A Rohingya fisher man namely Nur Muhammad(35yrs);son of Muhammad from Dar Paing village(one of Rohingya villages),Sittwe, Arkan went out for fishing on 28.3.2015. When he got near Aung Daing village (one of Rakhinese village),Sittwe fishing a long the river,he caught by was a gang of Rakhinese extremist of Aung Daing village and he was brutally killed by Rakhines gang and his dead body was thrown in the river near by the Rohingya Muslim village, Say Thama Gyi,Sittwe on 29.3.2015. On 28.3.2015 the village admin of Aung Daing contacted the village admin of Dar Paing (both of them are Rakhinese) and said that a Muslim entered his village and the villagers caught him alive. Dar Paing village admin shared the info with the wife of the fisherman in the village. Wife of the fisherman contacted the Village admin of Aungd Daing but did not pick up the phone on 29.3.2015. Eventually she went to Camp police station in Man Zhi and informed about missing of her hubby.Then heard that a Rohingya dead body was found being floated in the river at 8 am on 29.3.2015. The hands and feet of dead body was tied up with rope. The villagers took the corpse to Say Tha Ma Gyi village. Tomorrow morning they will bury the dead body if the police don't arrive. If the police arrive the dead body will be taken to mortuary in Sittwe General Hospital. For more details, please contact the sister of Nur Muhammad who was brutally killed by Rakhinese gang.

The authority in Maungdaw district in cooperation with Rakhine extremists has been attempting to create unrests in the Rohingya region by misleading the higher authority with purported misinformation and propaganda since last few days, according to the reliable sources.

Firstly, the Rakhine (Magh) have spread rumors that Rohingya students in Maungdaw Township would protest against the ban on their access to tertiary education. And then, they have spread another blatant rumor that ISIS members are sneaking into the region.

Therefore, around 200 military and police personnel were deployed at the Maungdaw Football Stadium. And the security has been tightened with the deployment of the military and the Border Guard Police in other places such as northern Maungdaw and northern Buthidaung townships.

“We abide by the laws and orders of the country. And these are rumors and propaganda that the extremists in the Maungdaw Administration and the Rakhine extremists so that the reconciliation initiatives being taken by some concerned quarters for co-existence between Rakhine and Rohingya fail. We fear that Hindu people, sister community of ours, who are our look-alikes, will be used in the disguise of Rohingya Muslims as the protesters to create unrests in our region” said an elder Rohingya in the Maungdaw township.  

As expected, 20 Hindu students holding some banners gathered at the football stadium around 8:30AM yesterday and started protesting in disguise of Rohingya students. Then, the authority took photographs of the paid protesters in their protesting positions. They also took photographs while in the positions of the Border Guard Police dispersing the protesters and chasing them for arrests.

What the paid protesters were made to demand are “we are Rohingya people. We are not Bengalis. If the government can’t grant us the status of Rohingya, we demand them to consider something for us etc.”

Similarly, Hindu people were used by the authority for their political interests. They were paid or forced to act for cameras and portrayed as if Rohingyas were creating unrests at the beginning of the violence in June 2012.

These latest signs of the possible unwanted unrests in the Rohingya region have been growing since the visit of the leader of 969 Terrorist Gang, Monk Wira Thu, to Maungdaw. Therefore, according to the latest reports, there will be operations by the Military and the Border Guard Police along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and the security along the border have been severely tightened.

Brutality against Rohingya children in Arakan State by Burmese authority much more...

BUKIT MERTAJAM, Malaysia  - Abul Kassim, a Rohingya asylum seeker, was snatched from his home in the northern Malaysian state of Penang on Jan. 12. The next morning, his beaten and bloodied body was found.

That day, police moved on the 40-year-old's alleged killers. Raiding a house in the neighboring state of Kedah, they rescued 17 Rohingya migrants being held against their will, according to a statement by Penang police.

Eight alleged traffickers from Malaysia, Myanmar and Bangladesh were arrested.

The murder of Abul Kassim casts rare light on what Rohingya activists say is widespread abuse by human traffickers in Malaysia, who are willing to use extreme methods to protect their lucrative but illegal business.

Abul Kassim regularly supplied police with information on the activities of traffickers, said Abdul Hamid, president of the Kuala Lumpur-based Rohingya Society in Malaysia.

Since 2012, more than 100,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims have fled violence and poverty in Myanmar. Most travel in traffickers' boats to Thailand, where they are held by traffickers in squalid jungle camps before a ransom is paid.

Relatively wealthy Malaysia to the south is the destination for most Rohingya who flee. For some, it is far from safe.

Relatives and witnesses told Reuters of three abductions in Penang in 2013 and 2014, from a home, a coffee shop and the street. In addition, a Rohingya man was confined and tortured after being brought by traffickers through Thailand.

Three of the four cases ended in murder, they said.

Fortify Rights, a Southeast Asia-based rights group, documented another three suspected killings of Rohingya by traffickers last year.

Banned from legally working and fearful of police harassment, few victims bring their case to authorities. Those who do say police have taken little action.

Confirming cases is difficult. Local media give the issue little coverage and Penang state police did not respond to further questions about Abul Kassim's killing. National police spokeswoman Asmawati Ahmad did not reply to Reuters' questions on that case or other suspected Rohingya murders.

Interviewed by Reuters in late 2014, Penang police chief Abdul Rahim Hanafi denied traffickers had killed any Rohingya in the state that year.

    

"WE ARE NOT SAFE"

Police quoted in the local media said Abul Kassim's killing was likely to be connected to a money dispute.

A Kuala Lumpur-based Rohingya leader, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said quantifying crimes was difficult due to the power and reach of traffickers in northern Malaysia.

"If we try to get information about the traffickers, they will simply target the person who tries to get information. We are not safe," he said.

Such cases include the alleged abduction and murder of Rohingya cousins Harun and Sayed Noor in 2013 and 2014, according to witnesses interviewed by Reuters.

Harun, 35, had his first run-in with traffickers in early 2013, when he was kidnapped from a Penang shop and held for a week for a ransom of 7,000 ringgit ($1,942), recalled his uncle, Mohammad Salim, 50.

After his release, Harun lodged a complaint with police and fled into hiding, Salim said.

In retaliation, traffickers took his cousin Sayed Noor, aged about 30, and held him as barter for Harun and 50,000 ringgit, Salim said. Several months later, Sayed turned up dead, his body showing signs of torture and mutilation.

In early 2014, the traffickers caught up with Harun.

Months later, his uncle, Salim, received a call from a Thai mobile number, telling him to leave town.

"The trafficker told me himself he had killed Harun."

A similarly chilling message was sent with the alleged murder last March of Sadek Akbar, 17, who had traveled from Myanmar with the help of traffickers.

After passing through a Thai camp and being ransomed for release, Sadek was imprisoned in a safehouse in Penang. Traffickers then demanded 2,000 ringgit for Sadek's release, his uncle, Altaf Hussain, told Reuters.

"We couldn't afford it, so they beat him to death and dropped him by the side of the road," Altaf, 48, told Reuters.

Altaf's account of retrieving the body from hospital was verified by another Rohingya witness and a Malaysian journalist, who both declined to be named.

   

"MILLIONS OF DOLLARS"

Hampering a full account of the problem is Malaysia's patchy record of protecting millions of migrants, including nearly 150,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers living there.

Relatives of victims are reluctant to report crimes to police, fearing months of detention for migration violations and shakedowns for bribes, according to Fortify Rights executive director Matthew Smith.

"There are millions of dollars being made through the trafficking of Rohingya. It's unsurprising that illicit profits of that magnitude would bring out violent behavior," he said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) declined to comment on specific criminal cases, but has received "regular reports of abuse, intimidation and exploitation of Rohingya refugees," said spokeswoman Yante Ismail.

"Under Malaysian law, all refugees are treated as undocumented and illegal migrants, and there is no national system in place to provide them with protection.

The fate of an estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims is uncertain as their temporary residence permit expires by the end of this month, the UN’s special envoy for Burma Myanmar warned today.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said, “There are about 800,000 (white card holders) Rohingya. But by the end of this month if it (white cards) expires and they have to turn it in and enter another process by May, it is very troubling because there has been no significant plan or portrayed in any reports that I have seen of what this entire process will mean and how it will affect the white card holders”.

According to the 1982 Citizenship Law, the white card – a temporary residence permit- is one of the many colour-coded cards used by the government to signify the status of a resident of Myanmar.

Though the white card holders were allowed to vote in 2010 and 2012, however, a notification from President Thein Sein’s office recently said the cards would expire on March 31.

White cards holders will now be required to hand them over to the authorities by May 31 and apply for citizenship.The decision was met with much uproar from nationalist Buddhist monks.

“Although some of the Rohingya have been living for generations but since they could not prove their status when the 1982 Citizenship Law came into effect (they got a white card),” Lee noted.

In Myanmar, more than 80 per cent of the population are Buddhists and about four to five per cent are Muslims.

“Among the Muslims, whereas the Kamans are considered an ethnic group, the Rohingya are not, according to the 2008 constitutional reforms. There are many, many implications of this on their political participation,” said Lee.

In her first report to the UNHRC since her appointment in June 2014, Lee states, “Both government and Arakan (Rakhine) Buddhist representatives explained that the term Rohingya has no historical or legal basis and that to validate the Rohingya as an ethnic group could allow a claim of indigenous status and corresponding rights under the Constitution”.

“The government has therefore insisted that persons identifying as Rohingya be classified as Bengali, which links their ethnic origins to Bangladesh,” it states.

Lee said in that though Myanmar has made advances, there are “worrying signs of backtracking” on human rights.

India had supported Myanmar at the UNHRC during the presentation of the report, saying “Democratic institutions in any country take time to acquire deep roots”.

Buthidaung, Arakan. Four Rohingyas have been killed and four other critically injured after the lorry carrying them had met with an accident in Buthidaung, a local eyewitness said.

The GE vehicle that a Rakhine man was driving met with the accident on its way to ‘Taung Bazaar’ village from ‘Pha Yung Chaung’ village in the township, around 7:00PM last Tuesday. The vehicle was not only carrying heavy loads of iron-rods but also the eight people at the time of accident, according to the eyewitnesses.

The eight people was taken as forced labours by the government-collaborator, named Abdul Ghani (son of) Sayed Karim, 45, hails from ‘Dudan hamlet’ of ‘Pa-Yung-Chaung’ village tract; upon the order by the authority for logging to the forest nearby ‘Taung Bazaar.’ On the way, the lorry provided as transport to them met with the accident and the iron rods on the lorry fell on them.

Four of the people died instantly. Three people were critically injured and another one received normal injuries. The people that passed away are:

• Mohammed (son of) Abdul Barry, 45
• Zafar Islam (son of) Islam, 16
• Lukhman Hakim (son of) Fedaan, 17
• Yusouf (son of) Zahir Ahmed, 20

The four other people injured are:

• Abdul Hashim (son of) Fedaan, 19, critically injured
• Abu Siddique (son of) Naagu, critically injured
• Noor Mohammed (son of) Nazir Ahmed, critically injured
• Doilla (son of) Rashid Ahmed received light injuries.

The corpses of the deceased people were buried in the grave of ‘the Dudan hamlet’ yesterday evening. The injured people are being treated in Buthidaung Hospital

The Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) arbitrarily opened fires at three innocent Rohingya men in northern Maungdaw last Friday, injuring one critically and putting his life at risk, according to the reliable sources.

The BGP under ‘Thay Chaung-Chaung Wa’ camp in Taung-Pyo sub-township, Maungdaw township, opened fire at the three people rowing a peddling a boat on pretext that they didn’t stop upon their order for a search on the boat.

The victims are identified to be Sayedul Amin (son of) Abul Khair, 25; Khala Shuna (son of) Abu Yusouf, 20; hail from ‘Mya Zin’ hamlet of ‘Long Doon’ village tract in northern Maungdaw and one more person from ‘Thin Baw Hla’ village, under ‘Taung-Pyo sub-township. All of them are poor people and earn their livelihoods on trading firewood from Taung-Pyo to Maungdaw.

After the firing, the BGP sent Sayedul Amin, the person critically wounded by bullet, to hospital and later took him into detention along with the two other people.

“It was around 2:00pm last Friday that three firewood traders were rowing a pedal boat with some firewood on board. Besides, they have acquired the license for the firewood trading. As they were passing by the ‘Thay Chaung-Chaung Wa’ BGP camp at ‘Thay Chaung’ village tract, some BGP personnel were said to have been hiding in the bush by the stream.

The BGP personnel reportedly called upon them to stop for a search on the boat. The people didn’t stop as they didn’t hear the voice of the BGP as it was too low to be heard. Just for that, the BGP started firing at them. A bullet hit at the higher part of the thigh of a person named ‘Sayedul Amin’ and came out from other side. He fell off the boat and suffered heavy bleeding.

He was temporarily sent to ‘Kyein Chaung’ hospital and later taken into along with others” said a local Rohingya in the region on the condition of anonymity.

It has been learnt that, later, when Sayedul Amin became critical in the detention, he was sent to the hospital again around 2am last Friday. Although the BGP has taken responsibilities of the treatment to the person, no relative of his is allowed to see him in the hospital.

However, the BGP is said to have been preparing to charge them on false allegations of possessions of three lethal swords and three Bangla phones on their boat so as to conceal the crimes that they (the BGP) had committed.

The ‘Chaung Wa’ BGP falls under the BGP commandment area (previously known as commandment area 4) at ‘Leik Ya’ village in Taung-Pyo sub-township. Locals believe that the rampant firing like this and alike in the recent time have been taking under the instructions by the higher BGP officers in the region. Otherwise, there is no way that the BGP can escape with impunity after committing the crimes and rather, make the innocent Rohingyas fall preys to systematic double victimization.

Six Rohingyas were arrested by the BGP and detained them in Zadi-Pyin police custody of Rathedaung Township are missing from yesterday believed to be killed by the authority according to reliable sources.

Among them, four Rohingya who were arrested from Auk-Nan-Yar’ village also known as Razarbill in Rathedaung Township over the blatant allegations of refusing to participate in the census re-enumeration process and the other 2 Rohingyas from Maungdaw Township detained for entering Rathedaung region without proper documentation.

The four missing Rohingyas from Rathedaung— Mv. Yousuf Jalal son of Sayed Ahmed 52, Mv Mohd Ali son of Hafez Ahmed 42, Iman Hussain son of Furuk Ahmed 42, Abdu Salam son of Sultan 48, two of them are religious teachers were being tortured and forcibly shaved their beards kept as a religious requirement together with two other innocent Rohingyas from Maungdaw in the custody.

Yesterday, on 16th March 2015, U Tin Aung Kyaw and Deputy Commander of the BGP in Rathedaung Township made a phone call to the village headman and said the six-arrested Rohingyas ran away from the custody but did not explain him that how they could manage to run away.

The head-man said he was shocked hearing such an unbelievable incident which never happened before. A family member of the victim said “I do not believe that they could manage to run away from the police custody, it might be another designed method of the authority to divert the minds of Rohingyas if they were killed”.

Another relative said if they escaped they might call us but no one made any contact with their families still. So, we doubt they might be killed by the authority and spreading the rumor of their fleeing. On February 8, seven innocent Rohingyas were arrested over the same allegations of refusing to participate in the census re-enumeration process, while many other villagers were also tortured then.

Of them, two persons Mv. Ataullah and Mr. Matalab were release and one of them named Boni Amin son of Ayub 22 was jailed for five years. On 2nd March U Kyaw Kyi a Myanmar’s Border Guard Police (BGP) arbitrarily shot a Rohingya minor girl in Razarbill, Rathedaung Township during the so-called census verification but didn’t take any action against the barbaric policeman a villager stated.

There were only 24 Rohingya villages in Rathedaung Township amidst 24 Rakhine village tracts. Three of the Rohingya villages were uprooted during the violence against Rohingya in 2012 and placed them in IDP camps in Shilkali (Chinkali) village located nearby southern-most Maungdaw. Now, “the besieged Rohingya community in Rathedaung is under pressures of the Rakhine extremists and the government forces

A Rohingya man was shot by a Rakhine group in the forest nearby Duchiradan village in Maungdaw Township of Arakan State

A gang of Rakhine extremists severely beat up an innocent Rohingya man in Pauktaw Township on March 3, which the local Rohingyas consider to be none other than a racist attack, a reliable source said.

The victim is identified to be ‘U Nisar Ahmed (son of) U Othman’ hails from ‘Sin Htet Maw (Sandama)’ village Pauktaw Township.

The Rakhine extremists stopped and abused him using many racist slangs on his way back from seeing off his relative to his home in a nearby Anauk Ywek (Ana Raing) across a Rakhine village. Then, they started beating him up in gang and injured him severely.

The victim said “I was on my way back home across ‘Sin Ainn’ village after seeing my brother-in-law off to his village around 5:00PM. Meanwhile, I encountered five Rakhine (Magh) extremists. They asked me where I was coming from. When I replied ‘Anauk Ywek village,’ they started using racist slurs for no reason at all: ‘you mother-f**king *Kulars. We don’t want to see your faces. What if we kill you now? Who will take action against us?’

Then, they started punching on my face continuously. They started beating me up in gang. Hence, I started running away from them in order to escape from a life-threatening situation towards an embankment nearby. I found out a hideout there. I hid myself there.

And they didn’t look for me anymore. They went back to their village ‘Sin Ain.’”

Later, U Nisar Ahmed came back to his village ‘Sin Htet Maw’ and lodged a complaint at the village administration office. However, the village’s administrator, U Ba Tun, didn’t bother to take any action on it. There are many cases such as the attacks on Rohingyas by Rakhine extremists but no authority has taken any action on them.

However, if Rohingyas respond and try to defend themselves, the authority and the armed forces take severe actions against Rohingyas according to the local Rohingyas.

The ‘Sin Ain’ village is a Rakhine village located between two Rohingya villages: ‘Sin Htet Maw and Anauk Ywek (Ana Raing).’ Most of the Rakhines settled in the village illegally migrating from Bangladesh post the then General Ne Win and post 1990s.

*Kular= a Derogatory term used against anyone of Indian Descends in Myanmar (Burma). It has become widely used racist slang against Muslims in the country especially after June 2012 violence.