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Approximately 10,500 Rohingya Muslims have taken shelter in India

Dhaka, October 23, 2017 19:47 IST
Updated: October 23, 2017 20:49 IST
http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...sis-deepens/article19906953.ece?homepage=true
Bangladesh on Monday sent a high-level delegation to Myanmar for talks on the deepening Rohingya crisis as Dhaka sought to increase pressure on Naypyidaw to take back 600,000 members of the minority Muslim community who have fled Rakhine state to escape persecution.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan is leading the 12-member delegation comprising chiefs of paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), coastguard, police and several senior officials. Mr. Khan did not speak to the media before the departure but a Home Ministry spokesman told PTI that the delegation left for Myanmar this afternoon.

The minister earlier had aid the “quick repatriation of the forcibly displaced Rohingyas is the main agenda” of the visit. More than 600,000 people from the Muslim minority group have fled violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since August, according to U.N. estimates.

Bangladesh accused Myanmar of spearheading a violent depopulation campaign to eliminate Rohingyas by branding them as so-called “Islamist terrorists”.
 
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JAISHANKAR

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar. | Photo Credit: AP

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''India’s behaviour in the South Asian and Bay of Bengal regions does not mean that it is a leading power but shows that it is an ‘aspiring leading power’, which has regional responsibilities to shoulder.''

The Rohingya refugees staying in Bangladesh and India will have to return to their home state of Rakhine in Myanmar and there is need for a ‘constructive’ approach to deal with the issue, avoiding harsh criticism, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said on Thursday.

“The exodus of a large number of people from Rakhine state to Bangladesh is clearly a matter of concern. Our objective would be to see how they can go back to their place of origin. Clearly that is not easy. We are talking to Bangladesh and separately engaged with Myanmar and we feel that this is a situation better addressed with practical measures and constructive conversation, rather than doing very strong condemnations and having checked the condemnation- box, move to the next issue. There is need for a sober, sensitive and locally sensitive approach in dealing with the humanitarian emergency that the exodus has become,'' he said

Mr. Jaishankar was speaking at a think tank event on prospects of India-Japan cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and Asia-Pacific regions.

He said that both sides were ‘mirror images’ of each other in terms of potentials, and have clear areas of convergence in the Asian humanitarian and strategic architecture.

Mr. Jaishankar brought up ties among connectivity, regional cooperation and humanitarian response to evolving crises. “One of the areas we want to see in the agenda of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) is collaboration on the HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) — that, we would like these member countries to start working together on humanitarian assistance to disaster situation. In the last three years, Nepal earthquake relief, (India’s response to) Yemen civil war, Maldivian water crisis, and even the Operation Insaniyat for the displaced people from Rakhine state are part of regional cooperation,” he said.

India’s behaviour in the South Asian and Bay of Bengal regions did not mean that it is a leading power but shows that it is an ‘aspiring leading power’, which has regional responsibilities to shoulder.

In this set-up, he said, India and Japan have common concerns and features that could be synchronised for regional welfare that spreads from the Bay of Bengal to the Asia-Pacific region. The reiteration of India’s position in the Asia-Pacific region indicated India’s willingness to partner the Shinzo Abe government’s desire to transform Japan’s strategic plans in the backdrop of the election victory of Mr. Abe in last week’s polls, he said.

“Japan is economically globalised, but in the security, political, strategic sense that process is yet to be completed. In some ways, Japan is a mirror image of us. As Japan’s own impression of its responsibility becomes sharper, I think there is clear convergence there for everyone to see. The challenge is that we may agree intellectually but the hardwork [for collaboration] will require much deeper economic relation that is happening,” he said, citing the technological collaborations like the bullet train project.

The ambassador of Japan, Kenji Hiramatsu, who was the second speaker at the event, said that security ties, technology exchange and defence cooperation have also emerged as key fronts in recent years that have provided Japan-India ties a strategic platform.

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http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...or-refugees/article19925799.ece?homepage=true

Points to killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs

A United Nations settlement programme, UN-Habitat in Myanmar, on Thursday rejected a state media report that it had agreed to help build housing for people fleeing violence in the northern Myanmar state of Rakhine, where an army operation has displaced hundreds of thousands.

The development underscores tension between Myanmar and the United Nations, which in April criticised the government’s previous plan to resettle Rohingya Muslims displaced by last year’s violence in “camp-like” villages.

Over 6 lakh have crossed over
More than 6,00,000 have crossed to Bangladesh since August 25 attacks by Rohingya militants sparked an army crackdown. The UN has said killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since then amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said on Thursday that UN-Habitat had agreed to provide technical assistance in housing displaced people in Rakhine and the agency would work closely with the authorities to “implement the projects to be favourable to Myanmar's social culture and administrative system.”

But Stanislav Saling, spokesman for the office of the U.N. resident coordinator in Myanmar, told Reuters in an email that “no agreements were reached so far” after the agency's representatives attended a series of meetings with Myanmar officials this week in its capital Naypyitaw.

“The UN-Habitat mission emphasized that resettlement should be conducted in accordance with the principles of housing and property restitution for refugees and displaced persons to support their safe and dignified return to their places of origin,” he said, responding on behalf of UN-Habitat.

UN-Habitat welcomed the interest of the Myanmar government in international norms and standards, he added.

The UN principles state that all refugees or displaced persons have the right to return to property or land from which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully removed.

This is Suu Kyi’s pledge
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged that anyone sheltering in Bangladesh who can prove they were Myanmar residents can return, but it remains unclear whether those refugees would be allowed to return to their homes.

Rohingya, who return to Myanmar, are unlikely to be able to reclaim their land, and may find their crops have been harvested and sold by the government, according to Myanmar officials and plans seen by Reuters.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar in August suggested that UN agencies such as the World Food Programme have provided food to Rohingya insurgents, adding to pressure on aid groups which had to suspend activities in Rakhine and pull out most of their staff.

Still, Soe Aung, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Social Welfare who attended the meetings with UN-Habitat, insisted that the agency had agreed to give assistance and the two sides will meet again on November 8.

“We have reached an agreement with the UN for technical assistance. We will discuss more details on how to proceed,” he told Reuters.

Military to withdraw ‘some’ troops

The Myanmar military said on Thursday that it will withdraw “some” of the security forces carrying out clearance operations in northern Rakhine and dispatch them to the state capital, Sittwe, as an auxiliary force.

Thousands of refugees have continued to arrive cross the Naf river separating Rakhine and Bangladesh in recent days, even though Myanmar says military operations ceased on September 5.
 
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http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...proach-to-rohingya-crisis/article19927136.ece

NEW DELHI, October 26, 2017 22:31 IST
Updated: October 26, 2017 22:31 IST

Our objective will be to see how they can go back to their place of origin, says Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar
Seeking a ‘constructive’ approach to dealing with the exodus of the Rohingya, India said on Thursday that the displaced members of the community will have to return to their place of origin in the Rakhine province of Myanmar.

Speaking at a think tank event here, on the prospects of India-Japan cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and Asia-Pacific regions, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar highlighted India’s regional humanitarian responsibilities and growing convergence with Tokyo.

“The exodus of a large number of people from the Rakhine state to Bangladesh is clearly a matter of concern. Our objective will be to see how they can go back to their place of origin. Clearly that is not easy,” he said. “We are talking to Bangladesh and separately engaged with Myanmar and we feel that this is a situation better addressed with practical measures and constructive conversation, rather than doing very strong condemnations and, having checked the condemnation box, moving to the next issue.”

He highlighted the need for “a sober, sensitive and locally sensitive approach” in dealing with the humanitarian emergency that the exodus had become.

Regional cooperation

Mr. Jaishankar also brought up the ties between connectivity, regional cooperation and humanitarian response to evolving crises. “One of the areas we want to see in the agenda of BIMSTEC is collaboration on the HADR— that, we would like these member countries to cooperate on humanitarian assistance to disaster situation. In the last three years, Nepal earthquake relief, (India’s response to) Yemen civil war, Maldivian water crisis, and even Operation Insaniyat for the Rohingyas are part of cooperation.”
 
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MYANMAR

In this Sept. 30, 2017, photo, Rohingya refugee survivors of a Sept. 28 boat capsize walk in a group to a registration center at Kutupalong camp for newly arrived Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. | Photo Credit: AP

http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...se-refugees/article19938249.ece?homepage=true

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM) newspaper said it had “incorrectly stated that UN-Habitat had agreed with the Union government to provide technical assistance in building housings for displaced people in northern Rakhine.”

A Myanmar state-run newspaper on Saturday corrected a report that a U.N. settlement programme, UN-Habitat, had agreed to help build housing for people fleeing violence in the west of the country, where an army operation has displaced hundreds of thousands.

The development underscores tension between Myanmar and the United Nations, which in April criticised the government's previous plan to resettle Rohingya Muslims displaced by last year's violence in “camp-like” villages.

More than 600,000 have crossed to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants sparked an army crackdown. The U.N. says killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since then amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM) newspaper said it had “incorrectly stated that UN-Habitat had agreed with the Union government to provide technical assistance in building housings for displaced people in northern Rakhine.”

“Union officials say that the issue is still under negotiation. The GNLM regrets the error,” said the newspaper.

In its report on Thursday, the daily said UN-Habitat had agreed to provide technical assistance in housing the displaced and the agency would work closely with the authorities to "implement the projects to be favourable to Myanmar's social culture and administrative system".

But the U.N. told Reuters in an email that no agreements had been reached “so far” after the agency's representatives attended a series of meetings with Myanmar officials this week in its capital Naypyitaw.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged that anyone sheltering in Bangladesh who can prove they were Myanmar residents can return, but it remains unclear whether those refugees would be allowed to return to their homes.

Rohingya who return to Myanmar are unlikely to be able to reclaim their land, and may find their crops have been harvested and sold by the government, according to Myanmar officials and plans seen by Reuters.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar in August suggested that U.N. agencies such as the World Food Programme have provided food to Rohingya insurgents, adding to pressure on aid groups which had to suspend activities in Rakhine and pull out most of their staff.

Thousands of refugees have continued to arrive cross the Naf river separating Rakhine and Bangladesh in recent days, even though Myanmar says military operations ceased on Sept. 5.
 
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/india...-parl-panel/story-i2O52BkHlKksoFgA47YnCK.html

Around 14,000 Rohingyas living in India are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
india Updated: Nov 06, 2017 21:38 IST
Press Trust of India, New Delhi
subrahmanyam-jaishankar_9be3cf66-c30c-11e7-94e0-d13ec9d58666.jpg

Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (AP File Photo)

India is in touch with Myanmar and Bangladesh on the issue of Rohingya Muslims, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is understood to have told the members of a parliamentary panel here on Monday.

The agenda for Monday’s meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, was ‘relations with Myanmar and the Rohingya situation’.

The foreign secretary told the panel that the government was keeping a close watch on the Rohingya issue and was examining the matter through humanitarian prism, said a member present in the meeting.

India was in touch with both Myanmar and Bangladesh over the situation arising out of the crisis, another member quoted Jaishankar as saying.

Asked about the deliberations, Tharoor, a former Minister of State for External Affairs, said, “It was an interesting and thorough discussion on the India-Myanmar relations, especially on Rohingya crisis.”

Around 14,000 Rohingyas living in India are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. An estimate puts the number of illegal Rohingya immigrants in India at 40,000.

The Rohingyas are an ethnic group, largely comprising Muslims, who predominantly live in the western Myanmar province of Rakhine. Their language is linguistically similar to Bengali. The commonly spoken language in Myanmar in Burmese.

Though they have been living in Myanmar for generations, the country considers them as persons who migrated to their land during the colonial rule. Therefore, the population has not been granted full citizenship.
 
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http://indianexpress.com/article/wo...a-refugees-in-bangladesh-us-official-4928288/

Expressing shock at the scale of the Rohingya refugee crisis, a top US official, who recently visited Bangladesh, has said he saw “evidence of atrocities” committed against the minority Muslims who have fled in millions to escape violence in Myanmar.

According to the UN estimates, nearly 600,000 minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State since August 25 when the army launched a military crackdown, triggering an exodus.

Myanmar does not recognise Rohingya as an ethnic group and insists that they are Bangladeshi migrants living illegally in the country.

“What we saw in the camps was shocking. The scale of the refugee crisis is immense,” Simon Henshaw, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration told reporters on Tuesday. Henshaw led a US delegation to Bangladesh from October 29 to November 4 during which the team also visited the refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar.

“The conditions are tough. People are suffering. Many refugees told us, through tears, accounts of seeing their villages burned, their relatives killed in front of them. It was tough to take. Some recall being shot as they fled,” he said. He said that despite the trauma, many expressed a strong desire to return to their homes in Myanmar, provided their safety, security and rights could be guaranteed.

Henshaw said he saw evidence of atrocities during the visit to the camps. “I’m not an expert, but what I saw was shocking. I saw evidence of atrocities,” he said. Asked if the atrocities rose up to the level of ethnic cleansing, Henshaw was non-committal, saying the State Department would review his and others reports to make any such confirmation. He also praised the Bangladesh government, its people and other organisations for supporting the refugees.

“However, more is needed. (The) US remains committed to addressing the needs of those impacted by the crisis, and calls on others, including in the region, to join us in our response,” he said. Henshaw said the Myanmar government “appears to be committed” to start a repatriation programme which is in its early stages.

“It’s very important to us that the programme not only creates safe conditions so that refugees will want to return voluntarily, but also assure that refugees go back to their villages and land, that their houses be restored in the areas where the villages were burned, and that political reconciliation take place,” he said.

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert, who accompanied Henshaw during the visit to Bangladesh, applauded the government of Bangladesh for taking “an extraordinary step to open its heart and doors” for their neighbours in distress. “They’ve opened their hearts; they’ve opened their wallets. Imagine – more than 600,000 to cross their borders, putting them in camps. It’s not where these people want to be of course – in their camps; they’d rather be home. But at least they’re safe for now,” she said.

Bangladesh has accused Myanmar of spearheading a violent depopulation campaign to eliminate Rohingyas by branding them as so-called “Islamist terrorists”.
 
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/world...on-oil-drum/story-NwaTU6jEsrCx2p94kDYX7H.html

In just a week, more than three dozen boys and young men used cooking oil drums like life rafts to swim across the mouth of the Naf River .

world Updated: Nov 13, 2017 17:36 IST
Associated Press, Shah Porir Dwip
myanmar-swimming-to-bangladesh_68461364-c832-11e7-8cd0-7e09bc26593d.jpg

In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, Rohingya Muslim Nabi Hussain, 13, poses for a portrait with the yellow plastic drum he used as a flotation device while crossing the Naf river in Shar Porir Dwip, south Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. )(AP)

Nabi Hussain owes his life to a yellow plastic oil drum.

The 13-year-old Rohingya boy couldn’t swim, and had never even seen the sea before fleeing his village in Myanmar. But he clung to the empty drum and struggled across the water with it for about 2.5 miles, all the way to Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims escaping the violence in their homeland of Myanmar are now so desperate that some are trying to swim to safety in neighbouring Bangladesh. In just a week, more than three dozen boys and young men used cooking oil drums like life rafts to swim across the mouth of the Naf River and wash up ashore in Shah Porir Dwip, a fishing town and cattle trade spot.

“I was so scared of dying,” said Nabi, a lanky boy in a striped polo shirt and checkered dhoti. “I thought it was going to be my last day.”

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In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, Rohingya Muslims carrying yellow plastic drums they used as flotation devices walk down the Shah Porir Dwip dock after reaching Bangladesh. (AP)
Although Rohingya Muslims have lived in Myanmar for decades, the country’s Buddhist majority still sees them as invaders from Bangladesh. The government denies them basic rights, and the United Nations has called them the most persecuted minority in the world. Just since August, after their homes were torched by Buddhist mobs and soldiers, more than 600,000 Rohingya have risked the trip to Bangladesh.

“We had a lot of suffering, so we thought drowning in the water was a better option,” said Kamal Hussain, 18, who also swam to Bangladesh with an oil drum.

Nabi knows almost no one in this new country, and his parents back in Myanmar don’t know that he is alive. He doesn’t smile and rarely maintains eye contact.

Nabi grew up in the mountains of Myanmar, the fourth of nine children of a farmer who grows paan, the betel leaf used as chewing tobacco. He never went to school.

myanmar-swimming-to-bangladesh_a95cafd4-c832-11e7-8cd0-7e09bc26593d.jpg

In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, newly arrived Rohingya Muslims with yellow plastic drums they used to aid flotation while crossing the Naf river wait in Shah Porir Dwip to be transferred to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (AP)
The trouble started two months ago when Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar security forces. The Myanmar military responded with a brutal crackdown, killing men, raping women and burning homes and property. The last Nabi saw of his village, all the homes were on fire.

Nabi’s family fled, heading toward the coast, passing dead bodies. But when they arrived at the coast with a flood of other Rohingya refugees, they had no money for a boat and a smuggler.

Every day, there was less food. So after four days, Nabi told his parents he wanted to swim the delta to reach the thin line of land he could see in the distance — Shah Porir Dwip.

His parents didn’t want him to go. One of his older brothers had left for Bangladesh two months ago, and they had no idea what had happened to him. They knew the strong currents could carry Nabi into the ocean.

Eventually, though, they agreed, on the condition that he not go alone. So on the afternoon of Nov. 3, Nabi joined a group of 23 other young men, and his family came to see him off.

“Please keep me in your prayers,” he told his mother, while everyone around him wept.

Nabi and the others strapped the cooking oil drums to their chests as floats, and stepped into the water just as the current started to shift toward Bangladesh. The men stayed in groups of three, tied together with ropes. Nabi was in the middle, because he was young and didn’t know how to swim.

Nabi remembers swallowing water, in part because of the waves and in part to quench his thirst. The water was salty. His legs ached. But he never looked behind him.

aptopix-myanmar-swimming-to-bangladesh_d5ffa938-c832-11e7-8cd0-7e09bc26593d.jpg

In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, Rohingya Muslim Abdul Karim, 19, uses a yellow plastic drum as a floatation device as he swims the Naf river while crossing the Myanmar-Bangladesh border in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh. (AP)
Just after sundown, the group reached Shah Porir Dwip, exhausted, hungry and dehydrated.

Nabi is now alone, one of an estimated 40,000 unaccompanied Rohingya Muslim children living in Bangladesh. He looks down as he speaks, just a few feet from the water, and murmurs his biggest wish:

“I want my parents and peace.”

Late afternoon on the next day, authorities spotted a few dots in the middle of the water. It was another group of Rohingya swimming to Bangladesh with yellow drums. They arrived at the same time as a pack of cattle — except that the cows came by boat.

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http://www.hindustantimes.com/world...ngya-crisis/story-FeD30HbVVTaA6VWfoJKqOP.html
In keeping with ASEAN’s principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of one another, the issue appears to have been put aside at the summit.
world Updated: Nov 13, 2017 17:37 IST
Reuters, Manila
myanmar-summit-counselor-opening-session-attends-manila_256ad6a4-c82f-11e7-8cd0-7e09bc26593d.jpg

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi attends the opening session of the 31st ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines, November 13, 2017. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha(REUTERS)
A draft of the statement to be issued after a Southeast Asian summit makes no mention of the exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine state following a military crackdown that has been described by the United Nations as ethnic cleansing.

One paragraph of the communique, seen by Reuters on Monday, mentions the importance of humanitarian relief provided for victims of natural disasters in Vietnam and a recent urban battle with Islamist militants in the Philippines, as well as “affected communities” in northern Rakhine state.

The statement was drawn up by the Philippines, current chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - which includes Myanmar - whose leaders met for a plenary session in Manila on Monday.

The draft did not give any details of the situation in northern Rakhine state or use the term Rohingya for the persecuted Muslim minority, which Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has asked foreign leaders not to use.

The government in mostly-Buddhist Myanmar regards the Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and does not recognise the term.

Well over 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to find shelter in refugee camps after military clearance operations were launched in response to attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts on Aug. 25.

The plight of the Rohingya has brought outrage from around the world and there have been calls for democracy champion Suu Kyi to be stripped of the Nobel peace prize she won in 1991 because she has not condemned the Myanmar military’s actions.

In September, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the situation in Rakhine was best described as ethnic cleansing.

Some members of ASEAN, particularly Muslim-majority Malaysia, have voiced concern. However, in keeping with ASEAN’s principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of one another, the issue appears to have been put aside at the summit.

Suu Kyi, who did not mention the crisis in a pre-summit speech after arriving in Manila on Sunday, criticised ASEAN’s principle of non-interference in 1999 when she was fighting for democracy in a country then ruled by a military junta.

“This policy of non-interference is just an excuse for not helping,” she wrote in an opinion column in the Thai daily the Nation at the time. “In this day and age, you cannot avoid interference in the matters of other countries.”
 
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/india...ter-mizoram/story-5dRuYW8qDtLvnTXqYT0NXM.html

In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine region to enter Mizoram
india Updated: Dec 04, 2017 18:01 IST
Indo Asian News Service, Aizwal
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In this photograph taken on August 30, 2017, Daw Bu (L), 64, who fled from Maungdaw, is seen with her sister (R), daughter-in-law (C) and three grandchildren at an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Sittwe.(AFP Representative Photo)

In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army, made up of Buddhist insurgents.

This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas -- who are Muslims -- from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.

The new group of refugees, belonging to the Chin and few other communities of Myanmar, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district.

According to sources in the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.

According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home.

“It’s been some six days since these refugees have arrived on Mizoram territory. They currently are in four villages of the Lawngtlai district and are put up at shelter homes, Buddhist homes, temples and many other places,” T. Arun, Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai, told IANS over the phone.

He emphasised that the security threat in such a situation cannot be denied.

“We basically have two rules -- one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases,” said Arun.

Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.

“The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern,” said Arun.

Mizoram’s police chief emphasised that though they won’t immediately term the arrival of the refugees a security threat, they are waiting for the situation in Myanmar to normalise so that they could be sent back.

“We won’t call it a security threat at this juncture. They were alllowed into Indian territory due to the ongoing fighting in Myanmar. We are taking care of it and police forces are there. However, we are making sure there won’t be any problem for the villagers due to the refugees. They have been confined to the four villages,” Director General of Police Thianghlima Pachuau told IANS over the phone.

The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 600,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

The Indian government has taken measures, including asking the states in the region to seal their borders with Mayanmar, to prevent Rohingya refugees from entering the country.

Myanmar, the only Southeast Asian country which shares a 1,600-mile-long border with India, serves as its gateway to the other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Four northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) -- have an unfenced border with Myanmar.

Experts on Indo-Myanmar relations see the current influx as a temporary matter that is different from the Rohingyas issue.

“This is an issue that has emerged in the last few months. The arrival of Buddhist refugees is certainly a matter of concern as it affects people on the Indian side as well. However, this is different from Rohingyas,” Khriezo Yhome, senior Research fellow at Observer Research Foundation and an expert on Indo-Myanmar affairs, told IANS.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India. The central government, though, has sent a clear message that it would not be willing to accept them “because of security concerns”.

The Supreme Court on October 13 asked the Centre to strike a balance between national security, economic interests and humanitarian considerations with regard to Rohingya women, children, old, sick and infirm
 
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UKHIA, Bangladesh, December 11, 2017 11:51 IST
Updated: December 11, 2017 14:12 IST
http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...-methodical/article21389618.ece?homepage=true

Sexual assault survivors aged 13 to 35 years describe horrific experiences, even as the government dismisses their claims as “fake.”

The soldiers arrived, as they often did, long after sunset.

It was June, and the newlyweds were asleep in their home, surrounded by fields of wheat they farmed in western Myanmar. Without any warning, seven soldiers burst into the house and charged into the bedroom.

The woman, a Rohingya Muslim who agreed to be identified by her first initial, F, knew enough to be terrified. She knew the military had been attacking Rohingya villages, as part of what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in the mostly Buddhist nation. She heard just days before that soldiers had killed her parents, and that her brother was missing.

This time, F says, the soldiers had come for her. The men bound her husband with rope. They ripped the scarf from her head and tied it around his mouth.

They yanked off her jewelry and tore off her clothes. They threw her to the floor. And then the first soldier began to rape her.

She struggled against him, but four men held her down and beat her with sticks. She stared in panic at her husband, who stared back helplessly. He finally wriggled the gag out of his mouth and screamed.

And then she watched as a soldier fire a bullet into the chest of the man she had married only one month before. Another soldier slit his throat.

It would be two months before she realized her misery was far from over. She was pregnant.

The rape of Rohingya women by Myanmar security forces has been sweeping and methodical, The Associated Press found in interviews with 29 women and girls who fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. These sexual assault survivors from several refugee camps were interviewed separately and extensively. They ranged in age from 13 to 35, came from a wide swath of villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and described assaults between October 2016 and mid-September.



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M, 30, mother of four, was raped by members of Myanmar's armed forces in late August. | Photo Credit: AP

Foreign journalists are banned from the Rohingya region of Rakhine, making it nearly impossible to independently verify each woman’s report. Yet there was a sickening sameness to their stories, with distinct patterns in their accounts, their assailants’ uniforms and the details of the rapes themselves.

The testimonies bolster the U.N.’s contention that Myanmar’s armed forces are systematically employing rape as a “calculated tool of terror” aimed at exterminating the Rohingya people. The Myanmar armed forces did not respond to multiple requests from The AP for comment, but an internal military investigation last month concluded that none of the assaults ever took place.

And when journalists asked about rape allegations during a government-organised trip to Rakhine in September, Rakhine’s Minister for Border Affairs Phone Tint replied, “These women were claiming they were raped, but look at their appearances do you think they are that attractive to be raped?”

Doctors and aid workers, however, say that they are stunned at the sheer volume of rapes, and suspect only a fraction of women have come forward. Medecins Sans Frontieres doctors have treated 113 sexual violence survivors since August, a third of them under 18. The youngest was 9.

Similarity in attacks
The U.N. has called the Rohingya the most persecuted minority on earth, with Myanmar denying them citizenship and basic rights. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees now live in sweltering tents in Bangladesh, where the stifling air smells of excrement from a lack of latrines and of smoke from wood fires to cook what little food there is.

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H, 30, mother of six; three children killed, was raped in late August. | Photo Credit: AP

The women and girls in this story gave The AP their names but agreed to be publicly identified only by their first initial, citing fears they or their families would be killed by Myanmar’s military.

Each described attacks that involved groups of men from Myanmar’s security forces, often coupled with other forms of extreme violence. Every woman except one said the assailants wore military-style uniforms, generally dark green or camouflage. The lone woman who described her attackers as wearing plain clothes said her neighbours recognised them from the local military outpost.

Many women said the uniforms bore various patches featuring stars or, in a couple cases, arrows. Such patches represent the different units of Myanmar’s army.

The most common attack described went much like F’s. In several other cases, women said, security forces surrounded a village, separated men from women, then took the women to a second location to gang rape them.

The women spoke of seeing their children slaughtered in front of them, their husbands beaten and shot. They spoke of burying their loved ones in the darkness and leaving the bodies of their babies behind. They spoke of the searing pain of rapes that felt as if they would never end, and of days-long journeys on foot to Bangladesh while still bleeding and hobbled.

They spoke and they spoke, the words erupting from many of them in frantic, tortured bursts.

N, who says she survived a rape but lost her husband, her country and her peace, speaks because there is little else she can do and because she hopes that somebody will listen.

“I have nothing left,” she says. “All I have left are my words.”




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N, 17, was raped in late August. | Photo Credit: AP

Two months after the men came quietly in the night for F, they came boldly in the daytime for K.

It was late August, she says, just days after Rohingya insurgents had attacked several Myanmar police posts in northern Rakhine. Security forces responded with swift ferocity that human rights groups say left hundreds dead and scores of Rohingya villages burned to the ground.

Inside their house, K and her family were settling down to breakfast. They had only just swallowed their first mouthfuls of rice when the screams of other villagers rang out- The military was coming.

But K was nearly 9 months pregnant, with swollen feet and two terrified toddlers whose tiny legs could never outpace the soldiers’ strides. She had no place to hide, no time to think.

The door banged open. And the men charged in.

There were four of them, she thinks, maybe five, all in camouflage uniforms. Her young son and daughter began to wail and then, mercifully, scampered out the front door.

There was no mercy for her. The men grabbed her and threw her on the bed. They yanked off her earrings, nose ring and necklace. They found the money she had hidden in her blouse from the recent sale of her family’s cow. They ripped off her clothes, and tied down her hands and legs with rope. When she resisted, they choked her.

And then, she says, they began to rape her. She was too terrified to move. One man held a knife to her eyeball, one more a gun to her chest. Another forced himself inside her.

When the first man finished, they switched places and the torture began again. And when the second man finished, a third man raped her.

In the midst of her agony, she thought of nothing but the baby inside her womb, just weeks away from emerging into a world that would not want him, because he was a Rohingya.

She began to bleed. She blacked out.

As she awoke, her great aunt was there, tearfully untying her. The elder woman bathed her, clothed her and gave her a hot compress for her aching thighs.

When K’s husband returned home, he was furious- not just at the men who had raped her, but at her. Why, he demanded, had she not run away?

She was pregnant and in no condition to run, she shot back. Still, he blamed her for the assault and threatened to abandon her, because, he told her, a “non-Muslim” had raped her.

Fearful the men would return, she and her family fled to her father’s house in the hills above the village. When they saw soldiers setting fire to the houses below, they knew they had to leave for Bangladesh.

K was too crippled by pain to walk. Her husband and brother placed her inside a sling they fashioned out of a blanket and a stick, and carried her for days.

Inside her cocoon, she wept for the baby she feared was dead.



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S, 25, mother of two, who says she was raped by members of Myanmar’s armed forces. | Photo Credit: AP
A few days after the men burst into K’s house, 10 soldiers arrived at R’s. She was just 13 years old, but R had already learned to fear the military men.

Yet R’s family had nowhere else to go. And so they stayed in the village. R busied herself by learning Arabic, doting on her chicken and its hatchlings and caring for her two younger brothers.

And then one day in late August, R says, the soldiers barged into her house. They snatched up her little brothers, tied them to a tree outside and began to beat them. R tried to run out the front door, but the men caught her.

R fought back against the men, but they dragged her out of the house. The skin tore away from her knees as her legs scraped along the ground.

The men tethered her arms to two trees. They ripped off her earrings and bracelets, stripped off her clothes. R screamed at them to stop. They spit at her.

And then the first man began to rape her. She froze. She was a virgin. The pain was excruciating.

The attack lasted for hours. She remembers all ten men forcing themselves on her before she passed out. One of her older brothers later found her on the ground, bleeding.

R’s two little brothers were missing, but their mother had no time to search for them. She knew she had to get her daughter over the border and to a doctor quickly to get medicine in time to prevent a pregnancy.

R was barely conscious. So her two older brothers carried her across the hills and fields toward Bangladesh. R’s mother hurried alongside them, terrified for her daughter, terrified that time was running out.

Very few victims saw doctors
That R’s family sought treatment for her at all is an anomaly. Despite still suffering pain, bleeding and infections months after the attacks, only a handful of the women interviewed by The AP had seen a doctor. The others had no idea free services were available, or were too ashamed to tell a doctor they were raped.



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F, 27, mother of one, who says she was raped by members of Myanmar’s armed forces in late August, is photographed in her tent in Gundum refugee camp in Bangladesh. | Photo Credit: AP
In a health center overflowing with women and wailing babies, Dr. Misbah Uddin Ahmed, a government health officer, sits at his desk looking weary. He pulls out a stack of patient histories for those treated at his clinics and begins to flick through them, reading the case summaries out loud:

“September 5, a patient 7 months pregnant says three soldiers burst into her home 11 days ago and raped her. Also September 5, a patient says she was asleep at home when the military broke in 20 days ago and three soldiers raped her. September 10, a patient says the military came to her house one month ago and beat her husband before two soldiers raped her.”

Dr. Ahmed says the women who manage to overcome their fear and make it to his clinics are usually the ones in the deepest trouble. So many others, he adds, are suffering in silence.

Though the scale of these attacks is new, the use of sexual violence by Myanmar’s security forces is not. Before she became Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi herself condemned the military’s abuses. “Rape is rife. It is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country,” she said in a 2011 videotaped statement to the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

And yet Ms. Suu Kyi’s government has not only failed to condemn the recent accounts of rape, it has dismissed the accounts as lies. In December 2016, the government issued a press release disputing Rohingya women’s reports of sexual assaults, accompanied by an image that said “Fake Rape.”

Dr. Ahmed seems bewildered that anyone would ever doubt these women. Look at what I have just shown you, he says, gesturing toward his stack of files chronicling one atrocity after another.



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A, 35, mother of four, was raped in late August. | Photo Credit: AP
Gynaecologist Arjina Akhter has witnessed the results of those atrocities. Since August, so many women began showing up at her two clinics, she stopped asking them to fill out patient history forms so she could treat them faster. Among other women, she estimates between 20 to 30 rape survivors visited her clinics in September and October.

She ticks off the injuries — Two women with lacerations to their cervixes they said were caused by guns shoved inside their bodies. One woman with horrific tearing she said was caused by a nail driven into her vagina. Several women with severe vaginal bleeding.

More recently, she says, women who were raped months ago have been coming to her in a panic, asking for abortions. She has to explain to them that they are too far along, but reassures them that officials will take the babies if they cannot care for them.

Still, for some Rohingya women, giving up the babies they never asked for was not an option. Which is how it was for F.



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R, 13, who says she was raped by members of Myanmar’s armed forces, adjusts her headscarf while photographed in her family's tent. | Photo Credit: AP
More than three months had passed since the men burst into F’s home, and her despair had only deepened.

Neighbors had taken her in and cared for her. But her house was gone, her husband was dead. And the timing of the attack left little doubt that the baby growing inside her belonged to one of the men who had caused all her grief.

She could only pray that things would not get worse. And then, one night in mid-September, they did.

F was asleep along with the neighbors a couple and their 5-year-old son when the men broke down the door, jolting everyone awake.

There were five of them this time, she remembers. They quickly grabbed the boy and slashed his throat, and killed the man.

Then they turned to the man’s wife, and to F. And her nightmare began again.

They stripped off the women’s clothes. Two of the men noticed the swell of F’s stomach and grabbed it, squeezing hard.

They threw the women to the floor. F’s friend fought back, and the men beat her with their guns so viciously the skin on her thighs began to peel away.

But the fight had gone out of F. She felt her body go soft, felt the blood run between her legs as the first man forced himself on her, and then the second. Next to her, three men were savaging her friend.

When it was finally over and the men had gone, the two women lay immobile on the floor.

They lay there for days, so crippled by pain and catatonic from the trauma that they could not even lift themselves to use the toilet. F could smell the blood around them. As the house baked under the punishing sun, the stench from the decaying bodies of her friend’s husband and son finally overwhelmed her.

She would not die here. And neither would her baby.

She reached out for her friend’s hand and clasped it. Then F hauled herself to her feet, pulling her friend up with her. Hand in hand, the women stumbled to the next village. They spent five days recovering there and then, alongside a group of other villagers, began the 10-day journey to Bangladesh.

The monsoon season had begun, but there was nowhere to shelter. So F kept walking through the downpours. She was starving, and her battered body ached with each step. Generous strangers offered her sips of their water, and one man gave her a few sweet rolls.

One day, she came across a 9-year-old boy lying along the side of a road, wounded and alone. He had lost his parents, he told her, and the soldiers had tortured him. She took him with her.

Together, the two made it to the shores of the Naf River and boarded a boat to Bangladesh.

Which is where they live now, in a tiny bamboo shelter between two filthy latrines. And it is here that F prays her baby will be a boy because this world is no place for a girl.



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K, 30, mother of six who's 3-year-old daughter was killed, who says she was raped by members of Myanmar's armed forces in late August, carries her baby born two months premature. | Photo Credit: AP
Dreams of homeland seem far away
For now, the women are left to wonder how long they will live in the bleak limbo of Bangladesh, and if they will ever return to their homeland.

R, the teen, is not pregnant. Her mother sold all her jewelry and got her to the hospital in time. But R can’t stop thinking about her little brothers, and her sleep is plagued by nightmares.

Since the rape, she has struggled to eat, and her once-curvy frame has shrunk. Before the rape, she says softly, she was pretty.

K, who feared the baby inside her had died, gave birth to a boy on the floor of her tent in a dizzying rush of relief. She had kept her son alive through it all.

But her trauma persists. The thrum of a helicopter hovering over the camp sends her into a panic and she recites the Muslim prayer for the moments before death. She is convinced the aircraft is Myanmar’s military, coming to kill them all.

When told she is strong, she looks up with tears in her eyes.

“How can you say that?” she asks. “My husband says he is ashamed of me. How am I strong?”

F, whose body is starting to ache under the strain of her pregnancy, finds her mind often drifts toward how she will care for the child in the future. She believes God has kept them both alive for a reason.

“Everybody has died,” she says. “I don’t have anyone to care for me. If I give this baby away, what will I have left? There will be nothing to live for.”
 
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Dhaka, December 14, 2017 20:50 IST
Updated: December 14, 2017 21:34 IST
http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...-in-myanmar/article21665056.ece?homepage=true

ROHINGYAS

Roshida Begum (22), sleeps on December 1, 2017 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. She fled to Bangladesh shortly after the August 25th attack from Tula Toli village in Myanmar. One day the military came to her village and threw petrol bombs and set houses on fire. They randomly shot anyone they say. | Photo Credit: Getty Images


Among the dead were 730 children below age of five years

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international NGO best-known for its medical support in strife-torn areas, has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed in Myanmar between August 25 and September 24 after violence broke out in Rakhine.

Based on surveys in refugee camps in Bangladesh, the MSF said in a report that gunshots were the leading cause of deaths. Many were burnt inside their homes and others beaten to death.

Among the dead were 730 children below the age of five years, according to the MSF report.

‘Security crackdown’
The latest crisis in Rakhine broke out in August after Rohingya militants attacked a security post. The Myanmar army launched a “security crackdown” which led to the deaths and displacement of Rohingya Muslims. Since then, more than 626,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to the neighbouring Bangladesh.

“We met and spoke with survivors of violence in Myanmar, who are now sheltering in overcrowded and unsanitary camps in Bangladesh. What we uncovered was staggering, both in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member died as a result of violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely injured. The peak in deaths coincides with the launch of the latest ‘clearance operations’ by Myanmar security forces in the last week of August,” said Dr. Sidney Wong, MSF Medical Director.
 
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http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...s-destroyed/article21856582.ece?homepage=true

Dhaka, December 18, 2017 21:29 IST
Updated: December 18, 2017 21:30 IST

The international rights group, Human Rights Watch, has identified 40 new Rohingya villages that were burned during October and November in Rakhine State. With this, the total number of destroyed villages since August 25 stands at 354.

Dozens of buildings were reportedly set on fire at around the same time that Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding (on November 23) to begin the repatriation of refugees. HRW said it used satellite imagery to assess and monitor over 1,000 villages and towns in the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathiduang.

The report said at least 118 villages were destroyed after September 5, the date the Myanmar State Counsellor’s office announced an end to operations.

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http://www.ptinews.com/news/9333850_Around-40-000-Rohingya-in-India--Govt-tells-Lok-Sabha.html

15:14 HRS IST

New Delhi, Dec 19 (PTI) Around 40,000 Rohingya migrants were illegally living in India and none of them had been deported so far, Union minister Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament today.

In a written reply to a question, the Union minister of state for home affairs informed the Lok Sabha that the entry of illegal migrants was clandestine and surreptitious and thus, an accurate figure of how many of them were currently living in the country was not available.

As per an estimate, the number of Rohingya migrants could be around 40,000, he said, adding that none of them had been deported so far.

Rijiju said though India was not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol thereon, the country's track record in dealing with or providing protection to refugees had internationally been acclaimed.

He added that there was no legislation to deal with refugees and asylum-seekers in India.
 
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