw north, said a youth from north of Maungdaw.
Situation of Buthidaung:
Two persons were released today morning who were arrested by army yesterday. The released two persons are: a son of Mr. Abu Toyub and another one is Adam Zee from Ward No. 7 of Buthidaung town. But, another two were not released among 4 persons who were arrested yesterday, said a trader from the locality.

Many villagers of Buthidaung south and north were flooded by heavy rain on June 26. The villagers have been suffering from many difficulties and there is no any help from government side.

Besides, the market of Buthidaung town was inundated under the water since Tuesday. The concerned authorities didn’t allow the shopkeepers to move their goods from the shops to other safe places giving the reasons that there should be untoward situation while moving the goods. As result, most of the goods should be rotten for keeping them for three days under the water. However, today at about 2:00 pm the concerned authorities of the market allowed shopkeepers to enter the market to see their goods.

Before, the sectarian violence, the concerned authorities did not allow to buy any one more than two kgs of rice from the market.

It is learnt that over 10,000 people including Rakhines and Rohingyas have been taking shelter in the Buthidaung High School because of flood.

ARAKAN ROHINGYA UNION, ADDRESSES CANADIAN PARLIAMENT AND TESTIFIES BEFORE THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

DR. WAKAR UDDIN, DIRECTROR GENERAL OF ARAKAN ROHINGYA UNION, ADDRESSES CANADIAN PARLIAMENT AND TESTIFIES BEFORE THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

The Canadian Parliament conducted a hearing on Rohingya human rights and political rights, and the current violence in Arakan State , Burma (Myanmar), on June 19, 2012. Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, the Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, addressed the Canadian Parliament on Rohingya human rights and political situation in Burma (Myanmar), and testified in a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, presided by Hon. Scott Reid (Conservative Party), Chairman of the International Human Rights sub-committee. In his address, Dr. Uddin brought a wide range of issues that Rohingya ethnic minority is facing in Arakan State, Burma, to the attention of the committee.

He outlined the Rohingya issues through an audio-visual presentation, beginning with demographic background information on Rohingya, some highlights of the roles of Rohingya in the multi-ethnic political process during the during and post-colonial periods of Burma, how the military dictatorship have systematically revoked the citizenship of Rohingya, the persistent human rights violations and persecution of Rohingya by the Burmese government forces, coordinated ethnic cleansing in Rohingya areas in Arakan, the ultra-nationalist and racist ideology of Rakhine as a confounding factor, implication of Burmanization schemes in ethnic minority areas in Burma, and the current ongoing violence against Rohingya in Arakan.

During hearing, a closed door session, the parliamentarian asked specific questions on various issues that Dr. Uddin had articulated during his address earlier in the parliament. Those specific questions and answers to the questions currently remain classified; therefore they could not be made public. However, in the summary, the committee members from all parties (Conservative Party,Liberal Party, and New Democratic Party), were stunned to hear the magnitude and intensity of the persecution that the Rohingya people are facing. The response from the committee to the Rohingya issue was extraordinary and unanimous. The unequivocal support for the cause of Rohingya political and human rights echoed throughout the room during the hearing in the parliament.

The hypocrisy of Burma’s pro-democracy movement

By Francis Wade
Jun 27, 2012

Much has been made of the recent sectarian unrest in western Burma and its ramifications for the country’s fragile reform process. It’s important to note that the violence and subsequent outpouring of anti-Rohingya anger is not a niche issue confined to a specific locale – instead it should be viewed as something more pervasive among many Burman and Arakanese, both inside Burma and abroad, that threatens to contaminate the wider discourse on how to move the country forward.

Among the key catalysts of anti-Rohingya sentiment are, surprisingly, prominent members of Burma’s pro-democracy movement. The hypocrisy of their attempts to vilify an entire ethnic group – labelling them variously as “terrorists”, “illegal immigrants”, “not worthy of citizenship”, and so on – appears lost on them.

Tin Maung Htoo, director of Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB), was forced by the organisation’s Board to retract a statement in early June in which he said the Rohingya were the remnants of a Mujahideen movement in western Burma that had tried to gain citizenship after their “Jihad” failed (like all the country’s ethnic minorities, there is no fixed date for their arrival, though one study done of dialects in Arakan State back in 1799 references “Rooinga”).

That, and other inflammatory comments posted on the internet, are merely the tip of the iceberg for many of Burma’s “democrats”, whose rhetoric implicitly encourages the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC), based in the UK, states on its website that a special battalion of Burmese troops should be deployed to northern Arakan state “to protect the lives of the minority Buddhist Burmese Araknese who are living in the middle of barbaric so-called Rohingya Bengali Muslims”, whom it claims have massacred “tens of thousands of Burmese Buddhist Arakanese in the past”.

The founders of BDC and CFOB were themselves forced into exile after the Burmese military was given free rein to put down the 1988 student uprising in the name of “protecting the nation”. The fact that these same people have also felt most painfully the scourge of state-sanctioned abuse and statelessness likewise gets lost in the fury.

Calls for the Rohingya to be expelled from Burma on the grounds that they are not citizens have been made by the very same people who were allowed to remain in their countries of asylum for years before citizenship was finally awarded – they assert however that this gesture should not be extended to the Rohingya.


Ko Ko Gyi, a former leader of Burma's prominent 88 Generation Students Group, pictured in Yangon earlier this month. Pic: AP.

Tin Maung Htoo has lauded prominent activist Ko Ko Gyi’s proclamation that the Rohingya are not an ethnic nationality of Burma; but nor is he one of Canada. He and others seem to have a hard time explaining the rationale behind their comments.

What the “anti-Rohingya but pro-democracy lobby” also seem to misunderstand is that they have become effective lackeys of a regime that they have dedicated their lives to reforming or doing away with. A key policy of successive Burmese juntas is the divide and rule of ethnic groups, which has allowed the government to foment unrest, justify heavy-handed control and which has historically provided the excuse for why the country is not ready for democracy.

It is of great irony and great sadness that the country’s civilians, both at home and abroad, have finally lent their hand to this, only months into the transition process and after decades of resisting state propaganda. As far afield as London, the front door of Tun Khin, who heads the Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, has been kicked in, while anti-Rohingya protests have been targeted against Burma Campaign UK and the BBC, often by veterans of Burma’s pro-democracy movement who, exiled from their homeland, have gained citizenship in the UK.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s reaction to the unrest was to call for rule of law to be the decider of the status of Rohingya – a deliberately non-committal and vague standpoint. As Sai Latt notes in Asia Sentinel, “The Rohingya case provides a very clear example why the law itself can be a source of problems. Statelessness, ill treatment, and discrimination against the Rohingyas are not simply the results of a lack of the rule of law. Quite contrary, they are legally produced.”

The hypocrisy underpinning the Rohingya crisis calls into question the notion of equal rights, and indeed democracy, espoused by Burma’s pro-democracy movement; indeed that the gestures accorded to them should not be extended to those of different origin, religion, skin colour, or whatever it is that makes the Rohingya such vile creatures in the eyes of those engaged in their persecution. The inability of many to see the double standards being deployed is perhaps a sign that the mindset of the regime, a master of psychological warfare, lurks within those who have spent years rallying against it, and becomes yet another factor in the sobering realisation that Burma’s transition will be a long and painful process.

BROUK ADDRESSES BRITISH PARLIAMENT ON ARAKAN CRISIS

The President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), Tun Khin together with Benedict Rogers (East Asia Team Leader, Christian Solidarity Worldwide) and Chris Lewa (Co-ordinator for Arakan Project) presented evidence of the persecution of Rohingyas in Arakan State at a meeting in the British Parliament today. The meeting was chaired by Baroness Kinnock, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma, and focused on the current crisis in Arakan State, Burma.

Tun Khin told the parliamentary meeting that the current crisis was well planned and organized by hardliners within the regime, who do not want to see reforms in Burma, and the Rakhine National Development Party (RNDP). In recent months, there have been an increasing number of anti-Rohingya activities, including seminars in Rangoon and in Arakan State organized by RNDP, and anti-Rohingya demonstrations.

According to Tun Khin, at least 650 Rohingyas have been killed by Rakhine and government forces, and at least 1200 are missing. More than 80,000 Rohingyas are displaced, 22 villages have been burned down and 14 mosques destroyed. Bangladesh has refused entry to Rohingyas trying to flee the violence, and has pushed back at least 16 boats from Sittwe. The curfew imposed by President Thein Sein has only been applied to Rohingyas and not Rakhine..During curfew time Rohingyas stayed in their homes, while Rakhine and government authorities burned down Rohingya villages and looted Rohingya shops in Sittwe and Maungdaw.

Tun Khin said: “We really need UN observers in Arakan State. Even though the riot was stopped some Rohingya houses are still being burned down by Rakhines, and in the last few days Rakhine police officers and Paramilitary Forces joined together and have been arresting Rohingya men, looting and raping Rohingya girls. We urge the British government to put effective pressure on the Burmese regime to stop the killings and violence against the Muslim Rohingyas in Arakan and to restore peace and security in the region, to allow the international community and NGOs to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to all the victims regardless of race or religion. We call for pressure on the regime to ensure that displaced Rohingya people can return to their original villages safely and freely. We call on the international community to urge the Bangladesh government to keep its border open to Rohingyas fleeing persecution and violence in Arakan. We also urge the Burmese government to restore our citizenship and ethnic rights, to stop anti-Muslim activities and racism in burma. There should be laws on racism if the regime want to see durable peace in Burma. There is a solution if the regime is willing to negotiate between the two communities.”

For more information, please contact Tun Khin Tel; +447888714866
10 Station Road,on Road, Walthamstow, London E17 8AA
Tel: +44 2082 571 143, E-mail: brorg_uk@yahoo.co.uk,
web : www.bro-uk.org

Breaking News: June 27, 2012

Buthidaung Township:
Yesterday night, 4-Rohingya man was arrested by army personnel of Military Operation Command             (MOC) No.15 of Buthidaung Township over the allegation that they have been involved in political matter. After arrest, they were brought to unknown place. The arrestees are: two sons of Master Abu Tayub, Imam Hussain, and Abin Chay. They all belong to Ward No.7 of Buthidaung Town.  This is the first time arresting occurred in Buthidaung Township, after the sectarian riots have been broken out in Arakan State, said a villager from Buthidaung Township.

Heavy downpours at Buthidaung Township yesterday, the following villages such as—U Hla Pay, longa Daung, Sindaung and Alay Chaung— went under water and villagers have been facing many difficulties. There is no report about death, but the water is still remaining. While the monsoon shower kept many villagers stranded at home throughout the day since early morning.
Maungdaw Township:  
Today, Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) is seizing family lists of villagers of Myothu Gyi under the Maungdaw Township, reason is unknown, according to villagers.
Maungdaw north and south were flooded by heavy rain yesterday. Many villagers have been inundated and are facing many difficulties. Mean while, the army chased the villagers to arrest, so the villagers have to flee their villages to avoid arbitrary arrest leaving their women and daughters in the homes.
Yesterday, army accompanied by a group of Rakhines went to Oo Daung village – of Maungdaw south in the evening and arrested five villagers and the villagers fled from the village. They looted rice, gold, clothes and money etc.
Army and Natalia villagers went to Khorja Bill two days ago and an arrested 40 villagers (already released by Kaladan Press) and brought them to the mosque of the village and tortured them severely.  In front of the arrestees, the army ransacked the mosque and tear of the Holy Quran. After that, they were put in a truck and covered it with a plastic sheet to avoid from public. Nobody knows their whereabouts.  They also tortured the females in the village as their husbands were not present. At present, the women and girls are staying in the village in a panic-stricken position. They also looted goods from the village.
Yesterday, in the evening, the army arbitrary fired to the villagers of Khonsara and Whycha villages of Maungdaw south, as a result, villagers ran away where they think to be saved, but some villagers jumped into the river. Meanwhile, the water current was very strong as the rain fell very heavily, so the villagers who jumped into river were washed away.  Today, the villagers found 10 dead bodies in the river that are floating.
Rakhines are backed by police, Hluntin, and Nasaka, but Rohingyas are only defenders while their houses were torched by Rakhine mobs in front of the security forces.  Seeing the burning their houses, Rohingya villagers came forward to extinguish the burning houses, but the security forces fired to the villagers, so the villagers are unable to put out the fire and were killed  and  wounded  by the firing of security forces. So, it is not a sectarian riots between Rakhines and Rohingyas, it is a preplanned action against the Rohingya community by government.
A village elder said,” The fake sectarian violence is still going on in Arakan State. It is really happened between government and unarmed Rohingya community. We are innocent, but the authorities give us pressure. ”

Massacre of Rohingyas in Myanmar

The Rohingyas in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, have again been subjected to a major massacre. The Rohingyas happen to be a Muslim minority living in the Buddhist majority country. They have been victims of discrimination for many decades, particularly under the military junta, which ruled the country on the motto of nationalism. Interestingly, one should point out here, that Muslims of Arakan known as Mujahidin, constituted one of the three major forces that fought for the country’s independence in the 1940s.

This is not the first time that Rohingyas have been targeted. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, approximately 200,000 Rohingyas were expelled to neighboring Bangladesh in 1978, but almost all of them were forcibly repatriated back: about 10,000 died in the process and another 10,000 remained in Bangladesh. In 1982 Myanmar passed a law declaring most Rohingyas non-citizens. In 1991, again about 250,000 were pushed to Bangladesh. In September 1992 the government of Bangladesh closed down registration of new refugees, and immediately resorted to another round of repatriation. However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and a number of other international humanitarian bodies strongly protested against the measure. Since then the UNHCR has negotiated with the government of Myanmar to repatriate back the refugees but it has succeeded only partially. Occasionally many of the repatriated refugees would return to Bangladesh. During this period many Rohingyas also migrated to a number of Southeast Asian and West Asian and North African (WANA) countries. But generally speaking, Rohingyas remain stateless people and according to one UN report they are “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.”

The current influx of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh began when a rumor was spread that a Buddhist Rakhine woman was raped and murdered by three Rohingyas and a number of Rakhines attacked a bus carrying Muslim passengers in early June. Violence  spread rapidly and hundreds and thousands of Rohingyas began to flee. Rakhine thugs seem to enjoy the tacit support of the law enforcement agencies. The Myanmar government has banned the media in the area. Neighboring Bangladesh also took a stubborn stand by not only preventing the refugees from entering the country, but also by not allowing the media to interview the refugees. The upshot of it all is a humanitarian disaster.

According to one analysis the origin of the current conflict may lie much deeper in the geo-politics of the area. China reportedly has invested heavily in the area and enemies of China are trying to destabilize the situation in order to weaken the country’s economic role in Myanmar. This is part of a larger agenda to thwart China’s economic ascendancy. (see landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-front-myanmers-role-in-geopolitics.html)

What is shocking in this whole episode is the stand taken by the country’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. She doesn’t seem to have been moved at all by this unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Another shocking phenomenon is the statement by the US Charge d’ Affairs in Myanmar who praised the government’s role in the crisis. Has the international community lost its conscience?

What should be done to overcome the crisis? Violence should stop immediately. The state government in Rakhine and the central government under Thein Sein have a big role to play in this.  The law should be applied without bias and wrongdoers should be punished, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. At the same time, Thein Sein should initiate measures to grant citizenship to the Rohingyas.

Myanmar’s fellow ASEAN states should quietly encourage Thein Sein to move in this direction.

Dr. Abdullah  Ahsan,

Vice-President,

International Movement for Just World (JUST).

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Burma: Regime behind Rohingya ethnic cleansing Tuesday, June 26, 2012 By Tony Iltis

Rohingya refugees trying to make it to Bangladesh.

There are wildly divergent estimates of the death toll from ethnic and religious violence in the Burmese state of Arakan.
Mainstream media reports and the Burmese government are claiming that fewer than 100 people have been killed in violence they describe as clashes between the Buddhist Rakhine majority and Muslim Rohingya minority communities.
However, Rohingya sources estimate thousands of deaths from a planned campaign of violent ethnic cleansing by Burmese government forces. Rohingya sources say the regime has been instigating Rakhine mob violence as part of their campaign.
France 24 said on June 22: “More than 80 people have been killed and thousands displaced in a wave of violence between Muslims and Buddhists in west Burma.”
On June 21, the Burmese government put the death toll at 62, Associated Press reported.
But the National Democratic Party for Human Rights (NDPHR), a Rohingya political party that won four seats in the democratic 1990 Burmese elections, said on June 19: “The information from Arakan confirmed that the death toll of Rohingya has exceeded 10,000 from Sittwe city alone, and a few thousand from Maungdaw, Rathedaung and Kyauktaw townships.
“Most of them were shot dead, brutally beaten to death, burnt alive and the rest were those taken away by security forces into hidden areas.”
Reports on social media from Rohingya sources inside Arakan, such as the NDPHR, have been published in English on Malaysian-based website The Sail and the site of the Ethnic Rohingya Committee of Arakan in Malaysia.
These reports make a grim catalogue: along with mass killings, alleged atrocities include burning of villages, mass rape, mass arrests, torture, looting and extortion.
Rakhine mobs and armed Rakhine elements have been responsible for much of the violence, but the main perpetrators have been the military and paramilitary forces of the Burmese government: the police, the army, the navy and in particular the Nasaka border security forces.
There are also reports of clashes between Rohingya and Rakhine rioters and clashes between government forces and armed Rakhine groups.
The violence started on June 3 in Taungup township when 10 Rohingya bus passengers were beaten to death by a 300-strong lynch mob. For the preceding week, Buddhist extremist hate groups ― assisted by the local media in Arakan ― had been blaming Muslims for the May 28 rape and murder of a Rakhine woman in the village of Thabyaychaung.
This was used as a pretext to whip up violent anti-Rohingya sentiment.
The NDPHR said activists from the Wanthanu Rakheta Association were distributing anti-Muslim leaflets in Taungup on the morning of June 3 immediately before the lynching.
On June 18, three Rohingya men were sentenced to death for the May 28 rape and murder, Democratic Voice of Burma reported. One of the three, “accused of masterminding” the crime, had already died in custody (officially suicide), but death sentences can be given retrospectively under Burmese law.
Phil Robertson, head of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch (FRW), told DVB: “We condemn the imposition of the death penalty in all cases as cruel and inhumane treatment. But we’ve also had no access to information about this case, so there is no way to say whether the three men on trial are in fact guilty.”
Chris Lewa, Director of the Arakan Project, told DVB: “My concern would be whether there was any kind of proper judicial system. This was quite quick.”
More than a third of Burma’s population belongs to oppressed nationalities and dozens of national liberation struggles have been ongoing since Burma won independence in 1948. In the past, both Rakhine and Rohinhya armed groups have fought the Burmese government in Arakan, and sometimes each other.
No Rohingya groups have been involved in armed struggle for 10 years. The main Rakhine rebel group, the Arakan Liberation Party, entered peace talks with the government this year.
Successive US governments have had a strained relationship with Burma’s military rulers. The US even provides not-so-covert support to some of the insurgent groups.
However, a confidential October 10, 2002, cable from the US embassy in Rangoon ― published by WikiLeaks on August 30 last year ― repeats in good faith spurious allegations by Burmese military intelligence linking the Rohingya national movement with Osama bin Laden.
The same cable expresses scepticism at Burmese government charges of terrorism against other armed national movements.
The Burmese government has used the anti-Islam bias in the “war on terror” narrative, which the West now uses to justify its wars, to delegitimise Rohingya self-determination to Western policy makers.
Reporting the current violence in Arakan, the Western media have generally repeated claims by the Burmese regime and Rakhine chauvinists that the Rohingya are not indigenous to Arakan, but are immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.
In reality, the Rohingya can trace their existence in Arakan as far back as the Rakhine can. There are records of Islamic political entities in Arakan more than a millennium ago.
Antipathy between different ethnic and religious groups was fostered by the British during the colonial period. In World War II, just before Burma won independence, Arakan was the site of some of the biggest clashes between the British and Japanese empires.
Intersecting with this conflict was Burma’s struggle for independence and many local conflicts. This resulted in large-scale violence between Japanese-armed Rakhine and British-armed Rohingya militias.
Both sides committed massacres of civilians, but the Rohingya bore the brunt of them. There was a large flow of Rohingya refugees to the nearest British territory: what is today Bangladesh.
Since independence in 1948, there have been anti-Rohingya pogroms in 1949, 1967-8, 1978 and 1991, sending more refugees to Bangladesh.
Encouraging Buddhist chauvinism and anti-Rohingya prejudice is the Burmese state’s political response to Rakhine nationalism. For its part, Bangladesh sees the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Rule of Law by Sai Latt

Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't know what to do about them either 

What if the Rohingya problem is 'legally produced'?

Aung San Suu Kyi’s 17-day European trip, which started on 13 June, could be called the “Rule of Law Tour.” She has been promoting the concept of the rule of law as a problem-solving tool in every single talk and press conference in Europe.

Yet her account runs the risk of being an empty promise if she continues to leave the content of the laws unchallenged.

Rule of law particularly is Aung San Suu Kyi’s default answer to the questions regarding the oppressed Rohingya minority group from western Burma who have been denied citizenship by the state, and are unwanted and openly demonized by the public at large.

The tremendous public opposition against the Rohingyas, most significantly reflected during the conflict in Arakan state early this month, demonstrates that any political leader supporting them can be accused of being a traitor.

This puts Aung San Suu Kyi in a risky position. On the one hand, any implicit or explicit support for the Rohingya is likely to entail a backlash from her Burmese supporters who are in a state of political hangover regarding the Arakan conflict. The conflict has resulted in numerous deaths and displaced many hundreds from both ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya sides. Her supporters are also in a state of denial for equal rights and citizenship to ethnic Rohingyas.

Conversely, saying anything to comfort her supporters’ anxiety regarding the loss of sovereignty to the Rohingyas endangers her international reputation as an icon of freedom and democracy. In short, expressing a sentiment beyond the reassurance of rule of law’s significance is her political suicide.

Aung San Suu Kyi, of course, is smart enough to avoid this dilemma by sticking to the ideals of rule of law. However, her strategy appears to be problematic because she only takes the laws for granted and implies that rule of law means implementing the laws properly.

For instance, when a participant at the Oslo Forum asked whether or not Rohingyas are citizens of Burma, she responded that, “We are not certain exactly what the requirements of citizenship law are…, If we were very clear as to who are the citizens of the country under the citizenship law and who qualify, then there wouldn’t be this problem… We have to have rule of law, and we have to know what the law is. We have to make sure that it is properly implemented”.

However, implementing the laws alone is not adequate. Unjust laws and their contents need to be challenged so that the laws and their ‘proper implementation ensures justice, which Aung San Suu Kyi has not seriously addressed so far.

The Rohingya case provides a very clear example why the law itself can be a source of problems. Statelessness, ill treatment, and discrimination against the Rohingyas are not simply the results of a lack of the rule of law. Quite contrary, they are legally produced. In particular, they are the results of the 1982 Citizenship Act that effectively deprived the Rohingyas of citizenship status.

Whether one agrees with the controversial ethnic label ‘Rohingya’ or not, this Muslim population has lived in the Burma-Bangladesh borderland, known today as Arakan state on the Burma side, for centuries. As in every other borderland, the inhabitants move about in the territory. They are connected by people on both sides of the border through cross-border networks of family ties, labor processes, trade relations, etc., just like ethnic Rakhines in Arakan state.

Throughout the dictator Ne Win era, deadly military operations and arbitrary categorizations of ‘national races’ undermined the Rohingyas’ historical existence in that borderland. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, they lost their indigenous status to that very specific borderland.

When the 1982 Citizenship Act was introduced, they were effectively disqualified for citizenship since the new act recognizes only the decedents of the so-called national races who had lived in the state territory prior to 1824. Rendered a non-indigenous or non-national race unlike other groups such as the Karan, Kachin, Shan etc., the Muslim population from that borderland, who called themselves Rohingyas, ‘became’ non-nationals and non-citizens, and worse, illegal immigrants.

Today’s ill treatment and discrimination against Rohingyas, as well as the popular mis-perception about their status as ‘illegal’ are all predicated on the 1982 Citizenship Act. As such, their statelessness and illegal status are not natural and automatic, but a man-made phenomenon, facilitated and fortified by the 1982 act.

To borrow a phrase from Professor Nicholas de Genova from Columbia University, the Rohingyas’ situation should be understood as the legal production of Rohingya illegality. It is the law that places this Muslim population outside the national citizenship regime; it is the law that institutionalizes their exclusion and renders them ‘illegal.’ As such, talking about the rule of law without being serious about the need to challenge unjust laws and their contents will only perpetuate the problems. Aung San Suu Kyi’s choice not to go further into challenging the laws might be her strategic choice for now, but she will have to address it sooner or later.

(Sai Latt is a Burmese PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada.)

Photographer, Greg Constantine captures plight of Burmese Rohingya

At least 90,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict in Western Burma.



Photographer captures plight of Burmese Rohingya (Credit: ABC) 

And with the monsoon season getting underway, a refugee crisis is looming, with the World Food Program saying it's provided food to more than 65,000 people and estimating a further 25,000 are in need of help.


Those refugees are mostly Muslim Rohingyas who flee to neighbouring Bangladesh - which already has a population of stateless Rohingya refugees.

Bangkok-based photographer Greg Constantine has been photographing those refugees for a number of years and he's releasing a book of those photographs in a collection called "Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya".

Presenter: Wayne Shields

Speaker: Greg Constantine, photographer


CONSTANTINE: I've been photographing the Rohingya in Bangladesh since 2006, so the photographs in the book, "Exiled to Nowhere", were taken over the course of eight different trips to southern Bangladesh from 2006 until the very beginning of this year. The last trip that I made was in February 2012.

SHIELDS: Ok Greg so maybe a little bit of background prior to this current conflict in western Burma, which has led to a lot of Rohingya moving to Bangladesh. But the people that you were taking these photos of, how did they mainly end up there?

CONSTANTINE: Over the past 40 years there's been really a history and a legacy of persecution of the Rohingya minority group, particularly in north Rakhine state, which is a series of townships in Rakhine where the recent violence has been taking place. And over the past 40 years there's been several different waves of persecution of the Rohingya in Burma, and that has openly ended up forcing a lot of people outside of their home country and fleeing to Bangladesh. And over the course of the years the last big wave was 1991-92, and since then several hundred if not thousands of Rohingya trickle over the Burmese-Bangladesh border every single year, pretty much seeking sanctuary from the various forms of abuse that they face at the hands of the Burmese government.

SHIELDS: So how many Rohingya do you think are now in Bangladesh?

CONSTANTINE: I don't think anybody particularly knows all the strict figure of how many people live there. But the estimates range anywhere from 200 to 300-thousand people from this particular group Rohingya live in southern Bangladesh, pretty much clandestinely, there is probably 29 to 30-thousand officially recognised Rohingya refugees who live in two UNHCR monitored and administered refugee camps. But the other 200, 250-thousand are people who are not recognised by the Bangladesh government as being refugees, and they basically eke away a hand-to-mouth existence in southern Bangladesh.

SHIELDS: Late last year the new government of Burma agreed to take back registered Rohingya refugees, and since then as we've mentioned the mood has changed and more Rohingya want to leave Burma. You've been there on the ground, what do these people go through when they decide to set off for Bangladesh?

CONSTANTINE: Well one thing to make clear is that the area where most of the Rohingya live in Burma, in north Rakhine, is completely closed off to pretty much everyone, for the exception of some larger international organisations. North Rakhine is completely isolated and closed off to the press, to the media, to tourists, I mean it really is a locked down area of Burma. And so getting into north Rakhine and being able to photograph and tell the story of the Rohingya there is pretty much impossible. So my method has been to try to spend as much time in southern Bangladesh over the years to get the stories of people who have been coming out of Burma. And the problems that Rohingya face in Burma are numerous from forced labour to arbitrary land seizure to extortion and heavy taxes to even heavy restrictions on the right to get married, is probably one of the most extreme cases in the sense that Rohingya who want to get married in north Rakhine actually have to obtain formal permission from the local authorities, which is called an Nasaka. And a lot of these administrative kind of procedures that the Burmese government has put in place over the past 20 years or so really make life for the Rohingya miserable. And miserable enough to make the hard decision, do I stay here in Burma or for me to move forward with my life whether it be to be able to provide food for my family, because Rohingya cannot travel freely even from one village to the next in north Rakhine? Do I go to Bangladesh and live as an unrecognised person there and try to provide for my family there?

SHIELDS: Ok so you've mentioned it's a fairly miserable existence in Burma. How would you describe the condition of the people you found in Bangladesh?

CONSTANTINE: Well in my first trip in 2006 when I saw the conditions in which the Rohingya were living in the first question that came to my head, and I'm sure it's the first question that comes at least when I talk with other journalists who've spent time in southern Bangladesh, the first question that came to their mind was when you look at the conditions that they're living in in Bangladesh you wonder this is really, really horrible, how much worse could it actually be in Burma for them to make the conscious decision to actually leave and place themselves in this desperate situation in Bangladesh? So if that's any indication, the situation on both sides of the border really is quite desperate.

SHIELDS: Of the people that manage to find work, what type of work are they generally doing?

CONSTANTINE: Well they do manual labour jobs, and I think kind of the precarious part of all this is that the Rohingya, there are so many Rohingya in southern Bangladesh that they really have become an essential source of labour for a number of different businesses in economic sectors in southern Bangladesh, anywhere from 70 to 80 per cent of rickshaw drivers in a lot of towns in southern Bangladesh, in the Teknaf Cox's Bazar area are all Rohingya. The salt fields, the back-breaking work in many of the salt fields in southern Bangladesh are done by Rohingya. The fishing industry is basically incredibly reliant on the manual labour of Rohingya. You can look at pretty much any sector of the Bangladesh economy in southern Bangladesh, particularly in the Teknaf and Cox's Bazar area, and local Bangladeshi business owners are saving a lot of money by hiring Rohingya for rock bottom prices.

SHIELDS: Given that your focus was very much documenting how difficult life is for these people. How were you greeted or accepted by the Rohingya that you've taken photos of for your book?

CONSTANTINE: Well I think most of my trips are quite long and I've built relationships over the past six years with a number of different Rohingya in the community. I think that for myself there's always an element they have absolutely no reason to trust who I am as a foreigner or trust anyone for that matter, because I think that a lot of people from western governments to bodies in the UN have really failed this particular community. So they have every reason not to trust me. But I think that I spend a lot of time talking with people before I start taking pictures, and I think in general that a lot of the Rohingya that I talk to, they want their stories to be heard because they have so little voice in the international community. There's not a very substantial Rohingya exiles kind of organised exiled community out there right now, it's growing. But I think that the Rohingya want people to know their story and I just happen to be one of the people helping to share that story with other people out there.

SHIELDS: Greg there doesn't appear to be any joy in the photographs that I've looked at, no pictures of children smiling or laughing, that's obviously a conscious decision that you've made. But there must have been some joy?

CONSTANTINE: Well yeah, I mean I think the fact is that kids are kids, and I think that children in a lot of ways, specifically little children, they don't particularly understand the gravity of the situation in which they're existing in. So there's always moments that you're going to find a kid flying a kite, or find kids just being kids. But the reality of it is that there is an equal amount of situations in which I've met children who are Rohingya who didn't have smiles on their faces. And I think that when you see kids who don't have smiles on their faces and aren't being kids, then you really realise how serious the situation is, because the weight of a community's situation and desperation has now been kind of transferred over on to the shoulders of the child, and that to me is a pretty dramatic thing. I think it's a really good indicator of how desperate a situation is, and hence the reason why the particular photographs that I've chosen appear in my book.

SHIELDS: They say that every picture tells a story, is there a particular personal story that touched you that you could share with us?

CONSTANTINE: Well I think there's a number of stories that have left an impact on me over the years. I wouldn't particularly want to share one in particular, but I think that one of the big things for me has been talking to youth, people anywhere from the age of 25 to 18 who are Rohingya, and I think that as of right now or over the recent years, one of the probably the primary reason why Rohingya youth end up fleeing from Burma into Bangladesh is not so much because of violence, and not so much because of forced labour, but it's really because I would hear these stories over and over and over and over again, is the restrictions on marriage, and basically how young Rohingya who want to lead a normal life, get married, start families, are prevented from doing so because of this web of administrative restrictions that are put specifically on the Rohingya community, which makes them end up really realising if I want to move forward with my life, there's no way that I can do it here in my homeland, because the Burmese government is now allowing me to do things that normal human beings are able to do, which is get married and start a family. And because of that, they end up, that's the primary reason why people, why youth I think end up leaving north Rakhine and going to Bangladesh to seek sanctuary. Those are the kinds of stories I think that have really left a profound imprint on my mind, many of them are quite personal, but these are the kind of stories that people would share with me. And that I'm trying to share with people in this book through the voices of the Rohingya that are in this book as well.

SHIELDS: Alright Greg you're launching it this week, if people want to know more give us some website and social media details so they can have a closer look?

CONSTANTINE: Yeah a website was just launched of the project, it's www.exiledtonowhere.com. People can get a lot of information about the Rohingya, about the book on the website. There's links on there as well about how to purchase the book. My Rohingya work is only a chapter of a larger project that I've been working on for six years called Nowhere People, which basically documents the consequences that the denial of citizenship and statelessness have on ethnic minority groups all around the world. And the Rohingya is probably one of the more extreme examples of the consequences that statelessness has on a community. So people can also visit, www.nowherepeople.org to also find out not only more about the Rohingya, but about the global phenomenon of statelessness, which it really is becoming a global crisis in the sense that over 12-million people, according to the UN worldwide are without a nationality or denied citizenship and really belong to no country in the world.

Dangerous Waters for Burma's Rohingya Minority

Monday 25 June 2012
John Sparks

Asia Correspondent

As Burma's rulers claim the country is embracing democracy, Asia correspondent John Sparks reports on the perilous attempts of native Rohingya people to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

At the end of a jetty in the town of Teknaf in Bangladesh, the sound of misery rose up above the wind and the waves. 140 men and boys were caught by the coastguard at first light, and a camera team filmed as they pleaded and prayed for their lives.

After weeks of violence in north west Burma, members of that country's Muslim minority, also known as the "Rohingya", are trying to flee. But no one wants them. We filmed as members of the Bangladesh coastguard handed out water and packs or rice and bread rolls before ordering them back onto their boats.

They were a sorry-looking group, many of whom were crying uncontrollably. Their boats were leaky and badly overloaded, but it wasn't the voyage they men fear most - they are petrified of returning to Burma.

"They'll kill me," said one man who had to be dragged on a boat. Our camera team heard the reply from a member of the coast guard: "Allah will save you. Now go back."

In Burma's Rakhine state, the fires have been burning for several weeks now. Homes have been raised and lives taken by hate filled mobs. Ethnic Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya blame each other for the violence, but hard facts are difficult to come by.

International NGOs have pulled their staff out - too dangerous they say - while Burma's government refuses to let independent observers in. The result is an information vacuum - no-one knows what the death toll or how many have escaped the violence.

The United Nations says 90,000 people have been displaced by the violence but they have little more than guesswork to rely on. The head of the UNHCR in Bangladesh, Craig Saunders told us: "It is very, very difficult to get an accurate picture of what is actually going on."

Information is scarce, but our camera team found people willing to talk. They spoke to Rohingya refugees who'd made the crossing to Bangladesh. Some have hidden in farmers' shacks. Others have been taken in by sympathetic locals - and most were seemed deeply traumatised.

One illegal entrant, called Shahara, said: "My sisters, brothers and other relatives were burnt alive. They burnt my own children. We couldn't bear it any more so we came to Bangladesh. The coastguard turned us back three times - and we floated at sea for four days and four nights. Then we managed to sneak in. Three of our children were burnt to death in Burma. Another two died in the boat getting here."

Her husband Mohammad told us that local policemen and members of the military in Burma had sided with the ethnic Buddhists - participating in attacks on Muslims. He said he saw a Burmese helicopter attack boats packed with refugees: "There were three boats together when we set off - and another three followed us. The three boats that lagged behind where attacked by a helicopter and caught fire."

He thinks almost 50 people were killed, adding: "We saw something reddish fall on the boats and instantly they exploded into flames."

A regional official in Burma today denied this allegation, pointing out that there was "only one" helicopter in Rakhine state which is "unarmed".

We don't know what happened to the men and the boys we filmed on the jetty in Teknaf.

A local contact said five of the boats, pushed back into the sea, had disappeared by the next morning - but like much of the tesitmony we've heard, we have been unable to verify this.

Still, events in Burma are a catastrophe for the Rohingya, a little-known group of people who nobody seems to want. Only dialogue and generosity and human decency will prevent further loss of life.

No way home for Myanmar's Rohingya

The recent inter-ethnic riots between Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Myanmar highlight some of the major human security issues the country must face as it embarks on democratization and peace-building processes.

While there are no questions asked about the citizenship of 135 officially recognized ethnic groups across Myanmar, the majority of which straddle the country's borderlands with India, Bangladesh, China and Thailand, the Rohingya are viewed by the state as outsiders.

The Rohingya have lived in the border region between Bangladesh and Myanmar for generations, but as the aftermath of the riots shows, Myanmar citizens - elites and commoners alike - hold  little sympathy for their stateless plight.

A typical post-colonial "indigene-settler" dispute exists in Rakhine state. The Buddhist Rakhines consider themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and perceive the Muslim Rohingya as "Bengali settlers". The Rohingya make conflicting historical claims to their rights as Myanmar citizens.

The recent tensions between the two communities escalated after the horrific rape and killing of a Rakhine girl in Kyat Ni Maw on May 28. Photos of her brutalized corpse were disseminated on the Internet, shortly after which news stations reported that three Rohingya were detained as suspects in her murder.

This prompted hundreds of Rakhines to rally against the crime in front of a police station and the local administrative agency of Rakhine state. Days later, on June 3, a group of Rakhines turned to vigilante justice when they reportedly killed nine Rohingya in a revenge attack on bus passengers in Taung Kote, Rakhine state.

Angered by the local media's slanted reporting of the murder and its provocative references to the Rohingya as kala, Rohingya in Yangon staged their own protests.

Although the word kala derives from the Pali word meaning "noble", it also means "black" in the Hindi language.The term is associated with racist connotations in the Burmese language, and is often used to refer to outsiders from the subcontinent, including Bangladeshis, Indians, Nepalis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.

To Rohingya, being called kala is to deny their historical connection to Rakhine state. The word "Rohingya" derives from the word "Rakhine", evidence of their connection to the land, Rohingya claim.

The Rohingya's protest over kala references also reflects their frustration over their official exclusion from Myanmar society. As the country's democratic reforms move ahead, many disfranchised Rohingya hope to gain citizenship rights, but so far there are no indications this is in the cards.

Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law established that the Rohingya, along with several other communities such as the Gurkhas (an ethnic community with historical links to Nepal), were not among the 135 officially recognized ethnic groups in Myanmar entitled to citizenship.

Myanmar's next census is scheduled for 2013, but no changes in the Rohingya's status are likely given that even the country's most respected leaders are approaching the issue with caution in the wake of the recent riots. Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said recently that "the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law", presumably the already standing Citizenship Law.

Ko Ko Gyi, an icon from the 1988 pro-democracy protests brutally suppressed by the military and until recently a prominent political prisoner, has openly opposed the Rohingya gaining citizenship. He also implied that sympathetic foreigners should stay out of the issue, in line with the military's long-held view on the matter.

"Now it is time that we announce our view on the Rohingya clearly. The Rohingya are not one of the ethnic groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riots happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw of [Rakhine] state are because of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh called Rohingya and the mischievous provocations of some international communities," Ko Ko Gyi said.

"Therefore, such interfering efforts by some powerful nations on this issue without fully understanding the ethnic groups and other situations of Burma will be viewed as offending the sovereignty of our nation."

Empowered by Myanmar's recent lifting of restrictions on the Internet, citizens now freely communicate on social-media networks such as Facebook. Many have used racially charged language about the Rohingya that previously would have been banned or censored.

Their online postings have highlighted grassroots perceptions among Burmans that the Rohingya should not be considered citizens of Myanmar. Not only are the Rohingya referred to askala on these posts, but they are also being viewed as "terrorists".

One representative post, for example, read: "We have a right of self-defense. I hope DASSK [Daw Aung San Suu Kyi] would understand that this is not bullying the minority. They are not a minority anyway. This is a sovereignty issue and this is just terrorism and they are evil enemies of freedom."

By mid-June, the government had declared martial law and imposed a curfew in several districts of Rakhine state. More than 80 have been killed and thousands of homes torched since the clashes first erupted. Sporadic violence has continued since the imposition of emergency rule over the area.

More than 800,000 Rohingya reside in Myanmar, but the violence is pushing a new wave of refugees into Bangladesh. The United Nations estimated there were already 300,000 Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, many of whom fled earlier rounds of state suppression against their communities in Myanmar.

Myanmar and Bangladesh will hold talks about the Rohingya situation in early July - Myanmar's President Thein Sein is due to start a three-day visit to Bangladesh on July 15. Some hope the persecuted minority will be granted some sort of quasi-citizenship after the talks. If this should fail, then the Rohingya will remain in a legal and physical limbo hoping for refugee status somewhere abroad.

Jacob Zenn is an international-affairs analyst based in Washington, DC, who formerly worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia.

Arakan Conflict: The Rates of Death and Displacement Can Be Much Higher

Yangon – The Arakan conflict in western Burma might have taken many more lives than the official report of 50 plus deaths. According to sources from Arakan state, more Rohingyas have been killed, but an exact number of deaths and displaced people is difficult to obtain as the government has barred journalists and relief organizations from visiting various places.

According to a letter submitted to a Member of Parliament U Shwe Maung by a Muslim community representative from the town of Sittwe, 159 Rohingyas were killed and 1,240 people are missing. The list that accounts for the Sittwe area from June 9 to 18 shows that 800 people have been injured (bullet and knife wounds). The list also shows that 94,613 Rohingya minority people have been displaced.

An email exchange between Rohingya activists in Thailand and Europe indicates, however, that the actual numbers are much higher.

A freelance reporter, who remains to be anonymous, predicts that Rohingya people in places where journalists are denied access to might be facing severe treatments including extra judicial killings and forced relocation.

Information shows that Border Administration Force (or Na Sa Ka) and security police have been raiding the homes of the Rohingyas, randomly shooting people, and secretly disposing bodies.

A Rohingya youth in Germany told MMSY News that he lost three relatives in Sittwe and that one is still missing. He added that Muslims’ homes are being bulldozed in the town of Sittwe.

Mg Win, a Rohingya migrant worker in Bangkok whose family lives in Sittwe, said, “People have been taken away, but they were not told where they have been taken to”.

The Burmese media, especially the domestic Burmese language journals, including Weekly Eleven, the Voice, and 7Days News have been reporting that Rohingyas are burning down their own homes.

Mg Win complaints, however, that the media reports are not accurate as houses are being burnt down by ethnic Rakhines and authorities.

Win Than, a migrant woman in Bangkok, agrees with Mg Win. She said her house in Sittwe was burnt down, and her family has been living in her grandparents’ village. She added that Na Sa Ka and security police are forcing Rohingyas to sign that they burnt down their own homes.

Although the scene in Sittwe seems calm presently, widespread but silent killing and house burning are still happening in various places. Rohingyas are specifically targeted by the authorities. “Even in Sittwe, Muslims (not just ethnic Rohingyas) are being forced out of their homes,” said Win Than.

Families who lost their family registration papers due to fire are being arrested. Burmese authorities are charging them with illegal entry without carefully examining whether they are residents or illegal immigrants.

Rohingya women have been targeted for rape as well. On June 15th, Na Sa Ka and security police located in the Maungdaw township raped five women between the ages of 14 and 35.

During the climax of the conflict, entire Rohingya villages were burnt down by Na Sa Ka. People were killed in their own homes; they could not leave due to Curfew. The bodies were transported by military trucks.

When sources were asked why the Rohingya side is still not able to provide photos or evidence of killing and burning experienced by the Rohingya, the sources said that it is difficult for Rohingyas to get photos. Many are still hiding in their houses as they have been shot as soon as they step outside their homes. Taking photos of the incidents and/or communicating information to outside world is virtually impossible.

Meanwhile, journalists and relief organizations are not allowed to freely collect information in Arakan state. The actual extent of killing, displacement, and injuries (estimated to be at a higher rate than previously disclosed) will continue to be unknown to the public.

On June 22nd, the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned the public that the Arakan state could face “severe humanitarian crisis” due to the conflict.