Bangladesh says refugees must return quickly

 Refugees living in the Nayapara and Kutupalong refugee camps and the huge number of undocumented Burmese nationals living in Bangladesh should be returned quickly, according to a joint statement by Burma and Bangladesh.

The Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Teknaf, Cox’s bazar. There are 30,000 un-registered Rohingya refugees living in the camp.

The statement came following a two-day visit to Burma by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, which ended on Wednesday. 
President Thein Sein was quoted in the Burmese state-run newspaper Myanmar Ahlin  as saying: “Burma wants to cooperate with Bangladesh in resolving the issue.”
According to figures compiled by UNHCR, there are about 29,300 Burmese refugees assisted by the UN group and more than 200,000 Burmese of questionable status in Bangladesh.  
The joint statement did not use the word “Rohingya,” a term the Burmese government does not accept.
On Tuesday, the Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star reported that Burma had agreed to take back Rohingya refugees who have been recently verified by Burmese authorities.
The Daily Star quoted the Bangladesh prime minister saying that the presence of the Burmese refugees creates social, financial and environmental challenges to Bangladesh
In other business, the joint statement said the two governments stressed the establishment of a direct banking arrangement under the Asian Clearing Union and a plan to launch direct air flights between Dhaka/Chittagong and Rangoon. The governments also discussed border trade, and Bangladesh said that it wanted to organize a trade fair in Rangoon early next year.  
The Bangladesh prime minister asked Burma to import readymade garments, pharmaceutical products, knitwear, and jute goods and ceramics from Bangladesh.
During the visit, the two countries signed an “Agreement on the Establishment of a Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation,” and an agreement for the two countries’ chambers of commerce to cooperate more closely.
On Wednesday, a ceremony was held to lay a foundation to build a Bangladesh Embassy in the diplomatic zone in Naypyitaw.

Living in the Racial Fault line: Rohingyas Look like Bengalis but are the People of Burma

(Dr. Abid Bahar is a playwright and public speaker teaches in Canada)

Who are the Rohingyas? An Arakani xenophob named Aye Chan says they are "Bengalis" from Bangladesh, and many of his hoodlum followers even call Rohingyas the "Talibans"; some even call them as "terrorists" perhaps because most Rohingyas are Muslims and some racist people it is easy to find all Muslims as being terrorists. However, research shows that Rohingyas look like Bengalis but aren't Bengalis. If Rohingyas are not Bengalis, who are they?  Rohingyas are a mixture of people beginning from indigenous Chandra people of pre 10^th century Arakan, and also Rohingyas in them had Arab and Persian traders from the 7^th century settled in Arakan, and the Bengali Sultan's soldiers send to Arakan with General Sindi Khan to help restore Noromikhala in the mid-15^th century, and finally they also had in their people Bengali slaves captured from lower Bengal during the 16^th and early 17^th century from raids by Mogh (Rakhine) pirates in the Bay. These flows of people from the north and west of Arakan are recorded in history.1 These people who looked like Indians and Bengalis were scattered all around Arakan but due to their racial differences, eventually were pushed out to the Mayu frontier in the north. "Rohingya" as an official name adapted during the 50's in the last century by its leaders to serve as a survival mechanism for its people to unitedly face the destiny of attack and expulsion by the brutal military regime and its Arakanese collaborators. However, the name "Rohingya was in use recorded by an early British historian of Burma.2 In Arakan not surprisingly, "Rakhine" is also a new name changed from the historic name "Mogh"  Most of the Rohingyas look like Bengalis because Bengalis have similar historic backgrounds as the Rohingyas have from the past. The racially motivated discrimination and expulsion of the Rohingya people has been an ongoing phenomenon for years for these people. The latest large scale push was during 1942, the 1978 and 1993 and even now in a smaller scale.3

Historically speaking, Arakan was an Indian land but occupied by the racially mongoloid people during the 11^th century removing the Indian Chandra dynasty. The dark skinned Rohingyas called by the Rakhines as "Kalas" are the indigenous Rohingyas. Rohingyas look like Bengalis but aren't Bengalis. Like the Rakhines (Moghs) are racially like Burmese, so racially Rohingyas are like Bengalis. This is clearly because Arakan is a racial fault line. It is for this reason that there are Rakhines, Chakmas, Thanchaingas, Moghs, who are racially mongoloid people in Bangladesh. They are now Bangladeshi citizens. In contrast the Rohingyas in Arakan, Burma were denied of their citizenship in the 1982 constitutional reform by the racist military government of Burma. This change was done unfortunately (on record) with the help of some Arakani xenophobs like Aye Kyaw, Aye Chan and Ashin Nayaka who enjoy freedom and democracy in abroad but keep racist skeletons at home in Arakan; calling the Rohingya people as the "Influx Viruses". In this act of suffering of a people, causing genocide and crime against humanity, the xenophobes even call themselves as democrats-ofcourse, it is acceptable in Burma to the military's Burmese way to democracy. Thus Rohingya issue remains unresolved and the suffering of these racially different Burmese people living in the faultline continues.

“I Have never heard the name Rohingya” – Xenophobia or Racism!

Well, the above can't be my statement. Those of you, who know me, know I have been working with the Rohingya people and on Burma for the past 31 years. So I have heard the name “Rohingya” many times. But surprisingly some Burmese people, who lived with the Rohingya people in Arakan and in Burma all their lives are of the claim that they have never heard of the name "Rohingya. It is as if saying “I have never met my brother, I have never seen my sister or even saying I have never seen my neighbor;” It sounds strange to me but not funny. Such assertion about an ethnic group aimed at intentionally ignoring them because you dislike them is called xenophobia, fear of the stranger. When Rohingyas as Burmese are made into strangers by the Rakhine gentlemen like Aye Kyaw, Aye Chan and the monk Ashin Nayaka, it is more than xenophobia; it is racism. It is a matter of extreme intolerance: an idea that also goes against even Buddhism.

What is behind all this?

1.    Burma is a huge country with more than 130 ethnic groups. Rohingyas are not included within them by the military government and their collaborators because the xenophobe’s assertion that they entered Burma after 1825 when the British occupied Arakan.

How is this possible? The recently arrived Rohingya refugees from Arakan show some of them are not even as old as 5 years to enter Burma in 1825? Strange logic indeed, against some people's birth rights. Well, the real story is Rohingyas as the Arakani Muslims are racially and religiously different from the racially Asian and religiously Buddhist Arakani and the Burmese majority population. The Karen Christians also have similar problems in Burma because of their religious differences. There you go!

2.    The fact is Arakan had an Indian kingdom first Hindu, later on Mohayana Buddhist (See the history of Mohamuni of Buddha statue now in Mandalay, see in the research work of Martin Smith "Muslim Rohingya of Burma, 1995). About Buddhism, this is similar to Mohayana Buddhism in Bengal of the time. The Rakhines (also known as the Moghs, identified in British history) took their official name Rakhine during the 40's was recorded in history (not in Aye Kwaw's proto-history) to have entered Arakan with Theravada Buddhism in the 10th century, much later than Rohingya Muslim's arrival in Arakan in the 8th century.  

Where did all these people called Arakani Muslims go who began to settle in Arakan from the 8th century?

Where did the decedents of the soldiers of Wali Khan and Shandhi Khan who married with the local women in the 15th century go? This Muslim army of 30,000 by Wali Khan and 40, 000 by Sindkhan went to Arakan to help the Arakani king settled in the Kaladan valley. Where did the decedents of the captured Bengalis forcefully brought to Arakan by the Portuguese in the 15th century to work in agricultural lands go?

Well, they were all there settled in all over Arakan. But after the 1942 Arakani Muslim genocide most of the Arakani Muslims began to retreat to the north of Arakan called the Mayu frontier area and the Rakhines feeling unsafe began to settle in the north settled in the South; some Rohingyas from 1942 even began to cross to Bangladesh. Then the situation was made more complicated when the British identified all the Arakani Muslims as being the Indian Muslims this was because India and Burma were under the one British Empire. However, in 1937 Burma was separated from India and the Arakani Muslims’ were seen as “foreigners,” and their fate was allotted with the Burmese Buddhist majority country.

To avoid the anti-foreigner movement that first began in Rangoon by Ottama, an Arakani reactionary monk, Rohingya leaders began to separate their British labeled identity (of being the Indian immigrant Muslims settled in Rangoon.)to their indigenous identity. In order to do that they officially adapted an existing Burmese name called the "Rohingya” used by the Arakani Muslims for themselves before Britain occupied Arakan. The leaders officially adapted the name during the 50's.That was a smart move by the Rohingyas but to the military and the xenophobes, it was another excuse to attack the victim; the Rohingya. It had turned out to be another excuse as if like in the wolf vs. lamb story of blaming the victim. The naming provided the military and the xenophobes the excuse that Burmese people have never heard of the name "Rohingya." "They must be "Bengalis"” immigrant” "Kula" and thus the contemporary anti-Rohingya propaganda began.

3.    Surprisingly, the name "Rohingya" was heard by Francis Buchanan in 1798 in Burma, recorded in Francis Buchanan, in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla, (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1992), 82. It is true, Rohingyas look more like the Bengalis across the border from Burma but, Jacques Leider calls Arakan a "frontier culture."  And it is true, Rohingyas are as if the Shans of Burma who have their Thai cousins across the border. But that doesn’t make Rohingyas non Burmese.

4.    No wonder, there are still some Rakhine Burmese people in Arakan says "We have never heard the name "Rohingya." Well, my question to a xenophobe Burmese who says " I have never heard of the word "Rohingya," question #1 Did you hear the news of Rohingya exodus of 1978 when 200,000 Rohingyas were forced out from Burma who were carrying NRC (national Registration Cards) because as a researcher I personally verified their NRC cards in refugee camps in Ukiya Bangladesh. Burmese government was forced to take back Rohingyas due to the pressure from international body because Rohingyas were carrying official documents. (b). did you also hear that in 1982 Burmese military government through a constitutional Act officially denied Rohingyas's Burmese citizenship? (c) Did you hear that in the 1991-92 there was another huge Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh? This time Burma made sure that Rohingyas don't carry any NRC.

Are you still confused? If you are still not sure about the name “Rohingya,” it is your problem because you are most likely not informed of your country; in that case I can not help your ignorance.

Worst of all if you as a xenophobe are acting strangely, it is called hypocrisy. In that case, if you are a citizen of Burma, you are intentionally keeping yourself ignorant, so that you can pretend, surely then you are a charlatan.

But if you are promoting this pretension saying "I have never heard the name Rohingya," they must be foreigners," and you are helping the military to exterminate them, and let me tell you, even if you have deserted a Burmese government job in a foreign embassy and is now a powerful democracy movement leader in USA or in UK, it is true, you are more likely to be a double agent, a war criminal that demands to be investigated and exposed to the world.

Why is it important to identify this type of assertions? Because in saying “I have never heard of the word Rohingya before" some leaders of Burma deny a people's birth rights, and help the military to exterminate them. 

Strangely, it is some opportunist Arakanese Rakine gentleman pumped up in prejudice, posing as the devoted democracy movement leaders in everywhere, do everything to block Rohingya leader's participation in Burma's ethnic nationalities’ programs quietly asserting the statement " I have never heard of the name Rohingya."  

But revolutionaries are not shy people. They know the difference between democracy-lovers and the reactionaries. As a matter of duty to Burma's democracy movement and particularly to discourage the growth of xenophobia, reactionaries and their pretensions in Burma, by seemingly responsible people should be brought to public attention.  In the meantime, Rohingyas continue to leave Arakan. FIDH International Federation of Human Rights says:

The …exodus is a deep, sustained trickle of low visibility. The Rohingyas progressively leave Burma in small groups, families or individuals…. Little by little, the population is being forced to leave Arakan because of a deliberate policy of cleansing.”

In that situation an observer lately commented about the Rohingya situation "The life of a refugee is like a football, kicking from bar to bar. One goal bar is on the soil of east Naff River and another is west Naff River. The Naff River is a football ground."

The international community should know that those people in the democracy movement leadership who receive huge donations from Western democracies in the name of promoting democracy in Burma are tolerating the military’s exclusion of the Rohingyas from Burmese citizenship; in the name of democracy they are tolerating and some even promoting racism in Burma. One Aye Chan published a book called Rohingyas as the “Influx Viruses.” The book was forwarded by Monk Ashin Nayaka. For the international community, in addition to sanction grants, there is much to be done to promote democracy in Burma.

Two Rohingya women beaten during bogus house search

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Members of Burma’s border security force (Nasaka) forcibly entered a house from in the Litra (Kurkhali) village area of Maungdaw North on November 16, at midnight, said a schoolteacher who preferred not to be named.
The house belonged to a Monsur Alam who was away at his business during the incident, though his wife was home.
The Nasaka members, of whom there were three, did a thorough search of the house, claiming to be searching for an illegal mobile phone. They were accompanied by 4 local collaborators. While in the house, they broke into an iron box and took 125,000 kyats belonging to Alam and his wife.
Alam’s wife Fatema Khatun and his mother Roshida Begum were severely beaten for offering resistance. Fatema Khatun was nine months pregnant, said a relative of Monsur Alam.
The next day, Khatun went with her husband to the Kawar Bill Nasaka HQ.  They reported the incident to the duty officer but that officer declined to take immediate action. The couple returned home unsatisfied, said a local trader quoting Alam.
Subsequently, Alam was summoned by Area Commander Major Kyaw Aung to the Nasaka Office 4 for questioning but did not go for fear of arrest or harassment.
A local businessman complained, “Why did the Nasaka take away his money after they failed to find any illegal mobile sets?”
A local elder thought it suspicious that the seven had forced their way into the house while only women were present and without a village administrative officer present.
A local youth gave the names of the collaborators as Faizal , Dulaya, Alam Gir, and Ayub.

Arrests and extortion in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Yesterday, at 10 p.m., three men were arrested by the local border security force (Nasaka).
They were at a village shop eating jelaphi, a locally made sweet, said a relative of the victims.
The arrested men were identified as Sayeddul Amin (22), son of Abdu Zalil, ali Zuhar (30), son of Noru Alam, and Mohamed Noor (23), son of Mohamed Jalil. They all lived in Nanda Khali village, which is in the Nasaka’s Area No.6 in Maungdaw Township.
A group of Nasaka personnel, who were on duty at the village administration office, went to the shop and made the arrests, claiming the three were drinking wine.
The three men were physically abused by the Nasaka who demanded money for their release while keeping them in a stockade.
Upon paying 700,000 kyats to the Nasaka, the men were released the following morning, said a close friend of the victims.
“They were only eating jelaphi. They did not commit a crime but were arrested and tortured. The Nasaka demanded money to release them,” said a village elder.
“People across Arakan State hope the visiting US Secretary of State Ms. Hillary Clinton will pressure the new army-basked civilian Burmese government on the human rights violation that occur in every part of the Burma,” said a local elder from Maungdaw Town.

Over 1300 Rohingyas arrested in Bangladesh so far this year

Teknaf, Bangladesh: Bangladesh authorities have arrested over 1300 Rohingyas along the Bangladesh-Burma border within eleven month of 2011, according to different sources.
Most Rohingyas were arrested at different border entry points and pushed back to Burma by the concerned authorities.
Among those arrestees, thirteen were sent to Cox’s Bazar jail under suspicion of smuggling.
In January 2011, Bangladesh authorities arrested 73 Rohingya. The totals for the rest of the year so far are: 76 in February, 70 in March, 132 in April, 255 in May, 132 in June, 73 in July, 128 in August, 161 in September and 261 in November 2011. This adds up to 1361, though October figures (not listed) would swell the total even more.
Eventually, all those arrested were sent back into Burma after being investigated by the authorities, according to officials.
An official aide said on condition of anonymity, “Most Rohingya people come to Bangladesh from Burma to see their relatives in the refugee camps and also come to get better medical treatment in Bangladesh.”
“In Arakan State, he continued, “Rohingya people aren’t able go to Aykab (Sitwe) for better medical treatment due to restrictions movement imposed by government and the expense needed to reach Akyab.”

Villagers in Maungdaw area face extortion tactics

Maungdaw, Arakan State: The Burma Border Security Force (Nasaka) Commander of Nasaka area No.6 in Maungdaw Township recently instituted a new plan to extort money from villagers in his area, according to an anonymous local trader.
“This morning, the deputy commander of Nasaka area No.6 summoned some villagers who had built houses or shops within his command area 16 or more years ago, after getting permission from the local Nasaka officer.”
“After arriving at the camp, the Commander asked those villagers to give money to the Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC) Chairman, now the Township Administration Officer (TAO),” the trader said.
According to the villagers, they did not need permission from TPDC officer at the time. They only needed permission from a local Nasaka officer. So, they had no authorized permissions papers from the TPDC officer. However, the current Nasaka area commander demanded money from any villagers who lacked such permission documents.
A village elder said, “This is a creation by the Nasaka officer to extort money. He is cheating the villagers by using his power and position.”
Another local trader said on condition of anonymity, “Nasaka officers are always thinking about how to get money from local Rohingya villagers by making new schemes or using their power to concoct fabricated accusations against villagers.”
“Those officers have no fear from their superiors as they are given free rein against the Rohingya community. They [the higher authorities] do not take any action against the culprits,” said a local teacher who declined to be named.
“The local Nasaka officer demanded100,000 kyats from a shop and between 200,000 and 300,000 kyats from a house. The shops were built in the villages or by the sides of the local roads. There are nine villages in Nasaka area No.6, and each has at least 50 houses and shops. So, the Nasaka officer will get a lot of money from the local Rohingya villagers without any investment,” the teacher concluded.