A Crime against Humanity

[Banglar Bir]

Without a Home, and Without Hope
September 23, 2017
Brook Larmer | National Geographic
“Dance!” shouted the army officer, waving a gun at the trembling girl. Afifa, just 14 years old, was corralled in a rice paddy with dozens of girls and women—all members of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. The soldiers who invaded her village that morning last October said they were looking for militants who had carried out a surprise attack on three border posts, killing nine policemen. The village’s men and boys, fearing for their lives, had dashed into the forests to hide, and the soldiers began terrorizing the women and children.

After enduring an invasive body search, Afifa had watched soldiers drag two young women deep into the rice paddy before they turned their attention to her. “If you don’t dance at once,” the officer said, drawing his hand across his throat, “we will slaughter you.” Choking back tears, Afifa began to sway back and forth. The soldiers clapped rhythmically. A few pulled out mobile phones to shoot videos. The commanding officer slid his arm around Afifa’s waist.

Rohingya refugees queue outside Kutupalong camp near the town of Cox’s Bazar, waiting to receive staples from the World Food Programme. About half a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh.
“Now that’s better, isn’t it?” he said, flashing a smile.

The encounter marked only the beginning of the latest wave of violence against the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya who live, precariously, in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The United Nations considers the Rohingya one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. Muslims in a nation dominated by Buddhists, the Rohingya claim that they are indigenous to Rakhine, and many are descended from settlers who came in the 19th and early 20th century. Despite their roots, a 1982 law stripped the Rohingya of their citizenship. They are now considered illegal immigrants in Myanmar as well as in neighboring Bangladesh, the country to which as many as half a million have fled.

Five years ago, clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities left hundreds dead, mostly Rohingya. With their mosques and villages torched, 120,000 Rohingya were forced into makeshift camps inside Myanmar (also known as Burma). This time the assault was unleashed by the Burmese military, the feared Tatmadaw, which ruled over Myanmar for five decades before overseeing a transition that led last year to a quasi-civilian government.

Early in the morning, family members warm themselves around a fire in an alley in Kutupalong. Refugees construct their huts from branches, leaves, and black plastic sheeting. Many of these flimsy shelters were ruined in May by a cyclone.

What began ostensibly as a hunt for the culprits behind the border post attacks turned into a four-month assault on the Rohingya population as a whole. According to witnesses interviewed by the UN and international human-rights groups, as well as National Geographic, the army campaign included executions, mass detentions, the razing of villages, and the systematic rape of Rohingya women. Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, believes it’s “very likely” the army committed crimes against humanity.

The full extent of what happened in northern Rakhine state is not yet known because the government has not allowed independent investigators, journalists, or aid groups unfettered access to the affected areas. Satellite imagery at the time showed Rohingya villages destroyed by fire. Amateur video appeared to show charred bodies of adults and children lying on the ground in the torched villages. Rights groups say hundreds of Rohingya have been killed. One incontrovertible truth is that the army assault triggered the exodus of more than 75,000 Rohingya into overcrowded refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh. Nearly 60 percent are children. (An estimated 20,000 or more Rohingya have been displaced within Myanmar’s borders.)

With no access to Bangladesh’s health facilities, Rohingya women with a malnourished baby wait to be seen by medical professionals who work for international non-profits.

Before the soldiers left Afifa’s village that day, she says they set fire to the harvest-ready rice fields, looted houses, and shot or stole all of the cattle and goats. The devastation and fear compelled Afifa’s parents to split the family into two groups and escape in different directions—to improve their odds of survival. “We didn’t want to abandon our home,” Afifa’s father, Mohammed Islam, told me five months later, when five of the family’s 11 members staggered into Balukhali, a refugee camp in Bangladesh. “But the army has only one aim: to get rid of all Rohingya.”

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. More than a year ago, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi became Myanmar’s de facto leader, and international human-rights groups—as well as many Rohingya—hoped she would help move Rakhine toward peace and reconciliation. The daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero and martyr, General Aung San, she is celebrated for her fearless resistance to the country’s military dictatorship. After enduring more than 15 years under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League of Democracy to a sweeping electoral victory in 2015. (A clause in the military-drafted constitution prevented her from becoming president, so a loyal underling serves as president while she runs the government as “state counselor.”)

“We had a very big hope that Suu Kyi and democracy would be good for us,” says Moulabi Jaffar, a 40-year-old Islamic cleric and shop owner from a village north of Maungdaw, sitting in his shack in Balukhali camp. “But the violence only got worse. That came as a big surprise.”

Men pray at a mosque being built from bamboo at Balukhali, a refugee camp in Bangladesh. The Rohingya are Muslims, while Buddhism is the dominant religion in Myanmar. Buddhist firebrands have stirred up hatred for the minority Rohingya.

Despite her reputation as a human-rights icon, Aung San Suu Kyi has seemed unwilling or unable to speak about the violence against the Rohingya, much less bring perpetrators to justice. When reports of army atrocities emerged late last year, she broke her silence—not to rein in abusive soldiers but to scold the United Nations and human-rights groups for stoking “bigger fires of resentment” by dwelling on the testimonies of Rohingya who had fled to Bangladesh. It doesn’t help, she said, “if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation.” Aung San Suu Kyi has yet to visit northern Rakhine. But in a BBC interview in April, she said, “I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing going on.”

Aung San Suu Kyi remains an immensely popular figure in Myanmar, where 90 percent of the population is Buddhist and the military still wields enormous power. But her role in shielding the army from scrutiny in Rakhine has tarnished her global reputation, even prompting a letter from 13 Nobel laureates upbraiding her for failing to protect the rights of the Rohingya. “Like many in the international community, we expected more of Suu Kyi,” says Matthew Smith, co-founder of Fortify Rights, a Bangkok-based human-rights group. “She is operating in a delicate situation politically, but that doesn’t justify silence or wholesale denials in the face of mountains of evidence. The army launched an attack on a civilian population, and nobody has been held accountable.”

Myanmar set up three commissions to look into the turmoil in Rakhine state, but none is independent. The army’s report, released in May, proclaimed its innocence—except for two minor incidents, including one in which a soldier borrowed a motorbike without asking. A member of the main government inquiry dismissed reports of atrocities and contended that Burmese soldiers couldn’t have raped Rohingya women because they are “too dirty.” That commission’s final report, issued in early August, was another blanket denial, contending that “there is no evidence of crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.” Aung San Suu Kyi says her government will accept outside guidance only from an international commission chaired by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Its report is also due this month, but its mandate is to make policy recommendations—not to investigate human-rights abuses.

Young boys study the Quran inside a madrassa in one of the older parts of the Kutupalong camp. Most Rohingya children in Bangladesh do not have access to formal schooling because they are unregistered refugees. Most attend the many madrassas found throughout the camps.

In June, when a newly formed UN fact-finding mission sought to investigate human-rights violations in Myanmar, including Rakhine, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government refused to grant visas to the team members. “We don’t accept it,” she said, arguing that the mission could exacerbate divisions between Buddhists and Muslims. When Lee, the UN special rapporteur, returned to Myanmar in July, she and Aung San Suu Kyi shared a warm embrace—before Lee excoriated the government for blocking her access and intimidating witnesses, the same tactics used by the military junta. “In previous times, human rights defenders, journalists, and civilians were followed, monitored, and surveyed, and questioned—that’s still going on."

Afia, her father, and siblings spent five months on the run inside Myanmar, sticking mostly to the forests to avoid the military, often going days without food. On their first attempt to cross the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and Bangladesh, a Burmese patrol boat opened fire, capsizing their boat and killing several refugees. It would be three months before they risked the crossing again.

I met Afifa in March on the day that half of her family finally reached Balukhali camp, where more than 11,000 new arrivals have turned the forested hills into a dusty hive of bamboo huts and black tarpaulins. Afifa wore the same soiled brown shirt she wore the day she danced for the soldiers five months before. “It’s all I have,” she says. Another family from their home village of Maung Hnama offered food to eat and a safe place to sleep, but Islam wept quietly. His wife and their five other children were still in hiding in Myanmar.

Rohingya from Shaplapur village, who work for local fishermen, shove a boat to sea, where some will spend the night.Right: Nur Haba dries fish at a factory in Cox’s Bazar, where she has worked for 10 years. She lives in Kutupalong refugee camp with four children and her husband, who has been unable to find work.

The refugee camps that line Bangladesh’s border are a short drive from the Bangladeshi resort of Cox’s Bazar. Tourists there cavort on the wide beach, taking grinning selfies in the surf, while a few miles away, hundreds of thousands of refugees marinate in grief and neglect. In Kutupalong, a sprawling camp with some 30,000 Rohingya refugees, the wood and bamboo dwellings radiate from the center like rings on a tree, each layer marking a wave of violence the Rohingya have fled.

Rozina Akhtar, 22, has lived here since she was seven years old. With no real hope of leaving—“we have no passports, no ID cards, so what can we do?”—she tries to help new arrivals adjust to their lives as refugees. “We can’t reject them,” she says. “These are our sisters and brothers.” Akhtar helps newcomers get medical care, plastic tarpaulins, and food rations, but what they really need are jobs. Men can occasionally get day jobs, fishing, harvesting rice, or laboring in the salt flats for a dollar or two a day, but many of the women beg for money along the road outside the camp.

Under a sprawling fig tree in Kutupalong, new arrivals gather to talk about the atrocities they endured in Myanmar. Nur Ayesha, 40, pulls back her headscarf to reveal bleached-white burn scars across her forehead; soldiers set fire to her house while she was still inside, she says. Residents of Kyet Yoe Pyin say the Burmese soldiers who firebombed their houses also gunned down six women and a man who had stayed behind to attend the birth of a baby—the mother included.

Minara, an 18-year-old in a black burqa, speaks about her missing family members before revealing that Burmese soldiers gang-raped her and several other young women in her village. Her voice barely rises above a whisper. As we talk, Minara, who, like many victims, didn’t choose to reveal her last name, bites the edge of her sleeve, pulling it over her face. By the end, only her eyes, darting back and forth, are visible. “We’re too scared to go back,” she says.

Left: Nur Ayesha says she was burned on her face and arm when the Burmese military torched her house while she was in it. She has received treatment at Kutupalong.Right: Nurul Amain, who also lives at Kutupalong, was shot by soldiers multiple times in his arm, which had to be amputated when he finally found a doctor.

Molia Banu, 60, arrived at Kutupalong about two months before this photograph. She and her daughters fled when the military began burning a house next to theirs. Still suffering from an operation to remove a tumor, Banu supports her family by begging on the main road.

On a hill back in Balukhali camp, I meet a 14-year-old boy, Ajim Allah, getting his hair combed by a friend. Ajim shows me his shriveled left arm, shattered, he says, by a police bullet when he emerged from a madrassa last October; three of his friends died of gunshot wounds that night, he says. In a hut nearby, Yasmin, 27, recounts how soldiers burst into her home in Ngan Chaung village and took turns raping her at knifepoint in front of her five-year-old daughter. “When my daughter screamed, they pointed guns at her and told her they’d kill her if she made any more noise,” she says. The worst moment came after the soldiers left. Yasmin says she went out to look for her eight-year-old son, who had fled when the soldiers came into the village. She found him lying in a rice paddy, a bullet hole in his back.

The Rohingya are caught between two countries—and welcome in neither. More than 500,000 Rohingya now live in Bangladesh. Only 32,000 are officially registered, however, and no new Rohingya refugees have been registered since 1992—an apparent attempt to dissuade more Rohingya from seeking refuge in Bangladesh. That strategy hasn’t worked, but it means that there are close to half a million undocumented Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with no right or access to employment, education, or basic health care.

Toward the end of day, a boy walks along a path past houses in through a more established section of Kutupalong camp toward a playground that attracts many children.

Bangladesh, already poor and overpopulated, shows no enthusiasm for hosting the Rohingya. Conditions in the camps are miserable, but the government has declined many offers of humanitarian aid. It has even floated a plan to move the refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. The radical proposal seemed designed to keep Rohingya away from the tourist hub of Cox’s Bazar—and to push refugees to return to Myanmar. Many Rohingya, however, are too traumatized to go back to Rakhine, an area historically known as Arakan. One rape victim I spoke to recalled the chilling words of her army attacker: “He kept saying, ‘This kind of torture will continue until you leave the country.’”

Children push a child in a wheelchair along a path in Kutupalong where enterprising refugees have set up shops and cafes. Almost two-thirds of the refugees who recently fled Myanmar for Bangladesh are children, raising concerns that they are at increased risk of being forced into child labor, early marriage or the sex trade.
A few years ago, many Rohingya men, including Yasmin’s husband, risked a perilous sea journey to seek construction work in Malaysia or Indonesia. With no citizenship and no passport, travel had to be undertaken illegally. Smugglers packed the refugees onto unregistered ships and cycled them through secret jungle camps, beating or starving to death the ones whose families didn't pay exorbitant smuggling fees. A crackdown on human trafficking in Southeast Asia has closed off that route, leaving a lot of Rohingya men languishing in the refugee camps without any way to make a living. The mixture of despair and marginalization, experts warn, is a recipe for radicalization. Many refugees seek solace in religious faith. In the camps, clusters of young men armed with holy Korans go door to door, urging refugees to pray more devoutly. Out of sight, locals say, is something more ominous: A newly formed militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, is reportedly trying to recruit refugees to join a nascent insurgency against the Burmese army and its local government collaborators.

The last time I saw Afifa, she was sweeping a rectangular patch of dirt on a hill near the refugee camp’s edge—the site of the family’s new shelter. Her father had borrowed $30 from a fellow refugee to buy a horse-cart full of bamboo poles and strips, and he’d already erected the thickest poles at the corners. Islam, a former Arabic teacher, was dressed in a white skullcap and a clean cream-colored tunic, getting ready to attend midday Friday prayers—the jumu’ah—for the first time since he left his village five months before.

Just down the sandy path from their plot, barefoot men in sarongs scrambled to secure the bamboo scaffolding of Balukhali’s new mosque. It would be another week before the structure was finished, with palm fronds as the roof, but the muezzin sounded the call to prayer and dozens of bearded men in white caps gravitated to a small carpet in the center of the mosque. Islam found a spot in the first row and bowed in front of the imam, who stood on a red plastic stool. Later, as Islam walked back from the mosque, he smiled: “I feel better now.”

The misery, however, has continued. In late May, a cyclone ripped through southern Bangladesh, destroying the family’s shelter and thousands of others in the camps. Nobody died in Balukhali, and Afifa’s mother and other siblings have since made it to Bangladesh, easing the girl’s anxiety. Still, food remains scarce, the monsoon rains continue, and there are troubling reports of renewed violence in Rakhine from both sides—military operations by the Burmese army and occasional attacks by Rohingya militants. In this predicament, it’s unclear when, or if, Afifa and her family will ever have a place to call home.

Some Rohingya live outside the camps near Cox’s Bazar. This man lives in a settlement on the Bay of Bengal, near trees planted to prevent erosion and close to a hotel catering to tourists drawn by the beach.
As one neighbor lamented: “Bad days for us never end.”
(c) 2017 National Geographic
http://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/09/22/Without-a-Home-and-Without-Hope

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rashidul Bari,
Contributor
A Servant of Education
Justice for Rohingya
09/23/2017
It was Aug. 28, 2017. I received an email from my father, who lives in Bangladesh.

“You have stood up many times against Islamic State terrorism,” he wrote. “Why don’t you stand up against Burmese terrorism against the Rohingya?” I read the email but decided to ignore it. Three days later, my father called me: “Your mother and I just arrived at JFK Airport. We’re waiting for you in terminal eight.” My father said he had come to America to convince me to give a speech in front of White House to a group of Rohingya.

Abdul Hamid is crying while holding the lifeless body of his 40-day-old son, Abdul Masood. The infant’s only crime was that he was a son of a Rohingya. Tears fell from my eyes as I watched Abdul Hamid grieve while holding Masood to his chest. His story brought about images of the Holocaust: a sobbing father holding the lifeless body of his child. When I saw this on TV at Columbia University, tears trickled from my disbelieving eyes as I cried out loud, “Aung San Suu Kyi, you are not a Nobel laureate. You are monster. You are a disgusting blood sucker of Rohingya people. You are a female Hitler.”
I dropped my parents off at home and then headed to Columbia University’s Gottesman Library to work on my doctoral dissertation. I was in a small reading room with a large LCD TV, watching CNN while working. Suddenly, a father, Abdul Hamid, appeared on the screen. He was crying while holding the lifeless body of his 40-day-old son, Abdul Masood. The infant’s only crime was that he was a son of a Rohingya. Tears fell from my eyes as I watched Abdul Hamid grieve while holding Masood to his chest. His story brought about images of the Holocaust: a sobbing father holding the lifeless body of his child. When I saw this on TV, tears trickled from my disbelieving eyes as I cried out loud, “Aung San Suu Kyi, you are not a Nobel laureate. You are monster. You are a disgusting blood sucker of Rohingya people. You are a female Hitler.”

At 11 p.m., I left Columbia University and went home. I had the idea that I would stop thinking about the lifeless face of Abdul Masood. There is no benefit in remembering the image of a dead infant, I thought — no benefit in remembering the tiny coffin his father had held.

I was wrong. When I got home around 11:30 p.m., my older son, Refath Albert, opened the door for me, and my younger one, Soborno Isaac, jumped into my arms. The images flooded back. Immediately I wondered who would open the door for Abdul Hamid. It was then that I decided to go to Washington, D.C., to give a speech for the Rohingya in front of the White House.

https://www.facebook.com/

The United Nations has described Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya as an ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya are an indigenous ethnic nationality of Burma who have lived in Rakhine State (Arakan) since 3000 BCE. Arab merchants began conducting missionary activities in the eighth century, and subsequently many Rohingya converted to Islam.

The Rohingya were represented in Burmese parliament until 1962, when military junta took control and began denying citizenship to the Rohingya. Currently, Myanmar law does not even recognize the Rohingya as one of its eight national ethnic groups, instead considering them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Rohingya are also barred from getting an education or a job and have little to no freedom of speech. The conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to what Jews experienced in Nazi Germany.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met with Rohingya Muslims at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp on Sept. 12 and said that her government would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid until Burma takes them back. President Trump also extended $32 million in aid to Hasina for Rohingya. This money should be spent on educating Rohingya children about their own cultural philosophy
On Aug. 25, 2017, long-suffering Rohingya protested this barbaric discrimination. Their demonstrations were designed to call attention to the injustice, end the discrimination and bring about reform. Aung San Suu Kyi did not like that, so she unleashed terror upon the Rohingya. In the last 15 days, her military has killed over 3000 Rohingya, including 40-day-old Masood, and has caused over half a million Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met with Rohingya Muslims at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp on Sept. 12 and said that her government would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid until Burma takes them back. President Trump also extended $32 million in aid to Hasina for Rohingya. This money should be spent on educating Rohingya children about their own cultural philosophy . At the hands of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Rohingya have suffered political oppression, economic exploitation and social degradation, in part because many Rohingya are uneducated and don’t know Rohingya philosophy. Rohingya philosophy is a self-help philosophy; it includes reading books, having a maximum of two children per family, sending children to school and encouraging them fall to in love with math and science. Unless every child becomes educated, the Rohingya will always be misled and led astray.
We shouldn’t call this issue a Rohingya problem. We shouldn’t call it a Muslim problem. We should call it a human problem. I gave my speech not as a Muslim, and not as Bengali American. I gave my speech as a human being trying to solve a problem. I strongly believe that many issues faced by the Rohingya can be solved. Every Rohingya is a rightful Burmese citizen, and they must have equal voting rights. Aung San Suu Kyi should not use any excuse to deny these right.

Hamida, a Rohingya refugee woman mourns as she holds her 40-day-old son, Abdul Masood, who died September 14, 2017. The infant’s only crime was that he was a son of a Rohingya. In this picture, my whole family is promoting Huff Post article “Justice For Rohingya” in Washington DC.
Still, the harsh reality is that the Rohingya are kept from voting simply because they are Muslim. Furthermore, a Rohingya may go to a job interview only to be told the day is wrong, the hour is late, or the hiring period has just ended. And even if a Rohingya persists, even if he manages to pass the test and get an interview, he will still be disqualified because he is a Rohingya Muslim. No person should be kept from voting or lose their job simply because they are a Rohingya Muslim. Grant Rohingya men and women Burmese citizenship. Allow Rohingya men and women to register to vote. Give Rohingya children access to school and higher education. Give them jobs, and stop firing them from government jobs. Treat them as human beings.

It is wrong to deny the Rohingya people a right to vote in their own country. It is deadly to prevent them from getting jobs. The time for justice has now come. Aung San Suu Kyi should stop reading Hitler and start bringing peace. Even if she were to simply hug a Muslim child, she would not only brighten the lives of every Rohingya but also inspire millions of Buddhist monks, whose hands are covered in the blood of Rohingya, to change their behavior. We seek and pray for peace in Burma. We seek order. We seek unity between Buddhist monks and Rohingya. But we will not accept the quiet that accompanies trampled rights, the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. What Patrick Henry realized 400 years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi fails to understand in the 21st century: peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.

Soborno Isaac, the Einstein of our time, will give a speech on Sunday to promote this article.
I have not the slightest doubt that good men from every part of the world, from Trump to Hasina, from Soborno Isaac to Malala, will hang “Justice for Rohingya” posters and help claim freedom of all Rohingya. We all share this duty, and I believe that all of us will respond to it. Because every Rohingya must have the right to vote. Aung San Suu Kyi must give them that right. Every Rohingya must have the privileges of citizenship. Aung San Suu Kyi must give them those privileges.

However, exercising these privileges takes much more than just a legal right. It requires an educated mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, the chance to find a job and the opportunity to escape from a culture of poverty. Of course, the Rohingya currently cannot contribute to building a modern Myanmar because they are never taught to read or write. They don’t have access to an education, and their bodies are stunted from hunger. Their sicknesses go untended to and their lives are spent in hopeless poverty. So, Aung San Suu Kyi must give the Rohingya not only the right but also the opportunity to learn the Rohingya philosophy.

On Aug. 25, 2017, long-suffering Rohingya protested this barbaric discrimination. Their demonstrations were designed to call attention to the injustice, end the discrimination and bring about reform. Aung San Suu Kyi did not like that, so she unleashed terror upon the Rohingya. In the last 15 days, her military has killed over 3000 Rohingya, including 40-day-old Masood, and has caused over half a million Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.
I want to see a Nobel laureate educate young Rohingya children about the Rohingya philosophy. I do not want a Nobel laureate who reads Hitler for inspiration and kills all Rohingya people, including the 40-day-old Masood.

As I delivered my speech in front of the greatest place in the world, the White House, I saw my father crying. For a second, I saw him as Abdul Hamid and myself as Abdul Masood — if only he were alive.
Rashidul Bari, a doctoral student at Columbia University, teaches mathematics at Bronx C. Community College. His email is rb3080@columbia.edu and website is Bari Science Lab
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...8f3e4b0f2df5e83ae6e?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003

 

[Banglar Bir]

Are the Rohingya Facing Genocide?
A single word; the most heinous of crimes.
By George Wright
September 19, 2017
Teenagers executed with rifles. Babies drowned in rivers. Hundreds of thousands fleeing to squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh as their villages were set ablaze by soldiers and Buddhist militias.

The horror stories streaming from the mouths of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar’s Rakhine State, as the country’s armed forces launch a brutal offensive in response to militant attacks on August 25, has resulted in widespread condemnation over the treatment of what many call the most persecuted minority on the planet.

While a top UN official recently called the treatment of the Rohingya a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing, some, including the Bangladeshi foreign minister, have taken it a step further by accusing the Myanmar government of committing what has been coined the “crime of all crimes.”

“The international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide,” Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali told reporters in Dhaka on September 10.

Ethnic cleansing has never been recognized as an independent crime under international law, meaning there is no exact definition and has resulted in the term being used liberally by politicians and journalists. In popular discourse, ethnic cleansing is generally defined as using violence or terror to disperse a group in order to make an area ethnically homogeneous.

The UN’s Genocide Convention, however, legally defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Those acts listed under the convention include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Alicia de la Cour Venning, a researcher at the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), who has studied the treatment of the Rohingya extensively, said a genocidal practice was being enacted in Myanmar and that genocide should be seen as a protracted process, rather than the sole focus being on acts of mass murder.

“Our research reveals that the historic and current conditions of persecution against the Rohingya minority have developed into genocidal practice,” de la Cour Venning said.

The Rohingya have been subject to stigmatization, harassment, isolation, and systematic weakening, the lawyer said, which are four of the six stages of genocide, according to a model devised by Daniel Feierstein, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

The remaining two are extermination and symbolic enactment, which is the reconstruction of a new society in which the victims of genocide are physically and symbolically “gone.”

“Understanding genocide as a process, which takes place over years, even decades, allows us to identify genocidal processes in motion, enabling us to step in to prevent escalating violence, including mass killings, which is just one part of the genocidal process, which begins with stigmatization and dehumanization of the target group,” she said.

“Until genocide is understood in this way, rather than solely as mass killings, which is just one component of the genocidal process, we will be unable to prevent this form of violence whilst in motion,” she said.

Although the Rohingya have faced persecution for generations, many trace the source of the escalated oppression in recent decades back to a 1982 law that refused to recognize them as one of the 135 “national races” of Myanmar. This has only intensified in recent years as members of government have denied the existence of any ethnic group named “Rohingya,” referring to them as illegal “Bengali” immigrants.

“Once we take into consideration the Myanmar government’s systematically oppressive policies and practices in regards to the Rohingya from the 1980s onwards, a very clear picture emerges of intent to eradicate this group,” she added.

Thomas MacManus, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London who authored an ISCI report “Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar” with de la Cour Venning and scholar Penny Green in 2015, said that the recent atrocities illustrated “the latest phase in the genocide of the Rohingya.”

“The stages don’t always happen in such a clear cut, step by step, way and often repeat and overlap and what I was saying is that we have entered a ‘new’ phase since August,” MacManus said.

“I would say that ‘systematic weakening’ is well under way and that we now need to start investigating whether ‘annihilation’ has begun in earnest.”

Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi — who was a darling of the West during her years under house arrest at the hands of the military junta — has come under hitherto unheard of international scrutiny for her silence over the atrocities being committed in Rakhine. Many have called for her Nobel Peace Prize to be revoked, claiming her refusal to speak out is giving the green light to the most heinous of crimes.

“Aung San Suu Kyi will play a major role in blocking recognition of the Rohingya genocide. Diplomats worked for years to get her freed. They idealized her until she got a Nobel Peace Prize,” said Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch.

“Now they are portraying her as having no power to stop the genocide. In fact her only power is moral, yet she won’t use it.”

Despite increased calls from academics to label the atrocities in Rakhine as genocide, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said he did not believe there was enough evidence available to prove genocidal intent on the part of the military — a requirement under international law.

“Not yet, but that doesn’t preclude that there might be at some point in the future, if more evidence can be collected about the intent of the Burmese government and Tatmadaw,” Robertson said, using the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar.

“There is a clear legal standard that needs to be met under the Genocide Convention and in our view, we would need to be able to get on the ground in Rakhine state to investigate in order to make that kind of determination, and ideally be able to uncover some government documents that lays out their plans.”

In comparison, Robertson cited the mobilization of militias, the use of government radio and speeches of Rwandan leaders in 1994 as an example of an “abundantly clear” genocidal intent against the Tutsi minority.

Robertson said he actually felt that efforts to tout the term genocide by some of the exiled Rohingya community and human rights activists could have had a detrimental effect on advocacy efforts.

“It’s not that simple by a long shot, and there are some strong arguments that by over-claiming without adequate evidence, the exiled Rohingya community has hurt its credibility with precisely those governments that they need to get on board if international justice for the Rohingya is going to be obtained,” he said.

However, HRW has accused the Myanmar authorities and Buddhist militias of committing crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya in 2012, and Robertson accused the international community of having “no strong interest” in addressing accountability for those atrocities.

While agreeing that the requirement to prove genocidal intent makes it far more complex in comparison to crimes against humanity, which simply requires that the acts be committed in a widespread or systematic way, mass atrocity scholar Kate Cronin-Furman said there were grounds to “accuse Burma of genocide.”

The reluctance on the part of the international community to call it such was due to a belief that it would then require action, she argued, when in fact the Genocide Convention imposes no obligation for intervention to stop a genocide.

Member states of the United Nations do, however, have an obligation through its endorsement of the “responsibility to protect,” a global political commitment which was agreed on at the 2005 World Summit to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, Cronin-Furman pointed out.

“Someday, it may be an international prosecutor’s job to decide whether to charge members of the Burmese military or civilian leadership with genocide. For now though, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re acting with genocidal intent,” she said.

“What matters is that the Rohingya are being slaughtered, raped, and burned out of their homes in huge numbers, all while the world watches.”
George Wright is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh.
http://thediplomat.com/2017/09/are-the-rohingya-facing-genocide/

 

[Bengal Tiger 71]

Wild Dogs of 21st Generation'

 

[Banglar Bir]

Culpability through denial and inaction
September 24, 2017
C R Abrar | The Daily Star,

A Rohingya refugee cries as he holds his 40-day-old son, who died as a boat capsized in the shore of Shah Porir Dwip while crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, in Teknaf, on September 14, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Finally, the barbaric regime of Myanmar has been put on the dock and found guilty of the crime of all crimes: genocide. The verdict was delivered on the last day of the final session of the Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) on alleged state crimes against the Rohingya, Kachins and other ethnic minority groups on September 22 in Kuala Lumpur after three days of deliberations. In the opening session held in London in March this year, following preliminary hearings on the complaints of Kachins, Rohingyas and other Muslim populations in Myanmar, the court convened this final hearing.

The tribunal, comprised of eminent jurists, genocide scholars and those involved in past genocide trials, heard testimonies of a number of survivors, members of victims' families, witnesses and expert witnesses. Oral testimonies, documents and records, including those of the Burmese government and the military (retrieved from archival sources of different countries), and visual materials (photographs and video footages) were presented before the tribunal.

Although symbolic, the verdict has major significance. For the first time, a conclusion has been drawn by competent authorities following thorough examination of facts and rigorous legal scrutiny: “The State of Myanmar is guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya group.” It went on to observe that “genocide against the Rohingya is now taking place with ongoing acts of genocide and the possibility the casualties of that genocide could be even higher in the future if nothing is done to stop it.” This essay argues that despite overwhelming evidence there has been a palpable reticence of the international community to call it genocide.

The international community refused to acknowledge that the Burmese state's intent and actions were systematically directed to dismantle the structures of protection that the Rohingyas enjoyed until the martial law regime of General Ne Win in 1962. Jettisoning the country's pluralist and secularist practices from the get-go, the military government was hell-bent on ridding the country of the Rohingya population. 1978 witnessed the brutal execution of that intent when about 280,000 were driven out of Arakan with the launch of Operation Naga Min, or Operation King Dragon. The 1978 exodus was not the outcome of any communal strife between the Buddhist Rakhines and the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan. It was the result of a deliberate policy of banishing an ethnic minority from their ancestral habitat by the Burmese state.

Within months of their arrival in Bangladesh, Myanmar (then Burma) had to concede to Bangladesh's demand of taking back the Rohingyas who by law were still its citizens. By the subsequent enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Law, Rohingyas were stripped of their rightful status. In pursuit of its genocidal agenda the Burmese state crafted a comprehensive policy to destroy the Rohingya identity by systematically denying the community members to live in dignity and pursue their faith and cultural traditions. Since then a plethora of laws, regulations and administrative orders have been passed and institutions such as the infamous security force Nasaka were created—subjecting the Rohingyas to what a witness during the Kuala Lumpur trial termed as “sub-human”. Despite the absence of any looming threat, the northern Arakan region was gradually turned into a militarised zone. Its Muslim residents have been subjected to degrading treatment, discrimination, torture, forced labour, forced relocation, and arbitrary taxes, and denied opportunities to practise their faith and culture and access justice. As a logical follow-up to such “systematic weakening” another state-sponsored mass flight was orchestrated in 1992 resulting in 250,000 Rohingyas seeking refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. The international community still chose to look the other way, remaining resolute in its denial mode.

Shrewd Burmese generals by then framed the project of depopulating Arakan of Rohingyas—not by brute force (that would draw international media attention and condemnation) but by creating conditions in which sustaining life became impossible. This resulted in slow and incremental outward movement of Rohingyas in small groups since 1992. Their number cumulatively stood at 300,000 in Bangladesh until the unfolding of events following August 25, 2017. In the interim, spikes in violence in Arakan shored up the number of incoming refugees.

Little effort was given to find out what prompted the cross-border movement of the Rohingyas. Compassion fatigue for the residual caseload of 23,000 registered refugees living in camps (the number by now swelled to 31,000) evoked little interest of the outside world towards the “most persecuted minority of the world”. The Rohingyas' claim to secure international protection was perhaps further constrained by the fact that unlike Iraq and Libya, Arakan remains void of black gold. In the headquarters of international agencies in New York and Geneva and national capitals of concerned countries, it was perhaps a conscious choice to not confront the bitter truth of enduring genocide since it would necessitate urgent international action. Despite the ongoing genocide, Rohingyas were left to face the vicious state forces quite like their poor cousins in Burundi and Rwanda.

By foot-dragging over the issue of recognising the Burmese government's acts as genocide, powerful states and international actors—who champion rule of law, democracy and freedom, and human rights—allowed the murderous Burmese army to act with impunity in implementing its long-drawn-out genocidal agenda on the Rohingyas. The international community's denial also contributed to the Burmese military's decision for the “final solution” of the Rohingya question that the world is now faced with. There appears to be a striking similarity between Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany and that of these entities' strategy of placating the Burmese military.

The heart-wrenching testimonies and video footages presented before the tribunal convinced the judges in no uncertain terms what Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term “genocide”, meant: “Destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” The tribunal concurred with Lemkin that in the Rohingya case, the national identity of the oppressed group was destroyed and national identity of the oppressor was imposed. The Rohingya case also sufficiently meets renowned genocide scholar and Genocide Watch's President Gregory Stanton's ten conditions of genocide: classification, symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, persecution, extermination and denial. Stanton reminds us that these stages are predictable but not inexorable, and the process is not linear. Most importantly, “at each stage, preventive measures can stop it.”

In their rush to embrace the once-pariah state of Myanmar, the powerful countries expediently sacrificed the Rohingyas at the altar of strategic and commercial interests, and international organisations hid behind the façade of intricacies of legal interpretations. Their usage of the term “ethnic cleansing”, a term that has no place in international law, is a scheme to not state the fact. As Daniel Feierstein, the chair judge of the PPT, poignantly reminded the court, “It's a concept created by the perpetrator Slobodan Miloseviç.” It's a shame that the world is resorting to the perpetrator's language to justify its inaction.

Days ago, the UN Secretary-General, in response to a question about whether he agreed with UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein that what's happening in Rakhine State is ethnic cleansing, retorted back to the journalist saying, “When one-third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?”
Yes, Mr Secretary-General, it's the G word.
http://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/09/24/Culpability-through-denial-and-inaction

 

[Banglar Bir]

The Stateless Rohingya
#Myanmar accused of crimes against humanity
https://t.co/S96NhXIgoJ

Myanmar accused of crimes against humanity
By Associated Press YANGON — Myanmar is committing crimes against humanity in its campaign against Muslim insurgents in Rakhine state, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, calling for the U.N. Secur…
THESTATELESS.COM

'Take Myanmar to UN court for crimes against humanity’
Bangladesh’s rights body urges Myanmar to face top UN court over persecution of Rohingya Muslims
September 27, 2017 Anadolu Agency

File photo
Bangladesh’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) called on the international community on Tuesday to take the government of neighboring Myanmar to the UN Court of Justice for committing crimes against humanity in Rakhine state.

“We urged the OIC and the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] member states and UN organs to consider referring the matter [of persecution of Rohingya Muslims] to the International Court of Justice or the International Human Court,” commission head Kazi Reazul Hoque said at the International Ombudsman Conference in Istanbul.

He also called on the UN Human Rights Commission and the international community “to mobilize political pressure on Myanmar’s government to find a durable solution” to the Rohingya crisis.

“The durable solution must include the right to return to their homelands in a safe, secure and dignified way,” Hoque added.

“All fundamental rights of the Rohingya should be respected in the process of resolving the current crisis.”

Hoque, who led a four-member delegation on an emergency fact-finding mission on Sept. 9-11, interviewed several Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh, and reported horror stories of cruelty and shocking tales of brutality, including serious injuries from bullets, burning, and physical torture.

“All these atrocities are carried out by the Myanmar military…This is an extreme violation of human rights, these are crimes against humanity,” he mentioned.

“Crimes against humanity are only possible when racism, xenophobia, and hate speech are practiced in extremely high degrees.
- Traumatized
The fact-finding body also found that most refugees, particularly women and children, are traumatized, according to Hoque.

“They have gone emotionless, they are concerned more about safety rather than food.”

He underlined the pervasive discrimination in Rakhine state, saying, “It is clear that Rohingya are severely subjected to religious discrimination.”

The commission has also sent out a call for action to many international, regional, and local entities, including UN agencies, ASEAN’s Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and diplomatic missions in capital Dhaka which directly or indirectly have a stake in the issue.

“It is the unequivocal responsibility of the government of Myanmar to ensure the protection of Rohingya living in Rakhine regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or citizenship status," he said, urging an immediate end to the violence and unhindered access to humanitarian aid.

Hoque said Bangladesh is hosting “around one million Rohingya" refugees, including the arrivals since Aug. 25, and the country is trying to handle the situation despite being a “lower-middle income and densely populated country”.

Despite these difficulties, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave them shelter and committed to extend all basic necessities for them, he added.

He also urged emergency humanitarian assistance for Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
- Fleeing violence
Since Aug. 25, more than 436,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN's migration agency’s latest report on Monday.

The refugees are fleeing a fresh security operation in which security forces and Buddhist mobs have killed men, women and children, looted homes and torched Rohingya villages. According to Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali, around 3,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown.

Turkey has been at the forefront of providing aid to Rohingya refugees and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan highlighted the issue at this year's UN General Assembly.

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/dunya/t...glish&utm_campaign=facebook-yenisafak-english

 

[Banglar Bir]

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[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya Blogger
Human Rights Watch says Myanmar’s army forces are committing crimes against humanity by forced deportation, massacre, rape and persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

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[Banglar Bir]

Raped, burned, killed
Afrose Jahan Chaity
Published at 11:36 PM September 24, 2017

Rape, a war crime, is being used as an instrument of terror in the ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Myanmar army in Rakhine AFP
The conspicuously low number of young girls among refugees bears testament to the use of rape as a weapon of war in Rakhine
In the Rohingya camps of Bangladesh, there are very few teenage girls. Over 429,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since a military crackdown began there in August. Unicef says 60% of the recent influx is aged below 18.

However, as this correspondent noticed, older teenage girls were very few. Most girls who had made it here were younger, under 10 or 12, or older women with children.

The testimony of some survivors may provide some clue as to what may have happened to the girls.

“They killed my son, cut him into pieces in front me and gang-raped my younger daughter. Then they threw me out of my house and burnt her alive,” said Rahima Begum, a refugee sheltered in Nayapara, south of Cox’s Bazar.

She spoke with a stony countenance. Hers was a large family, and nine members had managed to flee from their home in Hajipara in the Maungdaw district of Rakhine.

“They entered my house where I was talking to my daughter Sabekunnahar and my son Rahmatullah, my two youngest children,” Rahima said, describing the attack on their home by Myanmar soldiers and Rakhine men 20 days ago.

The soldiers and the Rakhine men started setting fire to the other houses around the yard.

“They kicked my son Rahmatullah out of the house. One of my sons managed to flee with my sick husband, elder son managed to flee with his wife, son and one of his twin daughters, but the other twin was burnt alive. They shot dead my other son Hamid,” said Rahima.

“I begged to them to spare my 18-year-old daughter. Two of them held my daughter, others beat me. I was crying in pain and watching my daughter get gang-raped,” Rahima said.

“They stripped her naked, beat her and raped her. There were six of them and when one of them would rape my daughter, the others would cheer him on.”

Rahima’s voice became strained, but it seemed that her tears had run out.

Also Read- ‘We are not terrorists’ – an exclusive interview with an ARSA commander
Taking a deep breath, she said: “They threw me out of my house and burnt my daughter alive in front of me.

“My daughter was so beautiful. I could not save her from them, they burned her in flames. I did not hear her screaming, maybe she had accepted that she was going to die,” said Rahima.

United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten said this week she was “gravely concerned” about security operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Survivors have described sexual violence being used as a “calculated tool of terror to force targeted populations to flee”, she said.

The Tulatoli village, immediately east of Bangladesh’s border, was one of the worst victims of large-scale massacres in the military operation against Rohingya villages.

Nurul Hakim was among about 20 or so fortunate enough to have survived the massacre. He told this correspondent that the soldiers had picked out all the beautiful teenagers and killed them.

“They picked up beautiful girls from our village between 12 and 20 years old, then they were tortured and raped by the Army and the Rakhine,” he said.

“Those girls were killed and then they locked them in a house and set fire to it,” he said.

This correspondent met a 16-year-old girl in a health camp for refugees in Kutupalong. She said she was from Buthidung. Asked if she was raped, the girl at first denied vehemently. Then she began to cry.

“I have been told that if anyone knows that I was gang-raped, no one will marry me and my life will be destroyed. What should I do? This is not my fault and I have not done anything wrong,” she said between gasps.

Soldiers picked her out, along with other girls and they were forced to strip at gunpoint.

The victim told the Dhaka Tribune: “When I was trying to flee with other women of my village, they found us and picked out around 20 girls. They told us to get naked in front of everyone at gunpoint and we did.

“Then they told us to bend down and they raped one after another. They raped us in front of all the villagers. Then they started shooting. I managed to flee and ran to save my life,” she said.

At least two to three people raped each of the girls in the line, she said.

Also Read- Gang-rape horrors haunt Rohingya refugees

She walked for 12 days to reach Bangladesh without any food.

Nur Ayesha, who is six months pregnant, witnessed her elder sister getting raped and killed. She is from Maungdaw.

“A group of Rakhine men came to our house in the afternoon. We were sitting together. They asked for water. When my sister got up to bring water they took her one-year-old son and threw him into the pond,” she said.

“Then they told her to get naked in front of everyone and to go inside the house. Seven of them went inside the house and raped her brutally. But they did not kill her as it was getting dark, so she survived.”

Nur Ayesha’s cousin, who is 12 years old, was also gang-raped and is under treatment in Kutupalong.

Mobile medical teams from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have so far treated 23 rape victims, according to Arunn Jegan, the project coordinator for MSF emergency response.

The low number of victims taking treatment may not be any indication of how many were actually raped. Officials from a clinic run by the UNHCR at the Leda refugee camp, told the AFP that there were rape victims among the refugees who came in October last year who would come forward months later.

Many women have yet to admit to being raped, they believe.

A 12-year-old girl was found waiting in line at a meal kitchen for the refugees in Kutupalong. The girl had a raw wound around her neck.

She said she was caught by Rakhine men in Pansi, Buthidaung.

It seemed that the child does not understand what rape is. She said they hurt her.

“They caught me while fleeing. Their camp was just next door from our village. They hurt me and tied a rope around my neck. They held one end of the rope and spun me around just like a fan. After that I cannot remember anything.”

The girl had thought she died. When she opened her eyes she started running towards Bangladesh. After eight days of running, all alone and hungry, she swam across the Naf River to get to Bangladesh.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2017/09/24/raped-burned-killed/

 

[Banglar Bir]

UN: 'Egregious' sexual violence reports emerge from Rohingya
The head of the UN's migration agency said he's "shocked and concerned" about reports of sexual and gender-based violence among new Rohingya arrivals in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

The International Organization for Migration's Director-General William Lacy Swing made the comments on Wednesday as Rohingya refugees who escaped a military crackdown in Myanmar accused the army of raping women and girls.

Myanmar's government denies the claims, but has refused to allow international observers to investigate.

IOM is coordinating the humanitarian response amid an exodus of an estimated 480,000 people who have reached Cox's Bazar since August 25.

An agency statement on Wednesday said IOM doctors have treated dozens of women who experienced "violent sexual assault" since August, but said such numbers likely represent only a "small portion" of actual cases.

Swing said such "egregious violence and abuse is underreported" even in more stable situations.
READ MORE: Myanmar: Who are the Rohingya?
"Particularly women and girls, but also men and boys, have been targeted for and are at risk of further exploitation, violence and abuse simply because of their gender, age and status in society," said Swing.

"IOM is supporting survivors but I cannot emphasize enough that attempting to understand the scale of gender-based violence through known case numbers alone is impossible."

It is estimated about 160,000 Rohingya women and young girls have arrived in Bangladesh in the past month.

Two sisters who spoke to Al Jazeera said they were raped by Myanmar soldiers.

"The military tortured us," said 25-year-old Minara, who gave only one name. "They murdered our parents. They took us to the jungle. They pushed us down on the ground."

Her sister Aziza, 22, said she was raped by two men and became unconscious.
The two sisters were rescued by other refugees who helped them cross a river into Bangladesh.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh speak of ‘horrors in Myanmar’
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/...accuse-myanmar-army-rape-170927105812065.html

 

[Banglar Bir]

Yeni Şafak
Hundreds more Rohingya refugees are fleeing Myanmar's violence. The Rohingya travel to Bangladesh in wooden boats. The latest attack by the Myanmar army and Buddhist mobs has garnered international attention, and rights groups have described the campaign as “ethnic cleansing”.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...IcDE6FSiul5gOAvhICiGq_4VC0qCw27VNIRO5Khchfv_Y

 

[Banglar Bir]

12:00 AM, September 29, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 03:34 AM, September 29, 2017
They pour in, through rain, rough water
Wasim Bin Habib and Mohammad Ali Jinnat
Dark clouds started to gather on the horizon near Teknaf yesterday morning and soon they covered the entire sky. The wind picked up as well. Four-month pregnant Setara Begum took a quick glance at her three-year-old daughter in her arms and paced towards Hariakhali on a muddy road. She then looked at Senawara, her seven-year-old daughter trailing behind, and said, "Walk faster ma. It may rain anytime."

Setara had reached mainland Bangladesh on a boat only a few minutes ago. The woman from Bagguna of Maungdaw in Myanmar had reached Shah Porir Dwip of Teknaf the previous night.

Her boat had many more fellow Rohingyas fleeing persecution across the border and they headed towards Hariakhali.

First a few drops and then the heavens opened. Some women tried to cover their infants with their veils while others with towels.

Barefoot, Setara and her daughter stopped, looked around for cover and then kept on moving again like the others heading towards Hariakhali.

The people on the muddy road were carrying and dragging whatever they could bring from their homes across the border.

"Our home was torched and my husband was killed 12 days ago. I could not bring anything except this bag," Setera told The Daily Star correspondents pointing to a small bag Senawara was carrying.

Senawara's wet and flimsy dress was sticking to her body and her lips were trembling in the cold.

"My elderly mother and brother will come here soon," Setara said.

Like Setara, hundreds of Rohingyas poured into Bangladesh yesterday braving the inclement weather.

A coordination camp of the Bangladesh Army in Hariakhali recorded 500 new arrivals in three hours at 9:30am yesterday. But as the day progressed, more Rohingyas showed up on boats.

The local union chairman put the figure at 3,000 yesterday.

The famished, scared and exhausted Rohingyas were assembled at the camp in Hariakhali Govt Primary School so that they could be sent to the designated Rohingya camps in Ukhia upazila of Cox's Bazar.

They endured a treacherous journey to Bangladesh and the rain and strong winds only made things worse. Fifteen Rohingyas died yesterday when their boat sank in the Bay.

"We fled with the clothes we were wearing. Now we are all drenched in the rain. I extremely worried about my children," said Munshi Mia, who along with his five children arrived in Teknaf yesterday.

At the temporary shelters set up on the hill slopes of Ukhia, rain brought unthinkable misery.

Water got into the shacks the Rohingyas built making the floors muddy.

Pointing to the floor in a shack, Mohammad Jaber, a refugee at the Balukhali camp, said, "You see the place is all muddy. Rainwater rolls down from the hills. This is where we have to sleep at night."

Yards away, Nur Begum was trying to get her six-year-old son dry. "He was out there with his father to get relief and got wet," she said.

A huge number of Rohingyas were crammed into the designated place for relief distribution. The place was fenced and they were all soaking wet.

Many of the women in the queue had children in their arms.

Rain disrupted relief distribution too.

A relief material distributor said delivering relief in a disciplined manner was a challenging job given the huge number of people and the rain made their job more difficult.

Ahsan, a refugee at Balukhali, said he had been trying to get relief materials since early morning but he only got wet.

"We got drenched several times. We need food," he said.

Eighty-year-old Badiur Rahman said he could not even go to collect relief materials because of the rain.

"Standing amid the huge crowd of people at this age is extremely difficult. And if it rains, I dare not go there … I'll try to collect when it stops raining," said the elderly man as dark clouds started to gather again in the afternoon sky.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...risis-they-pour-thru-rain-rough-water-1469236

 

[Banglar Bir]

BRAC
1 hr ·
(বাংলায় পড়তে নিচে দেখুন)
The scale of the humanitarian crisis we are facing is not possible to understand until you actually get inside the shelters. This video takes you inside, through our eyes. We are seeing 7,000 people per day through our mobile health camps, welcoming 1,500 children per day into our child friendly spaces and building 15,000 latrines. To donate or find out more, visit response.brac.net

মানবিক বিপর্যয়ের মাত্রা কত ভয়াবহ হতে পারে তা বোঝা যাবে যখন আপনি নিজে অস্থায়ী ক্যাম্পগুলোতে উপস্থিত হবেন। এই ভিডিওটি আপনাকে ক্যাম্পের ভিতরের অবস্থা কিছুটা হলেও অনুধাবন করতে সহায়তা করবে। আমাদের অস্থায়ী স্বাস্থ্যক্যাম্প এ প্রতিদিন ৭০০০ মানুষ আসছে চিকিৎসা সেবা নিতে, আমাদের শিশুবান্ধব কেন্দ্রগুলোতে প্রতিদিন ১৫০০ শিশু আসছে এবং আমরা ১৫০০০ ল্যাট্রিন স্থাপনের যে লক্ষ্যমাত্রা নির্ধারণ করেছি সেই পথে অনেকদূর এগিয়েছি। আরো জানতে অথবা ডোনেট করতে ভিজিট করুন response.brac.net

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[Banglar Bir]

04:19 PM, September 29, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 04:35 PM, September 29, 2017
Investigate atrocities on Rohingyas, Bangladesh tells UN

Fatema, a survivor, cries over the body of her nine month old son near Cox's Bazar on September 29, 2017. The boy had died after a boat with Rohingya refugees capsized in Bay Yesterday. Photo: Reuters
Star Online Report
Terming the atrocities in Myanmar as a result of “state failure”, Bangladesh has called upon the United Nations Security Council to fully examine the persecution of Rohingyas.
“Likewise, the new narratives of ‘Muslims-killing-Muslims’ or ‘Muslims-killing- Hindus’ should be seen as the State’s failure or abnegation of its primary responsibility to protect its civilians,” said Ambassador and permanent representative of Bangladesh to United Nations Masud Bin Momen.

In his statement to the UN Security Council Meeting on the “Situation in Myanmar” (under Rule 37) yesterday, he said, “Allegations and counter-allegations of various forms of atrocities, which amount to crimes against humanity, must be fully investigated by a Security Council-mandated fact-finding mission.”

He also alleged that reportedly more than two divisions of armed forces had been deployed by Myanmar in areas near our border since the first week of August 2017.

“Troops were spotted within 200 meters of the zero line, and heavy armaments and artillery are reportedly placed in close proximity of our border. There have been 19 reported incidents of Bangladesh’s air space violation by Myanmar helicopters and drones, including the latest one the day before yesterday,” he added, terming these as “repeated, unwarranted and wilful provocations”.

He also protested the remarks of Myanmar leaders who referred to the alleged extremists as ‘Bengali terrorists’.

“There is perhaps no taker for the baseless and malicious propaganda to project Rohingyas as ‘illegal immigrants from Bangladesh’. This is not only a blatant denial of the ethnic identity of the Rohingyas, but also an affront to Bengalis all over the world. This has to stop,” he added.

He also called upon the Council to examine whether military operations and consequent developments in northern Rakhine State point to any "threat to peace" and "breach of the peace" and what could be done to restore peace.
http://www.thedailystar.net/world/m...m_medium=newsurl&utm_term=all&utm_content=all
Exodus of hungry, haunted Rohingya continues
Abdul Aziz, Cox's Bazar
Published at 02:29 PM September 29, 2017
Last updated at 02:32 PM September 29, 2017

Rohingya refuge seekers arriving in Shahporir Dwip are taken to Hariakhali Government Primary School in Teknaf's Sabrang union on September 29, 2017 Abdul Aziz
Thousands of Rohingya continue to flee Myanmar
Thousands of Rohingya – hungry, tired and traumatised from their harrowing experience in Myanmar and arduous journey to Bangladesh – have continued to gather at Teknaf’s Shahporir Dwip to flee persecution in Rakhine state which the UN has labelled as ethnic cleansing.

In the last four days, nearly 6,500 Rohingya men, women and children have landed there. Many of them, having lost their parents, children and relatives, were still haunted by the painful memories.

Members of the Bangladesh army were collecting information of the refuge seekers who were taken to Hariakhali Government Primary School in Teknaf’s Sabrang union. From there, they were given aid and sent to various camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf.

Dos Mohammad, 35, came from Maungdaw’s Sikdar Para with five members of his family. He crossed the river on a boat with 25 others Wednesday morning. He had to pay Tk10,000 for the ride.

Mariam Begum, waiting for relief on the school grounds, said the Myanmar army was continuing its persecution in Rakhine state. They torched houses couple of days ago. She said she was happy to have made it to Bangladesh with other members of her family.

But Abdullah was not so fortunate. The man from Ghonapara said he had to leave behind his parents and siblings. He crossed the Naf River with his two sons, daughter and wife.

“About a week ago, the army told us not to escape. But later, they made mass arrests and killed people. They raped and murdered the women and set our houses on fire,” he said, visibly shaken and exhausted.

Myanmar army’s violent offensive targeting the Rohingya followed insurgent attacks on police posts and an army base on August 25. More than half a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since then.

The military and local mob have been burning and looting Rohingya villages while raping and killing their residents.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has institutionalised discrimination against the mainly-Muslim ethnic group, which it does not recognise and see as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Before the latest influx, Bangladesh already hosted around 400,000 Rohingya. Dhaka has been successfully building up global support to compel Naypyitaw to allow the Rohingya to return home.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/nation/2017/09/29/rohingya-exodus-continues/

 

[Banglar Bir]

The Rohingya refugee crisis is the worst in decades
The weekly outflow from Myanmar is the highest since the Rwandan genocide
Graphic detail
Sep 21st 2017
by THE DATA TEAM

ON AUGUST 25th a group of militant Rohingya Muslims attacked police bases in northern Myanmar. The army retaliated with untrammelled fury, burning villages, killing civilians and raping women. More than 420,000 terrified Rohingyas have crossed the border into Bangladesh. The UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has proclaimed the exodus “unprecedented in terms of volume and speed”, and Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN’s human-rights chief, called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Myanmar’s leaders deny they are conducting a campaign of repression against the Rohingyas. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the government and a winner of the Nobel peace prize, has repeatedly failed to condemn the attacks. Speaking on September 19th, she again avoided mentioning the Rohingyas by name, and flatly claimed that no violence or village clearances had occurred since September 5th. Amnesty International, a human-rights group, branded the speech “a mix of untruths and victim-blaming”.

Despite widespread international criticism, Ms Suu Kyi’s stance is widely shared in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. In 1982 the military government excluded the Rohingyas from a list of more than 130 officially recognised ethnic groups in the country, dismissing them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That rendered them, in effect, stateless, and their mistreatment intensified. In 1991-92, around 600,000 Rohingyas fled across the border to escape violent persecution by the army.

The current exodus is unfolding much more swiftly. On average, 120,000 people have crossed the border per week, although the rate has recently started to slow. Aid agencies say they are overwhelmed and cannot provide enough food, water or shelter. Other refugee crises have involved a larger total number of refugees, but have stretched out over longer periods, sometimes lasting years, so the flow has been less intense than the exodus from Myanmar.

Data on weekly refugee flows are often unavailable. The Economist has attempted to estimate them by using UNHCR figures for selected crises and averaging the yearly flows over 52 weeks (when yearly data are available, eg, for Iraq and Syria), or by averaging the overall number of refugees over the relevant time period (eg, for Liberia and Afghanistan).

This suggests that the current refugee flow from Myanmar is swifter even than the exodus from Rwanda in 1994. Some 2.3m people fled the country, more than a third of the population. (Confusingly, the refugees were mostly not Tutsis (the targets of the genocide, who were largely unable to escape) but Hutus (the perpetrators). A Tutsi rebel army overthrew the genocidal Hutu government, and its leaders fled, taking a huge portion of their own tribe with them.) We have assumed that most of the Rwandan exodus occurred between April and August 1994. If so, an average of 111,000 Rwandans left the country every week.

The refugee crisis in Syria is the worst of the past decade. Some 5.5m people have left the country. But averaging yearly flows, about 33,000 people left the country every week in 2013, the worst year.

Until the most recent violence began in Myanmar, some 1m Rohingyas lived in Rakhine state. Nearly half have gone to Bangladesh, which already hosted around 400,000 Rohingyas from previous outflows. A further 700,000 live in other countries in Asia and the Middle East. Ms Suu Kyi has said her government is prepared to begin a verification process “at any time” that would allow some Rohingyas in Bangladesh to return home. How many will be allowed to come back remains to be seen.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/09/daily-chart-13?fsrc=gnews