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.