Myanmar: Abuses against Rohingyas erode human rights progress

Myanmar: Abuses against Rohingyas erode human rights progress

Six weeks after a state of emergency was declared in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, targeted attacks and other violations by security forces against minority Rohingyas and other Muslims have increased, Amnesty International said today.

Communal violence in the state has also continued, the organization said.

“Declaring a state of emergency is not a license to commit human rights violations,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International’s Myanmar Researcher.  “It is the duty of security forces to defend the rights of everyone—without exception or discrimination—from abuses by others, while abiding by human rights standards themselves.”
The Myanmar government declared a state of emergency in Rakhine State on 10 June, following an outbreak of communal violence the previous week among the Buddhist Rakhine, Muslim Rakhine, and Muslim Rohingya communities.  It remains in effect in several areas.
Since then, Myanmar’s Border Security Force (nasaka), army, and police have conducted massive sweeps in areas that are heavily populated by Rohingyas.  Hundreds of mostly men and boys have been detained, with nearly all held incommunicado, and some subjected to ill-treatment.
While the restoration of order, security, and the protection of human rights is necessary, most arrests appear to have been arbitrary and discriminatory, violating the rights to liberty and to freedom from discrimination on grounds of religion.
“In six weeks, Myanmar has not only added to a long litany of human rights violations against the Rohingya, but has also done an about-turn on the situation of political imprisonment,” said Zawacki.
“After more than a year of prisoner amnesties and releases, the overall number of political prisoners in Myanmar is again on the rise.”
Anyone arrested since 10 June must be either charged with an internationally recognized offence and be remanded by an independent court, or released.  Any judicial proceedings must meet international standards of fairness and must not include the imposition of the death penalty.
Amnesty International has also received credible reports of other human rights abuses against Rohingyas and other Rakhine Muslims—including physical abuse, rape, destruction of property, and unlawful killings—carried out by both Rakhine Buddhists and security forces.  The authorities should stop these acts and prevent others from occurring.
The incident occurred on 3 June, a large group of local Rakhine Buddhists killed 10 Muslims in Taung Gouk township in Rakhine State, who were returning by bus to their homes in Yangon.
Myanmar’s National Human Rights Commission said on 11 July that at least 78 people have been killed since the violence began, but unofficial estimates exceed 100.
Between 50,000 and 90,000 people—with lower figures coming from the government and higher ones from UN agencies—are estimated to have been displaced.
The discrepancy between the figures is largely due to the Myanmar authorities allowing extremely limited access to independent and international monitors as well as humanitarian aid workers.
“The human rights and humanitarian needs of those affected by the violence depend on the presence of monitors and aid workers,” said Zawacki.
“The Myanmar authorities are compounding the error by exacerbating the suffering of those displaced by the violence and violations.”
Amnesty International is calling on Myanmar’s Parliament to amend or repeal the 1982 Citizenship Law to ensure that Rohingyas are no longer stateless.
“Under international human rights law and standards, no one may be left or rendered stateless.  For too long Myanmar’s human rights record has been marred by the continued denial of citizenship for Rohingyas and a host of discriminatory practices against them,” said Zawacki.

For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
In Bangkok: Benjamin Zawacki, benjamin.zawacki@amnesty.org, +66 81 138 1912

OIC leads global campaign to protect Rohingya Muslims

Friday 20 July 2012

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has launched a major international campaign to put an end to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Arakan state of Myanmar and protect their legitimate rights.

OIC offices in Geneva, New York, and Brussels are making intense efforts to foster international intervention in the issue. The OIC is in touch with the United Nations, UN Human Rights Council, European Union and other international organizations to halt the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeledin Ihsanoglu strongly condemned the renewed repression of Rohingyas since June 2012, which has resulted in deaths of innocent civilians, burning of their homes and mosques, and forcing them to leave their homeland.

He added that over the past three decades, Rohingya Muslim citizens had been subjected to gross violation of human rights including ethnic cleansing, killings, rape, and forced displacement by Myanmar security forces.

“The recent restoration of democracy in Myanmar had raised hopes in the international community that oppression against Rohingya Muslims would end, and that they would be able to enjoy equal rights and opportunities. However, the renewed violence against Rohingyas has caused great concern to the OIC,” Ihsanoglu said.

“When efforts of the international community including the United Nations were underway for a peaceful resolution of the issue, the OIC was shocked by the unfortunate remarks of President Thien Sein disowning Rohingya Muslims as citizens of Myanmar,” he said.

The OIC chief stressed that the Myanmar government, as a member of the United Nations and ASEAN, had to adhere to the international human rights charters, including the relevant conventions and declarations, in treatment of its citizens.

Ihsanoglu referred to the UN declaration that the Rohingyas are an ethnic, religious and linguistic minority from western Burma. Historical facts show that Rohingyas have been present in the land of Myanmar for centuries before the arrival of the British and before the formation of Burma.

“In spite of this, the government of Myanmar continues to persecute and discriminate against the Rohingyas,” he said, adding that the citizenship law of 1982 violated international norms by stripping the Rohingyas unjustly of their right to citizenship.

Ihsanoglu hoped that the Myanmar government would respond to the concerns of the international community in a positive and constructive manner, so that all its Rohingya Muslims are able to return to their homeland in honor, safety and dignity. 

“The OIC Charter stipulates that the organization should assist Muslim minorities and communities outside the member states to preserve their dignity, cultural and religious identity,” he added. “Myanmar should recognize that its new engagement at the international level does not only come with opportunities but also with responsibilities,” Ihsanoglu said.

The OIC intends to send a delegation to Myanmar after meeting with its permanent representative to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Ihsanoglu called on the Myanmar government to order an immediate probe into the slaughtering of Rohingya Muslims to bring those responsible to justice.

The OIC chief recently sent a letter to Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi urging her to help end the violence against the Rohingya community. “As a Nobel Peace laureate, we are confident that the first step of your journey toward ensuring peace in the world would start from your own doorstep, and that you would play a positive role in putting an end to the violence that has afflicted Arakan State,” it said.

The OIC chief suggested that Suu Kyi could make the government in Naypyidaw agree to an international inquiry into the recent violence, granting free access to humanitarian aid groups and international media in Arakan as well as expediting the return of the victims to their respective homes.

Rohingyas living in Arakan State of Burma are one of the most forgotten and persecuted peoples on earth. Their population is about three million, of which about 1.5 million are in diasporas in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK and Europe.

“The successive Burmese regimes have subjected them to institutionalized persecution, and the ruling civilianized military government is no exception,” said Nurul Islam, president of Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO).

The Thein Sein government's wind of change has not touched the Rohingyas yet, he said. Even the very word “Rohingya” is blacklisted and unmentionable, while the authorities have described them as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh”, he added. 

According to Nurul Islam, the primary factor that has led the Rohingyas to suffer grave human rights violations or crimes against humanity in Burma is their religion and ethnicity.

“Arbitrary killings, rape, torture, land confiscation, forced labor, forced relocation, theft, extortion and so on, perpetrated by the authorities in cohort with local miscreants and xenophobes, are widespread,” he said. The phenomenon can be described as slow burning genocide, which aims at ethnic cleansing or driving the Rohingyas into Bangladesh, he said.

In 1982, late dictator Ne Win enacted a new citizenship law that violated several fundamental principles of international charters and rendered the Rohingyas stateless. Their basic freedoms, such as freedom of movement, marriage and education, and economic activities are under humiliating restrictions.

Extension, repairs and renovation, and construction of new mosques or religious institutes have been prohibited. Muslim relics, monuments and place names have been erased. All these attempts aim at effacing the Muslim character of Arakan, said Nurul Islam.

A planned increase in Buddhist settler villages has caused serious demographic changes in Rohingya homeland. Vast tracks of their lands have been confiscated, forcing the Rohingyas to become increasingly landless, internally displaced, and to eventually starve them out to cross the border into Bangladesh.

There are 28,000 legal and over 200,000 illegal Rohingya refugees living in squalid condition in southern Chittagong, Bangladesh. The illegal refugees are vulnerable, often subject to arrest and harassment by security forces.

As a result, many Rohingyas become desperate and voyage in rickety boats to Southeast Asian countries in search of protection and food security. Since 2009, many died, over a thousand drowned, while scores of others were rescued or jailed in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and East Timor. A number of them were victimized at the hands of greedy exploiters and human traffickers.

Given their position of statelessness, food insecurity, denial of access to education and employment, lack of security of life, property, dignity and honor, the Rohingyas have virtually become a “dying alive” population in their own homeland. “This impossible situation is a 'push factor' that the Burmese government has created. They want the Rohingyas to slowly leave their hearth and home,” said Nurul Islam, who has repeatedly appealed to the international community to address the root cause of the Rohingya problem for a permanent solution. He has also requested for international protection in the absence of national protection.

The tragedy of Burmese Muslims | Professor Dr.Elmasry

Elmasry is a professor emeritus of computer engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada.

Muslims have been victims of discrimination and human rights violations in Burma for many decades. 

General Aung San, father of modern Burma, envisioned a more open nation with respect for differences. Aung San, head of the Burma Independence Army and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, managed to maneuver the British into agreeing to Burmese independence, but he and much of his cabinet were murdered in 1947 in a coup d’état before independence.

Aung San was reaching out to Burmese minorities to grant them minority rights, satisfying many but not all. For example, the Karens, with a sizeable Christian (Methodist) minority, undertook an armed revolt. However, with the coup all recognition of minority rights was off, and many armed revolts erupted. 

Roughly a third of the Burmese population is made up of a large number of ethnic minorities. Muslim Rohingyas make up around 4% of the population. Unlike other minority groups, they are not seen as Burmese citizens but as illegal immigrants. This is in spite of a very long history of Muslims in the Rakhine (Arakan) sector of what is now Burma (or Myanmar). 

Burma’s first Prime Minister, U Nu, was responsible for making Buddhism the state religion. He was overthrown in 1962 by General Ne Win, who expelled Muslims from the army. Turning to more recent times, Burma was the scene of an anti-Muslim riot in reaction to the Taliban destruction of the world-famous Buddha sculptures in Afghanistan. Bigotry begets bigotry. Another riot occurred because of damage by unknown persons to a statue of Buddha in Mandalay. 

The most recent major outburst against the Rohingyas specifically began in June of last year. It started in reaction to the rape and murder of a Rakhine (Arakan) Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Ten Muslims were hauled off a bus and killed by a Buddhist mob and Burmese troops. Following this atrocity, there have been killings and property destruction on the part of both Buddhist and Muslim mobs, with people of good will on both sides condemning the mayhem. 

Homes and businesses have been destroyed. Muslims have been tortured, raped, and murdered. Displaced Rohingyas have been placed in concentration camps. Aid workers warn of malnutrition, if not starvation. Buddhist monks have blocked food transports, and aid workers have been driven out and arrested.

Looking at the situation from a longer perspective, since 1978, Amnesty International reported on the Rohingya situation: 

“The Rohingyas’ freedom of movement is severely restricted and the vast majority of them have effectively been denied Burma citizenship. 

They are also subjected to various forms of extortion and arbitrary taxation; land confiscation; forced eviction and house destruction; and financial restrictions on marriage. Rohingyas continue to be used as forced labourers on roads and at military camps, although the amount of forced labour in northern Rakhine State has decreased over the last decade.

“In 1978 over 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, following the ‘Nagamin’ (‘Dragon King’) operation of the Myanmar army. Officially this campaign aimed at ‘scrutinising each individual living in the state, designating citizens and foreigners in accordance with the law and taking action against foreigners who had filtered into the country illegally.’ 

This military campaign directly targeted civilians, and resulted in widespread killings, rape and destruction of mosques and further religious persecution.

“During 1991-92 a new wave of over a quarter of a million Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. They reported widespread forced labour, as well as summary executions, torture, and rape.”

Over the years, Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring countries, some to Bangladesh which borders with their section of Burma, some to Thailand. Neither country is receptive. Bangladesh is negotiating with Burma to return Rohingyas. There have been instances where boats of Rohingyas reaching Thailand have been towed out to sea and allowed to sink. 

Faisal, the late Saudi King, welcomed Rohingya refugees, but with his passing the attitude has shifted. Syed Neaz Ahmad, a British academic who found himself in a Saudi prison for some unknown reason, reported in an article in the Guardian in 2009 that some 3000 Rohingya families were in Saudi prisons awaiting deportation. At the time, it was unclear who would accept them. 

Who will help the desperate Rohingyas? Who will demand that the new “reformist” government of Burma allow aid workers back into the camps, give Rohingyas citizenship, and protect their rights?