Breaking news: June 29, 2012

No relief for Rohingya in Maungdaw

Two helicopters with relief goods arrived yesterday in Maungdaw and all the relief goods are kept in Myoma monastery where the relief goods were distributed to the Rakhines who are not taking shelter as refugees. Most Rakhines have homes and foods but they receive the relief from distribution centers. The authority setup three centers in Maungdaw – Myoma monastery, Myo Oo Pagoda monastery and Ward number 5 junctions “Community hall for Buddha religious purposes.”

The relief goods are not distributed to the Rohingya community and has no plan to distribute relief to them. Most of the Rohingya community who are living inside town and nearby town are facing foods shortage and some become starvation which will be danger for this community in the future and will die.
Still not able to pray Juma  in Maungdaw
Maungdaw authorities are still blocking Rohingya community to pray Juma in the Mosques in Maungdaw Township.
Authority extracts forced labor to build new Natala villages
The concerned authorities forcibly extract forced labor from Rohingya community to build new Natala villages where the concerned authority paid only 1000 kyat and one kilogram of rice per day where normally one labor gets more than 2000 kyat. No foods or water are provided during the working period.

Myanmar ethnic alliance says Rohingya “not Burmese

Malaysia’s Rohingyas protest violence in Myanmar.

KUALA LUMPUR: Adding anger to an already tense situation in Myanmar, a group of 8 ethnic parties currently allied have said the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority are not considered an ethnic minority.
The statement by the group’s reiterated their position adopted in 2005.
It comes as the Rohingya minority in the country face waves of attacks and reported massacres in the Western Arakan area of the country.
“‘Rohingya’ is not to be recognized as a nationality,” said a statement by the National Democratic Front (NDF), saying it wanted its views to be known to “the people at home and in foreign lands” because of the sectarian violence that has erupted in Rakhine State, claiming nearly 80 lives since May 28.
Some 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma, where the government considers them illegal immigrants and denies them citizenship. Most Burmese call Rohingya “Bengali.”
NDF Secretary Khun Oh said, “Even before the current conflict, there has been frequent conflict between Rakhine and Bengalis,” referring to the Rohingyas as people from Bangladesh.
The NDF statement said the violence, which saw up to 3,000 homes and businesses burned, was a result of poor immigration regulations and enforcement.
However, Khun Oh told local media that some Rohingyas could be granted Burmese citizenship if they met appropriate qualifications, such as knowledge of the national language.
The stateless community has struggled to find a positive way of life as many fled violence in Myanmar in the early 1980s.
The Rohingyas said the flare up of violence in Myanmar has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the past three decades and they want an end to the alleged atrocities.
They want a UN peacekeeping force as well as a medical team to be sent there immediately.
Many fear that thousands of Rohingyas may be heading towards a crisis situation without food, shelter and medication.

Egypt activists to protest at Myanmar embassy over Rohingya attacks

Western Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims face food shortages and ethnic violence.

CAIRO: Egyptian rights activists announced their solidarity with the under attack Muslim Rohingya community in Arakan, Myanmar, and plan to protest outside the Myanmar embassy later on Thursday.
“We are against exterminating peoples for their religion or beliefs,” said the invitation to action.
“The Arakan region has seen some serious human rights violations since the beginning of June where Muslims were attacked by Buddhists.”
The activists plan to gather in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek at 5 PM to protest the ethnic violence outside of the embassy.
Some 30 Rohingya have been killed in violent clashes in Myanmar as a result of ethnic violence with Buddhists in the Western area.
The stateless community has struggled to find a positive way of life as many fled violence in Myanmar in the early 1980s.
The Rohingyas said the flare up of violence in Myanmar has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the past three decades and they want an end to the alleged atrocities.
They want a UN peacekeeping force as well as a medical team to be sent there immediately.
Many fear that thousands of Rohingyas may be heading towards a crisis situation without food, shelter and medication.

No reason to abandon Rohingyas

Apparently, Bangladesh's pushback of helpless Rohingyas from its territorial waters into those of Myanmar seems to have worked. Or has it? Given that 30,000 were afflicted in the latest eruption of ethnic violence in Rakhine state capital Sittwe, this may have been just a stalling operation.

Since no media is allowed in the troubled zone, there's no way knowing whether those sent back by us are safe. Perhaps, Bangladesh's stern approach has gone down well with the Myanmar authorities. For once, we could bite the bullet and let them float into the elements of nature, or shove them into the tunnel of uncertainty.

Clearly, all this is a palliative, and not a cure of the disease. Because the fundamental issue of statelessness of the Muslim minority in the Rakhaine state of Myanmar remains intact. Persecution and ethnic cleansing of varying intensity follow from this non-existent status of not even second class citizens.

So long as this seminal question of nationality is not resolved, Rohingyas in boatloads or trickles would keep coming in through the 200km long porous border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Thus, we find in the UNHCR's version, eight unregistered Rohingya refugees to every registered one. In contrast, government's ratio between listed and unlisted refugees stands at 15 to 1. This demographic pressure on an already densely populated part of Bangladesh is headed for snowballing with severe repercussions in the horizon.

One reputed international observer Derek Tonkin's position on this fallacy is unassailable: "The statelessness of the Rohingya is a breach of Article 15(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which provides that: 'Everyone has the right to a nationality'."

When a country is at the receiving end of fallout from either a willful persecution of the Rohingyas by the military as in 1978 and 1991 and internal ethnic violence as erupted lately, it has to defend its national interest. Bangladesh has every right to address the problem bilaterally, and if necessary, internationally. But a hands-on role is missing.

What is difficult to understand is Bangladesh government treating the latest dimension to the Rohingya question in a way that it can make all the difference between good and bad bilateral relations. Why must this be so; an issue has arisen and it must be dealt with, first compassionately and then by taking it up at the government-to-government level in a no nonsense manner.

Now, why have a short memory? In both times that the spates in Rohingya exodus were triggered by military operations in Myanmar, we arranged repatriation of the refugees by engaging the military authorities, post-1978 and 1991. We could work out a solution, incomplete that it might have been, albeit under the auspices of the UNHCR. Why then the latest upshot of ethnic raw nerves centering around a criminal act but allowed to proliferate as a religious-ethnic reprisal by the majority community under military watch should be handled like "glass with care" approach? By accident, if you like, the core issue has come to the fore, through a haemorrhage though. And if the wound is 'band-aided' now, it would bleed again.

In a sense, the international community is also playing kid glove with Myanmar authorities. The West is supersensitive to the cause of consolidating the pro-democracy and open economy gains and advancing the freedom and leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi to complete the process of Myanmar's opening to the world. So, why rock the boat?

Suu Kyi's appeal to reason, her sagacity, and persistent theme of reconciliation have inspired analogies with Nelson Mandela. This is something to draw on. One of the first Suu Kyi statements on her release from house arrest had been to call for speedy resolution of ethnic minority issues. We are looking to her to take a conscientious role in resolving the "nationality" issue of the Rohingyas. We are heartened by her expression of concern over "the handling of the situation by local Rakhaine authorities, in particular their failure to dampen anti-Muslim sentiment. Suu also calls on Buddhists to 'have sympathy for minorities'." (Xinhua)

Suu Kyi's growing international image is of value to the military who still retain the levers of power but understands the efficacy of withdrawal of sanctions on and investment in Myanmar. Pragmatism suggests they should swim with the current.

The two foregoing factors taken together, condition in Myanmar couldn't have been potentially more conducive than it is today towards settling all the ethnic minority issues that bristle the Myanmar body-politic.

There is a third element that the Myanmar government needs to consider to reshape its policy towards the Rohingyas. Ethnic groups like the Karen and Kachin are "insurrectionist" espousing the aspirations of small nations. While attempts are made to assimilate them into the Myanmar society, why should the innocent, armless Rohingyas be left behind?

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.

Arakan Roit News Update : June 28, 2012

Rathedaung Township:

Twenty two villagers were arrested from Anukpin village of Rathedaung Township earlier and on June 27, again 60 villagers were arrested from the said village by army and Nasaka. After arrest, they were sent to Rakhine villages where they were tortured severally by Rakhine villagers. After that, they were sent to Akyab. The fate of the arrested villagers is not known to their relatives. The village has about 1000 houses, of them, 60 houses were burned down by Rakhines with the help of army and Nasaka though they have responsibility to give security of the Rohingya villagers, said a villager from Rathedaung on condition of anonymity.

Besides, 350 houses from Mozai Dia village and 150 houses of Sarat Pyin village were burned down into ashes by a group of Rakhine extremists in front of army and Nasaka. The concerned authorities declared that the army and Nasaka take security of the villages of Rathedaung Township. It is very difficult to understand that the army and Nasaka give security only Rakhine, but not to Rohingyas. They also co-operate with the racist Rakhines for arson attack to the Rohingya villages. The Burmese media also highlighted that the Rakhines are suffering from crisis of food and shelter, showing artificial Rakhine refugees who have been taking shelter in Nasaka camps and Buddhist monasteries of Maungdaw and Akyab (Sittwe).


It is learnt that many Rohingya villagers in Rathedaung Township have been suffering from food, shelter, medicine crisis since the event were broken out.

In addition on June 26, the Rohingya villagers were flooded by heavy rain fall in Rathedaung. There is no place to take shelter whose houses had already burned down by Rakhine mobs. There is no one to give them any help as it is an isolated area. Every day, the army and Nasaka along with some Rakhines arrest the Rohingya villagers, so, the villagers are passing their days and nights with terrible situation for fear of arrest and torture.

Situation Maungdaw Township:

Yesterday, at about 4:00 pm a widow – Syeda Kanon daughter of Basa Meah – was shot dead by army while she was returning from a grazing ground with her goat. When the army took away her goat forcibly from her, the widow asked the army “Why do you take away my goat?”. It caused army angry and shot dead her on the spot. She was forty-five year old of Lamba Ghona village. Earlier, the army also took away a cow from her.

Moreover, today, at about 8:30 am, two helicopters arrived at Aley Than Kyaw village of Maungdaw Township from Akyab(Sittwe) and then flied to Nasaka headquarters to see the Rakhine refugees who have been taking shelter in the Nasaka camps and Buddhist monasteries at Maungdaw. The refugees are the Natala villagers who were brought to the Nasaka camps from Maungdaw north, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships and the relocated Natala villagers of southern side of Maundaw town. Whenever, the international community and the high level officials from Naypyidaw visited Maungdaw, they only see the Rakhine refugees. They never visited to Rohingya refugees (internal refugees) who have been locking in their own villages by imposing state of emergency. They have been suffering from food crisis since the sectarian violence was occurred. The government didn’t expose to the international community regarding the internal Rohingya refugees who have been persecuted by the Burmese authorities by daily basis.

Besides, the army and Nasaka are arresting the Rohingya villagers continuously, especially from Nurrullah Para, Kilaidaung, Sarcumbo, Horsara and Sombonna villages and other villagers of Maungdaw Township. The authorities are targeting mostly to Rohingya young people even 10-12 year old boys. It is learnt that the young boys were stabbed by Natala villagers, after arrest.

The authorities also took away cattle, goats, rice, fowls and valuables from Rohingya villagers. Every night, the armies, Nasaka accompanied by Rakhines go to the said villages and make arbitrary arrest to the villagers. So, the villagers flee from the villages leaving their family members in the villages. Taking this advantage, the authorities assault the Rohingya women and young girls in the villages. This is the daily basis occurrence in the Rohingya villages. Where is the international community? asked a villager from inside Arakan.
Police arrests with various forms in Maungdaw.

Police officer inspector U aung Kyaw Than and its groups arrested Rohingya with various forms – called for repairing, meeting , listed involved in the demonstration on June 8 and meeting on the road- recently in Maungdaw, according to Maungdaw resident.
Today evening, the police personnel arrested Mohamed – a Rohingya technician- from clock tower junction for calling to repair the police vehicle, but he was sent to the Maungdaw police station with false allegation as he involved in the demonstration on June 8.
Similarly, two Rohingyas from Bomu village were arrested while they are going to their home from another friend home in the same village. The police met them on the road inside the village, but arrested with false allegation that they were doing to set fire the house yesterday.

Nasaka checks Rohingyas’ family list in Maungdaw

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Burmese border security force (Nasaka) has been going to check the family lists of Rohingya today morning, according to village administration office member from Maungdaw.

The Nasaka has been starting to check the family list of Ward number 2 and 4 where the Nasaka checked the lists with family members and if anyone fail to show on the time of checking, he/she was eased from the list. If every member is present at the time of checking, the authority issued a card masked “Checked”But, in Kyikanpyin and Nwahyondaung village, Nasaka has been checking the family lists but Nasaka has been taking signature from the family head on a blank paper after checked the list.

It is learnt that the medicine of MARTEZA (an NGO) and food items of World Food Program (WFP) were destroyed by the flood of June 26. On that day rain fall very heavily and caused inundated many villagers of Maungdaw north, said a youth from north of Maungdaw.
Situation of Buthidaung:
Two persons were released today morning who were arrested by army yesterday. The released two persons are: a son of Mr. Abu Toyub and another one is Adam Zee from Ward No. 7 of Buthidaung town. But, another two were not released among 4 persons who were arrested yesterday, said a trader from the locality.

Many villagers of Buthidaung south and north were flooded by heavy rain on June 26. The villagers have been suffering from many difficulties and there is no any help from government side.

Besides, the market of Buthidaung town was inundated under the water since Tuesday. The concerned authorities didn’t allow the shopkeepers to move their goods from the shops to other safe places giving the reasons that there should be untoward situation while moving the goods. As result, most of the goods should be rotten for keeping them for three days under the water. However, today at about 2:00 pm the concerned authorities of the market allowed shopkeepers to enter the market to see their goods.

Before, the sectarian violence, the concerned authorities did not allow to buy any one more than two kgs of rice from the market.

It is learnt that over 10,000 people including Rakhines and Rohingyas have been taking shelter in the Buthidaung High School because of flood.

ARAKAN ROHINGYA UNION, ADDRESSES CANADIAN PARLIAMENT AND TESTIFIES BEFORE THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

DR. WAKAR UDDIN, DIRECTROR GENERAL OF ARAKAN ROHINGYA UNION, ADDRESSES CANADIAN PARLIAMENT AND TESTIFIES BEFORE THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

The Canadian Parliament conducted a hearing on Rohingya human rights and political rights, and the current violence in Arakan State , Burma (Myanmar), on June 19, 2012. Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, the Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, addressed the Canadian Parliament on Rohingya human rights and political situation in Burma (Myanmar), and testified in a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, presided by Hon. Scott Reid (Conservative Party), Chairman of the International Human Rights sub-committee. In his address, Dr. Uddin brought a wide range of issues that Rohingya ethnic minority is facing in Arakan State, Burma, to the attention of the committee.

He outlined the Rohingya issues through an audio-visual presentation, beginning with demographic background information on Rohingya, some highlights of the roles of Rohingya in the multi-ethnic political process during the during and post-colonial periods of Burma, how the military dictatorship have systematically revoked the citizenship of Rohingya, the persistent human rights violations and persecution of Rohingya by the Burmese government forces, coordinated ethnic cleansing in Rohingya areas in Arakan, the ultra-nationalist and racist ideology of Rakhine as a confounding factor, implication of Burmanization schemes in ethnic minority areas in Burma, and the current ongoing violence against Rohingya in Arakan.

During hearing, a closed door session, the parliamentarian asked specific questions on various issues that Dr. Uddin had articulated during his address earlier in the parliament. Those specific questions and answers to the questions currently remain classified; therefore they could not be made public. However, in the summary, the committee members from all parties (Conservative Party,Liberal Party, and New Democratic Party), were stunned to hear the magnitude and intensity of the persecution that the Rohingya people are facing. The response from the committee to the Rohingya issue was extraordinary and unanimous. The unequivocal support for the cause of Rohingya political and human rights echoed throughout the room during the hearing in the parliament.

The hypocrisy of Burma’s pro-democracy movement

By Francis Wade
Jun 27, 2012

Much has been made of the recent sectarian unrest in western Burma and its ramifications for the country’s fragile reform process. It’s important to note that the violence and subsequent outpouring of anti-Rohingya anger is not a niche issue confined to a specific locale – instead it should be viewed as something more pervasive among many Burman and Arakanese, both inside Burma and abroad, that threatens to contaminate the wider discourse on how to move the country forward.

Among the key catalysts of anti-Rohingya sentiment are, surprisingly, prominent members of Burma’s pro-democracy movement. The hypocrisy of their attempts to vilify an entire ethnic group – labelling them variously as “terrorists”, “illegal immigrants”, “not worthy of citizenship”, and so on – appears lost on them.

Tin Maung Htoo, director of Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB), was forced by the organisation’s Board to retract a statement in early June in which he said the Rohingya were the remnants of a Mujahideen movement in western Burma that had tried to gain citizenship after their “Jihad” failed (like all the country’s ethnic minorities, there is no fixed date for their arrival, though one study done of dialects in Arakan State back in 1799 references “Rooinga”).

That, and other inflammatory comments posted on the internet, are merely the tip of the iceberg for many of Burma’s “democrats”, whose rhetoric implicitly encourages the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC), based in the UK, states on its website that a special battalion of Burmese troops should be deployed to northern Arakan state “to protect the lives of the minority Buddhist Burmese Araknese who are living in the middle of barbaric so-called Rohingya Bengali Muslims”, whom it claims have massacred “tens of thousands of Burmese Buddhist Arakanese in the past”.

The founders of BDC and CFOB were themselves forced into exile after the Burmese military was given free rein to put down the 1988 student uprising in the name of “protecting the nation”. The fact that these same people have also felt most painfully the scourge of state-sanctioned abuse and statelessness likewise gets lost in the fury.

Calls for the Rohingya to be expelled from Burma on the grounds that they are not citizens have been made by the very same people who were allowed to remain in their countries of asylum for years before citizenship was finally awarded – they assert however that this gesture should not be extended to the Rohingya.


Ko Ko Gyi, a former leader of Burma's prominent 88 Generation Students Group, pictured in Yangon earlier this month. Pic: AP.

Tin Maung Htoo has lauded prominent activist Ko Ko Gyi’s proclamation that the Rohingya are not an ethnic nationality of Burma; but nor is he one of Canada. He and others seem to have a hard time explaining the rationale behind their comments.

What the “anti-Rohingya but pro-democracy lobby” also seem to misunderstand is that they have become effective lackeys of a regime that they have dedicated their lives to reforming or doing away with. A key policy of successive Burmese juntas is the divide and rule of ethnic groups, which has allowed the government to foment unrest, justify heavy-handed control and which has historically provided the excuse for why the country is not ready for democracy.

It is of great irony and great sadness that the country’s civilians, both at home and abroad, have finally lent their hand to this, only months into the transition process and after decades of resisting state propaganda. As far afield as London, the front door of Tun Khin, who heads the Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, has been kicked in, while anti-Rohingya protests have been targeted against Burma Campaign UK and the BBC, often by veterans of Burma’s pro-democracy movement who, exiled from their homeland, have gained citizenship in the UK.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s reaction to the unrest was to call for rule of law to be the decider of the status of Rohingya – a deliberately non-committal and vague standpoint. As Sai Latt notes in Asia Sentinel, “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.”

The hypocrisy underpinning the Rohingya crisis calls into question the notion of equal rights, and indeed democracy, espoused by Burma’s pro-democracy movement; indeed that the gestures accorded to them should not be extended to those of different origin, religion, skin colour, or whatever it is that makes the Rohingya such vile creatures in the eyes of those engaged in their persecution. The inability of many to see the double standards being deployed is perhaps a sign that the mindset of the regime, a master of psychological warfare, lurks within those who have spent years rallying against it, and becomes yet another factor in the sobering realisation that Burma’s transition will be a long and painful process.