HUMANITY GONE AMOK IN BURMA, SAVE ROHINGYA PEOPLE

HUMANITY GONE AMOK IN BURMA,
SAVE ROHINGYA PEOPLE

We the undersigned organizations have strongly condemned President Thein Sein for his disowning the Rohingyas.  It is an irresponsible action that the President had proposed UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres that sending the Rohingyas to refugee camps run by the UNHCR was the “only solution” to the issue. He also nonsensically said, “We will send them away if any third country would accept them”.

The statement of the President Thein Sein affirms the Government’s premeditated plan and direct involvement in the killing, destruction, rape, extortion, loot and starvation of the Rohingyas in Arakan. It can be considered a case of genocide.

The Rohingyas have a long glorious history in Arakan. There is no doubt the Rohingya population has been in Burma since before the formation of the State. By international law they are NOT ‘stateless’ in Burma. They conform to a genuine and effective link with no other State except Burma. The Government does not wish to recognize Rohingyas’ citizenship does not make them stateless.
The fundamental obligations of the State are to protect all persons within its jurisdictions. It is factually nonsense to call ‘illegally entered Rohingyas’. It is time for Bangladesh to stand up against Burmese Government’s false accusation.
We, therefore, appeal to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to immediately intervene in the issue in order to save the life, property, honour and human dignity of the Rohingya people. We also urge upon the EU, ASEAN, USA and all governments and international community to pressurize the Burmese Government to stop persecution of Rohingyas and to restore their rights and freedom on par with other ethnic groups of the country.
Signatories:
1.    Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO),
2.    Burmese Rohingya Association Japan (BRAJ)
3.    Burmese Rohingya Association Deuschland (BRAD)
4.    Burmese Rohingya Association in Thailand (BRAT)
5.    Burmese Rohingya Community in Australia (BRCA)
6.    Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK)
7.    National Democratic Party for Human Rights  (In Exile)
8.    Rohingya Community in Norway (RCN)
9.    Rohingya League for Democracy (Burma) (RLDB)
For more information , please contact:
Aman Ullah        +880-15584 86910
U Hla Aung         +33   -629258793
U Tun Khin        +44- 788 871 4866

UN refugee chief rejects call to resettle Rohingya

YANGON, Myanmar — The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on Thursday rejected a suggestion by Myanmar's president that the world body resettle or take care of ethnic Rohingyas who have settled in the Southeast Asian country.
UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres told reporters it was not his agency's job to resettle the Rohingya, who live in western Myanmar but without Myanmar citizenship.
On his website, President Thein Sein said he told Guterres in a meeting Wednesday that the solution to ethnic enmity in Myanmar's western Rakhine state was to either send the Rohingya to a third country or have the UNHCR look after them.
Clashes last month between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslin Rohingya left at least 78 people dead and tens of thousands homeless. The Rakhine consider the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
Thein Sein described the violence at the time as a threat to the democratic and economic reforms his government launched after decades of repressive rule by a military junta.
"The resettlement programs organized by UNHCR are for refugees who are fleeing a country to another, in very specific circumstances. Obviously, it's not related to this situation," said Guterres.
Thein Sein's reported suggestion to Guterres left unclear exactly how many people he had in mind. The U.N. estimates there are about 800,000 Rohingya in Myanmar. The count includes people of Bengali heritage who settled centuries ago, as well as people who may have entered the country in recent decades.
Many people in Myanmar don't recognize as legitimate settlers even those of Bengali heritage who came in the 19th century, when Myanmar was under British rule and called Burma.
Large exoduses of Rohingya to Bangladesh in the 1980s and 1990s because of persecution, and their subsequent return, also add to the confusion over who is an illegal immigrant.
Thein Sein told Guterres that according to Myanmar law, those Bengalis who settled in Myanmar before the country gained independence from Britain in 1948 and their children are regarded as citizens. However, post-independence immigrants are officially considered illegal and threatening to the country's stability.
In practice, it is difficult for many people of Bengali heritage to obtain citizenship, and they face discriminatory legal restrictions on movement, marriage and reproduction.
"We will take responsibility of our ethnic nationals but it is impossible to accept those Rohingyas who are not our ethnic nationals who had entered the country illegally. The only solution is to hand those illegal Rohingyas to the UNHCR or to send them to any third country that would accept them," Thein Sein told Guterres, according to his web

Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar

LAST spring, a flowering of democracy in Myanmar mesmerized the world. But now, three months after the democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won a parliamentary seat, and a month after she traveled to Oslo to belatedly receive the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, an alarm bell is ringing in Myanmar. In the villages of Arakan State, near the Bangladeshi border, a pogrom against a population of Muslims called the Rohingyas began in June. It is the ugly side of Myanmar’s democratic transition — a rotting of the flower, even as it seems to bloom.

Cruelty toward the Rohingyas is not new. They have faced torture, neglect and repression in the Buddhist-majority land since it achieved independence in 1948. Its constitution closes all options for Rohingyas to be citizens, on grounds that their ancestors didn’t live there when the land, once called Burma, came under British rule in the 19th century (a contention the Rohingyas dispute). Even now, as military rulers have begun to loosen their grip, there is no sign of change for the Rohingyas. Instead, the Burmese are trying to cast them out.

The current violence can be traced to the rape and killing in late May of a Buddhist woman, for which the police reportedly detained three Muslims. That was followed by mob attacks on Rohingyas and other Muslims that killed dozens of people. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, state security forces have now conducted mass arrests of Muslims; they destroyed thousands of homes, with the impact falling most heavily on the Rohingyas. Displaced Rohingyas have tried to flee across the Naf River to neighboring Bangladesh; some have died in the effort.

The Burmese media have cited early rioting by Rohingyas and have cast them as terrorists and traitors. In mid-June, in the name of stopping such violence, the government declared a state of emergency. But it has used its border security force to burn houses, kill men and evict Rohingyas from their villages. And on Thursday, President Thein Sein suggested that Myanmar could end the crisis by expelling all of its Rohingyas or by having the United Nations resettle them — a proposal that a United Nations official quickly rejected.

This is not sectarian violence; it is state-supported ethnic cleansing, and the nations of the world aren’t pressing Myanmar’s leaders to stop it. Even Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has not spoken out.

In mid-June, after some Rohingyas fled by boat to villages in Bangladesh, they told horrifying stories to a team of journalists whom I accompanied to this city near the border. They said they had come under fire from a helicopter and that three of six boats were lost. Some children drowned during the four-day trip; others died of hunger. Once in Bangladesh, they said, the families faced deportation back to Myanmar. But some children who had become separated from their parents made their way to the houses of villagers for shelter; other children may even now be starving in hide-outs or have become prey for criminal networks. Border guards found an abandoned newborn on a boat; after receiving medical treatment, the infant was left in the temporary care of a local fisherman.

Why isn’t this pogrom arousing more international indignation? Certainly, Myanmar has become a destination for capital investment now that the United States, the European Union and Canada have accepted the government’s narrative of democratic transition and have largely lifted the economic sanctions they began applying after 1988 (measures that did not prevent China, India, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore and multinational oil companies from doing business with the Burmese). Still, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Myanmar late last year and welcomed its first steps toward democratization, she also set down conditions for strengthening ties, including an end to ethnic violence.

The plight of the Rohingyas begins with their statelessness — the denial of citizenship itself, for which Myanmar is directly responsible. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, though not as powerful as the military officers who control Myanmar’s transition, should not duck questions about the Rohingyas, as she has done while being feted in the West. Instead, she should be using her voice and her reputation to point out that citizenship is a basic right of all humans. On July 5, the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, appealed to her to speak up to help end the violence.

To be sure, Bangladesh can do more. Its river border with Myanmar is unprotected; thousands of Rohingyas have been rowing or swimming it at night. But even though Bangladesh has sheltered such refugees in the past — hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas live here now, legally or illegally — it has been reluctant so far this year to welcome them, out of fear of encouraging an overwhelming new influx. Already, such fears have aroused anti-Rohingya sentiment among some Bangladeshis, and initially Bangladesh’s government tried to force the refugees back without assisting them. After some villagers risked arrest by sheltering refugees in their homes, the government began to offer humanitarian aid, before sending them back on their boats. Bangladesh should shelter the refugees as it has in years past, as the international community is urging.

But the world should be putting its spotlight on Myanmar. It should not so eagerly welcome democracy in a country that leaves thousands of stateless men and women floating in a river, their corpses washing up on its shores, after they have been reviled in, and driven from, a land in which their families have lived for centuries.

Moshahida Sultana Ritu, an economist, teaches at the University of Dhaka, in Bangladesh.

Supporting Rohingya human rights draws ugly attacks

(Opinion) – Burma Campaign UK (BCUK) supports human rights for the Rohingya people. For Burma Campaign UK to make such a statement shouldn’t be surprising or controversial.

We are a human rights organization working on Burma. How could anyone disagree that the Rohingya people are entitled to full human rights and the normal rights and protections under international law?

But some people see that statement as such an outrage that Burma Campaign UK staff deserve to be raped and killed. We need to be “punished,” “taught a lesson” and “hung.” All these views and many more – many vicious and obscene – have been emailed to us or posted on YouTube and Facebook.

The level of abuse, hatred and anger directed against Burma Campaign UK and other organizations who say that Rohingya should have human rights, and which work with Rohingya to defend their human rights, has been astonishing.

There has even been a demonstration in Rangoon, outside the British Embassy, which, as well as attacking exiled media in almost exactly the same way the dictatorship used to, accused Burma Campaign UK of “propaganding” for the Rohingya. I doubt anyone in that protest could cite an example of us “propaganding,” whatever that means, but in the current hysteria some people seem willing to believe anything they hear as long as it is anti-Rohingya.

That they were allowed to protest at all was a good sign, but have those people also used their new freedoms to protest for the release of hundreds of political prisoners still in jail, or to protest against the Burmese Army raping women in Kachin State?

The hysteria has gone to such levels that some people from Burma are claiming, and, incredibly, others are believing, that Burma Campaign UK somehow stirred up the violence which broke out in Arakan State. They claim that we are responsible for the violence that has taken place

Burma Campaign UK has long faced criticism for supporting human rights for the Rohingya, and for a variety of sometimes bizarre reasons, as well as what may be genuine misunderstandings.

One lie being spread around on blogs, emails and sites like Facebook is that we are making money out of working for Rohingya. Burma Campaign UK has never received a grant for working on Rohingya issues. In any case, all of Burma Campaign UK’s income is spent on campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. We are a nonprofit organization.

Another lie in a similar vein is that Middle East countries fund us. Sometimes it is implied we are funded as part of a Middle East plot to take over Burma and turn it into a Muslim country.  It is even claimed that there is evidence for this. When Rohingya activists attended an Organisation of Islamic Conference meeting and set up the Arakan Rohingya Union, pictures were posted on Arakan blogs of the delegation, with captions and an article saying I was in the picture, and this was proof that I and Burma Campaign UK were taking Middle East money.

The only problem was, I wasn’t in the picture. I didn’t even know the event was taking place. The person in the picture was Harn Yawnghwe from the Euro Burma Office. At the time we thought it funny that people making these attacks could not even tell the difference between a Shan Prince and myself, we never expected it to be taken so seriously, but this lie took hold. It was spread on email and more blogs, on Facebook, and people actually believed it. On my recent trip to Burma, even very senior democracy leaders in Rangoon talked about it.

One common lie is that we support the Rohingya having a state of their own. We have never said that, and although some Rohingya organizations talked about this decades ago, we have never even heard any Rohingya organization saying they want their own state. There seems to be some great misunderstanding that if the Rohingya are recognized as an ethnic group, somehow that will entitle them to land or their own state. This simply isn’t true, and Burma Campaign UK has never said we support that.

Another reason we are attacked over Rohingya issues is that we have a Muslim staff member. From the moment Wai Hnin Pwint Thon joined Burma Campaign UK, messages started to be left on our Facebook Page by people from Burma, attacking her because she is a Muslim.

It was not until years later when she was pictured at a demonstration protesting against the dictatorship’s abuses of the Rohingya that it became Rohingya linked abuse posted on our Page. But now Wai Hnin Pwint Thon is subject to torrents of abuse, much more than our non-Muslim staff and volunteers who were on the same demonstration as she was, and have been on other protests with Rohingya as well.

Lies posted and spread about Wai Hnin Pwint Thon include that she is secretly Rohingya (she isn’t), she has been accused of working with Rohingya Solidarity Organization (she doesn’t), of wanting to create a Caliphate in Burma (she doesn’t), of taking money from Rohingya (she hasn’t), and even that she has had several children with different Rohingya men (she hasn’t). She has faced not just lies but abuse, much of it sexual in nature.

Many people seem to think that any lie or story they hear about someone with any connection to supporting Rohingya human rights is justification for personal attacks, abuse and even threats. Given that this is the way their leaders behave, perhaps that is not surprising.

Around a year ago, I tried to engage Dr. Aye Chan in a conversation on why he and his followers spent much more time criticising Rohingya than they did the dictatorship. Aye Chan was incapable of having the discussion without repeatedly making personal attacks. The email conversation was forwarded to various email groups, and my in-box was flooded with abusive emails. When I asked Aye Chan to ask his supporters not to use personal abuse and threats, and to condemn those who do, he repeatedly refused to do so. When leaders not only fail to condemn abusive and personal attacks, but even make personal attacks themselves, their followers will copy their behaviour.

More recently we have been accused of being pro-Rohingya. I am still not exactly sure what that means. Certainly we are pro-human rights for the Rohingya, how could we or anyone else who believes in democracy and human rights not be?

But the implication is that we are pro-Rohingya, and therefore somehow anti-Rakhine. It is worrying how so many people now see the two as automatically going together. Burma Campaign UK supports the human rights of everyone in Burma, and that includes Rohingya and Rakhine. To talk about Rohingya having human rights does not make us anti-Rakhine. We have campaigned on many Rakhine related issues, including Shwe gas, Rakhine political prisoners, and were one of the few campaign groups actively campaigning for the 34 Rakhine and Karen prisoners in jail in India.

Burma Campaign UK has been criticised for not doing enough on Rakhine issues, and this is also cited as evidence of some kind of pro-Rohingya bias. But we have never refused any request when we have been asked to work on any Rakhine related issue by any Rakhine community or human rights group. We would do more on Arakan issues, but some members of the Arakan community in the UK will not work with us because we support human rights for the Rohingya. When we tried to meet with Arakan community leaders, it took months to arrange, and only one person turned up. In the past we made repeated offers of all kinds of training and support to the Arakan community in UK, and to groups in exile, and none have been taken up.

Burma Campaign UK was also fiercely criticized for circulating information from the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK about the recent violence. Circulating information on behalf of human rights groups is a major part of our work. Every year we circulate media releases, briefings and reports from dozens of organisations from Burma, and from international NGOs.

If any organization working on Arakan human rights had also provide a briefing with information not being reported, we would have circulated that as well. But they didn’t.

I have tried to have some conversations with some of the people criticizing myself and Burma Campaign UK for bias, asking them for examples. So far no one has been able to provide a single one. Yet the perception remains.

It seems impossible to dispel the belief by some that working for Rohingya human rights means bias against Rakhine. From our perspective, it seems that this is a deliberate tactic of extremists to polarize the debate and incite more hatred and intolerance.

Any public comment or photograph relating to the Rohingya seems to act as a lightning rod for more abuse and threats, and this article will probably result in the same.

But I hope some people may take the time to consider the truth. What possible reason or interest could Burma Campaign UK have in being biased?

Our agenda is solely human rights and democracy. We have been working relentlessly for this for more than 20 years. Why have people been so ready to believe lies and bad things about people who have worked so hard to support their cause? And why do people not simply ask what the truth is before passing on lies and gossip?

Even for those who disagree with Burma Campaign UK, is it right that we should receive threats and abuse just for having a different opinion than them? That is the approach and mind set of the dictatorship. It shouldn’t be the way things are done in a democracy. People do need to ask themselves why they are so ready to believe these lies.

The terrible events in Arakan State in the past month and the reaction of many people to those events, casts a long shadow over Burma. Violence and intolerance took hold. Is this the kind of Burma people want to see in the future?

Isn’t one of the main reasons for having a democracy that disagreements can be debated and settled politically, not through violence and threats?

Burma’s democracy movement is an anti-dictatorship movement, but it must also be a movement for human rights, for tolerance and for equality.

Rohingya Raised at ASEAN Meeting

The Southeast Asian body vows to monitor the plight of the ethnic group unwanted in Burma and Bangladesh.

A Rohingya Muslim family seen in the Burmese-Bangladesh border after fleeing violence in Burma's Rakhine state, June 12, 2012. 

The head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) raised the issue of the Rohingyas with the top diplomats of Burma and Bangladesh on Friday, vowing to monitor the Muslim ethnic group unwanted by both countries.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan has taken “a personal interest” in the Rohingyas and had spoken directly to Burmese and Bangladeshi representatives during a meeting of the grouping’s foreign ministers in Cambodia’s Phnom Penh this week, according to the ASEAN website.

Both Burmese Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin and his Bangladeshi counterpart Dipu Moni agreed to cooperate and keep ASEAN informed on the status of the ethnic group following deadly ethnic violence between Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines in western Burma in June.

"We will keep our eyes and ears on the plight of these unfortunate people," Surin said on completion of the ASEAN meeting and talks between ASEAN ministers and their foreign counterparts.

He said he appreciated the concern of the ASEAN people for the “sufferings” of the Rohingyas, who number around 800,000 in Burma and are considered to be some of the world's most persecuted minorities.

Aside from Burma, Rohingyas also live as migrant workers in many of the other ASEAN states—Brunei,  Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Burmese President Thein Sein had requested the United Nations refugee agency this week place Rohingyas in refugee camps or send them out of the country. His request was immediately refused by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Many of Burma’s Rohingyas have lived in the country for generations, but Thein Sein said that the ethnic minority is made up of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and that “we cannot accept them here.”

Bangladesh, where an estimated 300,000 Rohingyas live, has turned back boatloads of the oppressed group arriving on its shores since the outbreak of the unrest.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also in Phnom Penh this week attending the ASEAN meeting, met with Thein Sein in Siem Reap ahead of a U.S.-ASEAN business forum and raised the issue of the Rohingyas with the Burmese leader, officials said.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Clinton stressed Washington’s willingness “to be supportive of help with internally displaced people (IDP),” referring to the Muslim ethnic group.

The official said that Thein Sein had not responded directly, other than to say that the general situation with regard to the Rohingyas had been “very dangerous for the country” and that Burma “needed continued help and support with IDPs.”

“They talked about the situation … He talked about how difficult it had been. She offered that if more support was needed with IDPs that we could be supportive,” the official said.

UN Request

Violence between Rohingyas and the Rakhines that flared in June has left some 78 people dead and 90,000 displaced and living in camps, according to government statistics.

The clashes were sparked after an ethnic Rakhine woman was allegedly raped and killed by three Rohingya men in late May. On June 3, a group of Rakhine vigilantes attacked and killed 10 Rohingyas on a bus they believed were responsible for the woman’s death.

On June 8, thousands of Rohingyas rioted in Maungdaw, destroying Rakhine property, burning homes, and causing an unknown number of deaths. In the aftermath, Rohingyas carried out similar attacks on Rakhines elsewhere around the state.

ASEAN foreign ministers had earlier tasked the ASEAN Secretariat to monitor the situation of the Rohingyas and keep them updated after thousands were turned away from countries where they sought asylum.

According to the UNHCR, around one million Rohingyas are now thought to live outside Burma, but they have not been welcomed by a third country.