Genocide is Brewing in Burma

by Kara Foran
November 14, 2012   

5:15 pm

This post is courtesy our friends at United to End Genocide, who interviewed Mr. Mohiuddin M. Yusof, President of Rohingya Concern International, to learn more about the current crisis facing Burma’s Rohingya people following the outbreak of deadly violence in Arakan State this past June. You can also take action to stand with United to End Genocide to stop the attacks on the Rohingya people.

Can you talk about what is happening right now in Burma’s Arakan State?

The displaced people and those who are not displaced, but still live in their own homes and villages, are both still suffering a lot. Actually, those law enforcement agencies, security forces and police who have the responsibility to protect the lives of the Rohingya people have become an instrument of ethnic cleansing. This is still true today.

Myanmar fixates on Rohingya calculation

By Peter Lee   

 Southeast Asia     Nov 14, 2012   Original Source

To outside observers, the carnage inflicted on the Rohingya minority - a five-month spasm of violence and de fact ethnic cleansing ostensibly stemming from the rape of a Buddhist woman by three Rohingya men - in Rakhine Province is indefensible and inexplicable. 

What is even less understandable to Westerners is the virtually universal closing of ranks among local and national governments, pro and anti-government Buddhist monks, junta apologists and pro-democracy activists, President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, all uniting to deny the apparently undeniable fact that an old fashioned pogrom is taking place against Rohingya minority and other Muslims. 

UN Asks Asian States to Accept Burma Refugees

Lisa Schlein
November 13, 2012                      Source

GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency is calling on countries in Southeast Asia to open their borders to people fleeing insecurity and violence in Burma. The UNHCR said it is seriously concerned by the recent drowning of Rohingya Muslims who fled by boat from Burma’s Rakhine state in search of a safe haven.

Burmeese displaced by recent violence carry their belongings as they arrive by boats to Thaechaung refugee camp, outside of Sittwe (formerly Akyab), the capital of Rakhine State, October 28, 2012.

In the last two weeks, two boats reportedly sank in the Bay of Bengal with an estimated 240 people aboard. The U.N. refugee agency said Rohingyas from Burma’s Rakhine state were among them.  

ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ပဋိပကၡစံုစမ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္၊ သို႔ေပးစာ

သို႔

ဥကၠ႒

ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ပဋိပကၡစံုစမ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္၊

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕။                                                  အျပည့္အစံုသို႔

 

အေၾကာင္းအရာ ။ ။ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ ပဋိပကၡႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ အႀကံျပဳ စာတမ္းေပးပို႔ျခင္း။

 

ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္

 

၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္၊ ေမလ (၂၈)ရက္ေန႕တြင္ ရမ္းၿဗဲၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ သေျပေခ်ာင္းေက်းရြာ ေနအမ်ိဳးသမီးတစ္ဦးအား အဓမၼက်င့္၊ လူသတ္၊ ပစၥည္းလုမႈျဖင့္ ေက်ာက္နီေမာ္ရြာေန လူငယ္သုံးဦး အဖမ္းခံရ သည္မွ စတင္၍ ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း အေရးအခင္းေပၚေပါက္လာခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ထုိျပစ္မႈႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ ႏုိင္ငံပုိင္ ေရဒီယုိ၊ သတင္းစာမ်ားမွ တရားခံမ်ားကုိ ဖမ္းဆီးၿပီး၊ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ားကုိ ထိေရာက္ဟန္႕ တား သည့္ ျပစ္ဒါဏ္ခ်မွတ္ႏုိင္ရန္ တရားစဲြအဖဲြ႕အစည္းမ်ားက စိစစ္ေနေၾကာင္း ထည့္သြင္းေဖာ္ျပျခင္းမျပဳဘဲ ပ်က္ကြက္ခဲ့သျဖင့္ ေတာင္ကုတ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚရွိ ပါတီအဖဲြ႕အစည္းမ်ားမွ ၀ံသာႏုရကိၡတ အမည္ခံ လူငယ္ အခ်ိဳ႕ က ဘာသာလူမ်ိဳးကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ လံႈ႕ေဆာ္စာမ်ား ေရးသားခဲ့ၾကသည္။

၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇြန္လ (၃)ရက္ေန႕ ညေနပုိင္းတြင္ သံတဲြၿမိဳ႕မွ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕သုိ႕ ထြက္ခြက္လာသည့္ ရုိးမသစၥာခရီးသည္တင္ယာဥ္ ေတာင္ကုတ္ၿမိဳ႕၊ ေအးရိပ္ၿငိမ္ကားႀကီး၀င္းအတြင္း ရပ္နားစဥ္ မြတ္ဆလင္ ကုလား မ်ားပါရွိေၾကာင္း ၀ံသာႏုရကိၡတလူငယ္မ်ား၏ သတင္းလႊင့္ခ်က္အရ ၿမိဳ႕ေနလူထုကဓါးလွံ တုတ္စသည့္ရရာ လက္နက္ကုိင္စဲြၿပီး ေရာက္လာခဲ့ၾကရာ အတူပါရွိလာေသာ လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖဲြ႕၀င္မ်ားႏွင့္ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဖဲြ႕တုိ႕မွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားကထိန္းသိမ္းကြပ္ကဲမႈမရွိသျဖင့္(၁၀)ေလာင္းၿပိဳင္လူသတ္မႈ ေပၚေပါက္လာခဲ့ ရသည္။

Special Report: Witnesses tell of organized killings of Myanmar Muslims

By Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall

PAIK THAY, Myanmar | Sun Nov 11, 2012 4:18pm EST

(Reuters) - On a hot Sunday night in a remote Myanmar village, Tun Naing punched his wife and unleashed hell.

1 of 13. A Muslim woman, displaced by recent violence in Kyukphyu township, cries after arriving at the Thaechaung refugee camp outside of Sittwe in this October 28, 2012 file photo. 
Credit: REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/Files

She wanted rice for their three children. He said they couldn't afford it. Apartheid-like restrictions had prevented Muslims like Tun Naing from working for Buddhists here in Rakhine State along Myanmar's western border, costing the 38-year-old metalworker his job.

Rohingya plight hurts group's credibility

By Yang Razali Kassim

04:45 AM Nov 12, 2012      SOURCE

The plight of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar is threatening to blow up in the face of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), just before the regional grouping convenes its 21st summit in Cambodia. 

To help defuse the humanitarian fallout, ASEAN has offered to work closely with the Myanmar government and the United Nations, in the same way this tripartite arrangement effectively provided relief to the victims of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. 

But Myanmar has rejected the offer on the grounds that the conflict is an internal affair, according to ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan. He said that the atrocities, if not ended, could radicalise the Rohingya Muslims and destabilise South-east Asia. 

Dr Surin's warning bell is timely. There are signs of growing agitation, especially within the Muslim communities of South-east Asia, at the seeming lack of peace efforts on the part of the Myanmar government and the international community. 

Letter from America: Genocide of the Rohingyas of Myanmar – Part 2 All Over Arakan It’s Bosnia Again!

Sun, 2012-11-11 01:19 — editor ။ ASIAN TRIBUNE

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

In a meeting (in which I was invited to speak on the Rohingya problem) held in Luton (located 30  miles north of London), UK, on October 13, a British MP mentioned close parallel between what is happening today against the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan and what happened in Bosnia in the early 1990s against the Bosnian Muslims. He is right.

The Arakan state, which per estimates made by Dr. Shwe Lu Maung alias Shahnewaz Khan, in his book – The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar – a Social Darwinist’s Analysis – had probably as many Rohingya Muslims as there were Rakhine Buddhists living in its four districts before the latest extermination campaign that began on June 3 of this year, is now almost devoid of any Muslim village that is unharmed or intact by Buddhist Rakhine terrorism.

Displaced and stateless Rohingyas fleeing hell and facing limbo

Displaced and stateless Rohingyas face a life of disadvantage, and a future of untold health risks.

ROHINGYA organisations worldwide have called for a global day of action today in support of human rights for the Rohingya people of Myanmar.

Stateless Rohingya children in material and environmental disadvantage
 face severe consequences on their physical and mental health in adulthood.

As a researcher examining the access of Rohingya women to maternal health services in the greater Kuala Lumpur area, I am compelled to add my voice to theirs and share my observations about the health experiences of this group as it is impacted by displacement.

Nur Farida (not her real name) was born in Malaysia. Her parents fled Rakhine state in the late 1970s. She was one of the Rohingya women in my study who delivered their babies at home because they could not afford maternal healthcare and/or lacked documents.

Nur Farida’s husband, who had been arrested several times, was in detention at the time of her recent delivery. To feed herself, her two children and unborn child, she cleaned houses and washed clothes for others, while she lived in a rundown house lacking running water and electricity.

World should support Myanmar Rohingya Muslims: Rights organization

The Refugees International organization has called on the international community to make a collective effort to end the suffering of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Press TV reports.

Sarnata Reynolds, the program manager of the rights organization, told Press TV in an interview on Friday that the responsibility of supporting the Muslim minority in Myanmar has to be shared by the international community. 

“People are fleeing prosecution and they are fleeing hunger and violence, and they are fleeing the fact that they have zero human rights that no one would protect them. So when they take boat voyages or flee away, they need to be accepted. They need to be provided with refuge,” Reynolds stated. 

UN calls on Myanmar to offer citizenship to Rohingya

The UN human rights chief called on Myanmar Friday to allow Muslim Rohingya to become citizens after deadly sectarian violence in recent months in the western state of Rakhine.

Ethnic Rakhine people take refugee at a relief camp, in Mrauk U,
 in Rakhine state, western Myanmar, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012 (Photo: AP)

The group's statelessness is at the heart of two major outbreaks of unrest between Buddhist and Muslim communities that has left 180 dead and forced more than 110,000, mainly Rohingya, into makeshift camps since June.

The Rohingya have no legal status, with the government and many Burmese regarding them as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay added her voice to calls for the problem to be resolved and urged a change in the law, saying the Rohingya had been excluded from the reform process.

ႏိုင္ငံအဝွမ္း မြတ္စလင္ အျမစ္ျပတ္သုတ္သင္ေရး စစ္အစိုးရ စီမံကိန္းေရးဆြဲေနသလား

ပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ရက္သတၱပတ္အတြင္း ျဖစ္ပြါးခဲ့တဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာနဲ႔ ရခိုင္ေတြအၾကား အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈေတြဟာ အခုအခ်ိန္မွာေတာ့ ဘာသာေရးစစ္ပြဲတစ္ခု အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းလာျပီး ရခိုင္ေဒသျပင္ပကိုပါ ကူးစက္လာဖြယ္ရာ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒီလို သုံးသပ္ဖို႕အတြက္ အဓိက အေၾကာင္းအရင္း တစ္ခုကေတာ့ ရခိုင္ေတြ၊ လုံျခဳံေရးတပ္ေတြရဲ႕ တိုင္းရင္းသား ကမန္မြတ္ဆလင္ လူမ်ိဳးေတြအေပၚ တိုက္ခိုက္ျခင္းပါဘဲ။ ယခင္က ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္ေတြနဲ႔ ဘာျပႆနာမွ မရွိခဲ့ဘူးတဲ့ ဒီတိုင္းရင္းသား ကမန္ေတြဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ (ႏိုင္ငံသား ဟုတ္-မဟုတ္ ျပႆနာသည္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအေပၚ ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံရျခင္း၏ အဓိက အေၾကာင္းအရင္းတစ္ခု ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ရခိုင္အပါအဝင္၊ ျမန္မာအစိုးရမွ ေျဖရွင္းေျပာဆိုထား)

ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း အေျခစိုက္ အလြတ္တန္း သတင္းေထာက္ ဖရန္႔စစ္ ေဝ့ဒ္ (Francis Wade) ၏ “Asian Correspondent” တြင္ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ (၇)ရက္ေန႕က ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ေသာ “Burma’s potential for a nationwide religious war” ကို ဆီေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ျပန္ဆိုသည္။

Burma’s potential for a nationwide religious war

An armed police officer guards as Muslim refugees stand behind him at a refugee
camp in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, western Burma. Pic: AP.

The violence in western Burma between Rohingya and Arakanese has evolved in recent weeks, and now there is a distinct possibility that a religious war is unfolding that could spread far beyond Arakan state. The most concerning sign is the recent attacks by Arakanese and security forces on Kaman Muslims, who had previously lived comfortably alongside Buddhist communities, and who have citizenship (the citizenship issue had been one of the main justifications used by Arakanese and the government for mistreatment of the Rohingya, who are stateless).

Letter to His Excellency Koichiro Gemba, Foreign Minister of Japan

His Excellency Koichiro Gemba                                                            Date: 08 November 20012

Foreign Minister

The Government of Japan

Subject:            : An urgent appeal  to intervene, to help stop on-going violence on   Rohingyas of Arakan.

Dear Sir;

We, on behalf of Rohingyas in Burma are very concern with the deteriorating situation of Rohingya in Arkan. As the international community is very well informed but the violence attack on Rohingya minority people by the Rakhine majority since early June this year was not stop. There was some out-cry to stop the violence but the attack was unabated and consistently going on throughout the Arakan Region. There is no rule of law in Arakan. As president Thein Sein’s government forces are patronizing with the extremist Rakhine terrorists to exterminate the Rohingyas from   Arakan, Burma.