3000 Bangladeshi Rakhines settle in Maungdaw south

Maungdaw, Arakan State: 3000 Bangladeshi Rakhines were settled in Natala villages in Maungdaw south since end of the December, said a village administration officer.

“The Maungdaw officials brought the Rakhines people who recently enter to Burma from Bangladesh, to the Natala villages along the Maungdaw- Alaythankyaw road.”
The Rakhine seen very poor who are not able to survive in Bangladesh hill track and taking advantage of the violence between Rakhine and Rohingya communities in June 2012, said a school teacher from Maungdaw south.
“The Bangladeshi Rakhines were settle in every Natala villages as it is the family member of this village where they will get full support from UNHCR, WFP and Other INGOs aids as they were registered in the Immigration office as citizen and living since long.”
“In Maungdaw, the Rohingya IDPs are not getting any support from INGOs or UNHCR or WFP, but Rakhine who entered Burma recently and getting all facility from all corners.”

Border pass held for Ward number 3 and 5 in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State:  The Maungdaw authority passed an order today to hold the border pass of Rohingya who are living in Ward number 3 and 5, according to village administration office member.

Maungdaw Exit and entery point  No.1

“The Rohingya – living in Ward number 3 and 5 - who denied to take digital fingerprints and photographs for registration process with Bengali race.”
The Burma border security force (Nasaka) entered today ward number 3 to collect so-called family population list with computerized digital fingerprints and photographs as Bengali which Rohingya community denied to register and no one went to register with them, said a politician.
“The Nasaka only collect the so-called family population list from Rohingya community, but not to Rakhine community who live in the same ward.”
Similarly, the Nasaka entered Ward number 5 - all the population are Rohingya- to check so called family population list, but no Rohingya family registered with them.
The Nasaka become angry with Rohingya of Ward number 5 and 3, the field reports sent to the Maungdaw officers who made an order to held the border pass ( for one day pass and seven days pass to Bangladesh).
The Nasaka tried all the area of Maungdaw to collect the lists with Bengali race with computerized digital fingerprints and photographs which the Rohingya are not able to know their race which they want to be mention as per their willing.
“We processed this so called family population list checking which made reduce our family members and not include new born baby and charging at last 500o kyats per family list and extra for absent member and dead persons,” said a Rohingya elder.
The Nasaka tried to collect the Rohingya population list as per the authority willing – using Bengali for Rohingya- calling the village elders and village administration officers and members for taking digital fingerprints and photographs for registration process, but none of Rohingya villagers join with them when they went their villages, the politician said
“The Maungdaw authority again using their evil method as yearly family population list checking which now using computerized digital fingerprints and photographs with Bengali race. So, the Rohingya community from all sector denied to register so-called computerized digital fingerprints and photographs.”
“Nasaka harassed village administration officers of Rohingya villages for failing to organize villagers to register, so most of village admin officers had arrested in their (Nasaka) camps for one or two days.”
Some collaborators are trying to organize the villagers with warning, giving facility which made a few people from some villages of Maungdaw north. But, most of the villages refused to do it. 

Three young cowboys arrested by army in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Three young cowboys were arrested by army on December 30, while grazing cows on paddy field – After harvesting - nearby their village of Maungdaw south, Arakan State, Burma, according to a close relative of the victims.
“The arrested cowboys are identified as---Rashidullah (17), son of Mohamed Nazir, Rafique (16), son of Imam Hussain, hailed from Zaw Metet village and Jubair (20), son of Ahmed Sharif, hailed from Thayaigontan village.”
On that day, at about 12 noon, a section of army from Thayaigontan Rakhine (Natala) village went to the grazing ground and tried to arrest some cowboys without any provoking, so all the cowboys were fleeing to avoid the arrest leaving their cows in the grazing ground. However, the above said the three cowboys had been arrested by the army, brought to Maungdaw Town and handed over to the Maungdaw police station, the close relative more added.
Some Rohingya elders said, the army tried to attempt to rape a Rohingya female – Fatema, not real name – but failed as Fetayma screamed out for help and all the Rohingya villagers rushed to the spot and save the fatema on December 29.
The army angered with villagers as they are not able to rape the Rohingya female, so started to arrest anyone who will meet with them on December 30 and alleged with false case of rape to Rakhine girl, the elders said. 
Besides, all the cows (nearly 100 cows) were brought to nearby Natala (model) village by the army, but the next day, all the cows had been returned to the owners.
Hearing the news, in the evening, the parents of the victims went to the police station to see their sons.  But, police said to the parents that the arrestees were involved in the rape of a Rakhine woman, so they will be sent soon to Buthidaung jail after filing a rape case against them, a friend of the parents said.
“It is a deliberate action against the Rohingya youths. How can they rape a Rakhine woman in the open sky where many cowboys were grazing their cows in the paddy field?,” said a village elder  on condition of anonymity.
Another local leader said, “The situation is very bad for Rohingya community in Arakan State, in such situation, the Rohingya youths will not dare to commit such crime against the Rakhine woman.”
A village businessman said, “We hear that a Rakhine woman is motivated by army to appear at court and to say that the arrestees had committed rape against her.”
Over 100 armies led by Deputy commander Major Rey Wint Aung of light Infantry Battalion (LIB) No. 352 has been taking station at Maungdaw south to oppress the Rohingya villagers after the violence between Rakhine and Rohingya communities in June 2012. But, authority declared that the armies are for controlling from further clashes between two communities, a schoolteacher said from Maungdaw Town.
When contacted the Maungdaw police station, no one is holding the office phone.
A local youth said, “How can we live in our village, the concerned authority does such kinds of fabricated allegation against to us.”

Thailand deports Rohingya "boat people," despite international opposition

Rohingya refugees, who survived after their overloaded boat heading to Malaysia sank, are pictured on a fishing boat following their rescue by Bangladeshi border guards in Teknaf on November 7, 2012. About 85 people are missing after an overloaded boat carrying Rohingya refugees towards Malaysia sank off Bangladesh early on November 7, the second such tragedy in two weeks, officials said. (Photo - STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

Faine Greenwood

Global Post

January 5, 2013

Thailand has deported 74 Rohingya Muslim refugees back to Myanmar, the Bangkok Post reports, in a move carried out in the face of international opposition from human right's groups. 

The group, which includes small children, became stranded in Phuket last weekend when their boat ran out of fuel, and they were forced to come ashore in Thailand, says the Bangkok Post, and were then given food and water by regional authorities. 

After deliberating on the matter, local authorities decided that they would send the refugees back to Myanmar overland, instead of allowing them to go back out to sea. 

Human Rights Watch and the United Nations condemned the Thai decision to send the refugees back to Myanmar, claiming that Rohingya often face human trafficking and forced labor at the Thai-Myanmar border, as they desperately attempt to leave, says VOA. 

UNHCR asked for access to the refugees and a halt to the deportation plans, but the agency was denied the request by the Thai government. 

The Rohingya are a beleaguered minority in Vietnam, and have recently faced vicious sectarian violence in Eastern Myanmar, forcing many to flee Arakan State for more friendly climes. 

Rohingya who choose to escape Myanmar by boat face serious danger during the sea crossing, and often must battle high seas from old and leaking boats. 

At the end of October 120 Rohingya went missing after their vessel capsized in the Bay of Bengal. The refugees were attempting to transfer onto a vessel bound for Malaysia when the accident took place. 

Only a week later, 85 more Rohingya went missing at sea when their boat capsized in the Bay of Bengal, as the refugees headed to Bangladesh to look for work.

80 Rohingyas heading for Malaysia detained in Burma

A member the Bangladeshi border guard force comforts a Rohingya man after being arrested while trying to cross the border in Teknaf, 18 June 2012 (Photo - Reuters)

Over 80 Rohingyas, fleeing violence and persecution in Arakan state, were detained by Burmese authorities on Wednesday in a coastal town near the Thai border, after traffickers abandoned them en route to Malaysia. 

The Rohingyas, including 13 children and eight women, were taken for questioning by police when the boat was discovered at the dock in Tenasserim Division’s Kawthaung town in the southernmost tip of Burma. 

A local politician from the Democratic Party-Myanmar, Than Htun, who met with the boat people told DVB they believed they had arrived in Malaysia. 

“The [Rohingyas] paid [human traffickers] around 150,000-300,000 Kyat (USD$175-350) each to take them to Malaysia. They said the boat owner told them they had already arrived in Malaysia and they believed him,” said Than Htun. 

The group is now being kept in a derelict hospital building in town, before being returned to Arakan state’s capital Sittwe. Rohingya Muslims are denied citizenship by the Burmese government and are considered one of the world’s most persecuted minorities by the UN. 

Thousands of Rohingyas have fled Arakan state in western Burma in the wake of sectarian clashes with Arakanese Buddhists last year, which killed over 180 people and displaced 110,000 since June. 

“More than 10,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine State have left on these boats since October last year according to our findings,” Chris Lewa, campaigner for the Arakan Project told Alertnet on Thursday, adding that more and more women and children are now making the perilous journey along with men. 

Many head for neighbouring Bangladesh, and increasingly to Malaysia, but often end up in Thailand by accident. 

This week, 73 Rohingyas, including women and children as young as three, travelling to Malaysia were detained by Thai authorities when their boat washed ashore in Phuket. They were deported back to Burma yesterday, despite severe condemnation by international human rights groups. DVB understands that the group had still not arrived back in Burma as of Thursday evening. 

According to the New York based advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, many deported Rohingyas fall prey to human traffickers on their return, who demand extortionate fees for another attempt to be transported to Malaysia. 

According to Than Htun, the Burmese Navy discovered another boat with Rohingyas in the Andaman Sea around mid-November, but pushed it back into Thai waters. The Thai authorities are also known to push boatloads of unwanted Rohingya refugees back into the sea. 

Thailand, which is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, insists it cannot accept Rohingyas leaving Burma, but will help them resettle in third countries.

Man Accused of Thingyan Bombing Dies at Home

Phyo Wai Aung, the man accused of carrying out a deadly bombing during the Burmese water festival in 2010, has died just months after his release from prison from an illness that went untreated while he was still in custody.

Family members said he died at his home in Rangoon’s Kyauk Myaung Township at around 3 am on Friday.

The 33-year-old engineer was sentenced to death in May of last year for his alleged role in a series of bombings that killed at least 10 people and injured around 100 others during festivities to mark Thingyan, the Burmese new year, in April 2010. He was subsequently released under a presidential pardon on Aug. 3, 2012.

Following his arrest on April 23, 2010, Phyo Wai Tha was allegedly tortured while undergoing interrogation and later suffered from health problems stemming from his mistreatment. His condition went untreated until two days after he was sentenced to death in a closed trial, when he was admitted to Insein General Hospital and diagnosed with liver cancer.

When he was released from custody last August, he told The Irrawaddy that he was “arrested mistakenly” and that the political system was at fault.

Due to his rapidly deteriorating health in prison, Phyo Wai Aung suffered from paralysis of the lower half of his body. After his release, he was hospitalized in Insein and Rangoon hospitals, but his health did not improve.

His brother-in-law Aung Myint told The Irrawaddy on Friday that Phyo Wai Aung returned to his home from the hospital 16 days ago.

“He was able to speak until the last night before he died,” said Aung Myint. “It is such a loss for our family, as well as for the country,” he added.

Phyo Wai Aung’s body has been taken to the Yay Way Muslim cemetery, where he will be buried later today. He leaves behind his wife and two children, aged 8 and 4.

Backward step for reform in Myanmar?

Smoke is seen rising from a mountain in Kachin state in this still image taken from a video taken December. Myanmar's military has stepped up attacks on ethnic Kachin rebels in recent days with airstrikes. (Photo - DVB)

Dan Murphy

CS Monitor

January 4, 2012

Yes, Myanmar's military backed government has promised elections in 2015 and released Aun San Suu Kyi from prison. But it's still calling the shots - and violently.

Myanmar's military has stepped up attacks on ethnic Kachin rebels in recent days with airstrikes. This move calls into question efforts by the United States and other international powers to richly and quickly reward the nominally civilian regime there for a series of gestures toward political reform.

US State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday that the Obama administration is "deeply troubled" by increased violence and urged dialogue between Myanmar's government and the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, which has been in an on again, off again, war against the central state for decades.

Simon Roughneen wrote for the Monitor yesterday that"the Myanmar Army offensive – which includes helicopter gunships and aerial bombardment – comes after weeks of heavy fighting at outposts about 10 miles outside the KIA headquarters on the Myanmar-Chinafrontier." He then quoted Joseph Nbwi Naw, a Kachin Catholic priest in the KIA headquarters town of Laiza as saying "the situation is very tense. The bombers are bombing just about four or five miles from the town here."

Myanmar (also known as Burma) is as ethnically complex a country as they come, and while most in the West have focused on the democracy struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, there is no guarantee that any new order that emerges from a political promise, with promised free elections scheduled for 2015, will create stability or justice for its minorities. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, an ethnic Burman like most of the junta that kept Myanmar under military rule from 1962 until 2011, has been mostly silent on violence targeting the ethnic Muslim Rohingyas recently and does not appear to have spoken out on the situation involving the Kachin.

In September, the Irrawady, a Thailand-based news organization that focuses on Myanmar, reported that Aung San Suu Kyi argued against taking a strong stand, as it could make the situation worse. "There are people who criticized me when I remained [silent] on this case," she told a Burmese group on a visit to New York. "They can do so as they are not satisfied with me. But, for me, I do not want to add fire to any side of the conflict." The Irrawady wrote: "Some critics have condemned [Aung San Suu Kyi] for staying silent on Kachin as well as the sectarian violence between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in western Burma."

In early November, I wrote about doubts over the wisdom of America's breakneck pace of normalization with Myanmar, with President Obama becoming the first US leader to ever visit the country that month.

Has there ever been faster restoration of US relations with a country it had once worked so hard to isolate, in the absence of either a US invasion or a revolution? I can't think of one. The once-maligned leaders are being brought in from the cold. The US even indicated in October that Burmese officers would be invited to the annual Cobra Gold military exercise between the US and Thailand as official observers.

The Obama administration's motivations are clear: Demonstrate the benefits of the generals’ political opening and turn toward democracy. But with the breathless rush to friendship comes a country where ethnic tensions still dominate, and ethnic violence, specifically against ethnic Rohingya Muslims, that the generals have been either unwilling or unable to stop.

... If all goes well, the Obama administration’s overture toward Myanmar will go down as a major foreign policy achievement, and more importantly signal a brighter future for Myanmar’s 48 million people. But there are challenges and pitfalls ahead, and with each concession the US and other major powers make before 2015, a potential carrot to offer for positive change is spent.

Hopefully, Obama will not have gone to Myanmar too soon.

The recent war with the Kachin is evidence of how hard it has been to build on the fruits of "dialogue" between Myanmar and armed ethnic-minorities. A 17-year cease-fire between the Kachin rebels, in northeastern Myanmar along the Chinese border, broke in June of 2011, and the results have been catastrophic. Human Rights Watch estimated that 75,000 Kachin were displaced from their homes in the fighting, recording the razing of homes, stealing of property, torture of Kachin civilians, use of civilians as slave labor, and the rape of Kachin women, all by Myanmar soldiers.

Such events have been frequent for Myanmar's ethnic minorities since shortly after independence from Britain in 1948. In February 1947, nationalist hero Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, and other nationalist leaders signed the Panglong agreement with ethnic minorities, who today make up about 40 percent of the national population. The agreement envisioned Myanmar as a federal state, with regional autonomy for ethnic minority states like Kachin, where the residents are mostly Christian and speak a language distinct from the ethnic-majority Burmans, who are mostly Buddhist.

But autonomy was never delivered, and when Aung San and six members of his cabinet were assassinated in July 1947, the stage was set for decades of conflict not just with the Kachin but other ethnic minorities like the Shan and the Wa, many living in the rugged mountains in eastern and northern Burma.

For now, the elections of 2015 are a long way away, and whether those elections will lead to a more just approach to ethnic minorities remains an open question. That Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered personally and for decades for her principled stand on democracy for Myanmar is no guarantee that she or anyone else who may come to power there will handle the country's ethnic tensions any better than their predecessors have for the past 60 years.

Holding some diplomatic and sanctions pressure in the back pocket may prove a wiser course than declaring a democracy victory in early 2013.