Thursday 6 December 2012

Nasaka fire on Rohingya in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Burma border security force (Nasaka) open fired to the villagers of Bagona villagers but, no one was wounded today night at about 9:00pm, according to an elder from Bagona village.

“A group of Nasaka numbering about 40, entered Bagona east village with the name of family list checking and arrested 5 villagers with false allegation – involving in the riot- where the villagers screamed for help. Hearing the scream, the west side of villagers rushed to the spot. The Nasaka released the villagers when they saw villagers.”
After half an hour, the Nasaka again entered to Bagona west, but the villagers screamed for help, similarly, the east side villagers rushed to the west side where Nasaka open fired to the villagers when they saw the come to the village, said Anwer from Maungdaw who had connection with his relative in Bagona village.
“At last, the Nasaka entered to the village market and set on fire the fish market line, but the villagers managed to control the fire.”
The villagers are not sleeping in the homes and stay in the village to protect from security force from set on fire, a village admin official said.
“The Nasaka are from Padinn( Fatan Za) to extort money from villagers which is going as routine one village to another under their control.”
“The Nasaka always going to Rohingya villages – in Maungdaw municipal or rural areas- in the name of family list checking - a method to extort money from Rohingya villagers – after June riot. The Rohingyas from Maungdaw are always aware for fear of arrest when the Nasaka , police , army enter to their villages. The Rohingyas run away from the villages when the security force entered the village. In this situation, the security force used the opportunity to loot, rape and extorting money with allegation of runaway to Bangladesh for absenting family member.” 
When try to contact the Nasska out post of Padinn, no one received the call to answer about the event.

Security force harass Rohingya to extort money in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Security force from Pahlapa camp of MaungNi village under Burma border security force (Nasaka) headquarters harassed Rohingya villagers to extort money with false allegation, according to a student from the village who didn’t want to be mention.

“A security officer-Aung Myint Soe- who referred the director of Nasaka and used the power to extort money from villagers with false allegation. He summoned the villagers who have money and able to pay if he used his power to harass them.”
Aung Myint Soe summoned three Rohingya villagers- Hashim, son of Shaker Husson, Osman Goni, son of Abdul Latif and Illiyas , son of Gafor- with false allegation of holding Bangladesh mobile phone and arrested them asked huge money for released. When they refused to pay money, Aung Myint Soe kept them in the camp where they were tortured until to fulfil the demand, said a victim of Aung Myint Soe.
“Aung Myint Soe collected 700,000 kyat from Hashim, 500,000 kyat from Osman Gani and 400,000 kyat from Illiyas.”
Try to contact Aung Myint Soe, personnel mobile phone -0949584802- but no received the called. But, he has also Bangladeshi mobile phone, not able to get the contact with it.
“Most of security force are using Bangladesh mobile phone and also hired the Bangladeshi phone to Rohingya through their agent with monthly base,” said a businessman who used Nasaka hired phone for his safety.
Besides, the Pahlapa camp used through their agent- ex village admin officer, Mohamed Rashid- to collect money from prawn pond – 3000 per pond per month and weekly the pond owner had to supply the security force- one pack of coffee Mix, sugar 2 kg and two bundles of fire woods, said a pond owner.

Village administrator’s harassments to local villagers in Buthidaung

Buthidaung, Arakan State:  A village administrator of Buthidaung south has been giving arbitrary harassments to the local villagers accompanied by police and Sarapa (Military Intelligence), according to a village elder who denied to be named.  
“The village administrator is identified as U Maung Than Htay (35), son of U Hla Shwe, hailed from Pron Chaung village of Buthidaung south.”

“The village administrator is from Rakhine community, so he is free from guilty what to do anything against the Rohingya villagers, especially he has been extracting money from villagers by giving false and fabricated allegations to the villagers with the help of Sarapa and police.”

He extorts Kyat 200,000 to 400,000 from each of the villager by threatening with Sarapa or police. There is no law and order. The security forces or Rakhine authorities have been increasing harassments against the Rohingya community since June, this year, said another local leader of the village preferring not to be named. 

After giving allegation, the village administrator arrests the villagers by police or Sarapa and releases them after taking money. This is the normal function of village administrator. He becomes a rich man in the village tract.

He has to control ---Prying Taung village, Paron Chaung Muslim village, Shwe Tapyin, and Dudan villages of Pron Chaung village tract of Buthidaung Township.
When asked the village administration officer, “It is my duty to do this kind of works for authority, I don’t need to inform anybody.”
There is no military security force since November 20, but Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) is present and it does not give any trouble to the Rohingya villages, said a trader from the locality.

The villagers are not allowed to go out of the villages, so far and they did not able to grow their paddy fields fully, but half of the fields were being grown because of movement restriction.

These kinds of persecutions and harassments against the Rohingya people are to be seen very simple by the world community but in really, it is very, very harmful to the Rohingya villagers due to jobless and no earning sources since June this year.  Villagers have been contained in the villages, said a businessman.

Homeless and helpless: The Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state

Homeless Rohingya Refugee , homelesss - Getty Image

Andrew Buncombe
The Independent
December 05, 2012

Disowned by Burma, consigned to refugee camps and caught up in ethnic violence, they tell Andrew Buncombe why they will not give up the fight to win back their communities

What difference does a simple name make? For Mohammad Ali, a resident of this town's last Muslim neighbourhood, a ghetto cut off by barbed wire and military checkpoints, it matters to his very core. "Look here. It asks 'race' and then says 'Rohingya'," the 68-year-old says, touching his chest with one hand, while pointing with the other to a photocopied identity card dating from 1974. "We have been here for a long time. My father, my grandfather, they were born here."

For Shwe Maung, a member of a political party with links to the Buddhist clergy which wants to force Muslims from the state, the matter of a name is equally important. These people are not Rohingya Muslims, he angrily insists, but Bengalis. "They are trying to deceive the world," he adds. "They want the world to think they are natives of Rakhine."

Burma's western Rakhine state has for months been gripped by ethnic violence that has left scores dead and driven up to 100,000 people, the majority of them Rohingya Muslims, into refugee camps. The Buddhist community claims they are at risk of being "swallowed up by outsiders" who they say migrated from Bangladesh, while the Rohingyas, who say they have lived here for centuries, claim they are the victims of ethnic cleansing.

To glimpse the scale of what has happened while the world largely looked away, take the airport road towards the village of Bumay. From there, a rutted track leads to a series of tented camps in which thousands of Muslims are living, having been driven from their communities.

The largest is Borouda, home to 15,000 people. Many here fled here after their properties in Sittwe were attacked in June. Moniyan Khata, a 38-year-old woman, said their neighbourhood had been surrounded by Buddhists and police. "We had to hide in the lake," she said.

And why were they attacked? "We don't know," she replied. "They want our land, they want our properties. They want us to leave the country."

At another camp, Te Chaung, were those who fled more recent violence, both Rohingyas and Kaman Muslims who had escaped by sea from Kyauktaw, 50 miles away. Human Rights Watch released satellite images that revealed Muslim neighbourhoods there had been destroyed on the night of 22 October. Some who escaped spent six days at sea in fishing boats containing 100 people.

"I came in one boat, my husband in another and our children were in a different one," said Chu Kiri, 35, hugging her four children. "At the time I did not know if my husband and children were dead or alive. It was only when we reached here we met up."

The trigger for the clashes this summer was the rape of a Buddhist woman by Muslim men. But tension has existed between the communities for decades.

The Buddhists of Rakhine, Burma's second-poorest state, have always felt neglected by the central authorities. They say their history as an independent kingdom, known as Arakan, has been overlooked. Such bitterness has been seized on by the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), a hardline group established to contest elections in 2010 and which holds 18 seats in the state assembly and 15 in the national parliament. While it says it supports democracy, the RNDP also backs a 1982 law passed by the junta which says the Rohingyas are not citizens, and says they should leave.

In their office on Sittwe's main street, members of the party's central committee claimed the Rohingyas were trying to increase their population. Asked where the Rohingyas should go, one member, Shwe Maung, swept his palms backwards, as if he were brushing away a fly. Asked if the party was racist, one member insisted: "We are not anti-Muslim."

While the RNDP says it is secular, it has links to the Buddhist clergy which has been vocal in its condemnation of the Rohingyas. Abbot Ariyawantha of the Sittwe's Shwe Zadi monastery, said he had advised the RNDP leadership on various issues. He repeated allegations the Muslims were deliberately increasing their numbers and that there was a "conspiracy to invade Arakan cities". The monk denied claims from Rohingya victims that monks took part in attacks or that the clergy had been involved in organising attacks.

Asked about the cause of the violence, he said: "People are angry because of the rape and because they are trying to take our land. It's our reaction to that behaviour."

Asked what should happen to the Rohingyas, he said: "We have to identify illegal immigrants and keep them in refugee camps. If at some time, a third country wants to accept them we would be happy."

But the Rohingyas insist they have lived in the region for centuries and say they want to stay. In Sittwe's Aung Mingalar quarter, Aye Maung, an English teacher, explained how the 7,000 residents were unable to leave and had lived under a cloud of anxiety since the summer. A curfew is in place.

Walking through its dirty streets, he pointed to where Muslim homes and schools had been set alight or bulldozed during the summer violence. On one side were the homes of a handful of Hindu families and Bollywood music could be heard playing. To ensure they were not mistaken for Muslims, the Hindus were flying Buddhist flags.

In a dark shack serving Chinese tea, Mr Maung organised a showing of hands for those who wanted independence, as opposed to Burmese citizenship. Without exception, the customers voted for the latter. "We want to be citizens of Burma. We don't want to leave Rakhine," said Mr Maung.

The conflict in Rakhine is complex and historic. Several thousand Buddhists are also in refugee camps after their homes were set on fire by Muslims. A number have been killed.

Aid organisations expect to be in for the long haul. Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the World Food Programme, said they were now providing emergency food supplies to 110,000 people. "We have asked for funding to see us through to the middle of next year," he said.

Christophe Reltien, Burma head of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, said the Muslim population was growing faster than the non-Muslim population. He said the attacks against Muslims were not spontaneous. "We know in some areas it was well organised and not simply people going after a few houses," he said. "Messages were sent to the [Muslim] community that they should move."

The government of Thein Sein has established a committee to investigate the violence. The committee includes members of different religions, but no Rohingyas. Among its members are democracy activists who have spoken out against the Rohingyas.

Indeed, for observers the most disappointing role has been that played by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who – unlike Barack Obama, who has defended the Rohingyas – has refused to denounce the attacks and simply said violence was committed by both sides. At her National League for Democracy's office, her spokesman, Nyan Wyn, said the Rohingyas' future should be decided by the 1982 citizenship law. When it was suggested the Rohingyas had lived in Burma for centuries, he said: "That is not true. They were not here before 1824."

In Aung Mingalar, the Rohingyas believe Ms Suu Kyi has forgotten them. "She is keeping silent," said Mr Maung, the teacher. "Perhaps she wants more votes from Buddhists."

Burma camp for Rohingyas 'dire' - Valerie Amos

Rohingya refugee camps in Rakhine state (Photo - Partners Relief)
BBC News
December 05, 2012

The UN's top humanitarian official has said conditions for displaced Burmese Muslim Rohingyas are "dire", and called on Burma to improve them. 
Valerie Amos made the comments after visiting camps in Rakhine state. 
More than 135,000 people displaced during six months of ethnic conflict are living in camps in the state, the vast majority of them Rohingyas. 
The BBC's Jonah Fisher says Rohingyas are living in much worse conditions than Rakhine Buddhists. 
He says a camp on the peninsula of Myebon, exclusively for Rakhine Buddhists, had smart tents, working sanitation and a regular delivery of food and medical supplies. 
But a short drive up the road - past the burnt-out squares that were once their homes - some 4,000 Rohingya Muslims live crammed together on a fetid pile of mud, surrounded by streams of water filled with sewage, our correspondent adds. 
There are Burmese guards on all sides to stop them leaving, he says.
"It's a dire situation and we have to do something about it," Baroness Amos told the BBC. 
"Unfortunately we as the United Nations are not able to get in and do the range of work we would like to do with those people, so the conditions are terrible." 
She said UN efforts had been hampered by administrative and visa problems, as well as by a lack of funding. 
The UN has received less than one-third of the $65m (£40m) it says it needs for Rakhine. 
Baroness Amos called for the international community to be more generous, but also said the Burmese authorities had to help with reconciliation. 
She said tensions in the area remained "extremely high". 
"The government also has a responsibility, they have to take the lead," she said. "They have to work to bring the communities together and that work has got to start now." 
Our correspondent says Rakhine Buddhists control all the land around the camp for Rohingyas, and that bringing help is almost impossible.

Updated: Breaking News: NaSaKa (Border Security Force) Torched Rohingyas’ Shops


M.S. Anwar

Maung Daw, Arakan- At 8:30PM this evening, NaSaKa (Border Security Force) from Camp Base-15 of Region (Nay-Myay)-7 arrested two innocent Rohingyas from the village of Baggona, Maung Daw and torched around 40 Rohingyas’ shops in the village. Therefore, Rohingyas lost around 60 Million Kyats as the shops were burnt down. 
“The head NaSaKa of Camp Base-15 of Region (Nay-Myay)-7 ordered his Junior NaSaKas not to arrest any Rohingya from the village. But by ignoring the senior’s order, this evening, some Junior NaSaKa arrested two innocent Rohingyas who were coming out of the mosques after prayer. The two Rohingyas are Fir Mohammed S/o Mohammed Yunus (age-33) and Mv Mohammed Naim S/o (age-50). When these two Rohingyas shouted in their inability to bear up the beating and torturing of these NaSaKas, Rohingyas from the village tried to save them. Then, subsequently, the NaSaKas opened fire at them. 
So as to avoid the questions why they fired at people and the punishments to be given for breaking the Head NaSaKa’s order, they (junior NaSaKas) set fire to the Rohingyas’ shops. They torched the shops to set up a plot that they had to start shooting at Rohingyas because they (Rohingyas) were trying to torch their shops to blame Rakhines for it. Now, Military and the head of the NaSaKa came to the village where the burning took place. We are anticipating that something bad will come up against us and we might be arrested, tortured and can even be killed for something we but they have done” said a Rohingya Elder from a nearby village. 
It is a usual tragedy that Rohigyas have been facing for months. They are paying the price for doing nothing. They are wronged and abused. Instead of having justice, they are facing the double victimization.

About Me

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Maung daw, Arakan state, Myanmar (Burma)
I am an independent man who voted to humanitarian aid.