রোহিঙ্গাবাহী ৬টি নৌকা ফেরত
18 Dec, 2016
মিয়ানমারের রাখাইন রাজ্যে সেদেশের সেনাবাহিনীর হাতে নির্যাতিত রোহিঙ্গাদের দেশত্যাগের ধারা অব্যাহত রয়েছে।
শনিবার রাত থেকে রোববার ভোর পর্যন্ত রাখাইন থেকে পালিয়ে আসা নির্যাতিত এসব রোহিঙ্গাদের ৬টি নৌকা নাফ নদী হয়ে বাংলাদেশ সীমান্তে অনুপ্রবেশের চেষ্টা করে।
তবে বাংলাদেশ সীমান্তরক্ষী বাহিনী বিজিবির সতর্ক নজরদারির কারণে তাদেরকে মিয়ানমারের দিকে ফেরত যেতে হয়েছে।
টেকনাফ বিজিবি- ২ ব্যাটালিয়ন উপ-অধিনায়ক মেজর আবু রাসেল সিদ্দিকী জানান, শনিবার রাত থেকে রোববার ভোর পর্যন্ত টেকনাফের দুটি পয়েন্ট দিয়ে ৬টি রোহিঙ্গাবাহী নৌকা নাফ নদী হয়ে বাংলাদেশে অনুপ্রবেশের চেষ্টা চালায়।
তিনি জানান, বিজিবির টহলরত দল রোহিঙ্গা বোঝাই এসব নৌকা মিয়ানমারের দিকে ফেরত পাঠায়।
আবু রাসেল সিদ্দিকী বলেন, হ্নীলা ও লেদা পয়েন্ট দিয়ে ওইসব নৌকা বাংলাদেশে ঢুকার চেষ্টা করে। প্রতিটি নৌকায় ১৫/১৬ জন করে রোহিঙ্গা নারী, পরুষ ও শিশু ছিল।
উৎসঃ যুগান্তর
http://www.bdnatun.net/newsdetail/detail/31/267311
I am not stating in the light of that news. You must be aware of the military sales from Pakistan to Myanmar.... As much as I appreciate the efforts to help them, the military relationship disappoints me (angers me too). Pakistan needs to clear the situation...
Nothing o be concerned at all, its just a part of fine Diplomacy. I dont want to indulge further, just wait and watch, how the games are played, end result is all that matters.
The dirty fossil fuel secret behind Burma's democratic fairytale
South-east Asian country's untapped natural wealth is being opened up, regardless of the environmental and human costs
Burma has waged 'a campaign of ethnic cleansing' against Rohingya Muslims, according to Human Rights Watch. Photograph: HRW/AFP/Getty Images
Nafeez Ahmed
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...fossil-fuel-secret-burma-democratic-fairytale
Friday 26 April 2013 13.18 BST
New evidence has emerged that the systematic violence against ethnic Rohingya in Burma - "
described as genocidal by some experts" - is being actively supported by state agencies. But the violence's links to the country's ambitions to rapidly expand fossil fuel production, at massive cost to local populations and to the environment, have been largely overlooked.
Over 125,000 ethnic Rohingya have been forcibly displaced since waves of violence swept across Burma's Arakan state last year, continuing until now, according to the New York-based
Human Rights Watch's (HRW) latest sobering report. The "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Arakan's Muslim minority, although instigated largely by Buddhist monks rallying local mobs, has been the product of "extensive state involvement and planning", according to HRW's UK director
David Mepham.
The
group found:
"All of the state security forces [in Arakan] are implicated in failing to prevent atrocities or directly participating in them, including local police, Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and the army and navy."
Burma's
Rohingya minority has resided in the country for decades, but been formally denied citizenship by the government, subjected instead to forced labour, arbitrary land confiscations, and routine discrimination. Although the latest violence raises urgent questions about the integrity of Burma's ostensible democratic reform process, the west has refused to allow the campaign against the Rohingyas to interfere with efforts to integrate the regime into global markets.
The last two years has seen
first the US, then the UK and the EU, lift decades of economic sanctions with a view to "
open a new chapter" in relations with Burma.
Nestled strategically between India and China, Burma is rich in fossil fuels and other mineral resources, including oil, gas, gold, timber and jade. In recent months, even as genocidal violence has escalated, the country has been
courtedby world leaders, such as President Barack Obama, British foreign secretary William Hague, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.
As
Forbes reports , thanks to Burma's "vast, untapped reserves of oil and natural gas" – estimated at between 11 trillion and 23 trillion cubic feet – "and with sanctions over and a world thirsty for new sources of energy, Western multinationals are eager to sign deals."
But foreign companies must partner with local companies to be able to bid. This condition has spurred Myanmar's
crony capitalist elite of fewer than 20 families – many of whom built their business empires on the back of state favours from the former military junta – to rebrand themselves as honest brokers for western investors looking for their next regional venture.
Attempting to consolidate their privileged position in a highly unequal but resource-rich economy, Burma's business families are making renewed efforts to capitalise on the resource rush, highlighting their philanthropic activities, and forging new ties with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Foreign investment is currently dominated by Chinese, Thai and Indian firms, who operated relatively unfazed by western sanctions, but American, British and French multinationals such as Chevron, BP, Shell, and Total are jockeying to make up for lost time.
Yet the scramble to open up Burma for business has played a direct role in inflaming community tensions. One of the most prominent culprits is the Shwe
Gas Project led by South Korean and Indian companies, to export natural gas via pipeline from Arakan state to China's Yunnan province. The 2,800km overland pipeline is slated to become operational this year.
The project plans to produce 500 million cubic feet (mcfd) of gas per day for 30 years, supplying 400 mcfd to China, and the remaining 100 mcfd to
factories owned by the Burmese government, military and associated business elites.
The losers from this venture are the Burmese people and environment. An extensive report by the
Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), a Burmese community-based human rights network, documented the destruction of local fishing and farming industries, including confiscation of thousands of acres of land to "clear areas for the pipeline and associated infrastructure", from 2010 to 2011. Tens of thousands have been left jobless, with little or no compensation or employment opportunities.
The pipeline also cuts through the Arakan Yoma forest ecosystems of the Western Mountain Range, part of the Eastern Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, contributing to soil erosion and endangering species. One third of coral reefs north of Kyauk Phyu town have already been seriously damaged, undermining fish and marine life, and local fishing. Freshwater rivers and waterways have been dredged for sand and gravel for construction purposes, and are set to become dumping grounds for toxic materials.
In December 2011, the pipeline project
sparked widespread anger across Arakan's cities and rural areas, as local people demanded provision of 24 hour electricity. Ranked the second most impoverished state of Burma by the UN Development Programme, approximately 3 million people living in Arakan have no access to public electricity, with just a few major cities able to access only five to six hours of electricity per day, provided by private companies at extortionate prices of 400-600 Kyat per unit (compared to 25 Kyat per unit in Rangoon). Overall, Burma is by far
the poorest country in Southeast Asia, with a third of the population living in poverty.
The eruption of ethnic violence across Arakan against ethnic Rohingyas six months later in 2012 was therefore most likely triggered by the simmering tensions wrought by escalating economic marginalisation. On the one hand, Arakan's deepening economic crisis, fuelled by the state-backed pipeline project, laid the groundwork for an increase in xenophobia and racism toward the Rohingya. On the other, Burmese state agencies appear to have deliberately fostered the ethnic cleansing campaign to divert populist anger away from the devastating impact of the pipeline project, and instead toward the most easy and vulnerable target to hand.
Even as violence against the Rohingya escalates, conflict has also broken out along the pipeline route between Burmese security forces and local armed resistance groups linked to the
Kachin state, where people have faced arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labour, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the Burma Army.
The plight of these different groups underscores that the fairytale of Burma's rosy democratic transition is exactly that -
a fairytale.
But lured by the promise of windfall profits, it is a fairytale convenient for competing global powers eager to capitalise on the country's untapped natural wealth, regardless of the environmental and human costs.
• This is
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed's first post on his new blog, Earth Insight, hosted by The Guardian. Nafeez is Executive Director of the
Institute for Policy Research & Development, and writer/presenter of the film
The Crisis of Civilization, based on his latest book,
A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It. You can follow him on Twitter:
@nafeezahmed
